Surprising December

What can I say? December is full of surprises, at least the first two weeks. My grandma's 77th birthday was celebrated together with her sisters, Apong Rosing, who just came from the US and Apong Inyang (been living in the US since then and is here for the meantime). Pix below (I dont have Apong Inyang with them though). Time passes quickly for my lolas and its so nice seeing them all together again.

And then, come Dec. 7, I received a call from German Red Cross advising me that my application was accepted. It was totally unexpected! The National Headquarters is located at Port Area, Manila so I was so fortunate to figure out that our apartment was very near the Hulo Ferry Station! So I dont need to go through the hassles of commuting via LRT and MRT just to get there! Pix below while I'm waiting for the boat to come:

And pix below with my GRC teammates, Marion Guillermo - my buddy, Anna Mariquina, Floyd, Disaster Management Team, Rhia Bartolo, Ate Karen, Kuya Borg, and Ate Resti!

I hope to post pics of my Boss, Ma'am Katja and Sir Dither soon! Its all fun! Fun! And then Willy came from Brazil Dec. 13 losing five pounds (he wasnt able to enjoy the food there, that's why). I missed him a lot.

Aurora Shots

Shots in Aurora while on vacation. These are pictures taken from the beach, Baler Museum, and Pantabangan Dam. The painting of the Baler Church is what I love best.

Cat Reposted

Reposted due to tech issues: My unnamed cat is dead.

She was brought to the house by my brother Arjay as a gift on my birthday, October 22 ’09, and then she died yesterday November 16 ’09. My father said it was Dagul’s (dog) fault, he kept on teasing her, biting her until she can’t take it anymore, she died of exhaustion! Waaaahhh.. What a stupid death. I can’t believe I lost her like that, they should have taken her to my Inay’s house to be well taken cared of. Below are our pictures, that lazy cat, I miss her so much. Dagul's pictures with Willy are also included.

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Quoting Jonathan Bate of Sunday Telegraph

THE New York Times described Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) as "the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race." This is the most ludicrous gesture of literary hype I have ever encountered. Required reading? The book is so in love with its own cleverness that it is profoundly unreadable. It is generally credited with inaugurating the genre of "magic realism" novels which combine the matter-of-fact narrative style of conventional realistic fiction with fantastic nonsense such as levitation and alchemy. García Márquez is at his most characteristic when a woman ascends to heaven whilst hanging her washing out on the line. Other ingredients of magic realism include gypsies, tarts with hearts, dwarves, tricksters and a cast so large and confusing that you need a family tree to keep track of the plot. Márquez and his followers are sophisticated urban intellectuals who feign reverence for the simple wisdom of peasants. Myth, fairytale and folklore are wonderful things in themselves, but it is preposterous to imagine that mingling them with domestic mundanity will somehow puncture the bourgeois complacency of our time.

Let us hope that One Hundred Years of Solitude will not generate one hundred years of overwritten, overlong, overrated novels. Enough that it has already inspired such excrescences as Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus and Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children.

1999 © Telegraph Group Limited

+++ I havent finished the book yet, two more chapters to go. The review above says exactly what I feel about the book. Although, I did enjoy his narrative style in the beginning, it's like my grandmother telling a tale with no end nor purpose, until I fall asleep. I do believe that there is a political side to this novel, the portrayal of murder of the workers, and capitalism's form of repression, but I havent read any victory of the lower class yet, or the Buendia Family, or maybe, they are bound to be losers anyways.

'Love in the Time of Cholera' is a different story though, i'll give it a 5. Happy!

Final Week of November 2009

I spent almost the whole week doing errands for the new NGO that I just recently joined – Unang Hakbang Foundation. For four days of working with Ate Merli, Mark, Mylene, and Ma’am Olie, I have observed the great differences between my past job (Call Center) and this new challenge. In this kind of job, work and life is the same, whereas in most jobs, work is separated from ‘life/ social life’.

I haven’t done much this week for the NGO though. I only updated the books of accounts, explored the two learning centers here in Mandaluyong, chatted with my colleagues, tried to adapt to this new type of work environment. I also watched them bake cookies for the fair, and being a lover of anything sweet, i can say that it’s really worth it buying those chewy cookies! They sell it for Php15/ cookie, in case you have some orders, they can definitely do it for you. In the future, I might be able to help bake the cookies, for now, I’m just an onlooker. The beneficiaries of UHF are also doing calendars for 2010 for sale on next month’s Bazaar. Below are pix of the cookies:

Then come weekend, a long weekend, Willy invited us for an impromptu visit to Baguio.