You found the story online? And I shelled out money to read all about the penasaur. Saka in fairness naaliw ako kay Mike Testa. Damn! I feel duped! Refund, refund, refund! Hehehe.

Ako kilala ko na kung sino si Sol Calubayan pero hindi ko na muna sasabihin sa iyo. Itanong mo na lang kay Dennis, at kung inilagay na rin ba niya ito sa baul.

At dahil I was avoiding checking papers, I sneaked a peak inside Mitch Albom's The Five People You Meet in Heaven, my Book # 10. Gift ko dapat yun sa aking high school English teacher na nagretire na this year. May citation at tribute sa kanya kahapon kaya I had to wake up extra early so I could go to ye ole alma mater. Nagustuhan niya kasi yung Tuesdays with Morrie na may pagka chicken sopas ang dating, kaya naisip ko na baka magustuhan niya rin itong bagong libro ni Albom. Out of stock na yung libro sa National at muntikan na akong makipag-away sa counter girl dun. Meron pang waiting list, eh nainis na ako. Dapat sana Bob Ong ang ibibigay ko sa kanya kaya lang baka hindi niya magustuhan yun. Buti na lang merong Five People sa PowerBooks.

Anyhoo, ang Five People ay pang-Oprah moment na libro. I was expecting it to be inspirational, pero shyet ang daming namamatay. Shempre bago ka makapunta sa langit dapat dead ka muna di ba? Nagdalawang isip kasi ako dahil baka isipin ni Mrs C na gusto ko na siyang mamatay at mapunta sa heaven. Knock knock knock sa kahoy. Ayun, I spent the entire afternoon just reading. Okay naman siya. Maraming special mention ng Da Philippines sa librong ito. Hindi nagbago ang buhay ko at hindi pa rin nababawasan ang paper pile ko, pero keri na. Ito na siguro ang pinakamabilis na time na natapos ko ang isang libro, lalo na recently when it usually takes me a few weeks to finish one, at lalong mas matagal kung chicken sopas type siya.

Uuuuuy! Sino kaya itong si Sol Calubayan na nagsulat ng Mr. Penamora? Minsan me nareceive kasi akong text na bumili daw ako ng Graphic dahil sa kwentong ito. Sorry, wa akong pera kaya hinanap ko na lang online.

Book # 5 is Memoirs of a Geisha : A Novel. Took me a while to get pass the first few chapters but last Sunday, I was able to finish a huge chunk of it. Quite interesting. Never knew anything about geishas in the first place. Always thought they were prostitutes. Hindi pala. High class prostitutes pala sila complete with schooling on culture, tea ceremony, dance, etc.

I am avoiding checking papers.



Book # 8: The Beach. It took me several weeks to finish this book, not because it’s boring. Far from it. If not for all the student papers that came in, I wouldn’t have dropped it. Whenever I could, I turned a few pages while quietly eating in a din filled fast food, on the train to and from school, late night at the bowling alley. After the last of the people at the bowling alley left, I had less than a hundred pages to go. I was still in that detached, emotion recollected in tranquility mood, so I hiked off to the Shang Starbux—how so distressingly burgis, I know, don’t kill me—but it’s really nice to just sit in a corner there and read. The moment I sank my tush in that couch, aaahhh...book heaven. There weren’t too many people. I sipped my tea, listened to jazz and reggae, and marathoned the doomed ending of this secluded Southeast Asian island Eden. The beach people surrounded Alex, ready to kill him when they learned the rafters got there because of the map he drew. The flower children in the commune are now murderers. They gleefully sank in their knives into the flesh, cutting off limbs, severing ears and playing with them. The horror, the horror indeed.

Sure, it’s about some young and listless white guy who had nothing else to do but search for “real” meaning and adventure, but there’s also an awareness that they are to blame. The frequent references to helicopters’ rotor blades kept throwing me back to Apocalypse Now, to M*A*S*H, and somehow I felt a bit happy that I slugged it through Heart of Darkness, kahit na constipated ang language ni Conrad, and just because I would have been lost in Neferti’s class if I didn’t.

And oh, I liked it that Alex Garland seemed to know what he was talking about, and that Richard’s most favorite destination was the Philippines. I’m only sorry that I read this just now, long after I’ve watched the Leonardo de Caprio and Virginie Ledoyen movie. Major change nga pala between book and film: In the book, Richard was British, and in the film he was American. Si Leo kasi. This was after Titanic. Tsika pa nga dapat si Ewan McGregor dapat ang gaganap na Richard, but since Leo was hot, the studio cast him at wala nang nagawa si Danny Boyle. Ngayon hindi na siya kinakausap ni Ewan. Pero sige okay na rin dahil si Danny Boyle naman ng Trainspotting at 28 Days Later ang director. Saka it has Virginie Ledoyen. Hehehe.

Book # 9: The Laramie Project. I also read it in little bursts. I started it last year pa yata, but I only got to finish it now. Partly because Tita Arlyn gloated that she got her copy for only forty bucks. Blech. It’s a play about how a theater group went to Laramie, Wyoming to investigate about the death of a young gay male college student, Matthew Shepard, who was beaten and left for dead on the outskirts of town. Parang documentary. Anyhow, interesting read, but took me awhile to plough through.

Btw, I got my copy of The Beach for 85 bucks in a Booksale bin, and it's survived a shower leak in the bathroom. Bad and stupid, I know. But it's still alive, and the cover is just like the one in Amazon. Also, went book prowling na rin kahapon since I was so restless and was becoming bitchy already, and I found Robert Olen's They Whisper for 95 bucks!

Well, may magagawa pa nga ba kami?

Ganoon? Oh well.

Guys? Alam ko ako'ng nang-imbita pero di pala ako makapupunta sa Biyernes. LB ekek. Sorry mga bosing.

Kay Dennis. Okay lang kahit next time mo na lang kami libre. Hehehe. Uy lapit na nga rin pala birthday ni Nathan di ba? April ang alam ko.

Book # 7* is Fruitcake by the Eraserheads. Got my copy at the neighborhood NBS branch for the whopping price of thirty five pesoses! From the original from the php165(?), it’s quite a huge markdown since I couldn’t even afford to buy one myself when it first came out in our undergrad days. Book illustrator Cynthia Bauzon talks about it as well in a recent blog post. Strangely enough, I felt like Frannie Wei eerily resembled the illustrator, though of course I could be wrong.

As I read the book, I couldn’t quite get out of my mind that the Carol Kings were the Eheads themselves, disappointed at how they weren’t allowed to change and write and play their own songs as they would have wanted it. The burden of being the sole entertainer of Fruitcake Heights at such a young age, and the mysterious “own music incident” which drove them to escape the eternal snowsky of the fruitcake land. Fruitcakeans suffered from leading very predictable, safe lives, and they eventually all get afflicted with Monovirus and while located in a tropical country, they had Styrosnow. It’s the monotony that was most debilitating. Imagine having to sing the same old songs over and over again, not to mention that everyday was Christmas Day. Now that would be stressful.

I’d hate to be afflicted by the Monovirus. It’s like avoiding the inevitable fate that one day, we will all be old fogeys. Though I refuse to be one, there’s still the problem of negotiating authority. I found Fruitcake while looking for Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, which I figured I’d wage so I would not be mistaken for some undergrad anymore. According to good friend Claire, no matter what you do, appearances WOULD and DO count, especially in the grown up world of academics and old fogeys. It’s like being a model, she said. In order to have people believe that you are one, you must dress, behave and breathe like one all the time. So even if you aren’t exactly one, you at least give the illusion that you are. A mirage no matter how illusory are effective. So there you are. Walk like a duck, talk like a duck, therefore a duck you are. Argh.

---

*Book #6 is Bright Lights, Big City. Para lang clear kasi marami na akong inabandunang books by the wayside bedside table.

Salamat po. Shall I see you guys Friday? I'll be off from Diliman after 8 or so. No moolah yet though so bring dinner money or baon.

Si Dennis hindi man lang nagsasabi. Well, congrats po! Libre mo kami ha. Hehehe.

In other worlds naman. Noong Huwebes ako ay umattend** ng isang professorial chair lecture ek ng favorite undergrad teacher ni Jol. I had to introduce the guy, and since I couldn't just say, "Hello people, here's Mr. Reeves. Now listen to him, uhm, lecture..." I had to dig into what he's done in the last two decades. Now my home computer decided it didn't want to help me, so he swallowed what little info my google search amounted to. The dude has no internet presence. The following day, I asked Butas Na Chucks to do a supplementary search for me, and we came up with the same stuff. I ended up saying, "Hello people, here's Mr. Reeves who wrote a dissertation on .... and played the kumintang in New York. Now listen to him, uhm, lecture..." Galing noh? Hehehe.

Anyhow ulit. I sat way up front, so I had no choice but to listen. I was tempted to count how many times he cleared his throat and whipped out his huge bandanna of a hankie. During those times, naalala ko si Jol nung earlier years, na lagi ding may panyo noon. Jol, kunyari ka pa ayaw mo sa kanya, pero lagi mo naman siyang ini-impersonate. Hehehe.

About the lecture itself, ito lang ang masasabi ko: How can you talk about something that doesn't exist just yet? Ideas pa lang yun, and ideas are in constant revision until you commit them to paper. And only then can we say something that will make sense.

Sige I'm going to shut up now before they find me.

**I was there because I had to. They put me in the committee in charge of the darn thing and I must say that we can do better next time. Nasabihan pa tuloy ako ng "You truants!" at dahil dun ako ay muling kasama sa komite ng summer lecture series. Sabi nga ni Butas na Chucks, ito ay dahil kami ngayon ang favorite whipping boy at gels ng aming munting departamento. Bow.

Congrats kay Dennis for winning 2nd sa Mambo awards. No, it's not the annual mambo dancing contest but the CAL-sponsored literary awards named after Prof. Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio. Yey, Dennis!

Book #4 ay The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of The Oxford English Dictionary. Kwento tungkol sa isang dating American doctor na nakapatay ng tao sa London ang naging isa sa mga mahahalagang contributor ng Oxford Dictionary. Isa siyang non-fiction at napaka-interesting. (Tuloy pa rin ako sa aking Victorian England themed na mga libro). Madami akong natutunan tungkol sa paggawa ng dictionary, tungkol sa mga mental asylum sa London, at may mga dagdag pang mga vocabulary words sa bawat chapter. Una kong nabasa yung kwento sa isang excerpt sa Smithsonian magazine tungkol sa kung paano hinanap ng editor ng OED ang kanyang contributor dahil hindi ito sumipot sa isang royal dinner na diniwang para sa mga gumawa ng dictionary. Urban legend lang pala iyon. Ang totoo yung editor, si James Murray, matagal na niyang nadiscover na medyo baliw si Dr. Minor at nakakulong sa mental asylum. Lagi pa nga niyang binibisita siya e.

Kantogirl still alive after crash

Buhay pa naman ako. Masaya sana ang post ko tungkol sa Team Angas dinner at ang usapang The Flaming Pekpeks, pero gusto ko lang sabihin sa lahat na, oo, buhay pa ako. I tried texting you guys after the crash, and you might have thought na joke lang yun pero shocked ako at nakatayo sa corner ng Finance Road at Taft, sa tapat sa lumang National Museum nung mga panahong yun.

Medyo sa susunod ko na ikukuwento yung exchange with Nathan at yung plano para sa wedding. Btw, we might find good bauls daw either sa Tesoro's or sa ilalim ng tulay sa Quiapo. Nung 70s, a nice baul made of narra with encrusted shells na puwedeng center table cost Php700. Mahal na yun nun since nag-ilang beses na ang inflation. I'm sure we can find alternatives.

o nagpapa-canvass na ako ng baul. :)
share ko lang ito. kasi happy puppy ako.

UP ICW SELECTS 20 WRITING FELLOWS

The UP Institute of Creative Writing (ICW) has selected 20 Fellows to the 43rd
UP National Writers Workshop. The Workshop will be held from 11 to 24 April
2004 at the UP Baguio.

The Fellow's are: Fiction in English - Ma. Cynthia C. Diangson (DLSU), Asterio
Enrico N. Gutierrez (AdMU), Ma. Francezca Theresa C. Kwe (UST) & Mae Astrid N.
Tobias (UP Diliman); fiction in Filipino - Michael Francis C. Andrada (UP
Diliman), Carlo P. Garcia (UP Diliman), Marjorie B. Soriano (UP Diliman) &
Michael Jonathan A. Villar (UP Diliman); poetry in Filipino - Don Clarence R.
Cruz (UP Diliman/Baliuag University), Roy R. Cuesta Jr. (UP Diliman), April
Jade B. Imson (UP Diliman) & Carlos M. Piocos III (UP Diliman); poetry in
English - Glenn Vincent K. Atanacio (UST), Michael T. Balili (UP Diliman), EJ
C. Galang (AdMU) & Kris Lanot Lacaba (UP Diliman); poetry in Iluko - Lucila
Agnes C. Lopez (University of Saint Louis at Tuguegarao City); fiction in
Bikol - Marissa Reorizo-Casillan ( Universidad de Santa Isabel at Naga City);
poetry in Bikol- Benjamin C. Escoto Jr. (Bicol University/Aquinas University at
Legazpi City); & fiction in Sugbuanon - Brecil M. Kempis (UP Mindanao).

UP ICW Director Vim N. Nadera Jr. will also be the Workshop Director. The
Teaching Staff is composed of Gemino H. Abad, National Artist Virgilio S.
Almario, Joi C. Barrios, Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio, guest panelist Americo
Casiano Jr. (Grants Administrator, Bronx Council on the Arts), Jose Y. Dalisay
Jr., J. Neil C. Garcia, Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo, Anton M. Juan Jr., guest
panelist Marne Kilates (in Bikol), Domingo G. Landicho, Bienvenido L. Lumbera,
Carla M. Pacis, Jun Cruz Reyes, Lilia Quindoza Santiago, Delfin L. Tolentino
Ir., Ricardo M. de Ungria, guest panelist Tim Tomlinson (Master Teacher,
General Studies Program, New York University & President, New York Writers
Workshop), Ricardo M. de Ungria & Rene O. Villanueava.

The Writing Fellows should call the UP ICW at 922-1830 or text AFV Serrano at
(0920)555-4146 or Neville C. Cataylo at (0927)550-3654 to confirm attendance
and receive instructions.