There are places so different and aloof that no matter how hard you try to blend in you just can’t shake off feeling like a stranger. And you realize that regardless of how long you stay or how often you visit, they will never feel familiar, or at least comfortable. That’s just the way things are between you and these places.

And perhaps the same can be said of people.

One of my housemates is a senior voice major at the UP College of Music. Since Ervin joined us in the apartment a few years ago, I have had to resort to reciting psalms in the shower instead of belting out hymns. Hehe. Ervin is a very gifted singer, but he is more than his powerful and impressive voice; the dude’s a really nice fellow, lighthearted and very humble.

A few weeks ago we all got excited for him as he told about a possible guesting at the Kapuso Network. Turned out he would be singing the finale with Kyla at the launch of GMA’s newest, high-tech studio.

His voice recital had to be re-scheduled to accommodate the guesting. In the midst of juggling preparations for his recital and rehearsals for the TV guesting, Ervin asked me if I would design his recital poster. I was all too glad to help because, well, I am a good housemate—okay, maybe I was also eager to see Zak the MacBook in action with Photoshop. I missed his recital because of my Hong Kong trip, but I heard it went well. Now I wasn’t going to miss his TV debut.

The GMA 7 event, which actually happened last Oct 17, was aired just last night. I poured myself some orange juice (Minute Maid—with real orange pulp!) and waited for the finale. Ervin is in Bacolod for the semestral break, so when his bit finally came on, I just texted him, “Telegenic!” No reply. I’m sure he was flooded with text messages from all his friends (and fans!). Tonight I got a Yahoo message from a mutual friend, with a link to a YouTube upload of Ervin’s number. (Nothing escapes YouTube!) Watching it the second time gave me goosebumps. Here it is. Enjoy!

That’s mah housemate! I better get his autograph before he becomes more famous I wonder how it felt to hold Kyla’s hand and have her sing while staring deep into your eyes…

If, on some Friday afternoon, you feel the inexplicable urge to back up all your laptop files (including your precious email data), you would do well to heed that still small voice. Because soon after, say the following Tuesday, you could be walking back to your office from a meeting, with laptop, power cord, and assorted paper in your hands. And, who knows, you just might trip. (That little hump near your door isn’t as harmless as it looks, you know.)

In slow-mo you see your laptop escape your hands, succumb to gravity, and hit the floor. Your mind switches to denial mode and tells you this isn’t happening, you’re just dreaming. But the loud thud–no, BANG!–is more than enough to jolt you (and everyone within earshot) out of any dream or denial. You seriously think a cardiac arrest is not far behind.

Next day, you’re back working on your laptop, as though nothing tragic happened the day before. Until you notice the new paper weight on your desk, which looks uncannily like a hard disk. Then you remember yesterday’s painful credit card swipe at the repair shop. But you don’t forget to be thankful that your laptop, the trusty keeper of your productivity and sanity, does not have amnesia and is recovering quite splendidly from its accident and subsequent transplant surgery.

Now you’re considering belief in premonition.

Ever wondered what it’s like to be utterly funny, famous, and…uhm, yellow and two-dimensional? Then step into the world of the Simpsons! I did, and in that crazy world of Bart and his ilk, I look a little something like this.

I think I need a haircut and cooler shades. Now it’s your turn – create a Simpsons version of you over at Simpsonsmovie.com! It’s a hoot!

Better Than I from Joseph: King of Dreams (Dreamworks animation)

Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.

- C.S. Lewis

Last night I was hanging out with co-workers at our publishing house’s bookshop. Near closing time, a lady customer took a seat by the counter, one book in each hand. She was torn: “Which book should I get?”

“Why not both?” volunteered my friend Gracia, who’s from Sales and a certified booklover. (I mimicked a game show’s theme music for effects. Pressure, pressure.) Both books were novels (I didn’t catch the titles) and the only copies left. There was no guarantee either one would still be waiting for her on her next visit.

Our customer, we found out, started to enjoy reading at twelve when she got an entire set of Christian fiction books as a gift. And there was no stopping her since. Years later, we meet her in a bookstore tortuously pondering whether or not to let go of a rare find. (I have a feeling this dilemma plays itself countless times in her life.) As a high school teacher, she said that she shares her books to teenage girls in the hope that they too would be ushered into the wonderful world of reading.

Ask the bibliophiles you know and you’ll discover that most of them started their love affair with books early in life. A parent read to them every night; a ninang persevered in giving them books on their birthday—every year; a teacher pulled them aside and lent them a classic to check out; a principal detained them in the library for bad behavior.

The first book I owned was The Pied Piper of Hamelin, my prize in a poetry recitation contest in kindergarten. But the first books that really blew my mind away were C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia. I was ten and the books were lent to me serially by my English teacher (who later became my sister-in-law).

Then came the requisite (at least during my time) Bobbsey Twins, Hardy Boys, and Nancy Drew mysteries, followed by the cool Choose Your Own Adventure series. Now, as an adult, I gravitate to books that stir my heart and mind, and help me make sense of things—my faith journey, the human condition, glimpses of God’s hand at work.

I wouldn’t call myself an avid reader. I know some people who are far more into books than I am, delighting even in the smell and texture of the pages. But I certainly cannot imagine a life without books. Stripped of the opportunities to imagine endless what-ifs; to explore the workings of other minds; to participate vicariously in the experiences of others; to be challenged by truth and inspired to hope—A bookless life would be a tragic one.

I doubt if I would appreciate the power and beauty of the printed word now had it not been for encounters with books in childhood. Adult readers should propagate their kind by investing in the young ones in their lives.

Last summer I gave my little niece E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web; she enjoyed it so much she detests how the movie adaptation doesn’t stick to the book word for word. Her aunt, my sister, promised to bequeath to her the yellowed copies of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Men and Little Women when she turns twelve. The anticipation is killing her.

Every young person, I believe, should be given the chance to meet good books that can interest them. And, hopefully, that encounter will blossom into a lifelong friendship with these fascinating creatures of ink and paper.

“I guess I’ll just have to skip going to Jollibee for awhile,” the bookstore customer sighed as she finally reached her decision. She paid for the two books, clearly excited to find out what wonders await her inside the pages.

Maybe one of those two books, one day, will land in the hands of a young person, swinging open the doors to many worlds. Here’s hoping that reading will also captivate him or her, for a lifetime.

__________________________

Currently Reading:

Soul Cravings
by Erwin Raphael McManus

Last Memorable Read:

Walking from East to West:
God in the Shadows
Ravi Zacharias

Well, not really. It’s the same set of furniture, just a different corner in the blogosphere. And a little bluer. Too blue for me, according to my friend Turkangel.

“Blue is not your color.” (Emphasis mine.)

Of course, I know it isn’t my color (emphasis still mine). So whose is it, anyway? I’d like to know who owns the color blue so I can say thanks. Harhar.

Corny. Yeah, yeah. I got that a lot today. Blame it on the only four hours of sleep last night. I stayed up until past 2AM migrating from Blogger and doing a bit of header decorating. I’m not really sure why I moved. It’s just one of those spur of the moment things. (Now Gypsy calls me the blogosphere gypsy!)

I was so tired on the commute home today I think I slept through most of the jeepney ride from the MRT station. I hope I didn’t snore though. Groggy from sleepiness, still all I could think about was my Blogroll. Must… put… up… bl..og…rolllll…ASAP… Zzzzzzz.

And so here I am. Droopy-eyed and yawning every ten seconds. But a blogger’s got to do what a blogger’s got to do, right?

Welcome to my new little blue patch of blog earth

(By the way, the sea background on my header – I took that myself onboard the Superferry. Then again, even the most unskilled of camera users seldom go wrong shooting at least these two: sunset/sunrise and the ocean. They’re too perfect that even photographic ineptness can do so little to degrade their beauty.)

Once upon a time, the world was unimaginably vast. And it invited many explorers to brave its oceans in search of unknown lands. Today, the world has shrunken into a global village held taut by satellites and fiber optic cables. The only Explorer we know now is an internet browser (not necessarily the best of its kind, I might add) with which we navigate the world’s seas of information and ideas. Our time’s great voyagers go by a new name: internet surfers. And a distinct class of which are the bloggers.

In the comforts of our little corners, we bloggers turn on the computer, log on to the net, and the world is practically in our fingertips. Like children on Christmas day, we excitedly recount and read about seemingly trivial and mundane details of ordinary people’s lives. We get a thrill out of interacting with personalities, oftentimes veiled in screen names and online personas, most of whom we will never even meet face to face.

Blogs are as varied in subject, style, and substance as the diverse bloggers that author them. But where we might expect to find dissonance or discord—owing to a world of differences, the most apparent of which are geography and culture—we are delighted to stumble upon connection, a fresh discovery of our commonality as humans.

It appears that the more we share of ourselves and discover about others in these online journals, the more we feel under our feet the common ground on which we all stand—notwithstanding differences in location, culture, ideologies, beliefs, or even blog service providers. Our idiosyncrasies, we realize, have after all a generic value; we are surprised (sometimes even relieved) that a peculiar trait, a strange afterthought, a wild idea that we blog about oftentimes resonate with other people, somewhere in the vast blogosphere.

As modern-day creatures we have come to obsess over independence and privacy almost to a point of hermitry. And yet we must admit: we cannot truly thrive without connection. Away from any form of community, we inevitably lose parts of our humanity. So perhaps, just perhaps, blogging provides a workable compromise: we retain our privacy (which, for many, means anonymity), while still being able to engage in some form of human interaction.

Now, whether or not this techonologically-aided connection becomes meaningful and healthy depends on us as we swoosh the mouse and tap on the keyboard.