My Favourite Wife by Tony Parsons

p203 `What if the problem was not trying to meet someONE great but, that you would meet a LOT of great people?  What if the problem was not finding someONE worthy of love, but meeting an ENDLESS number of people who were worthy of love?
What then?  Blueprint for a happy life? Or recipe for disaster?'

I never expected to like the book or maybe I would but only a little bit; but I was wrong.  In a good way!

This is a story about a friendship between a lonely foreign family man and a neglected mistress which you could guess turn to something more.  He wasn't looking for an affair.  Is it love? Pity? Compassion?  I believe its every expat wives nightmare ...

This is my first novel by Tony Parsons and I'm happy to say its going to be the first of many.  The book engaged me almost immediately which was a welcome alternative.

'You hate everyones corruption except your own'

ps/ finish reading on Jan 21, 2012

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

I thought I have read Harlan Coben's book before.  But after looking through my read booklist apparently I have not.  Hmm .. wonder why did I think I have read one before. 

Anyways, my first thought of this book was cliche'.  Some dialogues or plots were just too obvious for me.  I'm not sure what I was expecting.  Perhaps a complicated investigation story?  Maybe it was due to my recent read title which force me to fully concentrate that I'm expecting the same for this one.

Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd become the type of overprotective parents who spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately and after the suicide of his classmate Spencer Hill - they can't help but worry. They install a sophisticated spy program on Adam's computer, and within days they are jolted by a message from an unknown correspondent addressed to their son - 'Just stay quiet and all safe.'

Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for Spencer put together by his classmates, Betsy Hill (mother) is struck by a photo that appears to have been taken on the night of her son's death and he wasn't alone. She thinks it is Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range; but when Adam goes missing, his parents and Spencer's mom expect the worse. 

When Adam confessed to Betsy that he and Spencer (Betsy's dead son) were fighting over a girl, I kept wondering ... which girl?
But on pp 349-350 I suddenly thought ~ maybe it was not over a girl? but a boy perhaps?

The book implied that we (normal people) like to assume or deduct our judgement from our obvious surrounding - especially in the case of the police enforcement in this story.  But didn't Sherlock Holmes did the same? Or maybe not.

The book was read somewhere in Jan 2012.  It was an okay read for me.  I guess maybe I was expecting more (... usually that's the problem).

ps/so it wasn't about a boy after all ...

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

This is the second book from Stieg Larsson's dark trilogy.  Continuation of Lisbeth Salander's aka the Wasp saga in her web hacking world.  To say I love the book is an understatement.  Lisbeth gives new dimension to common female protagonist in novels.  She is so complicated, brilliant and weird which is so REFRESHING.

I did struggle with the first book The Girl with the Golden Tattoo but not The Girl who Played with Fire.  Maybe because I already mentally prepared to tackle the foreign Swedish character names which is lesser in this second book compared to the first one.

p482 Lisbeth Salander can turn into Terminator Mode ~ I like this

p506 `I can feel that she's close ... wait a minute, I'll check my telepathic power ' said Cilla Noren, lead singer of the group Evil Fingers ~ she's hilarious.

p545 onwards ~Miriam Wu was kidnapped by the giant man - I cant read.  Have to stop.  My heart was racing. Too scary.

p602 As Bjock revealed to Mikail Blomkvist who Zola is ... I have a feeling perhaps ... he is .. (I'm not gonna spoil it for you ;)

p624 YES! I was right (for the above guess)

p633 `Daddyyy, I'm coming to get youuu' - payback time

I find the book very fast pace and enjoyed it immensely. Third book ... here I come

Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster

I read the book about 17 months ago.  Yup you read me right.  So I'm gonna skip my usual excuse of why I'm not updating frequent enough etc etc and straight to the book.  

Lily Wilson arrives in London in 1844 and become a lady’s maid to the fragile, housebound Elizabeth Barrett. Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress’s childish curiosity and intelligence, her poetry and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years.

From page 169, how accurate the writer observed and wrote about matters of the heart especially on woman's indecisive feelings towards a man who fancy her but she feels entitle to a better candidate (yeah, sometimes we feel that way); not allowing to trust herself to be totally in-like or in love with a guy. And in the guy's absence, finding it very hard to phantom the lost or empty feelings we experienced. The usual what is wrong with me question.

Back to the book - it is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning and flees together with them to Italy. 

I must confess that I'm not familiar with neither poets Elizabeth Barrett nor Robert Browning.  However I'm familiar with this quote:

'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways' 

Little that I know it was penned by Elizabeth Barrett.  So now you and I (well maybe its just me) know *smile*

'Mrs Browning refused to acknowledge that she is carrying a child' (pregnant).

I wonder is it because she doesn't want the baby or is it because she's not ready to become a mother (especially the way she likes to be mothered for) or is she afraid of the delivery process since she is always so sickly and fragile.  Anyways, as a result of not being careful with herself, she had a miscarriage at 5 months.

At pp 230, the book described the foetus ~ 'a liver like' appearance.  Remind me of my own experience.

As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis–birth, bereavement, travel & literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily’s own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given.

This was not a fast read for me.  Sometimes I'm irritated with Mrs Browning but most often than not my irritation turned to the protagonist Wilson ~ the lady's maid.  To me, she's never fully appreciative of her life or the adventures that she had  with the Brownings.  But she is taught to be ambitious by her employer - is she not?  And the Brownings can be too much too especially when Wilson is denied a pay raise even after a long faithful service without any raise.

I don't completely enjoyed the book but I don't totally dislike it either.  The book marks my last read for the year 2011.

ps/ I was browsing thru E.B.B other  poems and found this one on books.  I can't resist sharing it here.

Books, books, books! 
I had found the secret of a garret-room 
Piled high with cases in my father's name; 
Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out 
Among the giant fossils of my past, 
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs 
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there 
At this or that box, pulling through the gap, 
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, 
The first book first. And how I felt it beat 
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, 
An hour before the sun would let me read! 
My books! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

I read this book in Oct 2011.  It has been sometime so here I'm sharing Goodreads summary of the story.

Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards's two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt is threatened. 

I read Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve before but wasn't impressed by it.  I wondered why it appeared on Oprah's Book Club.  Then I saw this title at my favorite discount bookstore and thought I gave the author another try and bought it.  At pp 48 the story has yet to get me engaged.  Fortunately I wrote too soon.  Take back my words.  It turned out that I enjoyed this book after the initial 48 pages.  Much better than the Pilot's Wife.   Shreve weaves a story about marriage, family, and the courage it takes to love.  

The good experience from this read lead me to another Shreve's novel which now already added into my to read list.  When to read is a different story.

Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

At page 4, a thought crept subcontiously into my mind - I think I'm gonna like this book which I believe is a good sign to both reader's and book.

Arlene has spent the last ten years of her life in Chicago as she tries to forget the events that led up to her departure of her childhood home in Possett, Alabama.  She has changed her life around as she no longer will sleep with any man that walks through the door and has received a great education that will give her a stable future.  So far she has kept her promise and so does God.  Things are about to change for Arlene when her African-American boyfriend Burr is ready to take their relationship to a new level.  He has raised the ultimatum: introduce him to her family or consider him gone. Arlene loves him dearly but knows her lily white (not to mention deeply racist) Southern Baptist family will not understand her relationship.  As she and Burr embark on the long-avoided road trip back home, Arlene digs through guilt and deception, her patched-together alibi begins to unravel and she discovers how far she will go for love and a chance at redemption.

Although Arlene cited many examples of how ruthless her Aunt Flo is but I have a feeling that she's exaggerating it until I reached pp160-161 where Aunt Flo 'wiped clean' traces of Arlene from her shared room with Clarice (Arlene's cousin).  As if she never existed.

But come to think of it, what happened to Wayne's (Clarice's brother) dog and their neighbor's hen as a result of Aunt Flo's rage were equally horrifying too.

This book is full of sassy humor and family dark secrets were revealed one by one.  I enjoyed the book and it was a fast read.

I'm going to leave you with this line I got from the book 'If you keep the truth to yourself, it becomes a lie to everyone else'.  Hmm, think about it.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

If you come to me in company with a purple lion, a green elephant and a scarlet unicorn astride which was the King of England in his Royal Robes, I do believe that it is you and you alone that people would stare at, dismissing the others as minor irrelevances - p113

Picture that.  Seriously!  Somehow the paragraph got me laughing out loud.

It's post - Halloween (by 10 days or so) and I'm posting an entry which fits the occasion though late.  I guess by now it's not a surprise if I were to say that the book was read in early September LAST YEAR.  I haven't been updating my reads for the longest time.  So I'm now depending on my scribbles on the small multicolored (in this occasion they are in bright orange) notepads to remind me of the story.  What I've got so far apart from the paragraph above is that story is about a boy (named Bod short for NoBODy Owen) who was raised by ghosts in the cemetery.  As a toddler, he found his adopted ghost parents & guardians (or was it the ghosts found him?) when he escaped murder in his own house which killed his parents.

There are many interesting ghostly characters in the story.  Many whom initially appear to be scary but actually are good hearted.  But few are soulless downright scary) too.  And how sometimes the real (outside the graveyard compound) world is more dangerous for a growing up boy.  Particularly when there's someone or something out there wants to kill you when you are still a baby.  In many fantasy children's book there's always a character or two (whether willingly or not) that kinda look after the young protagonist and in this story its Silas (like Dumbledore or Hagrid in looking out for Harry Porter).  So Silas trained Bod or granted him special powers to allow him to embrace the graveyard as his home and introduce him to other 'tutors' to prepare him for the outside world.

You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.

This is my first book by Neil Gaiman.  I knew about him after after watching Caroline which to me was pretty scary.  This was an okay book for me.  I'm not really drawn to any of the characters.  Anyways I like the idea of the story.  See how you like it.

One Day by David Nicholls

I'm exactly one year behind in updating the books that I've read.  This book was read during raya holiday last year (12 months ago) and I'm now in the current raya holiday.  Time do flies - with the speed of light ...

Anyways back to the book.  I didn't realize I had the book until I saw the movie's still ad in Goodreads and realize that somehow the title sounds familiar.  A rummage thru my unread list cupboard proved I was right.  Based on previous experience, whereby I watched a movie based on (already owned) book, I tend not to read it.  So to avoid that I quickly read this one.

The storyline of One Day is not new.  A story of 2 people which expands for twenty years.  Mostly its funny but also moving.  Really I can imagine Anne Hathaway playing Emma Morby character.  In fact I'm picturing her all the way as I'm reading the book.  Back then I didn't know who will play Dexter Mayhew which kept me wondering and trying to put a face to the character.  

Emma and Dexter characters remind me of this movie called Before Sunset which was a sequel to Before Sunrise starring Ethan Hawke (I didn't watch Before Sunrise).  Its about two characters whom are in denial of their feelings to each other and choose to suffer through out the years.  "I love you but I just don't like you anymore" kind of stuff.

One Day was a fast read for me but I didn't expect the ending as such.  Since I'm a sucker for romantic comedy movie (but not in books) so I'm looking forward to the movie.

Eid Mubarak 2012

Amir Ishak clan

I think I should rename my blog as do you remember me?  It has been so long since I last post anything at all.

So before I miss Aidil Fitri altogether, here is the photos compilation of the recent celebration at my in-laws place in Ipoh.  After several years of not celebrating our 1st raya there, this year we (my family) did.

I've tried to upload the video into YouTube but after countless attempts which I'm too lazy to elaborate here but let just say it forced me to abandon the task but I found another way of uploading it onto this blog but unfortunately the pics quality are not HD (high definition) enough in the video.  Meaning the more beau tee effect in the photos doesn't work here :p Sorry.

Anyways enjoy the video.

Salam Aidil Fitri & Maaf Zahir Batin.

The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine

Everything can be told.  It's just a matter of starting, one word follows another - Javier Marias (A Heart So White)

p36 Hakawati - teller of tales, myths & fables (hekayat)

This book is a gem and the author is a genius.  There were many plots and subplots.  Stories within stories. Fables and myths mixed with current tales.  Many, many interesting characters but never once was I lost.  I understood the story perfectly well even after I have to put it away for a while ~ to attend to life's reality.  That's how good the book was.

The story is about a young man Osama al-Kharrat who returned to war torn Beirut to be with his family (near and extended) and his dying father.

p7 I was a tourist in a bizarre land.  I was home.

When Osama was with his family and friends, standing vigil at his father's deathbed, they turned to the things that gave them solace - gossip, laughter and above all, stories.

... stories do not belong only to those who were present or to those who invent them.  Once a story has been told, it's everyone's, it becomes common currency, it gets twisted and distorted; no story is told the same way twice or in quite the same words, not even if the same person tells the story twice, not even if there is only ever one storyteller - Javier Marias

Osama was reminded of why and how his grandfather became al-Kharrat (the fibster) and along the stories that he learned to tell, Osama's own family tales were also a fascinating real time drama.

On p292, one of my favorite character who was Osama's uncle (his father's youngest brother) died.  He was such a colorful and interesting character that I felt disappointed when he died in an uneventful death.  Just like that and he's gone.

Like I've mentioned earlier there were many incorporation of old tales and fables of the Arabian Nights into this book which many I haven't heard before this but characters or rather their names were familiar to me.  Maybe because I knew them from the local version of the 1001 tales of the Arabian Nights, once upon a time ago when I was young

The Hakawati is funny, captivating and enchanting from its very first line, “Listen. Let me take you on a journey beyond imagining. Let me tell you a story."

The Girl on the Landing by Paul Torday

Ever once in a while you stumbled upon a book which isn't recommended by anyone.  You just feel like picking up the book and give it a go.  Well, that's what happened to me for this particular book.  I'm not a fan of 'clever ' book but this one is and I'm so glad I chose it. 

This was read in July, 2011.  Yup, I know I have issues with updating my reads for the blog.

p83 It was like living with a someone for 10 years, you thought worked in a tobacconist's shop and then finding out that he was a nuclear physicist.

The novel begins as Michael, a middle-aged man of means, is dressing for dinner at a friend's country house in Ireland. As he descends the grand staircase, he spots a small painting of a landing with an old linen press and the white marble statue of an angel. In the background is a woman clad in a dark green dress. During dinner, Michael comments on the painting to his hosts but they say there is no woman in the picture. When Michael goes up to bed later, he sees that they are correct. This is only the first in a series of incidents that lead Michael to question his grip on reality. His wife Elizabeth is unsettled by the changes she sees in a man she originally married because he was dependable and steady, not because she loved him. Suddenly she is aware that she has never really known Michael and as he changes, she sees glimpses of someone she could fall in love with. Michael, in the meantime, is disturbed by events up at his family's ancestral home in the wilds of Scotland and by a past that he is threatening to destroy everything, and everyone, he has ever loved.

Oh and did I mention that apart from being clever this book is also creepy ... ? (Twilight zone theme, is most appropriate now)

p293 Elizabeth ran back to the house, slammed and locked the door.  Her  3 bars mobile signals suddenly disappeared 

I had to stop reading to catch my breath.  Too terrified to read.  Fearing for Elizabeth.  That's how good or scary the writing is.

p304 Lamia is a Greek word means greedy, female demon.  part woman part serpent and drank the blood of men.  

So now you know.

This was a fast read for me.  It's a psychological thriller which if I knew from the start I would not have chosen it but choose it I did and it didn't disappoint at all. In fact, I enjoyed it very much.  Like the cover said, its clever (think Sixth Sense movie) and gripping.

ps/Sharin if you are reading this, this book is not for you

Having a Coke with You by Frank O'Hara

I never knew this poem before nor do I know who the author is. It was mentioned in the movie Beastly which I just recently watched and I looked it up. And when I saw the the author read it, I immediately fell in like with it.  Like at first sight.  If you may call it as such  ^_^

So enjoy.



HAVING A COKE WITH YOU
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

—Frank O'Hara

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

To live in the world without becoming aware of the meaning of the world is like wandering about in a great library without touching the books.

This book was my read in June last year.  I love Dan Brown books.  Maybe because I'm always fascinated with fictions that interlace with facts, history and religion.  I know there are plenty of books out there with the same genre but let just say I'm sort of loyal.

I was planning to visit a girlfriend in Washington last year so reading this book was aptly and I also plan to take the book tour.  So there I was busy jotting down all the must-not-miss places to see from the book.  Alas the visit didn't materialized due to my work commitment but finished the book I did.  Perhaps, one day.

Back to the book.  Although it was fast paced for me but it didn't capture my interest as much as I thought it would be.  I have high hopes for this book, perhaps that was the reason.  Nevertheless, I like all the quotes and captions I found thru out the book - as usual.

p58 We all fear what we do not understand
me: like other religion and culture

p112 Knowledge is a tool.  And like all tools, its impact is in the hands of the user

p143 Alcohol came from an Arabic word al-kuhl

p537 Avrah Ka Dabra = abacadabra = I create as I speak
me: magic ^_^

p596 Albert Pike - what we have done for ourselves alone, dies with us.  What we have done for others and the world, remains and is immortal.

At one point, the book sort of lost me and I couldn't care much about how the story ends but I did enjoy all the many infos especially the history behind the words and monuments in DC.  All are saved for my 'perhaps one day' visit to Washington.

Without wax
me

The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer

I really want to like this book even before I read it.  I can anticipate myself making a connection to at least one out of the four female protagonists or even to all four.  After all, I am inspire to be a housewife one fine day.  Yup, you read me right.

The book is about 4 women who leave their careers to embrace motherhood and before you knew it 10 years had lapsed. What was meant to be temporary dragged to a decade ...

It's like the snooze in an alarm clock.  No matter how many times, the alarm screams at us, we can always find time for 5 min more (or in my case 9 min more) of sleep.  I'm not surprise that motherhood and marriage can make a decade of time flew off just like that.  

Alas, it didn't happened.  I mean the connection, that I hoped for between the characters and me.  

I like the idea of the story but it didn't engage me.  I found the story to be too narrative and sometimes too real for me to enjoy.  And at the end I struggled to finish the book.  But thanks to a short holiday to the island of Tioman where I purposely took only this book with me so I can finish it.  Limited access to internet on the island helps too.

ps/finished reading the book on June 9, 2011

Scent of a Woman - Korean Drama

After Secret Garden and subsequently World's Within mainly due to Hyun Bin the actor, I don't have much options of any interesting drama to watch.  But it was better that way bcos I'm easily influenced.
Anyways, I found about this drama and was hooked on it.  Storyline is not out of the ordinary.  Its pretty straight forward or rather common but I guess that why it works.  This time the writer stick to the original sappy story.  Rich, about to be engage (to a gorgeous, mean girl) guy fell for an ordinary girl who happened to be his ex-employee and he doesn't know that she has only 5 months to live.  And how their path crossed is because she has a bucket list to fulfill.  The drama is called Scent of a Woman because it followed the Hollywood movie with the same title whereby there was a tango scene by Al Pacino.  And of cos our terminally sick girl wants to learn to dance the sexy dance of tango as one of her bucket list.

What can I say, I'm a sucker for all this melodramatic, romantic, love story.  So since I can't wait for the episodes to be shown on tv plus I usually don't get the tv remote at the said time so I have to turn to the internet.  Bless the www.

The two main actors came down to KL to promote the drama recently which was how I got to know about it.  The famous OST for the drama is You Are So Beautiful sang by Kim Junsu from the band TVXQ who also made a cameo in this drama but I prefer this track.  I just learned that the singer is Kim Dong Wook and it is aptly titled Bucket List.

Until the next drama. 

A Thousand Years by Christina Perry

Happy 2012 people!!

Hope you enjoyed your new year eve. I didn't do anything special but family and I had supper at 1am at our favorite 'mamak stall'. So today is a late new year for the whole household.

Opening the blog for the first day of 2012 is this haunting tune. I have yet to watch Breaking Dawn the 4th sequel to the Twilight series. I'm gonna get the DVD. Soon I hope.

So here's wishing 2012 to be the best year yet for everybody. Enjoy the song.

 

The blog that use to be known as

Confession of a thirty something.
Hah, I wish!  Last I checked I was no longer thirty-something in August this year ^_^
So the change of the blog title is inevitable.  And since I'm changing the title, why not change the whole layout right?  So here I am after more than 2 hours trying to figure out Blogger's new dashboard layout and how do I make these changes, so pls, pls, bear with me if you encounter a half cook blog here.  I'm doing my best.  So here's hoping you stick with me and I see you around.  Soon. I hope.
PS/ apparently you can choose how you want to view my blog from the drop down menu (on the left).  So the choice is in your finger or mouse.

From Russia xoxo

Okay I'm still in the getting use to mode of using my Mac, so pls excuse me if the arrangement of the photos are somehow all over the place.  Maybe it will stay this way for all the entries to come.  Its hard to teach an old dog new tricks.

Anyways, hubby went to Moscow and St. Petersburg for yet another company's incentive trip last October (and yes I was green with envy) but I got all these magnets.  My favorite will have to be the St. Basel Red Square.

I also 'forced' hubby to make sure to get me the Matryoshka dolls.  Aren't they cute especially the babies ^_^

So the magnets are now totaling 123 and counting ...

Ghostwritten by David Mitchell

Okay so it's been a while since I update my readings.  Excuses to that can be several blog entries so I safe you the agony and proceed to this book.
At this point I'm still unsure on how to upload the photo of the book from my iPhoto into this new spanking MacBook Air of mine but I hope I'll figure it out soon so I can paste the book pic here.

But first thing first before I'm bogged down by other things in real life, my Apr-May reading.  Can you believe it that I'm only updating this now? I can't either.  Let me see, where's my note...

Okay I have several David Mitchell's books.  This is my first attempt to read him.  It's a combination of several short stories where one or two characters from each story will somehow interlink or with the other story very briefly.  Sometimes you have to really pay attention to your reading in order to notice that.

Chapter Tokyo
pp44  Then one of them asked why Japanese kids try to ape American kids? The clothes, the rap music, the skateboards, the hair.  I wanted to say it's not America they're aping, it's the Japan of their parents that they're rejecting.  It's not American culture exploiting us.  It's us exploiting them.
Hmm, thought provoking.

Conversation between two friends pp49
Koji: Do you believe in love at first sight?
Satoru: I believe in lust at first sight.
Koji: Seriously
Satoru: Well, love has to be based on knowledge, hasn't it?  You have to know someone intimately to be able to love them.  So love at fist sight is a contradiction in terms.  Unless in that first sight there's some sort of mystical gigabyte downloading of information from one mind into the other.  That doesn't sound too likely does it?
Are you smiling yet?

Chapter Hong Kong
It's about a corrupt financial lawyer.  I don't know what to make of it.  Don't quite like it but not totally disliking it either.

Chapter Holy Mountain
p146 I think my father was Emperor Chi seen shit.  Finding virtue in him was harder than finding a needle in the Yangtze river.  He never spoke a word of kindness or thanks to me and he sold my chastity for two tea bowls.  But, he was my father and the souls of the ancestors are the responsibility of the descendants.

An old woman who lives at the foot of a holy mountain all her life made her pilgrimage to the summit of holy mountain only to find - it was not holy anymore.  This is a tragic story but it has a justified ending.

Chapter Mongolia
This is my favorite chapter thus far.  One word, magical.

Chapter Petersburg
This one took me longer than expected.  But the last 10 pages were fast but story was not to my liking.

Chapter London
pp271 Question: Why do you exist?  Answer: Rugged lust and ruptured rubber?
LOL
pp285 I don't believe in an afterlife.  I consider the idea of God to be a childish prank and worst, a sick joke probably pulled by the devil.  And oh yes, you can have one without the other ...
London is about a guy who has to convince himself that he can make a commitment to marry the mother of his child.  I think ...

Chapter Clear Island
Scientist with a conscience, a fugitive, a woman - a page turner for me.  My favorite chapter thus taking over the previously liking above.

Chapter Night Train
This one completely baffled my mind.  I couldn't phantom who is whom etc.  Confused BUT the story is intriguing and clever for me to keep ploughing through. To sum up, a page turner with clever dialogues and complicated plot.

Chapter Underground
Epilogue of Okinawa.  The closure of the first chapter.

So I finished the book, more than a month later.  I think its an acquired taste, to read Mitchell that is.  I don't really enjoyed my first attempt.  But I can't strike it off entirely bcos com'on people this is THE David Mitchell we talking about and not to mention that I have 3 other titles that belongs to him which I bought and have yet to read!!!  Don't ask how come?  All I can say, not all recommendations out there works for you.  But read you must of anything you fancy.

Note: at this moment I have yet to figure out how to download the book's pic so I may have to post this without the book cover.

Day job

I blame my work. The one thing that never fail to wake me up unwillingly everyday except for weekends. The thing that pays all my bills. The one that allows me to taste all the luxury things that I sometimes splurge on. The one that makes me think is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? The thing that had me cried every time a new year dawns in because I always felt that I haven't done good enough to write it in my achievement column. Everyday I wish I'm doing something else and I don't know what that something else is. Until then, I'll be here stuck to do what everybody thinks I'm very good at except myself, my day job.