Cikelin Chronicle

Rating: ★★★★ Category: Books Genre: Science Fiction & Fantasy Author: Jules Verne Remember your grammar lesson in high school? My English teacher used to ask me to complete the sentence: If I were rich, I would... And I always wrote: If I were rich, I would go around the world in eighty days. That always made my teacher smiling. I found this book in Junior Fiction shelf in the library. I don't know why the classify this book as Junior Fiction. Is it? But since I became interested in reading classic (the famous book that we've never read), I picked it up. I did enjoy reading it, although it's not as rich of action as I saw at Jackie Chan movie. I couldn't help comparing this book with the movie because I saw the movie first. There were too many actions that were definitely not from the book. Here are some notes from my reading: 1. In the movie, Phileas Fogg was a scientist. In the book, it's not clear what was he doing. He's just a mysterious man. 2. In the m...

Rating: ★★★ Category: Books Genre: Literature & Fiction Author: Jane Austen What's a classic book? The one that is so famous and you've never read it, that is. It was because of the movie Becoming Jane that I started interested in Austen's books. I chose the 'easiest' book to read: Pride and Prejudice. Austen herself called this work as too light, yet bright and sparkling. But, to be honest, I couldn't enjoy this book that much. It's a good story yes, but the old style English language used made me dizzy. If only I had luxury time and comfortable place (rather than in the moving train), maybe I could finish this novel. More about Jane Austen at www.austen.com or www.pemberly.com

I don't know where she got this word from, but my mom called a ferris wheel as Jinontrong. I wondered if it's a Javanese word. I remembered when I was a little girl, my parents took me to a Pasar Malam Sekaten at Alun-alun (Palace square) Jogja. It happened every year until I was too big to be taken there (or was it my parents that was too old to go?). I remembered it was a very special day in a year, that my parents would buy us (me and my sister) something, whether they were clothes (cheap ones, hik hik), or a toy (an othok-othok boat) or a bag of Chiki. While my mom was very happy with her bag of Sasa or Sarimi and my father was satisfied taking a glance at the erotic dangdut dancer. And we always rode the jinontrong. Cause it was only one-in-a year chance. Years later I was not interested in that festival anymore. We didn't go there although we lived just a stroll away from the Jogja Palace. Beside, my dear boy-who-was-born-with-a-silverspoon-in-his-mouth aka Nino had n...