In Singapore

Rose mugs! What a find. And the cat mug, given to me by Elle, is gorgeous. The cat really looks like Chi Chi.

I've been in Singapore since last Thursday. Travelled as usual by Oddysey coach and arrived around 8pm. Brought my Jodi Piccoult with me and finally started reading it even though I've had it for almost 2 months. Its called Nineteen Minutes, about a 17 year old who had been bullied since he was 5 years old. Finally he could not take the bullying any longer and one day took some guns to school and started shooting the people who had been bullying him for so long. What made him break and did his mother take it? How would the judge rule it ? She had known him since he was born, had known his mother since before he was born and he had been her daughter's best friend in elementary school. These are the questions you want to know when you read the book. Is he guilty? Would you blame him? If you had been the one bullied day in and day out - would you be able to accept it ? Hmm... a lot of questions.

This is one of the things I liked about Jodi Piccoult. Her stories always have two sides - the perpetrator's and the victim's. In one of her previous books - Vanishing Acts we look at a very personal crime, in which a father kidnapped his daughter, to save her from a mother's neglect. So, in kidnapping his daughter, taking her to another state and bringing her up to believe that her mother had died, did he do a wrto correct another wrong? Should he had left her with her alcoholic mother and a potentially abusive step father? There is no black or white with Jodi Piccoult. Life has a lot of grey areas and there is no truly right or completely wrong when we deal with people and relationships. And that is how she shows it to us.


In Singapore I went to this wonderful craft shop while out with my daughter in law and Shasha. I just love the prints they had - roses! Especially the ones on something as practical as a shopping cart!