Staircase Wit

We have been planning our wedding since October last year. It was supposed to be a church wedding, and we wanted to celebrate it with 150 of our closest family and friends. Of course the pandemic made large gatherings impossible, so we decided to postpone our church wedding until next year, and just have a civil wedding ceremony close to our original wedding date. Planning a wedding in the midst of a pandemic is truly challenging: It was risky to get a professional to do your hair and makeup, so my mom and sister did my makeup. We couldn’t book hotel rooms to use as our wedding preparations venue, so we did our wedding preps photo shoot at my fiancé-now-husband’s house (which is now our family home). It was not safe to go out to buy wedding dress and shoes, so I shopped for mine online. Our first civil wedding date (August 5) was even cancelled because Metro Manila was suddenly put under the stricter Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ). The moment MECQ was lifted, we contacte...

1. "If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product." 2. Tech giants forbid their own kids from using social media. 3. "Social media isn't a tool that's just waiting to be used. It has its own goals, and it has its own means of pursuing them." 4. The guy who invented Youtube's algorithm is now telling us to avoid watching the next video Youtube is urging you to watch. 5. Social media platforms are built to manipulate us into spending as much time in front of the screen as possible. 6. We are indeed living in a Black Mirror episode, and it's a lot scarier than most people think.

This is an intriguing and entertaining quick read, a guilty pleasure of a page-turner that is easy to finish in a few hours.  This book is about social climber Amber Patterson, who befriends the beautiful Daphne Parrish so she can steal the latter's obscenely rich husband. While this book has evil villains with no redeeming value, it is worth reading for the satisfying plot twist.

 

Rebecca Serle's In Five Years pretends at first to be a romance novel. The premise: Dani, a career-driven lawyer gets engaged to a guy who is the "right fit" for her. She falls asleep and wakes up five years later finding herself in bed with a totally gorgeous total stranger. Then she wakes up again, returning to the present. Eventually she meets again the stranger in her "dream". It sounds like a cute rom-com, but nope, it's far from one. In Five Years is actually a story about friendship, and about finding and loving yourself. The bittersweet twist at the end is sad but realistic and satisfying. This is a heartwarming and beautiful read.

The story is so beautiful and it made me cry buckets, yes yes okay. But what I loved the most is how this film transported me back to Tokyo! The locations just feel so familiar, and this film makes me ache to go back there. This film shows Tokyo so vividly! The busy train stations, the coffee vending machines, the city skyline, the architecture, the restaurants and cafés where you can just sit by yourself and enjoy your meal alone. This film even captures the eerily quiet and peaceful experience of riding a crowded Japanese train. I miss Tokyo so badly it's almost heartbreaking.

Thoughts after watching Hamilton on Disney+ three times: 1. Hamilton is an exciting and kinetic frenzy of a musical about the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of American's Founding Fathers. It's a history lesson (but many liberties were taken of course), but sang in rap, hip-hop, pop, and R&B. 2. I have been obsessed with Hamilton since 2016. I have repeated the Original Broadway Cast Recording on Spotify probably a million times. Even if I can practically sing along to every line to every song in the musical, I was still awed and floored by the film. 3. There are so many witty details in the film; details that are so understated you will only see them on your second or third viewing. 4. Where else, in the history of pop culture, would you see two cabinet secretaries debate against each other in the form of a rap battle? 5. I have never seen a more talented ensemble of actors. They sing, dance, and rap. Their facial expressions add even more flavor to the already great musi...

No, this not a self-help book that teaches you how to be charming and how to effectively communicate with people. This a book written by Malcolm Gladwell, after all. Malcolm Gladwell wants to tell us that we generally "default to truth", that we have a tendency to believe that people are telling the truth, even if there is already glaring evidence that we are being lied to. Then again, Gladwell tells us that it's okay if most of us default to truth. After all, if we are all skeptics all the time, it would be impossible for us to have to have an organized society. Gladwell also warns us that not all strangers are transparent. We think we might know psychology and human behavior, and that we have ample experience in reading people. But some people's internal feelings and thoughts are simply not matched to their facial expressions and behavior. Talking to Strangers is another interesting and fascinating book by Malcolm Gladwell.  Read his books with a grain ...

The story of Bel Canto was inspired by the 1996 Japanese Embassy hostage crisis in Peru. That hostage crisis, just like the one in the novel, lasted for several months. In real life, just like in the novel, revolutionary rebels took as hostage high-level diplomats and business executives. The main difference between the two hostage crises: In the novel, one of the hostages is the world's greatest opera singer. Bel Canto is romantic, haunting, and fi lled with magical realism. It makes you fall in love with each and every character--every politician, diplomat, priest, idealistic young rebel soldier and general. It makes you understand why the hostages and rebels all wish they never have to leave the mansion where they are all locked up. Then it breaks your heart. Read the book, then watch the film. Both are inspiring and beautiful.

In Netflix's Hollywood, everyone is sexy, glamorous, and gorgeous. Everyone is miraculously talented. Everyone is in love. There are no real bad guys (except lawyers). Everyone wants to protect the civil rights of the minorities. Everyone does the right thing. The series starts out great--savvy and interesting. But then it slowly becomes cheesy, and ends in a cute Oscar awards show where everyone gets their happy ending. It's like the ending of the film/novel Atonement, where the writer fantasizes about an alternate reality in which everything turns out perfectly in the end, just because she felt bad about the actual events in real life.

Thanks to my HBO Go subscription (probably one of my most sulit purchases during the quarantine period), I was able to re-watch Season 1 of Sex and the City. I grew up watching SATC. All throughout my years in undergrad, I tuned in to HBO weekly to watch Carrie Bradshaw and her friends traipse all over New York City. I was a just a teenager back then, and as a teenager I thought Carrie and her friends knew everything there was to know about life and love. Watching SATC again, and now in my mid-thirties, I realized that Carrie’s maturity when it comes to dating and relationships is that of a woman in her early twenties. I mean, who else would: (1)  date a guy who clearly didn’t see her early on as someone he would want to marry eventually; (2) actually whine to the same guy about not being taken seriously; (3) actually arrange a meeting with the same guy’s ex-wife; (4) go to the church where the same guy accompanied his mother, hoping he would introduce her as his girlfri...

Final Fantasy VII Remake feels like a dreamy and stylish upgrade of the same game I used to play.

Notes on Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (now on Netflix): 1. This is a fun, fun, fun movie to watch. This is Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt in their element, and this is their kind of movie. 2. Leo and Brad have awesome chemistry together. Rick (played by Leo), a narcissistic almost has-been movie star, and Cliff (played by Brad), his "more than a brother, but less than a wife" sidekick and stuntman. 3. This film features real celebrities--Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, et al. In real life, Tate, Sebring, Folger, and Voytek Frykowski were killed by the Manson family (the hippies who tried to kill Cliff, Rick, and his wife, Francesca). In Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the hippies break into Rick's house instead. This movie gives us a fantasy "what-if". 4. Awesome soundtrack. 5. So Brad Pitt's character just easily beats Bruce Lee Bruce Lee, who can go against the Chuck Norrises of this world. Yes, this mo...

City of Girls is a decadent, booze-filled, and sexy coming-of-age novel about New York City, the theater, fashion, and feminism. While it starts off light and fun, it eventually reminds you that the novel is set against the backdrop of World War II, and tells of the somber reality experienced by the war's survivors. Photo credit: Bloomsbury UK