Undomestic Goddess and my thought

I just finished Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella last night! :D

I should not have touched the book at the very first time cause I know when I start any book by her that's the end of my day and I would not be able to sleep until I finish the book. Her books are like magnet! When I start reading I can't stop, I'm reading while eating, reading while walking, and last night I was awake the whole night and finally slept at 7 of morning! :p

So the book very thrilling. By the main character Samantha I can see myself, how being a careerist turns me into robot sometimes. But I have felt a little bit of extremity in her behavior. In real life Samanthas like her would be little more pragmatic if she has an IQ of 158. But it's novel and it is supposed to be dramatic anyway. 

The best thing I have learnt from the book is, however important career can be to us, it cannot buy us personal happiness. I personally would not go after a career which would ask me to wring out all the fun and love from my life. The book just reminded me those feelings again. When Samantha and Nathaniel walked along the countryside roads I could feel that for real and I knew that it's really the most important thing in our life - love! But of course real life is not that easy and I would prefer to try my best to keep balance.

After reading these awesome books -

Undomestic Goddess

Can you keep a secret?

Shopaholic Takes Manhattan

Shopaholic Ties the Knot,

Next on my list are-

Confessions of a Shopaholic and Twenties Girls :) 

But I have to make sure not to touch those books until I am done with my important works! (fingers crossed :p)

Another fantastic book I have been reading is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. I will write on that after I finish reading the whole book. But so far I have read I am really impressed and I would highly recommend this to everyone! :)

Messenger of Spring - Plum Festival at Hakone (箱根梅まつり)

So I have not been writing for a long time here, cause I was tired of writing for last 6 months. All those AW essays for GRE, short essays for TOEFL, my research paper, then all those SoPs and personal statements for grad schools....Gosh..I had few things to write about in my head. But then I was just tired of all these...
Then when we were kind of done with all these, me and my boy friend promised each other that we will have a day off when we won't think about career stuffs, studies and just hang around happily! Well, we realized that we did not travel anywhere except our cities in last three years, we were totally buried under all sorts of exams human being can probably have! So it was the perfect time to take a break!
It was funny that we had not been to Hakone in these 5 years of living in Japan though it is one of the famous tourist spots which is very close to Tokyo. So on 19th February we headed off for Hakone. Though there was the terrible snowfall on 15th in Japan and things did not get better by then, but we did not let us stop our awaited date!
We were really excited after reaching Hakone, it was lovely small city where you can stay away from hubbubs of city life and walk peacefully holding warm hands of each other :) Well, Hakone is actually pretty warmer than where I live and the plum flowers were already in full bloom at some places. I had pre-planned to visit the plum garden. Though later we found lots of attractive spots where we wanted to go but thanks to the snow, all routes were closed except train. So we decided that we will go to the rest of the places next time and go with the previous plan.
The plum garden of Hakone was not the best I have seen but still covers a huge area and was very pretty. It was a little cloudy day, so Mount Fuji could not be seen well. But I could spot it for a while and I was happy with that; well I had to be, to my bad luck I never get to see this beauty properly :-(
It was good day over all. Got to meet some sweet people over there.One granny offered us some free appetizers, another grandpa offered us to taste free oranges and a nice guy offered to take a couple picture for us :) And one more thing, the food! I would not forget the special Tofu I had there, it's the best Tofu I have ever had!! At least I will go back again for to taste that! :p
So I am sharing some pictures here from Hakone Ume Matsuri (Plum Festival), hope you will like!
Cheers!