I injured my shooting finger........ Yesterday I went for a traditional Thai massage hoping that it would take care of a sore lower back and a disjointed shoulder.

The masseau, a strapping woman of about 70 kg brought about much needed relief to those areas of my body. I'd forgotten most of my Thai and just said "Sabai!' (enjoy!').

Taking encouragement, she worked my fingers and squeezed heavenly crackling of my finger and wrist joints........ until she bent my shooting finger backwards one degree too many and seriously hurt a muscle between the first and 2nd bones from the tip.

Try loading and unloading film from an M6 with 4 fingers. Dismantaling the damn baseplate was almost impossible and slotting the tailend of the film into the slot was more difficiult than threading a thread through a needle.

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Bored waiting for my daughter's dance class to finish, I walked over to Basheer's Book Store and must say they have a good collection of serious photography books.

Browsing through its shelves, it reminded me how good a book feels in my hands and how different it is to read from a printed page, how one's enjoyment is affected by a book's print quality and the very quality of paper that its words are printed on.

Aahhh..... it was a good feeling holding a book for personal reading in my hands after such a long time. The same information that I could dig out of Google feels and tastes diferent between pages of pulp.

The exhiliration of flipping page after page as I read was something I never appreciated years ago before the Internet snared me.

And the dog ears I found decorating books in the Used and 2nd Hand bin seemed to give each paperback its own unique personality, leaving clues to the types of characters who'd passed before it reached my own hands.

I picked up one sorry copy of 'Julius Ceaser' and behind its cover were written the name of its original owner, a then 15 year old Seow Lee Ping in Secondary 3 from Raffles Girls' School in 1974.

In my mind, I wondered where now 45/46 year old Lee Ping is. What had become of this 15 year old child since 1974. Was she married or even alive? How many 15 year olds does she have herself now?

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Still at Basheer's, I came across 2 books on America's involvement in the Vietnam War titled 'Vietnam Inc' by Griffith and another titled simply "Agent Orange'........its images haunted me.

We've seen large numbers of images from the Vietnam war and many iconic images have stuck with public imagination and perception on what the Vietnam War was like.

The photographs in Vietnam Inc were tellingly intimate in its consistent capture of the fear and bravery of front line Viet Cong and American troops on both sides of the war.

to be continued..............