Exit 2009

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Ah, the last post for the year. What did I do in 2009?

Well, there were a couple of things. In the travel department, I am happy to say that I did not use my passport at all for this year *sarcasm*. Yeah, I kinda did not like that part. I am still stuck at 18 for my country count, and I did not increase that for 2009. Well, there are other priorities, so I attended to that first.

On the other hand, I was able to travel locally. And perhaps, this is the better way to go. I really do not know whether the United States is the place where I will be settling down (yes, your educational system when it comes to graduate school is superb, but there are other things that I think needs improvement), so I might as well visit other areas of the country while I am here. I took a lot of road trips this year, since I had a travel buddy with me. She drove, I navigated. I was able to visit Kentucky, West Virginia, Rhode Island, Washington, Oregon, and Massachusetts for the first time. I was able to visit the Mammoth Caves, I visited several historical sites in Philadelphia, drank beer in Seattle, went green in Portland, and traipsed the Freedom Trail in Boston.

Also, I was able to go to Berkeley, CA to present in a conference, and I was a joint author on another work that was presented in Barcelona. Unfortunately, I was not able to go and present it in person.

Speaking of presentations and publications, I added several lines in my CV. I had the two presentations as mentioned above, and I have two publications: one stemming from the Berkeley presentation, and another which was an invited publication from my undergraduate university.

Regarding research, I finally finished my qualifying paper, and now I am steps away from defending my dissertation proposal. Entering the job market is now just a couple of years away.

With respect to the family, I saw all members of my immediate family again, back in September. The last time that four of us were in one room was in June 2005, when my sister and I were visiting my parents in Vienna. The last day we were in Vienna was the last time the four of us were in one room, the day when my sister and I would be flying back to Manila. So it's been over 4 years, and it was time to reset the clock. We reset it in September 30, 2009. My parents were visiting the USA and so they flew to New York City (where my sister now lives). I took a week off from school and flew from Buffalo to New York City and met them there. The next day, my parents and I took the train to Boston and spent 6 days sight-seeing. My sister couldn't come with us, however, so it was just the three of us. Therefore, the four of us were in one room again, albeit just for a day.

2009 was also the year in which I got interested in watching arthouse and bizarre movies. We watched Requiem for a Dream, The Science of Sleep, The Pillow Book, and other interesting movies.

2009 was also the year in which I got a chance to be a research assistant. Finally, after being a teaching assistant and looking after undergraduates in the university, I was able to do research and collaborate with faculty. That was nice, because that gave me an opportunity to broaden my skills and apply the statistical knowledge that I gained a year ago. I started designing my own experiments, and they were good enough to be presented in conferences.

This was also the year in which I started reviewing my books better. Yes, I started my Book Review Series in late 2008, but by then, it was still too early to see whether I would stick to it or not. I read about 44 books in 2009, and I read a few big-hitters, such as The Last Temptation of Christ, Death with Interruptions, and Blindness. You can find the full list on my sidebar on the right.

I also was told that I became more human this year.

Anyway, 2010 is just around the corner. Who knows what this year would bring? Will I still be in Buffalo? Will I move somewhere else? Will I get this dissertation forward and defended and graduate? Will I visit a new country? Will I get a new entry stamp in my passport (speaking of which, I need to renew it sometime)? What are the books that I will be reading? Are there any new and interesting people that I will meet?

2009, it's time to exit. 2010, I welcome thee.

(Deconstructed Harp, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Shoveling Snow

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

It's that time of the year again. Winter is rather bizarre in my opinion. I prefer it to summer, simply because I can just put more and more clothes on my body if I am cold, but in the summer, I cannot take off all the clothes I am wearing if I were feeling hot.

Anyway, there are also bad things about winter. I started shoveling my driveway again for this season. Lake effect snow is here, and so I have started making the path clear and the driveway clear of snow as well. I started making mountains of snow on the lawn of my neighbors, since the wind blows that way, and it would be useless to put the snow on our lawn since it would just be blown back into the driveway given our geographic location.

I should really arrange my schedule so that I can still find time to go to the gym. The thing is, I feel like I am gaining weight again. I have this rhythm, I lose weight during the warm months, and I gain back the weight during the winter months. It has something to do with the relative inactivity, the cold, after all, what are blubbers for in whales? Anyway, I really should go back to the gym, and since I don't take any classes for this coming semester, just busy dissertating, I should find the time. Really, that should be my goal.

Anyway, I don't know if I will be glad for this winter. November was rather spared. A few years back, we already had snow in November, but this year, it hasn't snowed at all. But come December and snow came to the region. And now they are saying that this year will be colder than the previous years. Somehow I feel that to be true, since we already have negative temperatures constantly (in Celsius, at least). Anyway, I've done this for four years now, true story.

(Bean with a Lady, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Book Review: The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes by Tess Uriza Holthe

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

I suppose my opinion towards short stories has changed over time. I used to not like them, because my main reason for that is that I hate the fact that the story ends when I am just about settling into the characters and plot. I finally become accustomed to the characters and then I find the story ending, with a new set of characters on the next story. That's why I preferred short stories that have a common theme to them, and this one is I suppose the best example of a short story collection that I would like.

The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes is a collection of short stories that revolve around a group of people that for some reason or another are related to each other. The stories occur in and around Cannes, spanning from Barcelona to Milan to Aix. There are several threads to the whole collection.

First, there is the story about Claudette and Chazz Jorgensen. Chazz is a millionaire, and he met Claudette, who was this French waitress, while on vacation in Cannes several years before the story even began. Claudette broke off an engagement with another guy named Laurent Barr, in order to marry Chazz. However, Chazz has a mental illness, and it progresses until their marriage almost disintegrates. One day, Chazz on impulse books a ticket to Milan and takes the train to Cannes, where he is chased by two Romany pickpockets, until a taxicab hits Chazz and then he dies. Claudette's life is further elaborated in some other story, including her ambivalence with respect to selling the chateau that they both own in Cannes.

There is also the story about Laurent Barr and his Brazilian wife Serena and his mother. Laurent was engaged to Claudette but his engagement was broken by Claudette as mentioned earlier. Then, he meets Serena, but his mother is partial to Claudette. His mother dislikes Serena for some reason, and Serena is in a way jealous of Claudette. She poses as a potential buyer for Claudette and Chazz's chateau in order to try to find out who was the woman who dumped Laurent for her. In the meantime, Laurent's mother is irrational in the sense that she dislikes Serena for some reason, and at a brief episode, was pickpocketed by two Romany, the same two Romany who were involved with Chazz.

There is also the story of the Romany brothers. There's three of them, actually. GianCarlo, Marino, and Angelo. They pickpocket the Italian train lines. They have rival French gangs. GianCarlo wants to stop pickpocketing, but his heritage as a Romany somehow holds him back. Marino is in love with a French girl who belongs to a separate gang. Angelo is the eldest, and he changed a lot ever since their parents died. They are related to the other characters because at one point or another, the other characters have been victims of them.

There's also a couple of minor story lines, involving a lace designer and his three wives, a former convict who is now a ferry driver, and a hitman from Scotland. All of these intersect with the characters above.

So the thing I like most about this short story collection is that it feels like a puzzle, where every chapter is a piece that I can connect with the previous piece to make a whole. It's very coherent, and sustains the interest of the reader since the characters are all linked together even though every chapter is in essence a separate story from the previous one. I can see this as one complex novel, or a very sophisticated short story.

Is there anything bad about this book? Probably not. I'll give it 4.5 out of 5 stars, the only thing holding me back from giving it a full score is that as much as I liked the concept, it wasn't a moving book. It didn't tackle strong metaphysical issues the way Jose Saramago does. But hey, that's just a personal preference of mine. I would still recommend this book to anyone.

(Modern Totem Pole, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Linguistic Factoid No. 15: Clefts

Friday, December 25, 2009

Syntax is the study of language structure at the sentence level. The field of linguistics (without delving into its inter-disciplinary connections) is composed of phonetics (the study of speech sounds), phonology (the study of sound systems in language), morphology (the study of word structure), syntax (the study of sentence structure), and semantics (the study of meaning). So obviously, plenty of people have studied many components of language, and depending on what fancies them, they know pretty much everything about that topic.

Anyway, in my past life, I used to dabble in syntax. Partly because in my undergraduate department, syntax was the big thing, and until I got to know the other parts of linguistics, I never knew anything else about the other sub-fields. Anyway, one thing that popped in my head the other day was how there is a plethora of sentential constructions out there. One of them are these things called clefts.

Last night, we watched this movie entitled Death at a Funeral. And I liked it, but my friend didn't. So we were discussing what it was that she didn't like. Anyway, I determined that it was the genre, which was black comedy, that she didn't like, and not the plot. So I uttered the following sentence: It's against black comedy that you are. Obviously, I am not a native speaker of English, so that sentence was weird and wrong, but I uttered it, and soon enough I realized that it was ungrammatical, but I couldn't chase it fast enough.

Apparently, one cannot cleft prepositional phrases. See, clefts are sentences that have constituents that appear in a non-regular position. Consider the following:

Non-cleft: I love cookies.
Cleft: It's cookies that I love.

Non-cleft: I wanted to drive an Audi.
Cleft: What I wanted to drive was an Audi.

English is interesting in that there is a variety of clefts available for the speaker to utilize. For more information on clefts, just see the literature available online, this has been a topic studied by syntacticians for a long time.

Now what motivates the use of cleft sentences? One hypothesis is topic structure. English usually is a language that has the subject in the beginning, followed by a predicate. However, this is oftentimes violated. The first thing that comes in the sentence usually is the subject, but it is not always the case that one wants to talk about the subject, since there are times in which the subject is not the most important thing in the discourse. There are times in which there are other things that are more important in the discourse aside from the subject, and important things are most of the time put at the beginning. That's why people use cleft sentences.

So, back at my ungrammatical sentence above. I figured that given the discourse that was unfolding at that time, the most important thing was the prepositional phrase against black comedy (as opposed to against the plot). So I constructed a sentence that clefted that phrase. However, the fact that I am not a native speaker allowed me to cleft a prepositional phrase and my grammar did not restrict that from being produced. So I ended up with the ungrammatical sentence above. But I realized that it was wrong, and I should have said It's black comedy that you are against.

(Moving Things, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Superiority Complex

Thursday, December 24, 2009

I was reading this forum the other day about how Argentina decided to implement a reciprocity fee to its visitors. Let me explain what this is first.

If you are visiting Argentina, depending on your citizenship, you may or may not need a visa. Also, if you do not need a visa, you may or may not need to pay a reciprocity fee. Given that I have Filipino citizenship, I need a visa to visit Argentina. That means that I need to visit an Argentine embassy, pay the visa fee, and apply for one. I may be granted or denied a visa.

On the other hand, if I were an EU citizen, say, I were a Spaniard, I do not need a visa. I can just buy a plane ticket and head to Buenos Aires. I also will not pay a reciprocity fee, since Spain doesn't charge Argentinians a visa fee either. Argentinians can freely visit Spain as well.

Finally, if I were an American, then I do not need a visa to visit Argentina, but if I decide to fly to Buenos Aires, I have to pay 131.00 USD in order to enter the country. This is the reciprocity fee, since the United States charges Argentinians the same amount to apply for a visa. The difference is that there is no guarantee that the visa will be granted or denied, but the reciprocity fee is charged visitors to Argentina without question, in other words, there isn't a denial, unless one really looks like a threat to the country.

Now, back to the forum. Of course, there were several opinions for and against this. Now, surprise surprise, the people who were against this reciprocity fee are none other than Americans. They think that this fee is idiotic and crappy. But is it really the case? Or do Americans simply think that they have the right of way in every aspect of world affairs?

Argentina isn't the only country to do this. Chile does this as well. Chileans need a visa to visit the United States, but US citizens don't need a visa to visit Chile. But Chile also charges 131.00 USD for US citizens when they enter the country.

According to the Americans, this will deter tourists to Argentina. Wow. As if Americans are the only tourists coming into the country. I also get the impression that Americans seem to think that they have to have the right of way in every aspect of world affairs. They also say that the United States has every right to have a visa system targeting Argentinians because Argentinians are more likely to enter the United States and stay there illegally than US citizens entering Argentina and staying there illegally. But is that a valid argument? What happened to national sovereignty?

If Argentinians decide to implement a reciprocity fee, then respect that by all means. If you hate the fee, then don't go to Argentina. It's the same principle of respect that I voiced regarding the issue of the minaret ban in Switzerland. I find it arrogant that certain people feel that they can insist on other nationalities and coerce them into doing something that would violate the national interests of others.

If American tourists hate the reciprocity fee of Argentina, then just boycott the country. But Argentinians have every right to implement that law since it's their country after all. Argentina may have some use for the revenue that will be generated from that fee anyway. And besides, if you're a traveler, you obviously had the ability to buy a ticket to Argentina, so 131.00 USD is a small amount compared to the total amount of the trip that you have paid for already.

I find it funny that as amazing as this country I currently live in might be, there are things that I find absurd and unintelligible. It's the same mentality with respect to nuclear power: Iran and North Korea they say have no right to bear nuclear arms but they have their arsenals stacked with tons of nuclear weapons. That's one heck of a superiority complex right there.

(Totem Pole, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Comfort Food

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Sometimes, there are instances in which I would have a craving for something that is not really healthy, but is rather good to make and brings comfort when eaten. I have several of these comfort foods, and although not every item of comfort food brings the same pleasure, every item at least brings some sort of pleasure and satisfaction.

One such comfort food I have is my sloppy egg sandwiches. I learned how to cook really early, I think around 6th grade. I learned lots of basic stuff, like cooking rice on the stove, boiling and frying eggs, frying fish, and so on. So, as I was learning how to cook, I soon started experimenting with the stove. I remember back in Japan, since the stove that came with the apartment had a little grill that was included with it, my sister and I would place sheets of sliced sandwich cheese on a plate and grill it, so that it would melt. We called those fondues, and we loved eating melted cheese from the plate.

Anyway, I learned how to fry eggs, so I started making my sloppy egg sandwiches. I usually would make it by having bread, mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, pickles, and eggs. I would just assemble those ingredients in random order, obviously having a fried egg in between two slices of bread. I would make the eggs sunny side up, and then carefully lay it in between the two slices of bread coated with mayonnaise, and then put some ketchup, mustard, and pickles on top. I would usually fry two eggs and make two of these sandwiches. Then, I would eat them using a fork and knife. The thing is, it is messy because the moment the yolk bursts, the yolk will just be oozing from all sides, so I would eat it with a fork and knife instead.

Another such comfort food is my caprese salad. I learned how to make this when we were on vacation in Rome, Italy. This is very simple to make, all one needs is fresh basil, fresh mozarella, tomatoes, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Here, I would usually buy one pot of fresh basil, two tomatoes from the vine, and half a pound of fresh mozarella. I would divide the basil leaves in half, since I cannot eat all of it at once. One tomato, 1/4 pound of fresh mozarella, basil leaves, salt and pepper, and then drizzled with extra virgin olive oil. Perfect.

Another comfort food I make sometimes is chicken livers. I have two ways of making it, the Filipino style and the Hungarian style. Of course, the comforting one isn’t the Hungarian style. I make it with soy sauce and vinegar, together with onions, garlic, and black peppercorns. The key to delicious chicken livers is that one should not overcook it. Typically, fifteen minutes would be enough, because overcooked livers just taste a little chunky and not juicy at all. It loses the delicate texture it is supposed to have. So, what I do is cook all the vegetables first, so that the onions would be tender and golden. Once that is done, I put the livers in the pot, and fifteen minutes later, I can recreate Asia in my kitchen.

So, what types of comfort food do you have?

(Black Blob, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Social Mores

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

The other day, I have been in an energetic conversation with a good friend of mine about social dynamics and rudeness. We watched a rather interesting movie the day before entitled The Pillow Book, and it featured Japanese, Chinese, and English languages. So, given that, I had this idea that I wanted to practice my Japanese again, by talking to Japanese people.

There are a few Japanese students in the department. And the other day, I caught sight of one in the lounge. We were about to eat lunch, and so I was planning on speaking to this guy in Japanese, but somehow he left. So I ddin't get my chance.

So it ended up that just my friend and I were in the lounge eating lunch. I told her that I was intending to talk to the Japanese student in Japanese, but she told me that it would have been rude.

That's where I disagreed.

She told me that due to the fact that there are three people in there, and then since all of us are good friends more or less, and since by speaking in Japanese, she would have been excluded from the conversation since she doesn't understand the language, then that would be rude in our part. I on the other hand disagreed. She and I are good friends, and so we both have our own time hanging out with each other that a simple 30 minutes of not talking in English would not make a significant difference. Besides, she knows me well enough that she should not think that I had malefactive intent when I would speak Japanese.

Anyway, the conversation we had was rather long, and no, we were not having a fight, since after all, the incident didn't happen in the first place. This was all moot and theory. However, I still do not understand the social dynamic thing.

The thing is, for the most part of my life, I have been in that position. The position where two people speak a language that I do not understand and I would be excluded. In Japan, that happened all the time. Japanese people would talk to each other in Japanese, and they would be talking about us nonetheless. They would arrange our trips, our rides, who's taking who to the station, things that concern us. I do think that talking in a language that is not available to a third person is rude, if the two people are talking about the third person.

But in the theoretical case I mentioned above, I wasn't even planning on talking about the third person.

Anyway, we agreed to disagree. It just reinforced to me the belief that I do not do well in social dynamics, that somehow I operate differently, and that I think most people are bizarre and incomprehensible.

(Concrete Machine, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Dissertating Blues

Monday, December 21, 2009

So today is the last day in which the semester is in session. Last day of finals. Most people have left campus and are in their respective homes by now. However, I still am here.

Well, I guess that's because there's this dissertation that I am working on, and I have a workaholic thing that is working for me. Well, I also don't have family within a radius of 100 miles, so there really isn't somewhere to go. And besides, if I want to finish on schedule with my magnum opus, then I need to work on it as well.

I haven't been constantly blogging recently, there's just a lot of things to do. I also realized that I rarely find the time to be online, so I need to catch up on that as well.

I am surprised that we didn't get the blizzard that affected the rest of the East Coast this past weekend. I heard that people had a hard time flying since major airports in the East Coast got plenty of cancellations, such as LaGuardia and JFK, Newark, Dulles, and Logan. Good thing I wasn't scheduled to fly or anything, but I personally know a few people stranded with their travel plans. My German friend who was flying to Guadalajara had to take a bus from Buffalo to New York City because his connection got canceled. A college friend flying from New Jersey to Texas had to be re-scheduled. And so on.

Anyway, the holidays are coming, and people are getting in a festive mood. I am totally avoiding the malls for the moment. The sight of plenty of people just can be overwhelming at times.

Finally, I now have a new photo series running, still picture from DC, but I promise there aren't a lot anymore and I myself am ready to load a new photo series from a different location. It says how much photos I take when I am on vacation, since right now I have a two-year backlog.

(Red Sculpture, from my Hirschhorn Museum Series)

Book Review: The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

Friday, December 18, 2009

As I have been mentioning from time to time whenever I review a book, I rarely put a book down simply because the beginning part of the book seems to be bad. I usually finish the book all the way to the end hoping that it would turn good as I go along. And this time around, I am glad that I did that for this book.

So, what is this book about? This book tells the tale of Jacob Jameson, an architect, with two kids, a wife, a mistress, and an Alzheimer’s disease patient. The book starts with an unreliable narrator, and in the beginning, I hated how it was narrating the story. Things were sometimes incoherent, the information presented was rather skimpy and incomplete, and if I did not see the keywords that are associated with this novel (architects – fiction, Alzheimer’s disease – fiction, etc), then I would not know that this is a novel about the disease until the midpoint, when the story narrates a certain episode where the main character tells his daughter that he has the disease.

The chronological order was rather messed up too. There are 15 chapters, and in between every chapter is a separate chapter that is not numerically ordered. These unnumbered chapters serve as tangents explaining certain things that are relevant to the previous chapters. The numbered chapters are chronologically ordered, spanning about four years (which is only evident near the end of the book), from the time that Jacob was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, up to the point that his memory is completely deteriorated. The unnumbered chapters are not chronologically arranged, but spans a huge amount of time, from the time that he and his wife Helen were trying to conceive their two children, to the time that they built their first house outside London, to the time that he had an affair with a woman who eventually flew to America and settled there.

So why did I hate this novel in the beginning? It was because I felt a little in the dark. The facts were not being given to me in a straightforward fashion. Instead, I have to piece together stuff from the past, and sometimes, the information is contradictory. But I eventually liked the novel as I was completing it, since I realized that the novel itself is a simulation of Alzheimer’s disease. The novel simulated the gradual erasure of human memory, the gradual deterioration of past episodes in the brain, where certain memories seem to be out of place and not related to a bigger whole, where certain scenes seem to be misplaced and disconnected, contradictory to what one previously assumed. In the end, I was able to piece together every detail, and build a coherent whole, but I am sure that a person with Alzheimer’s undergoes a more complicated and tremendously painful ordeal.

So, will I recommend it? Absolutely. One needs patience in reading this book. It is not a page turner, but it gradually grows on the reader. It is slow, but the picture it paints at the end is beautiful. This book gets 4 out of 5 stars in my opinion.

(Renwick Gallery, from my DC Buildings Series)

Unfiltered

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Isn’t it funny how life unfolds? How life is rarely the result of planned behavior? Come to think of it, life is just the result of a little bit of planning mixed with plenty of coincidences. If life were a mixed drink, planning would be the hardest and most alcoholic liquid, while coincidences and random episodes make up the most part. Does that mean that planning is the most potent factor in life, and coincidences and chaos theory only chases and dilutes it?

Perhaps. At least, given the metaphor, that would be a nice scenario. But no, most people seem to live their lives in an unplanned way, relying on fate and chance to blow them in the wind. And on the other hand, it seems that people who tend to plan their lives tend to do battle with very strong headwinds, that sometimes, the chaser seems to be the more potent of the two.

Sometimes, it seems that life has a life of its own, and it is sitting on its comfortable chair on the control panel, watching every one of us. It perhaps is having fun, seeing how people cope with unforeseen circumstances, bending their plans in order to accommodate the most recent change. Perhaps life is playing games with us. Life may be curious as to how we deal with good and bad episodes in our lives.

The thing is, not every event in our lives can be planned. Yes, to a certain degree, we can plan things. So we want to be a doctor. We try to excel early on, so we can have good grades in high school, in order to enter a good university. And in university, we strive to do best, so that we can be accepted to medical school. And hopefully, the medical school that we want is the school that accepts us.

So yes, to a certain degree, we can plan our lives. But not everything can be planned. We don’t plan to be friends with certain people and not with others. We don’t tell ourselves that we will plan to make friends with John Doe but not with Jane Doe. Being friends with others happen spontaneously, unplanned, unscripted.

The same thing with relationships. We do not tell ourselves that we have a schedule. We don’t say that we want to have a good paying job by 25, that we want to find “the one” by 28, get married by 30, and have 2 kids by 35. Life simply doesn’t work that way. Come to think of it, romantic relationships perhaps is one of the most challenging aspects of life, especially for people who want to plan their lives.

Why do I say that? Well, let me test my theory from the point of view of someone who doesn’t plan their life well first. If one is content with hanging around, if one is content with just having a roof to cover their heads, if one is content with not dreaming big, then sure, it may be easier to find someone and get to know them. After all, the playing field is the same for both, and there is more contact with one another.

Take the stereotypical American for example. The American that does not even own a passport. The American who is born and raised in, say, Buffalo. Western New York will be the playing field, and chances are, if one hasn’t gotten out of this area, the person will meet someone else who is more or less from the area as well. Where will they settle? Western New York of course, no questions asked. No need for major life changes.

On the other hand, if one has big dreams, then things like these get to be harder. The world is a big place. If the world is one’s oyster, then things get complicated. What if the other person has his or her own set of dreams as well? What if both dream big and the playing field is too small for the two of them? What if one gets a lucrative job offer in another part of the world? What if there is a lab in Vienna offering a very tempting position?

I remember my mom telling us kids that she quit her professional job in order to be with the family and be with my dad all the time. Given my father’s profession, the playing field was very large, in fact, the world was the playing field. It wasn’t a small area like Western New York or Metropolitan Manila. It was way larger than that. And it seemed that the best solution back then was for my mom to sacrifice her career and be a full-time homemaker.

This perhaps brings to the point the issue of constraints. Multiple constraints are in play, and not every constraint work with each other. Some constraints are working against other constraints. Thus, things always need to be considered on a case-by-case basis. So, if a pair of people who care for each other are faced with a decision, say, Vienna, certain things need to be evaluated. Is the person worthy enough to make one drop everything so that two lives can be aligned with each other? Or is it the case that one’s relationship with the other person is not serious enough that it would just be easier to drop things and call it quits?

Sometimes, I think that human life is inherently flawed. One wants to be successful in one’s career and also be successful in one’s relationships and social connections, but these things do not always go hand in hand. I know of successful professionals who are divorced, and their families ruined and split. I also know of successful professionals who seem to have forgotten that life also has a social aspect. It seems that life doesn’t have enough room to be successful in every possible aspect, that in a way, one must fail in one of these aspects since that is the normal thing to occur.

(Exorcist Stairs, from my DC Buildings Series)

Book Review: The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

This is the third novel of Hari Kunzru that I have read. However, I did not read them in chronological order. I first read Transmission a couple of years ago, and this was about the ups and downs of an Indian worker here in the United States who due to some obsession of his, created a virus that plagued the whole word, while working for Google. The second book I read, which was Kunzru’s third novel, is My Revolutions, and this was about a group of young English people who were rebelling against the English society. The Impressionist on the other hand was Kunzru’s debut novel. And since I liked the other two novels that he wrote so far, I figured it wouldn’t hurt reading this one as well.

Somehow, I feel ambivalent with this novel. This is like a sweet and sour experience. As is the case with modern English literature, there is a dry witty humor to this one. But somehow, I had the feeling that it failed to deliver the goods.

The story revolves around a half-English, half-Indian child, who is the illegitimate son of an English explorer, and an Indian girl who happened to be both hiding in a cave during a flood. They had sex, but unfortunately, the English explorer died afterward due to the floodwaters. The Indian girl was then married to some Indian guy, and the boy was thought to be their child, but there was a servant who exposed the whole scheme and revealed the boy to be a bastard.

That set off the boy’s adventures. The boy went to a hijra house, and was first groomed to be a male prostitute for English colonialists. Then, he became the servant of a missionary couple and their mission. He learned to blend in, he learned to disguise his Indianness, and when the right time came, he was able to steal the identity of one drunk boy on his way to England, and because of that, he morphed into a new character. This continued on until the very end of the book, where his newest character was on Saharan camel rider, complete with tattoos and a turban.

Now what do I not like about this book? Well, I had the impression that it attempted to be a frame narrative. This reminded me of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, where each chapter was basically a story of its own, and then the whole novel is built up by combining each of these smaller stories. The Impressionist seems to be like this as well, except that it seems half-baked. Yes, Kunzru goes into detail about the history of the character’s first adoptive father, and how he was struck with Spanish influenza even though he had a rather peculiar fear of germs. Kunzru also went into detail with respect to the history of Elspeth Macfarlane, the adoptive mother that the character had, while in India in a Christian mission. There are these tangents but they seem to be not too short, and not too long as well. It felt like it was there but of no particular purpose. It does add background to the story, but if that was the purpose, then it was a little prolonged.

The thing that was great about the novel however, was the use of the anti-hero as a plot element. The main character wasn’t someone that the reader could easily sympathize with. After all, he was stealing people’s identities and doing malefactive things with them. However, this trick works, as can be attested by the series of novels beginning with The Talented Mr. Ripley. In The Impressionist, the anti-hero isn’t so violent as Mr. Ripley, in the sense that he doesn’t commit murder left and right, but instead, it seems that he was just in the right location at the right time.

So overall, I still think that I am glad that I read this novel. I just cannot totally be upfront and recommend it with no question. I would give it 3.5 stars out of 5, and would only recommend it if one is indeed a big fan of British literature.

(Right Wing of Healy Hall, from my DC Buildings Series)

The Wintry Blizzard

Sunday, December 13, 2009

It is funny that the moment the calendar changes to December from November, suddenly, the weather changes too. December 1 was the first snowfall of the season, and December 9-10 was the first blizzard of the season. There was this huge low pressure area extending from Arizona all the way to the Northeast United States which brought us not a lot of snow, but surely a lot of wind.

The temperature was about -9 Celsius, and the wind was just biting cold. I shoveled my driveway for the very first time this season last Thursday morning, and since the snow was just a few inches, it wasn't bad at all. But it is definitely winter here for sure.

It is funny how predictable the wintry phenomena are. Winds always blow from the west, so the north-south roads are the ones that are hit the worst. The snow just blows all over the place, and so the snowplows have a hard time controlling them.

The interesting thing however, is that on Friday, the sun shone bright, and even though the sun is out, the temperature is down. The presence of the sun and temperature are definitely not correlated with each other.

There were a few accidents on the road. I saw this one van who accidentally spun on the road, and because of that, a sign post that was about 3 feet high accidentally ended up underneath the hood, and he couldn't move at all since his van was rather impaled. People lose their sense of driving safety whenever the snow falls. They tend to ignore traffic lights and other signals, for reasons I somehow do not understand.

Anyway, the winter has not even officially started (it starts officially 10 days from now), but we already have wintry weather. And it is just the start.

(Healy Hall and John Carroll, from my DC Buildings Series)

Book Review: The Book of God and Physics by Enrique Joven

Saturday, December 12, 2009

There are several types of books that I like. One of them is this genre that most European writers actually know best. This is the historical fiction that is mixed with a detective story type of genre. Perhaps, the most common example of this book in the mass media realm is The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, but surprisingly enough, I haven't read that yet. Perhaps it is because everybody else has read it, and I simply do not want to jump into the bandwagon.

But hey, I have read Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco before. And this current novel is of a similar vein. Written by Enrique Joven, The Book of God and Physics is a story about the Voynich Manuscript. This is an undeciphered manuscript that is currently stored by the Yale University Archives, and it is the subject of several conspiracy theories. Ultimately, the novel presents this manuscript as the crux of the battle between evolution and creation, between right-wing politicians and astrophysicists.

The good thing however, is that this underlying debate between science and religion is not the major part of the book. Instead, the major part of the book concerns three characters, Hector the Jesuit priest and Spaniard who teaches in a monastery and high school; Juana the Mexican bombshell who has connections to American right-wing activists; and John the English astrophysicist who is also an atheist. The three of them engage in various Holmes-style clue-searching in an attempt to decipher the Voynich Manuscript. Their endeavors take them from Valladolid, Spain (where Hector's monastery is located) to the Canary Islands (where John's astronomy lab is located) to Rome (in order to visit the Pantheon) and Bologna (to see a church with an interesting meridian).

I like the book for several reasons. First, it reactivated in me the images of Rome that I encountered back in 2005. I visited The Eternal City back in June 2005, and this book had a very vivid description of the city, and accurate nonetheless. They visited sights that I visited back then, and reading about them just added another dimension to good memories I had.

Another reason why I liked this book is the fact that it was a page-turner. No, there wasn't any intriguing killing that happened, but the detective style and the search for clues kept me reading at a pace that I don't usually have, faster than the usual. I learned a lot about astronomy and calendars, and historical stuff about Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe. And it did help that these two characters in history were prominent characters in Prague, which is a city that I visited back in 2006. I actually saw several monuments dedicated to the two astronomers when I was there.

Finally, I liked the fact that this novel mixed fact with fiction. Everything in the book was real, and the only fictitious element of the book were Hector, Juana, and John. Everything else, the conspiracy regarding the Voynich Manuscript, Johannes Kepler and Tycho Brahe, their relationship with Rudolf II of Bohemia, all those were real. I don't like reading about history just by itself, but when there is a story that is intricately twined around it, then things get exciting.

All in all, I am glad that I picked up this book. 5 stars out of a possible 5.

(Georgetown Building, from my DC Buildings Series)

Unsweetened Dreams

Friday, December 11, 2009

Sometimes I get the feeling that my dreams are more vivid than the average dream. Sometimes I know why I had a certain dream, but most of the time, I don't. And most of the time, I also do not know why certain things in my waking life are all interconnected in my dream life.

No wonder Freud was so interested in analyzing dreams, because one can say that they reveal something about the subconscious. As if this subconscious is one hidden and inaccessible void.

Anyway, I had two dreams that were bizarre in the recent past.

One involved me and my family. I found myself in our old home back in the Philippines, but it turned into a war zone. And the weird thing is, we were in the future, but in the dystopian future. There was this very sexy girl, who turned out to be a robot, something along the lines of Terminator 3, and she needed a secret code from me. My family didn't know that I possessed the secret code, and I carefully hid it in the form of a T-shirt logo. The T-shirt that had that code was then randomly placed in the laundry that my mom was about to wash. We hid underneath the tables, and the Terminator 3 girl passed by, scanned the brains of my family, but didn't find anything. Somehow, she forgot to scan my brain, so she didn't find the code. Then I woke up.

Another dream I had was bizarre in the sense that it was a combination of several films that I watched both recently and not-so-recently. First, I have to explain The Pillow Book, which is this very interesting movie involving a homosexual publisher who is a guy, a heterosexual writer who is a girl, and a bisexual translator who is a guy, played by Ewan McGregor. The writer has a grudge against the publisher because she thinks that he killed her father ages ago. Anyway, the writer has a fetish of writing on the human skin, so she uses Ewan's body as her canvas, and then Ewan will then head to the publisher, and the publisher will copy the text from Ewan's body. So, the movie had plenty of shots of a butt-naked Ewan McGregor with his arms stretched out and turning around in the publisher's office while the publisher was copying the text.

Then, I have to explain The Unbearable Lightness of Being, where Daniel Day-Lewis played a womanizing Czech doctor, and his most used line in the movie is "Take off your clothes." I think he said that at least 6 times in the movie.

Anyway, given those two information, this is how my dream went. I woke up with a very bad case of measles. I knew that I was vaccinated for MMR when I was a kid, but somehow, I was still attacked. I had no hair in my body whatsoever, because the measles eradicated it. My scalp was bare, and the rashes were there, even in places where the sun doesn't shine. So I had to go to the doctor. When I went to the doctor, I was told to change into this gown, and then the doctor came in. He told me, "Take off your clothes." I was then told to stretch my arms and turn around and around in his office, while admiring the various rashes I have on my body.

At that point I woke up.

(Smithsonian Castle, from my DC Buildings Series)

Counting Pots and Pans

Thursday, December 10, 2009

I have a love-hate relationship with my dissertation. The thing is, the dissertation sometimes can be a painstaking exercise, and sometimes I think that it is pointless in writing one.

See, there are things that I hate about the dissertation. The dissertation can be the only research project that a scholar has to do that is top-down. By this I mean that this is the only research project that one has to do that has to be wide in coverage, and has to have an over-arching theme to it. In the early stages of my dissertation, I was asked what three things I want to argue for in my dissertation. Yes, my dissertation has an over-arching theme, but I have to tackle three things at least in order for it to become a dissertation.

So because of this, I had to think in a top-down fashion. This is not usually done in other aspects of research. Most of the time, a scholar finds something interesting and research-worthy, so he spends time working on it. Then he finds something of interest, and then publishes a paper out of it. The dissertation is a freaking book. And recently, I broke my dissertation down into three topics, three pots, as the metaphor that my adviser has deals it. My dissertation has three main topics, bundled into three different pots. Some pots are clearer than others. Pot 1 is especially very clear, while Pot 2 is still murky. Pot 3 is so-so at this point.

When this dissertation is over, I can clearly see revising these different pots into different research papers and publishing them separately.

If these pots weren't part of the dissertation, I would have just concentrated on one pot and polished it so that it shone really bright. However, that's just a paper, not a dissertation, and I need something bigger.

But, I also see the usefulness of the dissertation. This exercise will eventually prove that one can do research, and that one can be a specialist in something. One will eventually get a research program after completing a dissertation. The dissertation will eventually be the catalyst with respect to what the scholar will be known for. In my case, I hope that I will be known for the stuff that I am currently working on.

So, it all boils down to directionality of thinking, that I am somehow irked at. I don't like the top-down thinking that this dissertation needs. But, I suppose it is also a skill to be learned, and I am getting better at it.

(Spiral Staircase, from my DC Buildings Series)

Amazing

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

This past weekend saw the season finale of The Amazing Race. I have been an avid follower of this show, and, except for the Family Edition (Season 8), I always liked them. This time around, I liked them as well.

First, the team members. Well, there was an interesting twist here, where one team didn't even get to ride a plane. Well, that was Eric and Lisa, and upon reading the relevant news articles a few weeks back, it seems that they left the show and therefore was not sent to the Elimination Station. They therefore weren't shown in the final episode. That's fine, as long as you're not bitter about it. Entering The Amazing Race means leaving one's expectations at the door, and so if one is eliminated right at the outset, then accept that.

Then you have team members that seem to have their greatest fears. Like, Mika, what was that? Back in Dubai, they had to go through this high water jump, and she just couldn't do it. Because of that, they were eliminated. Wow. If one wanted to join The Amazing Race, one needs to expect that they will do pretty much everything, from jumping up a high building, to going to a very high place, to swimming in one's underwear. One needs to drive, walk, bike, take a taxi, and so on.

And what is it with team members being mentally challenged, in one way or another? They were in the Czech Republic, and there was a Kafkaesque challenge, and one team couldn't for the life of them figure out that the letters Z-N-R-F-A spell Franz, as in Franz Kafka? And another team don't even know that the most famous casino in Monaco is the Monte Carlo! They should play some more Trivial Pursuit.

The locales were pretty interesting this time around. I am glad that they didn't visit India again. I have nothing against India, but hey, they've visited that country for more than five times already, if I remember. Same thing with China. So I am grateful that they didn't visit those two countries and instead added new countries to the collection, such as Estonia and the Czech Republic. I also liked the fact that they went around the world crossing the Pacific, instead of the Atlantic. Asia is usually more challenging than Europe, so it weeds out the less travel-savvy of the group.

The thing that I didn't like about this race was its compactness. Yes, it spanned 21 days, but it only covered three continents: Asia, Europe, and North America. I wished they were a little more all over the place. I remember a previous season where they visited all continents in the race, and that was very awesome in my opinion. Oh well, I am just an avid fan.

Anyway, sometimes people ask me if I would want to do The Amazing Race. Probably not. I don't need that much of stress in my system. Heck, I get stressed just watching them. I get moments watching these that I see the clue and immediately the right answer pops in my head, but when I travel, I actually want to enjoy the place, instead of just zooming by.

(Ceilings of Justice, from my DC Buildings Series)

Book Review: Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Tuesday, December 08, 2009

If I were to pick a short story collection that I have thoroughly enjoyed, then I would pick this one.

I never picked up an Isiguro book before. I guess this is my first introduction to the novelist, and somehow, I like the fact that I picked it up. In fact, I liked it enough that I was able to finish the book within a day.

So, what is this book about? This book, as the subtitle says, is a book containing five stories of music and nightfall. I find it amazing that a writer was able to pick such a topic as a nocturne and write five related stories about it. And come to think of it, these five short stories indeed feel like the literary equivalent of a musical nocturne. I have played several nocturnes in a past life, when I was playing Chopin and Faure, and playing those nocturnes just gave me this melancholy and pensive feeling upon hearing the dreamy music. These stories are just the same.

The stories look like they are unfinished yet interwoven stories to each other. The first and fourth story shared the same characters, while the second and fourth story had a rather comic take to them. The first and fifth stories on the other hand both involved scenes in a cafe or a piazza, somewhere in Italy. Finishing every story just gave me this pensive and melancholy mood that always followed whenever I would hear or play a nocturne, and after that, I would always want another one.

I guess I couldn't find anything bad about this book. And so for that, I am glad that I decided to try Ishiguro. I never had the courage to read Japanese writers, for some unexplainable reason. I thought that they were too dense or complicated, and given my experience in studying Japanese literature back when I was a student in Japan, I never got them. So I thought they would be a hard read. And only recently have I learned that Ishiguro is actually a British writer, and that his writing cannot be categorized in the same way as other Japanese writers. I guess that made sense after reading this book.

I am glad. I am giving it 5 out of 5 stars.

(Justice Corridor, from my DC Buildings Series)

Death

Monday, December 07, 2009

I watched The Fountain for the second time the other day. The thing is, the ninja hasn't seen it before, and I recommended it to her so that we can watch it together. So that's what we did.

And again, I enjoyed the movie. It was very philosophical. And I cannot understand why my sister who is such a good movie critic didn't like this one.

The thing is, the movie is about death. The movie is about how people should accept death as a normal part of being human. In all three segments of the movie spanning three different generations, the character that Hugh Jackman plays is one who is the seeker of eternal life. The conquistador goes to Guatemala to search for the tree that grows from the navel of the earth, whose sap brings forth eternal life. The oncologist is doing research on rhesus monkeys incorporating a serum from the tree in Central America in search for the cure of death, which for him, is just a disease. And the astronaut is on his way to Xibalba, the nebula where he wants to be reborn.

The character that Rachel Weisz on the other hand plays is one who has accepted death. She is not afraid of dying anymore, and has come to terms with it. She is the most peaceful character in the movie.

Which brings the question why plenty of people in this planet are afraid of dying and why a lot of us want to prolong our lives. Some may argue that this urge to live forever is a sign that we indeed have the capability to live forever, but because of sin and corruption, we lost that ability. On the other hand, one can also argue that due to constant indoctrination that we humans once had the ability to live forever but lost it, it may be the cause of why we humans now aspire to live forever even though that is not the statistical norm.

Some people take as an argument the human body's apparent ability to regenerate at the cellular level, that we can heal and therefore in theory, should be able to live forever. But no, that is not the case. Women, when they are born, are already equipped with all the egg cells that they can have in their lifetime. Other biological aspects of being human are also subject to maturational constraints.

Anyway, I guess this movie has such an effect on me that I don't mind watching it again. I can see how this is different from the previous two Aronofsky movies, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, but I never felt that this movie was a flop. Yes, it was somewhat of a departure from the style that he had in the previous two movies that he directed, but I didn't mind that at all. This movie is one of the most philosophical movies I have seen, and I am glad to have seen it.

(Inside Columns, from my DC Buildings Series)

Book Review: The Seventh Beggar by Pearl Abraham

Sunday, December 06, 2009

I feel ambivalent about this story. It has good points, and bad points, and overall, I don't have a strong feeling about it. Well, I suppose it would help if I narrate what the story is about.

So, the novel begins by narrating the life of Joel, who is this young man, a child of a rabbi, and he goes to yeshiva school. Now, the weird thing about Joel is that there are plenty of weird things that occur around him. In the story, there was this incident where his parents are arranging his marriage to another Jewish woman, and he ends up being propositioned by seven women, all sisters, and they argued that it would be better if Joel marries all of them. So that was bizarre.

And then Joel starts having mental problems. He faints in a fish market, and that becomes gossip fodder for the whole Jewish community in Rockland county, and then his parents become worried about his marriage prospects. They think that the fainting incident becomes bad image with respect to his personality. Joel also becomes weird and obsessed with the alphabet, and this mainly concerns the Jewish prohibition of speaking God's name in vain, so he tries all these little permutations about pronouncing the four-letter Jewish word using various variations.

Then Joel dies in the middle of the story.

The story then shifts to JakobJoel, who is the son of Ada (Joel's sister) and Aaron (Ada's husband and Joel's best friend). JakobJoel is born after Joel dies, and he is characterized as one who initially went to Jewish school as well, but decided later on that he wanted a secular education, by transferring to the local public school. He later gets accepted to MIT and he studies artificial intelligence. There, he encounters Cog, a robot that his laboratory is trying to embody with human emotions.

Now JakobJoel becomes weird too. He hears his dead uncle. He develops this obsession about finding things about his dead uncle. And in a section of a book, where it wasn't really clear what happened, it seems that he had a hallucination and the time line was disrupted to create this parallel story within a story, where it recounted the story of lost children in the forest that were helped by seven beggars. This is where the title of the novel stems from.

Anyway, I liked the novel until Joel died. I always wanted to know why novels are titled the way they are titled, and yet for the longest time, this was unclear. Is the novel about Joel? About JakobJoel? About Joel and his weirdness and his influence on the living? About Jewish life in Rockland County? I am not really sure. This novel was interesting in the local level (I loved and appreciated the narrations and the mini-stories) but not at the global level. I never saw how the small vignettes of Joel's life and JakobJoel's life related as a coherent whole.

So, like I said, I am ambivalent with this. I don't think I would recommend this to others. I give it 2 out of 5 stars.

(Columns of Justice, from my DC Buildings Series)

Warping into a Tavern

Saturday, December 05, 2009

Yesterday was the day when the third-year doctoral students had to give their first presentation to the whole department. There is this requirement that was instituted in my year that the doctoral students had to do a presentation on their qualifying paper research by their fifth semester. So I did mine 2 years ago, and now, the people who came in 2 years later gave their talks.

There were two people who gave a talk. It used to be the case that their year included two other students, but for one reason or another, they both dropped out. So only two remained, and they gave talks yesterday.

It turned out well, and so afterward, the people from the year above them took the two of them to a restaurant, just to unwind and relax. I joined the group as well, since I am good friends with both of them.

We went to this tavern in Buffalo. It was locally-owned, and they didn't take credit cards; it was a cash-only establishment. They apparently were famous for good burgers, and they had plenty of selections for the beer. I got myself a Blue Moon, something that I enjoyed ever since visiting Portland, Oregon. I also got the sausage plate, and that turned out well too.

There was a rather big group, so I took the opportunity to mingle with the students that I don't really talk to, such as the first-years. I am a fifth-year, and so there is a four-year gap between us, and so there isn't much common ground. So I decided to chat with them while waiting for our food.

One thing that was a little cognitively dissonant though, was the ambiance of the place. Entering the tavern with the servers and the establishment in general made it look like we were warped into some bar in the wild west. Like it was some rugged bar in Montana or Colorado. Not that I had anything against those establishments, but someone wearing boots with spurs and a handgun would totally be in the scene in that establishment.

Anyway, that was well and fun, and so the night ended in a good note. I can only imagine what the next year's talks will be, given the fact that there is a large student body for next year who will give talks.

(US Supreme Court, from my DC Buildings Series)

Fermentation

Friday, December 04, 2009

Humans are social beings. That's at least what my T-shirt said at the back, which I got from my college back when I was in undergrad. After all, I belonged to the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy, which was a unit in the University of the Philippines. So we had a college shirt, and that was what it said one year. I happened to like it, so I bought one.

Anyway, there are times in which I feel that humans are too social. Too social that other people are turned into victims.

A person very close to me once complained about how people around her circle make stories about her and her close friend. The thing is, she has a best friend, and that best friend happens to be a guy. They haven't seen each other for a long time, and so they were initially planning to have a vacation together. Now, to cut down on expenses, they decided that they would be bunking together while traveling.

Now, in this 21st-century world, that would have not posed a problem at all. However, due to certain traits in other people that belong to their social circle, they decided to avoid this. Why? Other people wanted stories, so they would just create stories about these two people, and spread rumours about them, and run these stories in the rumour mill. It gets so bad that people start living their lives not because they want to, but because they simply follow the dictates of other people.

So, should I bunk together with a member of the opposite sex? Yes or no? Should I stay at a friend's house while visiting the country when my parents' house are just in the same neighborhood? Yes or no? Decisions such as these should come up easily, and yet people are forced to make decisions not because it is the most rational one, but because it is the most uncontroversial one. This I do not understand. Why do other people force other members of their society to conform?

Maybe because this particular social circle are discouraged to venture out. Maybe because all the people they know is this small group of people, and they don't know anybody else outside of this small group of people. Maybe they are so bored in their lives that they needed the urge to create a story, but fomenting rumours and spreading them around. Maybe this is the result of years of fermented association with each other, and that everybody just knows everybody, that it becomes a detrimental combination of characters.

I find it very hard to understand that people need to act accordingly, just so that other people won't stumble and fall. That reveals an underlying problem: that most people cannot think for themselves. Everyone's decision is dependent on someone else's decision. If a girl wears a strapless blouse, or blue-shaded fingernails, is that kosher or not? Personally, it is, but other people may think that it isn't. So what does the girl do? Chances are, she would just refrain from doing it since other people may think that it is not kosher and therefore bad. Because if she does it but other people look down on it, then the others might stumble and fall. That just reveals a major flaw with respect to the other people: that they are easily swayed by others, and that they don't really believe in things they claim to believe in if their beliefs are easily toppled by a simple color of a fingernail.

Why is it that people find it very hard to use their own heads? Come on people, you all have brains in that skull. Use it, don't just follow what everyone else is doing. If you're not fully convinced of what you claim to believe in, then no wonder that all it takes for you to fall is a simple style of dress.

(Office Building in Capitol Hill, from my DC Buildings Series)

Book Review: Seconds of Pleasure by Neil LaBute

Thursday, December 03, 2009

I guess this is what one gets when one writes about the dynamics of male-female relationships. This book is a collection of stories that detail the politics and reality of relationships between men and women.

So, why did I pick this book? I have been impressed with the work of Neil LaBute before. I am a big fan of his work, and I have seen both the movie and play version of The Shape of Things. What I like about his work is the candid and frank depiction of human emotion, how humans can be difficult, unpredictable, and incomprehensible at times.

So, this is a collection of short stories about various male-female relationships. Some are one-sided, some happen while in a plane, some are about arguments about whether to have a baby or not, some are about nagging wives and narrow-minded husbands. Some are stories that happen just in the head of one character, and nobody of the characters have names at all.

What I like about this book perhaps is the fact that it provides me with vignettes and a small snapshot of what it is like to enter the politics of sex. The various moves that men have to negotiate in order to satisfy women, the various rather irrational behavior by the women and also by the men, the various ways in which their modes of communication doesn't seem to match and therefore lead to trouble.

Anyway, although I enjoyed reading the book, I couldn't say that I enjoyed it immensely. I guess it has something to do with the topic: I can find other topics in which I would be more interested in reading. Oh well, I've finished reading it, and now it's back in the library.

(Bizarre Sculpture at Union, from my DC Buildings Series)

First Real Snow

Wednesday, December 02, 2009

Yesterday was rather bizarre. I've already mentioned earlier that we already had the first snow of the season, but it didn't stay for long. Yesterday was the first real snow of the season.

December came in, and with it was the first real snow. I woke up, and looked outside my window, and voila! The ground was white. The cars were covered, and the streets were slush. It's as if those slurpee machines in convenience stores just mass-produced their products that the streets were flooded with them.

Anyway, I guess it is winter again. Although the official start of winter isn't until December 21, but it is here. Somehow, I have the idea that this winter isn't as severe as the previous years, since we got out of November fairly scot-free. So if that is a sign that this is a warm winter, then I am all for it.

Oh well, a week and a half more of school before things wrap up. In the meantime, I can see snow on the horizon, so that is not a good thing. I miss autumn, which is my most favorite season, as the colors are just there blooming and attacking the senses. Winter is just white, slushy, and snowy. Oh well. Time to wait for the next year I guess.

(Union Bell, from my DC Buildings Series)

Book Review: Bernardo and the Virgin by Silvio Sirias

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Every once in a while, I pick up a piece of historical fiction, and it usually turns out to be a good piece that I wish it never ended. This is one such book.

This is the story of Bernardo Martinez, a tailor from Nicaragua, who claimed that in 1980, while Nicaragua was in the midst of a civil war, the Virgin Mary appeared to him. The virgin appeared several times, and Bernardo was given the task to propagate the message of the importance of praying the rosary to the Nicaraguans. The tale narrates the various difficulties and challenges that Bernardo had to face, including persecution from the Sandinistas, who wanted to silence him, and the apprehension of the Catholic Church with respect to his visions, mostly because he wasn't the most educated man in Nicaragua.

With respect to the plot, I have nothing bad to say. The author made a great job of writing a novel out of a historical fact. I am not a believer when it comes to the apparition, but I do respect the way other people construct their truth. Bernardo Martinez really existed, and for him, what he saw was the truth. I do not contest that. Truth for me is relative, and we can have contradicting truths because we construct our reality in differing ways. And the events that surrounded the apparition gave the author a lot of material to construct this wonderfully written historical novel.

The novel itself was written in a post-modern style. Every chapter had a different narrator. Somehow, I tended to pick novels in this style; My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk, which I read recently, was also of this style. But somehow I think this novel did a better job with respect to this style. After all, having the various different narrators provided the reader with access as to the various different opinions and points of view with respect to the affair of the apparition.

Another aspect of the novel that I liked is the non-linear aspect of narration. For every chapter, there was a date, and the story ran from 1931 to 2000, but it was not chronologically organized. Instead, it was divided into three parts: Innocence, War, and Peace. It was more of a triptych, with three parts spanning various moments in the life of Bernardo Martinez.

Finally, I liked the way the author gave me access to the Nicaraguan lifestyle. I have not been to Nicaragua, so I have no idea how the natives live, but this book was vivid enough to let me glean that from the text. It provided a very nice access to the scenery, and my imagination was more than happy to deal with it.

All in all, I was impressed with this book. I was glad that I picked it up from the library. It provided me with a glimpse of Central America, letting me visit that place in a vicarious manner.

(Christmas with the Romans, from my DC Buildings Series)