Heaven can wait

I bought this book on a whim. But I didn't think much of it. It was a slim volume, looking fairly unsubstantial. An exchange of letters between Bonny Hicks and some unknown academic called Tal Ben-Shahar.

Now I'm not one of those shallow idiots from the Straits Times who would diss her writing based on her modelling career and her lack of academic qualifications. The fact is that she did write a best seller about her life. How many best sellers are there in Singapore? Now you only have "True Singapore Ghost Stories, vol 21". We think of models as bimbos, but at the level of a supermodel, you need a lot of brains to survive, especially if you're drinking yourself half to death partying with coke in your nose all the time. I managed to get my hands on "Excuse Me, Are you a Model?" which I will read.

There has been an attempt to cash in on the book. "Excuse Me, Are you an Actress?" was written by Eileen Wee. Now I got my reservations about that. Met her in person, when she was hosting an event, she was standing 1m in front of me. Nice ass but she's got one of the most piercing voices I've ever heard. Maybe I'll stick to the model model.

This "Heaven Can Wait" book, though, is when she starts talking about philosophy and stuff, a little straining on the credibility. Until I listed it for sale and somebody snapped it up, telling me that this Tal Ben Shahar is the same guy who's now conducting the most popular undergraduate course at Harvard, one that teaches you how to look for happiness. He's also written another book based on the course that's become a worldwide bestseller. I'll be damned. Well not much for me to do but to speed read the whole book in between now and when I have to mail the damned book out.

She was replying to a reporter who criticised her for wanting to live life to the fullest and do everything when young. Her attitude is heaven can wait, I want to live my life now. And it proved to be a very wise decision in the light of her early death. And for all that she's done with her life, I've done something she hasn't, which was to celebrate my 30th birthday earlier this year. One of her last letters is especially poignant, written just before that air crash, where she finally decides that she has found her peace of mind and decides that life is wonderful.

And you know, that air crash was one of the worst because people til today aren't able to give good answers about why a perfectly good plane went into the Palembang river.

It wasn't hard to read. Finished it in about a day. There's this constant impression that Tal Ben Shahar has a crush on Bonny Hicks. It's all very nice and pleasant exchanging emails with nice girls that you have a crush on and I've done that before but this is not the time for such pleasant distractions.