Chill Nights-Review

Hey everyone!

It feels like decade since the last post. My apologies. But without beating around the bush let's get right down to it. 

I love reading. It's just the most amazingly relaxing thing to pick up a book, sit on the couch and just go on a journey with the author. To whole another world, a totally different dimension. To forget the world and escape reality even if it just for a few minutes.

"Every time you open a book, a little magic falls out." - Anonymous.

My cousin sister and I on the way back home from a movie went to the library and got ourselves some books. I got myself a pair of books after such a long time and I was so excited to read but I had my exams going and promised my cousin that I wouldn't read them till they had ended. I had two more exams left but I also had two whole weeks to finish reading the books. 

The books I had gotten were 'Just After Sunset - Stephen King' and 'Chill Nights - Dean Koontz'. The minute I saw a Stephen King book I picked it up instantly because King is a famous writer known for his supernatural fiction, horror works and me being me couldn't help but grin like crazy as soon I read the summary on the back cover of the book.  On the other hand, the other book that had I picked out was solely because of the title and the very horrifyingly captivating cover of the book. I wasn't aware of the story line of the book as the back cover just had a picture of the author. It's probably the first book that I bought without knowing what the story was actually about. 

After my exams were over, while everyone was hyped about being able to go to their native or go out to the movies, I was excited that I could finally read my books. Being a book-lover, having to stare at the books and not be able to read them while they were right infront of me was nothing but pure torture BUT I endured it and finally was at bliss. I decided I would read 'Chill Nights' first and read Stephen's book later. I wanted to save the best for last. 

I started reading but couldn't stand the inner-nagging of constantly wanting to know what the story was about and I eventually ended up searching about in on Google. NOW I was truly at bliss. Let's get into it. WARNING: SPOILER ALERT!

The concept is about 'subliminal perception'. The ability to control the sub-conscious mind.  The whole book discusses about 'behavioral modifications' and gaining control of the sub-conscious. Apparently, the sub-conscious mind is much more superior to the conscious mind comparatively ,what can not be achieved or observed by the conscious mind is done by the sub-conscious mind. Advertising agencies also try to promote their product through subliminal advertising. More about that in the book.

THE STORYLINE:
***********************
The whole story goes on about how a scientist named Ogden Salsbury with the help of a millionaire Leanord Dawson and military general Ernst Klinger come up with what they like to call a 'key-lock' program and subliminal drug that would help them control the sub-conscious mind that would help them take over the world inheriting more money than they could have ever possibly dreamed of.  The subliminal drug however, like any other drug has it's own side-effects such as nightmares, insomnia, nausea and night chills- hence the title. These three cunning men decide to use a little town named 'Black River' with a poor population of just 400 people as a 'test field' for their subliminal drug.

Meanwhile, Paul Annendale along with his children Rya and Mark Annendale  go to 'Black River' on vacation which became a family traditional getaway of sorts after the recent loss of Annie Annendale. They spend the first week of the vacation with Sam Edison and his daughter Jenny Edison. The story revolves around how the town and their lives are affected by the program and drug and how they manage through all the chaos that follows.

MY REVIEW:
**************
The book in general is a good read. It isn't a big book. Quick read if you got a lot of time on your hands. It's divided into three parts. The Conspiracy, The Terror and The Ending. The concept of sub-conscious control was very interesting. You tend to learn a few things and it does come to a bit of shock that subliminal advertising and such started in late 50's-60's. 

Generally books are a bit boring at the beginning which would explain why not many people like reading as they tend to get bored reading the first few chapters. But in every book as the chapters go, it slowly builds and gets more intriguing. On the other hand with this book the interesting bit starts instantly. 

As every other book the story does build but that's about it. It never gets exciting like other books normally would. After all the havoc that occurs, everything just seemed to have happened a bit too easily. Everything falls into place in the blink of an eye and just like that it's over. I was never fully satisfied and felt that there was still a part or a chapter a two of the book that I had left out. At the same time, the characters and the background of it all is a bit depressing and gray. The scenes don't come to life and the characters aren't vivid enough. Was a bit too plain but relatable in a way.  Honestly, the 'Terror' part of the book wasn't really terrifying at all.

All in all it was a pretty decent book. Probably not the thriller that I expected but worth the read. Though I believe the author's note was a bit exaggerated. He said, "By the time they have finished this book, many readers will be uneasy, frightened, perhaps even horrified". I definitely wasn't frightened or horrified but I could say that the character Ogden Salsbury did have a tendency to make me uncomfortable and cringe every now and then so partly true. I wouldn't recommend the book and it isn't exactly a page-turner but if you find yourself interested then sure go ahead. 

I'm reading 'Just After Sunset' as of now and shall get back with another review once I am done. Till then good bye. 

Take care and keep smiling :) 

Jezi

Quotes

Hello everyone! 

It has literally been over a year. I posted last April '14. Now it's May '15! Crazy how time flies by! So much has happened in the past few months. Some good some not so good. 
I realized it was about time I posted something. But unfortunately, as always, I have no interesting topic to discuss with you all. 

Though, just quite recently, I started getting into the habit of reading quotes. It's not really a big deal, but some are just very inspiring and eye-opening and just puts a smile on my face. And there is nothing more I love than trying to make people smile. So here are some of my favourite quotes and some random ones. Hope you all like it just as much I do. 

"Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud"
- Maya Angelou

"I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There is no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it" 
-Eminem

"God gave you them shoes to fit you, so put them on and wear them. Be yourself man, be proud of who you are. Even if it sounds corny, don't let no one tell you, you ain't beautiful"
-Eminem

"I think scars are like battle wounds- beautiful in a way. They show what you've been through and how beautiful you are for it"
-Demi Lavato

"No one can hurt me without my permission."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"If you can't get a miracle, make one."
-Nick Vujicic

"They don't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you love someone more than you love yourself"
-Robbie Williams

"Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time"
-Marthe Troly-Curtain

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears"
-John Lennon

"Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy. They are the charming gardeners that make our souls blossom"
-Marcel Proust

That's all for now. My next post will hopefully have more content and have something more. I hope the quotes put a smile on your face or changed your day. I will from now on try to post more on a regular basis. 

There is something else I would like to mention. Despite the lack of posts, I have frequent readers, which is amazing by the way. There are actually people who visit and read my blog everyday. Every single day there is at least one person reading my blog, which, makes me very happy. It's the fact that people actually take some of their precious time and spend it on reading my silly posts. So, to those people, a massive thank you! 

Take care and keep smiling :) 

Jezi 

Short Forms and Internet Slang

I haven't had a clue on what to blog about but not because I didn't know what to blog about, but because I had tooo many ideas and was confused on what to which topic to pick! 

Laziness is yet another reason. So to keep this very simple yet somehow helpful, I decided to tell you all folks about short forms and internet slang. The older generation have a hard time figuring it out so I made up my mind to tell you the full forms of the abbreviated words and tell you what some sentences actually mean. 

I don't quite know alll of it and I don't remember much of it either so I might miss out on a few, so forgive me if what you wanted was not on the list. 

G2G or GTG- Got to go

ASAP- As soon as possible

AFK- Away from keyboard

B4- Before

RYS- Are you single? [I personally never known that people used this but it seems to be common. It can also sometimes mean 'Are you serious?']

LOL- Laugh out loud

ROFL- Roll on the floor laughing

IKR- I know right?

IDC- I don't care; IDK- I don't know

DIY- Do it yourself.

WTF- What the ****? [I need to clear this out. Majority of the adults somehow came to believe that WTF meant 'Well that's fantastic!'. It is NOT what you think. So kindly refrain from using too often.] 

FTW- For the win.

TBH- To be honest

A3- Anywhere, anyplace, anytime

A1T- Anyone there?

GR8 and L8TR- Great and Later

ATM- At the moment

OTP- One True Pairing

GIF- Graphics interchange format. [I don't quite understand this, it's still a bit confusing but from what I think, it's basically making an image that moves over and over again in one particular way.]

Shipping- When you want to people to be in a relationship. For example "I ship 'Brangelina'," [Meaning you want Bradd Pitt and Angelina Jolie to be in a relationship]

Well folks, that's all I could remember. Apologies if anything was rude, vulgar or offensive. 2-3 were from my trustee friend Google and not quite sure if they were used but they seemed to be common phrases so I managed to squeeze that in as well. Hope it helped cleared some of your doubts. 

If you think I left something out or got something wrong, tell me in the comments. Hopefully, next time my post will be of something more meaningful. Till then Au Revoir! 

Take care and keep smiling :) 

Jezi. 


 

Weird Obsessions

I just recently realized that the blog's title is 'Me, Myself and My life' but I haven't really written anything about me, apart from the 'Huge Introduction'. So I thought maybe I should do a post on me and help you know little more about me!

From my 'Huge Introduction' many of you would have realized how weird I am. [If you didn't, now you know] It's like I was born that way.  Crazy, shy, social and weird. Not only am I weird, I have weird obsessions as well. Here are a few that I can remember.

My weird obsession over Youtube. Now it's not the fact I am obsessed with Youtube that's weird,it's the fact that somehow it's not normal. One fact that adds up to the weirdness is, if I'm on Youtube for more than an hour, I end up watching the most random things and end up loving it. For example, Guilty Cats compilation 2013. Nothing very astonishing about it but still I love it.

The next one is cleaning my nails. You'd all think it's not that bad, it actually good and hygienic, point is, I do it too often. Even when I've cut my nails and have no nails, I would be trying to pick the 'invisible' dirt out of them.

I did mention in my intro that I loved kitchen playsets. I'm 16 years old and if anyone got me a kitchen playset now, I would throw myself at it and start cooking for you, invisible yet delicious meals. [Notice how I said DELICIOUS]. The kitchen playset isn't very age appropriate. Well atleast not for me. Though, can't help it, obsessed.

Scribbling! Whenever I see a pen and a paper, it doesn't necessarily have to be just a paper, it could be a book, newspaper, magazine any writable thing, I get this itch to start scribbling. Just because of this one soul reason that I have a pen and I can write something with it makes me just scribble the most random crap. Weirdly enough, the things that I doodle or scribble 95% of time is hearts, flowers,weird wavy lines [to check if the pen works] and obviously my name. 

I am obsessed with cute little bottles and boxes. These bottles and boxes can vary from a cute little water bottle to nail-polish bottles. I would just buy a nail-polish because the bottle looks cute and would not use the real thing at all. That's why it's weird. Though, if you come home expecting some sort of huge bottle and box collection you wouldn't really find any. 

A dirty room annoys the hell out of me! Just like the scribbling, when I see a messy room, I get an itch to clean it! No matter whatever I'm doing and how important it may be, unless the room is cleaned I can NOT be at peace! Bit of an OCD case at times.

There's definitely plenty more but that's all I remember for now. When I remember more, I'll update the post! I'm sure I'm not the only weird one. Lots of you are weird too. Being an adult doesn't make any difference.

Anywayss jokes apart, if you have any weird obsession feel free to comment! Who knows? You might be a fellow weirdo! 

Keep smiling and take care. :) 

Jezi.

Bullies, Abuse and Self-harm

 The most awaited post is finally here! [Or so I believe it was awaited]. Though it makes me want to sort of cringe to talk about it I still have the strong urge to. The fact that several teens are out there thinking about ending their lives at this very moment and that the soul reason is because they're being bullied is crazy.

I had mentioned in my earlier post that bullying was a serious issue and many had taken their lives because of it. It sickens me to know that somehow people get pleasure out of hurting someone else. We're all human beings! No has the right to hurt anyone else.Bullying is mostly taken out in either one of the two ways, one is physical abuse and other is verbal abuse.

We human beings, hate being humiliated in public, yet still tend to do it to others. Though bullying takes humiliation to an aggressive level. A more violent way. Kids come home from school with a black eye, a bleeding wound, a big ugly bruise. Thankfully, not every child is going through it. As terrible as the physical abuse is, verbal abuse is worse. A scar on the outside can treated, healed even. The scar on the inside though, not very easily. [I can be cheesy sometimes]

Children are called fat, dumb, whore, gay etc. You're probably gasping just looking at these words but those poor kids listen to it everyday. It's worse that their helpless about it and can't seem to fight back. Schools don't seem to be taking this issue as serious as it is. It's really frustrating! If the school itself took these issues in their hands and punished bullies accordingly, the rate of bullying would have gone down by now. There's alot of videos on Youtube titled 'You know my name, not my story.' Basically, it's about teens telling the world about their story on being bullied by using flashcards.

Amanda Todd, was a teen girl who made a similar video on how she was bullied AND cyberbullied. I later on learned that she had died. She suicided. I never knew her personally but it was a bit of a shock. It was so sudden. 

Now, certain kids aren't as brave to suicide instead they find relief in cutting themselves. Apparently, matching the inner pain with the outer helps them cope. This is a yet another serious problem. Self-harming can go to the extreme where even the slightest thing that upsets them can make them cut. What's worse is, they self-harm with anything and anywhere on body. That's very dangerous. 

Though a few children are lucky enough because they have good, loving parents that show them immense amount of love, so they atleast have a good life at home. Unfortunately, not all are that lucky. Some unfortunate kids, have to deal with the bullies and the parents. Some parents are alcoholic, some going through a divorce, some molest their own kids [which is horrifying]. 

I think you've read enough and I've typed enough. Though the whole point of this is, if you're a person who's being bullied or you have a friend who's being bullied, just tell somebody. Do whatever you can to help them. If you need a friend to talk to, always here! :) 

This is probably the most serious post ever! But, I needed to spread the word! Everyone be aware! Please do you're best to help if you know someone being bullied. 

Anyyways keep smiling and take care! :)

Jezi.

Fault in Our Stars

To all those book-readers out there, you're in luck today! Some of you probably figured what I was going to talk about by looking at the title. Well, good guess! You are absolutely correct! I'm talking about best-selling novel 'The Fault in Our Stars' by John Greene.

For those of you unfortunate souls that has not heard of the book, well now you've heard of it! And I highly recommend you read it too.

The book is just amazing. It's only 25 chapters long so it won't take much of your time. I finished the book in just a day. [Maybe I'm just really jobless]. I'm sure you might like it. The book is from a cancer patient's perspective named Hazel Grace Lancaster. Obviously, since it has cancer involved in it, it's emotional and very touching. Yes, it's one of those books that leaves you with that 'feeling' after you've read it.

Though, I don't get what the hype was all about. It IS a great book but I guess it was a bit exaggerated. A few may agree to this. I guess it was just the hype that made you expect too much and then when you've finished reading, you realize it's just a simple, beautiful book. Whatever it is, I loved the book and I wanted to share it with you all.

The book was also made into a motion picture. I haven't really watched the movie. I'm afraid the movie may not do justice to the novel. People who have watched movies that were made from novels would understand. [We share a mutual feeling] Though I am a bit curious to see what the movie is like. If you've watched the movie please do tell me.

The amazingly crazy thing is that the author 'John Greene' has written only FOUR novels. One of them named 'Looking for Alaska' turned out be a best-selling book and then came 'Fault in Our Stars'. John Greene is actually a nerdy Youtuber! Which is the most surprising part of it all!

Anyhowsss, I hope you all get yourselves a copy and start reading because it's beautiful. There's a sick urge wanting me to give away a lot of details but I don't  want to spoil it for you. Hope you love the book just as much I did. Feel free to leave a comment telling me your opinion on the book.

Take care and keep smiling! :)

Jezi.

Flappy Bird!

A lot of people love certain things. Love can grow to an extent where it becomes an addiction. Many people get addicted to different things. Some get addicted to alcohol, smoking and drugs. Some get addicted to make-up, shoes, clothes. Some get addicted to games and well in my case, get addicted to 'Flappy Bird'. 

Now I'm not a person who's into games and it's highly unlikely for me to get addicted to any of them. Though, recently there has been this big thing on Youtube of people reacting to 'Flappy Bird'. At first I didn't understand anything at all. It seemed peculiar. It was later after a while I discovered that Flappy Bird was a game and it was very famous. It was released on May, 2013 and somehow became really popular in 2014. In about a few months, millions of people had downloaded the game!

The game is actually based on a very simple content. The main objective of the game is to keep tapping on the screen to keep the bird flying through sets of pipes without colliding into them. If the screen is not tapped, the bird will fall and that will end the game. People will earn points on the number of pipes they've successfully passed. Apparently if you reach 50 points, plants will come out through the pipes and try to eat you and 100 points will bring Mario into the game. [Or so I'm told]

The funny fact of the game is, it looks very easy but in reality it's not as easy as it looks and is quite a task to even reach the score of 10! [Looks certainly can be deceiving] What's funnier is, even though it's extremely frustrating when the bird bumps into the pipes, there's a sick urge to keep playing it over and over again! That sick urge is what develops into an addiction. It took a WHOLE DAY for me to get used to playing the game and I'm not even joking but my highest score is 10! For those of you, who are probably now very eager to download the game, I'll give you a heads up, that at first you might get really stressed out. A few people actually might be pretty good from the beginning of the game. 

Maybe a few of you already know about the game and are still playing it. But for those of you, who are now wanting to download the game, remember you can't get the original version. Apparently, the creator of 'Flappy Bird', Mr. Nguyen Ha Dong felt really guilty about the game and it's addictive nature, so he took down the game from Apple's App stores and Google Play stores. Though, a lot of people have copied the idea and the closest thing that you could get to 'Flappy Bird' would probably be 'Floppy Bird' or 'Splashy Fish'. I also have to apologise in advance for introducing you to the game. It is VERY addictive. Plus I'm sure many of you are now probably itching to download the game! [Your welcome!] 

Anyways if you've already got the game or you just downloaded and started playing recently, tell me how many points did you get? And what you think of the game! And by the way, Happy Women's Day to all the beautiful, amazing, inspirational women out there! 

Fun fact:
Nguyen Ha Dong- Creator of Flappy Bird received death threats after tweeting that Flappy Bird was going to be taken down. 

Keep smiling and take care :)

Jezi.