Sometimes I would like to share several cool stuff I discovered in daily life. Those could be life perspectives, a Youtube channel, books I'm currently reading or what I learnt from stories of my friends. Hopefully I could maintain this habit weekly.
1. Fine art oil painting restoration:
So recently I discovered a fancy Youtube channel of Julian Baumgartner. He's an artist who has expertise in restoring ancient oil paintings and he recorded these processes on his Youtube channel. Every artwork sent to his studio has been taking care meticulously. Observing the way he slightly moved every single cotton swabs to patiently clean small areas tells you how much he appreciates the artworks. Julian's job is a combination requiring skills from many different occupations: an oil painter ( to touch up spotted areas which were faded due to falling rotten pieces of wood), a carpenter (to separate the canvas paper from the old decomposed wooden frames and by himself make new ones that are much more pertinent and firm), a chemist (Julian has an ability to work on various chemical mixtures for cleaning purpose corresponding different types of paint colors, ancient and fragility of the painting), a surgeon (oil paintings are usually created on canvas paper stretched on wooden frames, so as to restore punctured spots, he needs to use tiny cottons to darn up the surface; and due to the thinness of those cottons, the tool should be the Atraumatic tweezers used in the surgeries). I realized that to become a good sublimation professional, a wide variety of skill set is indeed necessary.
2. How I met your mother:
Recently a friend let me copy the whole 9 seasons of the classical How I met your mother. I will enjoy the series with 2 purposes: slowly digest how relationships actually work (which honestly I'm not yet really good at) and practice English listening and pronunciation (thanks to the English subtitles).
3. Parents should less sacrifice to children:
Sacrifice is a noble virtue highly overvalued among Vietnamese for decades. Parents are expected (or required) to sacrifice time, mindfulness, financials, etc., basically their everything to the kids. When children grew up to become parents, they continue that life cycle to their second generations again. Personally I strongly believe this concept is no longer appropriate. Everyone deserves happiness, yep, everybody includes those parents. It makes sense that parenting shall not become a burden which brings up lots of pressure. Of course, parents definitely have responsibilities in taking care of children, however the approaches should be both efficient on the kids and relaxing for the adults. A friend on the other day just told me: Her mother is a traditionally exemplary model who sacrificed the whole life for family. She has never bought a single thing for herself, enjoyed good food or traveled anywhere. One day the mother went boom: " I'm having serious sickness. I hid it from you and your dad, why don't you both ever care about me?". That was the moment when the mother only suffers frustration but nothing else from her own family, no more love. The atmosphere went bad among members, no one expects this situation. The core value of sweet home is sharing, so it's time for the parents to start thinking for themselves, get rid of the sacrifice burden off shoulders. There's a viewpoint from a cool mom that I'm interested in:
""In the long run, my kids will benefit much more from having a relaxed, semi-calm mom who’s in a good mood then they’ll benefit from a perfectly clean house" - Kristina Kuzmic.
4. Currently reading:
Act like a lady, think like a man - Steve Harley.