She lives and works from her laptop on a little paradise island in the Philippines. She's a writer, graphic artist, and mountaineer. During rainy days she loves to sleep and oversleep and dream and daydream and then write. More »
+ Anaïs Walsdorf
+ Andy Macalino
+ Carlos Quijon
+ Chingbee Cruz
+ Christine Lao
+ Clara Buenconsejo
+ Dana Delgado
+ Eva Gubat
+ Glenn Diaz
+ Jeffrey Javier
+ Joel Toledo
+ Jordan Carnice
+ Kristine Reynaldo
+ Lyza Taguilaso
+ Oscar Sequina
+ Peachy Paderna
+ Pia Benosa
+ Raffy Recalde
+ Vlad Gonzales
Book fair at MOA.
At any given moment, it's just either I'm incurably curious or I don't give a shit. Now books and malls are two universes apart in my spectrum of interests. I can spend my entire life locked up in a library, but I'd go bonkers if you lock me up in a shopping mall. Friday just happened to be a convergence of these two extremities. I materialized in a book fair inside a mall.
Mall of Asia was packed with so many people you'd think the rockstar Jesus was having a free concert. The illusion of a three-day sale is that you pay less for the things you don't really need. But you buy them anyway because you think it's a good deal. The word "sale" is just part of a catch phrase predatory corporations use to trap their prey. A mousetrap with bits of rotten cheese. A psychological manipulation. They're the brains us zombies are programmed to feed on.
All those shit inside malls, they're either the stuff we want or the stuff we're trained to want.
I've been avoiding adverts forever. I haven't seen a TV commercial in ages; I don't watch TV. I haven't seen a single cyber-advert. (Thanks to Firefox's AdBlock plugin.) Inside jeepneys and buses and train rides, I read books instead of looking out the window. Corporate motherfuckers have been screaming at me to buy their shit that I've created my own little universe cramped inside my skull.
It just gets fucking annoying. You don't know it but everyday you subconsciously filter in an average of one thousand ads.
Two thousand years ago Homer and Virgil wrote epics they thought the gods whispered to them.
Two thousand years later we see an anti-dandruff shampoo on TV and we rush out to buy. Today this is what passes for free will.
Why we're all suckers for shopping malls is particularly why I avoid adverts. We're all hypnotized into wanting all the wrong things without even knowing it.
Now books, they're a different mofongo altogether. Reading defies all boundaries, liberates the mind, and generates creative and original thought. Reading is the best antidote against this marshland of boredom and vacuity. Reading is the supreme experience of living. The more I read the more I think the more I feel alive.
Humdaboogerdum.:p
But books inside a shopping mall, I'd be intensely curious and intensely disinterested at the same time they cancel each other out.
Buddies at UPWC.
Nevertheless I sauntered to the book fair in the mall with two girls (Yes, I hate girls and stupid girls in particular but this is an exception.:p) whom I share my passion for reading with. And would you believe it, half the books sold were strictly religious, strictly catholic, and strictly fucking pathetic. Them spiritual book stalls, they're infested with the same people who are trained to want the same things. They're the aimless lost zombies of our nation. The people who think they want the things they're conditioned to want. The idiots who think life's lessons can be reduced into a simplified and generic self-help manual.
On the tarpaulins inside the mall they say they've slashed up to 75% off the original price. But if you look at the original price they're so inflated you'd think they've wedged gold bars inside.
But me, I'm a sucker for books. I melt at the sight of them. I want to liquefy and drain all the ink from their pages. So to put it briefly, I've been sold into buying books at the book fair inside the shopping mall.
I am a zombie. But I am a zombie breaking borders, not building them.:p
Blabbityblah.
I'm saving moolalalah for a Mt. Apo expedition this coming semestral break. Mt. Apo, the highest peak in the country.:o But I don't know--I still don't get the logic behind mountaineering. It sounds like we all have the chutzpah and feel like we need to prove it. But really, I don't want to prove anyone anything. Why I'd spend ten grand on some stupid hiking experience, I haven't the haziest idea.
Or maybe, I'm simply a fool for nature. Maybe I'm vomity sick of the city. I don't know.
