Reading

I love reading stories. It is one of my favorite things to do, right up there with eating and sleeping. I would be the happiest person in the world if I was allowed to eat, read and sleep all day, every day.

I read everything, all types of genres. I’m not fussy. I don’t discriminate against books I read books that get bad reviews because hey, that’s the reviewer’s opinion. I’m a smart, educated young woman (not really), I can make up my own mind about the book – but yeah, it usually is as shit as the reviews say.

So just because I read pretty much anything, doesn’t mean I like everything I read.

Sometimes it’s the plot, but usually it’s the writing. Good writers can make the dullest events sound like the greatest things to have ever happened.

I didn’t know how much emotion reading stories can evoke in me. TV and movies I get, I’m seeing the emotions played out on the faces of the actors, and if they’re really good actors, I’ll feel what their character is feeling.

But words. Whoa.

Words are powerful. Whenever I come across a particularly good book, I get lost in the world with the characters, feel what they feel and imagine what they’re seeing, like I’m right there with them. It is an amazing experience and it’s from a few words on a page.

I feel every emotion intensely. I’ll smile like crazy when things work out and sulk around the house when things go wrong.

Much to the amusement of my family; here I am depressed over how the two main characters just aren’t getting together already and my parents are trying to decipher what the hell is going on.

I’m a girl. I’m allowed to have inexplicable mood swings.

Oh oh! I have to add something to my list of favorite things to do: talk about books.

When I meet someone new and they tell me how they like reading and we start talking about a book, I know we’re going to be good friends and we’ll never run out of things to talk about.

I’ve had a few awkward experiences though, when it comes to sharing what we’ve read. There are some books that some people think are a waste of time to read.

I just think, like with books with bad reviews, I won’t know how good/bad the book is until I’ve read it and because I like reading so much, I don’t care if I end up disliking the book. If anything, I’ll just have read a book that someone worked hard on.

Anyways, back to my awkward discussion. The person in my anecdote will be referred to as INSULAR (that’s a new word I learned meaning narrow-minded).

We were actually talking about some new movie that’s coming out that has vampires or werewolves in it (doesn’t everything nowadays?) and then Insular asks “Have you read Twilight?”

It’s not just a simple question, is it? She’s going to judge me for reading it, which is ridiculous, because clearly she’s read it too.

I know this because she then proceeds to compare the movie we were talking about to Twilight in great detail.

And I really wish she didn’t, you know?

I don’t know when Twilight became the benchmark for the vampire/werewolf genre. Like there were no stories about vampires/werewolves before Twilight or something.

Insular went on about how the vampires in the movie aren’t like the vampires in Twilight, how they can’t control their urges to drink human blood, how they get burned in the sunlight – so old school vampires – which according to Insular (and I’m paraphrasing here) “makes more sense, because the way they were portrayed in Twilight wasn’t realistic.” Because vampires are real and all.

Ugh.

It’s stupid to judge people based on what they read.

Yeah, I read the Twilight books. All of them! How do you like them apples? What has become of me? I am defending Twilight when I don’t even like them myself, purely because I feel like disagreeing with Insular.

No, wait! I am defending my love of reading.

Yeah, that sounds better.

I wonder how she’d react if I told her I also really enjoy reading fanfiction. Probably never speak to me again. She’s the Only Reads What’s In The Top 50 type of reader. Not the Read Whatever You See type like myself.

I fan girl over nearly everything, so naturally I read a lot of fanfiction. I ship couples outside of cannon – who didn’t want Draco and Hermione to end up together? There was so much pent up sexual tension between them; that being said I’m not questioning the way JK Rowling paired the couples as she did, she did it perfectly – and I love reading stories that people have written featuring these characters. But it’s gotten a little out of hand lately, because I start thinking the fanfic is canon – especially after finding stories that have better plot lines than the book/movie/tv show it’s based on – and then get disappointed when that’s not the way it works out in the actual book/movie/tv show. There are some amazing writers out there.

I’m a sucker for romance so I tend to read the stories where my favorite characters fall in love and well – because people who get together sleep together; it’s natural – most of these types of stories describe intimate moments in explicit detail.

I don’t know why I’m being so sensitive about it. Anyone who reads fanfic has been exposed to some intense amounts of porn. It’s way graphic. None of that “releasing his (insert name of object shaped like a penis) from his denim prison.” That is child’s play.

Hell, E.L. James got her break writing fanfiction about Twilight. And it’s all sex sex sex. It’s kinky sex actually.

Go on and judge me. Like you haven’t read that kind of fanfic. And if you haven’t, you’re totally curious now.

This is a long post. Oopsie.

Personality Doppelganger?

I wonder if there is someone out there who is exactly like me; who talks like me, thinks like me, likes the same things I like, gets weirded out by the same things I get weirded out by.

I also wonder if I’d be able to find them. Or if they’d be able to find me. It shouldn’t be too hard, right? Because we’d both be looking for the same thing, in the same way, if we were basically the same person.

What do you call a personality doppelganger? A kindred spirit/soul? That sounds weird.

 

Overthinking-about-random-shit limit reached for the day.

Getting My Mean Face On

I’d like to think of myself as a friendly person. I smile at people I make eye contact with. I make light conversation with strangers at the bus stop or while waiting in line etc.

I don’t know what my face looks like when I’m not expressing myself – I hope it’s still friendly, or at least not mean – but when I’m in the shopping center and I have to walk past those little kiosks set up in the middle selling sea salt hand cream or hair straighteners, I know I put on my “DON’T COME NEAR ME” look.

Usually, I walk along the outer most edge, keeping the distance between me and the kiosk at it’s utmost farthest. (I realise that utmost and farthest mean pretty much the same thing, but that’s to emphasise how much distance is in between), but times when I can’t – because there are too many people on the side or the distance between the kiosk and the shops isn’t a sufficient enough to avoid contact with the sales people – I get my mean face on.

I make the effort to school my features into one of disinterest and slight annoyance so they don’t approach me and try and sell me stuff. I know they’re doing their job, but I just ugh, I don’t know. Maybe because I know I’m weak and I’ll give in and listen to whatever they’re saying and blindly believe them..especially when it comes to straighteners. I have a weakness for hair appliances. And sunglasses, but that’s for another day.

I was in the shops with Mother the other day and we were walking near a kiosk and I was whispering to Mother “Keep walking, don’t stop, don’t listen.” But the girl was handing out free samples and GOD who can say no to a free sample? Not my Mother apparently. So she reaches out to take the sample from the girl and – I totally saw this coming, by the way – the girl moves her hand away, just out of reach and says, “Can I ask you a question?” Sneaky.

And that was it.

The girl asked what hand cream Mother uses. Mother explained her problems with finding the right hand cream. The girl went on and on about how the product she’s selling is better than everything else in the world. She even rubbed some onto Mother’s hand, which was her mistake because Mother didn’t like the smell and therefore didn’t buy anything.

I was just thinking, if this was Bangladesh, the girl would have insulted us for wasting her time because we had no intention of buying anything. Awesome customer service there is over there.

It’s been a while…

Yes, it’s the sky. It’s not instagrammed.

The last sky-related post was a good 28 days ago.  Whoa.

Anyways, it looks really smoky. I don’t know if that’s just the clouds or actual smoke. There has been a constant smell of smoke around for the past few days because of all the controlled fires they’re setting off, to reduce chances of bush fires in summer.

This photo is instagrammed, obviously. Same day/time/angle. Just zoomed in and filtered

 

Mad Photography Skillz

My sister had some guests over and one of the younglings took my phone and went on a photo snapping spree of my sister’s house.

He didn’t let me see any of the photos until he was done.

It’s pretty cool, he took photos of random things that I rarely even look at when I’m there.

Yes, the main color scheme of my sister’s house is black, white and red.

Happy 31st Anniversary

It’s my parent’s 31st anniversary today. So I made 31 cupcakes.

31 cupcakes, for 31 crazy years.

Happy Anniversary!

The last 21 of those awesome years were because of me =)

I don’t mean to beat my own drum, but damn, those chocolate cupcakes were GOOD! Like really good!

The result of this heartfelt gesture? Mother expecting me to write on all cakes now. It clearly doesn’t take much to impress her if she wants block capital letters spelling stuff out.

Library

Stupid library. It’s so quiet, so eerily, intimidatingly quiet. One would think that the extreme quiet is perfect for students to concentrate, but it only magnifies even the slightest sound and that does nothing for concentration. My concentration, anyway.

Every sound is amplified – a scratch of a pen, the shuffle of papers, tapping of keyboards.

And someone is opening a packet of chips. I almost want to go and hug this person, whoever they are, for being gutsy enough to disrupt the suffocating silence.

It began with the soft rustle of wrapper against wrapper as the person tried in vain to tear that packet open without making any sound. They set themselves up to fail, really; there is no way you can hide opening any packaged food here without the entire floor knowing. The person then changed tactics and, after a slight pause, ripped the packet open quickly. There was a noise louder than they would have wanted, for sure, but it was over fast – like taking off a band aid – and it kind of leaves you thinking you imagined the last two minutes of painful, awkward rustling.

Sometimes I’m too afraid to listen to music. I can only study with slow, soft songs anyway. Anything with the slightest of a beat distracts me..and there goes my studying (like I need another excuse to not study). If it’s any kind of fast paced song, I feel like the people around me can hear the DOOF DOOF pounding through my earphones. And they judge my taste in music. And then send me hate telepathetically. Is that word even right? Whatevs.

It suddenly got really chilly. What is with the temperamental weather here? It’s not too bad outside, but walking up the steps in the library make me realise how really unfit I am – well I knew that already, I re-realise it – and then I’m all gross and sweaty. But after, like, five minutes of breathing heavily (maybe the oxygen concentration is higher up here) and getting my heart beat down to a less than erratic rate, I get cold. Stupid library air conditioning. I’m too cold to study now.