Postcards from Penguin: One Hundred Book Covers in One Box

I want this so much!! But such a crazy price! And what can I ever do with them? Write postcards to my best friend Irving back and forth?

http://www.amazon.com/Postcards-Penguin-Hundred-Book-Covers/dp/0141044667/ref=pd_sim_b_37

This is a collection of 100 postcards, each featuring a different and iconic Penguin book jacket. From classics to crime, here are over seventy years of quintessentially British design in one box. In 1935 Allen Lane stood on a platform at Exeter railway station, looking for a good book for the journey to London. His disappointment at the poor range of paperbacks on offer led him to found Penguin Books. The quality paperback had arrived. Declaring that ‘good design is no more expensive than bad’, Lane was adamant that his Penguin paperbacks should cost no more than a packet of cigarettes, but that they should always look distinctive. Ever since then, from their original – now world-famous – look featuring three bold horizontal stripes, through many different stylish, inventive and iconic cover designs, Penguin’s paperback jackets have been a constantly evolving part of Britain’s culture. And whether they’re for classics, crime, reference or prize-winning novels, they still follow Allen Lane’s original design mantra. Sometimes, you definitely should judge a book by its cover.

Spelling your name – from Corey

Yesterday, afternoon while we were preparing Sunday lunch at La Madone a spilled box of alphabet pasta brought a flood of memories to the surface. Don’t you just love when out of the blue something comes and taps you on your shoulder bringing you a memory that causes you to stop and smile?

The alphabet pasta spilled on the floor, it was an accident that reminded me of my Mother.
She made chores into a game. Spilled milk was after all was not a big deal when we were taught that cleaning it up is far more fun than crying about it.

 

Concentration.

On a snowy day a box of spilled pasta spells out a memory as warm as any hug.

The tweeting cat;

I must be very much one of those crazy cat owners for I actually found this terribly adorable ^-^

Very busy at classes, have not had much sleep and have been rushing tutorials like a mad rabbit. The mad rush will end next Tuesday with a lighter schedule next week, however! Sorry to my dear Irving who has been made to tolerate my phonic absences!

To cheer you up, a lovely song I found just for you:

For you’re my tale too good to be true…~It’s a tale in itself that we’ve found each other. We could just as easily have never met…or was our meeting set before we were born? Who knows? Not you. Who knows? Not I. We know nothing now, we know nothing today.

Somehow, reading this reminded me of us shuckling oysters in your kitchen or eating strawberry pokky near International Hall. And today I was reading a psychology book on how people think favourably of others if we are in their company while having our meals. We are more like cats than we realize!

Pardon my very feline slant, for Carlo Rino recently launched a kitty-friendly bag collection entitled ‘Pawfect Friendship” which features little paw prints over cute little totes and bags! My favourite item of the collection has to be this red kitty carrier…if my cat sat in it it would have been her proudest moment in sleek red!

I was so happy to find that I had won Carlo Rino’s recent photograph competition, and I received a dear little kitty document folder with those little paw prints I mentioned and a kitty keychain! I adore it to bits, and, ironically, will be keeping it away from Tempura!

On the same crimson path, I love my Wizard of Oz red shoes. I designed the bow myself, you know, and drew the cut and gave the measurements. I am fanatical about shoe molds I love, so I have the same pair in pale nude, and mustard. Dreadfully boring, but in my mind they are like Cluedo characters…Was it Lady Scarlet, and Colonel Mustard?

**psss….see that package to the side? Its a new bag I got from a trade! I’m a magpie for a reason, and this bag makes my wings flutter! I’ve never been a big fan of Coach, but I fell hook, line and sinker when I saw their version of the Pink Spotlight XL Tote…(you have to admit you’ll carry it, E!)

More pictures soon when I take it for mid-week adventures!

Miss America takes the stand…

I spent the day after lectures procrastinating generally and reading Agatha Christie’s Spider Web (absolutely captivating book, I finished it in one sitting and it is my favourite play of hers to date!) and Robert Cialdini’s Influence (quite an interesting start, though it reads abit like the Encyclopedia of Cults) over shrimps and clam chowder at LJS. Following, I stormed around rooms and did my usual fanatical round of laptop polishing and labelling of files (the earnestness of my new personal life documentation systems) and futile instruction of Cat. Suddenly at 3am, it dawns on me after tossing and turning over a furry feline body that I have too much on my mind, and I suddenly feel inspired to finish my client’s conveyancing attendance note at 3am. So really, my discipline is a strange creature like that.

I wish I am more consistent, and yet I secretly feel glad I have secret bouts of passion, even as I feel guilty over the lumps of inactivity inbetween where I sip of apple juice and think of nothing, and think that Agatha Christie novels are indeed, contributing something to the mind (in truth they are just my guilty pleasure).  It would be interesting, finding out the little guilty pleasures of strangers.

I haven’t written detailed letters to the people I’ve meant to, or attended the dinners and jazz events I’ve promised to, or the afternoon teas I’ve craved for. Its a busy period this few weeks, hopefully the tide will change the next few weeks!

Meanwhile, an adorable video, which includes, amongst other, the art of self cross-examination and diversity as perceived by Miss America:

Marina Bay Sands

Roses turn;

I know there has been plenty of bad love on Glee for musical lovers, but I do adore Kurt Hummel in this version of Roses Turn, he is my little Mr. Cellophane for the stage! He feels a little timeless, part of the new and yet reminiscient of the magic of the old. What do you think?

Yesterday and before it was a mad rush to finish my criminal procedure tutorial! Today it will be a mad rush to finish my conveyancing attendance note. And don’t laugh at me, for I woke up thinking of waffles with treacle and jam.

Marcus and I received news of our passes in the CFA examination! We are both so relieved and for me it will be a good break before the next level (I figured that I won’t be able to prepare in time for next June’s examination, given my December examinations), and kudos to Marcus for getting an excellent score in his papers! Marcus has been my shifu in this period especially since he learnt many of the concepts for CFA in his finance degree, and often he would laugh at me in my weird way of thinking and deducing about questions haha!

Some absolutely impractical collections in my recent wardrobe…including some adorable gifts from K (and the pink charm barbie necklace!) 

And  the lovely pair of blue Marie Antoinette shoes which I haven’t been able to wear yet (but I love the handiwork of O.H who did a beautiful job with the bows). You might remember this pair, Beansprouts!

I so understand this little passage TLP wrote…

They don’t understand, when they give it to you, that they bleed out all the joy. That stars become specks of sand and flowers fade to paper cuts. Magic should never be homework, then it wouldn’t be magic. Homework de-magics things, you see, even if you write it with quill and yellow parchment, it comes out all inkblots. I need to know about ships, and about conjurers and manticores, but I just want to play outside and read my books and sing. Forgetting shoulds and s’posed tos. It never goes away, you know, even when you’re all grown up, they just stop checking up on you. Somehow that makes it harder.

 

Magic by Skylark

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Rose said “it’s messy and meaningless, a cosmic excuse for anything too difficult to explain.” She bit the blade of grass in half, savouring the bittergreen flavour.
“Then what do you call it,” asked the red haired boy “if it isn’t just an accident?” He liked the way the sun fringed her eyelashes, which were unusually pale and long. If he could he wanted to keep this conversation going forever, just the two of them on the bridge, but the sun would set eventually.
“Magic!” she whispered, with a frightening intensity. “I believe in Magic, and Fate and golden apples and Hades and unicorns in the glen.” She looked at him, waiting for a response. He didn’t laugh, instead he tossed his leaf in to the stream and watched it drift lazily beneath them and out of sight.

My bff’s favourite colour is green, and

My new weekend nail colour – Chanel’s nouvelle vague. I love the mint and it makes me happier for anything! Tripping around in a long white tulle swanlake skirt and mint shoes makes me think one can read chapters of criminal procedure and maintain one’s sanity.

On cameras – I love the Diana f+ personally amongst all the toy cameras (though I also admit to using often toyediting software by Toycamera Analogcolour, a software I recommend from Pentacom – (http://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/toycamera_analogcolor/) It is less romantic than taking your own holga and crossprocessing pictures but still it is a sweet little tool for editing.

I hope I finish my homework in time to commiserate with Beansprouts!

I also love the hearts on my new mint shoes, it is my brightest pair but who can fault me on the weekend! I shall go back to being a penguin on Monday.

Advocacy yesterday wasn’t too bad, but still quite tiring. Cross examination is much more difficult than I thought, although I enjoy it! I still have secret envy for barristers.

I was reading the trial transcripts of Oscar Wilde, (from the way Irving Younger raved about Sir Edward Clarke), and came across this adorable part:

W–I met him on the beach at Worthing.  He was such a bright happy boy that it was a pleasure to talk to him.  I bought him a walking stick and a suit of clothes and a hat with a bright ribbon, but I was not responsible for the ribbon.  (Laughter.)
G–You made handsome presents to all these young fellows?
W–Pardon me, I differ.  I gave two or three of them a cigarette case: Boys of that class smoke a good deal of cigarettes.  I have a weakness for presenting my acquaintances with cigarette cases.
G–Rather an expensive habit if indulged in indiscriminately, isn’t it?
W–Less extravagant than giving jewelled garters to ladies. (Laughter.)

Reminds me (I don’t know why) of that Michael Ondaatje passage from Divisadero:

And as the music ended he saw her, like a woman in a romance, pull from her cotton sleeve a note that she pushed into his breast pocket. It would burn there unread for another hour as he danced and talked with in-laws who did not matter to him, who got in the way, whose bloodline connection to him or his wife he could not care less about. Everything that was important to him existed suddenly in the potency of Marie-Neige. He could tell what the shallow frieze of the wedding party that surrounded them would continue to be, and yet the one he knew best – he could notconceive how she would behave or respond to him in a week, or even in an hour. She had stepped into more than his arms for a dance, had waited for the precise seconds so it was possibly and socially forgivable- the sunlit wedding procession, the eternal meal- and she had passed him a billet-doux as if they were within a Dumas. The note she had written said Good-bye. Then it said Hello. And then it reminded him that A message sent by pigeon to The Hague can sometimes change everything. She had, like one of those partially villainous and always evolving heroines, turned his heart over on the wrong day.

相聚離開都有時候，沒有什麼會永垂不朽，可是我有時候，寧願選擇留戀不放手。

陪我看細水長流。。

﹣﹣﹣﹣﹣紅豆

Hope everyone has a lovely minty weekend~!

 

White Daisies

you know not how to love, you know not how.
in vain I loved you so.

you know not how to love, you know not how.
And you will never know.

– The Age of Reason, Jean Paul Sartre

After a night belting out old Japanese and Chinese favourites (anyone remembers the old Jeff Chang tunes?), I am unfortunately not in very much of a mood to start on criminal procedure! But the cat must be fed, spinach must be eaten etc. and I expect to languish in the first chapter of bailable and non-bailable offences in a short moment.

My saving grace – hana maki. I wonder if you know of this, Beansprouts, but this is very much my favourite studying snack, ever. Salmon rolled with rice and good mayonaise, with some roe on top. Blueberry/cranberry juice. Yes, I am strange like that.

I read The Art of Cross-Examination by Francis Wellman to prepare for advocacy on Saturday and it was absolutely brilliant. Really recommend it for all the lawyers. I think advocacy is very much my favourite part of the course. If you were here, Beansprouts, I will be cross-examining you in the simplest things, like for instance, (gasp) discover if you were the one who ate my century-egg porridge, even if the current evidence is hearsay (Mama Yau says Little Beansprouts ate the porridge).

Recently I have been enamoured with…Yves Saint Lauren’s cage sandals. Aren’t they a dear? But I heard they hurt like anything and no one can survive more than an hour of wear. Still, imagine the exciting grimaces.

“Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and they were all yellow…” – Coldplay

Yellow is very much my new favourite colour. I crave a pair of bright yellow heart-heel pumps, and a DKNY yellow chiffon original – but in their absence the lovely girls of ATBU have ‘smooched’ a darling substitute in what they call the fluorescent ‘sugar rush bandeau’ dress. Tabio has also done a sweet version of mini bow ribbon tights, and I love bows on anything.

Nothing quite like walking by the river dreaming of places and discovering hidden cats and secret dimsum places (and coming across swearing traders). In those moments I was transported back to the time when I was a youngish 17, watching plays nearby and the pasta and wine sessions at night – and feeling as though life was full of possibilities! Each time I am in the area I always end up undoubtedly lost, and never do I know the proper names and ways of the area, except that I turn up here again absurdly at different parts of my life, each time with a different person, and each time with a different agenda in my life. How strange, and this time even the chocolate shop has transformed into some Asian restaurant with soccer and beer beckoning in the distance.

I was searching for an old restaurant of my past – but it was no longer situated there. When I was a child, we would go there for our Sunday weekly fancies, and I recall the most wholesome chicken and buttered corn dishes, a delicious array of puff pastry soups, baked potato with bacon bits, and the rainbow sundae afterwards. I was always a bit of an obsessive child (and admitably an even more obsessive young adult), and had the same thing almost every week (with the occasional change in soups). Many things which once defined what I remember of childhood Sundays are now gone.

John Keats wrote, in one of his last letters to Fanny Brawne, “I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death. O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute. I hate the world: it batters too much the wings of my self-will, and would I could take a sweet poison from your lips to send me out of it. From no others would I take it”.

Often living seems to be like that…we share two amber thoughts in the same moment.