Malditang Librarian

Aside from my family, Google greeted me a happy birthday! As I'm writing this, its my last day as a 23-year-old. When it was my 23rd birthday last year, I lamented that I can no longer sing along to Taylor Swift's 22 . When it was my 22nd birthday two years ago, I said that I'm no longer Forever 21. Time goes by, and I have more or less sixty years to live here. I'll be 24. I am 24, by the time you read this. 24 reminds me of 24 hours a day and all the time I'm wasting. I've noticed that I've grown, gained new perspectives, and I'm more open (to people, ideas, places, and new experiences). I'm also a lot more sympathetic, understanding, and forgiving to my younger self. Things in the past still replay and affect today, but part of maturity and growing up is learning to deal with them. I think I'm less stressed about the things I don't like about other people. There are things that really used to bug me about my friends' personali...

The Blind Assassin: a novel by Margaret Atwood, Anchor Books ©2000 Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.  Imagine a braid: three strands interwoven to form a whole rope. This is The Blind Assassin: three stories intertwined to form a coherent whole. Iris Chase Griffen is now an old woman, she is the sole survivor of an old rich South Ontario (Canada) family. The book opens with a news item of her younger sister driving a car down a bridge, effectively committing suicide. Iris narrates her own frailty in old age, and writes about her childhood in the 1930s to the 1940s. Her mother died early, leaving both sisters under the care of their father and their caretaker Renee. Her father, a war veteran still suffering from trauma, doesn't prove to be a good father. Laura is a strange girl, who takes things literally and whose odd ways make her an anomaly. A young man enters the picture, Alex Thomas, who becomes a friend to both of them. Between I...

I watched the new Disney movie Beauty and the Beast with my mother and sister yesterday. It is is a retelling of the 1991 original Disney animated film.We are all familiar with the story, and I remember that as a little girl that me and my cousins would watch Disney movies during weekly Sunday reunions in our grandparents' house (my mother's side of the family) when they were both still living. Most of us grew up watching these fantasy movies, and there's something supernatural about fairy tales that we don't get tired of these stories no matter how much they are rehashed and repeated. I'm interested in stories and myths, and fairy tales are also myths in a sense. I am a fan of Joseph Campbell (the great mythologist who studied these stories all over the world), and I think that we have a deep reaction to myths because they represent truths and symbolic aspects of the psyche and ourselves. That's why they are still timeless and people still flock to them in ...

Graduation season is fast approaching. Graduating students are often busy at this time studying for the final-final exams of their college life, late night cramming for the last round of editing theses and practicum reports, and planning how to celebrate graduation and the summer vacation after that. But after the relief of finally getting that hard-earned awards and diplomas... You need to find a job. You’ll be busy preparing perfect resumes, writing application letters, and practicing for job interviews. After waiting and deciding, you finally take an attractive job offer which looks suitable for your skills. Congratulations! But for those working for the first time, reality may hit you. You realize that the world of work is different from school. I consider myself a pretty good student, but after a few weeks into my first job in Manila I learned that the skills I had as a student aren’t the same skills and attitude necessary to succeed at work. We learn important things...

I admit I'm an #AlDub fan and loved Kalyeserye. Maine Mendoza is my favorite actress in Philippine TV today, and much has been written and said of her rise to stardom from social media and her accidental love team with Alden Richards that hit the masses at a critical time. The Kalyeserye hit the Filipino heart in all the right places, with a refreshing blend of spontaneous theater, reality TV, and noon-time variety show slapstick. What people really loved about it is their take on virtue and courtship in an age of sex and free love. "Tamang panahon" - the right time - is a phrase always used in the show, about waiting for the right time for love, and it gives us a good lesson while making us smile too. The chemistry between Alden and Maine is natural, sincere, and I must say - explosive! I loved the movie Imagine You and Me, the story was simple and elegant,   Italy was gorgeous and I screamed in kilig  too when they kissed in the end! At least GMA is careful and th...