Monthly Archives: September 2010

open house

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Why do you like reading? And what’s the best book you’ve ever read? Only one book.

I like reading because I think it’s the cheapest entertainment available to me (I once bought a book from a bargain bin for five pesos) with the greatest possible reward. I also read to learn, and to improve my writing.

Just the one book? Ah, you’re harsh. It’s just impossible to choose one, but if you insist, I’ll say Joshua Ferris’s THEN WE CAME TO THE END. But of course there are others. I’ve read a lot of books (and intend to read more, hundreds more) and I’m fortunate enough to fall in love with many of them.

Thanks for dropping by, Stranger.

hi! are you still studying french? or are you currently enrolled at alliance de manille?

Hello!

Oh, I’m afraid I’m not enrolled at Alliance. I did enroll last year, but had to withdraw because they changed the schedule at the last minute and it overlapped with my work sched.

What website do you spend the most time on?

Oh dear, probably Twitter. Does that make me shallow? It does, doesn’t it?

How many countries have you traveled to?

None, sadly. I don’t own a passport just yet. And I lack the funds.

What did you eat for breakfast today?

Oatmeal. And that will be my answer tomorrow. And the day after. Because my life is horrible.

If you won a million dollars what would you do with it?

Buy a house. If I get me my own place and put a stop to my renting days, then I’ll probably – PROBABLY – start acting like an adult. Haha.


Got a question?

twisted 8 1/2

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  1. Ooh littol shiny black book! With pictures of cats!
  2. I enjoy reading about gadgets and how they compare with the dinosaur age as much as the next person, but there were too many product reviews here. I want to read essays, not ad copies.(Though to be fair to Zafra, she makes an effort to make her product reviews personal by adding anecdotes.)
  3. I wished there were more movie reviews, or reviews of plays, etc. The book is loaded with gadgets, gadgets, coffee maker, gadgets.
  4. I wished the essays had dates.
  5. Still, a handful of interesting pieces here. I especially liked that essay about the streets of the metro. (Bwenja! Hell Poyat ! Bwenja! Hell Poyat!)
  6. But there were funnier posts on her blog. *whine*  I wished she included those.

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), new! 100 Bullets

philippine speculative fiction iv and v

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Disclaimer! I have stories in both volumes.

Writers and critics here and abroad have reviewed the fourth volume of the Philippine Speculative Fiction series, and Don Jaucian has written a review of PSF V, so I’ll keep this short: I like PSF V more than PSF IV. I was actually giddy while reading the fifth volume, excited by the new names and the sheer number of good stories that managed to make it into the book. PSF IV, unfortunately, had more misses than hits for me. There were stories that I didn’t like at all, and some of the stories I liked were just “okay”.

For PSFV IV, I couldn’t decide on my favorite story, but it would either be “The Secret Origin of Spin-Man” or “Breaking the Spell” or “The Paranoid Style”. Other stories I liked, in no particular order:

The Rooftops of Manila

The Sewing Project

The Dance of the Storm

Mang Marcing and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

A Retrospective on Diseases for Sale

Haya Makes a HUG

Sky Blue

Hopscotch

* * *

For PSF V, “Embedding” is easily my favorite. Fast and fresh and exciting. I had fun reading that story.

Other stories I liked:

A New Hospital

A Yellow Brick Road Valentine – It was an enjoyable read, but I felt the references to the Wizard of Oz were forced.

Carbon

Death and Noy

If We Catch Fire – I wasn’t too fond of the tedious back story and narration, though

Leg Men

New Toy

Sink

Strange Weather

The Creature

The Goodlyf

The Left-Behind Girl

Very Short Fairy Tales

* * *

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!), new! 100 Bullets

updates and stuff

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So, the weekend. I stubbed my toe. The last time I did something so stupid was in grade school, when I stubbed my toe while jumping rope. I broke it and it swelled like a tomato and I had to hop around the house for a week because I was too proud for crutches. This time Jake and I were walking around Greenhills after a glorious lunch at Gloria Maris with his family and a Starbucks stopover with his mother on Friday, and the fellas in front of us stopped and Jake stopped but I didn’t stop soon enough, so my toe hit the back of his shoe and my toenail cracked and almost got ripped off the nail bed. The pain was excruciating, but my first thought was, “My pedicure’s ruined!” I only noticed the blood when we got to the car.

Thank you to Jaykie for this care package. My bleeding toe was very grateful:

(Greenhills, I shall conquer you some other day.)

The logical thing to do was to stay home and rest the toe, but I wasn’t logical, so out I went with Jaykie to meet up with my high school friends. We had dinner at Abe (great food and the service staff was really helpful) and dessert at Golden Spoon and strangely enough, nobody took pictures. Why is that? Were we really that hungry? Or have we reached that age where camwhoring was frowned upon?

Saturday and Sunday were spent in Bulacan. Toe got better and I read some and watched some and I ate my mother’s cooking. No writing done, since I thought I deserved a break after all that pain. Ah, melodrama. But having a toenail almost ripped off your feet is really fucking painful, so there.

* * *

I finished the one and only season of Fear Itself. It’s a horror anthology series and I want more of it. (It got canceled, unfortunately.) Now I want to check out Masters of Horror. My favorite episodes: The Sacrifice, Family Man, In Sickness and In Health, Skin and Bones, Community, and The Spirit Box.

Other TV-related blabbering:

1) I’m glad Glee got its groove back with that season opener. It got boring and dull after the break in Season 1, but now I’m excited to watch again.

2) The How I Met season opener is blah, but I’ll keep watching.

3) Mad Men! More Mad Men! Yeah, I’m watching Season 4, even though I haven’t seen Seasons 2 and 3 and I haven’t even finished Season 1. Eep.

4) Wait, wait, I haven’t seen Big Bang Theory‘s season opener, but I will soon. Also: Modern Family!

* * *

Hey, have you seen Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer? Tight political thriller. Stunning last scene. (I’ve always thought of Kim Catrall as Samantha, so her British accent here just sounds wrong to me. Other than the fact that it actually sounds wrong – she drops the accent every now and then.)

* * *

It’s a year after Ondoy, and Rocket Kapre’s charity anthology is available for free till October 8. I have a poem there. :)

mockingjay

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There appears to be no end to the sadness and tragedy in Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay. Katniss Everdeen finally agrees to become the rebels’ symbol of dissent, and joins the forces of District 13 to coax other districts to join the cause and bring down the Capitol and assassinate President Snow. She sees a flicker of hope, imagining a future where her sister is a doctor, and where children will no longer have to give their names to the deadly lottery that is the Hunger Games. But even under the eye of District 13′s leader, Coin, she still feels like a pawn and a slave.

A heavy read, and unflinching in its description of torture and cruelty, but I’m glad this book, and the rest of the trilogy, came along. Highly recommended.

“Now we’re in that sweet period where everyone agrees that our recent horrors should never be repeated,” he says. “But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Although who knows? Maybe this will be it, Katniss.”

“What?” I ask.

“The time it sticks.”

- Mockingjay

* * *

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Mockingjay

We Are All Welcome Here

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!)

one for basement stories

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Straight from my inbox:

Ms. Victoria,

Thanks for sending “Incidental Light” to Basement Stories. I really enjoyed reading your story, in particular, the relationship between the main character and the little brother. I also have to add in here that I loved your poem, “Maps,” in the latest issue of The Pedestal Magazine. Anyway, I’d like to publish “Incidental Light” in the second issue.

[redacted]

Best regards,

Carol Kirkman
Basement Stories

The website: www.basementstories.org
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/basementstories
The blog: http://basementstories.wordpress.com

I said:

Thank you very much for your kind words. (And must I say that this is the first time an editor said something nice about my submitted story AND a piece I’ve published elsewhere? This made my day.)

It did!

“Incidental Light” originally appeared in the Philippines Free Press. Watch this space. :)

just passing by

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My short story for children, “Jeremy’s Magic Well”, now a book published by the Gig and the Amazing Sampaguita Foundation, Inc. (GASFI), is not available in the bookstores. Ms Beaulah writes:

For those who are interested in getting copies, please ask GASFI by emailing gigfoundation@gmail.com.

More info from here:

ABOUT THE BOOKS AND THE PUBLISHER

These books are part of the Gig Seafarer Children’s Stories series. They are published by Gig and the Amazing Sampaguita Foundation, Inc. (GASFI), a nonprofit organization founded and headed by Marissa Oca Robles.

GASFI is driven by Marissa’s three passions: honoring the memory and youthful spirit of her son Gig, promoting the reading habit among children and their parents, and serving the needs of Filipino seamen’s families.

The first has to do with turning the loss of a loved one into life-affirming action. When her son died in an accident, Marissa founded GASFI to celebrate his love for books, his tender affection for sampaguita flowers, and his frequent use of the word “amazing” to describe his life and almost everything in it.

The second is about kindling and sustaining a life-long love for reading among children and their families. “Twenty Minutes At Bedtime” is not only GASFI’s slogan, it is also the minimum amount of time, Marissa believes, that parents should set aside everyday to read with their children.

The third is Marissa’s special contribution to her family’s cause: the welfare of Filipino seamen. Her father Captain Gregorio S. Oca laid the cornerstone when he founded the Associated Marine Officers and Seamen’s Union of the Philippines (Amosup). Marissa builds upon it by running seamen’s villages, hospitals, schools and libraries throughout the country.

When you read and share one of these books, you join an ever-expanding circle that gathers round people and things that warm the cockles of our hearts: our children, books and reading, and the strength and resilience of families – especially where the father is mostly away at sea.

MORE ABOUT THE BOOKS

Each book is based on a prize-winning story, one of ten winners of the Gig Book Storywriting Contest conducted by GASFI in 2009. Close to 150 stories were submitted for the contest. The ten best stories were selected and edited for publication by publisher and children’s author Karina Africa Bolasco, book reviewer and children’s author Neni Sta. Romana Cruz, and Beaulah Pedregosa Taguiwalo. Book design, art direction, and pre-press production by Beaulah Pedregosa Taguiwalo, color separations by iColours, printing by Raintree Trading & Publishing, Inc.

Page size: 18.5 x 11 inches
Number of pages: 24
Binding: Softcover, Saddle-stitched
Cover: Full color, Foldcote Cal. 15 with plastic lamination
Inside: Full color, Matte 120 lbs.

CONTACT US

Marissa Oca Robles, President
Gig and the Amazing Sampaguita Foundation, Inc. (GASFI)
Suite 600 The Gregorian, 2178 Taft Avenue
Malate, Manila 1004 Philippines
Tel. Manila (632) 400-4933 or (632)353-1267 local 826,
Cavite (6346)9730370, Mobile (63915) 346 6251
E-mail: gigfoundation@gmail.com
Website: http://www.gasfi.com

Beaulah Pedregosa Taguiwalo
Executive Editor & Book Designer
Gig Seafarer Children’s Stories
E-mail: taguiwalo8888@yahoo.com
Mobile: 0917-787-4956

So send them an email, if you are so inclined. :)

eleven

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Eleven months since the day, which means just one more month and it’s the anniversary! Here’s a picture of us before heading out for the Serendra date on Friday.

Another solo for meeeeeee.

There.

Early dinner was at Chelsea Market Place & Cafe. Great ambiance. We had the Chelsea Fritto Misto Collection (appetizer) and the Three Mushroom Truffled Fettucine (one of the specials). We tried one of the boutique beers, but I can’t remember the name now a glass of Stella Artois. Ooh fancy, lol. (I wasn’t able to take a picture of the food because we were starving by then, heh.)

They also sell cakes, but I wanted to have dessert elsewhere.

Cupcakes by Sonja!

I’m a big fan of Mint Condition. Mmm.

I looked around A Different Bookstore not planning to buy anything, but I saw a cheaper copy of Joe Hill’s acclaimed 20th Century Ghosts, so I bought that. At Fully Booked, I claimed my free Signature Chocolate drink at Starbucks (they have a promo) and Jake picked up a Warhammer novel about the Space Inquisition.

I also saw a copy of Under the Dome, and wow I didn’t know the novel’s more than 900 pages. That’s a huge book. I’ll probably get it next time.

Then we sat at our usual spot, just outside the bookstore, facing Serendra, and peoplewatched and talked about whatever.

* * *

Saturday. We could have gone to the Open Gaming Meet or the Book Fair at SMX, but we were lazy and weren’t exactly in the mood to deal with crowds (lol), so we just watched Better Off Ted and Through the Wormhole and ordered takeout. Later in the day I had this huge craving for Starbucks chocolate (again!), so we went out for a short walk and ordered our drinks and shared a glazed donut and pandesal.

* * *

For your Moment of Zen, the new sign of the University of the Philippines! Ang yaman!

* * *

P.S. I got my medical exam results for the year, and I’m overweight and my cholesterol level is seven points higher than what’s acceptable. ARGH.

P. P. S. Hey, you: Thank you for making the weekends so special.

Even though most of the time all I do is eat and sleep while you play the PSP. Haha!

Still. :)

scott pilgrim

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Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old Canadian slacker living in Toronto who plays bass in a band called “Sex Bob-omb”. He is also dating a high school girl named Knives Chau, much to the derision of his friends and band mates. One day he begins having recurring dreams of a girl in rollerblades, whom he later sees in a library. Her name is Ramona Flowers, an American from New York who now works as an Amazon.ca messenger. Scott is mystified by her, and he ends up dating two girls. He later breaks up with Knives. However, in order to become Ramona’s boyfriend, he has to defeat her seven evil ex-boyfriends.

I am writing this with the last few panels still humming in my head. Ramona stands in front of a door, and holds out a hand for Scott to take. “And so,” Scott says, taking her hand, “we try again.” Yes, the series is neurotic, and hyper, and self-reflexive, and funny, and inventive, but it is all about these two confused twentysomethings who have managed to hurt a lot of people because they cannot stay put, who cannot stay put because they still cannot find the reason to remain.

In the end, they do, and they take each other’s hands and step through the door.

* * *

The Mighty Reading List!

Hunger Games

The Unnamed

Catching Fire

Next: We Are All Welcome Here by Elizabeth Berg, or Mockingjay

The Year of Fog

The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint

Notes on Extinction

Wild Mind

The Spooky Art

on the side: Twisted 8 1/2, Storm of Swords, Scott Pilgrim, PSF V (last few stories!)