Post #6

Book Vomit #1

Sometimes hype helps you overcome a reading slump. Case in point, this book by Rebecca Yarros. It's fantasy, it has dragons, it's a smorgasbord of tropes rolled into a spicy story with a cliffhanger of an ending. What's not to like?

Look, a dragon!

Some.

I do like imagining about the stone wall you have to climb to reach the parapet of  Basgiath War College in your head. Or crossing the parapet. Not the falling part. Not the part where the wind and the rain can make you slip and fall to your death. Lovely.

I don't envy the first years lining up and seeing the dragons after crossing the parapet. The possibility of being scorched by a dragon for seeing something in you they don't like.  But it's exhilarating to read. Of course you know the lead character, Violet, would get through this. What would be the point in making her the POV character if she'd get roasted in Chapter 4, right?

The imagined world is something to look forward to. 

On the one hand I do like the relatability of the text. There's the conversational sarcasm that a generation or two could relate to. 

On the other hand, I really though I was in another world, another time and place, until I get jarred by Xaden casually dropping his birthday was in March. What the hell? 

In the end I'm far more invested in the animals than in the love story. But this is basically a love story. The enemies to lovers trope at that. Imagined enemies to lovers trope, that is. 

But I do love the dragons. The fact they can communicate with their riders. I wish there were more gryphons. And the stories about gryphon riders. And wyverns. And venin.

Would I read the next book? Yes. This one helped me get over a reading slump. And I'd like to know more about how large Andarna is, and what power she would channel Violet.

 

Post #5

I haven't been here in a long time I don't even know what I'm going to write about. But hey, I don't want to deactivate this yet. Not now when I was reminded I still have this.

Life had its way with me the past five years or so since my last post about a rock concert. This morning I bought a ticket to watch the same band, hahaha. Life had its way and I come full circle, wanting to watch them again. Albeit this time via livestream as I can't be in Tokyo and the Asian leg of the tour is months  away.

I'm reading again, at least. Or trying to. Which is good. Books, I mean. Leisure reads. 

So, there's this much-hyped book called Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I'm somewhere in the middle, and yes pages fly by when I do get around to it. It's meant for a YA audience. But I'm intrigued with the world painted where dragons bond with its riders. I couldn't wait to get to that. And there are gryphon riders and wyverns and such.

And wyverns are enemies. Why? I love wyverns. I've loved them since one guards the gate to the Dreaming.

But I know nothing about them. And there's nothing yet in this book about whether they talk or where they come from. 

At least I'm reading. For now.

Post #4

Phone Lights Are Working

I was not supposed to be on the floor for the concert last January but I ended up with an (unexpected) upgrade by the time I reached my gate. So thank you, and yet seriously, for someone who actually wanted to sit through rock concerts (I get tired easily), being on the floor was not much of a good thing. That being said, I had good seats at Foo Fighters concert in Singapore but I practically stood the whole time. I mean, who wouldn't, right?

Well, on the bright side, I was closer to the stage. Relatively. I mean, my original seat would've made me a tad higher from the stage (and my phone camera shots would have been different from the one I used here).

Also, there's a reason why I chose not to buy a ticket on the floor. You see, I hate the crush of people's bodies around me. Like seriously. Anyone who has been to the EDSA 2 thing would agree. Or anyone who takes the train in the morning. I hate the feeling of being crushed. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

If you're in a rock concert and your ticket is on the floor, practically next to the guard facing you, barring your entrance near the guitar gods on stage, prepare to get other people's sweat staining your pristine shirt. Kidding. Not quite. I mean, yeah, no pristine shirts at the end of a concert. So it's pretty obvious I'm an introvert. Besides, the upgrade made me closer to the stage but not quite. Of course if I wanted to I could've been much closer to the stage. I opted not to. More like I inched closer to the tech guys. I parked my standing butt near the tech guys. The barrier before the tech guys. I didn't come near the people. At least the tech guys (the barred area where people made sure the sound, lights, video, and probably everything else computer-related ran smoothly for the night) weren't screaming fans. They had seen it all. They were probably so used to the set but still have to watch and do their jobs. I would've asked for a folding seat but I don't speak Japanese so there. I placed my backpack beside the barrier and watched the act. Or more like waited for my favorite song.

As far as concerts go it was ok. I knew the setlist beforehand (yeah, internet is a source of concert playlists and not just fake news) so I practically waited for my favorite songs. Didn't care much for the other songs and I only liked one song from the new album, which they played. Small mercies. After the concert though, I was hungry as hell and couldn't find anything I wanted to eat en route home. Life.

Post #3

Trucking 101

This is one of my nephew's toys lying around the living room when we visited my aunt's house last month. He has lots and lots of toys and pretty much does not want anyone, and I mean anyone, touching them without his permission. Maybe it has something to do with toddler's grasp of ownership. He cannot speak a lot of words yet but if you so much as touch his toy, or get one from a pile, he'll go and take it back from you. I mean, if you're a bully you'll probably let him cry before you give back the toy, right? Or make him work for it ("Gimme, gimme, gimme.") Or you could just give it back to him, apologize for taking it without his permission, and go on with both your lives unscathed.

I don't like kids. Out loud, in public I'll even say I hate kids. They're little mean things. But unless they are really mean and evil, you can see me interact with them. My nephew comes to me with his toys, probably wanting to play. He has this set of bricks similar (but cheaper) to Lego. Big bricks. He only sees one way of building those bricks - upwards. Eh, build, right? So his creations, at two years old, are barely rolling (some of the bricks have wheels) tall eh, stuff. He gave some to me. I made a sturdier, not as tall, rolling thing. Because. I mean, if you're going to conquer the brick world at two you do need to learn that going up is not always stable. You need a bigger, sturdier foundation. But I ran out of bricks. I just hope he got the idea.

I miss playing with Lego. I had Lego when I was a kid. The picture is not a Lego, obviously. It's a truck with shapes. It has blocks where you can put the correct shapes in their proper places. And you can also pull it with a string when you're tired of putting those blocks in their proper places. Life as a kid is far simpler. I don't have Lego. I don't even have a truck I can pull with a string. My nephew is one fortunate kid.

Post #2

Those Baby Blues 

This is the blue-eyed bulol from the BenCab Museum in Benguet. I first saw it around three years ago, when I first visited the museum. It's still there! I think it's part of the permanent exhibits but I could be wrong.

I fell in love with it because of its blue eyes. It's like an alien god blessing the northern part of the country with its blue eyes. Now that doesn't make sense. Anyway, we don't have much blue-eyed gods here, as far as I know, so seeing this years ago (and even when I revisited the museum) made me happy. 

Why?

We're a brown-eyed, brown-skinned race. Or black-eyed even (as to how the iris is seen with black pupils is beyond me). The blue eyes in the bulol makes it different from us. And now it reminds me of an article published what, early this year, about the first English people as black with blue eyes. Or something to that effect.

It's lunch time here but I'll be eating mine much later. And now ideas are competing in my head as to what to write next. Second post and I barely write about something. Life.

Post #1

Just Heads, At the Entrance

There's this place in Singapore, a theme park if you will, that has this gory, strange, Ten Courts of Hell diorama. The park is known as Haw Par Villa. And the reason I visited it early this year was because John Taylor of Duran Duran visited it last September. Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

One of my regrets last year was missing the concert of Duran Duran in Singapore. They had a world tour, you see, for Paper Gods. Unfortunately they did not include Manila (Philippines) in their Asian Leg. The first time they dropped by Manila I did not have the resources to watch them live. Last year I did. But it was also on the heels of my trip from Singapore to catch Foo Fighters. By the time I recovered, I couldn't find tickets to the Duran Duran show (it was during the F1 Singapore thingy) or maybe I didn't know where to look or how to look hard. Then I checked Japan sched (last stop of the Duran Duran tour, I think) and there were no tickets I could buy. So I followed them in Singapore virtually. And John Taylor visited the park, had some photos taken and stuff.

Early this year, while it was unheard of in Singapore to rain the entire weekend, I found myself trekking Haw Par Villa and looking at the sculptures for the Ten Courts of Hell. There were other structures, other stories set up obviously (it was a theme park) but I practically savored hell that rainy morning. And these beheaded men and women welcome you to the place.

Okay, enough word vomit for the day. Let's see if I can keep this up.