Crazy Rich Asians

Crazy Rich Asians – I have just finished reading the #CrazyRichAsians trilogy by Kevin Kwan. I have enjoyed reading the book. 🙂 I have bookmarked a lot of pages, mostly, the pages where food is described. 🙂 They seem delicious and if given the opportunity, I’d like to try them. Kevin was very considerate in adding footnotes to explain the meaning of this Cantonese word or that Mandarin term. But what I found myself “Googling” are images of #Cleverleys or #Beidermeier or such other fashion or design terms.

I have also just watched the movie and enjoyed it as well. 🙂  I watch Constance Wu in Fresh Off the Boat and I am very familiar with her acting. Henry Golding – I find very charming. 🙂 And what a delight to see Kris Aquino. She looks good in her scenes. My first impression when I saw her in that yellow dress – Cory Aquino.

Here’s my favourite quote from the trilogy. This one is from Rich People Problems. “Sometimes, the thing that at first appears flawed can end up being the most perfect thing in the world for you.” A very wise advise from Ah Ma to Astrid.

 

Best of times, worst of times

I just finished reading “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens. I can’t remember how many times I have read this book over the years. I love the beginning line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” I also love the different plots in the novel. I agree with Alex Trebek when he said to a Jeopardy contestant who is also a booklover that every time you read the same book, it’s a totally different experience. Sometimes you forget what a book is about after a long time, but what I couldn’t forget about this book is Sydney’s ultimate sacrifice at the end.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” It seems this line applies to my life at the present. Ending a long-time relationship may sound like it could be the worst of time in someone’s life, but if it’s a bad, explosive relationship, it could mean that it could also be the best decision someone makes. But of course, when we talk about relationships, there are always emotions involved. And that’s what makes it suck big time. I had wanted to leave a long time ago and it’s not like I left on a whim. I have thought about it very carefully and I don’t have any regrets.

A few weeks ago, I was given two awards at work. Perfect Attendance and 100% Quality for the year 2010. “How did you pull that off?” asked a co-worker. I honestly don’t know. I guess instead of wallowing in self pity and despair last year, I just really tried to focus on something else – work. And I guess it worked! And I’m very proud of these achievements. But the irony of it is this. Later that same day when I received these awards, I was at my lawyer’s office finally signing my separation agreement. It has been a long process drafting that document, going back and forth with my ex’s lawyer, trying to bargain on how much I should get from the division of our conjugal assets and liabilities. In the end, I agreed to what the ex wanted, just so I could get the money in my hands already (well it will go to my bank, actually.)

“Hardworking, niceheart. Life’s not fair, eh?” My lawyer greeted me when I showed up at his office.

“Well, it’s not.”

“How do you put up with it?”

“Well, I have already accepted that that’s the way he is and this is the way it’s gonna be.”

I could have fought it in Court, but as my lawyer has explained to me, I might end up losing more in the end.

What I have learned in life, especially during the time I have spent with this person, is that you have to choose which battles to fight. Not all of them are worth fighting for. And when you think you have lost in one aspect of your life, just look at the rewards and blessings you have. That’s how you move on with your life. That’s how I move on with my life.

Running With Augusten Burroughs

Let me just finish writing about Augusten Burrough’s memoirs before I forget what I’ve read.

I loved A Wolf at the Table so much that I just had to get his other books. After searching the second hand bookstores in my area, I found three more of his books. What can I say? I love this guy. I was reading Dry on the bus when the young woman sitting next to me said, “He’s one of my favourite authors.” Actually, she said it after I closed the book. And yeah, now, he’s also become one of my favourite authors.

In Running With Scissors, Augusten writes about his painful childhood. In the first chapter titled, “Something Isn’t Right,” he must have already known at ten years old that there’s something wrong with his mother. She wasn’t seeing Dr. Finch, the psychiatrist, just because of her marital problems, but because she’s crazy, as in psychotic crazy. His father was cold and distant and by the second chapter, his parents are already divorced. It was an explosive divorce.

When he was 13, his mother left him to live with the Finches because she could no longer handle him. The Finches were an eccentric and dysfunctional family.

I could relate to Augusten’s story. I was twelve when my parents separated and it was also an explosive separation. I was 15 when mother left me and my sister to live with relatives. Also a dysfunctional family. I love them dearly, but that’s the truth. I grew up in a dysfunctional family and was sent away to live in another dysfunctional family. But when I say dysfunctional, I say it like it is a term of endearment. (Sorry, folks. But I do love you all.)

Just when you think that you had a tough childhood, you read something like this and you feel lucky that this childhood didn’t happen to you. And once again, here’s a memoir that relates about the pains of growing up, about one’s trials and tribulations early in life. And it was written so beautifully and injected with humour. I think there’s only a chosen few who can do that.

I’ve read quite a few memoirs already and I think that the best way to relate about a painful childhood or experience is to either write it beautifully or with humour, or better yet, both.

Just a few interesting notes that I like to point out after reading this book:

Dr. Finch encouraged his children and patients to shout, scream, confront. Because as he said, if you don’t let the anger out, it will kill you. I do agree that sometimes it feels better when you let off the steam, but I don’t know, a shouting family? Is that any healthier?

Augusten said that the Finches showed him that you could make your own rules. Your life was your own and no adult should be allowed to shape it for you. At one point in the book, Augusten said that while he was living with the Finches, he had freedom. There were no rules at the Finches’ house, yet he felt trapped. “I wanted to break free. But free from what? And that was the problem. Because I didn’t know what I wanted to break free from. I was stuck.”

When Augusten was still living with his mother and he didn’t want to go to school, she wouldn’t force him and she would let him stay at home with her. When he was also living with the Finches, he’d skip school and the doctor even helped him stage a suicide attempt just so he’d have a valid reason to stay out of school. But he had to spend a month in a psychiatric hospital. I know, that’s just sick and weird.

Augusten also wrote about how he’d rather stay at home and write in his journal. I wonder if all memoirists kept journals. I’ve always wondered how they can remember details vividly from their childhood.

In Dry, Augusten writes about his life in advertising and about his alcoholism. His co-workers did an intervention and he agreed to check into rehab. He became sober and attended AA meetings. In this memoir, we get a glimpse of the life of this gay guy in his twenties struggling to fight the urge to drink and let go of his baggage. He wasn’t supposed to date anybody in his AA group, but he became involved with someone in his group.

I found it interesting how he, a gay guy, describes his feelings towards somebody that he’s attracted to. It’s the same feelings and emotions that I have experienced towards anybody that I have been attracted to. Gay or straight, we’re all the same. In Dry, I like how he wrote about his sexual feelings. It was so sweet and he wrote about it in sort of a discreet way.

In Running With Scissors, I was shocked at how he described his first sexual encounter, with a gay guy. But he wrote Running from his point of view as a child. I guess, when you have been taken advantage of at age 13, it will stick in your mind as a nasty experience. And there’s just no other way of saying it.

Dry is written like a novel and I love how he wrote it with his self-deprecating sense of humor. In the book, he used the word riveting to describe one of the stories that was shared in his group. Riveting is how I found his story. This has been a page-turner for me.

Magical Thinking is a collection of true stories. Funny, amusing, entertaining, and just brilliant writing. A couple of memorable ones are the one about his cleaning lady who was trying to rip him off and how he outsmarted her, and the one where he tried to kill a rat in his New York apartment. Magical Thinking is also the title of one of the stories in this book. Magical thinking, he explains, is the belief that we can influence events by thinking about them. Like for instance, how he willed his partner to let him have a dog, or how at 34, he decided to stop being an alcoholic and become a New York Times bestselling author. And look at him now.

I believe my youngest son has this (power?) influence, too. On November 1st, he came home complaining how he was forced to sign up for volleyball. Now, I don’t really think that he was forced against his will. The good mother and motivator that I am, I tried to sell it to him. Oh, that’s a good activity for you. You’ll get the exercise that you need. Still, he complained and begged me to not let him go to the tournament that was happening at the end of the month. But what’s the point of all these lessons and practice? Just go, I told him. The night before the tournament, he got ill. He had a fever and he had to stay home the next day. Coincidence or magical thinking?

Read my movie review of Running With Scissors here.

A Wolf at the Table

A few years ago, I watched the movie Running With Scissors. It was based on the book, a memoir, by Augusten Burroughs. It is about the time he spent with his mother’s psychiatrist, a dysfunctional family. I thought it was funny.

So when I saw Augusten Burroughs’ A Wolf at the Table at McNally Robinson, I got interested in buying and reading it. A Wolf at the Table is Augusten’s memoir about his father, mostly about his life before Running With Scissors, when he was still little.

He wrote about how he couldn’t remember his father at all before he was six years old. He remembers being two years old and living at the farmhouse with his mother and brother and crawling under the neighbor’s bushes, but he couldn’t remember his father. He must have felt his presence on the stairs leading to the basement, but he couldn’t remember his face, him being there.

His first memory of his father was when he and his mother came back home from Mexico. They went away because his mother said that his father was dangerous. Now that they’re reunited, Augusten describes how it was at home. His parents hated each other and they were always fighting. He describes his relationship with his father – how he pushed him away when he wanted to sit on his lap; how he gave him a baseball mitt but wouldn’t play with him and show him how to catch a ball with it; how he terrified him with his tempers and “mind games.” He also tells about his fear of turning out like his father.

I think it was a very honest account of his life as a young boy. This is the first book by Augusten that I’ve read. I haven’t read any of his books yet at that time. But I found out on the internet that he’s known for writing his memoirs with humor, except for this one. Even if this one isn’t funny, I already started to like him as an author. Although he wrote about his sad life, it doesn’t drag you down. But it tugs at your heart. You read sad stories where you feel sympathy for the author or the main character, but it’s not what I felt for Augusten. Rather I felt empathy for him. Maybe it’s just me. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s just a very honest story that anybody who has longed for a parent’s attention, especially a father’s attention could very well relate too.

In one of the final chapters of the book, Augusten wrote, ”I used to believe I couldn’t grow up right without a father, that I would ever be ‘normal’ without one. But maybe a father is really a luxury after all. Maybe you could grow up without one.”

Father – a luxury? So sad but it’s true. And yes, there are lots of kids who grew up without fathers and they turned out alright. (Myself included) But I also want to point out that I think this is changing. I’m seeing a new trend in our current generation of fathers. I think they are now more involved in their children’s lives, even with the higher rates of divorce nowadays, we see ex-couples with joint custody of their children or the fathers regularly visiting their children.

Spoilers:

I just want to say that I loved the ending of the book. It is so touching. Augusten ended it with an epilogue. It’s about how he felt this other father’s pride and love for his son who was graduating from Medical School. Augusten has never felt it from his own father and he thought that he would never ever feel it. But this man’s love for his son was so strong and it overpowered him and it leaked into him. And he felt it. He felt that love. And I was like, Wow!

New Moon: My Movie Review

I watched New Moon with my girl friend this past weekend. We talk about the books that we read and the movies that we watch but this is the first time we ever went to the movies together. It was nice.

I like New Moon. And I love Taylor Lautner as Jacob Black. He’s cute, he’s hot and “he’s sort of beautiful.” 🙂 Now I find Taylor more appealing than Robert Pattinson. I apologize to Rob’s fans. Not that I don’t like him. But just look at the bulked up, dark and smiling Jacob and then turn to the pale, slender, and always brooding Edward Cullen. Don’t you just want to turn your eyes back to Jacob again?

Robert is a lot more good looking without the pale Edward make-up and the restrained look. I’ve seen him on The Ellen Degeneres Show and yes, I did find him appealing on that interview. He was smiling and laughing and he’s sort of humble. And I like that kind of personality in a person, celebrity or not.

In New Moon, Edward left Bella. Heartbroken, she turns to Jacob for comfort. The movie stayed pretty close to the book, although there were a few changes and they weren’t that bad. As usual, it’s exciting to see the characters that we’ve only read about in the books, like the werewolves and the Volturi.

The movie is better than Twilight, as I hoped it would be. I’ve read a movie review of New Moon where the critic had a problem with the acting. It was flat, he said. I don’t even know what that means. I’ll have to look it up. How are lovesick teenagers supposed to act anyway? The acting was okay for me.

The only thing that I wish they could have done better was the transformation of the werewolves. One second, Paul and Jacob are human, and the next, they’re werewolves. The special effects are great, but I just wish that they could have shown how they have transformed a little bit slowly so we could see maybe at least a close up of the face changing into that of a wolf’s. After all, this is the first time we see them transform.

But overall, I like New Moon. Can’t wait to see Eclipse. And did I hear it right? It’s going to be shown in June? Only seven more months.

Read my New Moon Book Review here.