a book is an idea is time spent reading it

i was walking in a bookstore the other day, and they had this entire table of discounted books. a passing glance told me i had never heard of any of the authors, nor titles there. and then this feeling of ignorance, and perhaps also smallness washed over me. i privately consoled myself by making my brain believe that those were small-time authors, and we are living in an increasingly self-published world where small-time authors abound.

sadly, i must admit to not having great literary tastes. there are books i read for the purpose of research, and for a good while, they become indispensable - such that i feel those authors/academics have become my favourite ones to read. and inescapably, there are philosophers whose ideas come into vogue and then ebb (19th century french ones, for instance), and "evergreen" philosophers that anyone can quote, sometimes, even out of context. like nietzsche.

while i try to desensitise myself to name-dropping in conversations, it is frequently close to impossible for academics to have a coherent conversation sometimes without them referring casually to this theory, or that concept. it gets hard to keep up. every week i tell myself i have to be up to scratch with readings, but new ones come along and the backlog only gets bigger.

there is a distinction to be made between reading for work and for pleasure. some may say dismissively that 'oh! my work is my interest' with a casual flick of their hand. but how can someone immerse themselves in a particular field all the time? surely, there has to be a division of work interests and other-time interests? of the few authors of fiction i'm proud to like, are neil gaiman, and though past the quarter-century mark, jk rowling. and then some. more, i mean. :)

by now harry potter fans have probably heard that she says in book 7 "two die that I didn’t intend to die". shouldn't surprise me as much as it did, really.

but i digress. a writing workshop i attended some nights ago gave me a strange impetus to look up gertrude stein. and i did, today, and now she's going to be the author for the week. the flavour of the month, more like. sometimes i feel obliged to read stuff that supervisors or other lecturers casually name-drop. i haven't read widely enough for an informed backbone of my own, and that's really coming back to bite me in the ass.

i just wish authors weren't so prolific sometimes. give some of us slow and fickle readers a chance to catch up.

and then again, i am reminded of the mayor of casterbridge i'd left half-read maybe 8 years ago, and bluffed my way through a book review back then. i was a thomas hardy fan when i read far from the madding crowd but not his later novels. odd, really.

sometimes i ask myself: why is everyone else so fond of a particular classic but i can't wrap my head around it?

only in months with an R

as the saying goes, that it is safe to consume oysters. and that's in the northern hemisphere. so, perhaps consequently, in the land down under, it follows that the saying should be flipped. oysters taste so much better, creamier and of-the-sea during the colder months, i think. and that's just what we did today. bought freshly shucked oysters from the local seafood-shop where we got a complementary lemon, and headed straight for the national park nearby. we're purists, normally. oysters au naturel, with a dash of lemon is nearly always the way to go, unless, by some other means, we get distracted by really good oysters kilpatrick.



but the trick is to purchase it fresh from the local seafood shop. because, not only do you get to feast your eyes on all the other delectables, like plump scallops, vividly orange tasmanian salmon, or get taken with that lovely turqoise outline of a mussel's shell, you also get it for half the price the restaurants will fleece you for. oyster-eating is only a recently acquired taste, or skill, for me. before coming over to melbs, i'd never touch those slimy-looking invertebrates with a ten foot pole. and for good reason, too, because those puny, dried-up things we get back home in singas are only a travesty of an oyster! i was sorely disappointed when, back home for a vacation, i tried to show off to my mom and ordered a dozen oysters at some restaurant. live and learn, i say.



so. a buttery oyster that tastes of the sea. a dozen of those, and a good long walk in the national park with the weak warmth of a wintry sun. great way to spend an afternoon. life's been good these past weeks, because i'm beginning to notice signs for an impending battle with the winter bulge.

that must be due in part to project fatty breakfast i embarked on a week ago. i had one, or rather, shared one the other day with a friend at brighton. at AUD17 and rightly christened the big brekkie, and with ginormous proportions could be comfortably consumed by 3 hungry girls, it is only reasonable that i walked it off at the beach right after. the waitress who cleared the table said we did ok, judging by the lack of leftovers.

i'm also currently battling an incessant craving for chocolate.

and beer with nuts during the occasional soccer match.

must be the cold weather. tsk.

2 girls cannot eat so much yong tau fu!

that was what the uncle said incredulously when we paid $53.20 for our supply of drugs-that-remind-us-of-home. but the record was from our last visit to the yong tau fu shop - $72-something worth of yong tau fu! it lasted us several good meals, though. but it was a nice middle-aged lady who served us then, and she told us that the boys from melbourne uni would visit the shop and spend $100-odd. so. ours just paled in comparison.



born and bred in the tropics, i never gave much thought to flowering seasons, happily assuming spring was the time to see the lovely colourful blooms, and fall/winter would offer a bleak view of a garden. so i was nicely surprised when i saw these pretty things while on one of my long walks one afternoon. the guy on 60 minutes said that 15 minutes of walking, spread out each day - roughly 2000 steps, could stop weight gain. but i digress. these flowers were so pretty i had to snap a few shots of them. i even used it as an el-cheapo, belated mothers' day gift to my mom!



that was me. at the graduate research conference held over the previous weekend. what is it with poseur designers and black clothes, eh?? which explains the sabbatical from blogging and the internet. sabbatical sounds so much cooler than vegging out or slacking... during the past week, i even managed to resist driving to areas offering retail therapy, or even set foot anywhere near the city. i became a true blue girl from the 'burbs, and had a cookout with sotong, sausages, chicken wings, beer and the works. right at my balcony. and borrowed some books from the local library. and had a mental run-through of projects i'd been putting off, and that i could get started on now.

aaaah... this is life.

and right now, my ambition is to try out as many of the breakfast places, mentioned here, as i can. and that means lots of walking to follow. too bad i'm always waking up several hours past lunchtime, so making it in time for breakfast is a big challenge. that's a project to get started on in week ahead, then: project fatty breakfast.