Books lately

PS. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern

Highly recommended by one of my best pals, Nat. And it was indeed a very nice chick-lit romance getaway. It was romantic, funny, heartwarming, sad, heartbreaking, warm, and all kinds of girly-emotions all wrapped into one good read.

Holly Kennedy's husband, Gerry dies from a brain tumour. She is completely devastated. But, she receives a package from her husband. Inside, there are notes that she must open every month - things that she must do in order to live the rest of her life bravely without him. Her best friends help her through it, and of course, like every chick-lit novel, there is a happy happy ending - which is always the reason why we girls indulge in these books :)

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

It's very Amy-Tan-like, but with less flowery language. A lot of the English words used are direct translations from its Chinese words, like how all these books are usually written.

The book tells of how Snow Flower rose in ranks from a poor little farmer's daughter to the respected wife of a village head. It centralizes on her bittersweet relationship with her arranged-best-friend, her "old same" - Lily - and how they went through the ups and downs of being young girls to married wives and baby-making machines. Particularly, it emphasizes on the relationship between Snow Flower and Lily - as girls and as women. There's no happy ending, but there is an ending. It's a beautiful, engaging book.

Pompeii by Robert Harris

I rented this book because I thought I'd immerse myself in some Italian landscapes in order to appreciate the country better come this June. And, to be honest, this book did a very good job of detailing the Pompeii landscape.

Based in olden times during the days of the Roman empire, the Aqua Augusta is an aqueduct that supplies water all through the Bay of Naples. A young engineer is put in charge of this aqueduct and new on the job, he works very hard to find out what is wrong with the water when fishes start dying and water supply is slowly cut off along the long aqueduct stretch.

For those not in the know, Pompeii is the town in the Naples region of Italy which was completely engulfed by lava when the imposing Mount Vesuvius erupted a long time ago. (And I'll be visiting Pompeii this June!)

It brilliantly interfuses the lives of rich Italian villa owners with those of its poor working slaves, the common working folk with the renowned learned academicians, the community of Naples, the majesty of Mount Vesuvius, and more particularly, the author provides encyclopedic definitions of how a volcano erupts (which has made me rather interested in the news of the Indonesian Mount Merapi's impending blow-up). It's not the normal kind of fiction I read, and if I weren't going to Italy, it would be boring. However, for me, the countdown to Italy became very exciting after reading this :)

DaVinci Code - The Movie

The book's better - by more than a few miles.

Don't worry, no spoilers ahead, since everyone's read the book! :P

At the beginning of the movie, I kept wondering how people who hadn't read the book thought the movie was going. Because so many characters were introduced in the first 15 minutes. So yes, lack of character development. And well, if the book were to be compressed into a 2-hour movie, I guess we can't really expect much.

Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon was better than I thought he would be. Audrey Tautou was okay. Both of them together - not okay. Jean Reno as Fache, charismatic but not impressive. Ian McKellen as Leigh Teabing - excellent! And I-forgot-his-name-but-I-loved-him-in-Beautiful-Mind as Silas, well, I imagined someone of a larger frame and more imposing demeanour.

And of course, the part where Sophie is told that she is Jesus' descendant - hmm, I think this would require really excellent professional acting in order to ACT it convincingly. Indeed, reading is much more pleasurable than going to the movies - sometimes. This is one of those times.

So there, you got the essence of the movie.

Yesterday was a charity premiere screening for Soroptimist Damansara. And boy, were they strict. You had to be scanned with those hand metal scanners by security in uniform. Then at the next level, they checked your bag and made me shake my denim jacket to ensure I was hiding anything. Then they took my handphone (because it had a measly camera). And when we were settled in the hall, a number of the cinema staff came round to chase out people under-18. And a couple who brought their baby had to leave as well. Apparently the 18-PL rating was very strict - stricter than what it was meant to be. I mean, I thought it was allowed with parental guidance? Ah well, there goes RM35 per ticket for that poor couple.

The ending part had too much talking. I dozed off and on when it neared the end. Maybe because I was just tired and it was late.

But don't let all my talk deter you from seeing the movie. Go see if you must. After all, it's always good to be reminded that leaving some things to your imagination is always a good thing.

First & Last

The very first meme to be featured in my blog!

1. What is the first thing you said today? Who did you say it to?
'Morning Nik, what's for breakfast? I said it to my maid.

2. What is the last thing you ate and drank?
A piece of papadom. A cup of RO water.

3. What is the first thing you do when you get home from work / school everyday?
Walk to the kitchen to put down my water tumbler.

4. When is the last time you laughed out loud?
I really cannot remember. The last one I can remember is when I went out with the girls last Tuesday.

5. Name something you hope to do for the first time this summer.
First step in the Roman Forum, first step in the Collosseum, first step in the Vatican City, first (and only) time graduating with my MSc in Real Estate, first time in Europe with KF - oooh, I'm having lotsa firsts this summer! :)

And, that's the end of my first meme. JC, you're tagged for this meme! :)

May 15, 2001

To a wonderful, beautiful, eventful, emotional, sometimes-sad, sometimes-happy, sometimes-delightful, but at all-times-treasured 5 years of being there for each other.

I know you'll not like this PDA, and that there's really no need to put this down in such an obvious fashion.

But,
I love you and I want the world to know that :)

Ipoh

Natives claim that Ipoh's water, which is relatively hard (high alkali content) owing to Ipoh's location on top of a large karstic formation, makes the food especially tasty.
As taken from Wikipedia

While surfing Wikipedia on Ipoh, something interesting caught my eye :
Ipoh has a sister city, which is Fukuoka in Japan.

Hmm!

Prominent people from Ipoh :
- Dato' Michelle Yeoh from Main Convent of Ipoh
- Lat from Anderson School
- Angie Cheung Wai Yee, a HK-based actress
- Michael Wong (Guang Liang) from Sam Tet school

I always look forward to going to Ipoh, particularly for the food - which is rather detrimental to my plans to drop the kilos before carbo-high Italy - but mostly because Ipoh has that rather laid-back feeling definitely not associated with being in PJ and KL.