This person here, is an idiot. Please click on the image, all my comments have already been added to the image in question. Name and other major identifying elements have been removed to protect the hopelessly pretentious.

I really cannot stand pretentious people. I may not actually have read Naipaul, Greene, Golding and Rushdie - but I sure as hell know that they are known for their fiction work, not non-fiction, so what the hell (especially Golding and Rushdie!) are they doing on that person's 'non-fiction' list? The quote is also so holier-than-thou, OH LOOK AT ME I AM BETTER THAN YOU ARE, YOU JUST DON'T GET IT. Sorry kiddo, you've been exposed for the fool that you really are, did you really think you were so awesome that everyone else around you is stupid? GTFO please (AND what the hell are you doing in my !nk photo, get away from me, I've never seen you at any meetings before).

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I spent most of National Day Celebrations today taking pictures using Elliot's dslr, which was quite an eye opening experience because I had to operate under low light conditions + zoom which meant my shots were more susceptible to camera shake. This meant I had to find all sorts of angles to prop my body up against so I would shake less when taking pictures. I have also discovered that the two things on my torso are a hindrance when it comes to propping one's arms up. Dodgy :x

Afterwards Daryl, Arjun and I went to Vivocity. We ate at Superdog and Iordered chili cheese fries, which tasted really great, but I couldn't finish. Then we wandered off to Page One. After browsing about and picking up and putting down books like The Return of the Native and White Teeth, I bought 5 books using the $60 voucher my uncle gave me for my birthday. They are:

Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss
Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Marisha Pessl - Special Topics in Calamity Physics
Elie Wiesel - The Night Trilogy
Haruki Murakami - Kafka on the Shore

The first three books came in a set from penguin, and cost me about $30. What a steal! That's like $10 a book. I'm glad I never got around to buying Desai individually. Wiesel was the most expensive of the lot at $30, but after picking it up many times over many trips to Kino, I finally decided to get it. The last one I bought because it was on 20% discount, and it's a book Nic really recommended.

Daryl bought Henry James' Portrait of a Lady.

We then wandered over to Harbourfront Centre and bummed at McDonald's before heading over to Orchard to go to Borders so Arjun could spend his birthday book vouchers. He kept asking me for recommendations, but I felt really useless. Nothing there really jumped out at me either except this book I saw about giraffes and a James Frey book. There, we made a pact that if he read Soul Mountain, I'd read A House for Mr Biswas even though I dislike Naipaul. So he bought Soul Mountain, and I just added Biswas to my Amazon shopping cart.

From the books section, we also drifted over to the music section. I was very very impressed to see the music ("indie" anyone?) they had there, selling at ridiculously cheap prices. They even had Blonde Redhead's 23 for $23.95. I wasn't sure if I should buy it so, and so went about clutching it and scanning it into every music listening station I passed, like about 10 or so - so they all played 23. Yay. In the end I borrowed Daryl's card to buy it, but I only had $17 in cash. Oh no :o

This meant that I had to use my ATM card. Except I had no idea how to. Arjun had to prep me. "Just say 'I'm paying by nets' and look confident, like you know what you're doing". In the end I almost reached over and grabbed the wrong console, and started trembling slightly when I keyed in my password into the machine lest I get it wrong. What an adventure. What a lousy adventure. This reminds me of the time I was mildly stupefied when out with Daryl, Chong Wee, Arjun and Kaijun. They had to prep me on how to use an ATM machine to take out money. I am so fail.

Anyway I survived my first Nets incident! Hooray.

Happy National Day.

PS: CAMERA OBSCURA IS COMING TO THE ESPLANADE ON THE 29TH OCTOBER! I WANT TO GO. TICKETS $39.