stuff

Got this off Squirt's blog. It's Time's 100 Greatest Novels. There are plenty of such lists around, and there's always some fault with each of them. Everyone's got their own list of 100 greatest novels. So I'm going through the list just to see if I've read some of the novels that some people call the 'greatest'.

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume
The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Beloved - Toni Morrison (have the book, haven't read it)
The Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (have the book, haven't read it)
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder
Call It Sleep - Henry Roth
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
The Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather
A Death in the Family - James Agee
The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance - James Dickey
Dog Soldiers - Robert Stone
Falconer - John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles (yes, I've actually read this book.)
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (only an abridged version)
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (picked it up, never finished it)
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
Herzog - Saul Bellow
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison (on my list of books to read)
Light in August - William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis (the whole series too)
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
Loving - Henry Green
Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis
The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Money - Martin Amis
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
Native Son - Richard Wright
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 - George Orwell
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Possession - A.S. Byatt (maybe the book will be better than the movie)
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Rabbit, Run - John Updike
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John le Carre
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise - Don DeLillo (on my personal reading list)
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (bought the book, haven't read it)

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In other news, my car got a flat tyre yesterday. The short story is that it's now changed FOC.

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Some appliance in my house short circuited the entire flat. And my grandmother waited 2 hours in the dark, and would have just spent the rest of the night like that if I hadn't come home and decided that something should be done.

Bunch of pictures

Took a few pictures over the last few weeks, but just didn't feel like updating. So here goes:

Celebrated my Baobei's birthday a few weeks ago. Went to Settler's Cafe at Katong, then headed to Hong Kong Cafe? I think that's the name, to have dinner/supper. My lovely girls waited with me for my bus before crossing the road to head home.


Picture 306: My Darling being coy.



Picture 307: Baobei being cute.



Picture 308: Me and the birthday girl.


Went for the Fireworks Festival on Friday. Parked at Esplanade. Omg, please don't park at Esplande unless you got lots of cash to spare, like those rich people who can spend a few hundred on drama productions. It's $4 an hour. I didn't get a lot of nice pictures, but I got a nice video. Too bad there's a tree right smack across my line of vision. Bo bian. Only got there around 8plus.


Picture 309: Fireworks...



Picture 310: Fireworks...



Picture 311: And more fireworks.


And finally, the pictures that some of you have been waiting for...


Picture 312: My new car. It's not second-hand.



Picture 313: I put two stuffed toys on each side. I used to get stuffed toys for my birthday, and I never knew what to do with them. So the other day, I threw them all into the washing machine, and then threw them into my car. The rabbit is from Jaime-san, the giraffe from someone I don't talk to anymore. On the other side are two bears, one Tatty Bear from Stas, and the blue one is the Science fac bear. Yes larh, I bought it larh. Support support ma.



Picture 314: Side view of my car. Btw, it's a Hyundai Getz 1.1M. 

Btw, before you start saying, "Wah!! So rich ah! Buy car ah! Father-mother sponsership, right?" Let me tell you that although my mother encouraged me to get a car (because the journey to and from school is quite far), I am paying for the car myself. Petrol, road tax, season parking, cashcard top-ups, insurance, the whole works, I'm paying for it. And before you say, "Wah, earning so much ah!" Let me tell you that I'm not using the car for leisure. After paying for all of the above, where got money to go chiong?! Also, only one person actually intuitively got the intention of the car. I am quite surprised actually, that someone could actually understand the rationale of the car.

Graduation - More Pictures (the only way I know)

Picture 290: Me and my brother.



Picture 291: Piggy Fren and her little soft toy.



Picture 292: Don't really recall why I was posing with this.



Picture 293: Me and the huge banner outside UCC.



Picture 294: Obligatory picture with the cardboard pieces the school set up behind UCC.



Picture 295: Acting hiao.



Picture 296: Moving on to the smaller board...



Picture 297: Ready? One... Two...



Picture 298: Three! Obligatory picture of graduate throwing mortar into the air. Cannot lose it in a crowd k; it's rented.



Picture 299: Moving back to the big board with a couple of balloons we filched from the ground.



Picture 300: Acting hiao again, posing on the steps. I say "acting", because we are really sweet people who aren't hiao in the least.



Picture 302: This is where we studied for a couple of maths exams, specifically MA2213 (I think).



Picture 303: Bachelor of Science (Mathematics).



Picture 304: A picture with Uncle, where I am not doing anything funny to him.



Picture 305: Bye bye, NUS. 

If you're wondering why all the pictures have the same few people in them... Well, it's because they were the only people around to take so many pictures with.

Graduation - Pictures

Pic 369: Piggy Fren and me, and her little MashiMaro thingie.



Pic 270: Alex and me! Haven't seen him in a long long time.



Pic 271: Me and Daniel, also known as Piggy Fren's official photographer for the day.



Pic 272: Piggy Fren no have steady hands.



Pic 273: Kang and me. He flew back specially (not for me) from I-don't-know-where to be around for the after-ceremony.



Pic 274: Piggy Fren and me waving our scrolls about.



Pic 275: How come she no smile bright bright like me???



Pic 276: My bestest secondary school friend. Quick, she's still unattached, who wants her number?



Pic 277: Victor "High On Coffee" Cheng. I think he smiled so much that his face is permanently stuck on bug-eyed mode. He abandoned his gf for so long larh, the poor girl was just hanging around waiting for him. Lousy bf! *wags finger*



Pic 278: Another one of those silly Maths major/English Studies minor person. d= Met her in Sem1, and just kept ending up taking same modules with her.



Pic 279: Me and Uncle Brown Nut!!!! He looks constipated, as usual.



Picture 280: Me and the smartest girl I know. She is like, so smart. I like this picture, the lighting was just right.



Picture 281: The funny part about this photo is that we were both muttering under our breaths in Chinese, "Eh, hurry up can. Very hot, very hot!!! The sun shining on us, can hurry up or not!!!"



Picture 282: Bullying Uncle again.



Pic 283: And again. *jabs his stomach*



Pic 284: My beloved Baobei.



Pic 285: Both of us in our gowns!!! I completely forgot that we took a picture in our gowns!



Pic 286: I love this picture. Love you, Baobei!!!



Pic 287: Must bao bao!



Pic 288: Cannot forget to take picture of Uncle in his gown.



Pic 289: Class of 2006. 

Graduation

Sometimes when you hit a rough patch, you really want to just lie down and yell at the world. And the thing about it, no matter how many kind-hearted souls are out there, you'll just keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing them away. Sooner or later, they'll go away, and you'll say, "They never really cared anyway." Do these people who go away know that if they go, you'll really have no one left?

I am deeply grateful for Uncle Brown Nut who came all the way down early, even though his convocation was only at 2plus, and he even hung around helping me take pictures and holding my cameras and a whole lot of other boring shit. Out of all the people who said they would turn up, he's the only friend who actually bothered. Thanks, Uncle, you're always the best.

I am also thankful for my Baobei who came to school in a taxi because she didn't want to be late to meet me. She could have easily said that she'd be late, and take the mrt or bus down to save money, but she took a taxi down instead. Thank you for being the one other friend who came and took of picture with me in my gown.

Pictures to follow.

Wedding Pictures

Last weekend, I attended the wedding/s of one of my Kendo seniors. Was quite a packed weekend! Here are some pictures, cos I wasn't really in camera-whoring mode.


Pic 360: The church.



Pic 361: The hamsum bridegroom, looking smart in his No. 1.



Pic 362: Twinny and me.



Pic 363: Godspeed and me. Either he is taller than I thought, or my heels aren't as tall as I hoped.



Pic 364: Enginger and me, him being the melodramatic person that he is. He is about to attack a small cube of oreo cheesecake.



Pic 365: I love capturing people at awkward times. Enginger's drinking punch while Godspeed's chewing something.


That's all for the church wedding. After that, I went home to take my ez-link card, cos I forgot to bring it out, then went out with some friends. No pictures from there! I got like, the most terrible chafs from my new wedges. I'd take a picture of them, but I'm too lazy to walk out to the living room. Those shoes are KILLERS. And to think that I may potentially have to wear them and walk ten minutes to the school I'm posted to... *dies*

Had grading the next morning. After I was done, I asked Michael for permission to leave, and then rushed to Saizou's place with help from Enginger. Saizou's dog is really lazy, and so nuah. And it wants to be sayang so much... Tsk. Spoilt dog! But very cute larh. d= Got the results of my grading when I was at the wedding lunch, and I kaypoh-ed about people's results.


Pic 366: Peepee's ocifers. It's blurry cos the zoom on my camera is shit lousy.


After the lunch, me and Saizou went down to Borders to meet some of the Kendo people to walk walk. I bought a book, then we went to Taka to walk around. Had Mos Burger for dinner, and... I don't really remember what else we did.


Pic 368: Saizou and me! She has yet to send me her pictures. I taught her how to change exposure in her camera, and I would bet she's eternally grateful.