a smile & a thank you to my papa

... because he introduced me to the book 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne a few years ago.

It's a positive book about bringing good things to your life.

And on their website is this uplifting video - I hope it makes you smile -

my papa is smiling! (on holiday in Norway - what's not to smile about?!)

and one day, just over a year ago, when I was waiting to collect my papa at Glasgow airport, his plane was late coming in and by chance I went to the book kiosk (after I had my Starbucks earl grey and lemon + poppy seed muffin in my hand ofcourse) and amazingly came across Rhonda's latest book 'The Power'.

Well, if I hadn't fully understood The Secret, I certainly did after I read The Power. It is the key to unlocking the Secret and really the icing on the cake.

There are few things handed to you on a platter in life, but these 2 books are just that.

Ofcourse, as with time and books they lay on the self gathering dust like any good book should until the time is right for you to be able to accept and understand their contents ...

... my copies have recently been dusted off ....

My papa knows my taste in books which is really great because this xmas I got just what I wanted (without putting an order in to santa! how about that?!)

I got a War Stories comic style book - love these stories and I really like the pictures, plus the verbal expressions always make me smile. Plus they are just like the war sea story novels that I adore, by Hammond Innes, Desmond Bagley, Alistair McLean and Douglas Reeman.

I think perhaps I may have been a soldier in WWII :)

and er, yes, I am a tomboy and always have been!

and I also got a concise book on tanks and armoured fighting vehicles of the world!

Wow!!

now for a soldier who loved identifying military hardware, this is just the type of present that made me drool and my heart beat faster!

and my dad also had another gem for me - Spitfire Women of WWII

these were the women pilots who moved the war planes to where the airmen could fly them off to battle.

I have yet to read the book but it looks so exciting, and it's all true!

loving that faded front cover and those ladies in their uniforms.

The spitfire was the greatest British warplane of WWII

I got myself a little diecast spitfire off ebay (where else?) and I also got a plastic one to be glued together. It came with a paper instruction sheet that has amazing images of the plane - too nice to keep folded up!

many thanks dad for the great reads and the inspiration!

my dad has his own maintenance management consultancy PT Maintama Servisindo Mandiri based in Indonesia and I upkeep his website for him (I designed it too and write all the html code stuff, a bit dinosaurish but it functions well). It's good to have an entrepreneurial pop, especially because my etsy shop is my tiny bit of entrepreneurialism ....

so when he comes over to Scotland for a holiday he likes to meet up with his good friend, have a wee dram and talk about 'the one that got away'

ofcourse Hugh's catch/toss-the-fish-back was 'this much bigger'

hmmm, funny, I'm just wondering here - neither of them fish! but they do like golf and a whisky

Cheers!