Happy New Year, everyone!

Gods, it's been awhile since I've been here. Yeah, I'm ashamed that I've neglected my blog last year. I hope to remedy that this 2015. That's my new year resolution - to blog more.

So to start with, I'd like to write about what I have been doing this holiday season. It's been two weeks of no work, so you'd think I should have been productive, right? Well, that's partially true. The first week and a half had been hectic on the home front. I've been cleaning the house, cooking for my contribution for Noche Buena, and cleaning a bit more (with a bit of TV watching on the side). It's just this past few days that I've have allowed myself some crafting and reading.

So anyway, here are the stuff I've found myself doing this past two weeks:

Watched some old TV series. This included CSI season 6 (2005-2006) & some of season 9 (2008), Criminal Minds seasons 1 & 2 (2005-2007), and part of Fringe season 2 (2010). Yeah, I don't really mind not watching in order. :-)

Fringe is the best out of the three (not surprising, as it's a JJ Abrams show) and I'd like to get a hold of the entire series (which is doable since it has only have five seasons). CSI is a favorite of mine so I don't really mind the plot holes, wonky technology (the things they do with images and video are crazy!), and outdated themes. Criminal Minds is okay but their tech girl is terrible.I don't mind the tech girls-as-weirdos stereotype but for goodness' sake, practice good internet security! Any novice techie knows you don't use computers with weak security and plug it into a high-risk network to play mmorpg. And for goodness' sake, she got to keep her job in the end?! Sheesh. :-P

Caught up on some Pinoy movies. Well, just two. The first one is Shake, Rattle & Roll 15. A decent compromise, considering my nephews watched to watch either Praybeyt Benjamin or Feng Shui (*shudder*). MMFF is the Pinoys' annual Christmas perya and SRR is its regular haunted house booth. This year's SRR is okay. Of the three, I like the middle one because of the ambiguity in the story and ending.

I also finally got to see She's Dating the Gangster, starring KathNiel (Kathryn Bernardo & Daniel Padilla to you oldies). The local movie industry has a strange way of using books for story material. To them, adaptation is synonymous to 'very loosely based', to 'somewhat inspired but not really', to even 'we just got the title to dupe the fans of the book into watching'. The result of this treatment is diverse: some were very good (Hihintayin Kita sa Langit for example, based on Bronte’s Wuthering Heights), some were very bad (Once a Princess which is based on Angel Bautista’s book with the same name), and some were just okay (e.g. ABNKKBSNPLAko?!, based on the Bob Ong book). Star Cinema’s ‘adaptation’ of She’s Dating the Gangster was entertaining, and was a teensy bit above being just okay. It had also helped that the original book material was very terrible (I was going to say unreadable, but then I remembered that a lot of people had bought and probably read it, making it a wtf-why-is-this-a-runaway-hit-are-they-nuts kind of thing).The liberties that Star Cinema had freely made with the material really helped. So yeah, the movie is better than the book.

Brushed up on some Tolkien. To me, the holiday season is the best time for reading Tolkien stories. I've decided on two books: The Hobbit and The Father Christmas Letters. I'm not much of a fan of Christmas, so reading stories from this master fantasy writer is my way of putting some magic into the season. More of this in my next post.

So that's it for now. How about you guys, how was your vacation? Has it been fun? Boring? Long? Short? Do tell me.

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This started out as a slumber party topic, as far as I remember. What I don't remember is how we came from talking about songs in general, to specifically talking about songs of pain and heartbreak. After that, in a Facebook post, Eunice called them SPTD songs ("Saksak Puso, Tulo ang Dugo", which literally means "Stabbed through the heart, with blood dripping"). Lots of songs had been thrown around sporadically, both online and offline. Then I had this lame-brained idea of each of us contributing our own top ten SPTD songs and compiling them into a CD. With Joko contributing her own list, I guess this is a go. *shrug*

So anyhow, here's my own top ten list of heartaches, breakups, angst and other painful stuff like that, in no order whatsoever:

Insensitive - Jann Arden

I'll Be Okay - Amanda Marshall

Cry Me A River - Justin Timberlake

Much Has Been Said - Bamboo

You Oughta Know - Alanis Morrisette

7 Days in Sunny June - Jamiroquai

You Got To Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles

I Do - Lisa Loeb

Out of Reach - Gabrielle

Just My Imagination - The Temptations

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I'll probably remember this year as the one when Jose Saramago & Christopher Priest were bitter rivals (in my mind, of course) for my literary affections.

Photo from Brigadas internacionales

It started when I read Blindness for the March book discussion. It was a painful but satisfying read, and I liked it so much I'd promptly declared it as my best book for 2011.

Photo from Locus Online

But then, a fellow book blogger, FFP member and friend, Peter, who was a bit concerned of my earlier dismissal of NYRB books, lent me Christopher Priest's The Inverted World (thank you so much!). He was convinced that I won't just like the book but love it. And he was right. It was a mind-bending read but it was very, very good.

When my ardor shifted from Saramago to Priest, I thought, this is a bit unfair of me. I can't easily dismiss someone who won the Nobel Prize in Literature. After all, I can't judge an author by reading just one or two of his creations, right? Thus, I made an imaginary contest between the two authors for the most-coveted prize of all: my best author & book for 2011.

So here's the tally & the plan so far (not that I have these books right now, though I do hope I'll acquire/borrow some of them soon):

Jose Saramago

Blindness (read)

Death with Interruptions (read)

The Double

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

Baltasar & Blimuda

Christopher Priest

The Inverted World (read)

The Prestige

The Separation

The Extremes

The Affirmation

I ought to post reviews for these books, no? I'll do that as I go along, I promise. So what do you think, guys and gals? Is best out of five fair enough? Or should I read more?

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This blog post is not about books. It mostly contain boring pictures of an empty house. You've been warned.

Last year, I moved out of the city and bought a house in the countryside.

To say that everyone was surprised is a big understatement. You see, I'm a city girl through and through. I know Metro Manila almost like the back of my hand. I never had a province to go to during the summer break. I know how to cross a street filled with vehicles by the time I was seven. By the time I was in elementary, I sometimes go to school without adult supervision via public transportation. And my school was in Tondo, Manila two and a half miles from my home in Valenzuela, near Bulacan.

So anyway, I had always dreamed of having a place of my own, at least someplace to stash all my stuff away. The story of how I got this new house can fill out two or three long blog post, and would probably bore you to tears (actually even *this* post is probably going to bore you tears). I'm just going to show what the place looked like when I first moved in.

The stairs and my uber-mini kitchen from the living room. And since the kitchen is small, I'm going to do my actual cooking in the dirty kitchen at the back of the house:

I have two toilets: one for myself and one for my cat. How cool is that? :)

The partial view of the living room from the top of the stairs.

Second floor: On the left is the room I'm using now as the main (i.e. my) bedroom. On the right is a small room that's supposed to be a guest room but I won't since it's embarrassingly tiny. I'm currently using it as a storage room. In between these two room is the stairs to the attic.

The attic. Which I've now filled with books in their nice new bookshelves. After I solve the problem of making this space less stifling hot during the afternoons, I intend to stay here for the rest of my spinsterish life. Yeah, maybe I'm serious. Or maybe I'm not. Who knows?

The exteriors. This is actually a duplex (if only I have enough funds to take over the other half!). Taken from the space that's supposed to be the garage. It will be filled with a brand new car, hopefully soon.

I dedicate this blog post to Blooey who said I should write something about my new home, sort of like a blog of the (mis)adventures of a "city girl moving to the countryside setting up a house of her own". Oh come on, I'm not anything like Max Skinner (the protagonist of Peter Mayle's A Good Year - I suggest reading the book to know the connection). And I think it's too early to say that the province of Rizal is going to be my personal Provence.

What do you guys think?

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Neuromancer - William Gibson

Science Fiction; ISBN 0-441-56959-5; Ace Books, 1984.

First, the obligatory synopsis: Henry Dorsett Case was one of the hottest console cowboy in the Sprawl. But a double-cross went awry and he found himself, a year later, on the back streets of Chiba City, Japan, with a burnt-out nervous system incapable of even logging into cyberspace. Penniless, hopeless and suicidal, he reluctantly joins Armitage, an ex-military man with a mysterious past, and Molly, a mercenary razorgirl, for a last chance run that can either be his salvation or his doom.

My love affair with Neuromancer started in a night class called Computer Security. It was a last-minute addition to a fully loaded semester. Our teacher was supposed to be some top network security guru for one company on the top tier of the Fortune 500s, and the department chair (

as we were constantly reminded

) had just barely persuaded him to teach this class. Never mind

that the class ended exactly at midnight, and the students walked out of the classroom like brain-fried zombies.

But considering all the stuff we've heard about him, the guy was surprisingly unpretentious and easy to talk to. Knowing the class barely had an iota of attention to spare him, he got rid of the theoreticals; everything was hands-on from day one. Better than that, he figured that

the best way to learn how to protect a computer network is by knowing how to hack into them. It is (to use a Harry Potter analogy) like having a Defense Against the Dark Arts class that taught you how to do the Dark Arts itself.

Suffice to say, it was the coolest class I had that semester.

Between learning how to masquerade IP addresses, how to secretly listen into someone's Internet traffic, and even how to hack an Automated Teller Machine, he told us about this book called Neuromancer. "It's a book about hacking and you should read it - no, no, it's not a required reading (the rest of the class stopped listening at this point) - it's just something that you guys might enjoy."

I guess I remembered this, because I picked up a copy in a bargain bin for less than a hundred bucks at a National Bookstore branch in Katipunan.

Well, I never did became a decent hacker (I'm too lazy and I lacked finesse). I'm not much of a computer security person either (again, too lazy and lacked finesse). But I did pick up the habit of reading Neuromancer roughly every three years since then. And it's not because of the plot, which is basically just a caper story,

if you take the tech mumbo-jumbo out.

I reread the book partly due to professional curiosity - I like comparing the future it describes with the technological realities at that point in time - and partly due to affinity and

a sense of

parallelism of my life to Case's story.

Sadly though, I dawned on my fourth rereading just last month that the present had, in many ways, caught up with the book. Cyberpunk culture borrowed so much from William Gibson that his visions had become dated and cliché. And as online communities became a de facto standard, cyberspace became mundane in the twenty six years since this oft-quoted definition from the novel:

Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts... A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.

Will I do a fifth rereading three years from now? I hope so - I'd hate to lose this 'tradition' of mine, just when everything Gibson that predicted seems to be within our grasp.

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I learned the truth at seventeen.

That love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired
The valentines I never knew
The Friday night charades of youth
Were spent on one more beautiful
At seventeen I learned the truth.

And those of us with ravaged faces
Lacking in the social graces
Desperately remained at home
Inventing lovers on the phone
Who called to say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
It isn't all it seems at seventeen.

A brown eyed girl in hand-me-downs
Whose name I never could pronounce said
Pity, please, the ones who serve
They only get what they deserve
The rich-relationed home-town queen
Marries into what she needs
With a guarantee of company and haven for the elderly.

Remember those who win the game
Lose the love they sought to gain
In debentures of quality
And dubious integrity
Their small town eyes will gape at you in
Dull surprise when payment due
Exceeds accounts received at seventeen.

To those of us who knew the pain
Of valentines that never came
And those whose names were never called
When choosing sides for basketball
It was long ago and far away
The world was younger than today
And dreams were all they gave for free
To ugly duckling girls like me.

We all play the game and when we dare
To cheat ourselves at solitaire
Inventing lovers on the phone
Repenting other lives unknown
That call and say, "come dance with me"
And murmur vague obscenities
At ugly girls like me, at seventeen.

Lyrics: Janis Ian; Artwork: Eliza Leahy

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During a Friday night-out, a friend told me that if I were to make a essay, it would be in bullet-point. I agreed with him; I could've also added it will also be in power-point, and with charts.

That same night, I had been in a car crash. It was one of the worst night of my life because I had never felt so useless. I will never allow anyone to bring me home again.

I am so sorry.

Just a few years ago, I liked being awake at midnight. I had felt invincible then - no amount of sleep deprivation can topple me.

I don't want to be awake during midnight nowadays, not because my body can't handle the loss of sleep. I hate midnight because it's then that melancholia tend to creep up, threatening to smother me. And often, it succeeds.

That last one sound hokey, even if it's true. I roll my eyes at myself.

I am a fraud. I am skeptical of the sanity of people who listen to my ramblings. I applaud people who are skeptical to the saneness of my ramblings.

When I was in elementary, I won a few awards in essay-writing. During the second to the last contest - the regional level - I lost. I asked one of the coaches from other schools why. She told me that I paint detailed picturesque essays, the sort that makes one imagine the scenes vividly in her mind's eye, which will then coaxes a smile or two. But there is nothing beyond the nice pictures. My pieces don't have depth, they have no soul. I don't inject myself in them. She asked me what am I afraid of.

I still don't know the answer to her question.

I need to sleep (even if I had escaped and slept most of this weekend away). I am glad to go back to my cubicle tomorrow. I don't want to think dangerous thoughts anymore.

Image is Melancholic Tulip, NY by Andre Kertesz

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.. of my new layout. I was annoyed at how much tinkering I need to do with images in the former one, not to mention that I'm forced to make it small enough to fit the narrow window. That means no travel blogs (all those photos!), posts look longer, and few cute kitten pics (heheheh). This new layout is slightly larger, not to mention way more dramatic. Nice no?

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The 30th Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) is going to end today. I went there yesterday and came home with an empty wallet but a satisfying haul. I wish I can go there today - I’m sure the booths are going to do an all-or-nothing book sale war - but I’m not sure my woeful finances can handles any more additional pressure. Sigh. But anyway, here is my opinionated thought on the week-long book orgy.With Powerbooks out of the scene and with National Book Store being the only major book store chain to have a booth, the MIBF this year had inadvertently made smaller book stores and local publishers shine more brightly this year. I wasn’t surprised when I heard some grumbles from other shoppers that book buying at the MIBF is harder this year. I quite disagree with them. One of the reasons I love going to the MIBF is because it is the only chance one can see local publishers and smaller book sellers in one place. Not only that. MIBF is one of the few times when these exhibitors sell publications that one might not be able to see the light of day in book stores and/or without going to their respective offices. And oftentimes at bargain prices, to boot!

I would give the best seller prize for this year to Bookmark. They gave the best bargain of the entire fair when they sold some of those beautiful hardbound Lacson-Locsin translations of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo at 200 pesos a copy. I managed to get a Fili but cried a little when I wasn’t able to get a Noli (sob!). Another best seller from Bookmark was some 10 pesos per pack old Philippines photos and scenes as well as the cheap (below 50 pesos) children’s books. Next on the list is, of course, National Book Store. A bargain hunter will always adore a bookseller when it offers at least a 20% discount on ANY book in its store. Their sale during the MIBF (and during the whole month of September, actually) is thus always a goldmine for graphic novel enthusiasts who go gaga over the availability of good selections at bargain prices. I particularly like it that they had offered Oxford World’s Classics at 99 pesos a pop (and with 20% off, that means it's actually just 80 pesos). I bought a complete set of Jane Austen’s work – well almost, since there weren't any copies of Pride and Prejudice in NBS, or strangely enough, in the entire book fair itself. A Different Bookstore also had a good bargain deal but they should’ve paced the restocking of their inventory a little better – many good titles had been sold out during the first few days of the fair and the remaining ones are a bit unappetizing.

There is a tie for the most fun exhibit in the fair between Lampara Books and Diwa Learning System. The prettiest inventory is that of Ayala Foundation; I’ll also give it the gosh-I-wish-I-can-afford-that! prize. The most disappointing sale is that of Anvil Publication – the have great books but sad, unappetizing bargain bins. The most underrated and hope-they-have-a-better-setup-next-year prize is given to National Historical Institute (NHI) – great selection, great bargain, bad booth setup. The hippest inventory is that of Visprint Publishing (love the Bob Ong T-shirt btw), plus we saw Carlo Vergara for the nth time. I’m not much into Christian literature but the OMF Literature booth was jam-packed. UP Press had the best bargain among the few university and organization exhibits in the fair.

Well, that’s it for the 30th MIBF. It had I been a great experience yet again. I hope to see more exhibits in 2010!

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My cat, Shadow, hates Edgar Allan Poe. Of all the books lying around my apartment, it's the one she decided to punch holes into - much to my despair because I like the title of this particular anthology: "Selected Prose and Poetry of Poe" (nice alliteration, don't you think?).

She probably thought I'll get an idea or two of cat-torture from the book. Sheesh, if I were that cruel, I would've named her "Pluto". *rolling my eyes*

By the way, she does have this strange white patch on her chest... hmm, doesn't bode well for me, no? :P

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What do you know, every one is wrong.

Novels and reading books are certainly NOT EDUCATIONAL.

Philstar Article: Pinoy book lovers criticize new Customs policy

So boys and girls, the next time your teacher is making you read a novel for a book report, or maybe she's requiring you to read Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo for Filipino, just tell her she's wrong, 'cause Usec. Sales says so.

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Here's a better idea. If your free this Sunday, May 24, why not come to the Baywalk area for the BOOKBIGAYAN 2009:

Sunday, May 24, 2009
Baywalk Roxas blvd across Malate Church
3pm til sunset

We're giving them away for free!

Rock Ed invites you to bring used/old books to give away. We will invite people to just come and browse through our donated books and they are free to take books, maximum of 5 per person. But give anyway! Books left behind will be added to our public school book donation delivery before the school year starts.

Rock Ed Philippines is not happy about the taxes imposed on books. If you feel the same way, please join us.

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Local netcitizens, especially the book lovers out there, are all agog on what is now called the "The Great Book Blockade of 2009".

Here are some articles about it:

• Robin Hemley's article which had practically started it all
  
  
• An opinion column on it by Manuel Quezon III published in Inquirer.net
  
  
• The Philippine Genre Stories multiply page by Kenneth Yu. It's worth reading as he had kept his cool and posted Undersecretary Sales' side on the matter (scroll down to the comment posts).

Btw, here are the links to all those laws and agreements mentioned:

• Florence Agreement (June 17, 1950) (Note that the Philippines had signed the agreement on Aug. 7, 1979)
  
  
• Presidential Decree No. 284: Amending Subsection (s) of Section 105 of R.A. 1937, Otherwise Known as the Tariff and Customs Code (Sept. 3, 1973)
  
  
• Presidential Decree No. 1464: A Decree to Consolidate and Codify All the Tariff And Custom Laws of the Philippines (June 11, 1978)

And I just have to quote this (Text enclosed in [] and starts with MY NOTE are my insertions. Bold highlights are all mine.):

TARIFF AND CUSTOMS CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES, Sec. 105.

Conditionally-Free Importations. — The following articles shall be exempt from the payment of import duties upon compliance with the formalities prescribed in, or with, the regulations which shall be promulgated by the Commissioner of Customs with the approval of the Secretary of Finance... [MY NOTE: Three other provisions then follows]:

[MY NOTE: It then list specific items that can fall on this section. The one we are interested in is Subsection (s) of Section 105 which had been amended in 1973]

Section 1. Subsection (s) of Section 105 of Republic Act Numbered nineteen hundred thirty-seven, as amended, is hereby further amended to read as follows:

"s. Economic, technical, vocational, scientific, philosophical, historical, and cultural books and/or publications: Provided, That those which may have already been imported but pending release by the Bureau of Customs at the effectivity of this Decree may still enjoy the privilege herein provided upon certification by the Department of Education and Culture that such imported books and/or publications are for economic, technical, vocational, scientific, philosophical, historical or cultural purposes or that the same are educational, scientific or cultural materials covered by the International Agreement on Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials signed by the President of the Philippine on August 2, 1952, or other agreements binding upon the Philippines.

"Educational, scientific and cultural materials covered by international agreements or commitments binding upon the Philippine Government so certified by the Department of Educational and Culture.

"Bibles, missals, prayer books, Koran, ahadith and other religious books of similar nature and extracts therefrom, hymnal and hymns from religious uses."

It might be how I'm reading it but I still can't find the specific provision for 5% or even the 1% duty they are imposing in the above section. In fact the way I'm reading it (and I might be wrong) books (provided they are "economic, technical, vocational, scientific, philosophical, historical, and cultural books" and also included books specified in Annex A of the Florence Agreement) should be excepted from any duty. In Kenneth Yu's interview of Undersecretary Sales, she had mentioned that the 1% is "for, to use her words, "control/monitoring" of the imported books coming in".

My opinion?

It all comes down to their (Department of Customs or Finance?) implementation of their interpretation of Section 105 of the Tariffs and Customs Code versus the current implementation of Florence Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural Materials.

I'm interested in what the National Book Development Board will do. I rather wait for every possible stake holder's response before posting anything further.

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I got this idea from Fantaghiro's post. It sounded cute so I gave it a shot.

What Kind of Reader Are You?

Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

Even if I'm a bit disappointed (I was expecting at least bookworm level), I had to admit that the result did reflect my reading habits. It seems that I'm more of a book collector nowadays than a book reader. Awww.

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One of my New Year resolution is to make a database of the piles and piles of books that I own. It's not so much that I don't like organizing things but for an supposedly IT techie, I hate encoding stuff, even for personal reason. And it's not helping that these piles strangely grow on their own in places where I live - namely my apartment, my cubicle, and my room in my parent's house at the suburbs.

It was the Earth Hour 2009 last March 28, that spurred me to action. Aside from watching the short but nice concert, we (well at least I) bought some books from Booksale, including a highly wanted Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. Went home tired and sleepy. The next day I tried to go out of the bed - only to find out that the floor had been suddenly flooded with books that toppled the night before. Sighhh.

Jailed by books wanting to be databased. Behind me is the kitchen sink.

So anyway, I found out that I buy a disproportionate number of science-fiction and fantasy. Not surprising, since it is an incurable habit of mine to escape from reality at least once a day (not including sleep, of course). Next on the list is science non-fiction. How nerdy of me. I'm surprised that I don't own that much romance though; must be because most of them are with my mom. Other tall piles are crafts and sewing how-tos (I do some knittings, crochetings, cross-stitching and paper crafts), historical fiction and non-fiction, classics (surprise, surprise) and adventure fiction.

Lesson learned? I really need to cut down on those sci-fi and fantasies.

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From this site will rise blackbody's lists. Check it out in about a day or so.

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