The sky was so blue, the clouds were scattered by the wind, the trees were waving along with the breeze of fresh air and I was just laying there, on the stepping stones. Letting the day drift away slowly and just simply staring at the clear blue sky wondering why… why do I think about “why” so much! And then I just kept on why”ing”.

It was then, when I captured the view while I was visiting the Retiro Park, as I laid down by the pool and waited for my friends to finishing rowing the boat.

One of the questions I had was… Who is this man?
After zooming at the picture, then googled the name… I found out that he was the King Alfonso XII of Spain reigning, from 1875 to 1885. The amazing thing is that he was born in1857 which mean that he became the king while he was only 18 years old.

One amazing King!

Inspired by London’s crystal palace, the Palacio de Cristal can be found at the south-eastern end of the Retiro Park.  It was initially used to house exotic plants brought over from the Philippines. It is now mainly used for temporary exhibitions. (wiki)

It is an unfortunate thing to happen to an amazing structure, as the Cristal palace now houses absolutely nothing. Sure it was once a green house for exotic plants, but its name and glory are things lost in time, a time which has passed by. It has become outdated and has lost its value. The architecture at this scale should be occupied throughout the year; it should not be neglected nor only be used when it is needed.

A palace is not a palace if it were merely a decoration to a park. A palace is a palace when it is occupied and cared for.

To my eyes, this is a very lonely sight indeed. Once a place full of lives and happiness, now an empty shell waiting to be fill with joy once again, permanently. Until then…

Can you recall your dreams? Some people are able to finely detail their dreams from the beginning to the end. Some can’t recall the story line but are able to recall bits and pieces from their dream. And some just can’t recall nor remember any thing from the dream at all, hence… I didn’t dream of anything.

I am no psychologist, but I have a theory! hahah, that’s right! A theory from a guy with an Architecture and a Hospitality Management degree, about “Dreams” and why we dream?

There must have been thousands of theories out there about “why we dream” as in “how does it occur” However, what I am talking about is “why we dream” as in “how can we use that dream to our advantage”

Because we are the creator of those DREAMs, I believe that, then we must be able to control our dream to our DESIRES! Dream happen in a virtual world, unreal, not existing, nor happening… it then allow us, the dreamer, to EXPERIENCE different scenarios that are yet to happen or we would like to try. This may refer to the time that you say “aww I wish I did (dot dot dot)” or “what if (dot dot dot)” those moments are the time that we can’t redo because we can’t go back in time, unfortunately there is no “Ctrl+Z” for real life. The dream also allows us to observe ourselves of reactions we have on different scenarios in our dream.

A nightmare could be the result of us losing control of our dreams. As mentioned earlier, we are the creators of our dreams, hence we are the controllers of our dreams. If we can control our dreams, why would we make ourselves have nightmares. Instead we would make our dreams as fun, happy, glory, and joyful as possible! In our dreams… anything is possible and the worst thing is… to have woken up from a dream so sweet that you just want to keep sleeping!

I think the same can be apply to ourselves in reality. We are in control of ourselves therefore everything that happened, resulted from our previous, current, and future actions. Put simply… in our dreams, we can control our minds to dream of happy thoughts. In reality, we can control our actions to work toward those happy moments as well.

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Dreaming that you were lost in a forest may happen once in a while, but you can control it by believing and creating a path to lead yourself out of the forest.
Hey… a dream is your movie, and you are the director, the actor, the extra, and the props. So do whatever you want with it, use your imagination!

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” Albert Einstein.

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As for the photo, it was taken in Madrid, at Retiro Park while we were walking, looking for a bench to sit and just relax. Couldn’t relax because we were worried about one assignment that was yet to be submitted as we needed another team member to submit it to professor along with other documents. In the end, those worries were for nothing as everything was handed in days before by the team member.  Then, we just sat and relax in the woods… away from everything. It wasn’t long but it was memorable.

Just minutes before we had to leave the park, The Retiro Park in Madrid, I got the chance to take this picture. However instead of the photo, I wish we got to be in the boat just for a bit. Why? for more photos !

If I am correct, I know there are parks like this in Bangkok as well. I am going to find out where and then I will share it here and let see… which is better? In my honest opinion, I don’t think that it is where that matters… it is who you are with that makes the difference ^_^

I mean… look at the photo, they all are couples rowing the boats! … the location became insignificant.

This view of Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain reminded me of the quote “stand for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone.” Well, obviously because there is one statue standing in the center, however I don’t know why is he/she is standing there. Another interesting part of the statue is that he/she is holding a mask that has different expression from his/her real face expression.

Why would he/she standing there? And why would he/she wear a mask?

In my opinion, if you are truly standing for something you believe in… you wouldn’t need a mask to hide yourself. Instead you should throw away the mask with no regrets, no remorse, and no sadness while “standing for what you believe in, even if it means standing alone” and be strong, confident, and happy!

This quote also related to the previous post…

Just a Tree… on a Hill…

It took me an hour to start writing this post after having it uploaded here because I was side tracked watching music videos on YouTube.

The picture I selected today is from the Retiro Park in Madrid. The park reminded me the combination of Suan Lum (a park) in Bangkok and the Balboa Park in San Diego. The greening of the park and the lake is very similar to Suan Lum however the extensive use of classical architecture and sculpture is very similar to Balboa park. Walking at the Retiro park makes me feel home-sick in a funny way because I miss both Bangkok and Los Angeles to the point that I am confused as to which home is really home. If possible, I’d like to have more than one “home” (not house), as both of them feel like home to me. Walking in Madrid also brings me back the memory of myself studying history of architecture because we studied so much about Europe and its classical order of columns, the tri-parti, symmetry, asymmetry, and so on.

Those… were good times! And these… are good moments that I would never want to forget.