On All of Me

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Perhaps, one of the most beautiful songs I've ever listened to. The video is amazing as well.

P.s: I may or may not have shed a few tears the first time I saw this video. *snff* *sniff*

On Driving People Crazy

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If you're keen on driving people crazy, do one thing ... BE HAPPY! :) Have a lovely day, guys.

On Wolf Hall

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I might be a bit obsessed with Tudor history. Wait...did I say "might" and "a bit"? LOL! What a joke. Alright, let's do that again. My name is Dupe and I am very obsessed with Tudor history (Yes, that's more like it!).

Anyway, my friend, Zara, lent me this book. So excited! I'll be reading it every chance I get (seeing as I have a load of other work to do). About to start it now. Will do a review when I'm done.

Tada!

On Genie the Wild Child

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We talked briefly about the case of "Genie" in my Media Discourse class and I decided to look it up after. I came across some other cases of feral children like Victor (a child who lived his entire childhood alone and was later found in filth) and Oxana Malaya, a Ukrainian girl who was raised by dogs.

The story of Genie is quite striking because unlike the other two, she actually lived in a house with her parents. However, they decided to lock her up in a room - in complete isolation. Since she barely had any human contact, she did not learn how to speak and so, did not acquire any first language. She was usually tied to a toilet and her arms and legs were left immobilised. Her parents never even bothered to potty train her, and so, when she was found at the age of 13 years and 7 months, she was still in diapers.

She had a characteristic "bunny walk" and she often spat and clawed at herself. While doing all these, she never made a sound, which led to the conclusion that she was most likely beaten by her parents when she made sounds and had subsequently learnt to avoid making any noises. She however started to make progress until the research funding was pulled.

She moved from foster home to foster home until she was finally taken back by her mother, who realised that it was too difficult to take care of her, and then sent her back to where? You guessed right...more foster homes. She experienced severe abuse and regressed into silence.

These days, Genie, who is about 55 or 56 years old now, is in an unnamed private facility for mentally underdeveloped adults.

Poor Genie.

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On Vaneza's Awesome Birthday Dinner

There're some downsides to living in a small town, such as not having a train station or any proper places to shop. Perhaps, one of the saddest things is that there aren't a variety of restaurants (because, yes. I am a food lover). 

The other half of my music band from karaoke night celebrated her birthday today (actually, she's been celebrating it for a month now. What an opportunist!). As with most birthdays, we wanted to have a lovely birthday dinner. Problem: no restaurants to accommodate us. The first one we went to asked us to come back in an hour and frankly, we were too hungry for that, and my reaction was:

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Anyway, we finally found one Indian restaurant. Now, I'm not a big fan of Indian food because I always seem to get sick from eating it. But since the birthday girl is a big Indian food fan, we had to oblige. 

The food turned out surprisingly good (probably because I only ordered the naan bread and butter to be safe). The waiter was also very chatty. I mean, we gave him a 5p tip and he said it was nothing. LOL! Also, when we asked him for free dessert for the birthday girl, he told us to bring ours tomorrow so we could share with the restaurant! 

Overall, the night was good. I left my friends to get some work done but I heard they got into some drama with the bouncer at the next place they went. Well, that will be a story for another day.

On the Blonde Angel: An Update

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So, I blogged about Little Maria a few days back. Well, good news! Her birth mother has been found. Actually, I'm not very sure that this is good news. After DNA samples were collected from the actual birth parents, they fled for fear of being arrested. 

During her interview, she claimed she had to leave Maria in Greece because she didn't have enough money to pay for the child's birth certificate (whatever that means). She can't even remember the date she gave birth to the child. She only recalls that it's sometime in the last four years. There're some very annoying quotes from her interview like: 

"I left my daughter with my roommate. She is also in Roma. When I left Maria, I asked the woman to send her to Bulgaria. But she hasn't. I cannot remember her name. It was four years ago."

And: 

"I don't have any money to call the woman in Greece anymore so I stopped trying to get in touch with her."

Oh, and a quote from Maria's father too: 

"I can't remember all my children's names because there are so many of them." 

Seriously, are you kidding me?! I mean, I'm not here to pass any judgement to the birth parents or anything but why bring more children into the world if you can't even manage the ones you have? 

Poor Maria...it's hard to believe that she's even better off with the family who treated her like a dancing bear. 

On the Sparrow Face

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You think you know all about selfies? Forget about the duck face and pouting. There's a new way to distort your face when taking pictures. It's call the sparrow face.

Basically, what you need to do is make sure your eyes are wide open, then slightly part your lips. It's already popular in places like Japan. What are you waiting for? Do not be left behind.

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Disclaimer: I have not been paid by the Japanese to promote this trend.