Month: June 2011

ang mga kaibigan ni mama susan

Tuesday, March 2, 1999

8:58 am. Kagigising ko lang. May mga ginupit sa ‘king buhok na ipinatong sa kama ko at pinalibutan ng mga butil ng asin. Hindi magbibiro ng ganito sila Niko.

Matagal-tagal na rin noong huli akong magbasa ng libro ni Bob Ong (isang manunulat na hanggang ngayon ay nananatili pa ring misteryoso: walang pangalan, walang picture, walang interview). Tuwang-tuwa ako sa una niyang akda, ABNKKBSNPLAko?! Non-fiction daw, pero dahil nga hindi pa rin siya nagpapakilala, maaaring kathang-isip lang rin lahat iyon. Alam ko nabasa ko rin yung (ilang) mga sumunod, pero wala silang naging impact sa akin. Siguro natawa rin ako, na-touch, etc. pero mukhang hindi sila kasing-memorable noong unang libro, na walang kaere-ere at gusto lamang mag-kwento at hindi mangaral. Sabi ng kapatid ko maganda rin daw ang McArthur, pero wala akong ganang basahin yun, maski na may kopya sa bahay.

Noong inanunsyo na horror o katatakutan ang susunod na libro ni Bob Ong, nagka-interes ako, pero nagduda rin. Kaya ba niya? Matatakot ba ako? Baka kung anong ka-cliche-han na naman ito, baka mangangaral lang tungkol sa Diyos at Simbahan.

Wala akong nabasang rebyu ng Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan kahit saan, print man or online. Kaya’t nagulat ako nang makita ko na diary-style pala ang nobela, at naka-set sa 1998-99. Binata ang narrator, college student. Kuhang-kuha naman ni Bob Ong ang paraan ng pagsasalita (at pagsulat marahil) ng isang lalaki sa ganoong age range. Gaya nga ng sabi ko sa Facebook, nakakatakot na, dahil ka-boses niya ang mga kapatid kong lalaki. Haha.

Subtle lang ang katatakutan sa simula: nanaginip siya ng babaeng itim, nagigising ng alas-tres ng umaga, naririnig ang phone na nagri-ring pero pagsagot niya, wala namang tao sa kabilang linya. Mababaon ang katatakutan sa simula ng kwento sa mga kalokohan. Nagsusulat siya ng rap lyrics, nagrereklamo sa pag-ibig, sa mga utos ng tiyahin niya, sa kabagutan, sa kawalan ng pera. Maganda ang pacing. Kahit nung nakarating na siya sa bahay ni Lola (Mama Susan), hindi pa rin nagmamadali si Bob Ong. Unti-unti, hanggang sa paglabas ng mga sikreto, hindi ka na bibitiwan ng nobela.

Buo naman ang karakter ng bidang lalaki. Masasabi ko iyon dahil nagawa kong maawa sa kanya, lalo na nung pumatak na ang Marso 1999 sa kwento at naisip niyang sem-break na! Naalala niya ang mga kaibigan niya at mga pinsan na naiwan sa siyudad. Ang bababaw ng mga problema nila! At nagsimula siyang lumuha at magsisi.

Dapat nga ay hindi na siya umalis ng Maynila.

The Mighty Reading List!

Feast for Crows

The Kobayashi Maru of Love

Showbiz Lengua

PGS Horror issue

Floating Dragon

El Bimbo Variations

The Tesseract

Faithful Place

Moxyland

Zoo City

The Dispossessed

Our Story Begins

Glass Soup

Here on Earth

The Pull of the Moon

Little Bee

Story Quarterly Issue 44

The Bell Jar

Philippine Speculative Fiction 6

Pacific Rims

Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan

A couple of quick plugs:

– My poem, “Sadness: A Catalogue“, is now live on the Philippines Free Press website. Comments are welcome, and feel free to share the link.

– April Yap’s book, Stressed in the City, can now be downloaded for free! Visit her. Thanks to Luis K. for sharing it on Twitter.

I have also just found out that I am in the initial shortlist (50 poets, 50 poems) for inclusion in Under the Storm: An Anthology of Contemporary Philippine Poetry.

We’ve received over 290 submissions for the anthology. Our sincerest thanks to everyone who has submitted. We are choosing 113 poems from 113 of the poets who’ve submitted. This is in commemoration of our 113 years of Independence, of being Filipinos, of being Filipino writers.

4th .MOV International Film, Music, & Literature Festival

September 1 to 3, 2011

www.facebook.com/movfest

www.movfest.org

I recognize most of the names in the shortlist. Most of them are writers I admire. :)

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Had my second shot today. Isa na lang!

I can haz cute pink bandage!

weekend update

I love this weekend. Busy and fun and eventful and full of food.

Thursday night/Friday. Watched the latest episode of Game of Thrones and became very worried the series (if you haven’t read the book, do not highlight – spoiler!)would end up not killing Ned until Season 2 (if at all) just because he’s Sean fucking Bean. It is starting to look that way and – Bleh. I hope I am wrong.

Jaykie made a glass of iced milk with honey. Yum! Here’s the recipe from the Game of Thrones-inspired The Inn at the Crossroads.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup milk
  • 2 tablespoons honey, more to taste
  • pinch of saffron and/or cinnamon (optional)

Pour milk into a saucepan and warm on low heat.  Do not scald the milk!  When steam begins to rise from the surface of the milk, add the honey to the pot and stir until combined.  Place sweetened milk in fridge to cool off.

In a glass, place either cubes or small chunks of ice (crushed ice will dissolve too quickly).  Pour the sweetened milk over the ice, sprinkle with spices, and serve.

We woke up early the next day for Jaykie’s enlistment at UP. I waited with him, reading Zoo City, thinking I’d be able to finish the book before he could pay. But he was done before lunch. Lunch at ROC. I wanted to drop by the UP Press Bookstore at Balay Kalinaw, and found out that it was no longer at Balay Kalinaw. Effort na pumunta sa UP Press so tambay lang nang onti, then off to Makati to try Bonchon.

Bonchon at Ayala Triangle Gardens.

We were there at around 4 p.m. I think? And were already hungry enough to eat rice again haha! (We did a lot of walking.)

I’ve heard/read horror stories about this particular Bonchon branch, but since it was merienda time, there were fewer people, service was fast, and the servers were polite.

chops with rice and iced tea, plus a side of kimchi coleslaw

It was good! Chicken was crispy and spicy-sweet, and the warm meal went very well with the cold kimchi coleslaw.

I treated Jaykie to gelato from Caramia. Try the pistachio.

pistachio and new york cheesecake

We went back home, finished the book, and watched the second season of Damages.

Saturday

We left late afternoon, had dinner, then explored the bookstores for books! I got three.

Elmer (NBS, P250), Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan (Bibliarch, P150), Pacific Rims (NBS, P399)

Jaykie got a Steven Erikson book. (Pictured below.)

Photos from Almi and Andrea. Thanks!

bookswap!

Not so much a bookswap as a how’s-Kat-doing-these-days meeting, haha! Which of course led to other quality kwento. First loves, coming out of the closet (not applicable to me, maniwala kayo!), mediums, ghost stories, the afterlife. And oh, books. Of course.

With bookswap newbie, Ice! (Who apparently speed-read a Lionel Shriver book while the girls and I were talking – kaloka!)

Another little girl wanders into the Book Nook ™!

We stayed till 1 a.m. Till next time, girls!

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I just arranged my books this morning. I have serious book space issues now, it’s not even funny.

If I sell my books, will you buy them?

zoo city/elmer

Two reviews in one post! Animals!

Zoo City

In Lauren Beukes’s alternate world, a person gets paired with an animal (mashavi) after he or she commits murder, and is also endowed with a corresponding magical ability. While the animals, or familiars, represent a person’s soul in Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, in the brilliantly imagined Zoo City, the animals (according to one theory) are the external manifestations of a person’s guilt or sin – a bright scarlet letter that breathes and feeds and lives. Imagine being an “animalled” in this world. You will find it hard to look for a job or a decent place to live. You cannot deny your crime. One look at you, and people will know that you have blood on your hands.

Zinzi December has a Sloth. Her magical ability is finding lost things. Her crime is killing her brother. She runs a 419 scam. You know those scams involving Nigerian princes? She writes those letters. One day, she is offered a considerable sum to find a missing person.

The novel has so many unique ideas but doesn’t turn the story into a massive info dump. That’s the beauty of it. It paints the world of Zoo City one stroke at a time, and talks about important things like war and poverty and faith without preaching. And its a damn good mystery, too. A genuine page-turner.

Elmer

Another page-turner, with a premise that I would have laughed at if it were developed by a less talented mind.

One day, in the late 70s, all of the chickens of the world Awaken. The chickens in jampacked coops, the chickens on their way to slaughter – all of them wake up and become conscious, become aware of who they are and what the humans have done to them. Some of them fight back. Some, like Elmer, are rescued by a sympathetic human and goes into hiding. The story is told through Elmer’s diary, handed over to his son Jake after his death.

You know what Elmer reminded me of? Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH.

The novel relates the plight of a widowed field mouse, Mrs. Frisby, who seeks the aid of a group of former laboratory rats in rescuing her home from destruction by a farmer’s plow, and of the history of the rats’ escape from the laboratory and development of a literate and technological society.

Oh my God. Wished I still had a copy. Loved that novel to bits.

And loved this comic, too. There are flaws (here’s Adam David’s excellent review; beware – spoilers) but as an inquiry into civil rights and what it means to be human, its power cannot be denied. Gerry Alanguilan’s chicken story is worthy of praise.

The Mighty Reading List!

Feast for Crows

The Kobayashi Maru of Love

Showbiz Lengua

PGS Horror issue

Floating Dragon

El Bimbo Variations

The Tesseract

Faithful Place

Moxyland

Zoo City

The Dispossessed

Our Story Begins

Glass Soup

Here on Earth

The Pull of the Moon

Little Bee

Story Quarterly Issue 44

The Bell Jar

Philippine Speculative Fiction 6

Pacific Rims

Ang Mga Kaibigan ni Mama Susan

microfiction for awareness

I wasn’t able to blog, but I was able to tweet.

Yesterday was a Blog Action Day to save Philippine corals, in light of distressing revelations regarding the extent of illegal coral/turtle harvesting and export. To participate in the attempt to raise awareness, I sent an open invitation to Filipino authors to participate in a special edition of the #RP612fic event, and tweet micro fiction stories with a coral/marine theme. (Note: We’ll still be holding the normal #RP612fic on independence day, and the 13th as well.)

It was a lot of fun (even if my Internet cut out midway through) and I think that we managed to entertain folks on Twitter (and confuse a few–but if we make them ask questions, that’s a form of raising awareness too!) and the Save Philippine Seas organizers took note of our stories.

Read more on Rocket Kapre.

game of thrones boardgame + jaykie’s party

Jaykie broached the idea of playing the Game of Thrones boardgame with him and the guys one weekend. Jaykie looked at the game rules on Friday and kept laughing, because even the set-up was complicated. I was scared. I didn’t think I’d be able to follow. But yesterday, the guys came after lunch, and Phil and Derps explained the objectives and the basic rules, and I actually was able to play. I learn better while playing than by reading the entire guidebook, it appears.

I got the Lannisters, who start at Lannisport and Stoney Sept. The object of the game is to gain as many territories as possible. You can also make a deal with other players so they won’t take your territories (in this game, the Lannisters agreed to a truce with the Greyjoys), or make a deal and break it later (like what the Lannisters did with the Baratheons after taking Cracklaw Point, sorry Jaykie!) I wasn’t able to expand too much. The Greyjoys (Phil) had all the seas and eventually also got Riverrun and won. I was one city behind!

That was fun, though.

Later that night, pizza, pasta and booze with Jaykie and friends. I turned in earlier than the others because I have work the following day. I woke up to empty pizza boxes, steaming cup noodles, mattresses on the floor, and stories of ghosts. Oh no.

Happy birthday, you.

x-men: first class

I was ready to give up on the X-Men movie franchise because the third film was bad (they killed practically everyone) and the first outing of X-Men: Origins (Wolverine) was horrible. But I don’t think I have ever seen a young Magneto and a young Professor X on the big screen, and friends are raving about this new film, so I gave it a try. I’m glad I did. It’s not flawless, but James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender give engrossing performances. They’re really good. The supporting cast is meh. I don’t get that tornado guy at all. Kevin Bacon is more jokey than villainy, and January Jones looks lovely but is bland, bland, bland! I’m not too familiar with Emma Frost, but isn’t she supposed to be seductive and powerful? January looks more angry than alluring. She doesn’t suck you in. It’s like they just turned Betty Draper into a diamond statue.

We we so excited.

It also saddens me that the only characters of color in the film either end up dead or with the bad guys.

Is she really called Angel? Isn't there another X-Men named Angel? With angel wings?
"I knew I shouldn't have gone with these two white guys."

Now the question is: will they now continue with this new set of characters, or go back to the Origins series? So many origin stories! So many characters! This can be confusing.