2015 Bookhaul

Booooooooooks!!!

It's that special time of the year again!

This time I went on the third day, right after coming back from an award-giving ceremony, with a three-hour class earlier that morning! What a day it was! I was tired but excited at the same time.

I've been saving my money for one year just for this. But on the real day I kinda thought that I should set a proper budget so that I could control myself hahaha. So I carried just an OK amount of money..with the hope that I won't have to bid farewell to some good books.

As soon as my dad and I reached the place, I made an angel choir sound, something like TAADAAA and HAAAA and a guy gave me a weird look but I didn't care because I was too happy!!

I rushed to the pile of fictions..but quickly remembered that earlier on I planned that this year I was going to shop with a strategy. Some of my strategies that day:

1. Look for some good non-fiction books, particularly on self-help/leadership/business. Hah! These were the genres that I laughed about many years ago. After watching many TEDx talks and reading online articles, I realised that most successful people read these kind of books.
2. Buy more classics. Classics can range from RM8.90 to RM43.90 in Kuching, depending on whether there are popular movie adaptations of the books. Collins Classics and Trans Atlantic Classics are very affordable, but local bookstores tend to sell Penguin Classics at outrageous prices. And not all popular classics are easy to find. 
3. Only buy fictions which are hard to find in Kuching. 
4. Find some good textbooks on literature or any interesting subjects. 

Oh, there were emotional let-it-goes. I simply couldn't buy everything I wanted, because let's be sensible here, you can't just have everything that you want.

Books I took but placed back:

• For One More Day by Mitch Albom: My favourite Mitch Albom book out of all the books he has written. Excellent condition. I decided to let it go because Mitch Albom titles aren't difficult to find in local bookstores.
• Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Exact same edition that I've already I owned. I wanted to keep an extra copy, maybe to give to someone who enjoys good books (This is a beautiful book, trust me!) but if I took this I would've needed to sacrifice one of the books in this pile. I bought mine for RM49.90 (!!!) but thankfully I used my RM50 book voucher for it last year. The second hand one was just...RM7.90 (!!!) Just look at how ridiculous the price difference is...
• Two Harlan Coben books which I cannot remember (Yes, it's very hard to know which is which when we talk about Harlan Coben books). I decided that I can still buy these books next year. They seem to have a lot of it, judging from last year's sale. Also, I've just discovered that my local library has a lot of his books.
• A biography about Eric Clapton. I'm still not sure whether it was a wise decision to let this one go. I might regret this in the future..
• Playing for Pizza by John Grisham. It was in good condition, at a very reasonable price, but I had to sacrifice it for some rare titles I wanted to own. Playing for Pizza, I will get you next year I promise.
• Some books that I can no longer recall, which is PHEWWW A HUGE RELIEF because that means I didn't really need to buy it in the first place HAHA.

It took me nearly two hours to realllly choose the ones that I've chosen. I'm proud of some of my selections. I mean..I'm SO HAPPY I found some of these titles that I've chosen to buy. We'll get to that soon. 

1. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY

I knowwww! You'd be like "Ermahgerdd why is she buying a book that she already has?"

I adore this book! I want to reread it over and over again in the near future. Keeping an extra copy would be a good idea. But most importantly I purchased this again because I want that classic cover design. Not sure if that's the first edition cover (I'll Google about that later) but if you look for Owen Meany hashtags on Instagram, Americans normally have this edition (right). Left one is a fairly recent edition.

2. INTRODUCTION TO CRIMINOLOGY

Cool subject. I don't care if it was written in the 70s or 80s or 90s. I don't care if it's a super old edition. Can you imagine a day when you need to switch of your wifi router cos the weather is super bad and it's raining heavily outside with thunderstorm and lightning? Hah. This is the perfect book to read bit by bit during those kind of days. This is a huge and heavy book so I cannot imagine bringing it to college to be read while waiting for my classes to start. Unless..yknow..unless I want people to think that I'm a snob. 

3. PSYCHOLOGY: UNDERSTANDING BEHAVIOR

Just look at how retro that book cover is. So hard to resist. I'm not going to lie and tell you I know a lot about Psychology, but hey I don't think the facts and stuffs change over the years? Or do they? Only one way to find out... (Obviously I haven't had the time or commitment to sit properly and read this page by page..)

One of my tutors this semester told us that there is only one way to understand students if you want to be a good educator. And that is through learning and applying psychology. I've been thinking about this and hmmmh I'm not even sure if I really want to teach (dealing with people is not something I enjoy doing) but you know..you never know. Still have a lot to learn..

4. LITERATUREEEEE

I cannot wait to read every page of this book. It's like the ultimate guide for you to claim that you know a thing or two about literature. I've pretty much summed up what I think of this book. Very happy to have bought this. The previous owner's name is on first page of the book hahaha. I managed to search her Facebook because of the rare surname. 

5. THE ULTIMATE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF BASKETBALL

Old book. No Pau, no LeBron, definitely no Steph Curry. Jordan, Abdul-Jabbar, Pippen, Magic Johnson--all yep. You get the idea. This book was published in 1996. All the legends during and before that are in this book. All you need to know about NBA from the beginning of time until 1996 are here. Very happy to welcome this into my collection. If I could get a modern version with all those recent great players it would be very cool.

6. BLA BLA BLA EXCELLENCE

Years ago I'd be ashamed to carry or purchase these kind of books. But eh, time for a change I guess. I kinda regret buying both of these. One would be enough, Didn't realise both are mainly written by the same person. Let's just hope the contents aren't the same.

7. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF WINNING

My mouse is pink not because I bought it. It was a free item.

I like this book. So far so good. Halfway through the whole thing. Very insightful. I'm not sure whether I would like it if I read it in 2012-2014 (If you get what I mean..). I won't recommend it to someone who has depression. It's hard to speak in a general manner but if I read this while I was depressed I might feel that the author is belittling my depression. It does make you think and reflect though, especially about how much control you actually have over your life. Reading this reminds me of my parents and how the previous generation seem to be able to man up more in tough times. Again, this is me just generalising stuffs. Funny how psychology really plays a vital part in our lives.

And no, don't judge this book by its cover (and the title). You'll be like "OH SO KIASU, TALKING ABOUT WINNING." Well. That is why I love this book. It's not about the winning thing you think it is. It's more about how you can win against your negative self. 

8. LONG TITLE(S) TOO LAZY TO TYPE

Wish me luck. My plan for next year's Goodreads Reading Challenge is to read just classics. Or..you know..MAINLY classics. These are on the waiting list. Might read them sooner than I think.

9. HEH

I haven't checked if this is on Goodreads yet.

10. A TIME TO KILL

Everyone seems to say this is Grisham's best work. Only one way to find out... 

ANDDDD 

11. EAST OF EDEN

I am extremely delighted to find this gem among the piles of other classics. I've always wanted to buy this but my local bookstore sells it for RM46! Crazy price! This was RM5.90 if I'm not mistaken. Hope I'll enjoy reading this.

12. TWO OTHER BOOKS I FORGOT TO SNAP PICTURES OF (and I'm not gonna do it cos my SD card is still in my laptop right now.)

-The Soul's Code --> I read some pretty convincing Goodreads reviews before purchasing this.

-Word Origins --> Cool book especially if you have geeky friends who you want to impress with random knowledge of word origins. Imagine staring a conversation with "Hey, did you know the word ___ came from ___ because ____." 

___________________________________________________________

So yeah that's pretty much everything about the booksale. I'm still sad that I can't find:

• The Count of Monte Cristo (Penguin Classics edition, they say this one has the best translation)
• Infinite Jest
• And I forgot to go to the kids section to find Roald Dahl titles. I feel so sad that I forgot. :(

I reallllly want to read these two books. And I haven't seen them anywhere in front of my own eyes yet. Pretty sad eh. Funny how in some parts of the world people can get books so easily and they have cheap books all year round. While some don't even have the chance to learn how to read because books are so limited. And there's us here..where smart book-buying skills are needed so that yknow..you can actually buy books and not be broke. I've stopped buying books sold at regular prices in bookstores. Glad that these kind of booksale exists. 

A girl standing near me while I was taking a wefie with my dad said loudly to her bunch of friends that "WAHLAO SO JEALOUS AH! TWO PLASTIC BAGS AH!"referring to me ehermmm. I was like..in my heart.. Eh gurllll you're merely seeing the fun part of it. Took me a year to save for this. And it looks a lot but seriously..I didn't spend that much. Last year I saw the customer before me paying RM500. Now that's A LOT. But hey, go ahead and spend as much as you can and as much as you want. Books are cool stuffs.

I remember going there for the second time last year on the final day and they reduced the prices of a lot of classics to RM2. Not sure whether I'll be having the chance to go again but I think I'm happy enough I got all these. 

I am currently reading KL Noir, a book I borrowed from the library. Kinda good. 

And I had coffee during lunch and I didn't have any naps today and I'm so impressed what coffee can do to me. I started writing the song I wanted to write (two verses done so far), I practised a fingerstyle arrangement, and you know.. JUST WANT TO END THIS POST BY SAYING THAT COFFEE MAKES ME HAPPYYYY. And books make me happy too of course.

November

New shoes

I finally bought a pair of formal shoes because next week I'll be walking up on stage to perform my hit single. I don't want to get into a last minute fight with some people who holds the authority over dress codes. So yeah, I went to the shoe store with my parents and I stood in front of a rack full of black formal shoes and my dad was like "This one looks good" and I was like "uhmm ahh yeah" and in less than 5 minutes dad paid it for me. Yay. This reminds me of that day before the annual grand dinner back in 2013 when I went shopping for a dress with my housemate and in less than 5 minutes I pointed towards a dress hanging in a store and said "aha! That's the one!" I mean seriously, I am always amazed by my shopping skills. 

Guy on the bus

I'm sorry I keep on talking about people on buses but seriously they're the best people where I learn some of the most important life lessons.

Last Thursday my bus stopped at the usual stop near the back gate of SGH and as usual when buses stop to pick passengers up I won't really care cos I hate staring at people. But that day I glanced quickly and a familiar face appeared.

What are the odds of seeing someone you've sat next to on a bus a few weeks earlier? I mean it's not that shocking anyway. I've seen some familiar faces even more frequently. But this guy intrigues me.

And that day he sat on the seat just opposite to mine across the aisle. I'm not sure whether he remembers me. But I remember him. Same old white t-shirt, same old jeans maybe, same bag, same checkered shirt which he took off and carried around (I suspect he wore it in the hospital because hospitals are cold), and most importantly, same old gait. Slow. Painful. Thinning hair. He can't be more than 45, can't be younger than 28, but you know how illness can deceive the way you guess someone's age based on their appearance.

Is it cancer? If yes, what stage? Or is it just a regular checkup? I wish I was Sherlock sometimes. I wish I had some basic medical diagnosis skills just by fast observance. 

I wish I was Sherlock because on the first time I met him, he sat next to me because the bus was full. And the bus broke down at Batu Lintang, and when everyone got off the bus, I quickly wanted to get off too. I didn't realise though that he was slow to get up and move away from the seat we shared. If I knew, if I saw that he's an ill man, I wouldn't have rushed. And that's why I remembered him the second time I saw him. I felt bad that I didn't notice I was sitting next to an ill man. 

Sometimes I marvel at the thought that it's so much easier to have compassion for strangers than someone you personally know. I don't know this man. He could be a bad guy. But because I don't know anything about him, and only seen this side of him (a man of poor health, taking a public bus to the hospital--where is his family? This is Kuching. People don't normally take public transport unless there are no other choices), I kinda feel for him. Strangers are like books you haven't read. 

This reminds me of Passenger's song 'David'. I wanted to write a short story with this idea but I'm not good at creative writing. I thought that writing a song about it would be cool, but songwriting is a process I struggle with nowadays. In the end I just don't know..it's like I have so many thoughts bottled up about strangers I've met on buses and there aren't any good outlets where I can express all of these thoughts I have about them. Sometimes I begin to think that this is a clear indication about my life purpose, or my calling as they call it. I want to work with broken people. I want to work for broken people. I'm almost positive that I want to work for people who are vulnerable, hurt, ill, but I'm not good with people at all so idk man, is there a job where I can help them in a less direct way? 

Terima kasih

I also met a blind man at the bus station and I wonder how can blind people board buses. I mean..I don't exactly wonder about how they do it, but I am humbled by their courage. The bus station is a harsh place. It's harsher when you can't see, and dozens of people are just walking past in front of you while you're standing directly under the blazing sunlight.

But we're stupid aren't we? In a crowd where kindness and compassion isn't the usual thing to do, we hesitate to take an action that we know is right.

I asked him where he was heading to and he told me the bus number that he was waiting for. And I asked him whether he wanted to sit down. And I even made a hand gesture, showing him where to sit, before realising that..why I am using hand gestures with a blind man. Apparently I'm not as bright as I think I am.

I guided him to sit down and before I left him there, he said "terima kasih" to me. Simple words. Great feeling. Funny innit? Why do our hearts expand when we do something simple to our fellow men, especially a complete stranger? Why do we feel like skipping and jumping? Why do we feel so good about ourselves when we help people? Is it a clear indication that we were created to love people? Then why is there so much hate in this world? Why is it harder to love that annoying sibling? That annoying friend? That annoying teacher? Why? 

I left the blind man as I boarded my own bus. After the bus started moving, I knew I made a mistake.

I was still that selfish person. If I was a completely selfless individual, I would've waited with him. Made sure that he boarded the right bus. But I didn't--because I wanted to return home quickly and get my afternoon nap. But I learnt my lesson that day. Apparently being completely selfless is hard.

That's about it. I'm on a one week midterm break filled with assignments and more deadlines coming up. Striving to be a better person everyday, not just in terms of cgpa. I want to know myself more than ever. I want to read more books on leadership and character and psychology and I want to get better at drawing portraits. I want to get back to playing fingerstle guitar seriously. I want to let some of my friends know that they really matter to me. I want to have self-control over my voice when answering my parents, without having to raise it an octave higher when I'm annoyed. I want to finally have the courage to play guitar for the Christmas carol team next month, a dream I've been having since 13. I want to prove to myself that c'mon, I got one life, there is one Fiay in this world, and I don't care if my life sucks compared to others. I have the ill man and the blind man to remind me about a lot of good things. #blessed #selfmotivation 

Stuffs

I was blogging during the whole journey back home by bus from college today. I mean..I was blogging inside my brain, constructing lots of sentences, jumping from one imaginary blog post to another..letting my mind wander a bit. I guess it's because of the coffee. Bus rides are cool because it's probably the only time my mind is filled with inspirations to write song lyrics and blog posts and imaginary dialogues. I mean..this blog post is not really going to mention anything significant but there were some stuffs that I feel like typing here.

Life list

Believe it or not I've only managed to list 75 life goals in my life list or whatever you choose to call it. My target is 101 because that's what most people do. I've been writing down a draft and I really don't want to write down stuffs just for the sake of having a life list, so I'm taking it slowly. Also, while on the bus, I thought of posting up those goals with a little bit of description on my blog soon. Maybe 10 goals per blog post. Cos..I don't know..blog posts are supposed to be silly stuffs that you can laugh about in years to come, I guess. 

Driving with dad

I've been driving to college with my dad for a few days and what I like the most about it is that..I don't know, it's like the only quality time I spend with my dad apart from dinner time. A few days ago we had a conversation about what if he stayed as a teacher and never entered the navy. He recalled about a friend who failed in Form 3 but is now a teacher. This guy, Mr. P, now drives a nice car and his salary is perhaps twice the amount that dad receives. I'm sure that my dad is not regretting about not staying as a teacher, and that is his road not taken. And maybe in 35 years to come I'll look back and tell my kids that sometimes I imagine what would happen if I chose to stay in the medical path. And that is my road not taken. But before I even thought of myself and that perspective, I kinda asked my dad that at the end of the day would he still want to switch his life with his friend's life? At the end of the day, would he want to become Mr. P, or would he be happy that despite the fact that his current job is not the best job in the world, he had the privilege to be in a previous job that allowed him to see the world and live in a four-seasoned country for nearly a decade. And then it hit me that I was probably advising myself. I don't think I'd want to trade my life with someone else's life although they may appear happier than me. 

Bus ride home

And in front of me this afternoon on the bus was a lady born in the year 1967 who was named Chang K.M. and she had boxes of Metoprolol and medications that had lolols at the end of their names. When placing her stuff on her seat, her plastic of wantan mee dropped in front of me and she was struggling to pick it up before I realised that this was actually happening. I then picked it up and she said thank you and that warmed my heart for whatever weird reason. Sometimes I imagine having random meaningful conversations with these kind of people on the bus, but I'm too afraid to initiate any. I mean..I look at these people and wonder that there must be some interesting stories in their lives. You must've been thinking that I actually talked to her but no, I saw her name and IC number when she took out her hospital card while sitting in front of me. Nothing special happened, actually. I'm just mentioning about this lady here because in my life list, one of my goals is to have a meaningful conversation with a complete stranger. But I'm too cautious/afraid to do that. And I understand that initiating something like this is like invading someone's personal space or something, because no one acts friendly on bus rides. So yeah, I'm just being weird because of the coffee, I guess.

That's pretty much it, I guess. It's not that anything special is happening in my life right now, but I'm trying to think of special stuffs each day. I'm kinda thinking of learning to draw with pen and ink because life is kinda boring with nothing new to learn. Of course my course materials don't count because I'm always more diligent when I learn stuffs that are unrelated to college. Hahaha. Oh, how I love adding random hahahas, 

Oh, tober II

Breaking news:

New semester—Classes on every single weekday, all at 8am.

Which means I'll have to wake up at 5.30am every single weekday.

Biggest disappointment—Won't be able to jog on weekday mornings as planned. Won't jog in the evening because don't want to be seen by neighbours. Conclusion: won't be jogging at all, will most probably gain weight before the new year.

Won't be able to sleep too late too. Kinda sucks that I normally get more productive after midnight. 

Biggest joy—Won't need to have lunch at uni. Will be able to go back home before noon. Conclusion: will be saving a lot of money this semester. More money to buy books yeaaaarrrghhh! Will also probably get a library card if I'm motivated enough to walk to the City Council Library after my morning classes. Kinda excited. Yay.

Blogging from phone. Kinda tricky.

Oh, tober

Oh, it's October. (Lame, ha ha ha).

I'll be back to school soon. Other than that, oh come on, we all know I don't have a life.

I'm awake at almost 3am because I suddenly thought about bucket lists and life goals and that life list thingy I used to have back in my glory days. Now I'm like..contemplating..whether I should revive that life list or just live life the way it is. It gets pretty boring sometimes, stuck in this boring neighbourhood. And the fact that summer has just ended makes it worse because summer equals to travel pics on social media and sometimes I wish I wasn't so addicted to social media. Sometimes I wish Facebook was never invented. Sometimes I wish I'd be more grateful. But damn it, Europe is so beautiful.

To console my aching soul, I spent my short semester break watching basketball games and imagining myself meeting Pau Gasol and Sergio Llull. Llull liked the photo of the portrait of him that I drew and uploaded on Instagram. I'm like...trying to make myself feel better by telling myself that come on, a Real Madrid basketball player now knows he has a fan in this dog-shaped island called Borneo, and I complimented his fast feet/legs during the recent EuroBasket 2015 and he must've felt happy that I took 6 hours to draw him (and compliment how great he was on court) and that alone is a spectacular feeling. I'd like to think that Sergio Llull was smiling in front of his smartphone. And I made an impact by just sitting for 6 hours on my lazy chair. Not bad at all, I guess. I'll travel to Europe next time. Besides, I don't deserve a travel right now. My friends worked their ass off for 2 years before getting the chance. My degree course so far isn't requiring me to work my ass off that much. I mean..I'm not working hard enough for anything right now and I know many people deserves greater things than me. Simple as that.

But my results were OK anyway which makes me feel alright. As in..I was sort of slothing around last semester, if that's even a legit way to describe it. I'm not as stressed as last time when it comes to studies. Not sure whether last semester was easy or I put an effort subconsciously, but either way, I'm too lazy to get stressed with academic matters these days. Let's see what the next semester has to offer. 

I'm thinking of writing a new song. Got a new theme in my brain, but right now the right lines aren't coming out. I also ditched my plan to learn a new fingerstyle arrangement. I was too busy having fun drawing. The drawing period is dying already. I'm pretty sure I'll be indulged in a new hobby soon. It's always that way. My hobbies are so short-lived. 

Writing a long update won't bring me anywhere, so yeah, I'm just going to stop here. Till then, I'll dream of Spain and basketball and Sergio Llull...

Oh ya and Tommy Emmanuel is coming to KL soon and I hate myself for not grabbing this chance to watch him live. Will there be another chance for me in the future? I don't know. I guess keeping a bucket list isn't going to make me happy, so it's better not to keep one then, maybe. *wails*