Posts made in November, 2009

in my book collection

Posted by vienna on Nov 24, 2009 in This and That | 2 comments

I am a big Harry Potter fan and although I am not always the first to get a copy of the next book, I managed to complete my collection when I bought the final book (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows) last August. When the movie, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, was about to be released in cinemas, I reread my collection again to sort of review it because there was a long gap between the preceding Harry Potter movie and that one.

I started reading Harry Potter after I watched the first Harry Potter film sometime in 2001. Yep, I’ve seen the movie first before I read the book but that is good I think because, otherwise, I would have been really disappointed. Books are better than their movie counterpart. I think a lot would agree with me on that.

I became a fan right after reading the first book but I only started buying my own copies in 2005. I got Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in China and I got Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince from a tiny book sale I came across with while walking around in Munich. All the rest I got from our frequent visits here in Austria (note: I was living in China from late 2005 to early 2009). I have to say that I am really late when it comes to owning the copies but I enjoyed them just the same.

To date, I’ve read each book three times already and I could read them all over again. I know that the Harry Potter series ended with the Deathly Hallows but if J.K. Rowling changes her mind and writes a sequel to the last Harry Potter book, I would be delighted and would definitely get a copy.

Why do I like Harry Potter?

I like the Harry Potter series because I believe that it teaches some of our basic values in a subtle, creative and entertaining way. It is easy to understand plus the characters are not stuck in a particular age. I mean, they get old and mature unlike Nancy Drew who’s always 18 years old in all of her books. I used to like Nancy Drew but I sort of grew out of it. In the case of Harry Potter, I don’t think that that will happen to me.

let the house hunting begin!

Posted by vienna on Nov 11, 2009 in Home and Family | 2 comments

We can postpone them sometimes but the point will come that certain decisions have to be made and for us, the time has come to decide whether to stay in our rented flat or get a place of our own. There’s nothing wrong with our rented flat except that it is expensive. It is situated in one of those century old buildings in the center of the city. There are a lot of benefits of living in the city and it was, in the first few months of our stay here, very practical. I didn’t have a car then so it was great that I can go just about anywhere I needed to go on foot. This made my adjustment (living in a new country) period easier. I was able to develop routines and was familiarized to the city faster than if we would have stayed somewhere far from the city.

After living seven months in this flat, we realized that it is no longer working for us. I mean, we are renting a flat and in addition to that, we are also renting parking spaces. Yep, that small parcel of land where you can park a car costs us 108Euro and since we have two cars, we are paying double. We could still afford it but staying here is no longer an advantage to our finances.

We’ve thought about it thoroughly and we agreed that the most practical thing for us to do now is to look for a house we could buy. So we started looking for houses and as of writing, we haven’t found a house we like yet. Okay, that’s not true. We’ve seen just about a dozen of houses that we I really like but they’re quite too pricey for our taste.

I know that looking for a house and actually buying the house will take a while but I hope that we can find that perfect house soon. I am already super excited about it!