Is anyone keeping up with the events about the bombing in Bali?

I felt somewhat sick after devouring the newspapers on the second day of the aftermath, and so have avoided the news. Yes, the hermit crab syndrome, maybe tunnel-vision, but I do abhor knowing about the blackest side of the human spirit especially when my mood is rather bleak and cheerless these days. Call me a childish sot if you will, but Justice is a woman and she is blind. Fortune's a strumpet and fickle and I forgot what I was going to say.

But I digress.

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Oooh ooh can I ask a question?

No. Because I have a feeling I will regret it if I reply in the affirmative.

Have you ever dyed your hair?

Well yes. The whole rigmarole was accounted in this entry. I am now trying to grow out the highlights, which have faded to a sort of mousy brown due to lack of maintenance.

I'm not sure whether highlights constitute as dyeing my head of hair because it is after all, only some locks of hair and not the entire head. My parents are pretty conservative about any artificial enhancements to the body and this boundary stops at pierced ears (one apiece). Anything else will be subjected to highly incisive sarcasm.

I did express a wistful fancy to have my hair purple or blue once when I was younger. It was a hyperbolic extension of the wish for blue highlights in my black hair. And I was rather enamoured of the idea because of those over-romantic descriptions of people with "raven hair so black that it was almost blue" etc.. These people were always described as extremely attractive. Think of Vanyel in Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage trilogy. Think of Arithon. Heh.

What was your favourite book as a child?

I racked my brains for this one. It was a really tough one, because I read so many books in my childhood that I can't remember a favourite book, more like oodles of favourite books, in different years. I do remember being one of those annoying kids in school who finished their reading quota of books for the year in a week. I remember that one year, the teacher refused to assign a reading list to me or award me any of those metallic badges they gave out to encourage the students to read. I was beyond enthusiastic, I was rapacious, voracious and precocious to say the least.

Let's see. I remember Dr Seuss' books, Andrew Lang's colour fairytale books, the infamous tale about the Maiden and Death, the Sugar Prince (which I read at the advanced age of thirteen), the Encyclopaedia Brown detective series, a bumbling French Maid named Amelia, the first three books on Narnia by C. S. Lewis, the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends, Diane Wynne Jones, (I came into that fairly late, about eleven, I recall) and so on.

The first book I recall reading is The Cat in the Hat. I must have been pretty young because I remember I was wearing a frilly dress and white Mary-Janes. I know they were white because I fell down on my bum because I was still pretty unstable on my feet. Then I sat there playing with them while my mom picked books out. The Cat in the Hat was one of them. It was at the old Thomson Road Yaohan, and my mom made me read bits of it out to her before she bought it.

I started on my mom's bodice rippers when I was eleven too. Snucked out a few from under her nose and read it by placing it a drawer which I could then slam shut at any sign of a parent.

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I have to end here. I have spent far too much time on this tonight. I still have assignments to do.