Updates

gpoy/new hair

Boom. Here’s my face, taken this morning before heading to work. I had Permanent Blow-dry (also known as  Brazilian Blowout, or Keratin Treatment) done on my hair on Tuesday night in this little-known salon, B&W Beauty Salon, inside Kingswood Condominium in Makati. They currently have a 50-percent-off promo, so instead of a staggering 6000 pesos (my hair is long and thick; treatment for shorter hair is cheaper), I paid 3K or around 72 US dollars. Still staggering, but think of it as an investment. Permanent Blow-dry is not a straightening treatment, it just makes your hair more manageable. Recommended for frizzy or damaged hair and during humid months.

Hair still looks nice and shiny two days after the treatment, but I’m not sure if this will be the case after I give my head a proper wash on Saturday. We’ll see.

What have you done to your hair lately?

lauriat: a filipino-chinese speculative fiction anthology

Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction AnthologyLauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology by Charles Tan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the stories in this anthology, with Kristine Ong Muslim’s “Chinese Zodiac” (a series of flash fiction pieces directly or indirectly connected to each sign of the Chinese Zodiac) and Crystal Koo’s “The Perpetual Day” (a story of a Binondo that literally cannot sleep) as my definite favorites. These are the stories that I wanted to discuss with everyone immediately after I read them.

There are a lot of weird/horror tales in this collection. Other stories that I liked: Andrew Drilon’s “Two Women Worth Watching”, Isabel Yap’s “Pure”, Tin Lao’s “Dimsum”, Fidelis Tan’s “The Stranger at my Grandmother’s Wake”, and Erin Chupeco’s “Ho-We”.

PS I really love the cover.

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back from the bug

Hello all. I don’t know what it was that got me, but for two and a half days, everything I ate I just threw back up. Horrible. I hope I lost some weight from that ordeal because then what’s the point?

My thanks to J of course for buying me bananas and Gatorade and nursing me back to health.

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I was able to check my mail/Twitter/Facebook yesterday (and we were able to livestream the Obama-Romney debate), but not my blog, so I was pleasantly surprised to receive a message from blogger Nancy Cudis, who wrote a bit about A Bottle of Storm Clouds here.

Have you experienced buying a book for what you thought it is but it pleasantly turned into something else? A Bottle of Storm Clouds by Eliza Victoria is like that with me. I thought it is a short story collection about, given the cover, Philippine folklore flawlessly interspersed in a contemporary setting. It turns out to be what its title says—16 stories about individuals with bottled-up storms that change them in so many ways.

The storms come in different disturbing forms but oftentimes, the ending is the same: death. I have already read eight of these stories and so far, I have gotten the drift of Victoria’s admirable writing style—simple yet powerful words, short yet intense sentences, suspenseful flashbacks, and lots of dramatic dialogue. Each story evokes similar yet different emotions—do you understand? All stories I have encountered so far are sad ones subtly, others directly, covering a multitude of personal issues—abandonment, death of a loved one, fear of being left, fear of the future, and inability to move one. But the degree of sadness of the story can only be determined by how relevant it is in the life of the reader.

In my case, my heart was very heavy—still is—when I finished reading Earthset, the eighth story I have read (and mostly accounts for the reason that I could not move on to the ninth story yet).

Read more here. She says the collection is “highly recommended”. Thank you very much, Nancy!

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Cloud Atlas also accompanied me during my illness. And lookie, another book!

It’s a big-ass book.

buffet by the bay

We went to Vikings on Sunday. Felt like pigging out for lunch. They have a good spread, caviar and the works. Just a bit pricey. Minsan lang naman.

The bay, sun behind a cloud.

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. Or: I’d sleep and still wake up tired. I missed work on Monday due to a raging headache. I haven’t been writing. I feel like I’ve lost my fire.

I need a new bay to look at. A beach. White sand. Good food. Warm bed. Ten to twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Everyone can benefit from that.

Yikes, what is this post. How are you? I hope you are doing better than me.

the witnesses are gone

The Witnesses Are GoneThe Witnesses Are Gone by Joel Lane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read this novella in one sitting. Martin Swann finds an old videotape of an unsettling film by French director Jean Rien, and becomes obsessed in finding more about the auteur. Swann experiences an unnamed terror, a terrible unease, while overseas another kind of terror escalates as the US wages war against Iraq. Loved this. The language gave the story an ethereal quality, as though it were a dream.

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kikomachine komix #7

Sorrowful, Sorrowful Mysteries! (Kikomachine Komix, #7)Sorrowful, Sorrowful Mysteries! by Manix Abrera

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

One can say this about all of the komix in this series: Manix Abrera can talk about philosophy, abstract ideas, and social ills with wit and humor, and still manage to be accessible and not at all condescending.

I think I laughed more here than in the previous volume. Can’t wait for the next chapters in this saga.

Naks. Saga. ;)

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‘a bottle of storm clouds’ review on rappler

Rappler contributor Jerald Uy reviews A Bottle of Storm Clouds:

If there is one thing [Eliza Victoria’s] first collection of short stories, A Bottle of Storm Clouds, has shown, it’s that her sensibility as a news-oriented person can be a factor in weaving stories that feel so relevant and Filipino — characters and settings beyond the American lovestruck vampires and British lightning-scarred wizards Filipino bookworms know.

Don’t expect the usual tales starring your friendly neighborhood aswang and that snake-man who lives under women’s fitting rooms in this book.

Victoria’s characters — though plucked from the stories of our lolo and lola — are refreshing.

…

A news-savvy reader can spot the various references in the short stories that make the reading experience more enjoyable: the Guinsaugon landslide, the Oakwood mutiny, the Rizal Day bombing and even the time the President extended the operating hours of the MRT to appease call center agents.

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If you haven’t been introduced to Filipino speculative fiction, I ask you to do yourself a favor and get yourself a copy of “A Bottle of Storm Clouds.”

Read the complete review here. Contains some mild spoilers, so be warned.

Hallelujah for pointing out the news item references,  Mr. Uy! The news very much informs some of my stories in this collection.

A Bottle of Storm Clouds, published by Visprint, is still available in all major bookstores, folks! Grab a copy. :)