Birthday Lunch

Had birthday lunch downtown with a couple of NYU friends. They're all so busy that we could only spare an hour, so we had a quick meal. We went to this place that served what can be described as puffy Middle Eastern emapanadas. They were good, but not that filling. The others had salads with couscous and veggies, and all that herbivorous food.

Then we walked 2 blocks to St Marks and had shakes for dessert. Best shakes ever. The place is called The Original New York Milkshake Company (located at St. Marks Place between Second and Third Avenue). They serve gigantic 24 oz milkshakes for $5 a pop. They also serve waffles, and grilled cheese sandwiches, and PB&J's. Plus they're open until 2 am on weekends! Mental note for future reference. Between the six of us we had Banana, cookies and cream (mine), vanilla bean, chocolate peanut butter, blue raspberry, and mint chip. I thought all the flavors were good, but I think mine was the best.

And, because I have a sweet tooth that cannot be satisfied, we ordered a waffle ice cream sandwich. Best thing ever. If you like fried ice cream, you'll like this. They also have a soda fountain and they serve egg creams and all that. It was a really great find of a place. Yummy.

So back to work.

Weekend

I'm back and it's my birthday. Let me walk you through the weekend that was.

Friday
Had my birthday dinner thing at Waikiki Wally's in the East Village. Waikiki Wally's is a Polynesian-themed restuarant with foliage decor and beach murals all over the place. They share a lounge/karaoke place with Lucky Cheng's, the drag queen bar. Food was good, although the portions were on the small side. We had duck, Pork Pau Pau, sashimi, Habashi grilled ribs, calamari, and a scorpion bowl of Mai Thai for me and John.

After that we headed of to a bar on Houston and Ave A. Forget the name. Had some pitchers of beer, buffalo wings, mozzarella sticks, and potato skins. Good eating.

Saturday
Pipe burst and our bedroom got flooded. Damn this deep freeze weather! Went to John's mom's place to shower then headed to Jubie's place. We were supposed to meet up with a bunch of people for John's birthday dinner. Hung out for a bit then went to Sushi Rock. Ordered a HUGE HUGE ASS boat of sushi. I mean HUGE. Got some sake, martinis, beer.

Sushi Rock is a cool sushi place that becomes a karaoke bar after 11. They have huge screens on their walls, which serve as the video for karaoke. John's friends conspired to get the camera to focus on John as the place burst into the birthday song, effectively projecting his face all over the restaurant. The waiters also gave us a huge plate of fried ice cream and a bottle of champagne, both on the house. Nice, fun night.

Sunday
Dimsum with John, John's mom, John's sister, and a bunch of John's mom's friends. After that, we cleaned the house for a bit. Then headed to a new Indonesian place called Upi Jaya. Food was good! If you're ever there and you like setting your tongue on fire, try the padang rendang.

I have a couple of reflections on turning one year older and all that, but I'll save that for another day. Ciao!

Blogging Hiatus

Warcar will be on hiatus until January 30, 2005.

I have embarked on my last semester of graduate school. Which is a killer. Truly. The first draft of my master thesis is due on February 11, 2005, which gives me less than a month to get this all together. ("This" means turning 80 pages of very raw material into a credible, publishable, MFA-worthy 120-page novel.) Hence, the blogging hiatus. I am effectively putting my whole life on hold until I get this done.

Secondly, my graduate study paperwork (official documents, transcripts, advisor evaluations, verifications, etc.) is also due soon. As I will be in the Philippines for the latter half of February, all of this must also be submitted before I leave. (Yet another good reason for putting my life on hold.)

So there. If you email/call/text me and I reply with something that seems annoyed and terse, it is because I am. My mind is a big bad jumble of thoughts, ideas, and what-have-yous and in this state, it is best that I be left UNDISTURBED. So go away and leave me alone. Tell it to someone who cares. Right now, I really don't want to talk to you.

Book List

Reading List for this semester (aka books I MUST BUY). If you have any of these and are willing to sell them/lend them indefinitely, please email me. I'll be in Manila for 2 weeks in February.

Theme for this term is Personal Literary Influences, which just basically means I can pick anyone I want (well, within reason). They're even letting me do Neil Gaiman and P.G. Wodehouse! Woohoo!

ANNIE DILLARD, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
HARUKI MURAKAMI, Sputnik Sweetheart
MILAN KUNDERA, Immortality
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, Lolita
P.G. WODEHOUSE, Inimitable Jeeves
NEIL GAIMAN, Neverwhere
MARGARET ATWOOD, Blind Assasin or Alias Grave
ALICE MUNRO, The Love of a Good Woman
HA JIN, Waiting
MARK HADDON, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
ALLAN GURGANUS, White People
ELFRIEDE JELINEK, Women as Lovers
AUSTIN CLARKE, The Polished Hoe
M.G. VASSINJI, The Book of Secrets
DAVID MITCHELL, Cloud Atlas
ANAIS NIN, Henry and June
JUMPA LAHIRI, Interpreter of Maladies
E. ANNIE PROULX, The Shipping News

T-shirt Message

Message on the T-shirt the people here are selling:

The entire population of Goddard is made up of people who were marginalized in high school.

That pretty much says it all, I guess. Geeks, weirdos, punks, vampyrs, vegans, post-hippies, neo-hippies, post-modernists, post-post-modernists, germophobes, homosexuals, bisexuals, druggists, alocoholics... well, you get the picture.

It makes for interesting conversation.

Topics covered over dinner:
1. String Theory, which is the most current explanation physicists have come up for the world. If you don't know what it is, look it up. It's fascinating.
2. Einstein
3. Taoism
4. The merits of Insitutional Food (ie, our dinner).
5. Chemotherapy

It's fortunate that the conversation over dinner was as good as it was. It was a great way not to think of the food. We were supposed to have been eating roast turkey with gravy, string beans, and mashed potatoes. What we were really having was some kind of turkey spam with canned cranberry crust with gravy that tasted suspiciously like spoiled vinaigrette dressing, wilted string beans, and mashed kamote (sweet potatoes).

At least I got myself some Dr.Pepper. Everything's better with Dr. Pepper.

Vermont Redemption

It's actually a pretty nice day out. We're currently at 30 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 degrees Celsius, which isn't as cold as I was expecting. (Last year we were lucky to reach 1 below). The snow's soft, clean and fluffy, which is really pretty, if you think about it. (Quite different from New York snow, which invariably turns into gray sludge and brown mud.)

I ventured outside the campus today and took a mile-long walk to the General Store (also known as the gas station). I bought some candy bars for sustenanance. Tomorrow I might even venture further out and explore the book shops.

It was a nice walk. I was reminded of our little farm house in Dap-dap, Quezon Province - the cars whizzing by as you try to keep to the edge of the road, the animals (horses instead of carabaos), the quaint little architecture (barns and picket fences instead of nipa huts and pigpens), the expanse of land, the slow rythyms.

I suspect that if I let myself, I'll remember how nice this whole thing can be. The people are hopeless (I only talk to about a handful of students and those conversations never last for more than 2 minutes), but the place itself isn't half bad. It's peaceful and quiet and you can really hear yourself think here. (If everyone would just stop bugging me about going out at night, I'd be set.)

And time is flying by faster than last year too. I'm finding more things to do -- writing, of course, but also just walking around, enjoying the silence, watching the snowflakes fall.

I want to go home, but I'm trying not to be an ass about it.

PANSITAN

Hello guys.

Just wanted to let you know, you can now find me at http://warcar.pansitan.net


For all the updates and new posts, head on over there.

MALAS

Well. I'm here. Finally.

Indulge me and let me tell you why you should NEVER EVER fly via US Airways EVER. Sit down, have a beer.

My flight was ORIGINALLY supposed to leave for Burlington, VT at 7:25pm. So in accordance with airport regulations, I planned to get there an hour early. John drove me to La Guardia and we got there by 6:15. Fine, plenty of time to spare. Swiped my card at the machine, breezed through the self-service check in, went through the metal detector/inspection gate without a hitch.

Okay, so I headed off to my gate, my mind whistling a merry tune (my mouth can't do it). Sat there waiting to board since my pass said boarding would commence at 6:55. 6:55 came and went. My merry tune started twisting itself into decidedly unmerry little knots. 7:00, 7:15, and 7:30 all sauntered by, pointing and laughing at the morons suckered by US Airways as they passed. Finally, the shmucks over at the desk remembered their customers and told us that our flight was oversold by 9 (no mention of the delay). Would 9 of us be ever so kind as to give up their seats?

So nine apathetic ones, lured by the promise of free travel to anywhere in the contiguous states, went away with their newly-acquired airline and meal vouchers. And then more waiting. It was 8:30 before they finally acknowledged that our flight had been slightly delayed. Our new boarding time was 8:30.

Aha. A voice inside my head proclaimed. I know what the problem is, it continued. US Airways GATE 1 is actually on a dimension that's different from the rest of La Guardia. That's why all the attendants seem to speak an incomprehensible language. And that's why they act with no concerns for human decency. That's also why they operate on a time zone all their own.

At 9:00 they finally called Rows 1,2,3 and 4 to board. I was in Row 7, so I bade my time. BIG MISTAKE. Suddenly, the doors closed. The plane was full. All seats have been taken, losers. Go home. They had not only oversold by 9 tickets, they had also double-booked 5 seats, mine included. I would have raised hell right there, but I was hungry, sleepy, and very tired. So I grabbed my travel voucher, called John to pick me up, and trudged away, utterly disgusted.

My new flight was scheduled to leave at 8:29 am the next day.

Woke up, got dressed, and John drove me back to La Guardia before 7:30 am. Went through inspection in 5 minutes, and was back at Gate 1. 8:29. The flight was delayed, ofcourse. Engine trouble or something. The 9:40 people, who were on the flight to Vermont which was supposed to leave after us, boarded their plane. We all gave them menacing looks.

I finally got to Vermont at 12:00, obviously VERY late and very annoyed. But wait, there's more. For some reason, they didn't know where my luggage was. According to the computer, it was still unclaimed, but it had apparently disappeared.

I just let them have it then. The spoiled brat in me exploded. Man, did I make a scene. After putting on a perfomance that could put any contrabida to shame, they finally found my bags hidden away in a store room. Yes, in a store room.

So then I got on a cab to Goddard. I tried to make myself as comfortable as possible, as the drive is about an hour and a half. I was on my way to drifting off to plesant little napland when I suddenly heard a voice just above my ear. It was a big bear of a cop. The cab had gotten pulled over for speeding. 80mph on a 65mph road. When will it ever end?

I hate Goddard, but at that point, I just wanted to get to the damn place.

So here I am. It's not that bad. I got a single in a low traffic dorm, so I can tune everyone out. It's way up on a hill at the edge of this godforsaken campus, but with my recent string of luck, that's to be expected. So, it seems the fates have spoken. Solitary confinement for me, at least for the most part.

The computer works and so does the network, obviously. Right now, that's all I care about. Oh and the phone works too. Plus I got the advisor that I wanted.

It's as cold as Pluto over here, but the heater in the dorm is turned up so high it's like I'm back in Manila, so I'm not ruling out a bout of the flu before this whole thing is over.

Lord have mercy on my soul.

Reprint from this time Last Year

I STILL FEEL THE SAME WAY. HELP ME.

From January 4, 2004.

I'm surprised at my own resistance to go to Vermont.

I mean, It's definitely not hell, don't get me wrong. It's pretty enough -- the farms and the fields and the acres of snow. It's fun enough -- parties every night and sleigh rides and snowballs. People are nice enough, and what's more, they're smart. The conversations are usually stimulating enough -- it's the only place I know where you will inevitably find yourself debating the merits of a vignette as against the short story or the novel, or the true relevance of postmodernism in contemporary literature (you know, lit-geek stuff), on a regular basis.

When I'm there, I feel okay, and I do enjoy myself somewhat. I mean, I would never think of staying there for more than the standard eight days or anything like that, but I don't think of my residency as time wasted either.

And yet, truth be told, I don't really like Goddard. After much wondering and analyzing, I think I've come up with the reason why: It's pretentious. Incredibly so.

Writers tend to be, I guess, especially when surrounded by people who understand them when they spew out terms like "prosodity" and "interior plot architecture". At first, it's okay and it's fun. You feel like you've finally found a world where eveyone understands the secret language.

And then suddenly it just gets too damn much. I've often had to listen to long-winded conversations where people try to top each other by outlining their increasingly complicated, always slightly autobiographical novels-in-progress, most of which are inspired by some unlikely yet gut-wrenching epiphany which came to them in an acid-induced dream. All very good for some, but personally, it wears me out. Pass the headphones.

I'm sure they're all very sincere writers, who are very much into craft and what-not, and I don't mean to be harsh, but my god, the size and weight of all those egos piled up on top of each other on any given residency day in the lunchroom is enough to crush the sanity out of anyone. Good thing none of us are sane to begin with. I guess it's the result of the mental confinement most writers go through when working on a piece... you stay in your head for long periods of time... and when you come up for air, I guess sometimes you just want to talk it all away. Catharsis. It's also a form of self-assurance. It's all still there, I am still intact.

There's also the fear of being inadequate. There are so many beautiful books that will never be read by the people who could love them the most. A lot of brilliance will stand to dim before anyone will ever notice. And I guess it's just human nature to be scared of not being understood/appreciated. This is, after all, their life's work (Goddard residents are usually double my age, if not triple). The pretension is a coping mechanism, I guess. A hundred rejection letters will somehow, inevitably, take their toll. The lit-intellectual babble is a way of telling yourself that it hasn't been all for naught, and that you are not as shallow, disappointing, lackluster, boring, dumb, etc. as the various great editors make you out to be.

Even if it's tiring to be on constant intellectual guard, you don't want to put your defenses down because you don't want to be found out and exposed for the poseur/wannabe that you worry you really are.

That is, until you realize everyone shares that deep dark secret.

I guess for most of them, Goddard is the only place where it's okay to unfurl the ego and air it out. It's also the only place where the patterns will be appreciated, the colors understood, the rips and tears noted then overlooked. And people take their time doing that, they savor their moment in the sun. Because when the residency is over, their brilliant minds will have to fold up again. It's back to being unrecognized teacher, unread author, minor critic, boring housewife.

It's sad, but there you go. And I do understand.

But my god, I'd so much rather stay home.

Douglas Adams = Genius

The Hitchiker's Guide movie is coming out on May 5! This is one of the oh-so-few things I'm looking forward to this year. (How pathetic and sad that sounds.) I'm so excited!

Oh and a bit of trivia: To all you Neil Gaiman fans, well, apparently, Neil Gaiman was a fan of Douglas Adams too! He wrote a book called "Don't Panic" which is kind of a guide to the Hitchiker's Guide universe. If Mr. Gaiman liked it so much as to actually write a book about it, don't you think Mr. Adams' book deserves at least a passing glance from you?

Anyway, here's a reprint of an old and frankly inadequate review of Douglas Adams' first book. Don't worry, I kept it short. (Well, as short as I could.)

DOUGLAS ADAMS IS A GENIUS
Now go by his book.

An internet book review called it the first in a five-part trilogy. I was instantly intrigued. Apparently the author had intended it to come in three parts, but apparently just couldn’t stop himself from writing books four and five. Meanwhile, the press and the publishers still kept on calling it a trilogy and conveniently forgot that a trilogy means only three, and stops at that number. It is this sort of irreverent disregard for logic that propels this book in the hundred and one directions of space, time and pan-dimensionality.

Consider the premise: Arthur Dent, clad in his dressing gown (the unequivocal British touch, for what other nationality will condone its men sleeping in gowns?) rushes outside one morning to find that his house is scheduled to be obliterated to make way for a road. As he expresses his outrage and obstinacy by lying on the mud in the direct path of a bulldozer, his friend of some five years (Ford Prefect) talks him into getting a drink by making one of the bulldozing team lie on the mud in his place. The pair then proceed to the bar very near Arthur Dent's house and order alarming amounts of beer. Strengthened by a few pints of alcohol, Ford Prefect then reveals that in ten minutes, the world will end.

The next scene finds them in the midst of chaos, involving an alien race called Vogons who are telling the Earth people that their planet is to be destroyed to make way for some kind of space road, and that the demolition notice had been released as far back as fifty years ago on the nearest demolition office somewhere four light years away and that if the Earth people can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs then this whole business of extinguishing Earth is really all the Earth people's fault.

This is where the adventure and the hitchhiking begin. Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent traverse the infinity of space getting entangled with improbability drives (the invention of which, incidentally, makes all space roads obsolete), and planet-making planets (of which, again, incidentally, the Earth was a product). They also discover, along the way, that the Earth was but a super computer built by mice whose sole goal was to come up with the ultimate question, the answer to which had already been derived (after seven and a half million years) by another computer called Deep Thought. The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is 42.

Ahhh yes. This book is arguably the funniest and most sensible bit of nonsense Britain has ever produced. At the risk of sounding like an adolescent still deluded by the sham called first love (which we all know is just the biological instinct of species perpetuation kicking in), I must gush that Douglas Adams is a genius.

On one hand, his book is humorous and witty, and prods people to ask questions they might never have asked/forgotten they had asked/ didn't know could be asked. On the other, it shows the idiocy of dwelling on questions if that means forgetting that there is such a thing as a life to be lived and experiences to be experienced and generally just a whole number of other interesting things to do. It shows us how arrogant and egotistical we must be to actually believe that in the impossible-to-measure infinity of the universe, we could be the highest form of life in existence (life couldn't be that dumb), and that the removal of Earth from being would actually merit a second thought.

It brings down mental barriers and exposes serious loopholes in the very fiber of rationality and reason, discards the rules of logic by asking us the importance of logic in a place where neither time nor space (nor brainwave pattern) is absolute, and finally tells us in so many words, that although we were born but hapless, pathetic bipeds who might have evolved from almost brainless amoeba, we can actually live to be flying, free-thinking, galaxy hitchhiking bipeds who must still call amoeba our ancestors but only in a whisper, and only when we really must.

Why Not?

Another one of those. I may even have already done this one. But what the hell. I took out the sections that I had no answers for, though. From Jeline.

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
1 Wanda
2 Mita (only for family)
3 Tamuts (only for cousins)

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
1 purplegarage
2 warcar
3 warcargirl

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1 Resilient
2 Socially aware (well, most of the time)
3 Smart (most of the time)

THREE THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
1 Incredibly vain
2 Procrastinate way too much
3 Tell too many useless (and oftentimes pointless) stories

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
1 Mediocrity
2 Regretting too many things on my deathbed
3 Never being able to write again

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
1 Moisturizer
2 Internet
3 Food

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
1 Blue minnesota sweater from my dad
2 Gray yoga pants from mom
3 Extrmemly thick winter socks from HK

- Questions related to MUSIC have been deleted. -

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
1 Get a steady job. For real.
2 Surfing or kiteboarding or something similar
3 clean the backyard

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE: (figure out which is which)
1 I have an unexplainable love for eating raw food
2 My secret dream is to become a bikini designer
3 I'm an animal rights activist

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
1 Height. Yep, they gotta be tall.
2 Nape.
3 Clean hands with well-formed fingers.

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
1 Work consistently - ditto
2 Work a 9-5 deskjob
3 Stay away from the beach for very long

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1 Errr... beach-ing.
2 Surfing the internet (blogs, sites, news, whatever)
3 Looking at bikinis and winter coats.

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
1 Go to the beach
2 See my little sister
3 Get some money

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
1 Writing
2 Teaching
3 Anything else

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
1 Hawaii
2 Madagascar
3 South Africa

- Question about Three Kids' Names has been deleted. -

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
1 Publish a book (or two, hopefully)
2 Buy a beach house
3 Travel to at least one place in each continent