My new "friend"

Today, I had something really cool and interesting happen. I logged into my email, and found that Paulo Coelho had added me as a "friend" at blog catalog, not only that but he left me a message. The reason that is so cool is that Paulo Coelho is the author of The Alchemist, which is one of my favorite books.

Probably he has a staff that does all his blog promotion stuff, and it's doubtful that he actually visited any of my blogs, and the message was about a project he is doing, but nevertheless... I'm all happy and impressed with the whole situation. So impressed, that I visited his Flickr account and added him as a contact, sent him a thank you message, and rated his blog.

In a small virtual way, I felt that I had connected with him, person to person, which was totally unexpected and cool. You can also find him at MySpace and Facebook and YouTube.

Here's what he has to say about The Alchemist:

When you want something, the whole Universe conspires to help you realize your dream. Santiago, the hero of the novel, already forms part of a select gallery of illustrious characters and leads us through his story to experience a remarkable adventure.“When I wrote The Alchemist, I was trying to understand the reason for the existence of life. Instead of writing a philosophical treatise, I decided to converse with the child inside my soul. To my surprise, this child was living inside millions of people around the world. With this book I wanted to share with my readers the questions which, precisely because they don't have an answer, make life a great adventure”.

This is a book that makes the world dream - that's what it says on the cover. And here I am, working on turning my life into a grand adventure... when suddenly a person who writes about this very subject shows up in my inbox!

And check this out! It's a cool eCard! I had planned to embed it in this post, but it's too wide, so here's the link instead: Manual for Climbing Mountains