snail mail and reads…

Since the emergence of e-mail in the 90's, you don't get much of the snail mail these days in your real mailbox. The only snail mail you'll get are bills and those stupid flyers from real estate agents, companies trying to sell their products and people offering tutoring services and what nots. But on a rare occasion, in between those bills and flyers, you'll find a postcard, a letter, an envelope with a greeting card or a small package. Those really put a smile on my face! What really put a smile on my face would be receiving a package. It may not be a surprise package but still.

Last Saturday, I received a package containing 3 small books. They were from Cyrille. Two of the books are bilingual i.e. a page in English and the facing page in French. I have asked Cyrille for a favour a few weeks ago to buy for me a bilingual book. These sorts of books are for the Frenchs learning English but I think it will also work for me to read in French with the English translation for me to refer to on the facing page. I have tried reading a French book, with difficulty before as I had to refer to the dictionary quite a lot. I was not aware about this bilingual book until Pierre's friend, Olivier, told me about it. I have tried searching for one at the local bookstores but I have yet to find one. So, I asked Cyrille for a small favour.

What I didn’t expect was 3 books (I would have been happy with one). Two of which are bilingual and Cyrille threw in the package an English book called The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. It is a science fiction book, which I have never actually read one before, so this will be a first ever in my entire life (Science fiction isn’t really my cup of tea but there’s always the first time for everything).

At the moment, I am at the tail end of reading Freakonomics. I should be done with that soon but next in line will be Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. I know I said that I will not read another Dan Brown after The Da Vinci Code but Kevin bought for me Angels and Demons after a literary discussion while he was here in August. He said that it is the best after Da Vinci Code. So, that book is in the queue and I will see if the read backs his views on it. Hence, the three books from Cyrille will be read after I am done with Dan Brown's. I have been quite good with the reading in recent months – except that my magazines are now taking a backseat… they're piling up on the bedroom floor, waiting to be read. Well, at least my spare time is now occupied with things to do.

Merci encore, Cyrille pour les livres! Je te dirais s'il sont bons!

4 is STILL the magic number…

It was toss between a good 7 hours sleep or lack of it to watch Man United versus Middlesborough LIVE on the tele at 10pm on Saturday night. Since I was tossing like a salad in bed (my friend, Aminah, likes to say that when she has trouble sleeping at night), the LIVE match on the tele won. It was totally worth it as Man United defeated Boro with 4 goals. From 1-0 specialist from the beginning of the season to scoring 4 goals in 4 successive matches made yours truly quite thrilled that evening. However, I paid the price for watching the match, over turning to bed early as I was supposed to.

this is the REAL run!

3 and half hours after the football match on the tele ended, my Sunday began – a very early start as I dragged myself out of bed and make my way to a race – the Real Run, organised by the Home Team and New Balance. It is called Real Run for a reason. I ran 12km on road, 1km on sand, 1km on trail and 1km on a runway (well, not an actual runway but sort of like an emergency runway) and all that under the hot sun. The race started at almost 8am and by 9am, the heat of the sun was unbearable. With the lack of sleep, my entire body was about to give up but my mind kept pushing me to go. I try with my might to finish the race under two hours, overwriting my goal prior to the race to finish it in 1.5 hours. As I approach the last 100 metres, I saw the timer ticket at 1 hour and 58 minutes. I sprinted to the finishing line and I overtook approximately 10 other runners. That was the fastest I ran in the entire distance. I checked my results today. I finished at number 378 of 533 women runners with a time of 1 hour & 59 minutes. I am beginning to think that I may have lost my touch at this running thing. However, that doesn’t mean that I am giving up.

Today at work, my brain may have been functioning at less than 40%. My colleague was not impressed at how slow I reacted to his jokes, comments and other things that he said. It all didn’t come together for me in my head. Although my body was energized yesterday after the race and went on to spend the remaining of Sunday with some friends, mentally, I was not functioning very well with the lack of sleep. It carried over to this Monday morning, despite the 8 hours of sleep.

I am looking forward to this weekend where I can catch up on some rest since I have not had a decent rest for the last couple of weekends. Also, the biggest game of the season so far is on this Saturday – The top 2 teams in the English Premier League meet in a clash at the Emirates Stadium. Yes, Arsenal versus Manchester United! I will be so ready to be glued in front of the tele!

a slow & late start...

The 2007/08 began in August and somehow, I have not been following with the live matches, news, etc being a football fanatic that I am. Ok, maybe I am not exactly a fanatic then. What can I say? However, I have some views on what’s going in the English Premier League from the catch-up I had so far.

Last weekend, Man Utd finally wrote off their status given by the media as the one-zero specialists, when they put 4 pass through Wigan's goal. It was getting depressing seeing their 7 out of 9 league results ended in 1-0 or goalless draw, when they usually have firing power from all over the park. So, it was very pleasing to see the good results over the weekend against Wigan. Just when we thought the magic have just started, the league matches are taking a break this weekend for the Euro 2008 qualifiers. I wonder with this brief interruption would dampened the sparks that is beginning to sparkle last weekend. I will be in a bit of withdrawal since the next league match will be on the wee hours of Sunday morning of 21 Oct 2007.

So, the special one is gone from Chelsea. I feel sorry for them really because, despite me disliking Mourinho, I think he is a good manager. You can’t deny the fact that what he did at Chelsea was a marvel. Also, it is interesting to see the league title being contended by more than just two clubs. Last season, Arsenal was not doing too well to challenge the title but I can see that they are really strong this season. If only Abramovich did not rock the boat at Chelsea, we could have had a very entertaining season, where the challenge for the English Premier League is concerned. And also, I like it when the special one would cause some controversy over his views of the matches, the rules, the referees when he was being interviewed. We are going to miss a bit of that from him. I think Manchester City may have a chance of staying in the top 5 but I have a feeling they may fizzle after Christmas.

It is going to be quite a season this one.

the way i read it...

The character of Stephen Barley in Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, reminded me of John, while I was reading that book. John is Ger's brother, whom I met while in Shanghai with Kevin and Ger in August last year. I have imagined John as playing the character of Barley in that book.

The character of Stephen Barley was first introduced when the central character and her father visited Oxford. I don't know how John came into my mind when I read about Barley. I guess there were something about his background and how he is as a person that made me thought of him. John has youthful good looks (from my point of view. Some of you girls may beg to differ) and it was hard to believe that he was 29 when I met him. Some people are just lucky to be born with youthful genes. Prior to moving to China, John was working in some universities as a lecturer, I think, but he still look like he is a student. He has such a charm as well, which I bet would make any girl, tremble at their knees. There were times when he would flatter me giving me compliments on what I was wearing. He also would take my hand before we parted ways, and then gave a slight bow. On the night before we left Shanghai, he took my hand, bow and kissed it with such gallantry (sounds familiar?) before we parted ways. And this he did in front of his brother Ger and Kevin, who gave this wierd grin on seeing it. Off course, not receiving such treatment before, I would blush and giggled a little, like any lady would. At those instances, I felt like I was brought back to the era of Jane Austen.

Also, John is so eloquent. I just love the way he speaks. I found this video of him reading some lines from a notebook we found in Starbucks while we were visiting Hangzhou. The things that were written in there were crap but he made the words sounded so beautiful, like a poem. Ok, I am exaggerating a bit but honestly, I thought he read those words with such eloquence.



John was already engaged when I met him (not like it is going to make any difference if he is not because I still will not make any move on a man, no matter how much I like him). He married his fiancée (lucky bitch!) a few weeks after we left China. When I recently mentioned to Kevin about John and how I found him a real charmer, Kevin’s response to that was, "Well, he is not that charming after all since he did not even reply to your e-mail." Ouch! Oh well, I am discounting all that and remember only the good moments. You take what you can get these days.

I realised that I have been quite mushy about these sort of things lately. It must be hormonal. So there!