The Bookworm Is Still A Worm

I was so free yesterday (remember my audit meeting?) that I managed to chat with Cres via MSN. One thing led to another and in the end we talked about books. I think the topic started when I told her about my visit to Popular Bookstore at Petaling Street. Yea, I went there during lunch hour yesterday to get a new hole punch, as someone in my office broke my previous pink punch. Demit. Such an irresponsible person. We do have our own stationery department, but they don’t have pink punch in stock. Does the colour really matter? Yes !! So, it was good to know that Cres has same reading hobby like mine. Actually, we do have quite a number of things in common, such as food we eat, places we like to hang out, make-up we use, music we listen to and etcetera. Hee.

So back to the topic. When I was in Primary 1 – 6, I read those Enid’s Blyton and Nancy Drew books. My mom was an English teacher before she retired as a nurse so she encouraged us to read a lot of books back then. When I was young, I was so influenced by things I read. I’m still now by the way. So, for non EB & ND readers, these are an amateur sleuth, fictional mystery series type of books. So, since I said I was so influenced by these books, I actually founded ermm… my own investigation club back then. Really, no joke. You can laugh if you want too. Well, my sisters did laugh at me anyways. So, I don’t care. The members of the team were my classmates. All 5 girls by the way. We did have our weekly meeting, log book, by which came together with a weekly report. Ohh, yes we had a ‘case’ every week. We sure had a case every week. Hahaa ! I remembered our 1st case was about a white crocodile behind our school. Well, rumours said that there was an old well somewhere behind our school, and we were told that the water was blue. That was not the best part. The best part was, a white crocodile was a care taker of that so called blued-water well. So we were informed. Yea, it sounds like d’oh, but we were a bunch of ambitious investigators that time, mind you. To satisfy our curiosity, we did a secret ‘investigation’ (well, we were private detectives by name anyways) over the weekend and ended up, the rumours were just rumours. There was actually an old well but with very muddy water, not blue. And no white crocodile were visible to our eyes. But it was a fun activity though. The club was disunited when we entered our high school. I went to a selected school, and the rest went to another different schools.

When I was in Form 1 – 5, I read RL Stine books. Well, the original reason why I had to read these books was, I took a high level English as one of my tuition subjects, so the subject had constantly needed me to have a so called fluent English both for speaking and writing purposes. Another important reason; RL Stine was a hit that time, so I had to be ‘in the loop’ by reading them ‘in’ books, okay? I had to be a cool girl. RL Stine has the greatest thriller stories to share and I was a huge fan of his books. Back to the English subject, the tutor for this subject was a very fine lady; a Singaporean by the way. I learned a lot from her. So did my sister. Yea, we both took the same subject. But she was not a fan of RL Stine’s though. Another hit author that time was Christopher Pike. I don’t know why she preferred spirituality / spooky and whodunit storybooks that time. Well, I reckon she made a good choice because she has better English than me. When I was in Form 5, I knew them money my parents spent on these books were all paid off when I got a fine result for my 1119. I wrote an essay about a thriller story for that paper, which actually I ‘stole’ it from one of the books. Not a bad plagiarism. Really.

As I entered college and university, I passed the books to my younger sister, which she is not interested by the way. Well, she is not a book worm, anyways. But still, she is one smart girl. I don’t have time to take care of the books now due to works and other commitments, but I hope one day I can spare my time to collect all the books and maybe donate it to any library. But of course, only those with no scribble i.e. “Supergirl is great”, “Supergirl is reading this on….”, “Supergirl is sleepy..”, “I’ve super power. Do you?”… and etcetera. Will find a good time for that.