So, here i go, i am again writing about a book written by Mary Janice Davidson, because frankly speaking, i've kinda gotten addicted to her books...i know, it's horribly juvenile, and the language is so simple, i should be reading more serious stuff... but i digress...

anyway, on with the story

Main character: Elizabeth Taylor ( not THAT elizabeth taylor, this is Betsy Taylor, but they do poke fun at her name)

What happens: she dies in an accident, and instead of resting in peace, she wakes up at the morgue... and all hell breaks loose...

first of all, the funeral home can't find her body, so they couldn't have her funeral... then Betsy realises why she WOKE UP...

SHE's....

A...

VAMPIRE...... and the queen of vampires, to be exact...

My thoughts:

read between the lines, =i am addicted=.....because, well...it's side splitting funny. it's a bit like reading becky bloomwood, but the difference is instead of being a chronic shopaholic, this one is a chronic shoeaholic(addicted to shoes, if u know what i mean), and a vampire to boot....and there is a totally delicious male lead... (definitely an author after my own heart)

so, again, like all chic lit/romance novels, there are a  fair bit of compromising situations involve, but nothing biggy, compared to those of you who have read M&Bs...

my favourite part when it comes to romances?

imagine this, the guy is snobbish, arrogant, doesn't dare admit to the girl that he is hopelessly devoted to her and

suddenly,

something happens, she is in a life-death situation(or a situation that potentially involves great humuliation for her family, if you remember Pride and Prejudice) and suddenly, he jumps in, saves the day...

(and best of all, you can hear his thoughts),

you know: the

"please... please... please don't die...."

or

"if he does anything to her, I'll...."

or

"YOU DARE HURT HER!!!" (proceed with fist work)

you know what, i AM a feminist, yet i can't help feeling a bit weak in the knees for a hero who jumps in and saves the day.... i am definitely a romantic at heart, what can i say, i am a contradiction of the worse kind...

p/s: this whole article sounds a bit disjointed...will see what i can do when i get my next fix. that is to buy and to read the 3rd Installment :Undead and Unappreciated

p/s/s: confused? i already read the 2nd one... told u i was hooked...

What can i say? once again, i've proved that i'm not actually that much of a writer...hahaha

well, at least, this time i did send in an entry... :P

but anyway, if i was discouraged that easily, i ain't me, so, people, u can still expect to see more of this obnoxious, annoying person in the future....

exams are less than a week away, and i am sick, literally...

i got up this morning, coughed a bit, and voila, i now have a full blown, kick ass cough+sore throat... and tomorrow is my MUET speaking...

i already don't hold much hope for my MUET this time round(cause of the writing, everyone i know probably aready KNOWS that by now, seemingly because i couldn't help but to blast my dissapointment at everybody i know... what's misery without a bit of company eh?) but i would want to be able to speak tomorrow...

congrats to andrew loh, whom i do not know personally, but have in action at the HSBC public speaking thing(plus hui fen knows him), for proving that he is not only a speaker but a writer as well... unlike moi(there i go again...:P), pity he didn't get into Yale or Princeton though, which goes to show that the competition IS really tough...

Am very bummed out lately, 'coz of the MUET...

i admit it, i was nervous, but i sure didn't expect the total blankout i had...

never in my life have i had such a profound moment, where i totally did not know what i was gonna write...everything did not make sense, didn't sound right...

at then, the animal instincts kicked in...

it was fight or flee...

and u know what?

i actually wanted to run...

get the h**l out of there,

but

i couldn't

so

i wrote a whole bunch of nonsense...

total junk...

and my hands were shaking as i tied the string on the papers...

i wanted to cry...

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

I dread going to school tomorrow...

Not because i've done anything horrible or anything... but i just can't face the thought of going to school looking as i do now...

well.... first of all, my hair is now back to the stage where it looks like i'm just starting to keep it long...you know, the embarrasing stage where everything kinda looks a bit messy( make that VERY messy) cause the hair is a bit too short to stay in its place properly...it looks fine when i just leave it down, but when i put it up... well...

I wish i could just leave it hanging as it is, but school rules(haha) dictates that it must be up in a ponytail if it's long enough to cover your collar... problem is, mine's not even a ponytail, chicken feather's more like it...

whatever propelled me to cut my hair that short i have no idea... perhaps it's the inner me, who is sick of all this s*** lately trying to CHANGE something...actually, i kinda like the new do, if it didn't make me feel so silly...

Haih...

today, as i was channel surfing, saw that NTV7 was showing Mulan(another version besides the disney one), and it got me thinking...

i guess not many know that before Mulan was dug out of the depths of chinese literature and history, she was actually just a character short passage in chinese...

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perhaps it was the idea of a chinese Joan Of Arc appealed to the people at disney.. perhaps by potraying a character that was so brave and her dilemmas in not being able to express her feelings to the ones she wanted to trust most appealed to the western romantics

but i am thankful, because they have started to make an effort to understand.

I knew it seem absurd to buy a book just because of the title, or because the book faintly hinted to a sequel of my favourite couple, NOT written by the original author, but some other person. Thankfully, after reading a book, i can loudly proclaim that buying the book was definitely worth while:

Mr Darcy's Daughters by Elizabeth Aston

 The story picks up about twenty one years after the events of Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth and Darcy are as in love with each other as they were before ( which seriously earns it some brownie points in my books), and elizabeth, who can't bear to be separated from darcy ( actually, neither can he) has followed him to constantinople( where Darcy has been sent for some diplomatic business), and leave their children in the care of their relatives.

well, in case your curious, they have seven children, five daughters and two boys. While the boys are left in the care of their grandfather(Mr Bennet), the girls are given a chance to stay in London with a cousin of Darcy's( Mr Fitzwilliam/Colonel Fitzwilliam, as some would remember from P&P) and his wife. The two eldest girls are of age, and Fitzwilliam's wife, Fanny, is determined to get them a good match as it is "The Season" in London, and gets more than she bargain for.

My favourite character in the book, is none other than the heroine, Miss Camilla Darcy. Hui fen has always teased me about my penchant for the main characters, which is sometimes consider rather shallow, because it is as if i only see what the author wants me to see, and nothing more, but there is no argument on this one. People who know me know i have never held much regard for people with names like Camilla, but this is one camilla that you can't help but symphatise with...

Camilla Darcy, is the second daughter, after Letitia, the eldest. Letitia, is annoying and hypocritical, which sort of dissapoints me, for she IS after all, supposed to be the first born of Elizabeth and Darcy, two such intelligent and sensible people...but Camilla is the one that is more like her mother, intelligent, book-loving, and independent minded.

so, the book is generally about the adventures of Camilla and her sisters while in London. and adventures is a nice way to put it, because life in london for the rich and the elite is not just about parties and dancing, there is also lots of scandal, jealousy and more scandal involved.

The girls, being Darcy's, are each heiress in their own rights, worth fifty thousand points a piece(this thread is mentioned throughout the book. why the people in the olden days like to refer to women as if they were properties with price tags on them i have no idea.) Although only 2 of the girls are of age, the arrival of the 5 of them stirr immediate news and interest in London. besides the two eldest, the next in line is Belle and Georgiana, both beauties, but resembling so much in their behaviour to their aunt Lydia that one really feels like slapping some sense into them. the last is Alethea, the musical genius, very likeable indeed in her intelligent observations, but a bit too tactless for her own good.

Many of the characters in P&P appear in the book. Lydia, Caroline Bingley, The Gardiners.Mr Gardiner, Lizzie's aunt and uncle are now very rich, but are not as respected as their money should dictate, for their fortune is from trade. though so, their daughter has managed to find herself a delightful match in one rich, handsome and influential man, Mr Wyntton.

Mr Wyntton hates Camilla at first sight. He has vowed to hate women who are too smart for their own good, and Camilla's wit annoys him. Camilla too, finds Wyntton annoying and rude, but all is not as it seems.... haha, this is the part where the cliche comes in....

Wouldn't spoil the fun for you, but Wyntton reminds one of Darcy, in more ways than one. Camilla is like a Lizzie and Anne rolled into one, and is superb, though sometimes a bit annoying in the fact that she doesn't tell her elder sister a piece of her mind like she should. The author has refrained from hitching too much on Lizzie and Dracy, so they are only mentioned in passing throughout the book....

All in all, very enjoyable read. one question though, why must they always refer to the men using their last names? i once berated myself for forgetting what Darcy's first name was, and only remembering him as Mr Darcy, but when i reread it to find out for myself, i realised that was because it was so seldom used.... why?

for once, i'd like to make my own decisions,

for once, i'd like to forego the emotional blackmail,

the threats,

the insults,

the put-me-downs.

the "come on, be more REALISTIC"s

the "who do you think you are?"s

the "stop dreaming, you won't make it"s

the "don't you dare"s

and be able to breathe,

to make my own mistakes,

to make my own life out of it...

Perhaps then i won't feel so trapped,

as though struggling against the tide,

as though being chucked into the deep end of a swimming pool,

when i don't even know how to swim...

p/s: i don't care what she says, this is MY LIFE.

on saturday, 8TV reran the movie Ùv¾«ÏÈÉú¡£ i have already seen these movie once when it was shown the 1st time, but i still found myself drawn to it...

sure, HK movies of late have been getting cornier and cornier, but once in the while you get a few rare gems. don't get me wrong, i'm not saying these movies are worthy of an oscar or a place in the history books, but they have redeeming qualities in the fact that they are so..."human"

one quote that touched my heart:

¡°Ç°·½Ïµ½^·£¬Ï£ÍûÔÚÞD½Ç¡±¡£

soppy, i know, but touching all the same.

A friend i recently made introduce this author to me, said she was brilliatlly funny, so i decided to check it out. Anyway, here's a brief review of the book she recommended...

Royal Treatment by Mary Janice Davidson

Genre: Romance

   The story is like this. In this alternate world, Alaska is not an American State, rather, it is a country of it's own, ruled by a bunch of eccentric, make that very eccentric royals. The king, likes to dress up as a commoner and goes fishing, where he meets the protagonist, an american girl down on her luck stranded in alaska. He immediately likes her and wants to pair her off with his son, David, the crown prince....unknown to the girl, of course...

Anyway, like all other chick-lit/romance books, this provides nothing much besides some good old fashioned fun. girl falls in love, gets into all sorts of weird circumstances, not to mention compromising situations(this is after all, romance) and getting out of the messes she gets herself into. the heroine is generally lovable, decent, humorous, a bit too keen on swearing, but it comes out funny rather than being rude. One particularly good point is the way the author manages to tie the book to current happenings and trends, even if it IS set in an alternate reality... u see referances to robin williams, year 2005 stuff... all sorts, which is very entertaining to that aspect.

and the important point, the guy.... well, lets say he is quite the dashing prince. tall, polite, eventhough he is slightly harassed by the heroine, he plays it cool... ok.

being romance, there will after all be a few parts similar to the raspberry picking part in The Undomestic Goddess by sophie kinsella. as long as you are not a prude, and this is romance, not smut, things get along just fine....

after this, may read her other books. Undead and unemployed looks like an interesting enough book.

Reading hui fen's blog, i suddenly felt an urge to write this...

Today, the stpm results for 2005 came out. sure, those results have nothing to do with me, yet, at the same time, they reminded me of the sad state of affairs my life has become...

no, i am not studying my head off at the moment, neither do i see that happening any time soon. not a single day goes by without me thinking, "why oh why have i chosen this path... " "why couldn't things have been different"... then i berate myself for being negative, and proceed to tell myself to be more positive... that i am already better off than a lot of people....and the negative clouds of energy part for a while, only to come back the next day, the day after and the day after that...

i wish things were under my control, then perhaps i won't feel so much like the deer caught in the headlights... knowing that death is certain but having no way to escape.