Hardcover

My days, and pretty much my life in general, have grown into a set of routines. YAWN. Monday to Friday is almost all work – mostly preparing and holding classes with meeting with students and colleagues in between. I’m taking on an additional responsibility beginning January as student advisor, which gets me a few extra knocks on the door every week. It’s a university-appointed job so I’ll get paid – some amount I don’t care to remember – extra for it. They think that since I am a former student I’d do a better job at it than somebody else who isn’t. But experience as a former student tells me that practically nobody goes to see a student advisor for advice. They’ll only come looking for me if they need my signature for something – usually to drop a course.

Students are also coming to see me about the practical training program. Practical training is optional for the Economics program, though there is noise that the government is making it compulsory in the near future. The interesting observation is that all thirteen applications we've received so far are from female students. A few have already secured placements. Only one guy came to see me about it last week.

So I haven't been able to sit down and read so far in this new year. There are two books still in shrink-wrap on the bedside, waiting to be read. Both are SF – Learning the World by Ken MacLeod and The Android's Dream by John Scalzi. Two is just the right number of books to have waiting to be read. I get anxious when there is none. Anyway, I've also asked my bookstore guy to find me a hardcover copy of Scalzi's Old Man's War. Having read it in paperback, now I want to have a hardcover copy to keep. That's another thing about me with books: I like to have the books I like in hardcover. Hardcover's aren't cheap. Sure, books are books, and I have more than enough economics to know about publishers selling expensive hardcovers just to squeeze every penny out of me, but I don't care. I love my hardcovers.

Thank God I earn enough to pay for them.

Talking about pay, I still owe Chee Yoong RM100 for Android. I suppose I have Kue Peng to thank about that too, for setting up the whole thing. My mother has been bugging me about my salary, as I'm having my annual increment in January. She keeps telling me to give her RM1ooo every month to save, and asking me where I spend all my money at. Well, I'd like to know the answer to that too. Books, I guess?