Christmas Surprises

When we think about Christmas, some of us think of Santa Claus. While others think of presents waiting under Christmas trees.

So what is it about Christmas that makes Japanese marketers think I'm desperate for buy-a-dick services and gay/orgy/other sorts of crazy sex parties? Humor me.

Book Review: Handle with Care by Jodi Picoult

Jodi Picoult's best-selling My Sister's Keeper had both my mother and I crying like children until our eyes were red and swollen for two days. It was so moving and poetic, so original, and at the same time so heartbreaking that we had to make the difficult decision to jump right to the end and stop sobbing over all the miniscule details in between. It was a beautiful book.

Which is precisely why I did not hesitate to pick up a copy of Ms. Picoult's newest fictional novel, Handle with Care.

The subject matter and the characters are eerily similar to the plot & characters of My Sister's Keeper - a beautiful child is diagnosed with a life-threatening, incurable, debilitating disorder. In this case, it's osteogenesis imperfecta, a severe form of brittle bone disease. An obsessively protecting, fiercely loving mother. An overlooked, angsty sister. A compassionate lawyer with a conscience. A hearing and a trial. An ending that's supposed to come as a surprise.

Had Ms. Picoult ran out of brilliant ideas? Just because the disabled child plus controversial court case formula proved to be a success in My Sister's Keeper, doesn't mean she could pull the entire cast and situation out of a best-seller, give them new names and a new disease, then call it a new book.

But that's not even why this book was such a disappointment. Although the mother was doing what she felt to be right for all the wrong reasons in My Sister's Keeper, she didn't appear to be spiteful to the readers. She still retained vestiges of human conscience and even though I didn't agree with what she did, I knew she did it out of love. But Charlotte, the pastry chef cum mother of Willow the disabled six year old, was so manipulative, irresponsible, and such a bitch in all her theory of "the ends should justify the means," that, at times, I simply felt like hitting her.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when the tragedy happened at the end, I felt a sort of savage joy. It was inappropriate and Ms. Picoult probably expected her readers to lament and to cry the same way they did for the poor family in MSK, but Charlotte totally deserved what she got.

I definitely had more respect for Ms. Picoult as a writer before this book happened.

(Image taken from http://www.popular.com.sg/)

Farrer Park

Funny how unexpected life can be... I've been in Singapore since August 6, and will be here until December. And I'm staying at a hostel near Farrer Park, which is part of the Little India area.
There isn't much to do in here... I eat, I sleep, I go to smu. And that's basically it.

This feels very surreal. For each morning that I wake up, I lay in bed and pretend that I'm still in my room in Bangkok, and that I still have my NO小 with me. Then every morning I'm forced to concede that no, this is indeed Singapore, no, NO小 is still in Bangkok, and again, no, I'm not even alone in the room.

This is the first time that I had to share a room with anybody else (excluding my brother, who bunk-bedded with me when we were little), and it hasn't been a completely pleasant experience. Maybe I'm just being obnoxious, but I'm pretty sure the problems are caused by her. I've been nothing less than nice to her, to the extent that I even do her laundry for her and listen to her whine about being homesick.

I keep telling myself to just hang in there, that it's just four months, and then I'll be done with this place for good. But I'm beginning to wonder whether coming here is yet another mistake I've made.

The food is great (if you're willing to spend more), the people I refuse to comment on, the shopping is awesome when your pockets are full of cash, and the country as a whole... well, let's just say it's a very small country with a very diverse population. A very inconvenient small country.

My worst disappointment upon coming here was when I realized that there isn't a park nearby, as the name of the closest SMRT station has suggested, but mere patches of grass. Most of the grass is dried up and yellowing, sitting on top mounds of dirt and sand.

幸福的兔子。幸せなウサギ☆

Happiness is having a decent city-view and being overfed.

The Horrible Truth About the Canadians...

Vancouver Olympic Shame: Learn more.

Cheated and lied to?

I found this nice little shoe boutique in Taipei when I went home during spring break.

The shop only carried one brand, a cute-sounding (albeit cheesy) name called Sally Angel.

As I've never heard of that brand before, I asked the SA whether it's a local brand, and she proudly replied "We're a Spanish brand, everything you see here is imported."

So I thought, oh ok. But it was a bit weird since if it was indeed a Spanish brand and they were importing it directly and dedicated a whole shop in downtown Taipei to the brand, it must be a big deal for them and one would expect the manufacturers to advertise a bit more.

But either way, whatev.

There was this pair of beautiful pale lavender suede pumps with small circular and slightly larger rectangular dark-colored copper studs surrounding them. If you look closely you can see that they're slightly shimmery. And they have comfortable 5cm heels. It says "Sally Angel -- Spain, made in Macau" on the soles. The price seemed right too, at 1200nt (approx 36usd). It was love at first sight.

Just now I took them out to admire their gorgeous-ness again, and decided to Google the brand to see whether they offered any other shoes that I might like.

...And the only results that are remotely related to shoes that I found under "Sally Angel" are all in Chinese. Simplified Chinese. That could only mean one thing.

The shoes are indeed "imported" -- from China.

Niiiiice.

I mean, a nice pair of shoes is a nice pair of shoes. I would have gotten these beauties even if I knew they were from a Chinese brand beforehand, but they had to lie outright and claim that they're a SPANISH maker? Did they think no one would buy their products if they didn't invent some flashy tale about being EUROPEAN?

This is so incredibly sad. :(

I still love these shoes a whole lot, but now I'm also kind of pissed off about being lied to. If I had cared about the maker of the shoes, I would be FURIOUS now for being cheated against.

Have you ever heard about Sally Angel shoes? Are they indeed Spanish? (Highly doubt it.)

Anyhow, you know you want to see pictures of my bjootiful shoes.





<-- if you squint you can make out the "spain" written underneath Sally Angel.

Meh.

It's been a long time since I last posted.
Somehow, this always happens. I start a new blog and I post in it for months, and then one day, I just lose interest and stop.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of people following my blog closely (that's definitely an overstatement -- there doesn't seem to be anyone who reads this at all), so I think maybe it's better if I closed this, instead of leaving it to its own device like this, like a sad abandoned child.
Life's mediocre at best, and downright intolerable at its low points. But I'll live.
Hell, life's full of compromises anyway.