The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

"For you a thousand times over!" said Hassan as he turned and ran for the second last kite so as to bring his master even greater glory as the winner of the kite-flying competition.

This sentence will always remind me of the sweet Hassan in the novel, who had the character of Christ - loving, forgiving, longsuffering and unambitious.

This is not a Christian book, by the way. It is a book filled with the themes of guilt, love, honour, courage and sacrifice. Redemption is a theme that comes in at the later part.

Amir, the narrator, has the perfect life in 1970s Afghanistan - a rich and well-respected father, a good education, and a loyal servant who lives with him. Yet Amir is unhappy because his Baba seems to love Hassan more, and is secretly ashamed that his own son had inherited none of his courage. Amir thus takes his jealousy out on Hassan, who is officially his servant but treats Amir like a friend and thinks that the feelings are mutual.

The forgiving Hassan never takes Amir's unpleasant doings to heart, and is loyal to the extent that he would rather be raped by the village sociopath than give up the kite that he had promised to run for Amir after the kite-flying competition. (Kite-running is the attempt to run after and catch the last kite that was cut - the winner would gain even more glory if he manages to run that kite. Kite-flying competitions are usually held in winter) What he did not know was that Amir had witnessed everything while hidden safely behind the alley where the incident had taken place. Amir was too much of a coward to go forward to help his friend, and after that, he pretended not to have seen anything.

It was after that incident that the friendship between both boys changed. Hassan got over this a few days later, and tried hard to mend relations between them both, but Amir was angry with himself and refused to admit it, so he constantly pushed Hassan away. Finally, he drove Hassan and Ali (Hassan's father) away from his house. Baba was extremely upset about that.

Russia takes over Afghanistan some time later, and Baba and Amir are forced to leave Kabul, where they are situated. They settle in America after going through many hardships, and Amir marries Soraya there.

Amir had wanted to totally start afresh in America and leave behind his ugly past, but it caught up with him eventually. In a twist of fate, he learns that Hassan is actually his half-brother because Baba had slept with Hassan's mother. This act of betrayal done by Baba to his good friend, Ali, is almost as bad as what Amir had done to Hassan. Hassan had been publicly executed while trying to protect Amir's old house from the Taliban (who had later driven Russia out and took over Afghanistan in a reign of terror), and he had left behind only his son, Sohrab. Amir was tasked to get Sohrab back by Rahim Khan, Baba's old friend, because Rahim Khan knew all the evil that Amir had done towards Hassan and wanted him to do this as an act of redemption.

Ironically, Amir meets Assef, the village sociopath who had raped Hassan back then, and who was currently working for the Taliban. Assef had Sohrab in his possession, and had clearly sexually abused him too. The both of them got what they deserved in Amir's attempt to redeem Sohrab, although that was not the end of Amir's redemption.

When he breaks his promise to Sohrab to never send him to an orphanage again, Sohrab attempts suicide. Amir never managed to gain Sohrab's trust again after saving him, and even after bringing him back to America to his own home, Sohrab never spoke a word.

Redemption finally nears completion when Amir tells Sohrab he would run his kite for him in a kite-flying competition held by the Afghans in America. Sohrab had a faint, transient smile on his lips after their kite had cut down the second-last kite and nodded to signal to Amir that he had wanted Amir to run that kite for him. Amir hears himself saying, "For you, a thousand times over," as he turns and runs for the kite.

For in Amir's words, "Because when spring comes, it melts the snow one flake at a time, and maybe I just witnessed the first flake melting."

Suspect X

Watched with: Sunshine
On: Saturday 7 March 2009
At: Golden Village building next to Northpoint

Reviews only talk about this movie's main plot - how a woman (Yasuko Hanaoka)and her daughter (Misato Hanaoka) kill her ex-husband, and their mathematics genius neighbour (Tetsuya Ishigami) helps them cover it up. A brilliant physicist (Yukawa), who is a friend of Detective Utsumi assigned to the case, happens to be Ishigami's ex-classmate in college. After reading the review in Life! last week, it left me with the impression of another L-Light battle as seen in Deathnote.

The movie, however, was nothing like that. Subtle actions left much inferring work to be done, which contributed to the beauty of the movie. Also, interwoven in the main plot is an underlying theme of love. At the very beginning, Utsumi rebuts Yukawa when he says that everything on earth can be explained with science and logic. He retorts her playfully with unsolvable mathematical equations for her rebuttal answer - love.

Misato and Yasuko kill her ex-husband out of defence and security because his leeching presence is a menace to a peaceful future. As Japanese houses have thin walls, their neighbour, Ishigami, heard the entire commotion. He walked over, told them he heard everything and his conjectures, and proceeds to help them cover up the crime...

The next scene is of the police discovering the naked body of Togashi, who is the ex-husband of Yasuko Hanaoka. His body was found in a baseball field, with a new bicycle lying nearby, his clothes burnt, his hands and feet burnt and his face disfigured. He was found to be dead on 2nd December, and the police traced everything to Yasuko and her daughter.

After some questioning and investigation, the police were still unable to break Yasuko and Misato's strong alibis of being at the cinema and singing karaoke after that on 2nd December. Despite their strong alibis, the police still believed Yasuko had something to do with the crime because they found evidence that Togashi had tried to locate his ex-wife and would surely have wanted to meet her. Detective Utsumi finally enlists the help of Yukawa once again (apparently it wasn't the first time) and his initial disinterest towards the case melted away when he learnt that the suspect's (Yasuko) neighbour was his ex-classmate, whom he personally regards as a genius.

Yukawa thus went to look for Ishigami, and this is when the clues start to be given out to both the viewers and Yukawa. We find out from Yukawa that Ishigami's only love is Maths, and he never really cared for anything other than that. Also, they got along precisely because of their common love of disproving theories.

After their meetup, Ishigami asks Yukawa a question that Yukawa himself considered uncharacteristic of Ishigami - he had asked (or should I say, commented on) how Yukawa managed to remain young and handsome over the years. Let's call this clue A.

On the way to the high school that Ishigami teaches at, Yukawa remarks that he walks through an interesting path to school where he has to pass by many homeless people by the river. Ishigami agrees, while saying they are like clockwork, doing the same thing repeatedly every day. And this is clue B, even though it seems like a casual remark.

When Yukawa asks to meet up with Ishigami again, Ishigami suggests mountain-climbing - something he likes and is good at. While warming up at one of the stops on the way up, Ishigami says that he asked Yukawa for this activity because it could be his last time climbing a mountain. This is clue C.

I wonder why Ishigami gave Yukawa so many clues. Perhaps it was because he knew Yukawa is smart enough to figure out the truth, but would be unable to gather the required evidence.

Anyway, Yukawa mentions that he treats Ishigami as a friend and would never fully expose his suspicions of him while they were still warming up. Ishigami remarks that solving everythng to discover the truth might make everyone unhappy in the end so it was pointless and Yukawa shouldn't pursue it further. Later, tension builds up when they are on their way out and Yukawa almost dies while he continues his ascent in the raging snow - and Ishigami abandons him even though he hears his cries for help. It seemed like Ishigami had deliberately wanted to kill Yukawa - but at the last moment, he returns to help. This scene is important for a complete understanding of the movie.

Before this scene, actually Yukawa had mentioned casually his suspicions to Detective Utsumi about the case; that Yasuko was the murderer, and Ishigami probably helped her to cover up. He felt that Ishigami could not have been involved in the murder because he would never see murder as a logical solution to anything. Following on that, the police started to check up on Ishigami too, but he had alreayd preempted everything.

Just when we think Ishigami is desperately in love with Yasuko and is turning into a horrifying stalker when he snaps sneaky photos of her having tea with her ex-boss (she now opens a bento shop and had worked as a bar hostess previously) and sending threatening letters to him, he sends two letters to Yasuko and contacts her, as always, via a public telephone near their house, telling her to keep the white envelope and destroy the brown one after reading it. After that, he says that this would be the last time he is contacting her, which takes her aback because she was starting to fear that he would be another Togashi.

Next, we learn that Ishigami has turned himself in as Togashi's murderer. His story is that he saw Togashi hanging around outside Yasuko's house, and knew immediately that he was Yasuko's ex-husband. He told him that Yasuko wasn't home, and arranged to meet him at the baseball field on 2nd December, then killed him there. All the tools he had used were indeed at his house, as found by the police.

Yukawa is devastated as he knows that the truth is far from this, and he doesn't want to see his friend being punished for something he didn't do. He tells Utsumi that he would take over from here and attempt to solve the case. A previous remark from Utsumi about Ishigami's way of setting Mathematics test questions (from an interview with him at his school about his doubtful absence from school on 1st and 2nd December) makes him see things from another perspective. Ishigami had said that he likes to set simple trick questions, for instance disguising functions as geometry. They are simple as long as one can change one's perspective of the question. This is clue D.

Next, we see Yukawa speaking to Yasuko...

And then, the plot is unravelled...

Yakawa requests a special audience with Ishigami alone, and tells him his hypothesis about what he has done. Here it is:

The murder of Togashi had actually taken place on 1st December. Ishigami knew that the mother and daughter would not be able to tell lies properly to the police and would surely give themselves away eventually, so he arranged for them to tell only the truth. He asked them to watch a movie and sing karaoke on 2nd December, in the process gaining themselves strong alibis. To create a murder on 2nd December, Ishigami had to kill someone else - preferably a person whose death would go unnoticed. He paid one of the homeless people he sees on his way to work every day to stay a night at Togashi's boarding house (some temporary home) so as to leave his prints all over the house, then arranged to meet him in Togashi's clothes on the night of 2nd December at the baseball field. He also stole a new bicycle from some bike rental shop for the homeless guy to cycle. A new bike, because its theft would surely be noticed and reported. At the baseball field, he strangled the guy to death...

Later, he burnt the guy's clothes, hands and feet to get rid of prints. He also pulverised his face beyond recognition so that the police wouldn't know he was not Togashi. Later, he would pretend to be Yasuko's stalker and claim that he had killed Togashi because he was in love with Yasuko...

Another reason why he killed someone else was because he wanted to prevent the possibility of him cracking under harsh police questioning and saying the truth. If the truth was that he had murdered, he wouldn't be able to betray Yasuko...

What an excellent plan, misleading the police right from the start. I wouldn't have thought of it.

Ishigami shrugs off Yukawa's hypothesis, and says that he would need solid proof to prove that.

On his way out to the detention centre while led by the police, Yasuko comes in tears to Ishigami and says she cannot live in happiness with her daughter while knowing all that Ishigami has done for them...Yukawa had already told them what took place.

Let me put the clues together. Clue B was to show that the homeless man had been a gear in Ishigami's clock of the plot. Clue A had, according to Yukawa, shown that Ishigami was in love. Clue C was said by Ishigami because he knew he was going to turn himself in. Clue D was the ultimate clue that let Yukawa see everything differently and finally solve the mystery of how Ishigami managed to garner solid alibis for Yasuko and Misato.

The reason why Ishigami had done so much for Yasuko was because she and Misato had unwittingly saved him from suicide when they were friendly and called on him the day they moved in. Why he had wanted to commit suicide was not mentioned, but we can safely assume that it could be because he had found life meaningless. When he finally experienced human interpersonal love and warmth from Yasuko and Misato, he managed to find more meaning in life and live on. This also explains why he returned to help Yukawa that day - perhaps it was because he was loved that he learnt how to love others.

Ishigami had wanted to die because of love, lived on because of love and gave up his freedom because of love. The movie ends aptly with Utsumi saying, "She was the reason why he kept alive," in response to Yukawa's bemusement of why such a smart person would commit such a mistake and if he had not known love, he would not have committed this mistake.

If not for the love shown to him, Ishigami wouldn't even have been alive.

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

This is a mere interpretation of the book, and may not necessarily coincide with the author's ideas. In Vermeer's words, " 'It's not the painting that is Catholic or Protestant...but the people who look at it, and what they expect to see.' " A piece of work is meant to be enjoyed and interpreted by various people, and it is only then that the piece would seem more colourful.

The gist of the story here, which can be found on any site like Wikipedia, is that sixteen-year-old Griet is sent to work as a maid at the Vermeers' because her father , the sole breadwinner, had gotten involved in an accident and lost the use of his eyes. At her time there, Vermeer's wife (Catharina) and second daughter, Cornelia, gave her a lot of trouble. This was because Vermeer, who never trusted anyone in his house to go up to his studio, actually allowed Griet to clean there.

Griet started to admire her master as he went about his work quietly. He gradually increased his trust in her as he allowed her to even make his paints and be a stand-in model at times.

At the same time, Pieter, the butcher's son, showed interest in Griet and told her of his desire to marry her when she turned eighteen.

The story ends in a culmination of various factors. One of Vermeer's rich but licentious customers, van Rujiven, took a fancy to Griet and insisted on being painted with her. In a bid to protect Griet from a previous scandal that a similar painting of van Rujiven and another maid had caused, Vermeer decided to paint only Griet alone.

He finally chose his wife's pearl earrings to complete Griet's portrait. As Catharina highly prized her earrings, she was devastated when she found out what had been done. She created a scene not long after the painting was completed, and Griet took the chance to leave and agree to Pieter's marriage proposal (she had turned eighteen by then).

Ten years later, Griet was called back to the Vermeers, where Catharina awaited reluctantly. Vermeer had died two months ago, and had included in his will for Griet to have the pair of pearl earrings she had worn for his painting. Griet decided to pawn the earrings.

Throughout the book, one is kept in suspense about Griet's life, despite being the omnipresent reader. Many thoughts run through her head; yet her actions prevent us from fully understanding what Griet is about to do. The book manages to scatter its pearls in uneven portions, at times satisfying us to our heart's content, and at others, tantalizing to no end.

Catharina seems detestable, but she is the character who ought to be pitied most. Imagine being the wife of a famous painter, but not allowed to even step into your husband's studio and not ever being painted by him. (Tanneke, a senior maid, later tells Griet that it's because Catharina is clumsy and unable to keep still enough for an artist) She had eleven children altogether despite the family's tight finances, but one can guess that her reason for doing so was probably to affirm his love for her. A pity that she failed to see that males treat sex and love separately.

Griet's sister (Agnes) dies early in a plague, and her brother (Frans) was sent away for a tile-painting apprenticeship by his eager father. As a result, she lost two people she could confide in, although she did confide once in her brother about the lecherous van Rujiven and how she had been sent away from the house by Maria Thins (Catharina's mother) so as to avoid being seen by him. Her shrewd brother managed to detect her fancies for Vermeer, and said it aloud to her, which confirms our continual suspicion of her feelings for him.

See what I mean about how readers can't fully know Griet's thoughts? All the while, whatever we know of her thoughts are merely her avoidance of thinking about her master romantically because it is morally wrong. And this, we only manage to confirm after Frans verbalises it for us.

Griet is the ancient two-timer, as she responds to Pieter's affections despite being in love with her master. I must admit I was shocked that she allowed Pieter to touch her body freely, but decided to handle such graphic information with more maturity to be in tune with Griet's. Griet is a shrewd judge of character as can be seen from how she decided on her first day that Cornelia and Catharina would give her a lot of trouble, as well as wise in her ways of dealing with Tanneke and Maria Thins. She trusted Pieter to be a good man, and so should we.

It is after Vermeer asks Griet to assist him in his work that she started lying, and that is when we can understand that lies are not always evil. Lying has always been idealistically seen as a downright sin, but when you are lying to prevent hurt and worry, it can't be always evil.

Griet wears a cap to keep her head covered as most respectable women of her time do, but she is fiercely protective of her hair as she does not allow anyone to see her in her untamed long brown hair. In her own words,

"My hair was long and could not be tamed. When it was uncovered it seemed to belong to another Griet - a Griet who would stand in an alley alone with a man, who was not so calm and quiet and clean. A Griet like the women who dared to bare their heads. That was why I kept my hair completely hidden - so that there would be no trace of that Griet."

Vermeer insisted that she cover her hair with some other cloth for his portrait of her. One day, while she was changing into that cloth, he saw her with her hair "in waves over [her] shoulders, brown like fields in the autumn". After that incident, Griet somehow feels as if she no longer has anything precious to guard, and thus runs to Pieter to lose her virginity to him.

The entire novel's atmosphere has one that is like this portrait:

In a tunnel where hopelessness prevails (everything but the pearl earrings) but has a sliver of light (the pearl earrings) at the end.

Griet is stuck as a maid in the Vermeers' subject to Catharina and Cornelia's subtle torture while not being able to voice out her misery, but enjoying the attention from Vermeer while he trusted her above everyone else with his works and painted her while he had never even painted his wife before. The other part of her sliver of light lay in the likes of Pieter's ultimate marriage proposal, which she accepted after she left the Vermeers'.

Indirectly, it was Catharina's pearl earrings that provided the impetus for Griet to finally leave her job. Pieter had proposed to her earlier in the morning, but she had rejected him as he had done so randomly, just before she was about to model for Vermeer and made himself loud enough for the children and Tanneke to hear him.

Right after Griet returned from meeting Pieter, Vermeer expresses his desire for Griet for the first time in the form of a light caress on her swollen left earlobe, neck, face and lips after he wears an earring for her at her request. Griet responds by licking his thumb. I think perhaps Vermeer did love Griet because she was more able to relate to what his passion was - art - than his wife. If they had met at the right time, I think they would get together.


Maria Thins, who had always been on Griet's side, had aided her in wearing Catharina's pearl earrings secretly. Griet had pierced her own left ear using clove oil and a needle, with great pain, just for her master. Even though Griet managed to return the earrings before her mistress came home from a friend's house (by then, the painting was completed), Cornelia told her mother about the earrings and caused all the trouble. To Catharina, the thorn in her flesh (as she had always been jealous that her husband treated a maid better than her) wearing her precious pearl earrings was more than she could bear, and she thus made a scene over it. At that, Griet decides that it is time she left the Vermeers' and ran away, leaving us to wonder what the next step of her life might be.

Ten years later, Griet is happily married to Pieter and has two sons. Tanneke visits her at the butcher's where she is serving, to send a message from Catharina, who had asked to see her. Griet meets Catharina, who passes her the earrings at her late husband's wishes. Griet obtains some form of closure at Vermeer's death and on receiving the pearl earrings. Just like receiving light and sharing it with others, she pawns the earrings and gets twenty guilders (their currency) for them, and passes fifteen guilders to Pieter (and keeps the remaining five, which she never intends to spend), which the Vermeers owed him for their meat and never did return. Clearing the debt is a symbol of her final freedom from the Vermeers.

THE Clue

Really sorry about the delay! I totally forgot about the deadline that I had set. Haha. Here's the clue to my riddle:

'A' Level Chemistry students have an advantage.

As compensation, I shall extend this deadline to Sunday 25 May 2008 instead. And, there is a final clue I will disclose then, if no one has yet to solve this riddle ;)

The prizes are now:

First Prize: A drink from The Coffee Bean
Second Prize: A scone from The Coffee Bean
Third Prize: One packet of M & Ms, flavour of your own choice

(doesn't the third prize sound familiar? =P)

Jiayou to whoever is trying :)

An excuse to go out with my friends?

Here's another riddle, after the one I had posted in 2005!!Can't believe it's been 3 years. Anyway, enough of the crap. Haha. Here it is:

Which animal induces you to cough with its cough?

This is a rather lame riddle. And it is very difficult indeed, I think. =P The first person who can decipher this will get something from me!

First Prize: A slice of cake and a drink from The Coffee Bean
Second Prize: A drink from The Coffee Bean
Third Prize: A scone from The Coffee Bean

There is no consolation prize this time because I almost laughed to death when I went to re-read my entry on the previous contest I had.

And all my prizes are from The Coffee Bean this time because I just got The Coffee Bean card!! It's value for money!! I earned $5.50 from them (as stored value in my card, of course) after topping up $55 in it. Haha.

Like I had said, this riddle is difficult, so even though the deadline for answers is Friday 9 May 2008, there will be an extension of the deadline to Friday 23 May 2008 (if no one manages to solve this correctly by Friday 9 May 2008) whereby I shall let you in on a clue. BUT the catch is that the prizes then would become less attractive, of course!! Haha!! =P

So as usual, entries sent in after Friday 9 May 2008 for the first deadline will not be considered, and ditto for the second one. When you reply, SMS me so that others will not know what your answer is =) Do remember to send me the answer AND the reason for your answer!! =)

Deathnote Spin-off: L Change the World

I finally watched a second movie that managed to make me cry.

Not as much as the first movie that made me cry, though.

The first is A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, as some of you might already know.

Argh. Just remembered that I had promised #1 to write a review of A.I. since last year! :( I will...see how, okay? =P

As the title implies, that is the movie that I had watched yesterday. Haha. I'm writing this assuming that you have some basic knowledge of the characters. Haha.

The movie doesn't have many links to deathnote, but concentrates more on L's final 23 days on Earth after he decides his own fate in the deathnote book in a bid to outwit Kira. That's because, in the second movie, it did not mention anything about his final 23 days. Ever wondered what L had been up to? Haha. This movie, which is the third one, tells all.

And so will I, in my way. As usual. Haha.

As the movie progresses, we are constantly reminded of the number of days L has on Earth by these white subtitles that go: X Days Left, in Japanese and English.

I don't remember how the movie started. (Honestly! Because it didn't make sense to me at the time) Even tossing and turning around in my bed this morning in an effort to recall didn't help. So I went to search for the movie's webpage, and was brought to a Japanese one. -_-

I mean, duh, it's a Japanese movie. Haha. But I finally chanced upon Wikipedia, which I should have searched earlier, and found that the movie had started off with a woman, who is apparently from the FBI, walking on a dimly-lit street, and, later, disappearing into a barn, where gunshots are heard. She later steps out, winks at the camera in her car and returns to the car.

L is the person communicating with her.

Later, we see a recap of how he wrote his name in the Deathnote to die quietly of a heart attack, then burning up the two deathnote books that he had, and Watari bringing Misa into the room and dying of a heart attack.

Then the camera skips to a Thai village, which left me hanging for a long while. I was wondering very much what the link between the two was, until very much later when I realised that the main aim of the movie was about how L was trying to save the world from a terrible bioterrorism act.

That snapped me out of watching out for another Deathnote book. =P

Back to the Thai village.

There were many people clad in yellow suits that sealed up their heads and bodies who were heading towards the village in vehicles. When they reached, they got off and for a (long) moment, I thought they were voluntary rescue workers from the UN and that got my mind wondering if I am as noble as to look at all these battered people and administer first aid, etc, to them.

It was much later, when I saw how some of these "yellow people" (as I shall address them, out of convenience) roughly treated those villagers, who were obviously sick and dying of some epidemic, and this guy dressed in blue who saw everything and ran all the way back to somewhere in the wilderness to a little boy and saying to him, "This village is ruined. We have to go," that I realised that the "yellow people" are bad people.

Apparently, these yellow people were sent to extract blood samples from these villagers, who were infected by some very deadly epidemic, so as to examine it to figure out an antidote for it for some people high up there to conduct some acts of terrorism.

Guess what? The US seemed to be working in conjunction with the Japanese Dr Kujo and another guy who had an insatiable greed for money in this project.

Haha. What a convenient country to bring in. =P No offence!

I'm not going to narrate the whole story. That would be boring. I mean, it's so much better to watch...

Back to the boy, the blue guy's name is F. He sacrificed himself by being a decoy after the yellow people's forces bombed the village, and after he gave the boy instructions on how to contact Watari.

Apparently, F had been working undercover in the village, and had contracted the epidemic himself. Seems like that was actually an experiment on the bioterrorism act. I think those people had wanted to test out the virus they were going to use.

OMG. So cruel. :(

The boy, strangely, did not contract this disease, and after he was accepted by L, he was screened for traces of the virus and was certified OK.

The part that got me sad and crying was when this professor, who was working on an antidote for this virus (because he thought that the US, which had sent this over, had wanted to find out more about it so as to prevent bioterrorism), killed himself with the virus because his partner, Dr Kujo, was in cahoots with that big bad blind-in-one-eye guy who had found them a buyer for the virus and the antidote and was using him all the while. Plus, the sadistic gang had threatened to get his daughter as a hostage to threaten him to hand over the virus and the antidote that he had just successfully created.

The scene in which he died that very painful death (can you imagine growing blister-like stuff all over you which burst and bleed when they grow big enough, and bleeding everywhere, as well as choking?) and asked Dr Kujo to destroy the room [by some kind of electricity thing] in which he was in because the virus eats through the glass was very touching, albeit the last part where he reached for the glass pane one last time, with his entire body blackened was a little unwanted and elicited some laughter from others.

He had sacrificed himself not only for Mankind, but also for his daughter (who is, incidentally, a school-age girl). What a noble man! I cried because he looked a little like my own Daddy, especially since he just cut his hair. I don't know if Daddy would die for Mankind, but he certainly would do so for me. Bleah, I just cried along with that very strong little girl as she ran to the shelter of L, on her father's orders.

Now for a more summarised version. The girl, Maki, injects herself with the remaining virus that her father had asked her to bring to L, in a bid to infect Dr Kujo and her team. But it remains dormant in her as she has low blood sugar.

L saves her from Dr K and team, and brings the boy and her to another professor, who was the co-writer with her father of a research paper on that particular virus strain. There, they plead with him to develop an antidote for the virus as soon as possible.

Maki stupidly returns to Dr K to seek revenge, and fails, of course. Later, Dr K uses her to deceive the rest of her team that she has gotten the recipe to the antidote (which Maki's father did leave to her, in the form of a code. It's a mathematical puzzle, which was solved by the boy, who is a mathematical genius. But Maki didn't tell Dr K anything about that, of course), and brings them on a plane to the US, and has plans to hijack it using the virus.

Later, L rushes to save Maki, and causes the plane to not be able to take off on schedule, so Dr K changes tact and pulls out Maki's patient devices (i.e. erm , I forgot the name. The IV bag and needle thing, I THINK) roughly, causing her to bleed and spread the virus.

Dr K's plan is actually to cleanse the world of human beings who ruin the Earth, and that blind-in-one-eye guy just wants money. But can you imagine how someone would want to cleanse the Earth so badly that she just adapts herself to this lousy plan?

Just another point to add though. Here, like Kira, Dr K seems to think of herself as God. Human beings thinking of themselves as God never fails to bring problems. Look at the Saw movie series. Deathnote I and II also showcased this, with its Kira (Light Yagami) as the lead. How about Bruce Almighty and Click, which showed a little of this through the guy who wanted to control time?

I can't think of any more examples for now, but I hope you've gotten my point already. Haha. That is, no matter what, we as flawed human beings are in no position to pass judgement on others.

Back to my story.

The whole plane of people becomes infected, and L finally manages to save everyone with the tonnes of antidote that Maki's father's colleague had developed. Ever wondered how come L didn't get infected? That's because he had chosen to die quietly of a heart attack, in the deathnote book. Haha.

The boy is named Near by L, as L wants him to always be near when someone is saved. Something like that.

There we get how Near came about. Haha.

And L. Lawliet (that's his real name!) dies quietly of a heart attack in his house, as he had chosen for himself in the Deathnote.

The plot is not good in its coherence, but I suppose the good acting is a redeeming factor. It also had some funny parts like how L tried to babysit the two children, and how he bullied the FBI agent who was so willing to help him into becoming a decoy. And the fact that it touched me enough to make me cry...

Choke by Chuck Pahlahniuk

This novel is a crazy description of a man's life (Victor) who was ruined by the mother he thought was his. It turns out that she had simply kidnapped and kept him and in the meanwhile, taught him all kinds of insane stuff with her deluded mind. This man wastes the rest of his life on casual sex, his mother's deluded teachings and admitting to mistakes he did not commit to get the old folks in the elder care home that his mother lives in off his back and to make them feel better. He also pretends to choke and wait for people to save him at expensive restaurants so they would feel like heroes and also, hopefully, send him cheques regularly for the rest of their lives to support the person they had saved. He was going to use this money to pay elder care for his mother.

He later falls in love with Dr Paige Marshall at St Anthony's home (the name of the elder care home) and surprisingly finds himself unable to have sex with her. He cited the reason for it as that he loved her and did not want her to be just another one of the numerous girls he had had sex with (tells us a lot about what guys think...yucks.).

The story gets crazier towards the end of the book. Dr Paige Marshall turns out to be a patient at St Anthony's, and she explains that she is actually really a doctor and not like what the rest had said about calling her "doctor" to pacify her. The only problem is that she is from the year 2556 and was sent back to this era to get herself impregnated (which was why she wanted Victor to have sex with her) so that her team could preserve and document a genetic sampling. Shortly after she had convinced Victor he was the second coming of Christ and after he killed his mother by making her choke on chocolate pudding, she said she was leaving.

Then she somehow was not able to leave and came back and probably stayed with Victor.

What a confusing story...

The explicit details of the weird sex Victor had had were terrible to read, but the author's injections of other deluded teachings of his mother at intervals made things somewhat better. The redeeming factor of this book is the language used. It is not beautiful, but precisely cuts through to the heart. You can refer to these quotes here because this is just a book review. Haha.

I haven't done a book review for so long! :D