BOOKS
The Geography of Bliss should be on anybody's lifetime reading list and possibly closer to the present.
Eric is looking for something somewhere. A literary quest for the core of existence. He is also purifying some connotations from his past; words are better understood in places far from 'home.'
His search sometimes appears to be for a drug that would catapult you straight to the tip of the magic. It could happen simply because you are there.
He may be right. What do we expect whenever we travel to places ? A quick shot of scheduled joy.
In Iceland people have more chances to be happy and that is because they can try more things. Now, this should be a national priority/policy: creating the place for people where they can truly develop who they are.
Ultimately, happiness is the price we have to pay for being human (wink!).
A few things that I didn't know: Bhutan has banned smoking and the sale of tobacco; there is no such thing as bad Swiss chocolate; francium is the least stable element; when Qatari men get married, they receive from the government a monthly allowance of seven thousand dollars, and they pay no income tax; Jeremy Bentham's skeleton is nicely dressed and displayed sitting on a wooden chair in University College London, although he happily died in 1832; maya for Hindus is illusion; in 1445 the Dutch region of Flanders the first lottery took place; Bhutanese religious figures used to spread blessings using cow's butter;
A find: from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's book "Flow" : it is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have.
Pleasant memories: Nicholas the Reconciler.
