Bangkok, Thailand
Thursday 17 April 2025
Hi there,
It's almost 6.30 pm here and I'm supposed to prepare to feed my two furry bosses Miss Garlic and Miss Siamzee. Yet, I suddenly get an idea for my writing after lacking concentration all day. Reading is what I will be talking for a little while.
Reading is one of my favorite hobbies. It has been my habit since my early childhood years.
Saturday 19 April 2025
Yesterday I was busy with an urgent writing job (as a freelance writer, translator and tutor, I couldn't refuse a good opportunity when it arrives and I think some especially those who work as a freelancer would understand what I mean). Now let me tell you further about my reading in childhood years and more.
Back to those days when I was in early primary school, everyday my sisters and I would wait for our father to arrive home after work since he always brought home a newspaper. We the kids each wanted to grasp that paper first to read our favorite columns. However, I was very young and unable to read and understand every word on the pages especially serious news and news analyses. My interest was mainly cartoons and pictures of people, places, events, and their short illustration or captions.
As my mother sold food and dessert for a living and took care of our family, my sisters and I always joined force with mom in preparing, cooking and selling the food. Although preparing and cooking parts made us the kids feel very tired, selling the products which was not easy was another story. I enjoyed going out to bring food and dessert for sale not only because I could help my mother to get income for our family but because while waiting for customers, I could kill the time reading interesting information on the paper bags used for packing the goods for our customers.
Paper bags were once a big source of varieties of information. In those days, paper bags were common and used as the main container for goods, and plastic bags were merely for liquid goods. The paper bags could be made of newspapers, any books, magazines and all kinds of paper available and acceptable. Thus, I could get different kinds of topics from paper bags, from news stories to advertising lines and from novels to business reports, for example.
At home, I also made paper bags for our own use, and even selling them to other people who might want them. That helped us save some money from buying paper bags from the market. Every time I found interesting information on the bags, I felt like I had found hidden treasure. I read whatever printed on the paper bags, and more than often I even carefully separated each of those bags as to read the information inside and glue them back in shape later.
Besides paper bags, I read more of a wider range of books available in library as my school years advanced. From a small private school to a bigger private school and then a quality public secondary school, I continued my love of reading, and school libraries seemed the best spot in school, for I could read for free, and lots of interesting books were sitting on the shelves, waiting for some readers who might find them interesting. At school, I usually went to my school library during lunch time and grabbed one book or more before finding a quiet corner away from the crowd and immersing myself in reading. Quite often I simply skipped my lunch for reading , and I always borrowed some books to read at home too. I wished I could camp in the library and read all the books there all day all night.
Apart from textbooks and newspapers, my reading includes novels, mysterious stories, stories about science, history, literature, biography, astronomy, geography, nature, politics, varieties of magazines, etc. Basically, I read whatever available in the library. Reading different kinds of topics helped transport me to another plane of thought especially about humans and the world around us. Yet, one that hardly interested me then was fashion, and that later became a big challenge to my future career.
More to come later.
Gigi :)
