Rosary and Books



Noise From Silence 7 by Shel-yang



I saw a dead little white worm on top of the cooked rice yesterday, when Mum cooked it, and I paid extra attention today when I'm washing the rice. Guess what, I found 11 little white worms in the one and a half cup of rice I washed. They look like little maggots and it’s making my skin crawl. High protein rice much?

Mum was saying that there's rat in the house. I thought she was kidding but I saw one run past my feet yesterday. It was very small, brown, and very very fast. If it were in a pet store I might even say it looked cute. Mum brought rat glue traps today, and hopefully we'll be rid of them soon.

On the train in the morning I the Muslim woman sitting next to me had a rosary in her hand. The beads were made with a green stone, the markers were like round beads with a cone on top. Her fingers were moving the beads, like what you do when counting them and her mouth was moving.

I gathered that she mast be praying, and don't quote me on this, but I think I read somewhere that they say "Glory be to Allah" and "Praise be to Allah" and "Allah is the most great" and something along those lines a certain number of times. The rosary is used to keep track of the number of times they said it by having a marker bead that's a different shape or texture every certain amount of beads.

I'm quite interested in rosary beads, a lot of religions use them to when praying. Christians use them, Islam people use them, Buddhists use them. I've always thought it's pretty cool to do that and I really admire the dedication they have to say the prayers so many times.

I've first seen rosaries in the hands of Buddhist monks and nuns, and that's the image that's always stuck with me. The monk or nun is wearing a loose yellow robe uniform and moving a long long string of wooden beads between their fingers and they're muttering under their breathe as they stand still or as they're walking. For me, that was one of the iconic things they do. I've always thought that it must be a very soothing motion.

I borrowed Isaac Asimav's "The Complete Robot" from the school library this morning. He's a classic sci-fi writer, you might know him better as the person who invented the three laws of robotics. His Foundation series was recommneded to me, but I read in the introduction that this one is the first chronologically, so I borrowed this one first. It's actually a collection of short stories, which I like less than full length novels, so I'll probably go read Foundation instead.

The second book, which I'm currently reading, is "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss. I borrowed it in my free period when I'm in the library (my free period is on Wednesdays last period). It's one of those epic fantasy sags I just can't resist no matter how hard I try. I've just started and I'm loving it. I haven't read a real, physical book of my own choice in too long. Fantasy is my cup of tea, above all else.I love finding out the rules of a completely new world: how the magic works, the people and monsters in it, those people that has power and those people that doesn't.

The library also have Chinese magazines some are gossip/advice/girly/woman's magazine style, but others are literary magazines with collections of short stories and articles. I go up to the library and read them every morning. It's so rare for me to have such easy access to them and Chinese is a really beautiful, really poetic language.