The book is set in 1960s Mississippi, when African American maids worked for white households. It's told through three perspectives: Aibileen, an African American woman who is raising her seventeenth white child while still coping with her own son's death; Minny, an African American maid who always manages to get on the wrong side of people; and Miss Skeeter, an American woman out of college who wants to be an author. As we go from perspective to perspective, chapter to chapter, their story unfolds in such a great way to reveal the effects of racial integration.
I think what's interesting about this book is that it's got the highs and the lows of black and white relationships. It goes through, expectantly, the negative consequences and emotions of racial prejudice, but it also goes through characters who treat African Americans so positively and nurturing. I think most disturbing of all are the characters who don't actually care about race, but nevertheless treat their maids unfairly for the sake of conforming to their friends and their society.
I really liked this book, and I highly recommend it. It's very enjoyable and very easy to empathise with the characters. The plot is done well and there are some moments of humour and some moments of great distress, so it doesn't get boring or tedious or anything like that. The ending is very powerful to me because it's really bittersweet; no one really loses but at the same time no one really wins. Definitely give it a read if you're looking for something these holidays =]
And on Wednesday last week my uncle (who was on holiday from Malaysia) took my family on a cruise around Sydney!
It was pretty fancy with a three-course meal. I forgot to take pictures of the main meal (chicken with mashed potatos and veggies) because let's face it, I'm not hipster enough to remember to take pictures of food. Some of these pictures were taken by my mum while some were taken on my phone so I'll apologise in advance about the mix of quality.
There was even a magician host who called himself 'Jack Black'... he was pretty lame but his tricks were quite impressive. But the main thing was the show that was on during the last hour. It consisted of all these showgirls and one showboy, as well as a singer (who was way too old and out of shape to be wearing the things she was wearing and dancing the things she was dancing) and their theme was 'All Around the World' so they had all these costumes, songs and dances that were inspired by cultures around the world. I really loved the dancing, and the costumers were simply amazing! We weren't allowed to take pictures or videos during the show so here's a pic of them dancing at the beginning of the cruise (sorry it's blurry):
OH I also got my Hunger Games ID delivered in the mail!
I can't believe I actually got this haha but it was only like $2 so why not!
AND I got my Wet'n'Wild season passes!
So excited, honestly can't wait!
And I have a funny story to tell you about Kris Kringle.
Well I was out at lunch and we were organising our Kris Kringle, then out of the blue Joyce suggests an express Kris Kringle where we have 15 minutes to buy a $5 item for our person. We were near Haymarket so we decided to go to Market City since everything there is cheap.
Oh my goodness I was so stressed because I was like FIFTEEN MINUTES IS NOTHING! But in the end it actually worked out really well. Most of us finished about 9 or 10 minutes in while Alice finished right at 15 minutes. I ended up getting Joyce a lipliner for $3 and a sharpener for it for $2 while Alice ended up getting me retarded Spongebob magnets for $4 and pop-up Despicable Me stickers for $1.
All in all it was a pretty enjoyable experience and it wasn't too hard to find stuff because Haymarket has a huge variety of products in such a small area and it's all really cheap too. We thought that maybe we should cut down the time limit to 10 minutes because it didn't seem that stressful to us (except Alice).
Anyway we're still doing our normal Kris Kringle but it was a great fun, affordable, easy and different spin on Kris Kringle that maybe you could try out!
I also watched Happy Feet Two
Looking at the cast (Elijah Wood, P!nk, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Robin Williams, Sofía Vergara, Magda Szubanski, Hugo Weaving, Hank Azaria) you'd think this would be a really great movie right? Well, it was absolutely horrid. I have no idea what happened in the film because there was absolutely no plot, the storyline was all over the place and everything was just so confusing! I kept thinking, "Brad Pitt is in this surely it gets better..." but closer to the end you start thinking, "WHY did he sign up to this, why did ANYONE sign up to this?!"
I was seriously so surprised that some people from the original movie actually signed up to this one seeing as it was a huge waste of time and effort on their part. The only things that were good were the visuals and P!nk's singing.
Literally, that's it.
Don't watch it and let's pray there's not a third.
