‘Tis the season to pig out

Christmas is almost upon us, and there’s no better time to pig out. After all, aside from celebrating the birth of Christ, it’s also the season for giving and receiving tons and tons of food, among them the ever-present food for the gods, butterscotch, and everyone’s favorite fruitcake.

My mom's set up our tree already

It’s also the best time to catch up with friends and family, whether they’re from out of town, out of the country, or just out of mind since last we decked the halls with boughs of holly. Personally, I’ve found that Grace and I’ve been eating out a lot recently. We’ve both been busy the last few weeks so we’ve made up for it by maximizing the long weekends that’ve just passed us by.

Blueberry Pancakes from Pancake House

Inasal Paa from Chicken Bacolod

We also joined my family at Marciano’s last Sunday night for a long delayed celebration of mine, my dad’s and my sister Ina’s birthdays. There were 17 of us, but 4 appetizers, 5 pizzas, 4 pastas and 4 risottos were more than enough to keep us happy. If you’re ever in the mood for good Italian (by way of New York) food, check out Marciano’s!

Saffron Vanessa Risotto (Saffron and Dory)

Food is GOOD

Tony Soprano’s Sausage Pesto Pasta

Blueberry Pancakes from Pancake House

Inasal Paa from Chicken Bacolod

My mom’s set up our tree already

Princess Pride

The 7 year-old girl named Claire had an old woman’s tongue and a piercing stare

With a practiced smile and a bag of bad names, she set off one day to call out people’s shame

She cried “Dork!” to the skater on his brand-new board, and “Four Eyes!” to the cosplayer swinging a sword

To the book-lover “Geek!” as she shot him a glance; without insults of his own he hadn’t a chance

When she fell short of people she lambasted a tree; it ran off in fright, she then stripped down a bee

The bee stung back but she had really thick skin, she just laughed and hurled curses at some identical twins

Claire then looked up and threatened the sun; it looked down, aghast, and decided to run

Plants withered and died, dogs howled and then barked; Claire said “I’ll just call people names in the dark”

*Written in my Star Wars Moleskine last October 8

The Force is strong in this one.

Gone Digital

After all my comments on how film looks better, and how I like to surprise myself with a processed roll and the possibility of having 36 great shots (or not) to upload when I get home from work, I finally gave in and bought a Canon Powershot A3300 IS. It’s a 16-megapixel snapper with a few manual functions and fun filters.

I looks awesome

For the amazingly low price of *drum roll* P9,000, I brought this baby home last Friday and immediately put it to work during PC&V’s Halloween party, our family trip to Tagaytay, and our November 1 visit to Lola’s in San Juan, capped with dinner (and shopping) with Gracie at Greenbelt 5. I’m not about to sell or give away my film cams anytime soon, but I can foresee using them less often (it’s cheaper, too!).

Garlic Beef Pepper Rice

Pork Yakiniku Pepper Rice

Manila sunset

Miniature Tagaytay

The Alfonso Hotel

Justine’s zombie takes a bite out of Kat’s Evolution smiley

Dan, what are you supposed to be???

Bong’s pregnant white lady

Boyzone: It’s Only Words

I make no pretensions about being an expert on the English language. While I have completed all the basic English courses required for a university degree, taken up stylized writing classes (Feature Writing and Writing About Culture, both of which taught voice and originality as against formal technique), and read The Elements of Style from cover to cover twice, I must admit that working as an copywriter in the wide, wonderful world of advertising has caused me to frequently take liberties (or as we call it, creative license) with words.

JFK and Stalin give a f*#k about the Oxford comma, Vampire Weekend.

“First know the rules. Then break them.” Someone once said that, although for the life of me I can’t remember who it was. So it’s almost a personal affront to me when someone says “As long as people understand what I mean, it’s okay.” The way I see it, language already evolves enough as it is. For us to carelessly take liberties without there being a point to them is the equivalent of linguistic anarchy. Fail to follow one rule enough times and the whole system breaks down.

If you’re a professional writer who wants to inject style into a print ad or a novel or a poem then by all means, make your point. Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (which was the source material for the Ewan McGregor film, directed by Danny Boyle) is written the way Scottish people talk. It’s hard to read, yes, but as you trudge your way through it you can hear the characters’ voices in your head. Daniel Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon and Emma Donoghue’s Room both have characters who, for different reasons, speak in unusual ways, but being written in the first-person (despite requiring some getting used to) helps you get to know the characters more than if they had been written in the third-person.

If you’re writing a business letter, however, or a school paper, or even a text message to your boss (or even a tweet!), structure your sentences properly, follow the rules for subject-verb agreement, and check your spelling and punctuation. Any other way is just a sign of laziness.

Poor Grandma...

Fast Forward to the Future

I think I’ve been suffering from a little bit of iPhone envy lately.

I’m not tech-deprived, mind you. Far from it, actually. While my stuff ain’t exactly cutting-edge tech anymore, I still proudly carry around my Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android 2.2 Froyo), a Blackberry Curve 8520 and a 2nd-generation iPod nano (this is the oldest of my daily gadgets). And yet, despite being aware that as a relatively early adopter of technology it’s almost always gonna be a losing game, I find myself despairing over what I wish technology can do.

Take, for instance, GPS. Earlier, I was shuffling back and forth between the Discover Hong Kong and Google Maps apps on my Galaxy Tab, plotting out my ideal itinerary for my 4-day trip to Hong Kong in November. The process went like this: I found the places I want to visit on the Discover Hong Kong app, then saved the locations on Google Maps for offline viewing. Once the map was cached for offline use, I looked at which places were nearest each other (had a bit of trouble since 2 dimsum joints I wanna try are in the same vicinity), then checked back with the Discover Hong Kong app to check what time those places opened/closed so I could set them in a schedule (enter Microsoft Word on my iMac), and then when the schedule was set, I went back to Google Maps to write down the directions to get from one place to another.

The famous Midnight Express from Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Expres... now a 7-11.

While I was neck-deep in that process, I found myself wishing I had an iPhone 4S, with built-in Skynet (I mean Siri). Oh, to order that calm and collected voice around instead of having to schedule everything myself. But then I remembered something I read in a review of the iPhone 4S: Siri is a beta version. She (I mean it) has no power to control third-party apps just yet. That means scheduling and reminders and phone calls but no calling up Discover Hong Kong to check operating hours. Not yet, at least. So… that’s a no for the iPhone 4S.

For now, I’ll have to finish that itinerary the old-fashioned (already?) way, and wait until the future gets here for real… Are we there yet?

George Jetson had it good.

Recent Film Shots

Product placement in Cebu’s North Bus Terminal

Bukidnon’s Zip City

Kids love to swim

Grace + Aileen = Graileen

Dogs on the beach, just past dawn

Sunset over Santa Fe

Night swimmer

Three Faces of Grace

Joe, my sister’s beagle

Whatcha got there, Joe?

Rise of the Planet of the… Chickens?

I first came across Gerry Alanguilan‘s graphic novel Elmer a few years ago at Planet X Comics in Glorietta. Back then it was still being released as a four-part limited series, but despite my buy-everything-criticize-them-later attitude I didn’t pick it up (I thought the rooster on the cover was symbolic, poor me).

As time passed I heard and read more about Gerry Alanguilan: I started following him on Twitter, I read that Elmer was nominated for an Eisner Award (folks, it’s like the Oscars of comic books), and then people continued to recommend that I read his masterpiece. I also found out that the rooster on the cover was an actual character in the book. See, Elmer takes place in an alternate universe where sometime in 1979 chickens all over the world mysteriously became self-aware. It’s a ludicrous premise, yes, but Alanguilan’s beautiful black and white drawings and characters that abound with heart make this an easy, enjoyable read.

A page from Elmer

Told from both a macro (a history of the chickens’ fight for equality following their gaining sentience) and a micro perspective (a 2nd-generation sentient chicken’s search for himself by reading his father’s journal), Elmer succeeds on both levels. But where Elmer is most potent (at least with me) is in how it mirrors every single human fight for equality, from the suffrage of women to the Civil Rights Movement. In showing and telling us how these chickens deal with their newfound and often confusing sense of freedom (one that’s not unlike our relatively young country’s), it’s a reminder that in order to move towards a better future, we’ve got to learn the lessons of the past.

Gerry Alanguilan's Elmer

Kudos, Komikero!

Sherlock: Rise of the Cyber Sleuth

I read my first Sherlock Holmes story as a boy of 8. It was 1993, and the whole family (we were just 3 kids then) was in Singapore. My dad was assigned there for 5 months, 2 of which coincided with summer vacation in the Philippines, so his office agreed with our joining him for the entire break.

Uncommon for a boy of my age, I started reading the classics. Granted, they were abridged, semi-illustrated versions, but nevertheless they were still shorter, easily understandable versions of the greatest stories ever told. My first Sherlock Holmes story was the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles: a dark, grim story riddled with deception, greed, murder and the supernatural (and people ask me why I’m the way I am).

My first Sherlock Holmes story

I was fascinated with Holmes and his art of deduction, how he would tear into who you were, where you’d been and what you’d been doing just by looking you over. And with Holmes being portrayed in 211 films (including the one with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in 2009) since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first wrote A Study in Scarlet in 1887, apparently the world was too.

I just finished watching the first season (3 episodes, each an hour and a half each) of the BBC’s Sherlock, a modern-day interpretation of the legendary detective’s adventures with his loyal friend Dr. John Watson. Created by Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss and starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Holmes and Watson respectively, the series revisits the legendary characters’ exploits and updates them for the era of the smartphone.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes

Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson

Instead of writing his adventures with Holmes down in his diary, Watson keeps a blog. In the stories, Holmes spends his mornings combing the newspapers (and smoking his pipe); Cumberbatch’s Holmes finds whatever information his inhuman brain doesn’t contain in a smartphone that he keeps in his pocket.

The series is intriguing to say the least. Sherlock keeps viewers updated with what’s going on by having whatever information that passes through Holmes and Watson’s gadgets pop up on screen as supers. It’s not a new device (think Stranger Than Fiction) but it does keep you from getting lost in Holmes’ accelerated speech patterns. Cumberbatch and Freeman shine in this series, which was nominated for Best Drama Series at the 2011 BAFTAs.

Season 2 starts early 2012!

If you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan like me, or if you just like intriguing plots and fast-paced whodunits, watching Sherlock should be elementary (couldn’t help myself, sorry).

Oh and if you’re wondering (why would you???) if I ever graduated from those Illustrated Classic Editions, check out what my parents gave me for my 10th birthday.

Time to reread Volumes 1 and 2!

Food poisoning at Crown Regency Cebu?

While the food we ate at Crown Regency Davao last weekend was nothing spectacular, it didn’t give me anything (or at least, I hope not). Then again, if the service in Crown Regency Cebu is as bad as it was in Davao, I can’t rule out that a lack of careful inspection and general cleanliness in the kitchen could’ve resulted in food that was less than hygienic.

Hey, Judd! Turns out that despite the slow service and confusion as to whether smoking was really allowed in the cafe area, our group was lucky!

Here’s the source article: Food poisoning eyed; officials decide against confinement – http://pulse.me/s/2ss9q

Stranger in Fiction

I first came across Haruki Murakami on the desk of one Denise Haak-Luchangco. The cover of the book was black and white, with a woman lying seductively on it, and I first thought it was some cheesy romance novel, although I kinda wondered why someone as awesome as Denise would be reading something like that.

Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart

Months later, I came across a stack of his novels in Fully Booked, and I started reading the back covers, where they usually put the premise of the book alongside snippets from its reviews. Glowing praises from the Guardian and The New York Times made me realize that there was more to these stories than the simplicity of these black and white covers suggested, so I picked up a copy of A Wild Sheep Chase. And when I finished that I read its informal sequel, Dance Dance Dance.

What followed was an intense period of reading and rereading his books and short stories.* While I’ve converted to e-books for space and financial purposes, I’ve made an exception of Haruki Murakami, even going to the point of calling Fully Booked yesterday to place an advance reservation for what they’re calling his magnum opus, the extremely thick 1Q84.**

And I thought The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was thick

Murakami writes of life, and I find I can often relate to the lives of his characters (most of his characters are middle-aged men going through identity crises and with a penchant for jazz music, so I wonder what that says about me). But that’s just the beginning. Following these crises, Murakami takes his characters on wild rides, and I find myself asking: are these metaphorical or are they really happening? Then at some point, I find that it doesn’t really matter. His prose is lyrical, and his dialogue is incomparable.

Murakami creates worlds where the fantastic happens, but it’s completely believable. And that’s what I believe reading is all about. Some books make you want to be a reader. Murakami’s work makes me want to be a writer.

*Murakami books I own: A Wild Sheep Chase, Dance Dance Dance, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (currently rereading this one), Blind Willow Sleeping Woman, South of the Border West of the Sun, The Elephant Vanishes, After Dark, After the Quake, Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, and Kafka on the Shore

**1Q84′s worldwide release is on October 25; let’s hope we get it not too late after that