It is horrendous how the night passes so quickly sometimes. Now it is past midnight and a brand new day in a series of other impending new days. And new days, new days, they only sit around waiting to become history.

Good things:

- Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
I haven’t watched any anime in the longest time, but this caught my attention and held it. This is Tokyo, post a Richter 8.0 earthquake, and it unsettled me a tad more than I thought it would.

- Blade Runner
Finally got around to watching this. Quite ace, save for the presence of Harrison Ford. The eyeballs scene was tmd scary.

- The Brain that Changes Itself
Despite the title, this book is not a self-help/improvement book, even if it reaffirms the importance of positive thinking etc. I’m not done with it yet, but so far, it’s been a very fascinating and insightful read on our brain (brain!). There was also an article on one of the neuroscientists V.S. Ramachandran and his work on brain plasticity in an earlier issue of the New Yorker, which was equally interesting. (There’s hope for Homer, maybe.)

Saw ‘Ice Age 3′ yesterday. The whole Singapore was watching the movie too, it seemed, seeing that most of the screenings were sold out. ★★ It is half a star lower from yesterday’s initial impression, but it isn’t that good really. Predictable laughs, and the same old plot from two sequels ago. No wonder the animals became extinct. If you have to recycle gags all the time, sooner or later suicide will seem like a very viable option.

Dance dance dance.

Also saw ‘I Love You, Man’, which was a lot better. ★★★☆ (3.5 stars) At least, it got some real chuckles out of me.

Watched ‘Bashing‘ a little earlier on on The Auteurs. ★★★☆ (3.5 stars too) Some parallels with another Japanese flick I saw last month, which I guess are quite telling about the societal norms (and expectations) in the country.

Movies Entry Sunday. I can’t believe it is midnight aka Monday already. The weather today has been quite perfect. Was trying to finish a book earlier this afternoon, and that proved to be quite the impossible mission. It is an excellent book, but every time I read it, I can feel my brain die a little from the over stimulation, which is quite the exact opposite desired reaction that I’ve been hoping for. Yes, I fell asleep.

Random Youtube video.

Anyway, about those elusive 15 books that changed my life. I doubt I have 15, because I like to think that my life has been a well deliberated one and takes maybe 4-5 slow gradual turns around corners rather than 15 (fifteen) sudden life-changing shortcuts through dark alleys with leaky water pipes. Now, that is a shabby excuse.

1. The Faraway Tree Stories – Enid Blyton

My favourite Blyton series. I was a fan of the Famous Five and Malory Towers books too, but nothing tops the magic of the Faraway Tree. Gosh, I really feel like rereading the books now. Once while visiting a friend in her super suburb place in Brisbane (zone 4 and beyond!), we took a walk with her dog in the woods behind her house and I had several ‘it-is-this-tree!’ moments. Sadly, those were just ordinary trees and I doubt any land, good or bad, had ever stopped atop them. And yes, the woods was really in her backyard. Or five amazingly short minutes away. It was certainly an eye-opener for this HDB dweller.

Fansite!

2. The Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

I think I might have a more optimistic and less cynical outlook in life, if I have never read that book. Damn glad I did though.

3. Nine Stories – JD Salinger

A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Beat that.

4. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

Read this once when I was way too young to understand it. Read it again early last year, and it was brilliant. For a very long time, I was not reading any novels / books at all, instead favouring short stories and magazines; not that there was anything wrong with that, but I had missed those days where I could immerse myself in a book for days and days on end and inhabit its world completely. This book reassured that I could still do so, if I so wished to.

5. Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? / Short Cuts – Raymond Carver

Read ‘Are These Actual Miles?’ during a short story writing class in university, and that started my Carver reading spree. His stories, bleak as they come, for some reason always fill me with a certain optimism. Maybe it was through his stories that I realised that it was possible for people to behave without histrionics. And well, that evolution has got to trickle down eventually to the actual human race.

6. Goodbye Tsugumi / Kitchen – Banana Yoshimoto
 

7. A Wild Sheep Chase – Haruki Murakami

Hmm, just in case it hasn’t been obvious, I quite adore the author. I probably need a little more time to fully digest and reread some of his works so that my assessment of how I feel towards his books will be more accurate. For now, only this is on the list because it was my first Murakami book and a great introduction to the myriad worlds of ambitious sheep, vanishing elephants and talking cats.

8. Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers

This is a collection of writings by erm, Japanese photographers (just in case you missed the title). This is on the list because it provided me with invaluable insights on the work and thought processes of these photographers, and elucidated that writing and words can play an integral part in understanding and creating photographic works, which was something I had always known but had never believed.

8 for now. Sleepy and distracted.

- How David beats Goliath, When underdogs break the rules
If their strengths are your weaknesses, you gotta stop playing to let them win.

- The Squint Test – How to protect fashion designers like Jason Wu from Forever 21 knockoffs

- Objection, Dear Leader! – How do court trials work in North Korea?

- 19th-Century Pregnant Dolls

- How Not to Photograph

Bored. Four minutes to Monday.

Youtube is still loading that damn video. Yawn. Time for my regular indexing of the internet then.

Bookarmy.com. Literary version of Last.fm. I like books.

Kottke: Media packaging mashups. Packaging for popular culture re-imagined and Penguin-ified. These movie posters are great, and I would like these Harry Potter books, please.

My Google Reader is possessed.

Slate: Would You Like Your Cable Company More if It Were Quirky and Hip?. Actual effectiveness aside, I quite like the ad and the campaign website (very well done; and I like decorating rooms if it doesn’t involve actual manual labour).

Luis Mendo’s Tokyo Diary

My First Dictionary. The best dictionary, ever. Well, the most honest at least. Proof as follows:

Tim Berners-Lee: The next Web of open, linked data
Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen
Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Am especially charmed by Hans Rosling, haha. Midway through the second talk, he demonstrated Dollar Street, which appears to be a very interesting interactive tool for presenting statistical data in a more palatable format than graphs and charts, and then correlating that data with more familiar / practical benchmarks (i.e. the presence of certain furniture in a room versus daily income). And he swallows swords too. Wicked.

Sigh. Spoke too soon. Connection just went ‘Local only’. Knn.

Comments on an earlier entry led to a Favourite Haruki Murakami Books list. I am yet to be done with all of his books, and I am dreading that rather inevitable day. It is funny that barely a month ago, all I had read from him was The Elephant Vanishes and Underground and now, just a little over a month since then, I am rather well-versed in his lands of all-knowing sheep, wind-up birds, wells (covered and uncovered ones), alternate universes, enigmatic girls with great ears, and late-night whiskey drinks. Frankly, I wouldn’t mind packing for a trip to those worlds.

Sad as some of his stories may be, I think I would like a short stint in the following places:
- Midori’s bookstore/house in Norwegian Wood
- the Dolphin Hotel and the Sheep Man’s house in A Wild Sheep Chase
- the love hotel in After Dark

Yours?

So leave her.
Let her be their spoils, go wrap
Your head in the snowy rivers
Of the Brooks Range. Cover
Your eyes with the writhing airs
Off the Nullarbor Plains. Let them
Jerk their tail-stumps, bristle and vomit
Over the symposia.
Think her better
Spread with holy care on a high grid
For vultures
To take back into the sun. Imagine
These bone-crushing mouths the mouths
That labour for the beetle who will role her back into
the sun.

The dogs are eating your mother, by Ted Hughes. Looked that poem up after reading an article on Nicholas Hughes in NYT earlier this week. “Bloody sad,” a friend had said, and bloody sad it is. Not exactly sure why I am posting this here (and seemingly out of nowhere); I don’t read a lot of poetry but I, like all, know what I like. And this is just heartbreaking, and I can’t quite get it out of my head.

I haven’t been reading a lot of manga of late, but after reading this, I do want to read more about the first manga mentioned. I think a lot of people have this mistaken idea that a lot of manga either have 1. fighting, 2. supernatural stuff, or 3. romance/love, which isn’t untrue at all (far from it), but there are so many, many manga that aren’t all that. Some are really quite educational and are excellent primers on the niche or specialised topics/themes they deal with. Some are poignant slice-of-life stories. Some are pure (good) entertainment, which isn’t a bad thing too.

- Nodame Cantabile, by Ninomiya Tomoko

“The series depicts the relationship between two aspiring classical musicians, Megumi ‘Nodame’ Noda and Shinichi Chiaki, as university students and after graduation.” Classical music! Don’t know your Bach from your Beethoven? Well, I’m still pretty clueless most of the time, but reading this has cultivated a deeper appreciation for the genre, however superficial it may sound.

- Iryu, by Nagai Akira and Nogizaki Taro

About the healthcare and hospital system in Japan, with an added emphasis on the Batista procedure. This manga is heavy going, but very educational too, if that’s your thing. I read a couple of volumes, and each volume took forever (they were in Chinese, and my command of the language does not include medical jargon) so I gave up.

- Wild Life, by Fujisaki Masato

Another medical manga, though this is about veterinary medicine. The main character is a veterinarian with an extraordinary sense of hearing, which sometimes (most of the time) comes into handy when figuring out whatever seems to be ailing his patients. Quite liked this, though the overenthusiastic protagonist got on my easily-irritated nerves.

- Yakitate!! Japan, by Hashiguchi Takashi

A manga about bread! Supremely exaggerated, but terribly funny too. Some breads will send you to heaven. Others will, well, yah. When it comes to food-specific manga, there are many, many to choose from. I think they probably have every main cuisine covered. Curry (Addicted to Curry), pastry (Kings of Sweets), sushi (Shota no Sushi), pasta (Bambino!), wine (Les Gouttes de Dieu), train bento (Ekiben Hitoritabi) et al. Each of these manga varies in style and its storytelling, but they are usually very well-researched and informative.

- Honey & Clover, by Umino Chika

Probably one of my favourites (the anime is ace, ace, ace as well). The manga is a tender coming-of-age story of five art school students.

- What a Wonderful World, by Asano Inio

By Asano Inio, who is, in my admittedly limited opinion, the Murakami in the manga world. “What a Wonderful World” is a two-volume collection of whimsical, quirky stories that are sometimes poignant, and always quite surprising.

- MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) Psycho, by Otsuka Eiji and Tajima Shou

The title says it all. Well, except that the protagonist is a police officer. Not for the faint-hearted.

More interesting mangaka / manga:
- Junji Ito

Horror manga! He drew the most disturbing manga panel I’ve ever read. Imagine a face full of pus-oozing pimples (not the one above).

- Nananan Kiriko

Love her style and her storytelling. Now if only I can read fluently the books I got from Japan..

- Kunimitsu no Matsuri, by Ando Yuma and Masahi Asaki
“Eighteen year old Mutou Kunimitsu sees how political injustice is being committed all the time and how the government is profiting from the poor and labor class and decides that he is going to change all of Japan. Here starts the legend of the man later known as the ‘Japanese Don.’” This was actually a very decent read. Done by the mangaka who also did Psychometer Eiji (ace!).

- Mail, by Yamasaki Hosui
Another horror manga, woohoo.

I’m slowly getting the idea of making a three-point turn. Slowly. Somehow, the mind ceases to function intelligently when its vessel is behind a wheel. I quite enjoy driving though, but only if it is on a straight road and there is no fellow traffic. Jaywalkers, stay home! I say this out of pure altruism, and also, because it seems to rain whenever (or is it wherever?) I drive.

Things that irk me, part #2:
- People who ruin books
- Borders

(I’m going to whinge.)

And this time, I shall follow up with some related thoughts. The first is rather obvious. There is no way I will buy a book if it looks like it has already been read a million times or if it has a crease/fold/tear/stain on its cover (or anywhere else). I do think it is okay to “preview” a book by reading a few pages – I do it all the time, especially when it comes to authors I haven’t read previously – but please, do be considerate you dimwit. Contrary to popular belief, I take decent care of my books. Except those that go missing, but that is pardonable since they often go missing without consent anyway.

Bookstores with a persistent strain of this problem: Popular/Harris, Borders. I was very pleased when a Harris store opened at Jurong Point, but so far, I’ve been quite disappointed with the condition of their books. For some reason, the books that I have my eye on are always in crap condition. They need to improve their shelving system. Propping up books against nothing, and expecting them to stand on their own is just plain dumb. Even if a book is as thick as hell, it is almost definite that it will fall back or over at some point. Ahh. And stop treating books on sale like they aren’t worth anything! Am looking at you too, Borders.

Borders. Was contemplating getting a Borders card yesterday. Their email coupons are very enticing; you get 30% off for 3 books, and if you are a member, you get an additional 10% off, which is all very, very enticing. Last evening after work, I rushed down to the bookstore before meeting a friend for dinner, thinking I should get some books for the weekend. Well, then, of course, the books were in less-than-perfect condition (though it was minor enough for me to consider a purchase), and I couldn’t find all the books I wanted. But in the end, what stopped me was the fact that the book was more expensive than what it would had cost in other bookstores. The difference in price would have rendered the discount nearly worthless and unworthy of my infidelity.

The above primarily stems from me being a cheapskate, but yeah. And so, Kinokuniya, you are the (my) best. In terms of variety and pricing. And service. And decor. I don’t know why I’m whining about bookstores. It’s been a slow day on all fronts, I suppose. I could complain about how bland my milk tea was today, but I was quite happy to have had one at all.

Hmm, an iPod or iPod Touch?