picture in my mind

An article about fandom: Spellbound. And here I thought I was the mad one. Here's bits of it:

I mention the death of a major character at the end of the Half-Blood Prince to another devotee. "For me it was like somebody really died," she says. "I cried. I really cried."

Accio! is sprinkled with obsessive compulsive disorder, like fairy eggs on a lawn. I meet a woman who announces that she listens to the Harry Potter audiotapes continuously. "When I finish one, I begin another. When I am walking, when I am eating, when I am cleaning the house, when I am sleeping, I listen to Harry." A sinister oneupmanship infests the rooms; who has the most exhaustive knowledge of the canon? "How many times did Harry get a zero in potions?" snaps one witch. "I ... I don't know," her friend stammers.

Well, I don't know either. Thank god. This is really testing the boundaries of sanity.

~

Went to Stadium Cove last night to watch the countdown fireworks. It was really, really beautiful. But I didn't have my camera! What a waste, I tell you. We all spent about 2 hours or so waiting for midnight, and it was certainly worth the wait. The whole display lasted about 15 minutes, and I almost anticipated some Gandalf-like dragon to swoop across the river. They really upped the standard - there were different kinds: squiggly thingies that looked like worms, umbrella-shaped ones that opened at different angles and missile-like ones. Fantastic.

Happy Birthday, Singapore.