Part 1 of my crime story, “Needle Rain“, is now up on Philippine Genre Stories. Feel free to read and share!
Month: March 2012
I’ll be there. If you hear someone squeaking lines nervously into a microphone, that’s most probably me.
Let’s say hi to each other.
Spread the word!
Usually, when I review prose, I review anthologies, full issues (if a magazine), or a novel. But I’m making an exception for Ken Liu’s brilliant novella, “The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary”. It appeared in Panverse Three and is available as a PDF download here.
It is a time-travel story, but it has the most unique, most intriguing premise among all the time-travel stories I have encountered so far: Chinese-American Dr. Evan Wei, along with his wife, Japanese-American experimental physicist Dr. Akemi Kirino, develop a controversial technique that will allow people to travel back in time and experience history firsthand. Wei demonstrates this by traveling back to 1940 Harbin, to witness the atrocities committed inside Unit 731. Unit 731 is a research facility of the Japanese Army responsible for fatal human experimentation during World War II. Wei gets hit by critics for bringing relatives of the Unit 731 victims instead of professional historians. The critics contend: How effective is a firsthand historical record if the events are witnessed behind an explosively emotional screen?
In any event, the relatives, being untrained observers, did not make great witnesses. They failed to correctly answer observational questions posed by skeptics (“Did the Japanese doctors wear uniforms with breast pockets?” “How many prisoners in total were in the compound at that time?”). They did not understand the Japanese they heard on their trips.
tribute
I attended Inquirer’s tribute to Sir Y last night. It was so beautiful. Food, friends, and laughter – definitely his scene. Sorry for the crappy phone photos. I have crappy phone photos, so I’m uploading Kate’s photos instead.
Please see: Kate’s blog post.
That’s Inquirer President, Sandy Prieto, giving a tearful speech. We were in the satellite room. We were able to push ourselves into the jampacked main room only near the end of the tribute.
Amando Doronila, raging against “Twitters” and Facebook hahaha.
The program ended with a message from Inquirer’s Editor in Chief, Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc. I teared up a little when she said, “When [Gani] was told in 1994 that he was going to be appointed Inquirer’s Publisher, he wept.”
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It has to be told that when we went to a Starbucks after the program, Kate and Julie heard the cashier talking to the man in line in front of them. The cashier said:
“Thank you for coming, Sir Gani.”
What are the odds. :)
In Awake, police detective Michael Britten (Jason Isaacs) survives a car crash. In the car with him were his wife, Hannah, and his son, Rex. After the accident, Britten realizes that he is now living in two parallel worlds. In one reality, his wife Hannah survived the crash, but Rex is dead. He goes to sleep, and he wakes up in another reality, where Hannah is dead, but Rex is still alive. To help him “remember”, he wears a red rubber band when he is with his wife (and consequently the scenes in this reality have summer colors: warm reds and yellows) and a green rubber band when he is with Rex (the scenes here have cool colors: blue and green, like they’re underwater). In both realities, he is seeing a psychiatrist; in both realities, he is solving a crime. Britten still cannot tell which world is real, especially when certain details start to cross over from one parallel world to the other.
MANILA, Philippines – Isagani Yambot, publisher of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, died Friday.
Below is the official statement of the Inquirer:
”It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved publisher Isagani “Gani” Yambot. He will surely be missed but his spirit lives on in the work we do to ensure editorial policies are closely followed.
“We are very grateful for all of his contributions and we applaud his passion and commitment to his work. We request that you join us in prayer for the eternal repose of his soul.”
PDI Publisher Isagani Yambot writes 30
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I was an Inquirer Researcher from 2007 till July of last year, but I first met him in college, while taking the exam for an Inquirer scholarship (which I later won with other classmates).
I remember hearing the news about his health scare, and his subsequent requests for articles about heart surgery, heart bypass, and maybe non-traditional procedures? He was still on leave then, recuperating, and he’d ask me to print out the documents and leave them at the front guard. I’ll have someone pick them up later.
He was looking at his options. He was trying to save his life.
I get sad whenever I think of those Sunday afternoons, him phoning and asking Research to look for articles that could save his life.
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You know what stress and deadlines and the daily grind could do to you. Editors have screamed at me over the phone, but not him.
I could say this: he was never mean.
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I hope you remain jolly wherever you are, sir. Rest in peace.
(Photo from Princess.)
Eliza Victoria 