A short note on the Twilight series

gutsy dear, i was actually going to post this in the comment section as a response to you. but then i realized it was getting a bit long, and that i had opinions coming out of my ears about these books! so i decided to just blog about it very quickly.

so, stephenie meyer's twilight series -- i liked it, although i didn't think i was going to at the start. started off a bit slow for me, but as i continued reading (especially through the end of the first book), i found that i couldn't put it down.

i liked a lot of things about it, like how the author kept some parts of the vampire and werewolf mythology and tossed out others (garlic, crosses, etc) to really make them out to be the ultimate predators. definitely upped the books' cool factor.

i also liked how the cullens were written -- they were quite fascinating, even endearing. the action sequences and the sudden changes of pace every now and then were great too.

it reminded me of a very goth sweet valley high -- essentially the problems are the same (dad doesn't like boyfriend, boyfriend is overprotective, girl falls into a bad crowd, etc) but in a totally different context.

i found the love 'bits' a bit much, and tended to forward through them. it was actually like wuthering heights in that way, lots of pages spent on declaring passion for each other and all that. i did find that the mushy parts were useful for a bit of a slowdown before the big, set-piece, how-cool-is-that epic action parts. parang... love love blah blah and then biglang BAM! tracker vampire! vampire-werewolf dustup! newborn vampire army! yeah! rrrrawr! bring it on!

funny, while i was back in manila and marlon was alone in the flat, he saw these books in our bookshelf late at night and freaked. paano ba naman, they were lying beside my copy of william peter blatty's the exorcist (which has such a freaky picture on its spine that i store it spine facing into the shelf) and tony perez's spirit questors series (which i bought freshman year when doreen brought up the idea of me becoming a questor).

"what is this black book with the ghosty hands and the flower dripping blood?! why do you have such scary books?!" he demanded. "why are you bringing these things into the house!?!?!"

i think i scared him even more when i said, "what? what black book? i don't own anything like that!" he really freaked out then. "how did it get here then?!" he practically bellowed, before vowing never to pick them up.

when i got home and saw the books in question, i realized that i'd actually borrowed them from my sister, and forgot that i did. oh well.

now i actually think he'll find them more girly than scary. kasi naman, all the passages rhapsodizing on edward's godlike good looks! kind of reminds me of how i would write when i was younger -- all my short stories had some unbelievably handsome, sophisticated guy falling madly in love with plain old me. haha! girl's fantasy talaga.

Couchwife and comforter

it's been cold, gloomy and raining all through yesterday and most of today -- perfect weather for curling up in my pajamas, under a fluffy comforter, with a good book. so i did just that. in this case, it was three good books -- i turbo-read my way through stephenie meyer's twilight trilogy.

it reminded me a lot of high school, which was (eeek!) over eight years ago. reading in bed was one of my favorite things to do on days when school got canceled because of the weather. i used to live near enough school to walk home the minute classes got called off, which was great -- i would practically jump into bed with a book after my ten-to-fifteen minute walk.

in contrast, some of the other girls had to wait for their parents to finish work to pick them up, or their bus services to get to school all the way from paranaque and alabang. there were horror stories of girls who spent the whole night in their schoolbuses in the rain and in the traffic, only to arrive home in paranaque the next morning. all this was were pre-ayala interchange, pre-C5 and pre-skyway, of course.

so i was enjoying myself, what with my bottomless supply of brewed kapeng barako to offset the cold, until i started feeling a little guilty, and well... baboy about spending the whole day in my pj's.

then i realized that i hadn't done this in years... not since i started working! i mean, have you ever gotten sent home from the office because of the weather? i went to work the morning that freaking milenyo struck, for goodness' sake -- and stayed there!

and i realized there was no point feeling guilty, not just about staying in my pj's, but about having this time to myself. i admit i've been antsy about being between jobs lately, but i just got that there's no point in beating myself up about it. that i can actually do things i've wanted to do for a while now. that i can actually have fun with this time in my life. and that there's nothing wrong with me for being who i am now.

which is a couchwife under a comforter, very quiet and very contented.

The boss flies budget

i've often wondered if there still exist cebu pacific marketing collaterals with the ill-fated tagline "the new filipino time" on it -- they should be burned, because the new filipino time seems a hell of a lot like the old filipino time.

have you ever read a rant about a delayed cebu pacific flight on this blog? no sirree! they've become so common that i get over the announcement of the delay in the time that it takes me to roll my eyes and sigh. oh, and i always show up late at the airport if it's a cebu pacific flight.

i've taken ten or so flights with cebu pacific over the past two years; marlon has taken about five or six. none of them ever left on time. ever.

which is why, on my cebu pacific flight back to singapore, i could hardly believe that we were all boarding the plane at precisely 8:15 p.m. the flight was scheduled to leave at 8:30 p.m.

i was incredulous. and maybe more suspicious than pleased. "wonder of wonders! i think we're actually going to leave on time!" i texted marlon.

i was at the tail end of the queue, since i was seated in the second row of the plane. i was tuned out and shuffling mindlessly into the tube when a couple of middle-aged men in front of me began to turn around and crane their necks behind me. "it's john! it's john!" the daddy types gabbered to each other furiously.

maybe john was their kabarkada who was late, and surprise, he made the flight! i thought idly.

i surreptitiously glanced behind me. at the very end of the queue, waiting for a short distance to open up between him and the rest of us, was an snowy-haired chinese man dressed in a suit and holding a walking stick.


and so, as he stepped into the tube with the rest of us budget travelers, the mini-mystery of "john" was solved, and so was the heretofore unexplainable phenomenon of a cebu pacific flight actually leaving on time.

abah. JOHN GOKONGWEI pala ang potah!

as he waited to step into the plane -- excuse me, his plane, the female flight attendants giggled nervously and joked about petitioning him (in sugary sweet stewardess tones, of course) for a salary hike.

"omigod ayan na siya, nakikita ko na siya!"

"welcome aboard, sir... increase!"

"kindly fasten your seatbelt for takeoff... increase!"

"oxygen masks will drop down from overhead... increase!"

it was hilarious. i remembered being back at gma, and the fog of heightened alertness and mild dread (more from the prospect of making a complete fool of yourself, than from the presence of the boss himself) that would crop up the minute flg would step into an elevator with you.

i sat behind him and his wife for the entire flight. i was pleasantly surprised that he would use a budget airline for his own trips (even if it was a budget airline that he owned). it was really cute to see him eat cup noodles and drink C2 like the rest of us hampaslupa. oh, and in the spirit of eco-chic, his carry-on luggage was a reusable canvas tote stamped with a goldman sachs logo. o diba, sosyal ang lolo mo.

i toyed with the idea of coming up to him, shaking his hand and telling him how glad i was to see him on my flight -- because he was the only person who could ever, ever make it leave on time.

but i didn't. he slept through the entire flight, and we all know how cranky people can be when they're bagong gising. maybe next time.