December Book: The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin

Sorry for the picture quality

The HMS Beagle set sail from Davenport, England on Dec. 27, 1831. Charles Darwin was on board the Beagle when it circumnavigated the world. This voyage lasted for 5 years. During this trip, Darwin wrote the journals which made him famous. Of course, around this time, he was still in the early stages of his theory of evolution, the theory which made him even more famous, though not in a positive way.

The fact that I have read this book from cover to cover is a cause for wonder. It is no light reading, to be honest. It took me forever to finish it. It is... boring. And that is putting it lightly. If you are a naturalist, which I highly doubt, maybe you'll find it interesting. The problem is I'm not. And what may otherwise be a ground-breaking observation was translated into profuse bleeding at the pores to a layman like myself.

Consider this line: "I am inclined to suspect that thunderstorms are very common in the mouth of great rivers. Is it not possible that the mixture of large bodies of fresh and salt water may disturb the electrical equilibrium?"

The what?

But just because it is not something that I understand completely or find interesting doesn't make it less great. Not withstanding the fact that Darwin bored me into a deep slumber, I have the utmost respect for the guy. That focus. That concentration. That skill for analysis. It could not have been easy to determine that "female ostrich lays several eggs in the nest of several other females and the male ostrich undertakes all the cares of incubation". Could he had determine this if he just sat in the shade and observed a bunch of ostrich for an hour? Highly unlikely. It is possible that he spent days studying their habits while the possibility of being butchered to death by violent Indians was very real. Unfortunately, it may break Darwin's heart that none of these mean anything to me. What the hell do I care about ostriches? I don't even eat them.

So here is what I think about the Voyage. It is not for pleasure reading. The only reason I picked it up was because I promised to include more serious reading materials to my pile. I should have picked something less scientific. I do not recommend it as a topic for casual conversations with friends and significant others. I do not recommended it as a topic for conversations period. Unless you hate the person you are talking to and you want to kill them with boredom. If you are trying to impress someone, do not use your knowledge of this book. The person you are trying to impress will think that you are a pompous ass of a geek. Of course, there are attempts at poetry: "A most paradoxical mixture of sound and silence pervades the shady part of the woods". And even attempts at, gasp, humor: "A profusion of food showed itself at dinner, where, if the tables did not groan, the guests surely did for everyone is expected to eat of every dish." But let me state this for the record: humor is not synonymous to Darwin.

In closing, let me leave you with another of Darwin's attempts to be funny: "The carancha  bird destroys young lambs by tearing the umbilical cord and it pursues the gallinazo until that bird is compelled to vomit up the carrion it may have recently gorged. All these facts show that it is a bird of very versatile habits and considerable ingenuity." Versatile? Ingenious? Would you have said that of a human who does the same things to his fellow beings? What a joke.

November Book: The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

The story of Pi was that of an ordinary boy of extraordinary faith who went under extraordinary circumstances. It was a story of survival. It was the story of a boy marooned in a lifeboat with a 450-pound Bengal tiger.

At first glance, Pi was like any other young boy I know. He suffered in the hands of school bullies. He was constantly teased by his more popular older brother. He was normally curious about all the things around him. In short, he was not the kind of character that I'd take an interest in or who would leave a lasting impression. He was too normal and I really don't read books for normal daily-life portrayals. However, there was one thing striking about Pi and that was his deep love for God. So much so that he was a practicing Hindu, Catholic and Muslim at the same time. What I loved about the book was the event that happened to him which tested that love. His entire family were to move to Canada. Alas! The cargo ship which bore them sank in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. His whole family perished. He was the only person who survived and, worse, he was trapped in the lifeboat with the only other survivor from the shipwreck: Richard Parker, the tiger. When he was still an impressionable young boy, his father had warned him not to get close to a tiger under any circumstances. But he was trapped. He could either jump overboard the lifeboat, get drowned by the unfriendly waters of the Pacific or get eaten by sharks, whichever comes first, or he could find a way around Richard Parker until they get rescued, which was what he did. For seven long months on high seas.

The Life of Pi was a great story about human faith. When all is lost, when there is nothing left to live for, what makes us cling to life so tenaciously? When we look around and all we see is despair, why struggle with death? The Life of Pi tells us that the reason is faith. When all else fails, it is our faith that would get us through our ordeal. When we are at the deepest pit and we tell ourselves that there is no way in hell we can climb back up, faith tells us to get up and start climbing. And that's exactly what we do. We climb up or die trying. It's amazing what faith can do to a person's life. Even if there is no guarantee that things will get better, we believe that they will. Even if we are defeated and all we want to do is lay down and die, faith grabs on to the last embers of our will to live and absolutely refuses to let it go out. Instead, faith fans it until it glows into a flame again.

Do you have faith?

P.S. This was the book I stole from the cottage I was staying in when I went to Malapascua with some people from work. I have never stolen anything in my life, aside from the occasional lose change from my father's pocket when I was a kid. What pushed me to swipe the book? Could it be faith telling me that this book will give me a new perspective? :-)

My Weekend in Pictures

Another grueling tennis practice session with Vida.

Second-hand book shopping. Another check on my 6-month goals list.

I could stay here forever. I love the smell of the store. It smells like good old paper.

Some of my purchases. It will go on top of my Bara-dur

I also bought a bunch of travel books. I hope I could set foot on these places for real and put the books into good use.

Chicken and Krushers with my dear friend, Nila.

The Pledge

Because Facebook was blocked today in the office network but Blogger was not, out of boredom here is what I did:

I pledged to read one book per month starting next month for my own pleasure to Jessicarulestheuniverse.com. And because I love Jessica Zafra, I promise to do my best-est to abide by this pledge for as long as I live and I will also spread the awareness by nagging my friends to do the same. The website targeted to have 300 pledges by yesterday afternoon but since I was out for the whole weekend and yesterday being a holiday, I was not able to submit my pledge on time. What was more tragic was that only half of the target pledge was submitted by the deadline. Oh well, who says that battling illiteracy is easy? At least this is a good start. Now, all I have to do is make a conscious effort. On the bright side, I now have the extra push to really finish the last Lord of the Rings book. I have been stuck on it for, like, months. I know, I'm sooo lame. I'll do better. I promise.

Risen From The Fiery Depths

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

Meet Dante. He is my voodoo doll.

I have always wanted one, most especially at times when I wanted to hurt someone without actual confrontation. Call me a coward all you want but that's how it is.

But now that I actually have one, there is not one person that I want to prick needles with. There is always that girl next door. Hmm. But it seems so petty so I won't even waste my energy on that.

Anyway, I got my doll's name from the writer, of course. He is one of my favorites although God knows I'll probably be dead before I get to finish reading any of his works. If I do get around to reading them, I'll probably be the first person in history to die of profuse nosebleeding.

Where was I?

Being a voodoo doll, I had wanted a more menacing name for him. One of the names that came to mind was Charon, the ferryman of the underworld who, coincidentally, also figures in the first book of Dante's Divine Comedy. Unfortunately, although it implies menace, it just doesn't sound right for the very reason that it sounds like a cute girl's name. It sounds like Karen. I knew one Karen from Day Care and another Karen who was my seatmate in elementary. Both girls were cute. On a side note, when I was a kid, my brothers and I used to watch this show entitled The Young Hercules. Apparently, it was very popular because when the show ended it's run, the producers had this dumb idea to do a rerun, this time dubbing the whole show in Tagalog. So there was this scene where Hercules went to the underworld and met Charon for the first time. Their conversation went like this (everything pronounced in Tagalog):

Hercules:  Sino ka namang matanda ka?
Charon: Ako si Charon. Bangkero ng mga kaluluwa sa kabilang mundo.
Hercules: Sharon?
Charon: Hindi!!! Cha-ron! Mukha ba akong artista?!

Admit it, that was hilarious. The ferryman of the underworld, a movie star. Not Sharon Stone, the silently sinister bitch (also a writer) in the movie Basic Instinct, but Sharon Cuneta who, despite her apparent lack of cuteness, sings cutely the song Mr Dreamboy (or was that Mr DJ?) to the detriment of the word cute. So I settled for Dante whose main protagonist he named after himself and in the first book, Inferno, literally went to hell. Morever, Dante is also the name of another movie star. I am referring to Dante Rivero who almost always gets the role of the villain or the grumpy old man who makes everyone around him miserable. And he does look scary.

I actually have another voodoo doll, of a different color from Dante. His name is Montressor, from the vengeful guy who buried his friend alive in his wine cellar in the short story The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Alan Poe, who is also a personal favorite. However, I have assigned Montressor as a permanent decoration to one of my bags so it's usually just Dante who keeps me company.

My voodoo dolls have yet to serve their real purpose. But make no mistake about it. They are voodoo dolls and their purpose will be fulfilled. Someday. So if you value your life, try to avoid becoming the object of my wicked voodoo spells. Don't annoy the hell out of me and get out of my way.

"Nemo me impune lacessit." (*evil laugh)

The Eternal List of the Mundane

I have a confession to make. I am one of those people who has a list for everything. It's a compulsion. Crossing off things from the lists makes me feel like I am getting somewhere and that I am being productive. I know, that's not necessarily true but there it is. I make grocery lists, errands lists, to-do lists for work and to-buy lists for my closet. And except for the to-buy list for my closet, most of the items on these lists are recurring. I mean, if I make an errands list this week which includes laundry, I will still have to list down laundry in my errands lists for next week whether or not I have crossed off laundry this week.

Last week, during that spur-of-the-moment Saturday that I've been ranting about, within that same fateful hour when I bought the beach outfit that was not on my to-buy list, I also bought this book:

It was on sale and I was in a rut with my current reading material again. So I figured I needed a diversion and bought it. From the title itself, it is a compilation of lists from different people from different parts of the world. It made me feel good to know that there are other people out there who make some sort of semblance in this chaotic universe by making lists. The lists exhibited in the book were from the mundane, like daily task lists and grocery lists, to the monumental, like I-can-die-if-I-have-done-all-these lists. And some of the lists were from 20 years ago. It's amazing. People hold on to their lists and find that they are still crossing off things from it after 20 years. I also read somewhere that Jose Rizal kept all of his lists. But it was because Rizal knew that he was destined for greatness and was keeping even his most mundane documents to make sure that future generations will have stuff by which they could analyze how he lived. This got me to thinking: Hey, I should save my lists. I have no grand delusions for greatness but it would be nice to go over them many years from now and look at how much progress I've made. So, starting today, I'm going to renew my lists and revise them if necessary. I would even post some of them here.

I just love this book for giving me ideas. More importantly, a cute guy from the ATM line started a conversation with me because of the book. I was rummaging through my bag, the book fell and the guy next in line to me picked it up and started to ask me questions about the book. But then my turn on the machine came up so I had to go. If I didn't have a boyfriend, I might have asked for his number. Then again, maybe he was just really interested on the book because he is one of us compulsive list-makers. Hmmm...

"I am disorganized and yet I aspire toward order... Tasks that seem overwhelming look easier when reduced to mere lines on paper." ~from To-Do List by Sasha Cagen

Random Memory # 3: Prom Nights Straight Out of Stephen King's Brain

If a memory-erasing device had been invented, I would employ such contraption to wipe out my recollection of the prom night in my junior and senior years. As this was not the case, let me recount to you the horror.

It all started with the pairing. In our school, the teachers get to decide who you should go with. If you're a junior girl, you will be paired with a senior guy and vice versa. I had no cause to complain in the partner department as I had been paired with okay guys. By okay, I mean that it could have been worse. I don't mean any offense by that. I'm pretty sure that those unfortunate guys would have gladly gone with somebody else rather than me. But like I said, they were okay. The problem lies with everything else. The clothes, the shoes, the hair, the make up, and the event itself. I had the feeling that in some distant past, these events were meant to serve as punishment. Then I read Vanity Fair and all I can say was: Boy, I am sooo glad I wasn't born in England during that era. The social functions would have been the death of me.

I really hated the prom. What's funny was that I went to two of them. What? Attendance was compulsory. I hated my clothes, my shoes and my stylist had successfully made me look not myself but some has-been movie star from the 60's. If we were just made to sit around until the whole ordeal was over, it would have been more bearable. But, nooo. We had to parade ourselves around the ballroom and I had to see everyone raise an eyebrow to outer space upon seeing me. No, I wasn't being paranoid. And to make my humiliation complete, we had to do dance numbers whereupon my ill-fitting brassiere was threatening to stop doing it's job of covering my pathetic breasts and go on strike. The only thing I was thankful for was I still had the clairvoyance to avoid any photo ops, therefore, no OMG-is-that-me pictures of myself which my friends can use to blackmail me with. If you happened to be in those prom nights with me and have an incriminating picture in your possession, please contact me so that we can agree on some terms.

The book reminicent of my prom. Carrie by Stephen King (also had a movie version)

My Bara-dur

If I were Frodo, this would be my dark tower:

Like Frodo, it is my mission to conquer this tower. But unlike Frodo, my tower is self-imposed and will not likely end with my going to Mt. Doom to cast the ring of power to the fire, unless the ring is a metaphor for my eyesight and Mt. Doom is the cataracts. And yes, the tower is in dire need of replenishment. I am scheduled to go on a book hunting in the next month.

I am now reading this:

It is the last book from the trilogy.  What I will read after that will depend largely on my mood. Some of these books, like The Sound and The Fury, I have bought years ago but have not gotten around to reading. In the case of The Sound and The Fury, I had attempted many times in the past to read it but after several pages, my nose and ears started bleeding so I put it down and started reading another book.


"The people loved learning. They loved stories and poetry even if none of these were any good for getting a job." ~Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt