pilarcat’s

I’m currently reading The Other Boleyn Girl, recommended by one of my friends. The book was capturing at first and began to wear me down in the middle as the characters, seemingly well-rounded in the beginning, suddenly became flat and boring . I just hope that the book will lose its boring stuff of selfish characters and focus on political scheme more at the end.

Anyway, reading such historical fiction reminds me of my childhood when every Sunday my father would take me to a bookshop and we would come back home with a couple of picture books in my hands. I can’t remember when I began reading English books but I remember me fascinated with historical tales, especially of Britain’s most famous King, Henry VIII. I think it has something to do with romantic theme of prince and princess. Although there are a lot of adultery and beheading stuff, perhaps these make the tales more dramatic.

I found these two ladybird books in a bookshelf where I keep old books. They are two of The Great Ruler series. They give fun and beautifully illustrated tales of the king and the queen. I am so happy that I still keep these two books and hope to get more of the series as a collection.

I’m totally in the mood of the Tudor history right now. I just bought a vcd of Elizabeth: The Golden Age !. Actually, I intended to have the part 1 Elizabeth but too clumsy to get the part 2 instead -_-’. That’s fine though, I just want to watch the settings and costume design in the movie.

A set of ‘(how to) Speak Thai Fluently’ books for Japanese people I design and proudly present. The books are about teaching Japanese people who are interested in Thai language or who live and work in Thailand how to speak Thai. The publisher wants to have something that obviously represents Thailand in a modern look. I thought of a lot of Thai things like elephant, tom yum kung or even a way Thai people greets each other (called ‘Wai’) I came up with the tuk-tuk, a vehicle well-known among foreigners when coming to Thailand.

The second set is part two of the first one. This time I immediately thought of floating market.

I had fun drawing tuk-tuk, the boat and the fruits and even more excited to do the whole package.

After having dreamt of going to Austria for four years and with unsuccessful plans for three years, my friend and I finally had a chance to go to Austria last April. Our trip was staying in Vienna, Hallstatt, Salzburg and Innsbruck with a day trip to Graz and then Munich with Nuremberg day trip. We had a great time especially in our highlight, Hallstatt, a pretty little town in Salzkammergut in Austria. We were so lucky that we had planned to stay here for 2 nights. The first day we arrived here, the town looked gloomy with rain and grey cloud but our second day was so gorgeous with bright blue sky and warm weather. We took tons of pictures and never got enough of it!

The picture is an evidence of one of the best time of my life!