bbc's 100 books to read before you die.

Speechless. 

Every time there's a topic or raucous about books, I can't help but be teary-eyed. God knows how I love, oh no, how I adore books, any book for that matter. Any genre. Any form or any format. And all the time I always find myself disarmed by these whenever I am in a bookstore. The books seem to be talking. My version of "The Confessions of a Shopaholic". Taunting me. Inviting. As if faced by an Eve-in-the-Eden situation, I can only do nothing but succumb to this wanting. 

There's one thing I want to say actually. Forget those blubbers. 

I LOVE BOOKS. And when BBC released their list of the books to drool upon, I just can sigh. Pooh!!!

Here's the list:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien 
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell 
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald 
23. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
24. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
25. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
26. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
27. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
28. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
29. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
31. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis  
32. Emma - Jane Austen
33. Persuasion - Jane Austen
34. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
35. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
36. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
37. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
38. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
39. Animal Farm - George Orwell
40. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
41. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
42. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
43. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
44. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
45. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
46. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
47. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
48. Atonement - Ian McEwan
49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
50. Dune - Frank Herbert 
51. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
52. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
53. Jurassic Park - Michael Crichton
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. Fear of Flying - Erica Jong
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Inferno - Dante
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray 
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White 
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I read some of them. And I will definitely read all of them, that if I still can manage to. But I think I will. And also collect some of them. Weee..Something to look forward to next year.

2. sketch. i called him "jake".

sepia, edited via phone

raw sketch, work in progress

I don't know if I can sketch that good, so I pick a random pic and challenge myself to do it. Surprisingly...

Is this a good t-shirt print? What ja think?

scanned "jake"

of clothes and comfort.

Arrange your life like this.

Life is like clothes, at least for me. As I open my clothes cabinet ( I do not exactly know how to name it, it's the zipper-type thingy), I realized that my life is like the clothes I am wearing, or the pile of clothes I'm having. I'm not into clothes, although it pains me to look at the malls and sometimes in the Lookbook for some dandy suits and posh clothing. Who in this world would not want them? But then again, truth will hurt because I will still get the same old shirt I have, the comfortable hugger, and go outside and shrug the trains of thoughts I just have. And life will be the same life again, always, minus the sophisticated picture I just framed in my mind. I am a dreamer. That's it.

My clothes are like veils of confidence. I always wear my mood together with them. I can even remember when one student told me, "Sir, you wore that shirt like last week." I can just flash a bashful smile and retort, "But what you have now is what you wore a day ago". And we will just laugh. I wore what I considered to be my confidence cloak. I was not mindful, even if I wore the exact thing again and again and again. It's like staying in my comfort zone. And then I realized that my life was a patch of comfort zones. My life comes in and goes out in the same door and I just care less about it. Sometimes I ask myself if this is just sheer indifference or just plainly going-with-the-flow habit. And I would just ignore these thoughts because I don't know the answer either.

I prefer comfort, that would be my defense. But it won't hurt to digress sometimes. I always have that thought. *grinning* Always.

-------------------------

One child asked me,"What's the most comfortable thing in life Sir?"
Me: "To defecate."

i.design.my.shirt.who.designs.yours?

I had such a busy weekend and here I am again meeting another one. The Saturday that passed was a blast since I finally did something for myself. Something that I really like. Something that was productive and not boring. Hehehe. 

Remember the post-it sketch I made? Yes, that one. One blogger suggested or commented that it can be a good t-shirt print (I added the "good"  here). And know what? I took it seriously. And I was goddamn serious about it. Really, so serious about it.

I have no tools for this kind of job. Job, the t-shirt printing thingy. Isa lang ata alam ko and that was I have my hands and they are more than willing to try this thing. Hehehe. And the result actually was not disappointing. Hmm...

Tadaaaa....

Comment? Hehehe...pasensya na sa mala-emo na print. wahehehe..can't help it.

il bel far niente (the beauty of doing nothing)

I wrote this last Tuesday. Just want to post it. Hehehe...Wala naman atang papalag?

This night is the last night of my stay here in Cagayan de Oro, having my week break from work and other work-related brouhahas. The night is so calm and all I can hear as of the moment is the silent whirring of the ceiling fan and the silent orchestra of the keyboards and my heart, not to mention the snore of the sleeping neighbor. Tomorrow I’ll be heading for Davao and be stomped again by papers and neck-breaking backlogs. But that is work, and to face it is inevitable. Sans the mention of stress and the constant consumption of patience. Oh boy, I hope there’s a 24/7 store for this patience. Anyway, the rest is over, which is quite disappointing and nostalgic, for the fact that for the past 8 days of staying here I felt so at home with the knowledge of doing nothing. Yes, the idea of staying at home and waking up at your face slapped by the midday’s rays. Yes, the idea of “Il bel far niente” as what Eat, Pray, Love mentioned. Yes, it is the beauty of doing nothing.

But let me be defensive in this matter, it is doing nothing but accomplishing something. In my short stay here in CDO I have met friends and I have shared precious and meaningful time with my honey. I came to love the fact that I allotted myself ample time to appreciate the pointless things in life (as what I have might think of them or perhaps you yourselves) and find values in things so mundane. Things like walking under an umbrella with your special one during a cold, rainy three o’clock afternoon, reading your new book which was quite stressed outside but so fresh inside because it was not touched nor even read, pigging out on a pizza and ice cream on a drizzly afternoon, lying on your bed with Andrea Bocelli on, and dumping inside the bathroom sans the hurry (since there’s no pressure of work). And another one, staring at the ceiling fan and trying to argue with yourself that it’s turning counterclockwise. Such a reckless waste of time as one might say but such a time of recollection and peace as I might so consider.

I remembered before when I was in high school or in my earlier days of college, I was myself a nazi for time consciousness (not the management though). A single minute wasted is a mortal sin and an hour of squandered moment is a hell. That was a time when I was hard of myself. Currently, I think I overdo it though. Well, you can’t blame me for I am battered by work for almost five years already. I deserve this modest amount of rest. No worries. No guilt. No work. Pure rest, miles and miles away from work. That is what I called pure bliss. You know, the likes of waking up one hour before noon and drinking your coffee with the music on and with your underpants only. If this is a crime, I say then that I’d love to be a criminal. This pleasure of doing nothing and enslaving time is quite addictive.

But everything will have to end. Few hours from the moment I write this, I will be already in the bus for Davao. Attraversiamo. Let’s cross over. I have to cross over from the pleasures of guiltless self-indulgence to the stressful realities of work. Again, attraversiamo.

written on November 2, 2010, 3:09am

eat nothing, do something. 12-hour famine campaign.

Hunger has always been the twin of living. While someone lives, someone survives the everyday pang of hunger.

Today the World Vision Philippines is doing a 12-Hour Famine campaign which invites youth to voluntarily fasts for 12 hours to increase global awareness about this undying problem that the world is experiencing. It starts from 9am and goes until 9pm. For more info, click.

"Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. " ~ Mother Teresa

mused with life.

"Life lives, life dies. Life laughs, life cries. Life gives up and life tries. But life looks different through everyone's eyes."

It was a busy afternoon. Everyone bustled on the streets and the long dreary sun threw streaks of hatred and blood-curdling heat. The wind was blowing long dry gust of seemingly desert air with wisps of barbecue aroma and morning sweats. Each individual nailed on his own affair without the mind of turning their burnt necks. A misshapen lady was busy with her trade amidst the bellowing jeepney drivers. The clamoring market cradled themselves around shadows of disheveled piles of clothes and draperies. A total scene of morning business which I knew was a signal again of a long and tedious day.

I turned around the bend with thoughts mesmerized by those random musings. Well, life was quite a simple complication of things. Sigh. Phew! Another day of uncertainties. "Hey, where are you heading?", asked a rather mused "konduktor" (the driver's assistant) at my lost-in-translation look. "Thanks, but no thanks. Be just in the corner." I stopped first sighting those big trucks running and leaving only traces of black dusts and smokes. The lamp post beside the road must have been a pathetic witness of these city bustlings. My vision tried to scan all the angles of these and then there I saw her. She was rather bludgeoned by long and lonely years. In her eyes mirrored a thousand woes of uncertainties and dubious thoughts. Her body outlined with deathly stabbed of hunger. Her coat rather unkempt which left her with a look of a miserable old witch.

With eyes full of emptiness she crossed the street and there on one corner I stand watching her closely. All the world must have been an audience of this misery but ignorant enough to do anything. She crossed the streets still with all the grace that was left to her. But when she was about to finish that long exodus, a screeching sound hollered from nowhere and send her reeling on the streetside. A painful ghastly sound of shouts was heard from the people around.

The people gathered around and I was one with them. There she lied down with blood sputtering from her mouth. With one last strength and with all the hopes remaining in her, she cried "MEOWWW..." Then she died. Painfully. A cat.

small things.

Be faithful in small things
because it is in them that your strength lies.
~Mother Teresa

___________________

Small things can open up to great realizations. It did mine lately. There's this funny quote, "Money talks but mine said "goodbye!". I can't help but flash a smile for it is rather a sad truth. *smile* Well, I just realized that small things or those considered lowly are but the faithful ones and remains within your limitations. Well, I just look at my cash and I realized that "Jose Rizal" seemed so loyal to stay within the perimeter of my urgent needs. But "Escoda and others" and "Ninoy" just pass by and nothing ,even a memory, is left. Blimey! hehe..

Christmas is coming. Let's celebrate its spirit in the small things that we have. After all, the lowly ones were the first recipient of that joyous news. Let us cherish the small ones that we have. Be contented. That's it. Be contented.