The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield's evocative novel on the connection and bond between siblings, revolves around two sets of twins: Margaret Lea and her deceased twin Moira, and tragedy-born twins Emmeline and Adeline March. The story is two-fold, one story in another story: you have Margaret while she goes about her task to write the life story of reclusive, mysterious author Vida Winter... and then you have Vida Winter narrating her story; Ms. Winter, the successful writer who's never told the truth about who she is and where she came from. She's finally coming clean.">

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Welcome to a Whimsical Blog~

Hi, I'm Angela, a girl with a blog on five different psyches:
girl, geek, reader, writer, gamer
Choose your poison ♥

I survived hosting a dinner party

Yes, I survived! Last night was the fist time I’ve hosted a dinner party without any help from, well, anyone else. I had three families over (my aunt’s, and two cousins’ families) for a small housewarming dinner. Ten adults, and six kids (and one baby!).

I have been a nervous wreck for most of the weekend: I was sick for two days (Wednesday and Thursday) so I did not have enough time to get my shopping done at leisure. I went to the grocery thrice yesterday. (I need a new wire trolley.)

The menu

I’ve never really cooked for other people in my life. Okay, there were a few times that I did (Christmases, that sort of thing–but my mom was always around to ask/bug/wail to about why so-and-so isn’t happening in my dish). But I’ve never cooked, not really. I can feed myself, but that’s pretty much it. But I went and tried three dishes for tonight’s dinner:

  1. The Pioneer Woman’s favorite meatloaf
  2. The Pioneer Woman’s Shrimp Pasta in a Foil
  3. Baked mashed potatoes (topped with cheddar and bacon)

(Yes, you can tell I am a fan.)

They’re all relatively easy dishes, but I’ve never done either of them before. I’d say the runaway winner here was the meatloaf: no leftovers! I borked it up a little though, as I had “halved” the recipe but forgot about it midway and ended up putting the whole 1 cup of cheese, but then there is no such thing as too much cheese, isn’t it?

(That, and the sad fact that I can’t find a broiler pan. I compromised with a roasting pan with a roasting grill, with aluminum foil over the grill, cut with slits to let the oil drop through.)

(Oh, I also left out the white wine in the pasta. Not because I don’t have any–I actually bought white wine just for it–but because I have no corkscrews. How fail is that?!)

Five realizations

  1. Stick to your initial plans and gut feelings. I suddenly worried that the pasta would not be enough (I halved the recipe), and I added a quarter pound’s worth. That quarter pound ended up as leftovers.
  2. Five cups of rice is still too much rice. (I have enough for six more dinners!)
  3. Filipinos just aren’t mashed potato people. Everyone said it was good, but there was half left over (well…I should have known, really. I can’t eat so much either, even though I think it’s omgdelicious–because I feel too guilty).
  4. Stick a movie into the TV and that keeps most kids’ attentions. That, and prank donuts.
  5. You do NOT need five hours to cook two dishes.

This certainly isn’t something I’d love to do on a regular basis (omgsotired) but the sense of achievement after is rewarding :)

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The mundane things

I’d been feeling rather “off” recently–feverish and generally achy all over. Not a very swell thing to be. But, my sisters did come two weeks ago for a weekend’s visit, which was fabulous. We had a rainy Sunday, but we still had a great time. Since they’d been here before, this weekend was really just more of a going-around-and-bonding type thing than a tourist-y thing (same with my parents’ coming over earlier this month).

Biel and the scientist

Biel and the scientist

I’d never been to the Science Centre before, and this seemed like a good time as any to go. We had brunch, then went on it and took two IMAX tickets, for Sea Monsters and Van Gogh. Just our luck — we ended up picking show times at just the times when they’d power up the huge Tesla coil for viewers. When we arrived at the Tesla coil room, Ate commented that she felt like she was playing Red Alert 2 again. Hee hee. I miss that game.

The exhibits were pretty good, though — the most enjoyable ones for me were the optical illusions, and the human body/virus/etc exhibits. We spent a good couple of minutes on the projected game were you use your shadow to direct cells (like macrophages) around and help make this little boy well. That was fun! The IMAX shows were good as well, although I found the Sea Monsters show more enjoyable than Van Gogh; I ended up yawning every two minutes with the latter. Ate got dizzy with Sea Monsters, however.

After that, we went on to Settlers’ Cafe, which I had initially planned for them when the whole family visited Singapore for the first time. I think, at the start, they felt a little shell-shocked with how noisy the gamers were (haha) but we had a good time; I especially loved the last game we played, a strategy card game called Dominion. Makes me want to buy it :D I almost did, but got over since there’s really no one to play with, anyway.

Up Poster

Up Poster

The next day was spent mostly in malls, and commuting in between. We watched the 3D version of Up in Iluma at Bugis; damn animated movies, making me cry. (Ahem.) It was really good though–Dug is my favorite. I wish translating collars are real XD

We had a nice lunch at Empire State (reminds me of NYNY), then went around a couple malls in Orchard Road. Biel found My Girl (the Korean drama) at one of the video shops; Ate was content with just eating and sampling all the food (though we ended up not getting anything remotely asian… go figure). I’ve never watched My Girl, so after a bratwurst dinner, we went home and watched it while Ate packed up some. They ended up asleep all over my bed, which left me no space <_<.

My Girl was quite enjoyable, though, I’m glad they got me to watch. I don’t usually go for asian TV dramas, although I have a soft spot for the Matsumoto/Mao Hana Yori Dango (yes, I am biased, because I love my Hanadan). Gongchan/Yoorin reminded me of Tsukasa/Tsukushi, although they’re quite different. It must be the comedy moments! I don’t know exactly if I find Lee Dong Wook cute or not; he definitely has his angles and his moments but a big chunk of that is probably the role.

All too fleeting, though :( I accompanied them back to the airport on Monday morning. I’ve had the whole family come visit one after another the whole of August XD which has prompted my officemates to ask why not just come all together. Yeah, why not? Tee hee.

It was certainly nice to spend a rather “ordinary” weekend with my sisters, and doing random, non-tourist-y things. I don’t suppose tourists would actually sit and play board games if they go to Singapore? And watch movies. But the mundane things are often the dearest things, the ones that I miss the most.

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Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield’s evocative novel on the connection and bond between siblings, revolves around two sets of twins: Margaret Lea and her deceased twin Moira, and tragedy-born twins Emmeline and Adeline March. The story is two-fold, one story in another story: you have Margaret while she goes about her task to write the life story of reclusive, mysterious author Vida Winter… and then you have Vida Winter narrating her story; Vida, the successful writer who’s never told the truth about who she is and where she came from. She’s finally coming clean.

I will admit that I picked up this novel purely on reading that it was a “spellbinding, lyrical debut” as I’ve always been drawn to rather lyrical, lush stories–and always felt disconnected with rather terse ones. I raved about it some time ago when I started reading it, and I’ve since finished it. It was definitely a good read.

There are three things that I want to highlight about this book, which might very well be the deciding point if this book interests you:

  1. I’m usually a quick reader, always wanting to devour each book. But with this book (along with a few others) was worded so wonderfully that I took my time, savoring each word, each phrase. I’m not one for something overly drawn out, because that makes me read even quicker, skip some phrases. Setterfield hit a good balance between lush prose and story speed, which is important. Something too lush will drown me; something too terse isn’t personal to me.
  2. The story revolved around family, bonds, and love. There’s a lot of tragedy, and a lot of abandonment, with dysfunctional people and people who think they know better. But they all served to highlight the (often almost otherworldly) connections between siblings, between twins, to be precise. There wasn’t an extraneous story, a useless thread: I was easily sucked into the story, my full concentration on it.
  3. Vida Winter’s past is a mystery, and because of that, the book itself is a big mystery that keeps one guessing. And guessing. And guessing. It’s so finely weaved together that once you reach the end of Vida’s personal story (“…my story–my own personal story–ended before my writing began. Storytelling has only ever been a way of filling in the time since everything finished.”) you might say, as I did, “why didn’t I see that before?”

Other things that was of interest in me is that there are two writers in this book. Novels about writers are quite interesting for me; now I have two: one a biographer and another a fiction writer. Love of reading and Jane Eyre was another. That’s not to say that the book is perfect: precious few are. The final ending of the book felt a bit too drawn-out, a little contrived: there was such a lot of wrapping up to do that it seemed there were endless epilogues. It was not a slow landing, but one that happened in rather swift gradations.

All in all, though, it was definitely a good book, one of those that I can easily call an escape into another world, another time, another place. One that transforms, and one that speaks of more than just the surface.

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