my history with sports

Along with Kimi's decision to drive in Citroen's junior rally team next year comes the inevitable, in my case, waning of my interest in F1. Although I started watchng the sport before he was even driving in it, nonetheless, it doesn't seem to hold anything in it for me now if he's not there. I rarely continue to watch a race if Kimi has exited early. I guess, for me, the allure of F1 is the magic of Kimi's driving. Without it, it's just 20 or so cars making laps around a track. So strong is the effect of Kimi Raikkonen the driver.

Which leads me to this. Reflecting on this, I realize I have a history of abandoning a sport I previously vociferously supported. When I say abandon, I don't mean I lose total interest and move on but more like the passion fades and I invest myself in something else. Usually it comes on the heels of a major change in the team. Before F1, I would religiously follow Liverpool in the EPL. Although after the retirement of Ian Rush, Robbie Fowler being traded and the politics of the club overshadowing the actual football playing, I grew tired. I don't follow the matches anymore but I do take note of the scores and the league table. If anybody asks, I'm still a scouser fan, just not as fanatical as I was before. My eldest sis probably begs to differ. My ferocious defence of the club at any criticism hurled their way by her would probably indicate I'm still a nutter. I know she does it on purpose but I can't stop myself from getting riled up.

Right after the waning of football, I found myself being drawn completely into basketball. I don't know why but the first time I caught a game on ESPN, it so happened to be the Rudy Tomjanovich led Huoston Rockets and they hooked me. To this day my favourite player of all time is number 34 Hakeem Olajuwon. I used to love watching him, Clyde Drexler and later on with Charles Barkley on the court. It just broke my heart that in the 95-96 and 97-98 season the Utah Jazz kept overcoming them in the Western Conference. I started thinking that I was jinxing them and stopped watching. It took a lot to just go cold turkey but after a while I could be satisfied with just the odd bit of news in the paper. It did make me feel better that despite my not watching, they did continue to disappoint by not making it that last mile numerous times. I know that's an odd thing to say about a team I'm supposedly devoted to supporting but to me, that meant I wasn't the reason behind their difficulties in overcoming that last hurdle.

At the same time I got into the NBA, I also started following womens' volleyball. Yea, I know, of all things to get hooked on :P But the on court antics, especially of the very hot headed Cuba players were what reeled me in. There's hair pulling, shoving and A LOT of angry shouting. And all from the first ever game I caught. I was waiting for a Rockets game and that was what showed right before. From there, well, after all that excitement, there was no way I wasn't going to get sucked in. My favourite team were the Russians. I quite liked the look of their star player, Elena Godina. She looks like the female version of Prince William. To me anyways :D No, it wasn't a girl crush. I just thought she was a really great player and the way she took the abuse from the Russian coach was amazing. Now, he was a real courtside character. Always yelling to no end till he'd get majorly red in the face. I always was afraid he'd get a coronary from all that shouting and drop right there during a game. Then, well, as per usual, when they kept missing out on number 1, I thought I was jinxing them so I stopped.

Come to think of it, the only one I feel that I don't jinx when I watch is Kimi in F1. I feel that if I don't watch THEN he gets into trouble. LOL, yes, that's crazy talk but I'm entitled. How do I feel about losing F1? There's a sadness cos I really did love the sport but I don't think I can bear to watch it knowing I won't see my Iceman driving. Sigh. Kimi, you've totally ruined it for me.

completely in love.....with my studded flats

Just wanted to give some love to my new pair of studded flats. Got 'em when I went back to the Homeland for sis's wedding. I think my feet look really cute in them :D


Oh and for the heck of it, here's a pic of a 2K ring I managed to wrangle off of the finger of the local chief liason officer. Huge ruby surrounded by diamonds. And it's a dude's ring!

wouldn't it be nice to eat without your conscience nagging at you?

Ok, so I'm not the most healthiest of eaters but neither am I a complete junk food foodie. I try to balance out my KFC Snack Plates with my own home cooked, low fat (I hope) meals.

I've been driven to write this because my conscience is being noisy in my head. It's berating me for nearly finishing off a bag of Kettle brand lightly salted chips during pre-dinner snacking. I left a third of the bag. What's the big deal? So I didn't share it with anyone, big whoop. As a consequence, I'm now reduced to one rice cake topped off with a layer of cheese mixed with chives & onions and a cup of iced Skinny Cow Hot Choclate mix for dinner.

Ok, usually I do have more self-control but I went online and became engrossed in the whole Brittany Murphy cardiac arrest death stories that I ate without thinking. When I finally realized that I had been pigging out, well, it was at the part where my fingers were beginning to scrape the bottom. At least they were Kettle chips, au naturel, oven baked, so on, so forth.

I think a lot of women go through life feeling guilty about food. I know I do get struck down by my own inner voice lecturing me when I've indulged a bit too much on something that is perceived as sinful. What confuses me is how much food is really too much in a day?

Take for instance, today for breakfast I had 2 plain rice cakes and a cup of Nescafe mild 3-in-1. For lunch, I had a plate of fried chicken noodle. I drank a litre of water. I ate the chips and ended with the abovementioned dinner. Oh, and one marshmallow with choclate filling. Is that a lot? I wasn't being particularly healthy today and the whole chips bingeing made me feel worse about my eating habits.

Sigh. Getting this down doesn't seem to have given me any clarity. The guilt is still lingering.

what is the holiday season to me.....

if I don't go around spending money on things I don't need but want because I can't seem to control the overwhelming urge to spend money? Now that we've gotten my shopping impulses issues out there, I thought I'd post pics of my latest beauty purchase, the L'Occitane Discovery Set.


Aside from their bath products, I'm not a big fan of L'Occitane but when I spotted this set in a magazine, I just had to get it. My second sis is the L'Occitane worshipper and is actually a cardholder so when we went to one of the stores and were told they were in the middle of restocking, they offered to give her a call the moment the new shipment comes in cos the set was selling out faster than they could put it on the shelves.

And for good reason too. The set, which has some full size products retails in at just USD45. That's a really good deal considering the 2 50 ml riz rice bottles and the 2 full bar soaps alone would cost you 30 bucks! So when my sis got the call last week, I just didn't think about the fact I didn't need any of it nor the fact I just spent 20 pounds on a Bliss bath/body set in London, I told her to go right ahead and get me one too.

I've heard good stuff about their shampoos and have had a chance to try 'em out (via my other sis who doesn't know I occasionally nick a dollop every other time I'm at her house) so it's great that there's the 50 ml travel size shampoo and conditioners for me to try before I decide to jump into the higher end hair product pool (I'm just a head and shoulders gal for now). The set also includes the infamous L'Occitane Immortelle cream which is purported to be a "fountain-of-youth" sorta thing. I'm not quite sold but if it's there to be tested, might as well give it a go.


There's also a tube of hand cream and a purse size tin of shea butter salve. You can't have too many hand creams I say and isn't shea butter supposed to be good for everything? Once I finish the Bliss hand cream I got from Harrods, I can get started on the L'Occitane tube.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the ridiculously cute tote all of this beuaty goodness comes in. It's got a whole retro feel to it and since we're in the day and age of being more environmentally conscious, it's definitely an adorable and functional piece to be seen toting around with you when grocery shopping or whatever else. I usually buy these as flight tote bags cos I'm usually hauling a lot of crap as carry-on and don't want to carry a cabin luggage.

Unfortunately, just as is the case with my leatherbound books, the set's not here. I'm waiting for a visit from my mum, an aunt and aunt's friend in early January before I can get my hands on the stuff. But till then, I have these lovely piccies of my new beauty purchase to look at to tide me over :D

the fantasy has arrived!!!!

Four exclamation marks to signfy the four fab leatherbounds I got last Saturday! No, as per usual, I don't have them in hand as yet but like I always do, I badgered my sis to take pics of 'em outta the box. They're over back in the home country which is approximately 621 miles away by air with a whole other country in between. I googled it.


Anyways, my sis agrees. They were DEFINITELY a great buy. Looking at the pics, they look so gorgeous and read-worthy. A stupendously stunning set (say that really fast 5 times) to have on anyone's bookshelves. I'm sooooo happy I went ahead and got these classics! Can't wait till January which is only when I'll be able to get my hands on at most one of 'em. I really want to flip through the Grimm's Fairy Tales since that was on my original list last year when I was talking about starting a leatherbound book collection.

Thanks Barnes & Noble and b&n.com for making it affordable to own such beautiful books!

since we're talking about books.....

I realized that when it comes to romance novels, I am a complete sucker for period romance. I have no idea why the egalitarian times of English aristocracy (and hypocrisy) at its height is the setting in which I'll find myself being swept away on clouds full of fanciful (and idiotic) notions.

Judith McNaught is the best, the only one I truly enjoy reading (again and again and again). I mean many "ye olde England" novels can get a tad corny (and tawdry if I'm completely honest) but my good friend Judith does it in the most classiest of ways. Which just means that I don't find myself rolling my eyes or laughing out loud in sheer disbelief more than once while I'm reading.

I love everything about JM's period stories. The description of the clothes, the funny (weird funny, not haha funny) social practices, the whole lord-duke-earl-marquess business are just some of the things that I find makes me smile so foolishly while I'm reading these books.

Recently I tried reading Meg Cabot's offerings in this genre and while it does not hold a candle up to Judith McNaught, it's passable on the whole corniness-eyerolling ratio. I did prefer the ones she wrote for the young adult genre ("Victoria And The Rogue" and "Nicola And The Viscount") rather than the books for adults ("Educating Caroline" and "Lady Skye"). One reason is I found her writing the more "adult" scenes in the book to be rather weirdly executed. In the YA versions, they are of course nonexistent since the target audience are too young for such explicit content. Plus, I also thought that her heroines, especially in "Lady Skye", were far too easily shaken free of their morals for women of that day and age. Am I being a prude? I mean, I can think of only one time that Judith McNaught wrote her heroine to have had sex out of wedlock. Weren't these unmarried women and their virtue supposed to be guarded like the crown jewels of England back in the day?

Anyway, I recently concluded Cayla Kluver's first outing "Legacy" and although set in a fictional time, in a fictional world, it is essentially a period piece at heart. One of those times where the men are the "lord-of-the-manor-I-am-master-of-all-I-can-see" types and the women seem to be mere accessories (she implicitly writes that it is the norm for husbands to beat their wives should they see fit - i.e: wilfull women who don't kowtow to their significant other as they should). This is a 16 year old girl who created a whole other vividly portrayed world and managed to spin a 464 page tale. I admit, the whole 16 yerar old award winning author gimmick had me (I am after all a sucker for awards).

And it was a leap of faith for me to spend money buying her book without firmly knowing if it was going to suck or otherwise but I'm glad to say that the book was great to read. I'd say I liked it better than "Twilight" however blasphemous that may seem. The plotline and ideas that is. The writing was flawed a bit by her age. There were times when I was reading and thinking, "What a typical teen!". And though the protagonist is about 17/18 years old, I shouldn't be thinking that her actions/thoughts are typical to that of a modern day teenager. It's a period piece where women in that day and age don't particularly behave as how she sometimes portrayed Alera. Otherwise, I will definitely like to read the next book in her planned trilogy.

have i mentioned how much i love books?

Ok, still alive. Just being lazy like I usually am towards the end of the year. Been catching up on my tv shows and books, haven't been surfing much.

So I've talked about how much of a read-aholic I am. And I've also talked about how much money I've spent buying books. I have to also mention that I recently got into eBooks.....as a way of saving the trees. Ok, ok, my acceptance of eBooks are in no way altruistic like that, it was purely a logical and financially fiscal decision since I could practically just download most of the books for free. The whole tree-saving aspect is a boon. So is the shelf space I've managed to save.

But anyways, despite having downloaded a whole lot of books in the past coupla months (and not read a third of them as yet), I find I still have the need to buy books. Hence why I got myself the Barnes and Noble Leatherbound Fantasy Collection (which arrived on Saturday). I also actually shelled out cold hard credit card cash for 2 kindle books from mammoth e-tailer Amazon.com which is a real milestone for me considering that I think electronic paper of any kind should be free (I still have a mild lingering preconcieved notion that things I can't actually physically feel should not cost me. Trust me, I DO understand the concept of copyright and such).

Which is really want I wanted to talk about. I guess, after my experiences with the Kindle books, I've come away feeling that I really do not mind paying for a paperless version of a book. I realized how much of a physical space saver, delivery time saver and shipping cost saver eBooks really are. The two books I got were Jen Lancaster's Pretty In Plaid and Cayla Kulver's Legacy which totaled at $19.98 ($9.99 each) and I got to read them instantly.

I've been trying to get Jen Lancaster's latest offering for some time now since it was released earlier in the year but since this book was only published in hardcover, the prices inclusive of shipping was something of a deterrent. While I was shopping around on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble hoping for some holiday deal earlier this month, I thought I might as well see if there's a digital version of the book. And since I'm here talking about it now, obviously there is. Just none that could be downloaded for free :P

It didn't take long for me to decide to just go for it and cough up $9.99 for a book I wouldn't be able to turn it's pages with my fingers or get a whiff of that new book smell. What I did get instead was the satisfaction of book delivery within 15 minutes of my pressing on the search button. I also found to my extreme delight that reading electronic versions of books are great in that at a click of a mouse you can just jump to a different page to look at the glossary or illustration or in Jen Lancaster's case, her footnotes and with another short click jump back to the page you were reading.

eBooks are also great for buying when the paper variety is constantly out of stock. I've been trying to get Cayla Kluver's book Legacy in paperback since June when Amazon's newsletter informed me of their latest Amazon published bestselling author who happened to be a 16 year old girl. I've made it pretty clear that I still like to read young adult fiction and so I'm not ashamed to admit that I've been hunting for this book for nearly 6 months. Both Amazon and Barnes & Noble were out so again, I decided to see if they had an eBook version. Barnes & Noble didn't but since Cayla is on the list of Amazon published writers, they'd of course want to make more money by exclusively (I'm simply assuming this is true) holding the rights of eBook distribution for themselves.

And that solved my waffling between which eBook reader to use. I had only previously used third party eBook readers as well as Barnes & Noble's but if you buy Amazon, you have to install their Kindle reader application. I hate the fact that I have to use too many different types of readers to be able to view different eBook file types but I have to say that besides the Microsoft rtf reader, Kindle is really a great pleasure to use. In fact, it's definitely the best one out there.

So after working around the whole stupid "no-delivery-outside-the-US-for-Kindle-digital-content" thing, I am now the proud owner of two paid eBooks. And a slew of other free eBooks I found on Amazon. And it's not just the classics but recent authors like James Patterson have also offered their books for free download. It's a marketing strategy where they offer the first book in a series for free and when the story hooks you, you'll most likely end up buying the next book. It's also a great way to introduce authors to a wider audience. I just finished reading "Serial" which I got free and is on the Amazon Kindle Bestseller list. The product description reads:

"Remember the twin golden rules of hitchhiking? # 1: Don't go hitchhiking, because the driver who picks you up could be certifiably crazy. # 2: Don't pick up hitchhikers, because the traveler you pick up could be raving nutcase. So what if, on some dark, isolated road, Crazy #1 offered a ride to Nutcase #2? When two of the most twisted minds in the world of horror fiction face off, the result is SERIAL, a terrifying tale of hitchhiking gone terribly wrong. Like a deeply twisted version of an "After School Special," SERIAL is the single most persuasive public service announcement on the hazards of free car rides. Beyond a thrilling piece of horrifying suspense, SERIAL is also a groundbreaking experiment in literary collaboration. Kilborn wrote the first part. Crouch wrote the second. And they wrote the third together over email in 100-word exchanges, not aware of each other's opening section. All bets were off, and may the best psycho win."

It's a joint effort by two thriller writers Jack Kilborn and Blake Coruch. I loved the story they collaborated on, although it is completely sick and twisted, more so than I usually enjoy but it did pique my interest to see if their individual books would reel me in as much as this free effort did.

Right now, I'm trying to decide if I want to get the Kindle version or the paperback version of the sequel to "The Nanny Diaries", "Nanny Returns: A Novel". The tipping point will definitely be cost :)