Sunday, January 17, 2010

15 interesting facts about dreams

1. You forget 90% of your dreams. Within 5 minutes of waking, half of your dream is forgotten. Within 10, 90% is gone.

2. Blind people also dream. People who became blind after birth can see images in their dreams. People who are born blind do not see any images, but have dreams equally vivid involving their other senses of sound, smell, touch and emotion.

3. Everybody dreams. Every human being dreams (except in cases of extreme psychological disorder). If you think you are not dreaming, you just forget your dreams.

4. In our dreams, we only see faces that we already know. Our mind is not inventing faces – in our dreams we see real faces of real people that we have seen during our life but may not know or remember. We have all seen hundreds of thousands of faces throughout our lives, so we have an endless supply of characters for our brain to utilize during our dreams.

5. Not everybody dreams in color. A full 12% of sighted people dream exclusively in black and white. The remaining number dream in full color. Studies from 1915 through to the 1950s maintained that the majority of dreams were in black and white, but these results began to change in the 1960s. Today, only 4.4% of the dreams of under-25 year-olds are in black and white. Recent research has suggested that those changing results may be linked to the switch from black-and-white film and TV to color media.

6. Dreams are symbolic. If you dream about some particular subject it is not often that the dream is about that. Dreams speak in a deeply symbolic language. Whatever symbol your dream picks on it is most unlikely to be a symbol for itself.

7. Emotions; The most common emotion experienced in dreams is anxiety. Negative emotions are more common than positive ones.

8. You can have four to seven dreams in one night. On average, you can dream anywhere from one or two hours every night.

9. Animals dream too. Studies have been done on many different animals, and they all show the same brain waves during dreaming sleep as humans. Watch a dog sleeping sometime. The paws move like they are running and they make yipping sounds as if they are chasing something in a dream.

10. Body Paralysis.

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a normal stage of sleep characterized by rapid movements of the eyes. REM sleep in adult humans typically occupies 20-25% of total sleep, about 90-120 minutes of a night’s sleep.

During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain in order to prevent the movements which occur in the dream from causing the physical body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens.

11. Dream Incorporation. Our mind interprets the external stimuli that our senses are bombarded with when we are asleep and make them a part of our dreams. This means that sometimes, in our dreams, we hear a sound from reality and incorporate it in a way. For example you may be dreaming that you are in a concert, while your brother is playing a guitar during your sleep.

12. Men and women dream differently. Men tend to dream more about other men. Around 70% of the characters in a man’s dream are other men. On the other hand, a woman’s dream contains almost an equal number of men and women. Aside from that, men generally have more aggressive emotions in their dreams than the female lot.

13. Precognitive Dreams. Results of several surveys across large population sets indicate that between 18% and 38% of people have experienced at least one precognitive dream and 70% have experienced déjà vu. The percentage of persons that believe precognitive dreaming is possible is even higher, ranging from 63% to 98%.

14. If you are snoring, then you cannot be dreaming.

15. You can experience an orgasm in your dreams. You can not only have s e x as pleasurable as in your real life while dreaming, but also experience an o r g a s m as strong as a real one, without any wet results. The sensations felt while lucid dreaming (touch, pleasure and etc..) can be as pleasurable and strong (or I believe even stronger) as the sensations experienced in the real world.

Source

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Making J.Lo proud

Back in high school, (and I kid you not), I was known as the "asian girl with the big butt."
A particular conversation I was told of went like this:

"Hey, you know Sam--"
"Who? Wait, the asian girl with the big bubble butt right?"
"Yeah that's the one."
"Well, yeah sure! Why didn't you say so?"

When my guy friend told me this conversation he had with one of his buddies, I was mortified. Asian girl with the big bubble butt? You have got to be kidding me. He had to reassure me over and over again that it was a good thing and that it was hot. I rolled my eyes at this and sulked. Of course, like any other girl growing up, I had the preconceived notion that looking like a stick skinny model was the way to go. (Because who ever saw a Lagerfeld model with a big butt? I think not.)

It was even worse because even though I had a 24 inch waist, I could not for the life of me pull myself into a size 24 jean. They slid on smoothly from foot to thigh and then suddenly, I wouldn't be able to pull it over my butt and up past my "childbearing hips." To say it was a struggle is an understatement. I had to wear a size 26, and to this day, I still do...always with a belt of course. At the time, the rear was not a friend of mine. It was my enemy.

Over the years, I've been able to embrace what I have and love my butt. I'm not sure how it happened, but it happened. Yes, I do love it, and I wouldn't trade it for the entire Chanel and Proenza Schouler bag collection put together.

So to all the bootylicious girls out there, embrace that junk in the trunk. If I could go back in time to my former self, I'd slap myself across the face and tell myself to loosen up. Give 'em a little shake here and there.

Live a little.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Growing old does not apply to me

Tomorrow is the birthday. Another year older.

Not that I'm old or anything. I'm young, fertile and nothing's sagging. In fact, quite the opposite. Everything is in working order, so all is good.

With that, I will present my wishlist for this year:

- Gaspard Ulliel, James Franco or Johnny Depp (individually or all at the same time is not a big deal to me).
- A new texture of peanut butter (sometimes I get bored of smooth and crunchy).
- The entire Stella McCartney and Chloe spring/summer '10 collection (ruffles, lace and all).
- A Coldstone Creamery built in my cul-de-sac.
- A complete understanding of how a guy's brain works, computers, and why the trip back is always shorter than the trip there.
- Snow in this city that affects everyone else but me. And acceptance by everyone that this is fair and how it should be.
- The ability to win a game of Tap Tap with humility instead of dancing around and cheering my own awesomeness.

I hope everyone steps up to the plate for this.

Friday, January 1, 2010

That's a wrap. Here's to a new year.



Wishing you a happy 2010!