Hiding Stuff

Today I came home from work to find a card pushed through the letterbox. Hooray, I thought, my Amazon stuff has arrived, I'll go to the post office on Saturday morning to pick it up.

On closer inspection, I was aghast to find that instead of the normal "this package is too large for your letterbox, please collect from the post office" message; the box for "...this package has been left..." had been ticked. The delivery man had filled out in handwriting - in the white box in the garden next to the brown bin.

Aaarrgghh, I ran into the garden and checked in the box and whew, it was was there. BUT...

• where does this delivery man think we are? This is South London, where someone could have seen him hide the package and then run off with it 5 minutes later. Hey, I don't even want to speak to my neighbours, let alone trust them.
• that white box was rubbish that the council hasn't collected. Aarrgghh, what if the council had collected today..with my books and CD in it?

Oh well, I am probably making a fuss about nothing; everything did arrive safely after all. I put on the Justin Timberlake album straightaway. Aaahh, Justin makes everything better.

Under the Eagle by Simon Scarrow

Sweaty men fighting it out in Roman times. Combines some of my favourite things: a) military men b) fighting with swords and c) Romans. What's not to like?

How long has it been since I've blogged about a book? I've been reading lots but haven't got round to posting about this book; I suppose I should update my "what I'm reading" picture before it withers and dies from neglect.

This book was fun. Yes, I have a military fetish. Yes, I love reading about Rome. Hey, even before that Gladiator movie I was already into Lindsey Davis and Steven Saylor. It's a period of history that fascinates me - the complex social structure, the empire, the civilisation that was "lost". Plus, it's history-lite.

The book's two main protagonists are Macro and Cato, who serve in Second Legion. This book is the first in a series and I presume the series will continue with their adventures and some historical background thrown in.

Macro is the experienced battle-hardened illiterate soldier who has made it to Centurion through guts, hard work and a bit of luck. Cato is Macro's young, bookish inexperienced assistant who doesn't know what he's doing and has to prove himself. They are plagued by corrupt superiors, bullies and deceitful women. Sound familiar? Yeah, I know, just like a dozen other cop movies and bad TV shows. Original, no. Entertaining, yes.

Christmas Shopping

Yep, it's that time of year again. Mr K-E and I fought the crowds in Selfridges on Saturday and bought Christmas presents for his family. Whew, at least the women in his family are taken care of now. Can't say more in case they read this and it spoils the surprise!

I also chose some of my own presents, mainly makeup and body goodies from Benefit (oh how I adore Benefit) and Clinique. *happy me*

I've realised that time is running out to read all the books that I got given for Christmas last year as I will be getting a whole box full again this year. Not that I'm ungrateful of course. I just never got round to reading all those hardbacks.

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

Very Good! Sensitively written with interesting characters that you really care about.

This book caught my eye in the local bookshop and looked intriguing. I wasn't disappointed and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed The Kite Runner or God of Small Things.

It's set in Cairo around the time of the first Gulf War and describes the lives of the people living in the Yacoubian building. Some people live in poverty in the roof, while others live in the faded glory of the apartments. The book ties in the lives of a varied group of people, from Taha the doorman's son to Zaki Bey, an aging playboy clinging on to his aristocratic past.

None of the people in the book are "perfect" or do the "right" thing; they are alive and real from the first pages. The writer does a good job of drawing you into the characters, making you care about them and their struggles or triumphs.

My favourite character was Busayna, a young woman from a very poor family. She has no choice but to put up with the advances of lecherous employers, and she faces these ordeals pragmatically in order to support her family. However, day by day her bitterness grows and you can almost feel her self-belief ebbing away. How she reconciles what she has to do to survive with her deep, sincere religious beliefs is sad and sharp at the same time.

The book was originally written in Arabic and was the bestselling Arabic novel in 2002 and 2003. I knew this when I started reading, so I was surprised by the sympathetically written description of homosexuality. It addresses corruption, Islamic fundamentalism as well as human weaknesses and strengths. Read it!!! It's really good!

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

Made me smile. A "typical" Bill Bryson, sweet and charming. But is it getting a bit same-y?

You know where you are with Bill Bryson and this book doesn't spring any surprises on you. It's an account of Bill's small town childhood and describes his amily, his teachers, neighbourhood, pranks etc.

Despite his best efforts at making them seem weird or unusual, his family are hardly that interesting. It all seemed very white-bread to me. That's not to say that I didn't enjoy the book. Just that it's not as fresh as the first Bryson I ever read which made me snort with laughter.

If you enjoyed his other books then you might as well read this one too. If you have never read any of his books, then it's probably best to start with The Lost Continent or Notes from a Small Island.

Update

OK, I haven't really got anything to blog about because it's been a working weekend. I went into the office on Saturday and today, leaving Mr K-E to his own devices at home.

Mr K-E and I had a bit of a celebration on Friday night because I "brought-in" a new Client at work. It's a milestone for me and *grin*grin* it's a nice feeling........

But now I'm settling into a nice evening on the sofa with the latest JR Ward. It's been a long six months!

True Tales of American Life edited by Paul Auster

Highly recommended.

In 1999, America's National Public Radio invited listeners to send in their true life short stories. Stories that were true, but sounded like fiction, to be read on-air as part of the National Story Project. The response was overwhelming: more than 4,000 submissions were received and this book is a collection of 180 of the most fascinating submissions.

I really enjoyed the stories in this book. They are all short, mostly two or three pages, but they are such a reflection of human experience - happiness, sadness, regret, love, tragedy, comedy and almost unbelievable cooincidence. Knowing that these are all "true" stories adds a layer of emotional engagement and there were stories that made me wipe away a tear on the bus on the way to work.

Some of the stories are better than others, of course, but as each story is only a few pages, you never feel that you have wasted your time. The book is divided in sections i.e. Animals, Objects, Love, Death, War etc in an attempt to organise the stories sensibly. I found the stories in the "War" section incredibly intense; I often had to close the book after reading a particularly good (or bad, depending how you look at it) story. Just to gather my thoughts before moving on to the next one.

The only slight criticism of the book is that the final section "Meditations" was the weakest section of the book to me. It seemed a shame that these were at the end of the book, when we had read so many stronger stories in the beginning. However, this is only a small criticism - afterall there is nothing to stop you reading the stories randomly, dipping in and out as you please.

Where there's a will... by Matthew Beaumont

Adequate but not outstanding. Some parts were really funny but the story starts to sag in the middle.

Alvin Lee is a nice guy. He works as a "Learning Mentor" in a rough London school, helping the rejects and drop-outs to acquire "life skills" eg how to fill in a form or read a map. The kids are the bottom of the barrel, the ones you cross the street to avoid. Not intelligent enough to be successful criminals; these kids are on the verge of being kicked out of the education system altogether.

Anyway, Alvin loves his family but as he is so badly paid, lives perilously close to bankruptcy. Does that bother him? No! Not noble, kind-hearted Alvin! The kids are a bunch of losers, but hey Alvin can see the good in them, even if they are like feral dogs.

(Yes, about 50 pages in, I was getting really sick of "good" Alvin)

The kids are part of the Inclusive Learning Department (ILD), a dumping grounds for teenagers who would have been expelled in the old days. The teachers in the school refer to it as the I Love Delinquents section, but Alvin is not fazed by this. Afterall, he has had some success in turning around the "no-hopers" : his star delinquent Kelly Rowlands managed to get 7 GCSEs, proving that encouragement can overcome the attraction of petty crime.

So Alvin is distressed to hear that Kelly (instead of going to college) is working at a brothel thinly disguised as a massage parlour. Suddenly all his good work seems to be for naught. In a fit of righteousness, he goes to the massage parlour to try and talk her out of her new job.

Well, you can guess what happens next.

Alvin, despite his good intentions, lurches from one well-meaning misunderstanding to another. Till finally, he's lost his job and his family and his life is in ruins.....

It sounds more like a tragedy than a comedy but it does have some very funny bits - like the description of the teenagers that Alvin tries to help. However, I did get annoyed by "good guy" Alvin. Surely no one is that nice? My favourite character was Alvin's partner Karen; I really liked her no-nonsense attitude.

Unfortunately, I thought the book sagged in the middle. It started off really well, but then I started to lose interest and never really recovered. If I had to give it a grade, I would say C+. It did make me laugh, but some parts lacked that spark that makes you want to read on. Adequate but not outstanding.

Queuing with the other weirdos.

So, we were in town on Friday night and the Harry Potter fans were queuing up outside bookstores. The book was released at midnight - and frankly I can't understand the queuing. Why queue for hours? It's not as if the bookshops are going to run out of books! There is an unlimited supply! Just turn up at midnight, if you are that desperate.

Anyway, we wandered around Charing Cross road where the biggest queue was in the Borders. Mainly because it was actually open and people could sit inside the store instead of on the pavement outside. By this time it was 11:20 and the people camped out in a long snake around the bookshelves were starting to get excited. How amusing, I thought. I would never do this. Besides, I am so over Harry Potter.

When suddenly, Mr K-E says .... lets go to Foyles. They have a much shorter queue.

Me : Uh, why are we queuing? I thought the plan was to laugh at the people who were queuing. (thinking *oh God, I hope no one from work sees me queuing up with these weirdos*)

Foyles and Borders are on opposite sides of Charing Cross Road, but Foyles didn't open their doors till 11:30. Unbelievably, Borders staff came round to the Foyles queue and tried to get us to go to Borders instead, saying you can sit inside, have a coffee etc. When Mr K-E pointed out that there were about 800 people queuing inside Borders, the guy said optimistically, "but we've got more tills...".

Then while we were waiting inside Foyles, at about 11:45, two teenage kids with a loudhailer came in and announced ATTENTION SHOPPERS! XXXX KILLS XXXX ON PAGE 405! XXXX, XXX AND XXXX DIE IN THE END!

The crowds inside boo-ed and hissed at them and they retreated when a security guard approached. I thought it was really amusing. Not sure if they actually knew or were just making it up (there has been a leak due to cock-up in America) but Mr K-E was a bit upset.

Awww never mind, honey.



We still managed to get the book at seven minutes past twelve, which Mr K-E thought was impressive considering we had only queued for half an hour.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

We got our copy at 7 minutes past 12 last night. I'll tell you more later.

Cicak

When I lived in Brunei, I never gave our resident cicaks much thought. A cicak is a type of gecko. They live inside houses all over SE Asia, eating insects and walking on walls with their sticky feet. They also make a clicking sound, which is one of the most familiar sounds of my childhood.

*sniff sniff*

You know you are homesick when you even miss the sounds of home.

Anyway, in my flat in London I also have a resident cicak.

Look, here he is, looking at my latest Amazon delivery.

The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford

Good but a bit too much like being back at university and trying to get my head around hard ideas. Slightly too educational to be enjoyable.

I got this book because I read Freakonomics about two years ago and I thought it was soooo good. (By the way, if you haven't read Freakonomics, you should! It's really interesting and thought-provoking. Plus, it's dead easy to read.)

Anyway, back to The Undercover Economist. The ideas in the book are certainly very intriguing. Tim Harford explains complex ideas clearly and uses really good examples to illustrate his point.

When I read about price-targeting, which is practised by big companies (he uses coffee companies as an example) - it made me smile because it's also practised by fake handbag/watch sellers all over Asia.

In summary - if you are "seller", you want to sell as many items as possible while still making a profit. The last thing you want to do is to turn away any potential buyers. Afterall, a profit is a profit, right? But how can you maximise the profit from your buyers?

What you really need is a magic sign that senses how much people are willing to pay.

For example -
for people who have lots of money and are willing to pay £2.50 for a coffee - Price £2.50
for people who have less money and only want to spend £1.00 for a coffee- Price £1.00

But these magic signs don't exist, so how can you get people to pay different prices for essentially the same product?

Well, as Tim Harford explains, companies cunningly make products slightly different so that "price-insensitive" consumers will tend to spend more money.

For example

Cappuccino - £1.00
Cappuccino with chocolate sprinkles - £1.20
Hot chocolate - £1.30
Mocha - £1.45

In reality, the actual cost of the product in the cup is the same or only varies slightly. The main costs to the coffee company are rent, staff costs, advertising etc. However, by providing an option for customers to spend more money, they make more money. At the same time, they are not "turning away" the customers who are more stingy and only want to spend £1.00.

Back to the fake handbag/watch sellers in KL or Beijing - they practise the same thing! In general, the customer sets the price - as long as the vendor makes a profit, they will sell. No vendor will ever sell at a loss, no matter what kind of story he tells you.

When my in-laws went to China, they didn't like the idea of bargaining at all. They always felt that they were being ripped off.

I said to them - yes, but surely, when you see something you like, you must have some idea of what you want to pay for it? Whether it is £5 or £500, you know yourself how much you prepared to pay. It's just a question of whether the seller will do the deal. Or else you could argue that Marks and Spencer are ripping you off too. Who is to say whether that flowery blouse is worth £50 or £5?

My in-laws are still not convinced. They like a fixed price!

Anyway, he describes other ideas like this in the book so if you found that interesting, you will probably enjoy this book. If there are any proper economists out there who have read this book, I would love to hear your opinion of it. As for me, it took me ages to read because often after a hard day at work I couldn't face more "facts" and "explanations". Back to light reading!

Gasp!

I was flicking through my copy of Eve yesterday when I suddenly realised that the name at the top of the page was very, very familiar. Holy Cow! Rachael Malai Ali! And to prove it, her photo was there too...

She was talking about her nervous breakdown to promote her book The Cow Jumps over the Moon. I didn't realise she was a script writer and journalist? I thought she was mainly involved in running her mother's nursery school. I'm not trying to be bitchy here, by the way.

Her publishers call it "our new bestseller" - good marketing ploy :)

I haven't read it so I don't know if it is any good, but even so I'm very impressed. Jealous too; but mainly impressed. Well, she should be proud!

1. she has written a book
2. it's been published (let's face it, this is the tricky bit. Anyone can churn out pages of crap. Just like us bloggers hahaha)
3. her publishers obviously they are on to a good thing and promoting her in magazines like Eve

But also, nervous breakdowns/depression/stress are uncomfortable subjects in Brunei. So maybe other people who are going through the same thing will realise they are not alone.

Plus, I hope she has a good poke at all the people who were mean to her when she was ill. In a witty way, of course. Buy it here.

(PS I have just realised that people who aren't from Brunei will be thinking WTF? Rachael Malai Ali is a fellow Bruneian from a prominent family in Brunei. Her sisters Jenny and Paula are local celebrities. It's sooooo strange to read about a Bruneian who isn't the Sultan, or part of his family, or selling a story about them)

A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain

Good combination of food and travel, written in a distinctive blunt, no bull-shit style. Anthony Bourdain leaves his New York restaurant kitchen to travel around the world, eating unusual food and meeting interesting people. What's not to like?

I love books about food so it's no big surprise that I enjoyed reading this book (again). I found it when I was packing my books away for storage and put it to one side to re-read.

There's no big plot; just him travelling around the world and eating as he wanders from place to place. There' s a camera crew following him around but the film crew sportingly join in with his heroic food adventures.

Of course, he had to try durian (in Vietnam) - and he liked it! Hooray! He describes it as one of the few "new" tastes that he experiences in his travels.

Although it will mainly appeal to foodies, Bourdain also provides entertaining descriptions of the people he meets and the culture of the countries that he is visiting.

Maybe some people will be put off by his tone and language but it was OK for me. Refreshing, even. Foodies will enjoy it.

Very trashy vampires

I know I'm supposed to be re-reading A Cook's Tour (Anthony Bourdain) but this weekend I've been distracted by Lynn Viehl's vampire series. I've plowed my way through If Angels Burn, Private Demon and Dark Need. I'm about to crack open the fourth in the series, Night Lost.

You can tell from the titles just how trashy these books are but who cares? I love them! Men have their James Bond/Dungeons and Dragons/Jet Li delusions and I have my alpha-hero vampires ;)

(If you read trashy romance novels, you will know that vampire fiction is hot these days. I mean popular, not just steamy ...)

JR Ward is another one of my faves; unfortunately her next book is not out till September. *withdrawal*sob*sob* Luckily I stumbled on Lynn Viehl and have been gobbling up her books these last few weeks.

I love discovering new authors especially if they have long backlists. When I discovered JD Robb, I immediately ordered the next 12 books in the Eve Dallas series from Amazon. Why restrain yourself?? Reading is always educational. In Katie-Ella world, books are a guilt-free purchase.

Paris : The Lonely Planet Guide

The maps aren't very good but I still prefer Lonely Planet guides to the Rough Guides.

There are photos of me taken all in various tourist hotspots clutching these blue guide books. It can be embarassing when other people are on the same "walking tour" and you keep bumping into the same people.

(Walking tours are suggested routes with points of interest and historical background noted in the book. Very good for exploring cities....)

My Paris experience in summary:

• I know it's a cliche but why are French women so fucking thin? They live on croissants and fresh cream-filled pastries, cook everything with cheese and butter, and it's frites everywhere you look. Maybe they don't actually eat anything. Maybe it's all for tourists....

• I was so conflicted about my new handbag. Head: Spending money on material items will not make you truly happy. Self-esteem should not be based on owning over-priced "luxury" items. This is the sign of a vain, shallow and insecure personality. Heart (and all rest of body) : I have a hole that only that handbag can fill.

• A friendly "bonjour" goes a long way, even if you don't know any other French words.

• Eating out breakfast, lunch and dinner is really expensive.

• "Romantic" Paris is over-rated. One of our friends took his girlfriend to Paris for Valentine's Day. He had to warn her that he was not going to propose...or else she might have been expecting him to pop the question all weekend. Everytime he put his hand in his pocket she would have expected a little box to appear.... hahaha.

The Rainmaker by John Grisham

Very good. John Grisham is a master story-teller and this book doesn't disappoint.

Mr K-E read this first and he thought it was very good. He hassled me into reading it as soon as I had finished The Loyal Character Dancer because he wanted to talk about it!

The book was made into a movie in 1997, with Matt Damon playing the main protagonist Rudy Baylor. I haven't watched the movie, but I'm a big fan of Matt Damon so I could picture him clearly in my mind's eye.


When the book starts, Rudy Baylor is a young impoverished student in Memphis trying to survive the last few months of law school before starting work in a medium sized firm. After years of working all hours to fund himself through college, it looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Then, bad luck strikes - his future employer is bought out by another company and there is no place for Rudy in the new office. It is the end of semester and all the available jobs have been filled.



These are desperate times. Rudy is a good student, in the top third of his year, but not good enough for the big prestigious law firms. Add his trailer trash background and his chances of finding a job are even slimmer. The rejections and humiliations pile up around him, until finally he has no choice but to work for the infamous Bruiser Stone - a dodgy lawyer deeply involved in the "skin trade" i.e topless bars and prostitution. To his horror, he finds himself as the worst kind of lawyer - the ambulance chaser.

In the midst of all his woes, our naive lawyer stumbles onto the case of his career. He meets the Blacks, whose son Donny Ray is dying of leukemia. Donny Ray is "lucky" because he is an identical twin - and therefore he is an ideal candidate for a bone marrow transplant. His parents have been paying for health insurance for years and this is their only hope.

However, the big bad insurance company Great Benefit refuses to fund the transplant, finding all sorts of reasons to deny the claim, until finally it is too late for Donny. His mother shows the 8th denial letter to Rudy - unbelievably, part of it reads "...this is the 8th time we are denying the claim...you must be stupid, stupid, stupid...".

The "stupid" letter inflames Rudy and he resolves to fight for the Blacks : to represent this poor white trash couple and their doomed son.

The David vs Goliath theme is the main plot of the book. Interesting secondary characters, a likeable hero, a seemingly invincible opponent and quick, tight writing - it all combines to make an excellent read. Grisham's descriptions of the legal system and courtroom procedure are absorbing, even the courtroom scenes, which could easily turn tedious.

The book is also painfully funny in parts - Grisham pokes fun at the "initialed and numeralled" lawyers from big firms (Leo F. Drummond and F. Franklin the Fourth) as well as the ambulance-chasing deadbeat lawyers who hang around accident scenes.

Overall, highly recommended. A nice easy read; quick plotting and good story-telling.

A loyal character dancer by Qiu XiaoLong

Interesting, but not life-changing. Don't read this if you are looking for a page-turning, spine-tingling mystery. Read this if you looking for a snapshot of life in modern-day Shanghai. Not the tall-buildings-luxury-brands Shanghai, but a living, breathing China in transition as seen though the eyes of average Shanghai residents.

You know when you watch old kung-fu movies (think Drunken Master) and the subtitles are always dodgy? Or even better, when the speech has been dubbed into English and it's always worth laughing at the character's mouth movements that don't match the sounds (supposedly) coming out of them.

I think part of the reason the subtitles/dubbing is so unnatural is because Chinese just doesn't translate well into English. OK, kung-fu films are not a good example, but Little Fung, don't you know who I am? Your Master was a fool and I will not leave you alive to avenge him! just doesn't sound like anything anyone would ever say in English.

A loyal character dancer brought back memories of those badly dubbed films - I just got the feeling that the author was thinking in Chinese and then translating his thoughts into English. The writing is quite clunky and (dare I say it) reads like a prize-winning Form 5 English composition.

The book is set in Shanghai and follows Chief Inspector Chen, an honest, poetry-loving policeman with few political aspirations. The mystery revolves around a missing woman, Wen, the loyal character dancer of the title.

Wen's husband, Feng, has illegally emigrated to the US, leaving Wen living in poverty in a rural Fujian village. After a gang fight in New York's Chinatown, he falls into the hands of the US Marshalls office who offer him a deal if he testifies against the snakeheads, the infamous Chinese smuggling rings.

Feng agrees on one condition. His wife must join him in the US under the witness protection plan. Both China and the US are keen to crack down on smuggling rings, so the wheels are set in motion for Wen's move to the States. The US Marshalls even send a Chinese speaking agent, Catherine Rohn, to China to make sure that everything goes smoothly.

Then Wen disappears. This presents a serious glitch - especially with Catherine Rohn about to arrive from the US - so Inspector Chen is assigned to the case. Firstly to keep an eye on Rohn and make sure that she only views the "accepted" face of China and secondly to try and find the missing Wen.

The mystery itself is not that exciting and the book is actually about China, and how Chinese people fit into the new capitalist environment while the old communist structures crumble away slowly around them. The reality of Chinese people's struggles, especially the grinding poverty in the rural areas, forms the "meat" of this book.

However, Qiu has written his book with an underlying current of optimism so all is not doom and gloom. His descriptions of food also stand out; they left me hungry - where can I get Shanghai dumplings in London?

Overall verdict - Enjoyable but not outstanding. I haven't got the urge to hunt out the other books in the series, although I'm sure I'll get round to reading them one day.

More reviews here.

Mukiwa by Peter Godwin

Good. I found it really interesting and it gave me a bit of background to the the mess that is Zimbabwe today. Definitely recommended.

Peter Godwin grew up in rural Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and in this book he describes his childhood growing up in a rural farming area. He takes us through his conscription into the Rhodesian police force during his civil war and his experiences as a journalist during the early days of Mugabe's rule.

Godwin writes in a very straightforward manner - he just describes what he experienced at the time, without trying to apologise for or justify the attitudes and accepted rules of the day. I liked the fact that he didn't try to make it amusing, i.e. by making "characters" of the people or by making the book a series of contrived funny stories. Or worse, try to analyse the situation (with the benefit of hindsight) and bang on about the complexities of race, history, politics and human behavior.

He simply tells the story, and leaves us to make up our own minds.

Of course, we all know what Zimbabwe is like today and so reading it, I felt sad for the people described in the book and their problems still to come.

I was sorry when I finished Mukiwa; I could have spent much more time in that fascinating place. That's a sign that I've really enjoyed a book.

Read more reviews here.

Where is the driest place on Earth?

THE BOOK OF GENERAL IGNORANCE: from QI, the TV show

(The answer is at the end)

I loved it. It's suitable for all ages - a great present for a bookish 12 year old or a 30-something fact-aholic like me. Entertaining and informative, hooray!

I love the TV show QI and this book doesn't disappoint. QI stands for Quite Interesting, and the premise of the book is that everything you know is wrong.

The book is set out as a series of questions, for example, How many legs does a centipede have? The answer and a quirky discussion follows: and that's it really. I can't really do this book justice, but trust me - it's packed with lots of great stories and juicy details.

The answer to the question "Where is the driest place on Earth?" is Antarctica. Parts of Antarctica have not seen rain for two million years. 2% of Antarctica, known as the Dry Valleys, is free of ice and snow and it never rains there at all.

So now you know!