2011

I always have many new year resolutions or should I rather use revolutions for myself? But how long does the motivation lasted? You know better than me. For my case not really that long and I do wish that I can do better in the coming year.

I figured that resolutions should be nothing more than a starting point.Life has a funny way of throwing unexpected things at us. Sometimes the goal that we set at the very beginning will change. Most of all, recognize partial successes at every step along the way. Just as a resolution isn't accomplished the day it's stated, neither is it accomplished the day you reach your goal. Rather, it's accomplished in many small increments along the way. Acknowledge these incremental successes as they come.

Happy New Year to all of you! Have a great start cause it's as important as a good ending!

Space Rocket Disaster at India

The Indian GSLV (Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle), carrying the GSAT-5P satellite as payload, is seen moments after it exploded during launch above Sriharikota on Saturday.

A space rocket carrying communications equipment exploded soon after takeoff Saturday evening in India, the official national news agency reported.


The unmanned rocket strayed from its flight path and broke into pieces, according to the Press Trust of India.
Video of the incident showed huge plumes of white and copper-colored smoke streaming across the sky.

CNN's sister network, CNN-IBN, reported that the rocket lifted off from the Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. Its launch was originally scheduled for December 20, but had been postponed because of an engine leak, CNN-IBN said.

It was not immediately clear what caused the failure, which the Press Trust called a setback to India's space program.

Merry Christmas - めりーくりすます

The joyful Christmas is just around the corner. Wonderful and extravagant display is everywhere. Parents have been busy with gift picking and buying. Children have been  waiting for their Santa and not the last Christmas song can be heard everywhere.

In Japan, Christmas in known as more of a time to spread happiness rather than a religious celebration. Christmas eve is often celebrated more than Christmas Day. Christmas eve is thought of as a romantic day, in which couples spend together and exchange presents. In many ways it resembles valentines day celebrations in the England and the USA. Young couples like to go for walks to look at the Christmas lights and have a romantic meal in a restaurant - booking a table on Christmas Eve can be very difficult as it's so popular!
Christmas is not a national holiday in Japan, so schools and businesses are normally open on December 25th.
In Japanese Happy/Merry Christmas is 'Meri Kurisumasu'. And it's written in the two Japanese scripts like this; Hiragana: めりーくりすます; Katakana: メリークリスマス.

Parties are often held for children, with games and dancing. Japanese Christmas Cake is a sponge cake decorated with trees, flowers and a figure of Santa Claus Fried chicken is often eaten on Christmas day. It is the busiest time of year for restaurants such as KFC and people can place orders at their local fast food restaurant in advance!!! The traditional Japanese christmas food is christmas cake, but it's not a rich fruit cake, but is usually a sponge cake decorated with strawberries and whipped cream..

 

Wish you have a magical and wonderful Christmas !

 

Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse 2010 -冬至の月は、2010年エクリプス

It is the first time since 1638 that a lunar eclipse has fallen on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Skygazers with a clear view in North America and Europe were greeted with a celestial treat in the early morning hours Tuesday, as a unique total lunar eclipse transformed the Moon pink, coppery or even a blood red.

Coinciding eerily with the northern hemisphere's mid-winter solstice -- for the first time in almost four centuries -- the eclipse showed the Sun, the Earth and its satellite as they directly aligned, with the Moon swinging into the cone of shadow cast by its mother planet.

Despite being in shadow, the Moon did not become invisible, as there was still residual light deflected towards it by our atmosphere.Most of this refracted light is in the red part of the spectrum and as a result the Moon, seen from Earth, turned a reddish, coppery or orange hue, sometimes even brownish.
The eclipse was running for three and a half hours, starting with a chunk being slowly eaten out at 0633 GMT and the stage of total eclipse -- when the Moon heads into the "umbra" cast by the Earth -- lasting from 0741 to 0853 GMT. It was to last until 1001 GMT.

TIME'S 2010 Person of the Year

The annual accolade for "Person of the year" has been running since the 1920s, with winners such as Hitler, Barack Obama and Stalin picking up the award and appearing on the front page of the magazine. The winner is the figure who is determined to have the most influence on culture and news each year; not always in a positive way.

The Facebook co-founder, worth approximately £4.4 billion, is currently one of the richest people in the US at only 26 years of age. A recent film release in which Zuckerberg was the subject; The Social Network, has charted a rise in Facebook usage this year, leading to his position as one of the youngest recipients of Time’s prestigious award.

Almost seven years ago, in February 2004, when Zuckerberg was a 19-year-old sophomore at Harvard University, he started a Web service from his dorm. It was called Thefacebook.com.This year, Facebook added its 550 millionth member and it has 1,700 employees.. One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Last month the site accounted for 1 out of 4 American page views. Its membership is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day.

According to the editors at Time, Zuckerberg and Facebook have fundamentally changed the way people interact with each other and it’s changed how we define the concept of community. When you look at all of the things that seem to have been subsumed by Facebook, it’s hard to find some part of human activity that is totally Facebook-free.

Zuckerberg is part of the last generation of human beings who will remember life before the Internet, though only just. He was born in 1984 and grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., the son of a dentist. Mark has three sisters, the eldest of whom, Randi, is now Facebook's head of consumer marketing and social-good initiatives. It was a supportive household that produced confident children. The young Mark was "strong-willed and relentless," according to his father Ed.

Earlier this month Zuckerberg became one of the latest billionaires to make a promise to give a large proportion of his wealth to charity.A group founded by Bill Gates and his wife, along with Warren Buffet, encourages the wealthiest Americans to publicly pledge to donate to charity. Zuckerberg is one of 17 new people to express their support to the group.