iPod Nano + Book Rampage

Yes! I've won something! No, not "again". Every soul I told replied, "Again?!?!" You're so lucky!" Erm, I think the first thing I ever won in my entire life was a Sony Cybershot camera for an image I submitted on a photo competition organised by Sony. I eventually sold it away.

This time round, it was simpler. I didn't have to collect votes over a period of 14 days, which was what I had to do in the Sony competition, and all I did was upload pictures at www.photofrenz.com and send them for printing! Plus there was some promotion going on and I managed to print 139 photos for only $41 (inclusive of shipping. Yes, they post the printed photos to your address).

I've decided to give the iPod to my brother. I guess it'd be nice to "upgrade" my 4th Gen iPod to a new one, but I'm quite happy with my overly scratched and old iPod. I'll probably wait till it dies and becomes totally irrecoverable before I consider a new mp3 player.

I think it'd be great if he could listen to some music while making his way to uni everyday.

So I've told myself to cut down on unnecessary spending on cab rides, food and shopping, but I've been rather keen on buying books recently.

*insert Bunny's remark, "Sai cheen" (Cantonese for "waste money")*

Now this mood hits me once in awhile (erm, once every quarter or so?) and when it hits, I go on a book rampage. Ok, I'm exaggerating. It sounds like I buy 20 books at one go, eh?

When I say a book rampage, what I mean is, I end up visiting Borders twice a week just to see what books I can buy. I search Amazon.com for reviews and I shortlist some potential reads. But I end up buying less than 5.

I even went to the library to find some good fiction and that was when I realised that the libraries in Singapore suck so badly. You can only borrow 4 books at one time and they don't carry a lot of books, although I did find a few titles by Milan Kunera but that was about it. So I ended up borrowing just the travel guides for London, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels.

I had an impression we could borrow up to 10 books! 4 is pathetic la, but I guess this is the way to ensure that people don't over borrow and end up losing or not returning some. I remember I could borrow up to 18 books in Melbourne and mind you, it's from those teeny tiny community libraries near my house! They had a fantastic range of fiction and their non-fiction section was enormous, with plenty of ambiguous subjects that would entice you to find out more about it.

Bunny won $40 Kino vouchers from being the "Most Stylo Bowler" at her company outing a few months back, so she sold them to me at a discount and I used them to purchase:

- The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini
- Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

I even cut out a 30% Borders discount coupon to buy Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I subscribed to their mailing list (twice) and received two 20% discount coupons that I have yet to utilise and I'm aiming to read Umberto Eco's In The Name of the Rose once I'm done with the travel books and Brave New World.

See what I mean by going on a book rampage? It's not so bad. I only do this 2-3 times a year. :)

I also considered setting up a mini Book Recycling Club with Moo and Zon. Here's how it works: If I have a title I want to read, I'll ask them if they have it and they'll mail it over to me! Well, that's only if they bear to part with it in the first place. I think it's a good way to save money by "recycling" books.

I've mailed The Blood Chamber by Angela Carter to Moo because I thought she would like the stories and her writing, and guess what? I was right! Phew. It was simply a blind guess and intuition on my part.

I used to be rather possessive with my books but I realised that there's no point in doing so unless you want to read it again, which I never got about doing it because I'm always craving for new things (it's not a very good thing). Although I really do want to read certain titles, I just can't help reading something else from a spanking new book. *grin*

And no, I won't be visiting a bookstore today (I think). :)