30 day book meme - Day 2 (and outing with friends)

[sivaroobini]

First: this year's Shakespeare in the Park is Macbeth! My friends and I are hoping to go and see it. (I'll really need that job ASAP if I want to afford things like theatre tickets though... >_> )

Also, today I went out with my friends and had an awesome time. :D Alvie, Gena, Jing Jia and I went to one of their favourite karaoke lounges and sang our hearts out (steadfast , the first song that came on was Bad Romance, which highly amused me. XD We all sang it very enthusiastically.), then we took a cab to Mount Sophia. There's this lovely little open-air restaurant/bar (I always order apple juice and stick to it despite the alcohol my friends order) on top called Timbre where Jing Jia works, so Alvie, Gena and I dropped her off and then walked down to Plaza Singapura and walked around. Gena is an awful person to go out with if you're trying to save money; she drags me into clothes shops, pulls out gorgeous clothes that make me look good and that she knows I'll love, makes me try them on, and then gushes about how good I look and how this price is a really good deal and I wonder if she's secretly getting commissions. XD I bought a gorgeous, fitted black cowl-neck blouse (recommended by Gena). The salesgirl was wearing a lovely ring in the form of angel wings and I complimented her on it and asked if they were for sale there; she said no, she got it at Diva.

So we were walking towards the escalator to return to Timbre and then Gena noticed a Diva outlet and dragged me into it while Alvie rolled her eyes at us. XD She's, like, the voice of reason when we go shopping. God, I fell in love with more than half the merchandise. XD They even had lovely pocket-watches! And feathery headbands! And lots and lots of shiny things! I love shiny things! The accessories/jewellery were just the sort I love. One day I'm going to go back and go mad. XD I was seriously tempted by a lovely pair of earrings in the form of angel wings (one long, shiny, lovely wing per ear) and was considering getting it when Gena, the temptress, pointed out the shiny snake-ring above it. I've wanted a snake ring for AGES. After informing Gena she sucked and I hated her ("No you don't. You love me."), I spent some time deliberating over which to buy.



^ Yeah, I chose the ring. XD I plan to go back one day to get the angel wing earrings though! And after that I'll either get one of the lovely big neo-Victorian feathery hair accessories or an old-fashioned pocket watch.

We went back up to Timbre, huffing and puffing all the way, and had some AMAZING rich creamy delicious mushroom soup, equally amazing lightly spicy fries, and creamy mushroom pasta. Jin Yang joined us later, straight from army camp; sadly, I had to leave shortly after he joined us since I'd told Dad I'd be home by a certain time, which was two hours before the others left. XD So after wolfing down more soup, pasta and fries and chatting a bit, I had to say my goodbyes and leave early while they ordered mushroom pizza (As you can see, we're all mushroom fiends, especially since Gena and I are both vegetarian XD).

Also, in the last post I mentioned my fondness for tartan, so I must mention that the full-length flowy light brown skirt with embroidered flowers I wore today, a gift from Gena, had a bit of tartan on it. :D I took a picture of part of the hem.



TARTAN. <3 It's my favourite part of the skirt. Also, since I wore the snake ring immediately, my inner Good Omens fangirl was very happy.

Many thanks to my friends for a wonderful day out. <3 There had been some stuff troubling me, but enthusiastic singing, cuddles (Alvie is the best cuddler in the history of cuddlers!), conversation, shopping and food, and of course the wonderful company, make everything better. I love you guys!

Now, on to the book meme.

Day 2 of this awesome book meme.

2. Your earliest memory of reading or being read to

  Another hard one. XD Umm. I remember that one of my favourite books when I was, like, three or four, was Bala and the Moon. It was one of those simple books for tiny tots, and featured a boy called Bala who wanted to be an astronaut, and he goes to the moon. I don't remember whether or not it was made of cheese in the book. xP I doubt it, though; my father, with his love for astronomy, wouldn't have let me believe that. Still, this was the reason why as a preschooler I wanted to be an astronaut. (However, as a child I also wanted to be an author and a paleontologist who occasionally dabbled in archaeology too, and at the time I thought one could be many things easily enough.)

Mostly I remember the pages and the illustrations, and being in the kitchen and telling my mother I wanted to be an astronaut and go to the moon like Bala.

I also remember these read-along sets in a cupboard below the radio in my parents' room; illustrated simple books, generally featuring Disney characters, that came with an audio cassette per set. I'd slot the cassette into the radio and read along with the cassette, though eventually I just read the books myself; sometimes I still liked to put the cassettes in to hear things like Iago's or the Great Mouse Detective's voice or the Pocahontas songs, though. And eventually I couldn't do that because as a kid I had itchy fingers and liked to poke and prod at things to find out how they worked, which meant I pulled the shiny black ribbons out of some of the cassette spools and ruined them. XD

... I kind of miss cassettes now, they were fun.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

I don't really remember this, but apparently the earliest things Mum chose to read to me were ... fairy tales. I got scared. So Mum turned to ... a ghost story (friendly ghost, but ...) I got scared. This one I remember, but I also have some vague memories of actually age appropriate picture books and according to Mum we settled on Karl May after the ghost story failure so maybe the picture books were before that ...

[sirius-luva.livejournal.com]

Awww! *hug* I remember having some awful nightmares, but I don't think I was ever actually scared by actual fairy tales or even horror movies; I remember enjoying movies like The Haunting as a kindergartener, and I loved my various fairy-tale anthologies (I still remember lying on my parents' bed, as a small child, and reading them). One or two of them were based on the Grimm versions, so the Cinderella one featured the stepsisters cutting off their heel/toes to force their foot into the shoe, and the illustration showed them holding their feet, blood dripping through their fingers. And it had the long version of Rapunzel, with the prince wandering, blinded, though his eyes are eventually healed by Rapunzel's tears when she finds him. I never minded. XD

I'm glad you managed to settle on something, though. XD Although I thought Karl May wrote those Westerns? Weren't there battle scenes and deaths or anything?

I remember having to constantly make up short stories for my little cousins to get them to eat or sleep, and they always had to be about dinosaurs and preferably with little boys making friends with the dinosaurs, and eventually despite my own love for dinosaurs I was longing for some variety.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

I keep hearing that children have no worries, because they feel immortal and are confident that their parents can and will always protect them. While I can't remember what that was like before I started school, I remember having lots of worries in primary school, thinking that there was no way out and that if my parents could have helped me it would be too much work for them. Maybe I wasn't feeling safe before starting school either.

Yes, but they were completely natural and set in a far away land. No witches or ghosts.

I only ever made up stories for myself.

[sirius-luva.livejournal.com]

:( That's really sad. Helped you with what, bullies? *hugs* And overgeneralisations like that are silly; kids are different.

Though when I was a kid I remember thinking that when my mother died I would mummify her (I knew how the process went, after all, kind of) and prop her beautiful gold mummy-case up in the hall so she'd always be close. ... I was a weird kid. XD

Awww. XD I was always disappointed that the ghosts in Scooby-Doo weren't real; to me the ghosts in Western stories were friendly, but the Asian spirits were malevolent and scary; those scared me.

I made a lot of them up for myself too, I liked spending the afternoon alone in make-believe, but when my cousins came over I had to keep them entertained and quiet. XD I did like sharing some stories though, I remember writing and illustrating a 'book' when I was about five or six and proudly showing it to my family. My youngest cousin later tore it up. I was so angry at him. XD

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

With bullies is where I actually experienced it. "You must have done something to him to cause this." Dad would say and turn away. "They're just jealous," Mum would say, or "Ignore them and they will grow bored and stop." - It wasn't what I considered my problems, though.

My problems, I thought, (Warning: child logic from here on) were that I was too stupid to make it into the gymnasium, maybe even too stupid to pass the grade I was in, and if one didn't one couldn't get a job, and without a job one couldn't survive, that that made me cry a lot when I didn't know an answer in class which made me a nuisance to my teacher and classmates and that it made my parents unable to boast of my good grades and intelligence, which was what people chose to have children for, so I wasn't even fulfilling my most basic function - obviously everybody, including me, would be happier if I were dead, but unfortunately I was so worthless I was too scared of death to kill myself and make everybody happy ... Of course I wasn't expecting my parents to be able to help with any of that, they only accused me of it whenever I brought home another not perfect test.

Well, that story's protagonist was a friendly ghost, but he had a family of normal ghosts whose occupation was to scare and harm people.

[sirius-luva.livejournal.com]

Oh, Fox. *snuggles* I'm so sorry you grew up with a mentality like that, no child should have to. :(

I felt like that on some occasions, that my parents just cared about being able to boast about my grades, but at least it wasn't constant.

<3

The story sounds really cute! :D

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

The odd thing is that I didn't think it was my parents, but parents in general, that there was nothing wrong with it at all. At the same time I still believed that other children were more valuable than me, even if they were repeating a grade.

It might well have been. We never finished reading it and I remember nothing more than what I've already told you.

[sirius-luva.livejournal.com]

:/ *hugs* You're really valuable as a person in your own right. And hey, in the end, you did better academically then a lot of them, right? I remember you telling me about your oral exam grades.

Aww.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

I don't know. How do you measure the value of a person? I'm not filthy rich, don't have a high prestige job (that's how Dad would measure it), I'm not doing vital work for the community ... the world wouldn't be any different, if I'd never been born.

And I have no idea how I did academically compared to any of my primary school classmates, or any other classmates from my first nine years of school. I've seen two or three of them passing in the street since then, but we only exchanged a greeting and walked on. I never got an academic degree, and I'm not using my Matura ...

I don't normally go comparing myself to them, though. There's only one classmate I felt compelled to compare myself to when I heard of her again ... and she's from the class I graduated with.

[sirius-luva.livejournal.com]

It would have been very different for me. If you'd never started LTSH, I'd have missed out on discovering a wonderful new hobby and meeting so many wonderful people. And you're a good person. To me that's more important than money or a good job.

:/

When I was younger my parents used to compare my grades with everyone else's. I don't know what happened to change things, but over the past couple of years they've been more, "You're really smart and a very good writer, and we're proud of you! Now hurry up and write a bestseller!" than "Uncle so-and-so's daughter got this award!". (Once my mother DID say that - a friend's daughter was part of some group that was going to America for some fundraising thing and she'd get to meet Obama - and my father promptly told her to stop comparing because, in his own words, that other girl couldn't write like me and one day Obama would be queuing to shake my hand. I was really embarrassed and sceptical, but also felt very loved.) Dad and my sister were really supportive with my A Level results too, so I was very lucky (I'd been scared that he'd be angry, like he used to be when I was in primary and secondary school, and I still feel I disappointed him).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_silverfox/]

Ah, you'd probably have discovered it through another game a little later ... and met other people just as worth knowing.

I'm not sure I'm that good. ... I sometimes think I'm at least halfway intelligent, but then again I wonder whether I'm just too stupid to realise I am. I'm mostly content with my life, but I don't think that makes me valuable to anybody else.

Maybe already having a doctor in the family has satisfied your parents' ambitions for academic achievements for their children and made them more open for the other talents you possess? Someone once told me only children like me tend to suffer more from parental ambitions, because when there are siblings they don't each have to fulfil all of them. (Though I also remember one of Mum's students suffering a lot, because neither she nor her brother were smart enough for university - and Mum always said how she was such a warm hearted and diligent girl that would have made a wonderful mother and probably done well in an apprenticeship. If only her parents could have set those goals for her instead.)

[sirius-luva.livejournal.com]

I really doubt I'd have discovered it; my path on the Internet didn't really cross RP much. Yes, I knew and loved NO, but even then I wasn't quite sure who these people were, how they met, how this worked, etc, and I didn't know of any other RP comms, and basically I probably never would have if you hadn't posted that advert.

And you have been an amazing friend thus far <3 and Jen is wonderful, and even if Alisha and I have drifted apart now, back when LTSH started she was an awesome friend and helped me through some stuff (she was a huge help when it came to dealing with my sexuality). Bird's like an older sister to me. And whatever else happened between me and Ricky, I did and do treasure our friendship and conversations even if that's all a thing of the past now (and it makes me both happy and sad, when I see German children's books or magazines at work and can read about half of the summary or something). All of you are worth knowing, and I am glad I met you. Don't sell yourself short; you're awesome. <3

And on that note, you're valuable to me, and I'm sure you're valuable to your friends and family. I think the value of a life lies in how much you mean to others and to yourself, the difference you make, not in things like intelligence or grades or money.

Nah. I still remember having an argument with Mum when I was younger because I wanted to be an archaeologist and she wanted me to be a lawyer. She still wants more from me, even if she hides it. But yes, the only child vs siblings thing is also likely true. :/ (Awww. Poor girl. :/)

Интересно почитать

[chaikenybum.livejournal.com]

Прочитал, конечно, далеко от моей темы. Но, все же, можно с вами сотрудничать. Как вы сами относитесь к доверительному управлению? (http://site-sex-znakomstva.ru/)