Han-o,

My reading habits, during the school year, are sketchy. It might take me a month to finish a book I want to read, because there are other things I have to read. When I am not at school, I'll read 3 or 4 books a week. I read anything, but lately I've been trying to get into science fiction. Mostly because I previously have not enjoyed it, but am trying to. I don't know if I am a speed reader. I know people who read faster than I do, but I don't know if they are comprehending.

I leave for Dublin 1 month from today. Should be interesting.

I have a question for you, joli, how would you describe your reading habits. Also how would you describe your method of speed reading?

Joli! I am going to be in the UK. I'm not going home this Christmas. Happy b-day! May spring be visited upon by anti-histamine gods who dislike the allergic tone of the season.

i encourage song.

stop drop and roll.

merci beaucoup mr. duckmonger!

HAN. Where will you be this dec?

Today is my birthday. I am 22 years old now. 8 years away from 30.

I will write more later but I am having a sneezing fit right now. Damn you, Spring!

"I love the mix of journalism and cynicism". Christ, I thought that was clever at the time. Bali? Why? they didn't bomb your legs off? You and your sympathy genes have no effect on me. Fuck. Excuse me, I'm in a funk today.
That's the sweetness of Granta, Joli, cheap, high-brow reading. Oh why didn't I think of it in the first place, I could've started the Victorian porno genre (cheap yet highbrow?) fuck that's been done too. Speaking of which a lesbian scene was aired in some adaptation of some racy novel from some period (I pride myself on accuracy). "Tipping the velvet", I heard it was god-awful, but then again I cannot complain against that kind of thing, it's against my political leanings.
Read something about a porno being banned in New Zealand because the health minister invoked the little known law that maternity wards cannot be the place of explicit sexual stuff. "I'll never see a civil facility used like that ever". heh. Little did she know the secret of maternity wards. Porno makes me want to say "Shit Blazes!".

ssh, don't tell anyone, but australians frighten the shit out of me.

i saw some 2 dollar back issues of granta and i thought of you han-of-the-willow.

han, if you'll be in ireland, i will go. i don't know where the fuck i am going to stay, but i guess things will fall into place. at the moment things don't look good though, i will work it out.

I'll be around the place, Joli. I haven't decided what I'll be doing in the cold, winter months, but a certainty is I won't be returning to Malaysia quite yet. So I'll be in the UK, meaning I can probably see you in Ireland.

I'm in the middle of The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell's third book, and I love the mix of journalism and cynacism in his writing. I'm also reading Harold Bloom's "How to Read and Why" and having bought a couple Granta magazines as well, I fully intend on reading them short stories, there's even an edition on Australia where Howard Jacobsen describes being likened to Christ then a poofter, then of stealing their womyn, "it was not the first time I had been called both the saviour and a sodomite", hehe. You Australians and your australian sensibilities. ach! :)

my trip to ireland is in jeapordy. unless there are people that want to hang out with me.

I have been reading War of the Worlds for about a month now, and I am having trouble getting into it because I am imagining the aliens in the book to be like those who are on the Simpsons. Big, tentacled, drooling things. The book is ruined for me. RUINED. I am trying to read it as an allegory, which does nice things for me. Other than that I am elbow deep in the Bible, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Divine Comedy (Inferno), and Homer's Odyssey. That is because I am writing an essay on the subject of hell in selected literature. Fun, yes. Useful? No. :D

I am going to be in Dublin from the 1st until 14th of December. I am going with a friend, an English lad who has lived in Australia for some 16 years. Originally I was going to stay with Imran (he said it was okay), but a few days ago he told me that it's not okay, because his girlfriend is disapproving. So now I'm going to be hosteling/hotelling it. After that I'm off to NYC, Washington DC, Chicago for a varying amounts of time, then San Francisco to visit my grandma for about a month. Then back to Melbourne to finish uni!

I think we are the only ones to use blogger instead of email, etc.

We should all convene, if we are in close proximity.