Wednesday, June 17, 2009

88, 85, 75!

the five-and-dime concept has always been around but it took a place called Japan Home Store (where almost everything is priced at Php88, 66 or 55, depending on the item) to get me hooked. ok, so 99.5% of the merch actually is manufactured in China, it just makes it easier for me to decide if I really need whatever I'm picking up.

like little deodorizing shoe inserts, in the shape of stuffed animals. or organizers. maybe even a kitchen knife or cutting board.

then along comes a store called Saizen (with items priced at Php85) and although I spend about 1-2 hours trawling the aisles, I leave with about 5-6 items in my small basket. this is one shop where you should never bring your credit card, and it pays to know the going rate for certain things. for instance, sidewalk chalk in New Hatchin grocery is Php30 cheaper than Saizen.

last week, after picking up a check at an office in Makati (which required crossing the South Superhighway on one of those rare pedestrian crosslanes), I decided to reward myself with a non-Japanese treat: gelato from Amici's :D

--then hopped over to Choto Stop to see what goodies I could pick up at Php75 an item:
the melon-flavored cream soda that tasted more like bubblegum
Japanese alcopop, called chu-hi
curry-flavored noodles (although the sprout later found good sausage-flavored ones) and furikake (stuff you sprinkle on rice, mostly chopped seaweed with sesame seeds and egg or salmon or somesuch)


i really like this shop :)

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

confessions of a library 'fugee

libraries are havens. period.

in grade school, they were where you would find the kids who couldn't play (because people were hogging the swings or something) or the ones who would browse over the selection of new books (if there were any) wondering when the librarian would let them take one home for the weekend.

in high school, apart from those who needed to study and research, you'd find the daydreamers and the occasional sleepers (who couldn't get enough naptime in their noisy classrooms) and the refugees who wanted to be left alone with their Tolkien or comic books.

despite the books that opened your mind in college, the librarian there was not called "conan" for nothing --she confiscated personal items left on your spot at the table, all bags were to be left outside at a designated "package counter" and anyone who wasn't reading or researching had to leave at once. (thankfully, library refugees are a resourceful lot and discovered a few other places to go find better books and facilities)

Sign of the Times on Twitpic

and even after graduation, there's nothing like getting lost in a forest of books and lanes of shelves to find a gem to read.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Eoin Colfer, when are you coming to Manila?




Because I'm sure the sprout will write about you like this:
[note that the event was two years ago :D --though both of us don't really care for the title of the article, hahaha, what can we do, the sprout's editor is just as rabid a Gaiman fan :)]


Not many of you know him, but Neil Gaiman is a famous author (among
older readers) and he has made many books from inspiration like The
Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish which was inspired by his son
Mike, The Wolves in the Walls was inspired by his youngest daughter
Maddy and other work like Coraline, Neverwhere, Anansi Boys,
Stardust—the Sandman series, and many, many more.
He's made over 75 books, and joked at the Fully Booked event that
Mike was able to go to college because of the money from The Day I
Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, and he supposed that maybe Maddy can
go to college too because of Wolves in the Walls.
The event was held at Bonifacio High Street last Sunday, which
supposed to start at 3:00pm, but it started at 4:00-5:00pm. The hosts
came onstage and after introducing themselves, announced to the
audience that Neil would not be autographing any books. The huge crowd
that had gotten together (even though it rained a bit, because there
was a typhoon on the way) said together in disappointment: AWWW! My
mom already warned me there wouldn't be any signing, but I brought my
copy of Coraline, just in case.
After being called a "prestidigitator" (someone who does sleight
of hand) by the hosts, Mr. Eric Mana did some amazing tricks like
teleporting coins and then he worked his way up to the stage. My
favorite trick was when he made 2 rubber bands pass through each
other--he is a genius. It was sooo cool he did some funny tricks and
finally got Neil Gaiman to be onstage (everyone was yelling in
excitement, and my mom says I was yelling too, like at a rock concert)
for the last trick, where different audience members gave random
numbers from 1 to 9, and he had added them up, reversed them, got a
number (109), got the Mirrormask book, turned onto page 109, found the
longest word (quintessential) and when Neil Gaiman reversed the large
cardboard he was holding, the exact same page was there with the word
"quintessential" circled and in big letters.
It was really exciting to see this guy who had written many books
that I like to read. And it was great to hear him say that the
Philippines has great artists and many fantastic stories that need to
be told. Then he let the hosts take over and ask him a few questions
asked by the audience. The most interesting question was "what is the
most important thing to making a scary character?" He answered the
most important thing is that it has to scare you too, like when he
wrote Coraline.
After they gave out the certificates for the first batch of
winners for the Fully Booked contest for story writers and comic book
artists, Neil went to rest for a short time then they showed a weird
short film (about a strange guy who ends up reading in the bookstore
surrounded by tons of books), then a band took over, using mostly
household items and showing off martial arts skills accompanied by
some strange background music that was kind of cool.
We had to leave at 6:00pm because I had to have my dinner and
wake up early for school the next day, but it was all fun!

My rating is 5/5 Neil Gaiman is the best!!!

the sprout's first book review (in 2007)


THE KING IN THE WINDOW (Adam Gopnik, Miramax Books/Hyperion Books for Children)

“The King in the Window” is about an American boy called Oliver who lives in Paris, France. Strange things begin to happen on the Feast of the Three Kings (Epiphany), when he and his family have the traditional King Cake, and his cake slice contains a prize: a gold key. His mom gives him a paper crown and he gets mistaken for a king by beings living in a parallel world: window wraiths, who are the reflections of real people. After some small adventures, Oliver ends up leading an army of window wraiths who are fighting against the master of mirrors (a wicked character with no face, because he steals them from people who stare into mirrors for too long and uses them as disguises), because he discovers his father’s soul is trapped in this other world and fights desperately to free him. In the real world, he is helped by Neige (a slightly older French girl who is a crystal gazer), Mrs. Pearson, an author who is good at solving riddles and bad-tempered Mr. Theodore the balloon seller. Oliver also gets help from the homeless old men called clochards, who help protect him. In the other world, the window wraiths who help him out are Francois, Moliere (who is wise), and Racine (who likes to use metaphors)

Outrageous things happen in the story. In the parallel dimension or mirror world every thing is reversed: soft is hard, and hard is soft. Which means if you are in there you could get killed by a feather and the Eiffel Tower bends over like a rubber toy! One of the characters gets sucked into an ice cube in the story while Oliver almost gets strangled by someone in the mirror. At another point in the book, shadows leave the side of man and help fight the war.

If you were to read the book in one day you better start in the morning and go on reading nonstop and you’ve got to read quickly. Read everything, it might sound boring but if you read long enough you will feel as though you are there and you can also picture it in your head and read at the same time which proves that it is all worthwhile and in my opinion it is more fun than GBA or Playstation.

My rating is 4/5 because it is a nice book.

The Grand Saint of Pinoy Rock


(Pepe Smith by Wig Tysman, woohoo...when are we gonna see Mig Ayesa do the biopic?)

munchmunchmunch {or book love in the time of a(h1n1)}



we got our flu shots a couple of weeks back, thank you very much.
meanwhile, the sprout has been going nuts gorging on books (Eoin Colfer, my kid is making you rich buying your hardbound books at full price --yes, this is the stingy horrified parent metaphorically tearing her hair out despite being happy for the voracious little reader who's now chewing slowly through the collected Narnia works).


and now, whilst shopping for school supplies at our friendly neighborhood bookstore, a treasure trove of Dr. Who* books at Php30 each! yay. Yes, and the Artemis Fowl novella called "The Seventh Dwarf" --a steal at Php20.

*addiction begun thanks to the Easter Special, plus three audiobooks that gave him nightmares involving zombies and a huge tentacled creature ripping the windows off his room.