I’ve never been fond of smoking, cigars or otherwise. Not too fond of drinking either. My two vices: food and TV. Yes, food – sweets, meats, and even a few fruits and veggies! :P And of course television.

You’d be surprised to know that I don’t own a television set, though. I’ve wanted to buy one for a long time, but I’m pacing myself. I live in an apartment and I will be going home for Christmas. As much as possible, I don’t want to leave anything valuable in the house while I am gone for such a long time. So I am thinking of buying a TV in January, when I get back.

But even without a TV, I manage quite fine! One can always download. :)

Yes, that’s probably my biggest vice lately, watching TV shows. My favorites, aside from the Korean and Taiwanese shows I follow, are these (in order of most favorite): Vampire Diaries, Pan Am, Revenge, Once Upon a Time, Ringer and Glee.

It just so happened that Vampire Diaries took a Christmas hiatus and the next show is in January so a week ago I decided to look for a replacement show. I downloaded the pilots for Pan Am, Revenge and Ringer. To my surprise, I loved Pan Am and Revenge!!!

Pan Am is a TV show about a fictional Pan Am crew – four stewardesses and two pilots. One of the stewardesses, Kate, is an American courier spy. Her sheltered sister Laura has just jilted the bridegroom on their wedding day, and decided to become a stewardess like Kate! She joins her sister’s crew, composed of Maggie, who pretended to know how to speak Portuguese to land her job, and Collette, a French woman whose parents were killed by the Nazi when she was a child. The pilot Dean is broken-hearted because his girlfriend has just left him. He’s played by Mike Vogel!! Yes I find him cute and I’ve always wanted to see him in more lead roles. Lastly, copilot Ted is a son of a powerful businessman. Ted used to be a test pilot in the Navy but his plane crashed after a failure, and he was dismissed because the Navy decided he had been negligent. Ted’s father’s company provided the planes and decided not to back him up since it would pin the blame on their company, Ted’s dad recommended Ted to Pan Am instead.

Nice backstories, huh?? Yeah, plus, all the stimulating visuals of the 60′s makes for a great show! The plot is a little ridiculous though. Their latest episode had the pilot landing in wartorn Haiti to find a doctor for an ailing passenger, where the runway has been destroyed by a hurricane so they have to leave all their passengers’ luggage AND the body of the ailing passenger, who ultimately died! If that’s not crazy enough, they decide to take aboard a Haitian girl whose family has been killed in the war and has no one else. Haiti, really??? I don’t think any sane pilot would land in a dangerous, warring country even if it was to save a passenger. And then to bring back a stowaway – migosh. He would probably be fired at once, and not only that, I’m thinking jailed too.

Anyway, latest plot aside, I’m really enjoying Pan Am. :)

Revenge, now, is a story about a woman, Amanda Clarke, whose father was framed for a murder he didn’t commit when she was just 9 years old. She spent her entire childhood in a maximum security detention facility separated from her father, and when she finally got out her father had passed away, but left her a wealthy woman. She exchanged her identity with a friend from the facility, and now, as Emily, she goes back to her hometown and is out to take down all the people who had a hand in framing her father.

This show is very juicy fun. It’s satisfying to watch Emily exact revenge on one person per episode. At the same time it’s nerve-wracking for her, because the powerful family who framed her father is getting closer to knowing the truth about her every episode. And it’s heart-breaking to see her wanting to lower her guard and let herself fall in love with her childhood playmate Jack Porter (played by Roswell’s Nick Wechsler!!!) but not being able to. Instead she pursues Daniel Grayson, son of the powerful Grayson family, and whose mother Victoria was the woman her father loved, but who in the end, betrayed her father most of all.

I can’t wait to see what happens next. :)