Innumerabilis

I had an enjoyable 4D3N cruise to Phuket and Langkawi. Seriously, cruising is all about onboard experience, because the time you get to disembark and look around is so little that they are nearly negligible.

The onboard experience was quite good – they had live performances, stuff to do, a lot of food to eat (five meals per day included in the fare), and the ship even has a private GSM network. The 13 deck Superstar Virgo is large enough to keep the shaky feeling to a minimum.

Phuket’s Patong beach is over-commercialised, with touts every where you go. I bought two tabs of Ponstan there, because it is available over-the-counter, and it saves me a trip to a doctor here.

For Langkawi, we chose the trip to Pulau Payar. The water was crystal clear, there were fishes swimming close to the beach, but there the good things end. I couldn’t get used to the snorkelling equipment, because salt water kept getting into my mouth, and because I couldn’t wear spectacles with the snorkelling mask, resulting in me being unable to see anything. In the end, I just wore my power-goggles instead. I ended up getting sunburnt from the trip, and it just hurts all over, but especially on my thigh (because I swam backwards).

Overall, it was a very enjoyable trip. Photos available at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/innumerabilis

Since 9th Apr 2007, I’ve read:

So Many Books, So Little Time : A Year of Passionate Reading. This is like a collection of blog entries, about books. Some of her assessment of books I agree with, some I do not, but I don’t read books about books in order to find more books to read; it is simply interesting to read about the life of someone who gets paid to indulge in reading all day, and laments about how she cannot find the perfect book for the perfect moment. I’d love to be in her shoes, but the price of books renders this unlikely in the near future. This book refers to plenty of other books, but at least they are contemporary books that I have, if not read before, then at least heard of. The Historian, in contrast, refers to plenty of books that I’ve never even heard of. Little wonder that I didn’t finish reading it.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Philosophy. I struggled through three or four chapters, realised that I am totally not interested in it, and returned it without completion. One of the very few books that I have stopped reading halfway, but sometimes it is better to cut short your loss.

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters. Neil Gaiman in comic form = superb.

The Sandman: The Wake. Ditto.

The Sandman: Fables and Reflections. Third book, and still not sick of it.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes. It is just gets better.

American Gods. Neil Gaiman in prose form. It is the expended version, so it is as long as the three books of the Lord of the Rings put together. I can see why it is so well-acclaimed, but seriously, it is loooong! Still a nice read, though.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Wow, such an irreverent tone and such funny logic. The worst thing is that they all make sense, in a warped way. I haven’t had so much fun since The Catcher in the Rye (a half-finished book that I plant to complete. One of these days. Yeah. Really.)

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Hmm, not as good as the original, but still enough of its spirit to enrapture me.

Mostly Harmless. Almost same category as the above.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Okay, Douglas Adams is a genius and all that, but I’m starting to get more and more disappointed as I progress down the series. It is like Harry Potter, the Philosopher’s Stone will always be my favourite. I don’t know, this one seemed to be hitching on the coat-tails of the original. Sort of like a one-trick pony given a re-hash. It is still better than some other books, but it pales in comparison to the original.

Three Act Tragedy. Ah, classic Agatha Christie. The perfect genré for a lazy day, when you don’t want it too intellectual, when you just want to coast along.

Dear Valued Customer, You are a Loser. A collection of modern faux pas, usually of the electronic type. This made me laugh all the way through.

I’ve finished all of these books (with the exception of the Philosophy Idiot’s Guide, which I do not intend to finish,) and I’ll probably borrow more tomorrow.

With a one month break between the end of the job and the start of school, I thought I’d be pretty bored, but it turned out otherwise. Let’s see what kept me occupied:

I started on the practical aspect of the driving lessons, and I’m booking the lessons quite closely. As long as someone cancels, and it is within reasonable timing, I’ll snatch it up. If you have to go out once every two days, you feel like you’re doing something, even if it is only for 2 hours or so. That being said, I still need to go through the online learning for the Final Theory Test, but that is so boring.

French lessons every Thursday, but the last one just ended. Here goes the slow and enjoyable lessons, and the cramming sessions at NUS are in sight. The conjugation of adjectives are becoming more and more difficult; I wonder what the NUS lessons would be like.

I’ve been borrowing books from the library. I’ve been reading quite intensely, on the one-book-per-day kind of scale. Let’s do a book-review. Since it is so long, I’ll do it in the next post. Bonne soirée.