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He loves Japanese cuisine.  I love Japanese cuisine. He read Master Chef Murata’s featured article about his book “Japanese Home Cooking” and am tempted to buy it. We love the fact that his recipe is fuss free, using readily available ingredients and looks yummy with great reviews!

Yoshihiro Murata, one of the most accomplished and respected figures in Japan’s culinary world, has combined his expertise and artistry with his enthusiasm for teaching Japanese cooking to create this exciting new book. Japanese Home Cooking with Master Chef Murata presents over sixty healthy home recipes, from classic to modern, ranging from popular restaurant offerings like yakitori, tempura, and shabu shabu to typical home dishes like onigiri (rice balls), miso soup, and tonkatsu fried pork cutlets. “

All of the dishes can be made using Western kitchen tools and ordinary ingredients readily available from the supermarket; if a more exotic ingredient is called for, Murata suggests alternatives. And, while he strives to retain the authenticity of a recipe, he also recommends ways for the Western chef to adapt it. For example, in a number of the recipes, he suggests using high-quality store-bought chicken broth, which is also used in Japan, instead of traditional Japanese dashi stock.”

- Amazon.com

He made me buy it and I made him promise me to whip up the dishes we both love!

With $30 dollars I get to eat up to 60 Japanese home cook dishes! It’s a great deal! Hee.

A fan of Sex and the City, I’m always trying to find the second best in Candace Bushnell’s collection, I doubt this the one I’m looking for, but I guess this is one of the few which I enjoyed reading.

Janey Wilcox is one tough character. Her stupidity, materialism and manipulative nature, bitchiness, love-less-ness together with her flawless exterior beauty makes me want to rip her apart like a paper doll when reading the book! On the flip side of the coin, her determination, strength, adaptability and resourcefulness is strongly displayed through the many trials and tribulations she went through. What a lady!

Just bought a secondhand book today! I can’t help buying chick flicks! I’ve got tons of books (7 unread books) sitting on my table arranged according to my preferred reading order yearning to be read by me. HAH. I’ll probably need a garage sale to get rid of all these books before I move to our new place next year!

There are many authors who wrote about the powerful, brutal and crafty Sam Walton (and Wal-mart as a whole) but little about his values, visions and rationales he had for Wal-Mart and America. After reading his autobiography, Sam Walton to me is just a human being like any others, one with aspirations, one who inspires and one who has a soft side like anyone else. He is definitely not a scary old man leading a colossal corporation which many painted him as.

This book is a great read and everyone, managements, entrepreneurs, employees alike should read it!

I enjoyed reading “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert and I can’t wait to read her sequel, “Committed”! EPL is a memoir of her life after divorce. It’s liberating and it’s simple sharing of a life exploration where the author found herself in Italy, India and Indonesia in a year! I want to take a one year sabbatical too! SIGH and this is coming from a girl who has worked for less than a year.

In Italy, she learnt that Italians are “… the masters of Bel Far Niente (the beauty of doing nothing)”. I need to learn to enjoy doing nothing too! To enjoy life just breathing and observing as the world goes pass.

In India, someone said, “You are, after all, what you think. Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.” How true! I need to stay positive and control my emotions and thoughts.

In Indonesia, she fell in love with someone who said this to her, “Think of it this way, I don’t care if you shave your legs everyday, I already love your body…” Isn’t it sweet to find someone who loves you for who you are? I need to love myself for who I am, to love him for who he is and hopefully, he will love me for who I am too.

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Our Group CEO gave this to each of us in the batch! I love my company! (or maybe I’m a cheapskate? HAH) I’ve started reading the first two chapters and it’s good! Now, my reading list is growing.

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elevenhours

Read Eleven Hours by Paullina Simons and concluded that I’m still a chick flick lover! I read it within 2 days because the suspense of a thriller proves to be too heavy for my heart. The read about a poor pregnant woman getting kidnapped is tormenting. Don’t get me wrong. It’s definitely a good read. It’s exciting, thrilling, freaky and gosh, Didi Wood (the pregnant woman) is one brave soul.

P.S. I certainly didn’t expect this book to fall within the collection that CW bought for us girls! HAH. Surprised.

I found an official bookcross@sg hotspot over the weekend and thought it is an awesome idea for book lovers!

BookCross@SG (BCSG) is a ‘book X-change cycle’ where books will be left in public places (hotspots) for a person to find and/or pick, aka “catch”, and upon completion of reading, “release” the book at any hotspot for the next potential reader to catch it.”

- BookCross@SG

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It is not something new and probably has been around for a while, but I thought it’s fun to stumble upon a hotspot, find a couple of books that may potentially be a good read, share a review and release them back to the “wild” for the next would-be reader! How fun! I guess this can work only if people remember to release them back to the wild.
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My find!

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Oh. Dear. I’ve got a whole stack of books waiting for me.

Love Rules

I finally finished reading the second book – Love Rules by Freya North – which I got from the girlies! This book is all about passion, love, guilt, envy and lust. Definitely a good read if you’re into chick-flicks but I hate it when betrayal and trust issues slowly surfaced in an otherwise innocent read. HAH.

love rules

I can’t wait to read the other 6 books in the collection!

Disclaimer: I am not a member of a book club neither do I have any intention to join one nor to set up one. HAHA.

elegance by kathleen tessaro
A frumpy, depressed woman (Louise Canova) metamorphosized into a confident diva in Tessaro’s novel, thanks to a 40-year-old style manual (A Guide to Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux) found in a second-hand bookstore. An interesting novel which presented snippets of interesting style tips! I love Tessaro’s classy and witty novel and Madame Dariaux’s timeless style tips that are relevant (and sensible) till this day!

Here are some of my favourite tips featured in the novel!

On Accessories
“Be strict with yourself. Save. Economize on food if you must (believe me, it will do you good!) but not on your handbags or shoes. Refuse to be seduced by anything that isn’t first rate.”

Makeup
“… some beauties are born, most of us are made. Make-up is a kind of cloting for the face, and in the city a woman would no more think of showing herself make-up than she would care to walk down the street completely undressed.”

On Weight
“I recommend that you weigh not just yourself but your priorities as well. After all, God made you the way you are and there is no point fighting nature to the extent that you alienate all your friends and family with endless rules and regulations concerning what you can and cannot eat. Being slender is undoubtedly elegant but neurotic self-obsession is NOT.”

I am so going to get my hands on Madame Dariaux’s style guide!

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