The leading reasons as to why I haven't been blogging has probably got to do with eBay addiction (I think I'm still mildly hooked onto it) and my new found comfort in picking up the lousy ballpoint pen to write in my writing pads. Of course, my latest/current obsession involves comparing prices of books sold at Kinokuniya and on eBay; I probably can give you a close, rough guide on how much you'll have to fork out for a particular book that appears on my booklist, where would it be cheaper. And I briefly flirted with the idea of setting up a small quaint bookstore to compete with BooksActually.
But having done adequate homework, I can safely say book prices are pretty competitively priced and you usually don't get more than a five dollars difference between retailers, online and at the real marketplace. That explains why Borders, Kinokuniya, MPH and Times (I've heard of Carefour joining in the fun) gives out discounts almost all the time - every other month or so - because that's one edge they get over one another. Borders used to have this very smart marketing ploy, which offered you in discount of a month's validity, if you bought in one of their discounted weekends. It does try to cultivate the loyalness in customers, which is what Kino has done with their privilege cards.

I know I sound pretty scary when I get obsessed over certain things; I've been quite obsessed to get the best bargain out of any book I get, or those my friends decide to get.
(Right now, I'm pretty glad I got a good price on my friend's request to get Louis-Ferdinand Celine's Journey to the End of the Night, and my own keeness on reading Adrian Tomine's 32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics)

Something struck me reading (after printing it out) Jhumpa Lahiri's Once In a Lifetime, and the perspective was something rather new to me, so it did make me try to write my own, with her style. I haven't given it a title, because I haven't gotten down to editing the piece. So here's the raw piece:

dated 15th July 2006 (or scroll down to the entry titled so.)

I know it has no conclusion: my excuses are that I respect Kafka's works way much, and I was just writing with the flow. It will come, I'm sure.
It would be very nice indeed if anybody who makes the effort to read my short scribe address a short comment or so.