Liv in a Life Well-Lived

At different points in my life, I wanted to be a nun, an actress, a maid, a teacher and a dolphin trainer. But in all points of my life, there is one thing I consistently wanted and that is to be a mother. I am at a point in my life though when I think that might be the one thing I may never be. My weight, let's admit it, will probably never go down south of 100 kilos. I have diabetes, and a history of difficult pregnancies in the family. To top it all of, my boyfriend still doesn't have any plans of asking me to marry him soon, and my chances are getting slimmer by the literal second. Sometimes I am angry at myself, for not connecting the dots about health and getting pregnant. Then I assuage myself by saying, I'm not financially ready anyway. This will be followed by a spate of resentment against my boyfriend for being so slow and contented while the one thing I want in life grows in jeopardy. It's not like I never discussed this with him. He's just too happy...

Cast of Hunger Games: Catching Fire I am biased. Way biased. No young adult fantasy could be as good as Harry Potter. Flawed as some characters may be in Suzanne Collins Hunger Games, the distinguishing factor of this series compared to, let's say Twilight, is the tight storytelling. The best thing about this movie is that it does not stray far from the book, so instead of confusing the audience, it actually serves as companion material to the book. Say for example,  I honestly appreciated seeing the film's idea of how the Dome looks like. I have to say it's even better than my own imagination's rendering of the Arena. Very few book-to-movie rendition can claim this, but the Catching Fire movie actually helps deepen the mythos of the book instead of distract from it. I also have to say that half of the reason why I loved the film was because of the heroine. Some people say Katniss Everdeen breaks the mold of modern heroines everywhere, but I disagree. Katniss...

Here's a window into my soul: I am the type of person who will not do something if I can't be the best in it. Some people actually exist who chooses to learn and be good at something even if they repeatedly fail at it. I am not one of them. Which basically explains my whole life. Which is why I know I am actually an underachiever, even if a few people may think otherwise. Gosh, even my parents believed it, i think. Case in point: If I took up a Math-based course in college, I will be lucky to generate a pass. But taking another course which has less structure in it can make me a magna cum laude. Maybe I shouldn't be belittling my past achievements, because let it not be mistaken that I didn't work for them. It's just that, I didn't work that hard for them. My sister always had an impression I never studied in college, which is of course a fallacy. But it's saying something that I can afford to read all the books I wanted and still get the grades. ...

Last night, I bought this book in an Islamabad old books shop for Pkr 595 (Php 250) in one of the many book shops scattered all over the city. For a nation that claims they do not like to read over much, they sure have a lot of bookstores. This particular bookshop though had a certain asset to it that very few bookshops nowadays can boast of -- a bookseller who apparently reads books. It helped he was a denim-clad, lion-haired, bollywood handsome young man with a fantastic smile. Upon entering his shop, an unusual conversation started --- unusual in the light of me not able ti imagine having a similar conversation at my local Booksale outlet in SM Fairview or any of the National Bookstores. Book guy (BG): I am glad you put down that book (referring to a bootleg copy of Dan Brown's Inferno I picked up only to check if it was indeed bootleg), it's a lot of talk, but not really good, eh? Me (trying to stay distant and still digesting the fact that apparently, cute guys ...

I write of books as I would write of an aging parent. With reverence, admiration, a lot of love, and a deep sense of foreboding at their possible demise. I have been raised by books as much as I have been raised by my loving parents.   I know all things are lost eventually, but mortality makes it difficult to accept that   a loved one who was so instrumental to your being alive could be lost. We have to wrestle the delusion of their invincibility as they take their last breath right in front of our eyes. So it was with me.So it is with books.   If you dig away at the layers of my humanity, you will find you won’t have to dig very far to find the solidified layers of lessons, values and stories that reading has given me. Each bone of my body has a patina of literature protecting it; a silvery sheen of extra strength that calcium or any mineral on earth cannot provide. With every book I have held, I have understood worlds. The firm hard covers, th...

(Inspired by a link shared by a common friend of Ian and I --- Thanks, Elaine) It has come up, it did. My boyfriend and I have skimmed through the M word for some time now, and making itty bitty smattering of plans that more or less falls on the other side of the line of our relationship. I am glad that our plans constitute of real things like where should we live, where our kids will study, who will be good cop or bad cop to the children. I think it's so much better than just talking about the wedding ceremony itself. I don't care a fig if Ian wears an Armani suit or something bought during the further reduction sale of Marks and Spencers. I don't need a Vera Wang gown, and I don't want fakey grated styrofoam posing as falling snowflakes to annoy my tropical climate guests. I know that girls are stereotyped to be the kind of creatures that  keeps Dream Wedding Journals since they were 8 years old. But I have always had what I thought to be a healthy disdain for ...

I have a craving today, and it can't be sated. I want to eat Paella. I know that this dish isn't anything like Sinigang na Baboy which has a huge following in the Philippines. But this has always been one of my favorite dishes. As a rice lover, I enjoy the richness and softness of the rice, the mixture of tomatoes and saffron, and the myriad possible toppings you could put on top of a paella. It's on my top 5 list of Spanish things I love (in good company with the Spanish language, the word delicadeza, the unique chorizo, and my own surname). I don't understand why Ian and Ella can't get into the paella craze. It's a complete meal on its own. I could eat it for days on straight! Anyways, the last Paella meal I had was in Shangri-la Mall's East wing --- in a new quaint resto called Corazon. It features Spanish-Filipino food, and serves the kind of meals you have grown up with. I luuurved it. Ian ordered the Molo Soup, and it was ok for tastes, but I on...

Of all the Marvel superheroes, the least I expected to love was Ironman. I was more of a Hulk kinda gal, until the Edward Norton movies ruined it for me. He was just too... wishy-washy, too emotive. A lot of people disagree with me, and at this particular point, I am not trying to dissuade them. But something was off and I couldn't put a finger on it. That is, until they got Mark Ruffalo, of course. Now I could just say, Hulk is more Mark Ruffalo than Edward Norton and let's leave it at that. But Ironman? Whoever was the casting director is a visionary because Robert Downey, Jr. IS Ironman. He has the grits, the slick, the brass and the vulnerability down to a pat. Downey's life hadn't been easy. He had his moments of slip-ups --- a whole decade of it. So it's this guy who has been so down, but managed to rise up again who could bring a love-to-hate character to life. Anyways, please don't expect this to be an unbiased review. I'm a fan, so of course...