The Magnificent Swimming Pool

 

I had a chance to visit a traditional Asian village last week and spent hours in a place that brought me to the past.

With chickens and ducks freely roaming around, one always side-eyed me with judgmental eyes (maybe he thought I was supposed to feed him). I had pleasant afternoons watching goat MBEEE on their way home. Kids were out playing bicycles and soccer and got muddy on one rainy afternoon with laughter as the soundtrack. 

Dirt, animals, soaking in the rain, and playing outside were the good times of my childhood. Nothing could kill us; tumbling from the tree, falling to the drain, running from a snake, and stepping on a colony of fire ants was just another Thursday. Even the ghost in our attic and the monstrous neighbor didn’t kill us. Well, I made one up, but the monstrous neighbor was real; she threatened to chop off my hand because I touched her flower, but that is the story for another day. It traumatized me for a while, and I have been planning on an elaborate revenge by making her a despicable character in my future book! Just wait, you mean neighbor!

My primary (elementary) school back then was considered the biggest in town. To me, it was huge, with giant outdoor courts and a gigantic park with trees that reached the sky with my favorite bench under one of the trees (when I had the chance to go back as an adult, it was a small school with two rundown courts and a small patch of green with a few medium-sized trees, but everything looked big and grand when I was a child). 

One day, I arrived at school, and the whole park and court were filled with water. They were situated lower than the main street outside, and after raining the entire night and, of course, a horrible drainage problem, the whole yard was flooded up to my knee. We could still access the classrooms through the corridors, but during the class, everyone was looking out of the window longingly at the most magnificent swimming pool. Most of us didn’t have many chances to swim in a proper swimming pool, so it was very tempting. Our class had a sports subject that day, and we begged our teacher to let us play in the water. They did!

We giggled, laughed, and splashed each other while wading through the knee-high brownish-clogged rainwater; we couldn’t even see our toes or identify what we were stepping on. Other classes that didn’t have sports subjects that day were allowed to play in the water during the break as long as they didn’t get their uniforms wet. You would see rows and rows of shoes on the corridor with children walking around holding hands in the ‘pool.’ We were the luckiest ones as we got to play longer and had change of clothes, so it was up to us whether we wanted to go all in, as in real swimming!

Germs? Pathogens? Possible dangerous animals? Possible skin problems? Oh yeah, the risk remained the same with our modern day, but the attitude was different. Maybe some studies say we have better immune systems; maybe some parents would categorize that as horror. I don’t know. I am not a parent, and I am not an expert. But I can tell you that it was one of the best days of my childhood, and it’s nice to recount the memory.

Locky seems to agree with the theory 'What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Below are his pictures lounging on the river discharge to the ocean. It looks clear, clean, and pretty, but trust me, it doesn't smell as lovely as it seems. 

A Tale of the Young Witch

 

A tale of a young witch is a very ambitious fantasy. However, I am not sure why it’s divided into three parts because all three happen continuously and in the same timeline, involving the same characters.

The book has a simple but interesting beginning. We follow the story of Amelia as some origin story because she is the titular character who starts as someone ordinary enough with ordinary life, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. From there, the journey goes to common fantasy routes with a twist ending. More on these later.

This goes throughout the book, but it’s more jarring in the beginning; it is the way the story is told as ‘Amelia this,’ ‘Amelia that’ even though the scenes only involve one character or the other character is a male. It becomes very distracting because of the number of times the name is thrown instead of using she or her. I believe it would average at least three times per page. I am also distracted by the description of Jack earlier as lanky and when he is mentioned later in the book as lean. It would be fine as the two definitions are close enough if it’s not mentioned too often. Other terms that bother me are between ‘puppet’ and ‘clone.’ I love Sci-Fi, and the way these terms are used as if they are the same confuses me. In the earlier scenes with Scarlet, I’m sorry, but I have to repeat the word ‘distracting’ to read things like ‘angelic’ voice and ‘gorgeous’ eyes while they are in dire situations and not some observations of someone about the character. But these are nitpicking, and they most likely don’t distract others as much.

I prefer realistic fantasy, if that’s a thing. I wish there were a genre for it. It’s like fantasy, but the plot, the problems that the characters face, and the characters themselves are very much in line with reality. I devour The Song of Ice and Fire with great interest and have no problem with big-sized books, but this book makes me recall my experience watching the first Transformer movie. I’d categorize it as pure fantasy, so maybe I am biased in my reading experience because, as mentioned, I prefer the other kind of fantasy, nevermind they both have a similar magical creature. It starts well, and everything is intriguing enough. Still, unfortunately, I can’t wait for it to end after the final fights that stretch over one hundred pages, more or less, with repetitive dialogues. The fights are great and well-written, but it takes one-fifth of the book, and I have to admit I don’t care anymore since the outcome is obvious to me anyway. And there is a plethora of action scenes before these final fights that already exhaust me.

Having said all that, pure fantasy readers might enjoy this book. The author put a lot of effort into this, and there are a lot of unique and great scenes for the theme that is probably quite saturated. The characters are done well; we are introduced to plenty of them, and although some have fewer scenes than they deserve, they are distinguishable enough. The fight scenes are creative and well-written, and although I am not really taken by the ending, it has the potential for more stories.

3.5 rounded up.