Harry Potter and other ramblings

Spoiler Alert! - There'll be NO spoilers about Harry Potter in my entry. (Der...)

 

 

Finished Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince a few days ago. The book is absolutely well-written, mavelous, hilarious, incredible and 'unputdownable'. Well, this is the most expensive novel I've bought to date (S$40!!! Almost as expensive as my thousand over pages textbooks!), to say otherwise would show that I'm as stupid as a pig! (Sorry to pig lovers out there! =P)

 

But truely speaking, most of what I've said is true, and I just can't help but mavel at the ingenuity of J K Rowlings, one of my favourite authors, who single handedly create the most interesting and fabulous magical world of Harry Potter. And I especially love some of the things we can found in that world bcoz it shows great creativity and humor, for example:

 

 

U-NO-POO (A joke shop product):

 

'Why Are You Worrying About You-Know Who?

You SHOULD Be Worrying About

U-NO-POO -

the Constipation Sensation That's Gripping the Nation!'

 

Patented Daydream Charms:

 

'One simple incantation and you will enter a top-quality, highly realistic thirty-minute daydream, easy to fit into the average school lesson and virtually undetectable (side-effects include vacant expression and minor drooling).  Not for sale to under sixteens.'

 

Felix Felicis  (Liquid Luck - Potion):

 

"I must give you warning that Felix Felicis is a banned substance in organised competitions ... sporting events, for instance, examinations or elections. So the winner is to use it on an ordinary day only ... and watch how that ordinary day becomes extraordinary!"

 

etc etc.

 

 

  

Even muggle magic tricks are mentioned in the book (George and Fred sell them!). A really nice book to read. Just saw a very beautiful sentence in Dune :

 

'The joy of living, its beauty is all bound up on the fact that life can surprise you.'

 

How true! And Harry Potter's world is full of such little little surprises. I was thinking: if all of us create some little little surprises for one another and for ourselves, our lifes will be more beautiful.

 

 

 

Ok, back to the topic, and something frustrating. =( Actually before I read the the HBP I already know who's going to die in the end. Why? I remember it's some blog I read (claiming no spoilers most probably) that refer me to some website whose URL is www.<soandso>isnotdead.com (substituding the <soandso> with the actual name of the wizard who died).

 

Argh! The most ironic thing is that the soandsoisnotdead.com site's main page write in big letters - WARNING! This web site contains SPOILERS about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! Erm... webmaster, so you know that your site's URL is already a spoiler, despite that you said he's not dead??

 

But well well, even though I knew who died in the end, the story isn't spoiled by the spoiler. I throughly enjoyed the book. Highly recommended.

 

 

 

Moving on to ramblings... Just feel that I'm abit down on luck recently - sometime i've the feeling that anything that could go wrong went wrong. (The only thing that didn't go wrong is that we clinched the gold medal for bridge and chinese chess in the Inter Block Games. Heehee. =P). Also suffering from constant fatigue these days. Maybe I'm getting burnt out from hall life, ie sleeping at 3 every night. Going to take some time to nurse myself back to health and catch up with my school work. 

 

Btw I've decided to turned down an offer to do reseach project for $8 per hour and 10 hours per week. Wondered if I made the wrong choice. My dad always tell me never choose a soft option. But given now that I already almost buay tahan le... I think health is more important. This reminds me of a survey - although health is not the number 1 factor in what makes people most happy, lack of health ranked first in what makes people most unhappy. 

 

Hope that I won't regret my choice and my luck and 精神 will be better for the rest of the sem. 

 

Hmmm... and a bottle of Felix Felicis will be good =)

 

 

PS. The link to <soandso>isnotdead.com is at my sidebar. Feel free to take a look after you finished HBP. If you haven't finished the book, please don't put your cursor over the link since the URL of the site will show up on your status bar. You've been warned.