Eat Pray Love - the movie

You might be wondering how this piece of literature garnered two entries on my blog which has been, in the whole of its existence, a random spurting of thought. No, I am not an Eatpraylovaholic. Its just a good book and as I have said, its been long since I actually finished a book. I finished the (approximately) 400 pages of it and I am proud to truthfully declare that my eyes are still intact.

While reading the book, I did what most of us do - imagine the scenes in full detail. After a few pages or so, my imagination can make an hour long movie. There are approximately one hundred few pages in the book so if you do the math, there should be around 100 hours of film to justify the magnitude of the book. Common sense used, it is impossible to make a film that can justify the mammoth chronicles of the book. So while finishing the reading, I was lowering my standards for the film which will probably skip most of my favorite details and which will likely fine tune the plot to create a more tangible and less spiritual ending, in honor of the limitations of commercial film making. Skip the whole point to make more people understand , in other words.

The film can survive if you haven't read the book. If you have read the book, I can easily imagine you throwing tomatoes at the movie screen. The book was like Ferrerro Rocher, the movie was just the gold wrapper. Some consider that trash, others, part of the whole treat.

Eating, Praying, Loving

I love bookstores but since I realized my eyes do not enjoy reading fine print, hesitations on buying a book were bigger than ever. Thus, I haven’t read as obsessively as I used to.

(There is the obvious question of why don’t I get myself a pair of glasses. I had experiences with glasses. At least three pairs have been sacrificed to my clumsy hands. In two weeks or less, I’ll get tired of wearing them and I will eventually lose them without enough sympathy to find them. They cost a fortune and it figures I am not worthy of another one. I have opened my mind to getting contact lenses but my mother thinks they are killing machines disguised as calibrated sheets of transparencies. She said my eyes will completely give out if I use contacts. Lasik, on the other hand, is very interesting but seeing something on TV outside the capital of the Philippines rarely means its readily available.)

So now I’m in Jakarta (No, I’m not getting a Lasik.) and my sister owns the book by Elizabeth Gilbert called Eat Pray Love. I saw this already on a bookstore in the Philippines and in Singapore and every time I do, I would feel my hand digging down for bills in my pants. Hesitation kicks in and I decide that reading something this thick would probably draw my eyeballs out.  Holding that book now feels amazing because I saved a few bucks for patience, a virtue I sorely lack. I started reading it yesterday and I’m barely half-way through. My reading is of approximately thirty minutes of reading, then a millennium of contemplation.

 

The pauses are not only brought by the aching eyes. Eat Pray Love is a memoir of a woman’s travel to three countries – Italy, India and Indonesia – in an effort to find contentment. I got triple excited when I read the introduction and knew that the book was actually a journal of the author on her journey last 2006, simply put: its all real. The book is slow paced and she has wrote, in detail, all the life lessons and tidbits of thought she accumulated in every part of the world she is in. I pause because I need time to digest the magnitude of reality she shares in every few chapters. The book is amazing and is just perfect for school breaks.

Last August, a movie version was released starring Julia Roberts. I did not watch it because I lacked reason to do so. Tomorrow, me and my sister (who already read the book in full) are going to watch the movie.

ARE YOU?

ARE YOU tired of the few dimensions we are exposed to everyday? Are you bored by movies that are extremely comprehensible? Are you annoyed by commercial movie-making that focus on profit rather than craftsmanship? Are you the person that hears Leonardo DiCaprio and immediately tears on a hallucinated scene from Titanic and nothing more? Well, this movie is for you. Ladies and gentlemen, I present .... Shutter Island:

 

Leonardo's acting was exploited and/or abused in this masterpiece. Its both entertaining and draining. After the movie, I felt like my head was in a debate whether I understood the movie or if I just spent more than two hours of my life staring at incoherent pixels. The movie is about human psychology and its just amazing.

(If you allow me: ARE YOU interested in blending your brain by watching a movie with a killer story line? Are you? ARE YOU!?!?)

Merry Christmas

So in a few hours, I'll start cooking penne pasta with my sister. We are planning a tomato sauce-tuna fusion that is edible. It being tasty would be a huge bonus. We are doing it for .... wait for it .... noche buena!

I wonder why Santa looks overweight.

Noche buena, formally Nochebuena or "Good Night" in Spanish, is a Hispanic tradition well accepted in the Philippines. Its a bountiful meal at Christmas Eve implying "what better way to celebrate the coming of the Savior than by gluttony eating a lot". My race just believes that abundance of food is a symptom of celebration and happiness.

We only do this once in over 360 days so you better get yourself a nice one. Advanced Merry Christmas!

Now in Jakarta

Be forgiving. I was busy having fun.

First things first, so we arrived at Singapore and we stayed there for three days. I have planned to bring my father to the Universal Studios but unfortunately, the tickets were sold out. December is a money pot for amusement parks. I have been to the Universal Studios last month and I wanted to go there again but I can get over it. My father was also enthusiastic about the park and he was disappointed. I hope he will dismiss it as another reason to return to Singapore.

So instead, I went to stores and shopped a little.

The Christmas sale at The Orchard Rd. was amazing but still my wallet couldn't catch up. =(

I also went to Bugis, a street market, and eyed on several beautiful stuff.

Singapore is such a haven for people who enjoy window shopping and walking in the warm sun, browsing through epic shelves of outstanding architecture. Its my second time here but in seemed that I still have a lot to see. Singapore is wonderful.

My flight off Singapore was late afternoon so Mother Earth treated us to a show.

So now I and my father are in Jakarta with my sister and wonderful niece so I couldn't be happier. I was also here last year and I'm so glad I could come back! Jakarta is such a colorful city.

Off to Singapore, then Jakarta

I will be flying off to Singapore tomorrow! Then from Singapore, I'll be in Jakarta to spend the Holiday Season with my wonderful sister and my cute niece.

The wind blowing my lips to a smile on top of VivoCity, a mall which size can swallow all
the malls here in Iloilo

I was in Singapore just last month and in some funny turns of fate I'll be back with my father (last time was with mother) to Singapore, the Asian country-city which disallow dust to roam around in public areas, where cleanliness is a mantra, where irritant-triggered asthmatics are truly free.

My tired phase smothering Christmas Orchard Road.

All photos were taken from last month.

I finally saw him on earth on stage on tv

Its 1:19 in the morning with exams later - and probably a lot of regret. Where did I get my nasty sleeping habbits from? Watching the replay of the concert on TV was well worth it though.

I guess Christmas is in town.

For the past n years, Christmas in our house has failed Filipino standards. 


Read more on tumblr.

I'm seriously considering moving on to Tumblr because of the Follow feature but I have been with this blog for a very long time and ohwhatthe treachery it would be just to leave it hanging in midair after a more than a year affair.

Drifting in my mind

An expert from a conscious dream.

The problem is myself. I find it hard to realize that I am special and that I am unique. I only believe that I am mediocre and I despise that. Every time I say out loud that I love myself or that I look good, a part of me burns because I long for the day when I will truly learn to love myself, then I would stop longing to be someone different.

Over thinking only leads me to depressing ideas that seem to be the truth. I talk a lot, joke a lot and consequently laugh a lot but growing up will teach us that a laugh is not happiness. The complexity of the mind is a mystery and being that, I only look at it as a complicated maze where I am losing myself. 

My heart is speaking to my brain. Its saying that maybe, being a human is too complex for my soul. But I know that I am not average in the level of thought I put into things. Paralysis by analysis. Ugh. I never get paralyzed by thought! I'm more on the ADHD side of thinking. The thinking process keeps me moving and moving a lot which results to finishing nothing. I am a failure. 

What keeps me alive? The light at the end of this long tunnel and the curiosity on how it would feel to be happy because of what you are.

Maybe its just my fault that I put myself down too much that I do not appreciate myself; but what is there to appreciate in a barren but active mind. My mind is constantly in motion but it seems to lack in substance that is more related to life than science.

Science. It is supposed to procure answers but all it seems to do for me is to create more and more choices to decisions normal people should take, in short, it causes confusion and more 'Why?'s. Science is supposed to satiate the brain's hunger for content but for me, it keeps my brain hungry. I guess the brain's longing for knowledge is by the longing of knowledge to itself. Unless we figure out the universal answer, learning will be infinite.

 This is not wisdom literature, this is an excerpt from my daydream.

Early Bird Trust Issues

When I was writing a speech as Judas Escariot for English class, a rather random idea popped into my mind. Can you remember the last time you stopped yourself from telling the whole story to your mother thinking they would just forget about it? This is my answer to that:

I am in grade six and I was walking the way home from school. My route involves passing by the University Church which is grand with a high, platform-like roof covering its grand entrance several steps up high a wide staircase. It was a sight to behold and every time I walk its way, I wouldn’t miss taking a peek at its majesty. This day was different though because on the high roof, I saw a man wearing clothes similar to the school’s gardeners. Have they started to plant on that roof? I asked myself and took several steps nearer to home.

I heard the man on the roof shout at me because apparently, I was the only one near enough to hear him. I took another look and I saw him clutching a bible and a knife, he was tearing down his jacket and the shirt he wrapped around his head. I knew something was wrong. He was shouting at me and I was pretty sure he wanted to jump. Knowing I should listen, I listened and after I heard enough, I started running towards the nearby security guard station and informed them about the horror I witnessed.