This is a proof of my victory over grandma's food. I had a massive portion (Grandma portion) that I didn't think it would be possible to consume, but I managed to eat it all!
I don't know where Grandma's food ideas come from, but she just wants to be always sure that there is never a shortage of food in her house and that all the guests are well fed. Anna says that it may be related to the fact that when Grandma was just a little girl during the Second World War she and her family were taken to Siberia by Russians and they experienced a terrible hunger. Some members of the family died from hunger, cold and hard work and Grandma as a little girl witnessed it all. She herself was so hungry that she was dreaming of just a piece of a dried bread, was eating leaves and tree cork and almost died from hunger. Maybe her over-feeding is to ensure that this will never happen again. Our past experiences often leave marks that influence our way of thinking and our future actions, so who knows...

Dear Atria,
Simi Valley is another place I visited with Baba & Anna in Los Angeles. One Sunday afternoon we had a little time on our hands, not enough to take a metro to Hollywood or downtown LA, but too much to waste it sitting in the house. So Anna took us for a drive around and we discovered this beautiful Simi Valley nearby. We had a little walk and we spent some time enjoying the silence and admiring spectacular views.
Dear Atria, I don't know if you ever had a chance to experience a profound beauty of a perfect silence in harmony with the nature? It's a wonderful feeling. You automatically keep quiet just not to disturb the moment. It also makes you realise how much noise surrounds us in our everyday life. It bring peace to the mind and calms down all the emotions. I really enjoyed the experience.

We decide which path to take on the journey we are destined to make in our lifetime. We make choices every day.  Some of them we may regret at the later stage in life. It doesn't mean however that we made a wrong choice at the time, or that we would have made a different choice if we were to turn the clock back. We even do not know if a different choice would have been a better choice.

Some of our choices may have consequences on other peoples' lives as well as on our life, so before making such choices it is both wise and responsible to take a moment or two to think before making any decision.
But all in all what I am trying to say is that there is no right choice. You may look at the choices other people made and at the way things worked out for them, but that does not mean things will work for you the same way if you make the same choice. You are a different person and although you may be making the same choice as someone else, it will be at a different moment in time under different circumstances.
Only be sure that you make your own choices, leave the rest to faith.
Follow your heart, have faith and believe in yourself.

Dear Atria,
I came across these words of a wise man and I thought I will share them with you. What do you think about it dear Atria, do you agree?

Those who do not love you for who you are, they don't love YOU.

Do not allow anyone to tell you what or who you are, that is something that exists within you naturally.
You are who you are, TIME is the only thing that can change that and YOU are the only person who can influence that change.

You can not control or stop the change, however, you can humbly guide the direction of that change.

Believing in a worthy goal, persistence, continued effort & unwillingness to move aside and refusal to accept defeat and quit may turn what at first seems to be a hopeless failure into a glorious success..

Before considering to give up, always remind yourself that you may almost be there and that if you give up, you will never know.

Iranians have set up 'walls of kindness' where people can easily donate coats and other warm clothes to help the homeless as the country suffers from bitterly cold winter weather. The concept is simple - a few hooks and hangers are installed on a coloured wall next to the words: 'if you don't need it, leave it. If you need it, take it.'

What do you think dear Atria? I think it this is truly excellent, a great humanitarian effort. It encourages people to think of others, to be generous and open-hearted - I hope other countries will adopt this idea in order to help the homeless, weak, poor and vulnerable.

Dear Atria, you can be kind to people in many ways, small and big ways, but you can make a difference if you only want to. I just read about Mark Bustos and wanted to share with you his act of kindness. He isn't your average stylist. In addition to his day job at a hip New York salon, he spends his Sunday's cutting hair for homeless people in the American city. His tagline: #BeAwesomeToSomebody.

We took advantage of park's facilities and we had a nice lunch in the park. There is a giant fountain at the most-western part of the park, with floor fountains (you can see me and Baba sitting in front of it). There are a number of monuments located throughout the park, including statues of George Washington and Christopher Columbus (Baba is posing with Christopher Columbus in one of the pictures).
There is also a Flag Garden, featuring historic American flags, that overlooks the Event Lawn and City Hall. I also liked the flow of the walkways and stairs. They guide you in a wandering fashion so subconsciously you may be relaxing instead of travelling in a straight path. I think they call them Broadway stairs. We spent good few hours relaxing in the park. There were no events on that day, but Grand Park was designed as a dynamic, inclusive environment for community events, cultural experiences, festivals, holiday celebrations and many other activities that engage and attract visitors from all communities in Los Angeles County. Park visitors can enjoy original programming, Music Centre programming, outdoor activities, interactive events, entertainment and many other activities that benefit from the park’s multi-use lawns, stages and spaces.
We will definitely visit the Grand Park again.

Perfection by definition is not achievable because there is always a room for improvement. Therefore a better strategy is to aim for a continuous improvement and achieve progress.

Dear Atria, do you like chocolate? I guess the answer to this question will be 'yes' :-) Who doesn't like chocolate? I love my chocolate. My favourite is just a plain dark chocolate, but I also like milk chocolate with hazelnuts, chocolate with ginger, with tiramisu, chilli, mint... well, I like almost all kinds of chocolate. Although eating too much chocolate is not advisable because of its high contents of sugar and fat, but in moderation chocolate is a healthy and tasty treat. Dark chocolate contains hefty amounts of disease-fighting flavenoids, antioxidants. We often crave chocolate when we are in a low mood - it releases calming endorphins that reduce anxiety and help us feel better. It’s high in magnesium. Regular chocolate consumption is also associated with improved markers for cardiovascular health.

Chocolate comes from cocoa beans, which grew on trees in Central America starting probably about 100 million years ago; cocoa trees may have gotten their start on the lower slopes of the Andes Mountains. Cocoa trees can only live in hot, rainy places.The trees bear large orange fruit, about the size of small pumpkins. You pick the fruit, and many small beans are inside, like peas inside a peapod. The raw beans are really good for you, full of vitamin C and magnesium, but they're bitter. They also have a fair amount of caffeine in them, like coffee or tea, and can help you work harder than you could without cocoa. People probably ate cocoa beans as soon as they got to Central America, maybe about 15,000 BC.

By around 2000 BC, pre-Olmec people in Central America (modern Mexico) were grinding up the beans and making them into a hot or cold spicy chocolate drink with vanilla or chili peppers. All the people of Central America - the Olmec, the Zapotec, the Moche, the Maya, and the Aztecs - liked chocolate.

By the 600s AD, Maya farmers were growing cocoa trees instead of picking wild cocoa. The Aztec government made people pay a lot of their taxes in cocoa beans, because they were expensive and you could store them for a long time. Once the government made people use cocoa beans as money, most people couldn't afford to actually eat them anymore, and only rich people drank the chocolate drinks.

In the 1500s, Spanish conquistadors such as Hernán Cortés who sought gold and silver in Mexico returned instead with chocolate. Although the Spanish sweetened the bitter drink with cane sugar and cinnamon, one thing remained unchanged: chocolate was still a delectable symbol of luxury, wealth and power. Chocolate was sipped by royal lips, and only Spanish elites could afford the expensive import.
Spain managed to keep chocolate a savory secret for nearly a century, but when the daughter of Spanish King Philip III wed French King Louis XIII in 1615, she brought her love of chocolate with her to France. The popularity of chocolate quickly spread to other European courts, and aristocrats consumed it as a magic elixir with salubrious benefits. To slake their growing thirst for chocolate, European powers established colonial plantations in equatorial regions around the world to grow cacao and sugar. When diseases brought by the European explorers depleted the native Mesoamerican labor pool, African slaves were imported to work on the plantations and maintain the production of chocolate.
Chocolate remained an aristocratic nectar until Dutch chemist Coenraad Johannes van Houten in 1828 invented the cocoa press, which revolutionized chocolate-making. The cocoa press could squeeze the fatty cocoa butter from roasted cacao beans, leaving behind a dry cake that could be pulverized into a fine powder that could be mixed with liquids and other ingredients, poured into molds and solidified into edible, easily digestible chocolate. The innovation by van Houten ushered in the modern era of chocolate by enabling it to be used as a confectionary ingredient, and the resulting drop in production costs made chocolate affordable to the masses.
In 1847, British chocolate company J.S. Fry & Sons created the first solid edible chocolate bar from cocoa butter, cocoa powder and sugar. Rodolphe Lindt’s 1879 invention of the conching machine, which produced chocolate with a velvety texture and superior taste, and other advances allowed for the mass production of smooth, creamy milk chocolate on factory assembly lines. You don’t need to have a sweet tooth to recognize the familiar names of the family-owned companies such as Cadbury, Mars and Hershey that ushered in a chocolate boom in the late 1800s and early 1900s that has yet to abate.

For more information visit http://www.history.com/news/hungry-history/the-sweet-history-of-chocolate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate

Dear Atria, today I want to expand on yesterday's post about not giving up on your dreams and importance of trying again and again even if you encounter difficulties and your efforts fail. As long as you learn from each failure and try again you will eventually succeed. I want to give you few examples of well known and successful people who did just that.

Walt Disney: Today Disney rakes in billions from merchandise, movies and theme parks around the world, but Walt Disney himself had a bit of a rough start. He was fired by a newspaper editor because, "he lacked imagination and had no good ideas." After that, Disney started a number of businesses that didn't last too long and ended with bankruptcy and failure. He kept plugging along, however, and eventually found a recipe for success that worked.

Thomas Edison: In his early years, teachers told Edison he was "too stupid to learn anything." Work was no better, as he was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. Even as an inventor, Edison made 1,000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb. Of course, all those unsuccessful attempts finally resulted in the design that worked.

Oprah Winfrey: Most people know Oprah as one of the most iconic faces on TV as well as one of the richest and most successful women in the world. Oprah faced a hard road to get to that position, however, enduring a rough and often abusive childhood as well as numerous career setbacks including being fired from her job as a television reporter because she was "unfit for tv."

Vincent Van Gogh: During his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting, and this was to a friend and only for a very small amount of money. While Van Gogh was never a success during his life, he plugged on with painting, sometimes starving to complete his over 800 known works. Today, they bring in hundreds of millions.

Ludwig van Beethoven: In his formative years, young Beethoven was incredibly awkward on the violin and was often so busy working on his own compositions that he neglected to practice. Despite his love of composing, his teachers felt he was hopeless at it and would never succeed with the violin or in composing. Beethoven kept plugging along, however, and composed some of the best-loved symphonies of all time–five of them while he was completely deaf.

Michael Jordan: Most people wouldn't believe that a man often lauded as the best basketball player of all time was actually cut from his high school basketball team. Luckily, Jordan didn't let this setback stop him from playing the game and he has stated, "I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

I found these inspiring stories gathered together in one place on the Internet, so if you want to learn more click here to visit the original website.

Today Whiskey celebrated his 4th Birthday, well if you can say so and if a cat actually can celebrate. I personally don't think he understands anything, but Anna certainly celebrated by spoiling the cat with his favourite treats. He is a big cat now. Do you remember how tiny he was? You can click here to refresh your memory. Looking at the photographs below you can certainly say he grew up a lot.

Dear Atria, today I want to share with you an old picture of me and my Mum (MadarJan). I like this photograph not only because it brings up good memories of my youth but mainly because in this picture both I and my mum, we are very happy. You can see just pure happiness emanating from our faces. It is one of these memories that brings up a big smile to my face.

Today I want to tell you a story I've came across on the Internet. That's how the story goes:

"A crow lived in the forest and was absolutely satisfied in life. But one day he saw a swan. “This swan is so white,” he thought, “and I am so black. This swan must be the happiest bird in the world.”

He expressed his thoughts to the swan. “Actually,” the swan replied, “I was feeling that I was the happiest bird around until I saw a parrot, which has two colours. I now think the parrot is the happiest bird in creation.” The crow then approached the parrot. The parrot explained, “I lived a very happy life until I saw a peacock. I have only two colours, but the peacock has multiple colours.”

The crow then visited a peacock in the zoo and saw that hundreds of people had gathered to see him. After the people had left, the crow approached the peacock. “Dear peacock,” the crow said, “you are so beautiful. Every day thousands of people come to see you. When people see me, they immediately shoo me away. I think you are the happiest bird on the planet.”

The peacock replied, “I always thought that I was the most beautiful and happy bird on the planet. But because of my beauty, I am entrapped in this zoo. I have examined the zoo very carefully, and I have realized that the crow is the only bird not kept in a cage. So for past few days I have been thinking that if I were a crow, I could happily roam everywhere.”

I like this story. We often don’t value what we have and who we are. We compare ourselves with others and we imagine that they have a much better life than us.
Things may look different from outside, if we find a reason to envy other people's lives, it doesn't necessary mean that they actually are happier or that their life is better than our's.

So instead of comparing yourself with others, learn to be happy with what you have and stop looking at what you don’t have. There will always be someone who will have more or less than you have.
A person who is satisfied with what he/she has, is the happiest person in the world.