it's all about chemistry

you and me, we have the chemistry. the thing that i miss the most is having an eye to eye conversation with you. we can talk about everything. we have mutual understanding. we support each others' ideas. we don't just talk to each other, we listen too. we never have to pretend, we just be ourselves and trust each other. we share our insights, and our deep secrets, no matter dark or white. having that kind of trust, interaction, and communication with you, is liberating. being with you, it's like getting a full dose of confidence. with you, i feel beautiful. you are the best thing that has ever happened to me, and i cherish our memories together. i am ever so thankful that we met, my friend.

a memoir, a chick lit and a mystery

Footprints In The Paddy Fields is what the author, Tina Kisil, regards as the family portrait and childhood memoir of hers. This captivating book is the author's reminiscence of her earliest life with her Dusun family in Sabah, Malaysia during the 1950s to 1960s era.

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For me, the book is an eye opener for the customs and traditions of the native Dusuns, related by the author through her family's roots and lineage, their life journey, values of life, relationship with other natives, survival and sustenance methods, crafts and skills, sources of entertainment, sadness and joys and everything else under the sun in an engaging way and all through the eyes and the perspectives of Tina Kisil, the young Dusun child at that time. Written as a memoir, this book is more interesting to read because of the honest narration of personal experiences. I was taken back to the times when I flipped the pages of serious books about Sabah and saw those old black and white pictures of native people in their traditional attires and holding baskets of their trades. I had thought nothing of them, until I read this memoir, and suddenly I realize that each and every faces in those old black and white photos has a story, a personality ... a life of their own. It is something to be appreciated and respected. It is a refreshing read.

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I picked up The Men's Guide to the Women's Bathroom purely because of the interestingly curious title. I had a sense that it could be a light and easy chick lit and I was not wrong. The narrator of the story is Claire St John, a 30-something woman who had just lived through a painful divorce, quitted her lawyer job and moved from New York to her mom's rental house in Austin, Texas. The whole story is about Claire's emotional journey to get over her post-divorce era and try to move on with her life. She decided to become a writer and her junior effort is to write about the women's bathroom. It's quirky and funny to read her notes about women and their association with the ladies room. As the author said, the women's bathroom is a sanctuary where every deep, dark secret is revealed... Of course, Claire found herself a new romance, experienced a few embarrassing moments, had a gay male friend and several other girlfriends who were as quirky and funny as she is ... a typical setting. The story doesn't have much of a depth but interesting enough to kill away time with light entertainment.

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In Death In The Clouds, Hercule Poirot solved a murder that happened right under his nose. It was in the airplane of Prometheus, where an old moneylender, Madame Giselle was murdered by a snake venom pricked to her neck via a blowpipe dart. Naturally, everybody in the rear car of the plane were the suspects and it's up to the brilliant work of M. Poirot to find the murderer ... and somehow arranged some matchmaking works in the process! As usual, the obvious question to be answered is who had the highest probability and possibility to kill, when everybody denied having seen anything related to the murder? But it is also important to learn about the victim herself. Madame Giselle is not the real name, an estranged daughter came to light, or perhaps it's one of the clients? In the end, M. Poirot caught his murderer in his usual grand 'moments-of-truth' speech.

Chin up!

CHIN UP!

"Chin up!" was one of the popular phrases when I was in secondary school. Specifically for us 'bandgirls' aka the members of the school's marching band. It's what I was being told by my seniors during my junior years, and it's also what I told my juniors when I was their senior.

Chin up, girl. Don't let your head down. Chin up when you bask in the glory of the glaring sun in the middle of the field coz we have to look proud and smart standing in our reds and blues.

When you feel that your self-esteem is degrading, chin up!

When you feel people mock you for your lack of ability, chin up!

When you feel bullied by people who think that they are better than you, chin up!

Don't ever wallow in self-pity and let them get the better of you. Do not let the negative things catch up on you and anchored you to the bottom of the ocean. Sometimes, certain things might not work out for you, it's inevitable but you can never let it affect you so much. Because you still have a full life ahead to live.

Chin up, go forward and never look back.  

The Long Walk

My encounter with this story started when I saw the movie, "The Way Back" (2010) last year on the movie channel. From the movie, I learned that it was actually inspired by a true story written in a book titled "The Long Walk". The movie gripped my attention till the end. It's one of those adventurous story of prison escape that I have enjoyed after The Great Escape (1963) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994). So, when my eyes caught the book on one of the library shelves one day, I didn't hesitate to pick it up for reading.

The Long Walk is a story of Slavomir Rawicz's adventure of escaping the infamous Siberian Gulag camp during the Second World War (WWII) and traveling about 6,500km south on foot from the camp in Siberia down to India, traversing harsh weather and difficult terrains including the Gobi Desert, Tibet and the Himalayas. His arduous and gruelling mission for freedom was shared together with six other inmates consisting of two Polish soldiers, a Latvian landowner, a Yugoslav clerk, a Lithuanian architect and a mysterious American engineer from the camp and later on joined by a young Polish girl, all were victims of the war. Rawicz himself was a Polish cavalry officer. Of all in the group, only 4 people including Rawicz succeeded in reaching the British India, while the rest succumbed en route.

I have also learned that this story's claim as being a true story that occurred to Rawicz has been debated by many, due to certain parts inside the story that were deemed inaccurate or questionable. Another fact that being brought to light was that the story actually happened to another Polish soldier, not Rawicz. However, as far as I know, none of these debates were definite in confirming whether the whole story told by Rawicz was really true or not. After all, it happened during one of the biggest war in human history, where the world was in chaos.

For me, true or not, this story is an ultimate tale of human perseverance with gripping adventure, exploration of different cultures and tragic disasters before freedom is finally accomplished. A captivating story.

Title : The Long Walk

Author : Slavomir Rawicz (ghost-written by Ronald Downing)

Published:  First published 1956, this edition was published in 2011 by Constable.

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recent indulgence

Hola ... oohh, it felt so wonderful and nice to be able to indulge myself in some books after so many months of not doing it. I don't know why I deprived myself from reading ... maybe too much distractions coming my way. However, it's time to hit the library and let's take a look at my recent accomplishments in the reading department, which consist of  2 very familiar authors in my book archive, Jeffrey Archer and Agatha Christie.

Honestly, I have never read a full novel from Jeffrey Archer, but I have enjoyed several of his short stories collections instead. New additions to the list are "A Quiver Full Of Arrows" (1980) and "A Twist In The Tale" (1988). Most of his short stories are inspired by true events, while a few are his own creation. The most common experiences of reading these stories are (for me) are, one, it's like reading a person's whole life biography, where a story could tell a tale encompassing decades of years, and two, the tales are often normal and bland in the beginning but smack you with a twist or something surprising or unexpected in the end. In these two short stories collections, I have several favourites i.e. from the "A Quiver Full Of Arrows"; The Luncheon, The Coup, Old Love, The Perfect Gentleman, One-Night Stand, Henry's Hiccup and A Matter of Principle. In "A Twist In The Tale", my favourites would be The Perfect Murder, A La Carte, Just Good Friends, The Steal, Honor Among Thieves and A Chapter of Accidents.

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Next, my favourite crime novelist, Agatha Christie. I have read so many of her books, yet there are still many more that I haven't read. Hallowe'en Party (1969) might not be as grand as her other stories that I've read, but it's still one of the best. And it's a bit dark story, when the victim is a child. Now that is quite different because there's never been a child victim in the books that I've read so far. In this book, Hercule Poirot is helping his novelist friend Ariadne Oliver to figure out who and why a 13-year old Joyce Reynolds is murdered in a Hallowe'en party.

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There, those were my recent conquests. And right now, I'm just starting to read a fourth book, all in one week. Perhaps, I'll write about it in my future post. Till then, au revoir.