TONI THE MALDIVES LADY

· A story of Toni De Laroque born in an upclass English family and was raised in the African continent most of her early life
· She was a very active young girl to the extent that she decided to learn how to fly plane without the knowledge of her family
· She then jined BAC as stewardess and travel around the world. She even had a rare experience servicing the Queen Mother in one of the flight
· When her marriage was in trouble (after 2 kids) she decided to travel and ended in Maldives.
· She was puzzle of why a very beautiful island with very nice and warm people such as Maldives do not get the attention of tourist. She then decided to promote the island to British people
· She even help the children of Maldives to study in Britain finding them sponsor, placement at University and even place to stay
· She runs a company called MALDIVES TRAVEL from her flat in Chelsea where she also get friend to donate books to be given to Maldives children

STAN THE MAN

*Started as a player at Burnley. Has been very good in managing since he was hailed as the Fergie of Nationwide League since the double promotion of Bury ( a limited budget football club)
*Was hired as Burnley coach after Chris Waddle and Adrian Heath failed. Stan was the first team coach of Chelsea in 1991 assisting the manager at that time Ian Potterfield. He has to deal with Dennis Wise the captain who has a problem with Ian.
*Stan playing career started with Carlisle where he played as a defender and known as the Yorkshire Ripper. He was transferred to Sunderland where we was injured and decided to move to coaching. At 32 he coach Blackpool. However was sacked and work as contractor since not being offered by any club.
*He then get the chance to join Crystal Palace as coaching staff assisting Steve Coppell. From there he went to manage Hull City but sacked later as he cannot get along with player
*Next he manage Bury and get promoted to Division 1
*Manage to sign big playes like Ian Wright and Gazza when he manage Burnley

MARTINA

*Born in Czech Republic to a ski instructor mum and ski patrol dad
*Start to be introduce to tennis at Klamorka Park the first indoor tennis court in Prague. She was noticed to always look more like a boy than a girl. She train with the Klamorka Tennis Club
*She won the national championship in 1972 where she beat Vlasta Vopickova
*Met Chris Evert for the first time in 1973 but lost 7-6,6-3
*She the defected to USA citing tennis as the main reason
*Among all the grand slam she like wimbledon due to the well behave crowd compare to US Open where the crowd is similar to the baseball game crowd
*She has a slight temperamental problem. Get the help from Sandra Haynie to control the temper
*She then had a lesbian affair with celebrity writer Rita Mae. They then separated after Martina found new lover Nancy Lieberman
1981 finally get heer US citizenship
*She then had another lesbian affair with Judy Nelson and Panda Ja
*She then finally retired after 18 grand slam and 167 single titles

MARCO : DEVIL IN THE KITCHEN

*Born in Leeds in1961 to an Italian mum and English dad. Dad works as a chef in Hotel St George. Marko leave school before finishing exam to work in his dad kitchen.
*He then join Box Tree one of Leeds better restaurant under head chef Michael Lawson. He then decided to experienced the London scene and that brought him to Roux Brothers. He joined the famous Le Gavroche under Albert Roux quit in 1982 but then rejoin again.
*He then joined the famous Pierre Koffman at Tante Claire with no salary on his first month as part of the joining agreement.
*Then he joined Raymond Blanc at Le Manoir after being asked to cook perfect fish dish during interview. This is also whre he fist met with Heston Blumenthal
*He was planning to go to Paris for cooking experience but due to few incidents he then decided (with 2 other partners) to open HARVEYS. A very impressive review by Egon attract lots of people and even give him his first Michelin Star in 1988. He’s very vocal in the kitchen but proud of having his ex chef to be awarded Michelin star including Gordon Ramsay (3 stars)
*In 1992 he joined actor Michael Caine to open CANTEEN. He then leave HARVEYS to concentrate on CANTEEN
*He then married MATI , his wife who he met at CANTEEN
1993 open MPW @ Hyde Park Hotel with Rocco Forte.
*Feeling that he achieved everything in the cooking world he decided to give away his Michelin Star and retire from the culinary world.

BUSH WOMEN

A compilation by Laura Flanders discussing about the womens that has a big impact on President Bush political journey. Among the women are :

* Condolezza Rice : the state secretary during his time as president
* Karen Huges : regarded as the counselor to the president. She has been his loyal adviser since the time where mr bush is just a small governor trying to survive in the political world
* Elaine Choo : the living example of a person that achieve the AMERICAN DREAM. She help the president to be closer to immigrant especially the asian people
* Christine Todd Whitman : his environmental advisor that assist mr bush in dealing with the environmental issues

SHE SAID YES ....

A story by Misty Bernall the mother of Casey Bernall, one of the victim in Columbine high school shooting. It reveal how Misty was shot in the library (shot direct to the head) and how Misty heard it first in her office while having lunch.

It also reveals how Misty and her family deal with Casey problem while she friended a girl named Mona before the incident. Mona did influenced Casey to hate her parents. They manage to get police order so that Mona will stay away from Casey. Casey even wrote an essay saying she hate her family and god. Because of this they decided to transfer her to Columbine from Beaver High.

They also receive a letter from the parent of the Columbine Killera pologizing and do not understand of their son behaviour.

HIGH TECH CAREERS FOR LOW TECH PEOPLE

A book on career guidance especially for non-technical graduates to join technical company. A very good read with eye opening information especially knowing that there are lots of job opportunity for people without technical background in a technical company. Jobs like proposal developer, marketing assistance, event organizer do not requires technical experience. Communications and creativity is the strength needed.

Also the books discuss about the importance of covering letter to attract attentions. The interesting fact about this books is that the writer works in Sun Micro system after graduating from Columbia U in FRENCH HISTORY !!!!!

ZLATA'S DIARY

A story about a girl from Sarajevo who likes to write into her diary which she called MIMIE. She wrote about how her town in Sarajevo transformed from a dream place to live to a war zone. Her school friends were killed, bomb attack near her house, living everyday without water and electricity and worst of all disconnected from the outside world. With the help of UN Zlata and her family were transported to Paris as part of UN protection program.

ROBBO : MY BIOGRAPHY

Bryan Robson was born in Chester le Street to a father who work as a truck driver. His father was a big fan of Newcastle football club. Robbo first taste of pro football with WBA manage at that time by Ron Atkinson.

When Ron moved to Man United he offered Robbo to join with a transfer record fee at that time of 1.5 million pound. After a very good start with Man United he then replaced Ray Wilkins as team captain. Man United was also supposed to sign Paul Gasgoine at that time of the most gifted midfield player in England. But Gazza refused to join because he’s afraid of being overshadowed by Robbo.

He was known as a goal scoring midfielder with a very good leadership as shown during his captaincy of England football team. However Robbo is injury prone which is his biggest problem during his footballing career. The arrival of Eric Cantona signal his days is to be ended in Man United.

His first coaching experienced is with Boro and using his image and contact he manage to bring talented player such as Juninho and Ravanelli. After stint in Boro he join WBA as manager. Robbo is a famous face for brand NEW BALANCE.

The Wizard Behind Harry Potter

Joanne Kathleen Rowling was born 31/7/1966 in Chipping Sodbury Hospital. She is very good in writing things that based on her imagination. When she stayed in Wintebourne her closest friend was Ian and Vikki Porter and the name Harry Porter was inspired by their surname.

She graduated from Exeter University and joins Amnesty International, she did not like it because it took away the free time for her to write. She then worked in Portugal as English teacher because it provides more time for her to write plus new experience living in Portugal. She then met her future husband in Portugal (a journalist for one of Portugal TV station). Their only daughter was born in 1993 but sadly due to unforeseen reason they divorced.

JK Rowling favorite writing spot will be a small café named Nicolson Café. Complete her first novel however due to lack of financial support she had to type the whole 2 copies to be sent to the potential publisher. Her first novel was published by Bloomsbury Press.

Her second HP novel even beat the bigger names such as Tom Clancy and John Grisham. Warner Bros sign contracts to film Harry Porter. She even used a real person Natalie McDonald (page 159 – Goblet of Fire) to honor her fan who died of cancer. The actor for Harry Porter was supposed to be an American (suggested by Spielberg) but JK Rowling wanted an English actor. Daniel Radcliff was selected.

She is now happily married to Neil Murray with 2 kids.

Payless Books Warehouse

Map to 3K Inn (this is 2007 ads)

Catch of the day

I went to the sale at 3K Inn near Subang Jaya. I've targeted cheap fiction books (due to the need to add my fiction collections). With a budget of RM 150 I manage to bring back around 70 books. Payless will be having this every month and for more info you can go to their website at this website

Book Xcess

Book Xcess @ Level 3 Amcorp Mall

My first business deal with Book Xcess

The books store is made for book lovers

I was told about the above book store by one of my fellow book blogger. I've visited the website and really like the concept of buying overprinted books from publisher and selling it at a very good discounted price.

I'm finally was able to drive to Amcorp Mall last Friday and brought myself 5 good bio books on the followings :

1) Ashley Cole
2) Martin Johnson
3) Gazza (Paul Gasgoine)
4) Nicole Kidman
5) Ballack

The total cost is around RM 100 which for me considering it's a new books was a real bargain.

Rizal

Book Blogger Appreciation Week 2009

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Announcing the Second Annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week September 14-18, 2009

Last year over 400 blogs came together to celebrate the art of book blogging during the first ever Book Blogger Appreciation Week! I am so pleased to announce that the second annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week will be taking place September 14-18.

WHO Anyone who blogs about books is invited to participate. In fact, we want everyone who blogs about books and reading to be a part of this week!
WHAT A week where we come together, celebrate the contribution and hard work of book bloggers in promoting a culture of literacy, connecting readers to books and authors, and recogonizing the best among us with the Second Annual BBAW Awards. There will be special guest posts, daily blogging themes, and giveaways.
WHEN September 14-18, 2009
WHERE Here at the new Book Blogger Appreciation Week Blog! (Please note that this year there are three separate blogs and feeds—one for the main event, one for giveaways, and one for awards.)
WHY Because books matter. In a world full of options, the people talking about books pour hard work, time, energy, and money into creating a community around the written word. I, Amy, the founder of Book Blogger Appreciation Week love this community of bloggers and want to shower my appreciation on you!

For further information visits :

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/redirect.php?r=9bcdb2772641c55237e203c9d9136674&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pussreboots.pair.com

Nickel and Dime

Barbara Ehrenreich wanted to study how people in America who earn less than USD 10 per hour manage their live and what she decided to do? To be (or act) as one of them. This book summarizes her experience working at the following places:

a) Work as a restaurant server in Florida

b) Work as house cleaner in Maine

c) Work with WALMART in Minnesota

She did challenge herself to live within a limited budget on food, rent and entertainment. Most of the time she has to do extra works during weekend to earn extra cash. What she did discover was to survive in this category (low income earner) it requires exhausting mental/physical efforts.

RIZAL

HOW THE WEB CHANGE OUR READING HABIT

When Ed Chi wants to read, he turns to two of the six computer screens that surround his desk. One is devoted exclusively to e-mail; the other, to the rest of his reading material.

The senior researcher is testing a theory: What if your "virtual desk" was as just big as your real desk? How would that change your behavior? Dr. Chi, of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in California, has found out one thing already. Almost all his reading - text messages, e-mails, journal articles, even books - is done on-screen.

Computers and the Internet are changing the way people read. Thus far, search engines and hyperlinks, those underlined words or phrases that when clicked take you to a new Web page, have turned the online literary voyage into a kind of U-pick island-hop. Far more is in store.

Take "Hamlet." A decade ago, a student of the Shakespeare play would read the play, probably all the way through, and then search out separate commentaries and analyses.
Enter hamletworks.org.

When completed, the site will help visitors comb through several editions of the play, along with 300 years of commentaries by a slew of scholars. Readers can click to commentaries linked to each line of text in the nearly 3,500-line play. The idea is that some day, anyone wanting to study "Hamlet" will find nearly all the known scholarship brought together in a cohesive way that printed books cannot.

Even that effort only scratches the surface of what's possible, some researchers say. Since people are still largely reading the way they always have, they ask, why not use technology to make reading itself more efficient?

The reading experience online "should be better than on paper," Chi says. He's part of a group at PARC developing what it calls ScentHighlights, which uses artificial intelligence to go beyond highlighting your search words in a text. It also highlights whole sections of text it determines you should pay special attention to, as well as other words or phrases that it predicts you'll be interested in.

"Techniques like ScentHighlights are offering the kind of reading that's above and beyond what paper can offer," Chi says. While readers might not feel a need to use ScentHighlights with the next Harry Potter novel, the software could help students, academics, and business people quickly extract specific information from other written material.

ScentHighlights gets its name from a theory that proposes that people forage for information much in the same way that animals forage in the wild. "Certain plants emit a scent in order to attract birds and bees to come to them," Chi says. ScentHighlights uncovers the "scent" that bits of information give off and attract readers to it.

If the reader types in "Wimbledon tennis," for example, ScentHighlights would highlight each word in its own color in the text, as search programs do. But ScentHighlights adds additional keywords in gray that the system has inferred that the reader would be interested in (perhaps "US Open" or "Andy Roddick"). It would also highlight in yellow entire sentences that it deems likely to be especially relevant.

GRANMEDIA

Finally , there a book store near to my house. Granmedia is a book store franchise from Indonesia and to my surprise this is their first book store in Malaysia and they must have a very good reason to open it in Tesco Setia Alam and not in area like Bangsar or KLCC. Whatever it is I'm really happy and the first book that I've bought is a biography of Kassim Ahmad.

RIZAL

ORGANIZING YOUR COLLECTIONS

• Alphabetizing by author works well for fiction but not necessarily for nonfiction books of various subjects.
• Judging a book by its cover is usually frowned upon, but sorting by color can be aesthetically pleasing to some. Those generally forgetful about the colors of their books might disagree.
• After a painful breakup, the main character in Nick Hornby's book "High Fidelity" organizes his record collection autobiographically in the order he acquired them. A chronological organization might include shelves that track the progress of your life, from beloved childhood reading and college textbooks to parenting books.
• To some readers, there are two ways to look at books: read and unread. Prioritizing when you might need the book will allow you to keep unread books at the forefront of your collection, as well as books you reach for frequently, such as reference books or favorite novels.

RIZAL

A STRANGE KIND OF GLORY (SIR MATT BUSBY)

A story about the famous Sir Matt Busby arguably the best Man United manager before Sir Alex Ferguson era. Born in Scotland and played for Manchester United and the Scottish National Team. He was asked to manage Man United by former Man United players who was in the club management at that time.

Manage to recruit young talented players around Great Britain such as Duncan Edward (arguably the best striker ever born in England) and others. This selected players was know as "The Busby Babes". Even Bobby Charlton could not get into first eleven.

Tragedy struck in the famous Munich Plane Disaster. 70% of the original squad including Duncan Edward died. Matt Busby build again the team from scratch recruiting young and talented players such as Brian Kidd and George Best together with Bobby Charlton. They won the European Cup in 1968 the first English Club to achieve it.

RIZAL

BEHIND THE MASK (DAVE PALLONE)

A story about former Major League baseball umpire. His father plan for Dave to be a MLB Baseball player, but did not materialized. Dave decide to join the Umpire School (from newspaper advertisement). It works and his progression is very good starting from Minor to Major League.

One day he realized that he's gay and tried his best to hide the fact. Being gay is known not to be accepted in the big league and he do not want to create problem. His first lover , Scott, died in accident. Dave was chosen few times to umpire playoff and All-Star games but never achieved the ultimate goal ..THE WORLD SERIES ..

Dave did experienced several controversial moments especially the shoving incident with PETE ROSE (at that time managing Cincinati Reds). Due to a minor sex scandal (Dave didn't admit it) he was forced to quit.

PESTA BUKU ANTARABANGSA KL 2009

Jom la kita pegi ramai-ramai. Let support the KL Books Fair 2009.

RIZAL

THE LAST GREAT RIDE

A story about Brandon Tartikoff the "wizard" of media industry. During his tenure in NBC his COSBY SHOW was a big hit to about 48% of the share. However in 1982 he hits into problem both health and NBC. Series such as Remington Steele and KnightRider are not doing very well. He was save by A-TEAM and SHOGUN which receive high ratings at that time.

He also lead the idea of replacing Tonight Show (Johnny Carson leave in 1991) with The Late Night Show with David Letterman. During his time NBC bids for MLB contracts worth of USD 800 M and succeed.

After 14 years with NBC he move to Paramount Pictures as Chairman.

MPH 'JIMAT' BOOK FAIR

Another book fair from MPH.

RIZAL

Karangkraf Mini Karnival

For those looking for a good Malay novels and magazines, and do not have any plan this weekend ...why not going to this event ...and yes ..they do give good discounts.

RIZAL

PROUD TO BE (KELLY FLINN)

She is the first women to fly B-52. A tomboy since kid she was in love with aircraft since watching the launching of a spaceship in TV. Entered the Air Force Academy in 1993 and decided to be a pilot. She was selected to fly B-52 and was based in a town called MINOT.

She train hard and received good review from her trainers. Then she seriously involved with a con-man called Marc Zigo (who's wife is an air-women working in Minot). Suddenly Kelly Flint affair was in every newspaper front page.

The Air Force wanted her to resign but she decided to fight on (it happen that Marc Zigo had the same problem with other women previously). However since 'She'll be prison" if she decided to go for trial and for the safety of her family, she step down.

A very classic example of a women fighting for her pride and was denied by the corrput politics of the American Air-Force.

CONTENT = 8/10
IMPACT = 8/10
OVERALL = 8/10

Times Warehouse Sale

The Poster (complete with a map to Plaza Damas)

My catch (30 books with a budget of RM 100)


I went to the warehouse sales (after few difficulty looking for Plaza Damas) and after spending almost 2 hours, most of it at the 3 books for RM 10 area, went back with 30 books with a cost of approximately RM 100 ...now that is what I call ware house sale ....

RIZAL

BOSS TALK (WALL STREET JOURNAL)

A very interesting books that collects interesting idea and system implemented by successful CEOs from various company. The input is from interviews conducted and 25 CEOs have participated successfully. In this summary I’ll list down 3 input from 3 highly recognize CEO.

1) Jack Welch (GE)

· The introduction of Crotonville Complex that handles all training for General Electronics staff.

· Rewarding people is very important and Jack believe the best rewards is in terms of CASH.

2) Steve Ballmer (Apple)

· Get the best people

· Clear goal (short term and long term)

· People (that Apple hired) understand the goals

3) John Chambers (Cisco)

· Birthday breakfast (staff will have the chance to meet John in an open session)

· Customer is the center of the company culture.

RIZAL