I have no idea how this idea formed in my mind, but a few months ago, I decided that I had to have a buckwheat pillow.  After some internet research, I was even more convinced that I needed one.  My usual preference for a pillow is something firm, but not too high, and a buckwheat hull-stuffed pillow sounded right up my alley.

I ordered a twin-sized pillow from beans72.com which I found through Amazon. Strangely enough, their price on Amazon including free shipping was more than their price on the site with non-free shipping, which is why I ended up ordering directly from their site.

When the pillow finally came, I understood why the shipping was so much. Buckwheat hulls are heavy. As many reviewers noted, the pillow came over-stuffed, so I had to empty about 1/3 of the buckwheat out of it. These, I keep in a ziplock for refilling the pillow later, when the buckwheat in the pillow has been polished down.

My first couple of nights on the pillow weren’t as restful as I had expected. This is the first pillow I’ve come across with a learning curve. First, there’s the noise. It’s pretty crunchy when I move my head around it. I think it’s only loud to me because my head is directly on it, but luckily it doesn’t seem to bother Will.

Then there’s the firmness. I’m all for a firm pillow, but this pillow is really firm. Like plopping your face on a mound of sand firm.  I’ve found that if I smush the part of the pillow where my head usually rests down before I actually put my head there, it makes a perfect cavity for where my head would be, while still giving me neck support. It’s awesome. I can move around as much as I want on the pillow and it still seems to hold its shape fairly well.

The pillow also works well for when I want to sleep on my side. It’s hard to explain, but the way the pillow supports the side of my face and my shoulder is really comfortable.

I was afraid that the pillow would be all hype because all the raving reviews I’ve read of buckwheat on The Internets, but here I am, adding to the hype. It really is a great pillow for people who like firmer material. It’s pricier than all the other pillows I’ve owned, but it’s certainly cheaper than some $100 ergonomic foam pillow.

Someone give this man an editor! The whole book could have been cut down to half its length. There are pages after pages of needless filler, only making me roll my eyes at all the trite, cliched paragraphs I was actually reading. I know it’s supposed to invoke some emotion for the characters, but I just kept thinking, "I’ve read this before."

Now don’t get me wrong, The Passage is a page-turner. But it doesn’t actually reveal itself as that until 200 pages into the book. If you ask me, that’s too long for a book to start getting interesting.

As for the story, it was the main thing that kept me going. I’m a big fan of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction and I had very high hopes for this one considering how everyone was raving about it. It even had some dystopia thrown in, but in the end, it left an ugly taste in my mouth.

Although there were full pages crammed with pseudo-science and explanations of the virus, nothing was that believable. The characters were either flat and one dimensional, or archetypes. There’s the pure, innocent girl whose destiny is to save mankind, the old cryptic, slightly crazy old mystic who has all the answers if only someone could take the time to sit down and really listen to her. There’s the tough-as-nails woman who has something to prove. Oh and the loyal, all-believing hero who comes to terms with something.

The Passage read like a long video-game. There are intense, suspenseful action scenes, but there are also a lot of clumsy, poorly-staged exposition chapters which just made me cringe.

The worst of all, the whole novel was some modern-day metaphor for Noah’s Ark. Viruses that turn people into vampires with super strength, I can stomach, but characters who act only because they think they hear the voice of god or think they’re on god’s mission? No thanks.

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The restaurant itself is nicely decorated and just stinks of money, but luckily not in a tacky way. There are glassed walls decorated by rocks strung on wire, beaded partitions, and dim lighting. While we were doing research on vegetarian restaurants in the area, we read that this place is frequented by celebrities but alas, we didn’t recognize any.

Yu Shan Ge serves food influenced by Japanese cuisine which is evident in the meticulous presentation of each dish and the little speech that our waitress gave before setting down the food. Everything we ate had some florid, touchy-feely, spiritual story behind it. While it’s typically a turn off for me, I was surprised that most of the food was tasty enough for me to overlook the over-the-top presentation.

The first thing the waitress brought us was this dish of water with rose petals and a lemon slice floating on top. I was immediately reminded of the story of the boorish American who thought the finger washing dish was some sort of cold soup.  It felt strange rinsing my hands in this bowl of cold water while the waitress smiled and looked on, but at least my hands were clean.

Because Will doesn’t eat dairy or eggs, we had to ask them if they could modify the already vegetarian menu to his restrictions. Luckily, the waitress seemed happy to accommodate.

The first dish we were presented was a cold appetizer plate of vegetarian sushi and salad.  The bite-sized piece of fake salmon was actually some sort of agar preparation. It didn’t have the same texture as real salmon, but tasted good nonetheless.  The custardy tofu on a cracker was also nice.

One of the soups we had that night really stood out because of its mouthfeel.  The broth was rich, thick, and coated my mouth the way a slow-simmered pork broth would.  I think it was a vegetarian rendition of shark fin soup and it was one of the best I’d ever had.

We also had a taro root porridge type dish which was presented in such a thoughtful way.  It was brought out to us on a straw mat with an orchid plant on the side and some rocks.  Even though we were sitting in a dark restaurant, it was cute that the chef wanted to bring a little nature to his dishes.

The only letdown of the dish came in the form of what I assumed was the main course. I think it was supposed to be a vegetarian play on steak and gravy and it certainly looked nice, but the taste just wasn’t good. The texture of the steak, which I think was made of chopped mushroom was actually decent, if not a little weird at how accurately they mimicked the fibrous texture of real steak. What broke the dish was the sauce. It was too peppery, sweet, and sour. It made me think of gravy made out of Chinese spices, which might have been what it actually was.

No Chinese meal would be complete without rice, and this meal was no exception. Unfortunately, by the time the savory, sticky rice came out, I was beyond stuffed. I could barely manage to finish half my bowl of rice.

Dessert was a good breather. I was dreading that it would be something really sweet and filling like a pastry, but then that would go against the restaurant’s whole message. Instead, we were brought out some cut up fruits and a bowl of sweet soup filled with white woodear mushrooms, dates, and papaya. It was sweet, but just the perfect amount of sweet.

Yu Shan Ge is certainly not priced as a casual place to stop by and eat, but it is worth going there at least once for the experience. Their mini-speeches before each dish is a little hokey for me, but it’s worth sitting through just for the food.

Yu Shan Ge
14, Bei Ping Dong Rd (at Shandao Temple MRT)
tel: 02-2394-5155

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book was recommended several times as a *good* paranormal romance book to read in the worst paranormal series you’ve ever read thread, but after reading it I’m wondering if maybe I mis-read the thread.It was not the *worst* paranormal romance I’d read, but it certainly wasn’t good.

The Brotherhood was too full of testosterone and machismo. The women characters in the book were terrible role models. One was a pseudo-ass-kicking female who just creams her pants at some total stranger and then decides she’s in love with him. Another is a stay-at-home-wife type who says things like, “Boys will be boys.” The third is a self-sacrificing virgin whose sole purpose in life is to please a man. Boring.The plot was predictable, the characters one dimensional, and just everyone’s reaction to everything very unbelievable. This book just seemed like a vehicle for very hot, steamy love scenes, which I guess is good if that’s all you want out of a book.

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I wanted to try out George R. R. Martin’s other genre of books, so this novella set in a futuristic, sci fi world seemed like a good place to start. The beginning was strong and I was sucked in right away into the dynamics of the alien world which seemed similar to ours, but with some important differences. The middle was a little creepy and cultish, but the ending kind of fizzled out with no satisfying explanation or revelation.

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I read this in school but apparently didn’t remember much about it at all, which is why I decided to re-read it. There are a lot of unlikeable characters in this book and all the female characters seem needy and too reliant on men. I guess they’re a product of their era, but it still doesn’t mean I have to like them.

I’m surprised this book was assigned in school. There are a lot of adult themes and I think at the time I first read The Great Gatsby, I didn’t understand half of what was going on. Especially all the drunken parties. I definitely got more out of it reading it in my 20s.

A quick read, good prose, excellent characterization, but it didn’t exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy at the end.

It did make me pop up from the couch and make myself a gin rickey though. Delicious.

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This book was picked for our office book club book for July, a pick that I’m glad about because I never would have read it otherwise. Cloud Atlas could be described as six interconnected novellas with a basic theme, but that’s putting it in the most simplest terms.

The book is about a journey on sea, about a penniless young man working for a highly regarded composer, about a journalist treading over dangerous water to unveil the truth about an evil corporation, about a clone living in a not-so-distant dystopia, and about a post-apocalyptic society. So yes, this book covers a lot of ground and yes, it is epic, but everything is tied neatly together with the book’s central theme.

I have to admit that at first, I was put off by the book because I read some reviews comparing this to some of Murakami’s works, which I’m not a fan of. It’s good that that didn’t stop me from reading this book because it’s a wonderful book with a decent message. The narrative is strong, the characters are fleshed out, and the plots are intriguing. Best of all, each story is different enough from the next that I was surprised Mitchell could change his writing style so drastically, yet still tie the stories together with invisible strings.

I’m usually wary of books that are structured strangely just for the sake of conversation, but the frame within a frame, mirror structure of Cloud Atlas works so well it’s almost as if the framing device is a complete character with its own quirks and behaviors. Reading the book is kind of like reading a mystery, only instead of the mystery unfolding linearly, it does so in a 3D space.

In honor for the book, I made a scribble inspired by it. That’s supposed to be a pineapple on top. Cloud Atlas — an interpretive drawing

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Although I would describe Life As We Knew it as apocalyptic, I don’t really want to because it doesn’t really fit in with a lot of books of that genre I’ve read. The Event in the novel is an asteroid hitting the moon and thanks to some gross miscalculations, it ends up knocking the moon off its regular orbit and closer to earth. Because the moon is suddenly closer to earth, the tides swell so that whole states get demolished, dormant volcanoes erupt, and the climate pretty much goes hay-wire.

That’s on a macro level.

The micro level is what Life As We Knew It is about. The story is told through journal entries of a 16 year old girl in a rural, northern state. The beginning of the book reads very much like a Young Adult novel, with the girl, Miranda, fretting over boys, homework, and all the usual things teenagers have on their mind.

When The Event happens, things change, but not at once, and I think this why the novel is so good. No one knows what to expect, so most people don’t prepare. People worry about mundane things like if they should send their kids into school the next day. Pfeffer makes the novel terrifying and believable by focussing on just Miranda’s family. I like that she has selfish thoughts, jealous outbursts, and flaws throughout the entire book. It made her feel realistic.

While reading this book, I kept stopping and reminding myself that this is a YA book. While the narrator is a teenager, she ends up maturing quickly because of The Event. Most of the story is dark and I really felt a sense of hopelessness to the point of wanting to put the book down, but like a bad car wreck, I couldn’t turn away.

Life As We Knew It is a decent entry in the genre and one of the better, serious YA books I’ve read. The cover is also AWESOME. Halfway through the book, I flipped it over to the cover and just stared at it for a few minutes. It made me kind of scared.

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What a wonderful, self-contained fantasy book. The world of Graceling focusses on individuals with particular talents, called Graces, such as incredible speed, mind-reading, foresight into the weather, etc. But to un-graced people, they’re strange and to be avoided.

The overall plot was easy to spot a mile away and there were few surprises (save one), but it didn’t make this book any easier to put down. I read the entire 400+ book in two sittings. The prose flows fluidly and quickly while still keeping its rich nature.

The only thing that keeps Graceling from being a five-star book though, and this is a minor quibble, is that it feels particularly like a young adult book. I would have preferred more character development, especially between a certain pair of characters and their sweetly blossoming relationship.

It maybe a strange thing to write in a review, but I appreciate the fact that this book didn’t finish with a cliff ending. The sense of closure was nice.

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After reading the book, I knew I had to watch the movie. Usually, I’m apprehensive about movies based on books, but for some reason,I felt a little better about this one because like the book, the movie is Swedish.  Apparently, there’s an American remake in the works. I wanted to catch the Swedish version before it left theaters.

The Swedish movie was one of the better book to movie adaptations I’ve ever seen.  From watching the trailers, I thought that the actress who portrays Lisbeth Salander looked too old, but in the movie, she was frighteningly perfect! And kinda hot in a “oh my god, she’s going to break my neck” hot.

Unfortunately, I thought the actor who played Mikael Blomkvist wasn’t cast as well. He was a good actor, but he wasn’t who I pictured. From the book, I got the impression that he was quite suave and handsome, but the actor didn’t give off that vibe in the movie.

The movie stays very true to the book in terms of plot even though there are a couple of understandable changes.  It was kind of a cliff-notes version of the book, but not in a bad way.

It’s hard to say if I would have liked the movie as a standalone movie since I read the book before watching it. Will, who watched the movie without reading the book enjoyed it too and didn’t feel like he was missing key points of the story.  It doesn’t have all the car chases and explosions of a Hollywood blockbuster, but it’s a decent mystery/thriller.  I can’t wait for the sequel.