It has been quite a year and while the upcoming last days of 2007 will be spent at work, i’m savouring every moment now i’m back in Melbourne.

Pre-boxing day sale reconnaissance has been amazing with my first-time experience in the 24-hour Chadstone madness. You can complain all you want about shops closing early in Oz but there’s one important trading day right before Christmas where shoppers were out in force.. jam packed!

Dave and Shan provided me with the pool comfort after such a long abandonment of simple life pleasure.

Jelita and Dazza have been too kind in bringing back old memories. and this year, they decided that i needed a new scent as my Christmas gift. So thoughtful that they actually ’surveyed’ how the smell will mix with other smokey odour. hahahaa

By the by, after a year (it was last year when i posted my desire to get BB8800), i decided its worth the wait to get BB8820 (WiFi). Thanks to my aunt who gave it to me as my Xmas present last year but didnt really get 8800 then due to the lack of its WiFi feature…. My RazR V3 has been serving me well in the past 3 years or so… i love its form factor and simplicity and its bold blackness.. but its due to retire… been having problem with its software and some of its call buttons lately… but BB8820 is comin soon, most likely i’ll get to play with it in the second week of Jan… this festive season pretty much shuts and slows down everythin…..

Anyway.. tomorrow will be the big day where we will be getting up early and knockin on those shops at 6am. Crazy? Yes!

In the mean time, party hard.. have a good Merry Christmas and take care of each other especially when travelling!

Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is the cover:

Editorial Review

From the Publisher
Terrace Books, a trade imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press

From the Back Cover”This is a world of violence, turmoil, strife. . . . I was completely taken by the plight of [Birabiro's] characters, the life she represents of this part of the world so few of us know anything about. The impact it made on me as a reader is a devastating one. It’s a reminder that people will rise against all odds to survive and prevail.”–Marjorie Agosin, author of At the Threshold of Memories: New and Selected Poems

“When I began to read this memoir, I could not put it down. There is an intensity of experience, a poignancy in the voice of the child-narrator that tells her own harrowing story of poverty and marginality. But at the same time, there is a lyrical tone to her writing. She is able to capture beauty amidst the horrors. And also, she is able to continue becoming human in a dehumanized world.”–Virgil Suarez, author of Guide to the Blue Tongue

About the Author

Meti Birabiro studied Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She currently lives in the United States.

Excerpted from Blue Daughter of the Red Sea: A Memoir by Meti Birabiro. Copyright � 2004. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“Poverty is venom that slowly saps one’s existence. It is a white noise that quakes the shape of survival. It corrodes the scenery and cuts one’s world asunder. I was born and grew up in the heart of that corrosive acid. Dire Dawa, a small city warmly embraced by a fiery sun and caressed by some magicless dust, was the name of my hometown. Life was not charming in Dire Dawa. Children ran barefoot against a background of feces-embedded roads, spinning around the desert city, puffing on the sand so forming dunes of smaller versions, while the little ones piggybacked on their mother’s back. They had the appearance of several shiny, brown ponies: untamed and wild creatures. Their feet moved like those of a ballerina without her tutu, dancing to the tune of an unheeded song: free. Their laughter rang like a violent rain of diamonds. And they shouted in a language as inarticulate as their age, and yelled in voices as overly used as the sole of the shoe that was guarded at home for special occasions.”–Excerpt from Blue Daughter of the Red Sea

Book Description

Born into a life of constant financial, physical, and moral threat, Meti Birabiro takes refuge in literature and the fantastic. Blue Daughter of the Red Sea is Birabiro’s poetic account of the harsh reality of her young life spread across three continents. Her voice is a fresh m�lange of child and adult perspectives, at once brutally honest and wise beyond her years. Through the journey from Ethiopia to Italy, and finally to the United States, we encounter Birabiro’s relatives, friends, and enemies–relationships so intense that these people become her vampires, devils, angels, and saints. These character designations always lead her back to the truth. They help her to decipher what is fair and good, to understand what she must cherish and what she must rage against.