Some Memories

Amazon calls 2016 holiday season its best ever; shares rise The Amazon Echo home assistant and its smaller version, Echo Dot, topped the best-sellers list, said Jeff Wilke, chief executive of Amazon's worldwide consumer division, in a press release. "Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock," he said. Sales of voice-controlled Echo devices were nine times more than they were during last year's holiday season, the company said. Amazon did not disclose comparable sales figures from a year earlier. "It's all relative to other numbers that they've never told us," said analyst Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research. Amazon likely sold between 4 million and 5 million devices this year to date with Alexa, the voice-controlled assistant on the Echo, estimated Morningstar analyst R.J. Hottovy in a research note. Shoppers can command the Echo to perform a host of tasks, from playing music to turning on Christmas lig...

Please don't see my animated blockbuster, says Japan's 'new Miyazaki' The ying and yang doesn't end there. The story is set between the beautiful mountainous Nagano region where Shinkai grew up and Tokyo's hyper modern megapolis. It also plays on the tension of teenagers desperate to quit their small towns for the big city yet who are still entranced by the beauty of age-old Japanese traditions. "It is a film about memory, but also about losing memories," said Shinkai, who adapted the story from his own novel. "It's about individual memory and collective memory, the forgetting of a certain morality and sense of tradition." While he is resigned to the fact that the comparison with Miyazaki will haunt him forever, he insisted that they are very different. To prove it he commissioned the Japanese J-rock group Radwimps - whose music you could see giving the old master tinnitus - to do the soundtrack. Shinkai is also at pains to point out that...

Fear is the great extinguisher of dreams... Conversely, it can be your best mentor and source of motivation. Paula Amato

Stumbled upon this when I did a search on Vietnam. Interesting read! Vietnam: Where saying 'I love you' is impossible Bill Hayton was the BBC's correspondent in Vietnam until he fell foul of the authorities for reporting on dissidents in the country and had to leave. Here he looks back at the vagaries of life in one of the world's five remaining communist-run states. 1. It's impossible to say "I love you" in Vietnamese It isn't because the Vietnamese are not passionate. Rather, there is no word for "I" or "you" in colloquial Vietnamese. People address each other according to their relative ages: "anh" for older brother, "chi" for older sister, "em" for younger sibling and so on. This is why ...

Agree! Very well written. The Three Types of Chemistry You Need to Make Your Relationship Successful A couple months ago I was taking an Uber to the airport when my driver asked me what I did for a living.   My quick and easy go-to response is, "I am in graduate school." When I eventually told him what for, he enthusiastically responded, "Wow! So like, couple's therapy?" Typically upon hearing this news, people respond in a variety of ways including their terrible experience in therapy, how they feel like they are their own friends' and families' therapist too, their crazy friend who definitely needs therapy, or my personal favorite, "Why would you ever want to do that?" But this man responded differently. Instead of going on a whole spiel about his opinion on therapy, he simply asked me, "What do you think makes relationships most successful?" I sat back in my seat and took a second to think about it, granted it was about 6:00 in the...

Kathy wrote it very well on how to select a career that complement one's life!

'Hamilton lost the battle but won the war,' claim papers as Rosberg quits Mercedes and F1; Was the 'mental strain' too much? http://www.skysports.com/f1/news/24207/10681153/fleet-street-lewis-hamilton-made-nico-rosberg-retire-from-formula-1

The latest rout, triggered by American businessman Donald Trump's win at the US presidential election, has seen the currency fall nearly 7 per cent since Nov 9. On Thursday (Dec 1), the greenback fetched as much as 4.4705 ringgit, its highest level since September 2015. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/business/international/battered-malaysian-ringgit-keeps-tumbling-5-key-questions/3333712.html

So inspirational! For Real Human Beings Only By Robin Sharma #1 bestselling author of  The Leader Who Had No Title As I sit here on a glorious day during late Summer, I reflect on what it means to be human… My thoughts are offered with humility. These are just my observations based on the best of my understanding. To be human means: – to stand for your dreams + heart's desires and deepest values no matter what stones those who do not understand may toss at you. – to wake up each day radiating hope, strength, wisdom and love, regardless of whether your'e at the peak of the mountain or lost in the valley of disruption. – to find the blessings of your work and notice the dignity within it, whether you run a nation, lead a family, drive a taxi, teach a class, dig graves or bake bread. [To all my friends in JoBurg, please find the janitor in the men's WC/restroom at the airport and tell him his shining example of leadership + decency still walks with me to this day – I'd rea...