Year: 2011
3 Idiots
Raju, Farhan, and Rancho are three engineering students sharing a room at the Imperial College of Engineering. Farhan’s passion is in wildlife photography, but he is taking engineering because it’s what his father dictates. Raju prays every morning, buckling under the immense pressure of topping his class, finding a job, and earning money to lift his family from poverty. Rancho is a free-spirited young man who teaches his two friends his own views about education, but his approach is seen as disruptive and idiotic by the college dean and the rest of the school.
Some sequences are a bit heavy-handed on the melodrama, but it’s an engrossing watch despite its length (2 hours 44 minutes). Funny and touching. Well-written, well-acted and well-produced. And it’s a darn good story.
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Tucker and Dale are two young men living in the country, fishing, buying pickled eggs at the gasoline station, and fixing up a vacation home near the woods. They don’t mean anyone any harm really. Too bad a group of judgmental college kids mistake them for a pair of hillbilly psycho killers.
That little summary should be enough to make you see the movie! Over-the-top and ridiculous of course, but hilarious.
2011, year in review
Tough year. It’s the year of floods and self-doubt, but for this personal post, I’ll focus on the bright moments.
This year I got a new camera.
This year I went to the Yale House Party.
This year we celebrated the New Year without fireworks. Hooray!
This year I joined a fun run. Just 3k, but still.
This year we watched Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah, the play.
And of course, lovely Valentine’s Day.
This year I went to the launch of Kritika Kultura, which published one of my poems.
And then there’s the Palawan trip!
This year I ordered books online for the first time.
This year we went to a garage sale for Japan.
Book swap night, a constant.
This year I got one of my stories recorded as an audio story.
This year I gave away books.
This year I attended the always-fun PSF book launch.
Got my cervical cancer vaccine shots.
This year I got a poem nominated for the Free Press Awards.
This year I played the Game of Thrones boardgame!
This year I got a new job.
This year I got myself a Galaxy Tab!
This year I received my second Palanca Award for poetry.
This year I read a poem to an audience.
This year I quite enjoyed the office Halloween party.
This year is the year of kindness. :)
This year I got nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
This year I read some good books.
This year I had four poems and thirteen stories published or accepted for publication.
A good year, despite it all.
2012, please be kind.
best reads of 2011
This is the year I read a lot of comic books (thanks to my Galaxy Tab purchase – it’s mighty hard to carry around 60-plus issues of anything, no matter how engrossing).
What are your favorite books this year? Here are mine:
A Visit from the Goon Squad Jennifer Egan
The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss
Wise Man’s Fear Patrick Rothfuss
Full Dark, No Stars Stephen King
Preacher Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon
Pyongyang Guy Delisle
Fun Home Alison Bechdel
Ex Machina Brian K. Vaughan and Tony Harris
Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon
Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan Bob Ong
Zoo City Lauren Beukes
Moxyland Lauren Beukes
Elmer Gerry Alanguilan
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
Glass Soup Jonathan Carroll
Faithful Place Tana French
The Pull of the Moon Elizabeth Berg
The Tesseract Alex Garland
A Feast for Crows George RR Martin
The Kobayashi Maru of Love Carljoe Javier
Showbiz Lengua Jose Lacaba
Our Story Begins Tobias Wolff
Bone Jeff Smith
And here are ongoing comic book series that I’ve dipped into and I think are worth following:
Chew
The Unwritten
Runaways
The Walking Dead
Went to Cubao at 1) 7 PM on a 2) FRIDAY 3) BEFORE A MAJOR HOLIDAY so I could go home. Talk about a commuter trifecta. Stood in line but ended up in a near-stampede because the bus driver didn’t give a fuck about lines, apparently. Ended up standing inside the bus for more than an hour, while those who didn’t stand in line got seats. Got home at 9, and all the frustrations fell away. Is now bathed and happy. There’s no place like home. Merry Christmas!
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Some of my favorite pictures taken in the past few weeks:
Inquirer Research batch 2005 to present (with Jaykie!)
The Editorial Party Fuel gang
This family picture was taken at my Lola’s birthday party/family reunion. We haven’t had a family picture taken in a long, long while, so this is pretty special.
Picture of a picture, so forgive the bad quality.
Too bad my mother wasn’t looking at the camera!
Look at me and Jaykie looking so enthusiastic! HAHAHA. (We were hungry.)
I guess some yearender blog posts are in order? Yes? Yes?
donate to help the victims of tropical storm sendong
The death toll from the flash floods on Sunday rose to at least 711 in Mindanao. Hundreds remained missing.
The Philippine Red Cross (PRC) said it was a combination of factors that led to the tragedy.
“It’s unusual for Mindanao; a month’s worth of rainfall fell in only a few hours; people were already asleep; the storm hit pineapple plantations that don’t absorb water; it was high tide and waterways were heavily silted. It was unprecedented and overwhelming,” said PRC secretary general Gwendolyn Pang.
In Cagayan de Oro, the bodies, many bloated and bluish and frozen in grotesque poses, continued to pile up in funeral homes. Senior Supt. Gerardo Rosales, city police chief, said 474 bodies had been recovered. A total of 482 persons remained missing.
Officials said 214 died in Iligan, 15 in Bukidnon, five in Compostela Valley and three in Zamboanga del Norte.
The government and the Red Cross appealed for help to feed, clothe and house more than 35,000 people huddled in evacuation centers as soldiers battled to recover bodies.
Click to donate! I used Paypal. Safe, fast and secure.
According to the Iligan Bloggers, the Paypal Donation ID for Iligan is singcol.inquisitor@gmail.com.
For Cagayan de Oro, send to francis.siason@gmail.com through the Cagayan De Oro Bloggers. “Proceeds will be donated and delivered to Xavier University Cagayan de Oro where the members of CDOBloggers are planning to volunteer. Thank you and God Bless.”
hear ye, hear ye
Late post! But I’m sure you know by now that
The day has come!
“Alternative Alamat“, our digital anthology of stories inspired by Philippine mythology, is now available for US$4.99 at the following fine establishments:
- Amazon.com – US$4.99 (note there’s an extra US$2.00 charge for certain non-US territories/accounts, including, unfortunately, the Philippines)
- Flipreads.com (epub file) – PHP235.00
- [iTunes and Barnes & Noble/Nook editions to follow]
I hope that by now you’re all excited to get your hands on the book (or, rather, the hardware holding the file), and if so, thank you and what are you waiting for? If you’re still on the fence even after the preview of our contributor and story introductions, and our author interviews (Raissa, Mo, Eliza), then read on (or download the press release here)!
You heard the boss. Click here to see a glimpse of some of the non-fiction segments of the book, as well as the wonderful artwork of Mervin Malonzo, creator of “Tabi Po”.
What’s been happening? My maternal grandmother’s birthday on the 8th, my paternal grandmother’s birthday on the 11th. That was epic, because it was Lola’s 90th birthday (90th birthday!) and they had a reunion party with games and raffles and all. I brought Jaykie but knew and was able to introduce only at most five percent of my relatives there. (Fail!) It was nice to see the boyfriend mingling with family. Even family I didn’t know, haha.
On the 9th I visited the old office to see my friends.
Company Christmas party on the 14th. Theme was Famous Couples and I came in as Veronica with another officemate as Betty. But I don’t think anyone really understood I was supposed to be Veronica. At least Betty had a blonde wig.
Didn’t win anything at the raffle, as per usual. (One of the new girls won an iPad! Why can’t I be that lucky?)
Really looking forward to the holiday vacation so I can write, write, write, read, read, read.
Eliza Victoria 