Clay Aiken / Learning to Sing

Usually when we do read memoirs, it's either for a paper or that he/she is one who had really done something impactful for the country or the world. And this one that i've just finished was neither. I only remember clay aiken as the second runner up for the American Idol 2. It was THAT time when all the "star searching" started.

No doubt this book was out to tap on his fast increasing fanbase during that AI period, as it was really easy reading. Some parts make me laugh and cry... Some parts made me think: hey that's life again, right? And there was this part about this... when he went on The Ellen Show, he doesn't understand why many of his relatives question him about going on the show... and by doing this he is condoning her lifestyle... and after the book, i went to pull out this first CD of his: Measure of a Man and ran it.

So i was trying to look for a good clip of his, i saw this... he looks TOTALLY DIFFERENT now.
See how stardom / tv / pop industry can change one's physical looks... well with money of course...
In the clip there was this contestant who claims to be a clay-wannabe, and well, yeah... maybe if he could sing like clay, he'd have the same stardom fate... but i can understand why the judges said no immediately. Well, think positively, he still got to sing with clay in the finals!



Well, many things happen everyday.
Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be.

Umberto Eco / How to Travel with a Salmon & other essays

Saw the recommendation from anobii online bookshelf and managed to get it from the library.

It's an interesting read.... did some brief readup on the author and actually this italian novelist / columnist was well-known for his novel "The name of the rose", but i couldn't find this book on the library shelves... but this book is a recommendation for anybody who wants some light reading, easy to digest (for pple who aren't very proficient in the language like me)...

i had good laughs while i held the book the whole of last afternoon.
U don't have to follow chapters, u can just flip to any page and start reading and u'll still get good stuffs.

I especially loved this one: "How it begins and how it ends".
Eco, during his university days loved movies and dramas, but becos of certain rules and regulations, he had to leave the theatre/cinema before midnight. Thus he did not have the luxury of knowing the ending of each and every movie/drama he went to. His friend on the other hand, was in charge of ticketing, and the numbers of latecomers alwiz let him end up missing the front part of the movie/drama. Thus he did not have the opportunity to know what went on in the beginning that laid the plots. So one day they sat down and talked about it. The anguish and disappointment they had was the same even though one was about the start and the other about the end. So they started to talk about it and filled each other about the parts they had missed. And Eco reflects after the event...

"Will we be happier afterwards? Or will we have lost the freshness of those who are privileged to experience art as real life, where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who's going to win or lose the game?"

probably we will alwiz moan about things we've missed and we will alwiz be curious about things that we had missed. The curiosity may hang on us for many years till it was dug up again, and finally the key to your question was found... but later we realised... SO WHAT?

Life goes on. :)