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Goodnight Michael Crichton
In 1996, as a lowly paid factory operator working at a semi-conductor factory in Toa Payoh, I earned the grand total of SGD500/month. The money was pretty bad, but I only worked 4 days this week, and then 3 days the following week. The only catch was that I worked 12 hour long shifts, day and morning - 2 weeks at a time. This was a much better deal than waiting on tables for 10 hours everyday, six days of the week in a Chinese restaurant.
Once I got my work permit, I discovered that I now qualified for a library card. So I begun borrowing books from the National Library.
You see everyday, a van would pick me up at either 4am or 4pm at the same spot and haul my ass to the factory. It was a 2.5 hour journey, so I would listen to Cream on a cassette tape walkman while reading a book in the van. And then the same van would pick me up at 7.30pm or 7.30am, and bring me home merrily reading and listening to music in the van.
I was 18 years old, and my weapon of choice was Michael Crichton.
Not because he was a good writer - but because I was a voracious speed reader and his books were quite short and fit into my sidepouch. Also, Jurassic Park or Congo was released at about the same time so the NLB stocked up on Crichton books pretty well. I did not enjoy his work much. Most of it was rubbish designed to entertain people with short attention spans. Sphere and Timeline (both of which were later made into movies) were books which I felt, insulted the reader’s intelligence.
Michael Crichton was my generation’s Dan Brown.
I mourn his passing, but I don’t miss the sad days where I used to earn $500/month, listening to cassette tapes and reading shitty novels.
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