Since June, I’ve been on a digital journey with Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare. These platforms have become my go-to for everything from reading to sharing docs and jazzing up presentations. Let me share why this trio is my internet happy place.
Everand is my not-so-secret weapon for diving into ebooks and audiobooks without burning a hole in my pocket. From classics to the latest releases, my Everand subscription, at just $9.99 a month, gives me access to a world of stories without breaking the bank
Scribd, the sibling of Everand, is like the chill spot for documents. It’s not just official papers; it’s where the community shares all kinds of reads. Scribd keeps it down-to-earth, making the document-sharing scene feel like a laid-back hangout.
Slideshare, the funky cousin in this trio, is all about presentations and visuals. Whether you’re a student, a pro, or just into pretty slides, Slideshare is the visual party that’s part of the gang. And hey, it’s all bundled up under the same subscription.
Let’s talk subscription smarts. Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare are all under one subscription, and at $9.99 a month, it’s like having a backstage pass to the whole show. Now, here’s the cool part—I’ve decided to switch to a yearly plan at $84.99 next billing cycle. Why? On top of having unlimited ebooks and audiobooks, that’s a saving of $34.89 a year. Simple as that.
Oh, before you go, here’s a little gift for you! Dive into Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare with a 60-day free trial. Just click here to unlock the doors to this digital wonderland
Everand, Scribd, and Slideshare aren’t just websites; they’re like my digital hangouts, each bringing its own vibe. Whether I’m lost in a book, sharing docs with pals, or jazzing up my presentations, this trio’s got my back. Here’s to more digital adventures and discovering the wonders of this content-packed crew! 🚀✨
I have used both the learning platforms for learning 2 different languages for some months now. Preply for Mandarin and iTalki for Hungarian.
They are both online platforms for finding a personal tutor who can help you in your language learning journey. Both similar in a way that you can choose when you want to be tutored. I love the fact that it is very flexible and very convenient than finding someone locally.
What I think of iTalki:
Let’s start with the good parts. Easy to use website – It’s pretty standard and very easy to find what you need. The tutor of your choice may offer discount packages – you can opt to buy a package of few hours lessons that you can use anytime, instead of paying by the hour. This way you save a bit more.
There are quite many teachers to choose from and languages that you can learn. Even the not so popular languages. Like Javanese or Esperanto. They also offer an option for group lessons. So far they only have those for English, Japanese and Spanish. The teacher provides the level, the time and cost, and you can choose if you’d like to participate. It is much more of a group conversational practice I believe. There is also the ‘Community’ area where some tutors would share some language quizzes and you can try them out to test your knowledge.
So those are the good things about italki that I rather like.
Now, what I do not really like about the site is that you can only cancel or reschedule your classes within 24 hours. Well, I do think it is reasonable to give notice for the tutor to schedule something else in their lives, 🙂 but still I do not like it too much.
It seems pretty complicated to get a refund or transfer the credit to another teacher if you are not satisfied with the current one. Especially when you bought a discount package. If you cancel before you can use up all the credits from the package then you would have to pay in full the lessons that you had earlier. Which means that you will get less refund as they deduct that from the balance.
What I think of Preply:
Just like italki the website is also easy to navigate. I also like the concept that you can pay for monthly subscription of 1 to 5 hours a week. So monthly it will just charge you automatically and you will get the balance hours in your ‘wallet’ to schedule. I usually subscribe for 2 hours a week.
There are many teachers to choose from to learn. I think there are about 48-49 languages. Further, you not only can find tutors for languages but also for other things as well e.g. Python, Web design, Music , Maths and others.
Easy to transfer balance from on tutor to another, in case if you are not satisfied with the current teacher and you would to have a new tutor you can easily cancel and transfer the balance to book the time with another teacher. Which I had done a couple of times.
I like that you can cancel or reschedule up to 4 hours to the time of the lesson. I usually would tell the teacher at least a day before but there are sometimes unforeseeable things like when I was out and thought in the end that I may not be able to get back in time, it was really good that I could reschedule even then.
Now, what I don’t really like is the subscription option is not very flexible. I could not simply pause my subscription to a later date because I have an excess of monthly hours right now. When I would rather change the charging period to a later date till I can use up my hours, but I have to cancel my subscription instead and renew it later. Not a big deal, but it would have been better. 🙂
Preply or iTalki?
I would have to say Preply here. Though both websites are easy to use but Preply had never given me any problems which iTalki had when I just couldn’t enter the ‘classroom’ a few times. Until I used a different browser.
I feel that Preply gave me more flexibility – when I need to reschedule or when I needed to transfer the credits to another teacher.
In case you’d like to give it a try yourself you may sign up using my referral link and get 70% off your first lesson. Click here
I have been a fan of the “choose your own ending” text-based games and romance novels for a long time. So this genre is just perfect for me. It is the only kind of game that won’t take me years to finish. Just like how I would read books right before bed, I would read a visual novel on the switch instead.
The first Visual novel game I tried on the switch is “Bustafellows”. It is a noir mystery crime busting visual novel. Here you will play as ‘Teuta’ or what ever name you choose to give the girl protagonist. I am not even sure if it can be considered a game because you get to make very few choices. Some chapters would go on without you having to make any choices at all in fact. Few but important choices that would determine which route you will take and which Love interest you would end up with.
What I like about this visual novel is that, there are many stories to unfold. Good endings, bad endings, and side stories as well. The character designs are nice as well in my opinion. My Love interests here are Shu and Limbo. The least being Scarecrow and Helvetica. I suppose because the characters of the first two guys I mentioned are not over the top. I also enjoy the good endings for sure.
Now what I do no like much about it is that the stories can be pretty dark. There would be some mention of ‘suicide’, ‘violence’ and ‘murder’. Heck it is after all a mystery crime novel after all, but I wasn’t expecting it to be a little disturbing to be honest. So I would usually go over the bad ending first and later go for the good ending to clean my system with more positive emotion.
All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would definitely recommend to anyone getting into visual novels. Out of 5, I would give it a 4.5. 👌
From Goodreads: The title of the series is Simple Hungarian, for the stories are told in simple, everyday colloquial style.
I have to admit that I got this book a while back and started reading it long ago only to put it aside for a long time. I began to read the book again since I started to brush up on my Hungarian. I just need something else to read other than the text books that I am using.
If you are learning Hungarian like myself you would know that there aren’t many study resources out there for this language compared to other languages; say Japanese or Spanish. So when I saw this book I was glad.
Well, despite what the title says, “Simple Hungarian”. There is nothing simple about Hungarian. 😀 But just like everything the more you expose yourself to it the easier it gets. I find that the book is good for learning new words and also helps you remember the basic concepts and words usage as they are repeated a lot. It kind of ease you into the language.
The book is divided into 2 parts – Simple present and simple past. Each part comes with 50 short articles or topics. The topics are about common things that you would use in your daily life with topics like – family, friends, siblings, work, hobbies etc. The topics were actually repeated in both parts but as I mentioned earlier, one is presented in simple present and the other in simple past. And at the end of each topic there are questions based on it. Also the translations of both the articles and questions are provided as well. So you can use the questions to try to repeat what you’ve read by memory.
This book is not something you can use as a textbook for sure but definitely something you should consider getting as a supplement for language learning.
From Goodread: It’s 1948 in Rippling Creek, Louisiana, and Tate P. Ellerbee’s new teacher has just given her class an assignment–learning the art of letter-writing. Luckily, Tate has the perfect pen pal in mind: Hank Williams, a country music singer whose star has just begun to rise. Tate and her great-aunt and -uncle listen to him on the radio every Saturday night, and Tate just knows that she and Hank are kindred spirits. Told entirely…
I finished this book about a week ago. I just didn’t have the time to write my thoughts on it. I am a fan of ‘letter writing’ or ‘journaling’ story telling. Not surprising that one of my all time favorite books “daddy long legs” by Jean Webster. You kind of get into the head of the characters and it can make them seem much more real.
It took me a few hours to go through this book. I love reading stories from the perspective of a child. Innocent ,funny and refreshing. The story is based in the late 1940 post II world war period and the story was told through letters sent by an 11 year old girl named Tate P. Ellerbee to her idol, Hank Williams. I have to confess that every time she mentioned a song, I had to look it up and listen to them while reading the book. It was well written that I could imagine rather vividly how it was to live as a child in the 40s. How much more simple and complicated it was at the same time. Now when I wanted to listen to a song I could just google it or look it up on ‘spotify’ or ‘Tidal’ and chances are I would find them there. But for a child in the 40s who wanted to listen to songs of their favourite singers, they would have to make time to tune it to the radio at certain time of the day with the entire family. If you missed it, you miss it. You just have to wait for the next day or week for the program to come up again on the radio. I suppose something that we modern people would not have to go through – everything is instant gratification these days.
Anyway, it all started when her teacher decided that they should all start writing to penpals. And Tate, after listening to Hank Williams for the first time on the radio, had a good idea of who her penpal should be – which is Hank Williams himself, and nothing her teacher told her could convince her otherwise. From then on she started to relate the daily going ons in her life religiously through letters – without getting a reply of course other than the occasional autographed photos.
As I mentioned earlier, the letters were well written, peppered with childish humor, and curiosity. It is a story about love, family and grief. I conveyed in the end of how a grieving child might see the world. It reminded me that nobody is safe from the harsh reality of living. Not even a child. But love and hope conquers all and makes it easier what ever hardships life throws at us.
With this I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the book and recommend it for sure.
One of the lesser known works of L.M Montgomery compared to Anne of Green Gables, but according to her, Emily was closer to her own heart. Like Anne, Emily is a strong-minded, gifted, imaginative child, left alone and unprotected in a harsh world, who is taken in by adults who are at least initially cold and unloving. Both girls grow up amid the beauties of Prince Edward Island, both keenly sensitive to natural splendors and…
The last time I read one of Ms Montgomery’s books, I was still a teenager. I loved all the books with Anne as the heroine – from Anne of Green Gables to Anne House of dreams. The books were magical for me. Anne, Diana, Gilbert were like real people that you’ve got to know more about them. Despite my love for those books it sure took a while for me to get a hold of the less popular books by Ms Montgomery. I suppose that was it, because it was less known, I barely could see these at bookstores back in Malaysia years ago when the internet was not that widely used.
In fact, I got these books for free to be read on my ipad. You can find great bargains and even free classical books on Amazon Kindle once in a while. So the books in order which they are supposed to be read: Emily of New Moon, Emily climbs and Emily’s Quests.
I read all three books within 3 days. I am at the moment sleep deprived for sure but I just couldn’t help myself, it was not easy to put them down once I started reading during the night.
I decided to just do one review for all three books as to me it is like one whole story of Emily. It just won’t be complete to just read one or two books out of the series. This is one of those stories that you simply got to read one book at a time and not skip any.
So here is what I thought of the books. They were good. Obviously as to how it was difficult for me to put them down. 🙂 But not as good as the Anne of Green Gables series and I could not help but to compare. This series seems to be a bit darker with a touch of paranormal, pedophilia, emotional incest and rather not as cheerful as Anne of Green Gables series. Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride characters kept on popping up when ever Emily’s uncles and aunts were in the picture. The Murrays ( Emily’s maternal family) just infuriates me sometimes with their judgmental nature with one Aunt Ruth for example always suspecting Emily as being sly at all times and questioned everything she did as having a bad underlying motive simply because of what her mother did in the past. But I suppose that is what real life families are at times – annoying pain in the ass lot.
I don’t know why it is, but somehow I felt it was rather rushed at the end. Maybe because it was only planned for 3 books and no more, or simply she just got tired of writing it towards the end. Some characters had more attention than some other important ones. I mean, there was Teddy Kent who was supposed to be a love interest for Emily and we barely know anything much about him. With Anne of Green Gables each character’s personality was well built so much so you feel like you yourself know them all your life – like Ruby Gillis, and heck even Charlie Sloane. Now with Emily of New moon this lack some how left me with a feeling of slight dissatisfaction.
All in all they were worth the read. Believe it or not there were positive take aways from the books for me personally. So I gave the books 4 out of 5 stars. Looking forward to read more of L.M. Montgomery’s other works soon.
Andy Dufresne, a banker, was convicted of killing his wife and her lover and sent to Shawshank Prison. He maintains his innocence over the decades he spends at Shawshank during which time he forms a friendship with “Red”, a fellow inmate.
Yesterday being a rather gloomy and rainy Sunday, we decided to stay indoors and watch a movie. And that movie was Shawshank Redemption. I had watched it like 4-5 times now perhaps. It never gets old.
Though I’ve watched the movie that many times but it never occurred to me to actually read the book of which the movie was adapted from. Yesterday afternoon, right after the movie I decided to look for the book and remedy that.
I was surprised that the book was actually a short read – less than 120 pages. From the over 2 hour movie I expected something more. But I am not complaining – I love short books with substance.
The movie didn’t follow the book to the “T” but to be honest I was hoping that it wouldn’t. As I was looking for a different end for the crook in the book. A better payback than the mere hours or maybe days before he ended up ‘making it easy’ and pulled the trigger on himself. The ending for the man Sam Norton indeed differs from the movie, not satisfying enough but I settled for it.
I sat down and finished the book in a couple of hours and enjoyed every bit of it. What I love about the movie and the book is that it teach us to continue to hope. Something nobody can take away from you if you don’t let it. And where persistence, patience and grit would lead you.
“Remember that hope is a good thing, Red, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Ikigai is a traditional Japanese concept that embodies happiness in living. It is, essentially, the reason that you get up in the morning. This book is about finding your ikigai – identifying your purpose or passion and using this knowledge to achieve greater happiness in your life. Your ikigai doesn’t have to be some grand ambition or highly noble life’s purpose – it can be something simple and humble, like tending your garden or walking…
It is not a new idea that we all need some sort of ‘motivation’ or passion in order to get up in the mornings feeling alive and motivated. The question is how to find it? Usually we were told it is supposed to be related to what you do as a job. But according to the author, it can be anything and not necessarily limited to just one’s career – it could be taking care of your family or enjoying your hobby. I particularly love the example of the cleaners of the Japanese trains. How they take pride on what they do and how they are appreciated by the Japanese society. Most societies’ perception would be that as cleaners they are at the bottom of the career chain. They are not appreciated, and who would wake up happy everyday if only to get up to a thanklrss job? But for these Japanese cleaners, the passengers’ comforts seem to be their ‘ikigai’. They maintain a high standard of cleanliness, so that the passengers can travel to work or school in comfort and they, in return, will be able to contribute back to society through what ever they do.
Other than the story of the Japanese train cleaners, I don’t find anything else that is interesting or extremely inspiring . My biggest qualm about this book is that, she only interviewed those people who were already deemed to be ‘successful’ and one of those lucky ones who already know what they want and need to do in their lives from a very young age. If only she could have included interviews from those people who were ‘lost’ and actually found their ‘ikigai’ by chance or from Zero to Hero sort of story. That would have been more inspiring and more interesting.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby is a Fireblood who has concealed her powers of heat and flame from the cruel Frostblood ruling class her entire life. But when her mother is killed trying to protect her, and rebel Frostbloods demand her help to overthrow their bloodthirsty king, she agrees to come out of hiding, desperate to have her revenge.
When I first got this book, I wasn’t really sure what I would be reading. I chose it based on the title instead of reading the synopsis. From the title, I was expecting it to be something like the “Game of thrones”. However, after reading the book till the end, it isn’t exactly that but it was a bit more of an Avatar’ish sort of fantasy story. With people gifted to wield an element of nature. In this first book of the series, there are mainly 2 tribes, which is the Fireblood, those who can wield the power of fire and the Frostblood, those who can conjure ice and frost.
Other than an interesting story line, in order to enjoy a book I have to like the characters. Ruby, the Fireblood didn’t make me feel like rolling my eyeballs – no foot stomping, or demanding this and that. Instead of simply born to be good at something, just like the rest of us mere mortals, she had to really work hard to learn to bring up her powers and and control it. She had her moments when she wanted to just give up but she went back to it. I suppose, she is relatable.
Her love interest, a Frostblood called Arcus is not your typical dashingly handsome hero. His face was badly burnt and scarred, a constant reminder for him as a survivor of a Fireblood attack. So he didn’t have and entirely beautiful face, but his rare to smile, brooding, fiercely loyal, hard working sort of personality made him ‘handsome’ and likable. He disliked her at the beginning and so did she because of their differences – obviously since one is a Fireblood and one is a Frostblood. But they had to fight a common enemy, therefore they had to put animosity aside. For Arcus it was to save his people and for her it was for revenge.
Now, though enjoyed the book as it was written well, but I have to say that the storyline is okay-ish as I felt it was too predictable. If you read the book, most probably you will know what I mean. Will I be reading the sequel? I am not sure. The first book was good enough on it’s own but it didn’t leave me wanting to know more about what will happen to the shadow for example or whether Arcus will ever marry Ruby etc.
So I will skip the sequel for now and concentrate on other books or series first.
Fumio Sasaki is a writer in his thirties who lives in a tiny studio in Tokyo with three shirts, four pairs of trousers, four pairs of socks and not much else. A few years ago, he realized that owning so much stuff was weighing him down – so he started to get rid of it. In this hit Japanese bestseller, Sasaki explores the philosophy behind minimalism and offers a set of straightforward rules – discard…
This is the second book I have read on Minimalism so far this year and the best yet. Written through personal experience, the author explained to us as to why and how he became one of the maximum minimalist by choice in Japan if not in the world.
It is not simply a How to book but it is a story of a journey of the author’s own experience – his struggles and triumphs in letting go of his attachments to material possessions. I found myself chuckling many times and able to relate to myself and those I know, as he explained what his thoughts were and how others may think as well when it comes to throwing ‘junks’ that we take as treasures or items that we save up for our unborn grandchildren. We are different and yet the same. The more I read on I understood as to why he did what he did – to throw away and not even store anything of ‘might be useful someday’ just made sense. To move out of one apartment to another in just 30 minutes? Or to have more time doing what you like instead of doing chores? In fact he said that doing chores is even more enjoyable as it became less of a hassle and his living area calms the nerves.
With a bit of story telling he also gave us about 55 ways or tips on how you can condition yourself emotionally to make it easier to say goodbye to things that no longer serve your daily life. Those greeting cards and arts and crafts given to me by kids whom I cared for during my Kindergarten working days went into the recycling bin day before. I took photos of them as suggested. I suppose it is a fear of no longer seeing something that brings me the feeling of nostalgia that made me kept them. I had piles and piles of notebooks that are waiting to be used. Simply taking away more storage and more of my living space. I packed them up and told my daughter to give them away for her friends to use. I’ll finish using the ones I am using and once I’ve utilized them I can get more then. Buy things only when I need or I really use on a daily or even monthly basis. I don’t strive to be a minimalist but I do aim for a bit more simpler life with less things that only taking up space.
I only took a few tips and I feel that I am actually making more progress in getting my life to be less cluttered. Minimalism as he puts it is a journey and you don’t have to do it in a day or weeks. It could be years. As I remember him saying that it took him about 5 years. Get rid of the real junk out first and go on from there. Would I recommend this book? Totally. Especially if you are hoping to seek some guidance or are thinking about downsizing your worldly possessions.
