Kamiruchan.

Doodles and Novels

I haven’t doodled anything in class for quite a while already, no random drawings or random poems. Though I still doodle on my hand just like I used to do in college. But today, while listening to a discussion about Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Therapy I found myself doodling. Sorry, classmates, my first instinct whenever I receive handouts is to flip it and doodle on the back. Hehehehe.

On my way home, I passed by Booksale without intending to buy anything. I still have a lot of unread books, anyway. But I saw a two-novels -in-one book for such an utterly cheap price and the synopsis seemed like a nice story, and so I bought it. Yay! Another book in my collection. So happy!

Deep Heat and Flatmates by Chris Manby.

Speaking of books, this is what I’m currently reading, another sleuth novel.

Fowl Prey by Mary Daheim.

12am

An accumulation of the little happy things.

This weekend was the last of the two consecutive long weekends. The next longest holiday would probably be around Halloween and Christmas. I think I spent the long weekend last week just sleeping so I wasn’t exactly able to catch up on school works and had to drag it on for the remaining of the week. Though I pretty much did the same this weekend, it seemed much more productive however.

Before I forget, we have a new baby! Baby Bullet! My mother gave that name. She’s so tiny, she’s only as big as one and a half of my hand! One of our neighbor’s dogs again gave birth to several puppies and they gave one to us. I was surprised when I saw a little puppy walking around when I arrived home that night. I was so happy, I was jumping with joy!  She’s been with us for two weeks now, though she’s been sick most of the time. I hope she overcomes that initial always-sick stage puppies go through. Cola went through that stage too, we all thought she’d die. Thankfully she’s all well now. Cola is no longer a baby, she’s a grown dog now. She grew so much in just four months. Therefore, the arrival of a tiny little puppy is much joy, but, of course I still love Cola very much! I am highly convinced they’re both Mongrels. They probably are.

As for my long weekend, Saturday was spent in school and as usual I liked it. Though as days go by I’m starting to think and see how important that you not only study, it’s also very vital that you have practical knowledge of the real world. Perhaps that’s why most of our professors back in college were highly suggesting that we get work experience first before enrolling in Graduate School. After classes, I had a good conversation with a classmate. So I’m not the only one who doesn’t admire too much technology, especially overrated Apple products which people so annoyingly use not for practicality but as status symbol. Printed books as the status quo! And because I was in good spirits that my mind got a good dose of conversation where its sentiments had been understood, I saw my favorite bookstore on my way home and decided to buy several books. I haven’t been reading these kinds of books for years already, I seem to have been too engrossed in murder books these last two years.

• The Reluctant Landlady by Bernadette Strachan
• Little Lady, Big Apple by Hester Browne
• Someone Special by Sheila O’Flanagan
• Foul Matter by Martha Grimes

I kind of slept early on Saturday night, so I woke up early on Sunday morning. Early enough to go to the organic market. I bought just the usual fruits and veggies, nothing much I can’t buy from the market near home. There didn’t seem too much variety that time. I was so disheartened that no one was selling strawberries, I was looking forward to making strawberry smoothies for the rest of the week. But I found and bought something which boosted my spirits again, I bought my first ever potted plant. These are Malaysian Mums. Wait, am I right? I love flowers though I know nothing about their names. I probably should make a career shift to gardening, I’ve always loved nature. If this doesn’t die anytime soon proving I do have a green thumb and I can take care of it, I’m going to buy other flower varieties. This reminds me of that scene in “A Crazy Little Thing Called Love” when P’shone gave Nam a potted flower he planted himself. Though it’s sweet from time to time, I sometimes don’t see the point of giving bouquets to the person you love. In a few days time the flowers would die and beauty would end there.  However, if you give a potted flower, beauty would last longer as long as they take care of it. And if they go water and prune the plant everyday or so, they’d remember you each time. Taking care of the plant is the same metaphor as their love for you. Though I don’t think this would apply to people who don’t admire nature or those who wouldn’t have the heart to take care of any plant, or anything, in general.  

I was making an apple smoothie. Yay!

Then Sunday afternoon I met with Jam and Erl and we had an impromptu decision to go to SM Mall of Asia which was very very very far from where we were. And just like most unplanned decisions, we actually went there, fuss-free.

There was something like a Lego exhibition there.

Pastries!

And as the usual dilemma of our clique, we couldn’t decide where we wanted to eat. After much deliberation, we thought of random numbers, added them, and looked up which restaurant corresponded to that number in the mall directory. We finally decided to eat at Fish & Co, which was good because I was somehow craving for Fish and Chips.

We wanted to ride the Ferris Wheel but we weren’t able to. Next time, hopefully. The last time I was on a Ferris Wheel was during our Physics fieldtrip back in senior year in high school and that was a good six years ago already.

Notice the colors were changing.

Monday afternoon was unexpected. We got a visit from my childhood friend accompanied by some of her relatives. It’s been years since I last saw her. They left after a good few hours of chatting with us.

Cola had a new collar and chain and I decided to give it a try outside so I brought her out for a walk. The last time I tried that was months ago when she was still a tiny puppy. She was so scared with all the cars’ and people’s sounds outside that she just sat frozen on the sidewalk and refused to walk. I ended up carrying her home then. But it was different this time! She did walk, though I had to tug on her half the time because she kept wandering wherever and the other half of the time she was pulling me because she kept running fast. And the amazing thing was that it started to rain halfway through our walk and we had no umbrella. We weren’t drenched too much because we were walking under the trees which served as a partial cover, nevertheless, we got wet walking under the rain. Too bad that the rain stopped after a few minutes, I would have loved to walk under the rain. Seriously.

See, she’s beat and so was I when we arrived home. But it was a really good experience, to walk under the rain with my beloved dog.

I conclude this weekend to be an accumulation of the little happy things. 

9am

Like photographs, books can also preserve memories.

Someday, I would write a book. I would publish it with only your name on the dedication page. You will be oblivious. You would only hear about it and find out through your friends. No, it would not be a book of fiction. Though it will be full of photographs, poetry, vignettes, and stories, it would be a book of fact. Everything written there would be true. If you decide to read it, I hope to give you goose bumps as you realize how a love that strong could ever exist, and how you had merely let it pass you by.

But I, the author, would be somewhere on earth at that same moment, having goose bumps as I realize how with a love that strong, I had let you just pass me by. 

12pm

The Vow

Happy Leap Year, guys! February 29, 2012 just passed us by.

In the Philippines, leap year is believed to be the year when women can force/set-up men into marrying them or what we locally know as “pikot”.  Hahahaha! I know, that’s a bit absurd…..

Anyway, I went to watch The Vow for this once-every-four-years calendar date. Again, courtesy of Mae-Mae! Thanks a lot, dude! She said she’d treat me, hey, could I turn down such an invitation??? Of course not! Hahahaha! She initially wanted to watch Unofficially Yours which I disagreed with because I think it would just have the same storyline as Friends With Benefits. I insisted we watch The Vow, since I’ve heard and read from the news feed and timeline updates of people that it’s a good movie to watch. I also went to the movies with some friends over the weekend but the mall where we went pulled out The Vow already from their cinemas. We wanted to watch it because we wanted to go gooey over love and well, we wanted to cry. Seriously, we thought it’d be so moving that we’d cry. Boy, was I wrong! But we watched This Means War instead and I saw it was a good movie, it had action, comedy, and romance all in one! Not really breathtakingly cool, but it was a cool movie nonetheless. I love action scenes, they give me an adrenaline rush; the comedy, well, who doesn’t love to laugh? And the romance, who doesn’t wanna fall in love? Anyway, this post is not about that movie anyway….

The Vow: thumbs down. Sorry to the movie production crew. I didn’t fall in love, watching it didn’t make me want to fall in love, I didn’t get kilig over it, I didn’t cry. I felt like there was no climax, the whole movie seemed monotonous. It just didn’t arouse any romantic emotions in me, which is really unusual since I’m a hopeless romantic and the littlest things could make me fall in love. A short story, which can be read within 10 minutes, by Haruki Murakami made me fall in love and made me teary-eyed more than this one hour and forty five minutes movie did. I think they put in a lot of happenings in the movie that there wasn’t time enough for the audience to absorb it. One incident happens, then immediately followed by another event, which is somehow not really very related with the first event, thus, the momentum stops and you’d have to cope with another incident again. Okay, what incidents was I referring to? The accident, the ex-fiance, the father’s infidelity, the first date, etc. The first date, they only showed it once, actually I think it would have been better if they focused more on it and showed a series of first dates and struggles that would allow the audience to explore how he was able to make her fall in love all over again. Oh, and the timeline wasn’t really elaborated well. I kinda didn’t even know how many days/months had passed by from one event to the other. They showed the accident, then a short four years ago flash back which didn’t even explore how actually their love flourished, then time passed by while she was in the hospital, her parents arrived, she went home to their house as a couple, went back to her parent’s house and promised to come back after her sister’s wedding, things happened and suddenly she was in law school already then doing arts again, they separated ways, then they were back together again but she did mention in the last scene that it’s been since months since they separated ways but for the other events there really wasn’t a concrete timeline. I think it’s important that the audience knows how fast the movie is going already. Anyway, I did have fun when Mae-Mae and I were analyzing the amnesia at the beginning of the movie. We guessed that it might be selective retrograde amnesia and she might have had her memory erased from at least four to five years prior to the accident since what she mostly can’t remember was everything since their relationship started, which was four years prior to the accident, and transferring to art school which was even before they met. Mae-Mae suggested that it might be her right hemisphere and hypothalamus that was damaged since she forgot about her emotions (only for him, though) and her artistic endeavors, which the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for.  

Anyway, after we disappointingly went out of the cinema, we ate at Pizza Hut.

Shrimp pasta and salad (can’t remember the exact names)! Yummy!!!

Gangster/killer or really just mad that we should have just watched Unofficially Yours instead. Hahahahaha!

This is a heart, does it look like a heart?

It’s not about the money, money, money ♬♬♬

Mukhang pera, literally! Hahahahaha!

And since we both love books and reading, we went to Booksale!

True Confessions of the Stratford Park PTA and Autobiography of a One-year-old.

The book Mae-Mae bought seemed nice, about dreams or something. Must borrow it some other time. Hehehe!

Then we had ice cream at Dairy Queen. For the first time, I didn’t buy a Blizzard, but I bought its equivalent, the shake which I had in strawberry. Hehehehe!  

Then we went home. The end.

I’m still currently reading a book but Autobiography of a One-year-old seems really cute I think I’d read a few pages first before going to bed.

Good night!

3am

Dearly Depotted by Kate Collins

Dearly Depotted by Kate Collins, published in 2005.

As usual, the suspect is the person they least expected to be the killer. There’s always the verge between life and death at the end of the novel at the final confrontation with the real killer, which supposedly provides the climax and thrill of murder novels, the scene where the heroine could have died already, if not only saved by a dear friend, who usually is the love interest as well.

Hmmmm… These heroines are always the owner of their own businesses that’s why they have all the time to leave their work to their subordinates and do some snooping around….

I can’t really say a lot, pretty much the same pacing and storyline with other sleuth novels I’ve read, still in my comfort zone.

1am