Updates + News

Kuala Lumpur Park

Hope all of you are doing great. Lots of changes are happening over here; so though I've been a bit quieter on the posting front, busy-ness has been in full force - just in the background.

 A few quick updates...

Thingyan
Myanmar - and several other SE Asian countries - just celebrated Thingyan - or Buddhist New Year. Last year, we celebrated it in Thailand where it's called Songkran. You can read some posts about that over here.

This year, we went to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We spent about six days there and had a wonderful time. I will write more about KL later ... but I do have to tell you that it's probably now my favorite city that I've visited in SE Asia. We just got back.

Moving to Myanmar eBook
As you know, I've just published Moving to Myanmar and you can find it over on Amazon here. I hope you find some interesting information in there and if you do, please consider leaving a review!

New Blog/Website Launched
Today, I've launched a new professional blog/website, Becky Cavender. Becky in Burma will not go away; it is time, however, to have a place to focus on my writing career. I'd love it if you could go take a look and follow my new page. I also have a new Facebook page for Becky Cavender. Come on over, say hello, and like the page. I'm loving the look of the two and I hope you do also!

Thanks for all your support as I continue on my journey - which is filled with lots of changes. Big ones, too. I'll spill all the beans soon.

What’s Beautiful in All of Us

I have a hard time dealing with super negative, scary, or violent things.

I’m not a news junky for this very reason.  And I avoid certain types of movies and news as much as possible because I get quite affected by it all.

After watching the film, “The Road,” I was incredibly upset and wasn’t sure how I was going to sleep that night without having nightmares.  I felt panicky.  My husband was laughing at me and asking why I watched that movie. I groaned, “I had no idea it would be like that! Why didn’t you tell me?!” He just laughed.  He had read the book and knew it was grim.

I knew I needed to replace all those horrid images with positive ones.  I snuggled in bed, lit a candle, and found the fotopedia World Heritage Sites app on my iPad. I kept quietly chanting, “I just have to see all the beautiful things in the world. I just have to see all the beautiful things in this world. The world is beautiful. The world is beautiful.”

I’m a little embarrassed telling the whole world about my mini panic attack after watching “The Road,” but I’m illustrating a point which you’ve clearly figured out by now: I’m just a teensy bit sensitive about things, so…err… try to avoid yuckiness. (I’ve learned this is part of a personality trait called Highly Sensitive People.)

But there’s been a lot of unavoidable, horrific news lately.  We don’t have satellite TV so my main way to connect with the world is through Facebook. There’s also been a lot of super negative, blame-y, nasty stuff there, too. Sometimes you have to dig for the good.

I've been doing some digging around lately because...well...there's a lot of that yuckiness around and frankly, I don't want to be bogged down in negativity.  So just like I had to find my trusty, happy iPad app, I've been looking online for the happy stuff.

Thankfully, there is lot of nice, fluffly, restore-your-faith-in-humankind content online. I’m thinking most of us need a bit of that right about now. I know I sure do.

 So, I thought I'd share some happy websites you can visit:

• http://gimundo.com/news/article/25-amazing-websites-and-online-resources-for-inspiration-positivity-and-mor/ 

• http://www.getmilkshake.com/ 

• http://www.wikihow.com/Restore-Your-Faith-in-Humanity 

• http://www.moreloveletters.com/ 

• http://www.oprah.com/blogs/Write-a-Love-Letter-to-your-Latte-Maker 

• http://hellogiggles.com/ 

• http://www.ordinarycourage.com/

I have a Pinterest board dedicated to inspirational stories and people. You can find it here. 

I’ve discovered that many people have similar boards which are very uplifting.

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned Highly Sensitive People; if you think you might be someone who’s quite sensitive as well (check out this test here), then here are a few lovely blog posts from some of my sister bloggers that you might find helpful:

• http://rainbowlightangel.com/2012/12/holidaysurvival/

• http://suzipoland.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/taking-time-for-self-care.html

Below are some cool news websites I’ve found that only report positive stuff. I listed some of these on my Facebook page recently: 

• http://www.happynews.com/ 

• http://www.huffingtonpost.com/good-news/ 

• http://www.dailygood.org/ 

• http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ 

• http://www.positivenewsus.org/stories.html 

• http://gimundo.com/  
  
  
  What are some of your favorite uplifting sites? Where do you go to get positive news?
  
  Enjoy! Hope you have a happy, peaceful day!