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Happy Tuesday All,
And welcome to the Cultural Reads Newsletter! A bi-weekly book, music, and movie recommendation from different countries worldwide.
For those who watched the Eurovision Songfestival, it was nice to see Moldova get the 2nd vote from the audience. The band, Zdob si Zdub, is a famous Balkan group and was mentioned as one of the favorites during my interview with Lidia Isac (Moldova’s 2016 Eurovision Candidate)
In this week’s newsletter: China, Norway, Ethiopia, Barcelona Food & Drink, Shazam
“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
If you stay in the center
and embrace death with your whole heart,
you will endure forever.” – Lao Tzu
Taoism is an eastern philosophy (such as Confucianism and Buddhism) that originated in China around 500 BC. To put it in simple terms, the Tao Te Ching is the Taoist equivalent of the Bible.
I first came across this book when reading Tim Ferris’ interviews with the world’s top performers in Tribe of Mentors. Tao Te Ching was the most recommended book. And with good reason, because it’s full of wisdom.
Make sure you get a good translation because I’ve come across many boring ones that lose their wisdom by being too descriptive.
My recommendation would be Stephen Mitchell’s version.
The Worst Person In The World is a modern love story.
Julie, afraid of committing to a single relationship, ends up dating one guy after the other without being willing to commit in the long term.
Are her expectations too high, or is she not ready yet? An entertaining yet realistic movie about essential life choices with beautiful cinematography.
The movie is currently showing in many art movie theaters around the world.
Here are two tips to get more out of it.
1. Connect your Shazam to your Spotify account. This will automatically upload all your Shazam songs to a Spotify playlist. You can do this by going to Library – Settings – Connect to Spotify.
2. Turn on Autoshazam. This will allow you to automatically shazam all songs during your next road trip or at your favorite festival. If you implemented step 1, you can drag and drop the songs from the Shazam playlist to a new one. In this way, you can relive your memories whenever you want. You can find this option by going to Library – Settings – Auto Shazam.
Aster Aweke is an Ethiopian singer who sings in Amharic. Her songs are unique and unlike anything else.
Aster grew up in Ethiopia and later moved to the U.S for 15 years, where she studied computer science and formal music education.
When she returned to Ethiopia, some 80,000 fans welcomed her back. Until 2015, she ran a coffee place in Addis Ababa called Kabu.
My favorite song is Chewa.
Want to take a break from work and fantasize about your next holiday?
If your next destination happens to be Barcelona, I have something for you.
When I lived in Barcelona, someone sent me a list of bars, restaurants, and clubs.
Recently, I updated this list with the help of friends living in Barcelona.
I divided the bars and restaurants per neighborhood and created a Google maps layer, so you should be able to find your way around the city easily.
You can read the full post here!
The four elements of cooking are salt, fat, acid, and heat.
Once you master these, you should be able to do a pretty good job at cooking always.
Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat
