The Perils of Doing Laundry

What have been seen cannot be unseen.



Try not to watch this where people could see you howling with laughter like a complete loony.

God bless the child

Title from this song. Ah, a walk down memory lane.

My childhood was rife with epic adventures. Whooshing down mountains on cave rivers, battling the Nazis in a Sopwith Camel, fighting for what is rightfully mine with magic, plotting to regain royal thrones, performing in a circus, solving mysteries with my boyfriend Ned, and much, much more.

No, it's not just because I'm lucky enough that my parents were unsuccessful in curtailing my television viewing, but because of BOOKS.

Beautiful, marvelous, magnificent BOOKS.

Enid Blyton, Carolyn Keene, Captain WE Johns, Rubaidin Siwar, Khadijah Hashim, Othman Puteh, Othman Wok, and many, many more has helped fuel my imagination and vocabulary. I became addicted to reading at a very young age, and the habit remains to this day. It got to a point that I was borrowing a book every day from the school library, and I made no bones about harassing the student librarians to open up the gates to paradise. I can still recall the crisp scent of my primary school library, the hushed hall and the rows upon rows of delicious books. Mmm.

School holidays were highly anticipated for the opportunity to haunt bookstores. Those stores were wonderlands for exploration, racks upon racks of fragrant, bound pages that harboured secrets and knowledge. I think my Mom sighed a breath of relief when we discovered the rental book store that carried books that I would read (I was an age appropriate reader up to a point); the money would go for much longer with rental and would save on storage space.  

However, I find that the section for children's books in Malay these days are terribly disappointing. I posit the evidence below:

Some desultory fairy tales, and ooh. Encyclopaedia stuff. Exciting.*yawn*

Hikayat Derma Taksiah modernised, most of these.

These pictures were taken at Borders in Bangsar Village 2. Notice that the children's books actually occupied only the top one and a half row of a SINGLE RACK. Those are mostly encyclopaedia types and a miserable collection fairy tale fictions. The rest is taken up by religious tracts and sappy, I-like-to-be-emotionally-abused romance novels. I mean, WTF?

How on Earth can we hope to inculcate the reading habit in our children with such a meager selection? How do we encourage them to explore worlds and dig for information and knowledge beyond what can be Googled? When most of the books are directed to the Malay Muslim audience, how do you hope to encourage non Malay children to love the national language when they have nothing engaging to read?

What happened to the writer of children and young adult fictions in Malay? What happened to the translated books? I remember seeing Harry Potter and Twilight in Malay on display in Popular Books but I don't see them any more.

I got to read Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jane Eyre, Jules Verne and many more English literary works, not in its original form, but beautifully translated and abridged (I did get on to read them in the original version). Most of my Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys and Biggleswort adventures were in Malay and what a wonderful discovery it was to read them as they were first published. Those books taught me about life in foreign lands, understanding motivations and reading between the lines, and made me pretty good at comprehension exercises.


The English books selection, on the other hand, is fantastic. You can get up to 6 racks for the young readers and the same number dedicated to young adults. But how do we instill a love in the national language when there's nothing to read in them? Children rarely read newspapers, and most of the Malay magazines for children (except for Dewan Pelajar and Dewan Siswa) appear to be geared only for the Muslim readers. Not to mention that it is darn hard to find Dewan Pelajar and Dewan Siswa in regular bookstores anyway.

Truly, we cannot blame the children for pooh-poohing the national language. Not with this appalling situation.

*shakes fist*

Just for laffs

Cos it's Monday.

Cut it out!

TL;DR.

(accidentally deleted post cos I can be lame that way) *head desk*

My dearest friends are well aware of my radical liberalism tendencies when it comes to matters of faith and religion. If you are not in the know, you can read it here.

Oh, and plus a tiny edit.

Sweetness need not be cloying

The Arrangement by Mary Balogh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ms Balogh has a knack for writing characters that has a realism that is really appealing. This is the second book of the Survivor's Club series, this time chronicling the love story of Vincent Hunt, Lord Darleigh, who escaped the Napoleonic Wars with permanent loss of his sight.

The development of his tendre for Miss Sophia Fry is sweet though flavoured with hard practicality. It is delightful to see how a penniless orphan manages to liberate the proud aristocrat of the boundaries of his disabilities; escaping from the usual rescue trope. In this case, they rescued each other, making for a more satisfying story telling.

Lovely stuff. Go read.


Favourite quote:

"If people cannot beg pardon on one another," she said, "then nothing can be forgiven and wounds fester."

Male protagonist: 4/5 stars
Female protagonist: 4/5 stars
Storyline: 4/5 stars
Pacing: 4/5 stars
Fun Factor: 4/5 stars
Repeat Reading Factor: 4/5 stars

View all my reviews

Couples that kill together, stay together.

Broken by Kelley Armstrong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ms Armstrong writes cool, unsentimental werewolves. None of the barf-inducing romantification of a potential spree killer who look at humans as meat.

Broken is the third book in the Elena Michaels and Clay Danvers series. I like they way they have grown as characters, the flow and ebb of the relationship, how it all ain't sugar and roses.

This time round, the adventure includes a pair of zombies.

Werewolves and zombies, fun and games all around. Go read.


Favourite quote:

"That's all I get after three years? We spent a harrowing week together, locked in an underground prison, fighting for survival --"

"I was fighting for survival. You were drawing a paycheck."

"Hey now, in my own way, I was just as much of a prisoner as you."

I snorted. "A prisoner of your greed."

"Trapped by my shortcomings. It's tragic really."


Male protagonist: 4/5 stars
Female protagonist: 4/5 stars
Storyline: 4/5 stars
Pacing: 3/5 stars
Fun Factor: 4/5 stars
Repeat Reading Factor: 3/5 stars

View all my reviews

Nothing says love like running away together from a maniac

Deception Cove by Jayne Castle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is the latest installment of Jayne Castle's Harmony series. Adventure? Check. Steamy romance? Check. Demented villain who would have been a Mary Sue if not for psychopathy? Check.

The book hit all the right notes, but nothing particularly spectacular.

If you're a fan of paranormal romance flavoured with a little sci fi, go for it.


Favourite quote: He gave that some thought. "Not that I'm against sex in a garage or anywhere else, for that matter."


Male protagonist: 3/5 stars
Female protagonist: 3/5 stars
Storyline: 3/5 stars
Pacing: 3/5 stars
Fun Factor: 3/5 stars
Repeat Reading Factor: 3/5 stars

View all my reviews

I missed Movember!

Gosh!

I completely missed November! Not a single post. *hangs head in shame*

And I really don't even have an excuse for it. Not even NaNoWriMo (which I tried for the first time and failed utterly) could be put forth as a reasonable lieu. I moved about in my daily life, taking note of stuff that may be of interest to blog, filed away a few in my head, and promptly forgot about them. *face palm*

And it's all because of this man. OMG, I don't even ...

*sigh*

Vroom! Vroom!

What the interior of my baby looks like on a rainy night.

Like many suburban teenagers, I took the driving test after completing my SPM (high school exam). I remember being terrorised by a driving instructor who didn't understand that I had no clue that there are other gears apart from 1st and reverse. Hey, my first three lessons were nothing except the bit about parallel and and L-parking, okay?

After getting my license, I harassed my Dad to let me drive. I may have gotten JPJ's (Department of Motor Vehicle) permission to drive on the road, but getting past Daddy!JPJ was much harder. It took a while, but I finally got permission to get myself around in Mum's car, even to uni. Lucky for me, there weren't many students driving in those days, so parking wasn't as hellish an issue as it is now in my alma mater.

A lot of drivers, myself included, take driving for granted. We got wheels and can go places, whether because of work (all those hours behind the wheel cursing other salarypeople like myself who are also on the road) or even out of duty or pleasure. Of course we curse the Government with every fuel hike, conveniently forgetting that we pay the least for fuel in this region, but nonetheless, we could continue to choke the highways and widen that hole in the ozone layer over the McMurdo Base in Antarctica.

Ladies in Saudi Arabia do not have this luxury. Bad enough they are treated worse than toddlers (cannot go anywhere without a male family member or written permission), they don't even have the luxury of self transportation. I don't know if there are any public transport system in Saudi (I doubt it), but with the kind of social restraints put on these women, they can't even board a bus without a pass from their husband/father/brother/son/whoever with a Y chromosome in their household. If their child had an accident in the house and needed to be taken to the hospital pronto, she will have to wait for a male member of her household to come home, pick them up and go.

Saudi Arabia is the only country in the whole world that forbids women from driving. The authorities in Saudi Arabia claimed that allowing women to drive would be detrimental to society. Some cleric even said that driving would damage women's ovaries or something equally demented. I am not surprised. It was in Saudi Arabia that I saw signage in shops that says "Women are not allowed!". Like we are dogs. Which is also lousy for business because, hello? Shoppers bring revenue, remember? Who cares what sex chromosomes they carry?


Last Saturday a group of women in Saudi got together and pushed for a campaign to allow them to drive in the streets of Saudi. The website of the campaign was hacked in order to discourage them but at least sixty women donned their hijab and braved the disapproval and got behind the wheel and got to places. It's a start, but hey, even suffragettes didn't get the vote until decades of blood, sweat and tears, hey?

Anyhoo, this guy made this cool video poking fun at the Saudi authority's stand on women driving. Check it out.



Solidarity for our sisters in Saudi!

Losing My Religion - And Finding My Faith

Based on the writing prompt: What I Learned from Someone*

Sparked by ear candy

The year was 1991. The American rock band REM released a single that shot them to superstardom, Michael Stipe’s crooning of being left in the spotlight andlosing his religion has emphatically propelled the band out of obscurity. Personally, I preferred the Nina Persson’s version; her sweet, slightly raspy voice lent a different piquancy to the lyrics and melody. Tori Amos, mad musical genius that she is, deconstructed the song and reinterpreted it into something very different.

(more after the break)