Books I'm Reading...

 

Just finished reading this book, took me two sittings in two nights to consume its 642 pages. Ga! Nagpuyat ako (the second night, I slept at 2 am so I could finish it, FINALLY!). To be honest, it disappointed me. :( 

It started out nicely, and I like Kostova's writing style. I could really see the mountains and castles of Eastern Europe. It was like going to Bulgaria/ Romania/ Hungary vicariously.

However, it was simply TOO LONG, in my opinion. Sure, there was enough suspense (always put it at the end of the chapters, propelling the reader to forge ahead... nice) to keep me going, but somewhere in the middle of the book I kinda forgot WHY people kept dying, WHY the girl was going after this wild goose chase after Dracula. Well, not really forgot... but it was no longer REAL to me after a while.

(Call me a prude, but I was rather shocked that the sixteen-year-old heroine SLEPT with a man as the story progressed... ganun na ba ka-loose yung mga Americans even back in 1974?)

I like how one reviewer (courtesy of amazon.com) put it:

"...imagine for a second that you're at a fancy French restaurant. Money is no object, so you tell the chef to prepare the finest, greatest meal he can muster. And he's up to the challenge. From divine appetizers to wonderful entrees, the most exquisitely delicious food crosses your palate. After a delicious plate of seared lamb, you realize you're starting to get too full. You're not sure how much more you can eat. But the chef begs you to continue, for the desert he has planned will be pure ambrosia. So you sit through just a few more courses. You nibble your way through courses of soup, and veal, and a divine roasted duck. Finally, unable to stomach another bite, the chef announces desert. You sit up, wondering what exactly the chef had in mind...how it can possibly trump all the delicious food you had consumed already. And the waiter walks out of the kitchen carrying a small plate. Your desert. The promised ambrosia. He sets it down in front of you, and you stare at it in confusion.

It's a popsicle.

... The Historian flounders under it's own weight, unable to scale the mountain of even it's own windy narrative and leave me with even anything remotely close to a feeling of satisfaction upon it's close. Somehow, I think the popsicle would've been more entertaining in the long run."

Let's hope that this is better:

Some books I want for Christmas (*winks suggestively to siblings and parents*):

 

I loved Anthony Capella's previous novel, it's one of my favorites! Especially good to read while eating, yum yum!

And this one:

Hmmm... not exactly "intellectually edifying" reads, but hey! That's why I joined Ex Libris and not UP Grail (hehe half kidding).

Will be going out of town for a week, specifically to Baguio. Yay! Malamig!

Asa pa kami that we'll be able to stick to our every-day jogging plan.

Jogging in Baguio. To lose weight. During Christmas season.

Hay. Asa pa kami.

Art Of The Saber

I LOOOVE the action! The brothers ought to make martial arts movies of their own, in Hollywood. Think The Matrix + Hero/ House of Flying Daggers.

The Voice Major Party: for the Department's web site

I first found out about the upcoming voice major Christmas party a week before the event, when I saw the colorful poster on the Voice Dept. bulletin board while rushing to the loo. "Hmm... that's a first," I thought distractedly, and I am ashamed to say that I put it out of my mind almost immediately, seeing that it fell on the same evening as a Jazz Concert that we were supposed to attend to get extra pogi points for our MuL 13 class.

Wednesday evening: I had just come from another Christmas party (which was a HUGE flop due to lack of proper planning) when a text message from Keith reminded me of the voice major party. (Thanks Keith!!)

I replied that I couldn't make it, I had to watch the jazz concert, blah di blah di blah...

And then it hit me. What am I doing? I said to myself. This is an HISTORIC event!

Another voice hissed in my mind: But it's a POTLUCK party. You just attended one of THOSE, and it was a disaster! Not to mention the food which was hardly better than CASAA fare. And the games were ill planned. This party will probably turn out like the previous one! And what about the jazz concert?

My good angel huffed and puffed: Teka muna, MuL major ka ba, o Voice Major?

The B.I. (bad influence) voice spoke up: Mapupuyat ka... e puyat ka na nga tonight. You'll need your energy for the next day, for the lantern parade! The party will probably be boring, anyway. You won't miss much.

Good angel shifted tactics: Sige ka... kapag hindi ka pumunta, ikaw ang pag-uusapan!!

Oh goodness! I better go!

Fast forward to Thursday afternoon. A couple of us voice majors congregated in the canteen, waiting for our rides. "Is _______ riding with me or with you?"    "What kind of pasta are you bringing later?"     "DON'T buy chocolate cake! I'm bringing that already!"    "Are any of the freshmen going? Goodness, I don't know ANY of them!"

Three of us (Feon, Shaddai and myself) left first because we had to drop by Katipunan to buy our contributions for the pot luck. We decided on Cello's donuts, and I got two boxes (cheese and cinnamon crunch) while Feon got chocolate sprinkled ones.

At least the dessert's good, I thought to myself, preparing for the worst.

We then proceeded to the party venue: Zuri's (new) house at Ayala Heights. If it hadn't been for the map beautifully illustrated by the official cartographer of the voice department, Tanya, we would have been hopelessly lost.

Upon our arrival, we saw to our dismay that Ma'am Kitchy had been the first to arrive! Shame on us. "Para pala itong klase...palaging una ang teacher," she joked.

We couldn't very well start eating without the others, so we settled ourselves on the comfy chairs around the tv and watched De-Lovely, the musical movie on Cole Porter.

(Good thing our department head was present! Otherwise the only thing left of the Cello's donuts would be their boxes by the time the others showed up.)

After De-lovely, Zuri popped in a dvd of a broadway concert special, hosted by Julie Andrews and featuring the best dancing/singing divas of our time. Time simply flew by! We got so involved in watching the dvd, and it was nice because Ma'am Kitchy would comment every now and then. "The Americans don't really prefer quality or a beautiful voice... mostly, their idea of a Broadway voice is a nasal one, with power," and other little gems of wisdom would pop out of her mouth. And all of us would go: "Oooooooh...."

Finally, when a sizable number of people were present, we started eating. I was astonished at the bounty on the table!! Each person who was asssigned to a particular food (e.g. pasta) made sure to bring the most delicious specimen possible, and lots of it! If I recall correctly, there were three different kinds of pasta, an enormous Yellow Cab pizza (courtesy of Ma'am Kitchy) which was devoured in a matter of minutes, and other yummy things. We happily filled and re-filled our plates, and ate to our heart's content while gossiping amongst ourselves, seated in the patio/veranda outside with the cool evening breeze wafting on our faces

Definitely NOT Casaa fare, I thought happily while I got my 3rd mini-slice of donut. Someone had the brilliant idea of dividing each donut into four pieces, for those diet-conscious among us. I may have had 4 or 5... I don't remember! Possibly more... no wonder my jeans were nigh near bursting after eating!

The freshmen arrived soon after we higher years finished eating, so while they ate, we watched Zuri's dvd entitled GREAT MOMENTS IN OPERA (or something like that).

It was fun watching singers with fellow voice majors! We would alternately sigh / gush / make fun of the singer, depending on how good they were. An example of a typical discussion would be the one on Vissi d'arte as sung by Leontyne Price ("I prefer Callas' version... " "Leontyne's my IDOL!"  "Ever notice how black women have big asses?"  "Don't you mean VOLUPTUOUS behinds?"  "Didn't ________ sing this for opera workshop?"  "Will you LOOK at that MOUTH? SCARY!"  "Woohoo! Inggit ka lang! Kaya mo ba yan?")

When the freshies had finished eating, we introduced ourselves all around. We were divided into helpful categories such as Bechie Babies, Ferrer Gals to help the freshies remember us more easily.

Good! We now knew everybody else! Time to play games!

There was a suggestion that we play strip poker, unfortunately nobody really quite knew how to play. Besides, there were MINORS present! Hehe. Instead, we played GUESS_WHOSE_NAME_IS_WRITTEN_ON_THE_POST_IT_STUCK_TO_YOUR_FOREHEAD. Of course, the names were all those of people present in the party. And we were divided into two groups. Pataasan ng points!

The person on the hot seat could only ask questions answerable with 'yes' or 'no.' There was this time when Patrick's name was written on his OWN forehead! He easily guessed it after the first few questions: "Is he a guy? Is he in our own group? Is he studying under Ma'am Vina? Is he a baritone? Ohmygosh this is SO hard! *sarcastically* Who can this be? 

Uh... is he CUTE?"

To which we all shouted NoooooOOOOOoooo! "Then it can't be me!" Patrick said, deadpan. Haha!

Next we played a variation of charades. The topics? People from the college. Ma'am Vina came up with the name assignments. That was how I came to impersonate Sir Raul Navarro's conducting style.

Later, we played the connect-the-song game (hey, we're voice majors! No surprise there!). The first group would sing any song, and stop at a particular word. The next group had to start singing on the same word (or one that sounded very much like it).

E.g. 'Doe, a deer, a female deer...'

'Deer... ever had a shiny nose...' and so on.

I remember the time our group was stumped when the other group sang out, "Hakuna!" Haha!

Eventually, one group lost. "Truth or consequence?" Rather than being forced to admit their crushes in public, they chose the consequence: Spell your name with your butt!

(For more information, please see Tanya's lovely videos.)

Sadly, I had to leave at 9:30 pm so I missed out on the christmas carol sight singing part of the evening. Ich bin "loser," yeah, I know. My family picked me up and we still had to go home to Paranaque. (If only I'd known beforehand that there wouldn't be a lantern parade the following day!!)

So there! That's my (incomplete) transcription of the events that took place in Dec. 9, '06.

I can't wait for the next voice major party! To say that it was fun would be an understatement. Zuri's neighbours probably hate him now, since we made such a huge racket that evening. I got to bond with my colleauges (and teachers! Hi Sir Leslie and Ma'am Vina!) on a level that would be impossible to achieve within the classroom/school setting. For one beautiful evening, different people came together, bonded by our love for singing. And we were ONE.

*sniff*

Sa mga hindi pumunta: Sorry na lang kayo! We gossiped about you guys all evening... hehe I'm kidding. :) But we might, next time around. SO BE THERE! OR ELSE!

Mabuhay ang Voice Dept. ng CMu!!

Blast from the Past

Back when we were young and innocent... *sigh*

December Happenings

Ex Libris party / Voice Major party
December 2006

"Malamig ang simoy ng hangin..."

I had so much fun yesterday!

It just struck me that there's only one more week of school left... and then... PASKO NA!!! Well, practically.

I'm only starting to feel the Christmas season NOW. Maybe it's because of the weather. It's been nice and cool these past few days, quite a pleasant relief from the heat we're accustomed to.

I guess I'll feel even more Christmas-y come tomorrow, when I watch the TDR of our college's production of MESSIAH (tickets for the actual show on Tuesday were sold out weeks ago, I'm lucky to have gotten tickets for the dress rehearsal!!).

Nothing like Christmas to make one feel senti. *sigh* Christmas seems less magical and more realistic with each coming year.

I remember the good ol' days when I blissfully believed that it was TRULY Santa who brought the presents (I only awakened to the harsh reality that it was my parents doing the stocking stuffing three years ago, believe it or not!!).

I remember being all dressed up and ready to go for Christmas Eve mass, and watching the old fashioned Christmasy cartoons showing on Cartoon Network while waiting for the parents to finish dressing up.

I remember singing along to Jose Mari Chan's Christmas album in the car, on our way to the Church.

We've all been so busy, we haven't taken the time to look up the Christmas album of either Jose Mari Chan or Charlotte Church (Dream A Dream)!!

Gosh, I feel old.

This will be my last Christmas as a teenager. Next week, it will my 4th Lantern Parade (and my twinnie's last!), and my 3rd Oblation Run (i'm no maniac... but it's great fun waiting for the prancing peacocks to appear, when with friends!!).

I really want to make the most of my subjects, but right now, plantilla-making/materials hunting/TEACHING voice/practicing is taking up way too much time that I haven't even bought Christmas gifts for some of my loved ones yet! :(:(: Guys, sorry a, bawi ako come January.

For the first time, I'm regretting taking 19 units this sem.

*toddles off to practice the 3 voices in Bach's three part invention in g minor... Gabi's assignment for her piano lesson next week*

 

Am re-posting my twinnie's post here on my multiply account...

blood...blood...need blood

 

What happened yesterday and today was really frightening and has made me an OFF! (or Nenuco) - toting person for life.

Seriously. I'm currently lugging around a bottle of OFF! in my bag, with an extra bottle in the boarding house, and yet another bottle stashed in the car.

Because I do not want to catch Dengue please Lord no it's nasty and it's a raging epidemic and it's one of the sneakiest, deadliest illnesses ever and if you do catch it, it'll kill the platelets in your blood and you will need lots of blood transfusions that sounds fine right but NO it's not you know why I'll tell you why it's because there's no blood to go around.

My uncle was confined yesterday to the ICU of the Asian Hospital, where half of the hospitalized people are Dengue victims (and only three of those are kids; most of those who caught it are 20+). My uncle was in critical condition because he was down to only 7,000 platelets. Now it turns out that the human body's normal platelet count is 200,000 to 140,000. You're critical if you only have 20,000.  And he was down to 7,000. 

Yesterday night was spent in the hospital, where we were all panicking, trying to get blood. Because of my uncle's critical condition, even the universal donor blood type O wouldn't do. We had to get blood donors with type A RH positive (blood type A+). We started calling up like mad. The National Kidney Institute was out. So was Manila Doctor's. St. Luke's. Even The Red Cross. Because Dengue is so prevalent, there is no blood to go around. Some hospitals had the blood we needed, but would not release it (my uncle needed 5-7 packs of blood) until we had a type-specific donor at hand, ready to replace the blood at a ratio of 2 packs to 1 (hospital) pack. 

Last night and today was spent in a flurry of texting and calling (in the hospital lounge). To all the people I pestered, begging for blood donations, you have my apologies and my sincerest thanks. Thank you especially to willing donors Jika and Nerie from Archi, Rosa, Anna Migallos and Ate Jorge from Music. Thank you also for the people in my phonebook who I texted/called for your replies and prayers.

UPDATE: Just tonight, my uncle's condition has improved (thank you Lord!!). My uncle's platelet count is up to 28,000. He's past the danger zone...for now. The thing with dengue is, you can't guarantee that you're well. Which is why my uncle is going to have to undergo a series of blood tests/transfusions for the next several days, because the illness eats up platelets so fast. One day you're well, the next, you're not. So we still need your prayers. And possibly your blood.

So if you are blood type A+ or if you know someone who is, please email at tatatwin@gmail.com (or gabitwin@gmail.com) , text at 09209470861 (or 09209470835), or leave a comment here. We're still scouting for possible donors. Thank you so much. If we do take your blood, I am honor-bound to source blood for you when you need it.

Am so mad part 2

I met R.I.P today in school. I stared at him, coldly, and called him by name. The gall, he actually SMILED at me sarcastically and said hello as if everything was fine. I was too nice to upbraid him in public... but... come to think of it... I SHOULD HAVE.

Ah well. Tomorrow's another day.

Am so mad...

Last night, this really irritating person who I used to think of as a "friend" texted me something that really made me blow my top.

Context: I was a bit panicky because my uncle had just been confined that day to the hospital and diagnosed with dengue. The normal platelet count is 140,000 -- 200,000. Critical is 20, 000. My uncle's was 9,000 last night. So I texted a lot of people, asking for potential donors of blood (type A+).

This R.I.P (short for really irritating person) texted back, saying that he was type A.

I replied: "Ei... it's got to be A+. Thanks very much though."

And then he replied with: "O, tignan mo ang sagot ng malditang bruha!"

What the?!?!?!??!

I ask you... even if you were the nicest, sweetest person in the world, would you just sit back and do nothing when called a malditang bruha?

Maldita na. Bruha pa.

I got so mad, I scared even myself.

I do not like who I become when I am mad.

I texted back: "What's wrong with my reply? Nagpasalamat ako a! IKAW ang malabo! "Malditang bruha," indeed. And you call yourself a Christian?"

R.I.P: "I find it ungrateful, though. You didn't even ask me if I'm A+. Fact is, I am A+. I'm sorry, I was just trying to help because I thought you needed one (sic)."

Gabi: "For a Christian, you take an automatic un-Christian view of everything. An ungrateful person wouldn't even thank you.You only texted that you were A. In an emergency, we need accurate info. We didn't want to trouble you unnecessarily. If you REALLY wanted to help, you'd say you were A+."

R.I.P: "I wouldn't even text you if I didn't want to help. Don't worry, nobody would know that you personally JUDGE people if they're REAL Christian(s) or not. (sic)"

Gabi: "I'm not worried. I am what I am. People will judge me by my actions, in the same way you will be judged for who you are and what you do. You seem to be forgetting you were the first to pass judgement in this case."

Gggggggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....

Comments, anyone?

The Impresario (Der Schauspieldirektor) at The Podium

This is me singing Madame Silverpeal's aria, "Bester Jungling." Warning: Crazy camera! I think Mama and my twin were fixing some stuff while recording this.

Exhausted...

But oh so happy! For I got to sing AND go to The Podium for the first time ever! :)

It's a pretty nice mall. Reminds me a lot of Powerplant. Not so many people, which makes for a hassle-free malling experience.

After the performance, I had dinner with the family at Cafe Mediterranean. Their pizza is REALLY good! But lentil soup is an acquired taste. And so is red wine.

One down, four more to go. Kaya ito...

Afterwards, we went shopping at Park Square for some work out stuff that Ogot needed. (Yeeee-eeeees, serioso talaga kapatid ko sa kanyang 'getting fit and gorgeous' regimen! Little bro, you are my thin-spiration.)

Tata and I came across this stall selling HERMIT CRABS!!! Some were REALLY huge, as big as my fist (and I'm no dainty female with dainty hands, mind you)... we got SO freaked out. But the small ones were rather cute! Tata and I purchased 4 small ones whose shells hadn't been painted Pikachu/Spongebob faces, and a matching plastic case to transport the little crabbies in. It's our advanced Christmas gift to Ogot. The little ones in their plastic cage are on top of our piano right now... ooooooooooh so cute so cute...

On acads: I never knew how hard teaching could be. :(  I'm taking MuEd 120 right now, which will prepare me for my teaching practicum next sem. I'll be teaching grade school kids. ANG HIRAP PALA!?!?!?!

I also have two voice students. Yay! I'm officially a voice teacher now. Wish me luck! Hopefully, they'll be singing at a recital at the end of the semester. :)

A weekend (gosh I miss the sem break...)

Opera Goes to the Mall! The Mall Tour of Mozart's Opera: THE IMPRESARIO at SM Southmall

Start:	Nov 29, '06 5:30p
Location:	SM Southmall

Opera Goes to the Mall! The Mall Tour of Mozart's Opera: THE IMPRESARIO at Mall of Asia

Start:	Nov 30, '06 5:30p
Location:	SM Mall of Asia

Opera Goes to the Mall! The Mall Tour of Mozart's Opera: THE IMPRESARIO at SM Manila

Start:	Nov 27, '06 5:30p
Location:	SM Manila

Opera Goes to the Mall! The Mall Tour of Mozart's Opera: THE IMPRESARIO at SM North

Start:	Nov 28, '06 5:30p
Location:	The Block (SM North)

Opera Goes to the Mall! The Mall Tour of Mozart's Opera: THE IMPRESARIO at The Podium

Start:	Nov 25, '06 5:30p
Location:	The Podium

Haaaay...

Sometimes I can't understand how our college works. Heck, sometimes I can't understand why UP works.

Today I spent a total of three hours running around collecting signatures and getting my add-mat papers processed for PI 100. I nearly had a heat stroke, see-sawing back and forth the O.U.R, A.S. and our college (most of the time, on foot).

(Hurray! I got to pre-rog my PI subject!!! It's true... the early bird gets the worm. I came to the prof's 7 am class, even though I was gunning for the 8:30 class. After getting his signature, I left. When I returned for the class proper, there was a note on the board with the assigned readings for the next meeting. And NO PROF. Whew! Buti na lang nanigurado ako! I feel a bit sorry for the others in the 830 class who wanted to pre-rog as well... most of them said they won't pursue it any longer because they might not make the deadline).

I was supposed to have my change-mat papers processed as well (from piano minor to chorus class), but then Ma'am Gemma said I didn't have to, anymore.

"Huh?" I said. "But Ma'am, my piano teacher said that YOU told her that taking extra units for minor/concentration subjects are no longer allowed."

"Yes, I DID tell her that. But then we decided to enforce it next sem," she told me.

 And after I went through all the trouble to stalk Sir Mark and ask him to let me in his class..... Haaaaay...Sayang yung 4 hours na hinintay ko siya Friday afternoon to get his signature...

On the bright side, I will be reunited with my beloved teacher: Ma'am Pia!!

And I'm taking the same PI 100 class as my twin!! YAY!!

"Can't Believe It's Time For School Again" ---> a parody of a Westlife song

For the first time ever, I shall have to prerog a subject. *gulp* I don't know if I'm going to get it, but I really hope I do.

Prof. Tinio of PI 100, PLEASE PLEASE ACCEPT ME!?!?!

I can't imagine a sem with only 16 units!! Granted, my subjects are rather heavy (what with a practicum subject and my second solo recital thrown in)... but I've always been used to having 19-21 units on top of the things I do on the side (e.g. college performances/harangs/athletics etc.).

There's this new college rule that discourages students to take minor/concentration subjects that are not required (or, in my case, no longer required) in their curriculum, and IT SUCKS! :(  I have to "change-mat" [yes, it's now a verb] my piano minor this sem. Sayang... I was SO looking forward to studying under Ma'am Pia Balasico again. She was my piano teacher for 6 sems/3 years, and she's played a huge part in my musical growth! I owe her a lot.

In exchange for the 1 unit of piano, I will be in the Chorus Class of Sir Mark Carpio!! How exciting! As in, THE Mark Carpio. The conductor of the best choir in the country... the Philippine Madrigal Singers!!!

This sem promises to be an exciting one.

My First Recital! Part 1

Oct. 20, 2006, Friday
5:30 pm
Abelardo Hall Auditorium
UP College of Music

Michelle Nicolasora, assisting artist

living up the last days of the sem break...

For the past several days, our family's been going mall/bar/restaurant-hopping like mad! Ang saya saya!

Last night, the family and I went to Chef and Brewer at Ortigas to watch Lala & Djiwa LIVE!!  Wahoo! They're really good! Domini is the QUEEN of the guitar! Mabuhay ang College of Music!!

I'm a bit sentimental about the sembreak coming to an end. I feel like it's barely begun! On the bright side, when school starts I'll start losing the pounds I gained whilst being a lazy-daisy.

I'm excited about taking piano again this coming sem!! I've missed it so. I'm going to request this 3-part invention by Bach... it's GORGEOUS! It's no. 11 in the book, in g minor. I've heard Raymond play it before and it literally brought tears to my eyes, it was that exquisite.

Join me in a toast to the best sem-break ever!

The Sem Break! Part 2

A happy day at SM Mall of Asia

Excerpt from our college's production of Mozart's short opera, Der Schauspieldirektor (The Impresario)

Apologies! Audio is not perfectly in sync with the images...

This is from the penultimate trio, with Sir Raymond Diaz, Ma'am Mary Ann Lanuza and myself singing. Sir Greg de Leon is in the background, happily imbibing. The UP Student Orchestra is playing (not shown in the video).

Excerpt from the Voice Dept.'s production of Menotti's opera: "The Old Maid and the Thief"

a short excerpt: my character's aria "What a curse for a woman is a timid man..."

apologies! audio's not perfectly in sync

The BEST interpretation of Erlkönig... and one of the best singers EVER!!!

I LOOOOOOVE Anne Sofie von Otter!!! She's AMAZING! Grabe! Just look at her interpretation of ERLKONIG. She successfully manages to play the four different characters in 1 song (Narrator, Son, Father, and of course, the wicked evil Elf King).

Plus she manages to make all four have their own different vocal timbre... ang galing niya, sobra! Idol! I get the goosebumps when she does the character of the Elf King!

Here's the translation:

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.-

"My son, wherefore seek'st thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."-

"Oh, come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."-

" My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;
'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves."-

" Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the aged grey willows deceiving thy sight."-

" I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty,dear boy!
and if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."
My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Pull sorely the Erl-King has hurt me last." -

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,--
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.-

My sembreak TRULY started today...

Whew! FINALLY! I can relax and truly enjoy what remains of the sem break. (sits back and contentedly sips buko juice)

Last week was spent preparing for a singing engagement. Tata and I went to UP twice to practice with Ate Michelle. The gig was last night, and although we had a few minor boo-boo's, it turned out alright. :) Ang galing kasi ng pianista!!! At ng page turner! Bwahahaha!!

Kababawan!! I got to put on make up!! Heehee! I think I've FINALLY figured out how to apply foundation properly... thanks to Kokuryu Summer Cake!! A secret weapon! And it's only Php ~60!!

Plus, I earned some moolah. Yippee!

Tata and I found time to meet up with our good friend Denden in the past week. We had lunch at Cibo's (which I think is WaaaaaaAAAAaaaay overrated... you're SO not getting value for money), window shopped a bit, then bonded over over-sized margarita's and Bailey's at Fridays. We got to talk about LIFE (still a magazine... harhar), and a lot of other things. Our outing put a HUGE dent in my wallet, but it was worth it. :) We get to see Den every so often lang, it's truly a special occasion worth splurging on.

I'd be making more catching-up-dates if it weren't for the fact that i'm so broke... oh hey! Am not THAT broke anymore! *evil grin*

Was supposed to watch the MMCO concert tonight but something came up. :(  Sadness! Was really looking forward to it.

Watched THE PRESTIGE today with the family, after hearing mass. WATCHITWATCHITWATCHIT!! Ang galing! A GREAT movie! Will keep you guessing til the end.

Having a twin is TRULY awesome.

I have so many books to read!?!?!!? They're just lying around in the house. Am starting on ERAGON, it's surprisingly good! I call it "Lord of the Rings for the masses."  I like Paolini's simpler prose.

Been doing some heavy reading...

Having had quite a few hours to while away at my leisure, I decided to read the 400-peso book I had bought from Kuya Randy's stall along AS walk (brand new! it was definitely a good deal)...

James Carroll's CONSTANTINE'S SWORD

Here are excerpts from New York Time's contributing writer Andrew Sullivan's review of the book: (emphasized parts mine)

How can one categorize ''Constantine's Sword''? It is in part a memoir of an American Catholic of a particular generation, a self-confessed ''lefty'' whose political and spiritual awakening came during the Vietnam War. It is also a history of the long and bitter fruits of the schism among Jews two millenniums ago about the meaning of eschatology, messianism and faith itself -- the schism that finds its origin in the life and work of Jesus of Nazareth. And it is a book of a deeper sort -- a rigorous theological and moral dialectic that Carroll never removes from the personal necessity of choice, for good over evil, for memory over denial and for love over power.

Holding this ambitious edifice together is an argument. What Carroll wants to show us above all is that the relationship with the Jews is not merely one issue among many for the modern church. It is the central issue in church history and inextricable from the core of what Christianity is about. To make his case, Carroll has to go back to the very beginning and show an alternative history -- a history of what might have been, a history in which the followers of Jesus were neither hostile to Judaism nor threatened by it.

Carroll begins by restating, along the lines of the revisionist scholarship of the Jesus Seminar, the essential Jewishness of Jesus. Jesus was not, so far as we know, a man alien to the culture or politics of his time. He lived and died in a region controlled by an imperial power, and asserted in that context an intense form of Jewish spirituality, animated by a kind of love that was clearly shocking and inspiring to many of his contemporaries. It was only in the later context of the struggles between Jesus-following Jews and other variants of Judaism that the Gospel story came to be told as a conflict not between a Jewish rebel and a brutal Roman Empire but between the founder of a new religion and ''the Jews,'' a monolithic term that began the process of demonizing the other.

Susan Walsh/ The Associated Press

James Carroll

In Carroll's reading, in other words, Jesus came not to supplant but to renew. The love he proclaimed was the unconditional love that God also displayed throughout the Hebrew Scriptures -- a covenant that could never be broken, since it was unconditional. There is no dichotomy between the God of Law of the Old Testament and the God of Love of the New. The message is seamless, made more whole by the witness of Jesus. The notion that Christian anti-Semitism began with Jesus is therefore meaningless. He would not have even understood such a term. It was Jesus' followers who reshaped Christianity by defining it less by what it was than by what it was not. Carroll somewhat unconvincingly exonerates Paul on these grounds, placing his occasional extremism with regard to the supersession of Judaism in the context of his belief that the end-time was imminent. And Carroll persuasively shows how the concept of opposing religions is a function primarily of hindsight.

Still, there are some theological matters that Carroll too easily elides. Part of the reason for the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism in the first centuries of the Christian Era was their closeness. Christianity surely rests on the Hebrew Bible, as indeed the Gospels, more than any other documents, prove. But precisely because of this, the early Jewish indifference toward the notion of Jesus as the Son of God was so threatening. In a world where the fledgling sect of Christianity was attempting to find its way among competing paganisms and cults, the remaining recalcitrance of the very people it was designed to embody was bound to create conflict. Call it the narcissism of small differences. Human history shows that the fiercest conflicts -- from the Balkans to Ireland -- are fomented by estranged members of the same tangled family.

Carroll's narrative picks up steam with the arrival of Constantine and the fusion of Christianity with imperial power. He neatly rebuts the notion of Constantine's conversion as some sort of divine intervention, seeing it more as a canny political move, shoring up support in Rome. And from Constantine's sword, designed in the shape of a cross, the fusion of a religion opposed to power with power itself is the core of the corruption of Christianity. When Christians used this secular power to persecute, banish, murder Jews, they were betraying not just the essence of the faith of Jesus, they were embodying the very power that killed Christ -- not the evil Jews, but the power of the state. Mercifully, the injunction to save Jews, to convert them, to see them as pre-eminently worthy of salvation, was a strong check on the demonization of Jews. But under the Inquisition, the church itself innovated another definition of Jewishness -- not of faith but of blood -- pioneering expulsions and then a demarcated Jewish ghetto in a quarter of Rome, to house refugees from elsewhere. The picture of the displaced Jews' arrival in the capital city is as fresh as the images from Srebrenica. One contemporary wrote: ''You would have thought that they wore masks. They were bony, pallid, their eyes sunk in the sockets; and had they not made slight movements, it would have been imagined that they were dead.'' Even then, Christian friars offered bread only on condition of conversion. After creating the ghetto, the church in the mid-16th century laid down what Jews could do and earn and how they could live. By the 17th century, the Jesuits had instituted the forerunner of the Nuremberg Laws, barring anyone from becoming a Jesuit ''who is descended of Hebrew or Saracen stock'' -- a baldly racist provision not formally ended until 1946.

Is there a continuous link between this Jew hatred and the final act of vengeance in the Holocaust? Carroll is wise not to say yes. The uniqueness of Nazi evil, the fact that eliminationist anti-Semitism, to use Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's phrase, found full fruition only in one state at one point in history, places earlier Catholic anti-Semitism in some perspective. Indeed, compared with Luther's vicious rhetoric about the ''pest in the midst of our lands,'' the Jesuits were relatively restrained. But, as Carroll points out, ''the fact is that the Inquisition moved Christian suspicion of Jews to a whole new level of irrationality.'' It was a touchstone for the church at moments of insecurity -- in the 19th and early 20th centuries -- and, although the persecution never regained the insane passion of Torquemada, it certainly never missed an opportunity to acquiesce in popular anti-Semitism.

Carroll's account of Pope Pius XII is particularly damning. His early pact with Hitler was a foundation stone of the Shoah. The church was capable of resisting state power in Germany. It had doggedly survived and prospered under Bismarck's Kulturkampf. But Pius XII's elevation of Catholic self-interest over Catholic conscience was the lowest point in modern Catholic history. That he barely bothered to protest the deportation of Jews from the Roman ghetto within sight of the Vatican is eloquent enough. Yes, there were many instances of Catholic heroism. But no honest Catholic can look objectively at what Pius XII did and did not do without simple shame. The notion that he could be canonized is beyond this particular Catholic's comprehension.

In all this, Carroll does his fair share of breast-beating, but it is remarkable, perhaps, how few jarring notes there are in this book. The story is strong because it is framed within Carroll's own personal story -- his childhood Jewish friend, his years as an Army brat in newly liberated West Germany, his shared grief at the early death of a good friend. But there are times when solipsism nudges in. I could have done with fewer echt-Catholic remembrances of the erotic charge of his pious mother. And there is at times a lack of worldliness that gives Carroll's faith a real edge but his politics a slightly blunted focus. We feel the corruption of faith in the service of power, but we don't get a sense of the inevitability of such power and the acute difficulty religion will always have in reconciling itself to the world. Carroll's inability, for example, to see anything but pure evil in America's Vietnam excursion betrays an ingenuousness that doesn't always capture the intractable political quandary of, say, Paul or Constantine or Pius XII.

But Carroll's love of the church is equally unmissable. His deepest insight, I think, is to see in John Paul II's transforming papacy a deep grasp of how central the Jewish question is to the current state of the church. Karol Wojtyla did not merely attempt to reach out to Jews. He didn't merely apologize. He went to the Western Wall. He shuffled up to it as a Jew might, and prayed, and inserted a small piece of votive paper into its cracks. Here's how Carroll superbly describes it: ''The church was honoring the Temple it had denigrated. It was affirming the presence of the Jewish people at home in Jerusalem. The pope reversed an ancient current of Jew hatred with that act, and the church's relationship to Israel, present as well as past, would never be the same.''

In calling the church to an accounting with its past, the current pope [referring to Pope John Paul... this article was written 2001] has not been perfect. There is still a reluctance to confront the horror done to Jews in the name of Christian faith. But he has put his finger on a vital element in the church's possible renewal.
~ ~ ~

It is not mentioned in the review the several far-reaching implications that this book raises. Some controversial (?) points the author raised are:

"Truth is not the highest value for us... because our knowledge is imperfect... Truth is subjective. Therefore, dialogue/conversation is far more relevant to truth-seeking than conformity to dictation from above."

"Religious pluralism begins with this acknowledgement of the universal impossibility of direct knowledge of God. The immediate consequence of this universal ignorance is that we should regard each other respectfully and lovingly."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Church could, in James Carroll's words, "embrace a pluralism of belief and worship... that honors God by defining God as beyond every human effort to express God?"

"God is the horizon... equally bidding all people to approach, yet equally distant from all people, Christians included."

I end this post with a quote from Rabbi Heschel: "GOD IS GREATER THAN RELIGION... Faith is greater than dogma."

Nothing like the sem break to review one's beliefs.

My first recital!!!

Wow! I can't believe it's over! An entire sem's worth of preparation... finished, just like that *SNAPS FINGERS*

Last night was my first undergraduate solo recital. :) And it was a blast!!

At first I was so nervous, and I think my teacher sensed it too. She went backstage to fix my hair (IDOL! She was able to fix my hair in a neat bun with only FIVE hair pins and a scrunchie)... and guided me through breathing exercises. It helped me A LOT.

I was still nervous when I went onstage for the first song, but come the second song I warmed up already. And everything went smoothly from then on. :)

Thank you to Ate Michelle Nicolasora! It was such a privilege working with you and making music together! I look forward to the next time we do so. :)

THANK YOU SO MUCH to Papa and Mama! For providing every kind of assistance imaginable (financial, emotional, etc.)... thanks also to my make up artist and emcee-of-sorts, my clone Tata... thank you to my personal bodyguard and bouncer, my witul brother Ogot! I LOVE YOU GUYS!!!

Thank you also to my beautiful Lola Lolita and Uncle Digoy, coming all the way from Alabang... for the gorgeous flowers!

Thank you also to everyone who took time off from their busy schedules to come see my first recital... Sir Eudy, Ma'am Vina, Ma'am Luci, Ma'am Sherla, Sir Queano, Sir Aureus, Ate Maricris, Jaime, Christian and Francis from Archi, Raymond, Domini, Feon, etc.

And of course, to my teacher, Ma'am Aileen Cura... THANK YOU PO SO MUCH!

(Boy this acknowledgement post is getting pretty long)

Waaaaa!?!?! As Tata and Ogot would say, "I am FREEDOM!"

Of course, I still have to prepare for a little performance next Saturday. Have to memorize 12 songs, whew! But aside from that, I'm freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.....

Tapos na!?!?!?!??!

I think I mistakenly posted some time back about having only two more things to do for the sem... namely

1) The Ensemble Recital

and 2) my own recital

I forgot to include our THEATER 130 Class Production for our FINALS!?!?!?!?!?

Thanks to Sir Dexter Santos and the past few weeks, I've had a taste of what it's like to be a Theater major in UP Diliman.

A typical day:

4 am. Wake up and rush to eat breakfast, then run like mad to UP

6 am -- 8 am. First practice of the day at FC Lobby

8 am -- 10 am. Rush off to SC to type a paper (deadline: tomorrow!!!)

10 am -- 11 am: Watch a Dance Recital at your home college, Music

11 -- 11:30: A quick catnap at the LR (thank goodness for the wooden sofa!)

12 noon-- 10 pm: THEATER REHEARSALS!!! (with only 15 minutes break)

10:30 pm: Get picked up by parents (good thing, the darkness and the silence at AS steps was starting to get creepy)

11:30 pm: Get home, and barely have enough energy to eat dinner

12 midnight: take a bath

12:45: Go to bed. ZzzzzZZZzzzzz

4:30 am: Good morning! And the cycle begins again...

Buti na lang at TAPOS NA SIYA!!!

We presented our 9 minute movement piece last night, along with 4 or 5 other classes under Sir Dexter.

Will write a more detailed account of yesterday (one of the most INTERESTING days of my life) and of backstage moments when I am less sleepy...

What a time to get my FIRST SORE THROAT

(Er, I may have had sore throat before... but I sure can't remember...)

It hurts to swallow. I can't breathe because my nose is clogged. And I CAN'T SING.

This wouldn't really be a big deal if it weren't for the fact that my voice finals are 50 something hours away...

I've had this sore throat since Wednesday, and it's not getting any better.

I want to have it checked by a doctor but I don't have the time.

I need a miracle. Pray for me?

I got tagged by Feon! :)

I got tagged. :-)

Instructions: Name ten (10) of life's simple pleasures that you like the most, then pick ten (10) people to do the same. Try to be original and creative and not to use things that someone else has already used.

10. reading a good book while munching on sugar-coated pili nuts

9. travelling! which I don't get to do often :(

8. walking around the beautiful UP campus (especially if the weather's nice: breezy and not overly sunny)

7. watching movies with my crazy siblings (and sometimes even crazier parents hehe)

6. blog-hopping

5. reading make-up/skin care reviews (aaaaAAAaaaa and lusting after these overly priced products!!!)

4. jogging/a good sparring session (i.e. one where I don't get hurt haha)

3. a movie marathon!!! (Tata, when are we going to hold our annual LOTR marathon?!?)

2. (finally) being able to sing a song the way the composer would have wanted it to be sung

1. going into beauty stores (e.g. PCX, Beauty Bar, Watsons) and just drooling over the pretty, pretty things inside

I tag!!! Ogot, Tata, Enrico, Riva, Krina (hi there!), Roxy, Brenda, Denden, Kevin, Bianca

It's been ages...

I haven't posted for so long! Argh! Been super busy. Apart from having several (rather personal) issues to deal with... there's all the performances that are part of every Music students' life.

I'm done with four... now, I've only got two to go.

I'm done with:

1. The Old Maid and the Thief
2. The Impresario
3. MuP 131 Filipino Song Lit. Recital
4. Kuya Armin Comon's Recital (a Rossini mass)

Now there's only:

1. MuP 146-147 Ensemble Recital

and the really big one...

2. MY FIRST SOLO RECITAL!!! :)

I'm so stressed out and exhausted but I don't think I've been happier. :) I think I'm finally learning how to be a performer (a rather decent one, I hope).

Music is INDEED the ultimate high.

Theater 131 Beginning Acting Class

"Bester Jungling... "

What an exhausting week. But there's no one more exhausted among us than our dad. Papa. "The best of men," quite literally. We don't deserve him. He's driven us to and fro school more times than it is healthy for him to do so. (Paranaque to UP is an hour's drive, if there's no traffic. One way)

Here's to my father. The most caring, generous one in the world. Thank you for everything!!

- - - - - - - - - - 
SHAMELESS PLUGGING

Guys! If you're free on the following dates, please watch the following operas in our college!

SEPT. 7, 2006, 3  to 4 pm
Menotti's THE OLD MAID AND THE THIEF (a grotesque comedy about an old woman and her younger maid who fall in love with a "thief"... and their hilarious love triangle!)
Lead roles to be played by soprano Tanya Corcuera, tenor Zuri Valbuena, soprano Michelle Sullera and yours truly!

SEPT. 12, 2006, 6:30 to 8 pm
Mozart's THE IMPRESARIO/ DER SCHAUSPIELDIREKTOR
Lead roles to be played by tenor Raymond Leslie Diaz, baritone Greg de Leon, soprano Mary Ann Lanuza and yours truly!

ATOM day...

I am ashamed to say that I did not accomplish all that I set out to do this 3 day weekend. I worked on my MuEd 105 observation reports most of the time. It took me forever to input the vocalises used by the 4 different teachers using Sibelius (thanks boardmate Kris!!), it would have taken double eternity if I hadn't used the tips Kris boardmate gave me. 

I had the good intention of studying my pieces this morning but I woke up horribly late (8 o'clock!!!) and I had a horribly stuffed nose. So I drank 2 cups of coffee (with Hazelnut flavored coffee mate... perfecto espresso!) and settled down to read Joseph O'Connor's "Star of the Sea." It hooked me!! I had to finish it today. WHOA! Whattaread!! I highly recommend it. It's about one fateful voyage of a ship bound for America filled with Irish immigrants back in 1842... yup, the year of the horrible famine. It's also a murder mystery. You know at the start of the book that the murderer's out to kill this certain lord, but you're never really sure if he's going to be successful. And until the 2nd to the last page of the book, you don't know who the real murderer is. Galing! I loved how he was able to create such believable characters. I thoroughly hated the murderer but the author was able to make me feel compassion even for such a repulsive criminal.

I accompanied Mama to her lunch with her SSEAYP batchmates/friends Sir Alex (who's teaching at UP!) and Max-san, from Japan. It was FUN! It was my first time to eat at Dencio's... ang sarap pala! And the prices were reasonable. It was a pleasant surprise. I always thought Dencio's was a very expensive restaurant...di pala. Tama lang.

It's school time again tomorrow. This time, Sir Anton won't be coming to our Theater class anymore. :(( Oh well. We had a blast under him. Maybe our new teacher will surprise us!

My poor knees

I haven't had these many bruises on my knees/arms/shoulders/other body parts since I stopped training with the UP Taekwondo Team, quite a while back now.

Ack! And the cause for these bruises is STAGE MOVEMENT CLASS.

But it's all worth it, because Sir Anton absolutely LOVED our group's final presentation today (key concept: Trauma... our piece is entitled "Nightmare"). It helped that we had 100% swak-na-swak music (thank you George Crumb for the use of your Black Angels for Electric String Quartet!!!) Haha, I'm so glad that all those MuL classes weren't for naught after all.

Ang galing galing namin!! It was doubly amazing (well, for me, that is) since our group was composed of the non-Theater majors in the class (well, we had one theater major groupmate, but she's a freshie and doesn't have a lot of experience to draw from). I hoped only to match the other group's movement piece (yup, that's right, the all-theater-major group) but today's performance exceeded my highest expectations!! :)

In Sir A's own words: "I loved your piece! Wonderful! Beautiful!"

I'm so happeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee...

Aside: Watched CLICK today with the rest of the family. (Thanks to Ate Michelle N. and Raymond for recommending it to us! We were choosing between Click and My super ex girlfriend...) Boohoohoooo it made us cry buckets of tears (that part where Adam Sandler was crawling through the rain to get to his son... CLASSIC, I tell you!!). Even my dad and my bro shed a manly tear or two! (or make that two dozen hahahaha)

Three day weekend! Yipee! I SO need this. Got pieces to study, papers to type, books to read, shows to watch..

quickie update

It seems my LJ entries keep getting shorter and shorter.

Tata and I had our first facial today. Read all about it at her blog! http://tatatwin.livejournal.com
The entry's called "Facial Fallacies." Haha. Hope it makes you laugh.

Sir Anton Juan is leaving next week. :( Sayang talaga. We only had him for half a sem but we've learned SO MUCH from him!! Hats off to you Sir!

He's more than a director. He's also a singer (heck, he can sing NASAAN KA IROG better than some voice majors in my college, MEMORIZED!!), a teacher, a linguist (He can speak fluent Italian, Greek, French, and Dutch/German I think... that's just what i heard him speak ha), a philosopher, an athlete, a comedian, and best of all... a truly wonderful HUMAN BEING. 

Am so hyped over my song cycle! I find it so cute that Feona and I have the same song cycle... and we're both singing it for our recitals (which happen to be only one day apart... Feona's is on the 19th of October, mine's on the 20th). Where else can you listen to two different interpretations of the same cycle... na magkasunod lang na araw?

Bought two new books, am currently devouring Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" (it was made into a movie starring Tilda Swinton, I think) while reserving Patrick Suskind's "Perfume: The Story of A murderer" up next. They're modern classics, and i got them for only Php 250 each!! A veritable steal considering they're BRAND SPANKIN' NEW.

That's all for now. Tata!

P.S. For some reason, I keep coming back to http://www.beautynomics.com  Haha! As if I can afford to buy anything she's advertising. But I must say, this is one enjoyable blog to read, especially if you're a closet KIKAY like moi. (Oh no! Inamin ko na! I have GONE OVER TO THE PINK SIDE!!! AaaaAAAaaaAAAAA!!!)

     Closet kikay (noun): One who is kikay but does not really do anything about it (i.e. does not really buy make up, but only researches about products) ---> C'est moi. Ich bin "closet kikay!!"

Time to post... haaay...

What luck! A four day weekend!

I woke up today at 5:15 a.m, all fresh and excited after paying my sleep debt over the past few days. I literally bounced out of bed with a cheerful, "Gising na people! Pasukan na naman uli!" and went out of the common bedroom to take a shower. But then I saw my mom in the kitchen, conversing with the ates in excited whispers. And then... I KNEW...

... WALA NA NAMANG PASOK!!?!?! As my dear brother would say... "Amf/gg."

I'd like to quote someone who posted on Bianca's LJ... "My schedule is officially F____D up for this week."

On the bright side, I was able to de-stress, catch up on my beauty sleep, and watch a couple of my favorite movies (like BRAVEHEART on Star Movies, woohoo!! I just hear the theme music and the tears start coming...)

I swore that I would make today a productive one, and I shall!! I've scheduled an interview with THE Sir Agot Espino later in the afternoon (aaAAAaaa!! The man is a living legend! He's written the most beautiful kundiman since Abelardo... KUNDIMAN NG LANGIT. Can't wait to find out where his inspiration came from...), whew! No pressure!

It's for our MuPC 131 class.

And then I vocalized/practiced for 2 hours. Did a bit of Concone too. Always thought they were boring vocalises, but some are so pretty!! Miniature ariettes indeed.

Now that's done, and lookie! It's only 9:20 am! Doncha love it when you wake up super early and get all sorts of things done quickly?

Let's see, what book shall I read to while away the rest of the day? :)

Too busy to blog

A quick update on what's been going on in my life...

   * Was part of the chorus in our college's (and the CCP's) production of Pagliacci (one of two operas performed on July 2, 2006). Got to sing with orchestra for the first time evah! It was INTIMIDATING. 
      Were all those sleep deprived nights and missed classes worth it? 
      We shall see. Depends on how soon I can catch up with my school work.

   * Am singing as part of the chorus for Kuya Armin's masteral recital (a Rossini mass!! COOOOOOL!!) as well as the restaging of Kuya Paul's recital. These are on September 22 and September 5, respectively. Nood kayo! It's free naman e.

   * Am rushing to learn my required pieces for my first recital (*cough*)... which...by the bye... is on the 20th of October, 5:30 to 7 pm at the Abelardo Auditorium, College of Music. :)  Ma'am Cura picked such nice songs for me... am so happy!

   * Am currently nursing a hoarse throat as a result of my ten-minute screaming session during Theater 130 class this afternoon under Sir Anton Juan. Kailangan e. It's the Greek way of teaching drama, I guess. Will ask Sir if I can "place" my voice next time. :(( huhuhu I wasn't able to sing tuloy during my voice lesson later on with Ma'am Aileen. Shucks. Kakahiya.

   * Am trying to choreograph a movement piece utilizing the concept of Open/Close. Ideas, anyone?

   * Am cramming learning CARMINA BURANA for Conducting 100, which is turning out to be a looooot harder than I thought it would be. I'll bet my arms will be soooo toned after a sem of all this hand waving. :)

Okay ...no more time to type. Hopefully I get to update soon.

"Can't Believe It's Time for School Again" --> sung to the tune of a Westlife song

Last sem I took Theater 131 under a living legend... Sir Behn Cervantes. This sem, I'm privileged to be under yet ANOTHER living legend, Dr. Anton Juan. He only speaks a dozen or so  languages, and only graduated with highest honors from schools in Greece, Italy, and Japan. Your typical UP genius prof, right?

HA!

Here's to another "feeling-theater-major" sem for me, because of a 10-unit Theater class. It's gonna be one heck of a ride, but hey! I think I'm going to enjoy this. :)
++++++

I don't know who'll be my voice teacher this sem.

++++++

The PAGLIACCI rehearsal sched is going to kill me.

++++++

"Little Red Riding Hood": the poem we're supposed to interpret physically for Stage Movement class

Red Riding Hood
In the book
Walked in the woods
When she was little
If she grew up
Or died a sudden death
No one can tell
She was brittle
To star [in] a fairy tale
Brittle
To deliver goods
Crossing the woods
Without an elder
Brittle
To flaunt a red outfit
When young girls
Are supposed to dress in pink
The red outfit
She wore
I wonder...
Is it from a whore?
Did it come with
Red fingertips?
Red lips?
Red stockings?
Red undies.
Did her nose bleed?
Who told [her] to wear it?
Mere instincet?
Was it bought cheap?
Borrowed?
Shiny?
Or
Old?
Details were untold
Unfold
The rest of the story...
Red Riding Hood
Red in sight
Alive
With passion
Lost glory
Red is unholy
To the big bad wolf
Off
And running
Cunning
Red in heat
Smelling
Seeing
Red meat.

I was tagged... (c/o orgmate Jomel)

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different descriptions of their perfect lover.
2. He/she needs to mention the sex/gender of their perfect lover.
3. He/she must tag 8 more people to join this game and leave a comment on their comments saying they've been tagged.
4. If tagged a second time, there's no need to post again.

Gender: Male

Must be my superior.
I'm not talking about age... but characteristics like physical strength (he has to be able to defend ME, not vice versa), emotional stability (I'm a bit moody at times), intelligence (okay, we can be equals here... but we're talking about the perfect lover right? I'd LOVE to have someone who's wiser/smarter than I. Yup, gray brain matter IS the ultimate turn on).

Must be confident, self-assured and independent minded.
Can't have a weakling for a perfect lover now can you? He must have a good sense of what's right and wrong, and not be afraid to stand up for his convictions. Also, he must be the type of man other guys would respect and follow. When he enters a restaurant, his charisma would be such that the maitre d' would wait upon him immediately.

Must have a strong and righteous character, and be full of integrity.
It doesn't matter if he doesn't belong to the same religious denomination as I... but he should have good morals and be... honorable. :)

Must have a good sense of humor.
Woe is she who gets married to a guy with zero sense of humor. Life can be a pain in the derriere sometimes, and a little bit of humor can go a long way. No suicidal, manic depressive man for me, thank you.

Must be a bit musical... and must love dogs (especially rottweilers)
I know this is rather shallow of me, but right now I can't imagine being married to a guy who's tone deaf. However, if he fulfills all the other characteristics of my 'dream lover.....'    well..... :)   I'd much prefer someone who REALLY plays the piano well, however. (Haha! Frustrated pianist talaga...) Oh and he must be able to put up with my "howling/wailing" --> as my family describes my singing. I'm the resident banshee, as it were.

Ooooh and since we're being shallow, throw in a bit of dog loving as well. (CANNOT live with a cat person!! Okay lang if he likes BOTH dogs and cats... but CATS over DOGS? Nu uh)

"Readerly" --> right on Jomel!
Sir Aureus once said that "People who read go places." Can't have a boy friend whose idea of great literature is reading comic books (e.g. Archie...although I make an exception for the Sandman series, ahehe...)

Must be patient (with me) and be organized.
You know what they say about artistic people and artistic chaos? Not that I have pretensions of being an "artiste" but I definitely fit the bill about their organization skills (or apparent lack therof). I CAN be organized if I put my mind to it... however, it definitely takes no small amount of effort on my part. My future hubby must be patient with me (and the state of my room).

Must be kindhearted (deep down) and put Country/Family first.
Call me prejudiced, but I wouldn't be interested in a brown American whose idea of patriotism is heading off to settle in the States at the first opportunity  (after studying in Philippine schools, after receiving so much from the Motherland, etc.).

In short my perfect lover is..... DARCY FROM PRIDE AND PREJUDICE HAHAHAHAHA!!!
(I DO think Jane Austen made mention of a few rottweilers in Pemberley... and if she didn't, she ought to have. Ha!)

I tag Ogot, Tata, Kris, Denden, Riva, Cass, Bianca, and Jaime!

A few pics from the Mekeni Ad Launch (thanks Phat!!)

Tata's going to be posting some pics as well, so I'll only post the few that she didn't.



Resty (in green), Phat, Shaddai, moi, Feona and Ogot (who suddenly became a bass singer for a night haha!)



A very kilig Ogot with the gorgeous Pia Guanio (looooove her shoulders!!).

And that's it! Tata posted the rest. :) Ooooh, thanks to Patrick de Leon for the pics!!

VMV Hypoallergenics

At the risk of sounding kikay (and therefore, sounding like my twin, haha peace tayo Ta!), I MUST rave about the new cleanser and toner I got from VMV. :) (The one for oily skin... the green line) And nope, I didn't get the moisturizer anymore because I don't need it... THAT's how oily my skin is!

Nary a new pimple in sight! Just waiting for the old ones to go away... they've subsided considerably over the past several days and I'm very optimistic. This MIGHT be the start of a very loooong and satisfying relationship, VMV!

My scars are still horrible, though. Very red. Very... noticeable. :( The sad thing is, I can't wear make up to cover them up because my skin's so sensitive, it breaks out even with high-end make up that is supposedly noncomodogenic and hypoallergenic (whew! What big words! Thanks to Tata for my new vocab).

Tata says that if I don't get new pimples (and therefore, new scars)... hopefully my old scars will be gone in two years time. 

Years!!! :( Sadness. Decent skin, even with the proper skincare regimen, will take me YEARS to achieve. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaay buhay.

Oh well. Here's looking forward to better skin c/o VMV. (The awesome thing is, it's a Filipino brand! Yay! Support the economy and buy VMV!)

Long time no post

Well it's my summer break at last, although it doesn't seem like much of a break because I'm not as idle as I wish to be, hehe.

(Farewell, my dream of going to Boracay only to trap myself in an airconditioned room and read the days away...)

Busy busy times! In the past few weeks, I've

* gone to a bar and drank REAL Irish whiskey (Jameson), woohoo! A MACHO drink!

* blown my talent fee (c/o the Mekeni ad) on VMV Hypoallergenic's Green Line for Oily Skin -->I'm hoping it will bring about an improvement

* gone out with a few friends whom I haven't seen for AGES! And had a really great time catching up on life stories

* practiced for our college's production of the opera PAGLIACCI [July 2 at the CCP!]

* read my eyes red (haha umimbento!)

Among other things :)

I wish summer'd never end!

Happy times are (almost) here again...

Wahoo! Summer's over! Just one more dastardly Kas 1 exam to cram for. *gulp*

This past week I:

-- took a really hard Comm 3 exam (the kind that you don't study for... the kind you PRAY for)
-- gave a persuasive speech ("Operatic" Singing: The Healthier Option) and got my Comm 3 prof interested in taking up bel canto singing lessons
-- partied with my Comm 3 class (the image of Chester carrying Jovik while standing on a measly sheet of paper on tiptoe will forever be engraved in my memory... haha!!)
-- watched THE DA VINCI CODE on the 1st day (hahaha!! achievement!!)
-- filmed a documentary with my Kas 1 groupmates (Ang Katipunan sa Bicolandia... YEAH!!)
-- met up with a very good, old friend and had a wonderful catching up session

Never knew there were so many (forgotten) heroes during the Revolution of 1896... this is what comes of being taught Luzon-centric/Christian-centric history all my grade school and high school life.

Our country's history is sooooooo interesting, full of passion, intrigue, drama, and action! It's like reading a swashbuckling adventure... hmmmm I think I WOULD have enjoyed it if I hadn't passed Music and gotten into History as my second course choice ;)

Years from now I could do an Ambeth Ocampo and write interesting essays on our history... they'd call me the Singing Historian. Catchy, huh? :)

Waaaaa I had LOADS of fun during our Comm 3 Farewell Party!! I never bonded with my classmates like this before... not even in Music (and that's saying something since in Music, classmates tend to bond pretty well). I'll miss watching the free line dance sessions of the DOTA boys (Abraham, Alistair, and Fefie... miss you guys already!), I'll miss my oh-so-friendly seatmate and future tennis champion Tine... I'll miss silent-but-malupit Micko of the stiff hair. 

To be continued...

My Kas 1 Field Trip to Cavite... In Honor of Gat Andres Bonifacio's 109th Death Anniversary

Not many people get to go to Mt. Nagpatong to see the shrine erected in memorial of (arguably) our first president and (arguably) the greatest hero of our country, Gat Andres Bonifacio. I'm just glad I was able to go.

I went with my Kas 1 class on a special field trip to celebrate his 109th death anniversary.

Warning: Very anti-Aguinaldo content to follow... pro-Aguinaldo people might want to stop here.

(Aside: It's interesting that Rizal day is celebrated on the day of his death, while Bonifacio Day is celebrated on the day of his birth. Wanna know why? Because Aguinaldo did not want people to remember how the Bonifacio brothers were MURDERED, in cold blood, under his command. The spineless ******* who did the foul deed was one Lazaro Makapagal. Bonifacio was robbed of his clothes, his corpse chopped up into pieces [hence the poem that goes "Andres Bonifacio, atapang a tao, a putol a ulo, etc..."], and buried in an unmarked grave. Indeed, karumaldumal ang pagkamatay niya ---> said Prof. Villan)

Our first stop was the Bonifacio marker in Tutuban, near Divisoria. It was so disheartening because we were the only ones there, and only one flower offering was given (courtesy of Lito Atienza). It's as if no one remembers him anymore. I felt this was so all throughout the field trip, at almost all our stops.

Next we went to the Aguinaldo Shrine in Kawit, Cavite. His house is well-kept, and in beautiful condition. We were shown around by a kindly old caretaker, who thoughtfully showed us the family rooms, the banquet area, and even the secret passages!! One of the tour's highlights, hehe.

Ang saucey naman ni Aguinaldo... may bowling alley pa sa bahay. Haha!

We expected that the following historical landmarks we would visit (this time, connected to Bonifacio) would be in the same condition as Aguinaldo's Shrine. We were dead wrong.

The Hacienda de Naic, where the Bonifacio brothers were held prisoner by Aguinaldo's men, is now a school. There is only a plaque to give any clue that anything historical actually happened. Here, the wounded brothers were kept for several days in a dark, damp, tiny cell... their wounds (both were wounded rather seriously) left untreated to fester and rot... and only fed twice with gruel "not fit for animals to eat."

(By this time, a very strong feeling of hatred against Aguinaldo was building up in us...)

The Trial House of Bonifacio was in slightly better condition compared to the Hacienda de Naic, but we were shocked to find out that the land it is on isn't owned by the government, but only being leased. :( The contract's good for 15 years, so if you folks plan to visit, better do it soon. One of these days, this very important historical landmark will be gone.) Here, the mock trial of the Bonifacio brothers was held. Everything was orchestrated, and the sentence was already decided upon even before the brothers set foot inside the house. Here, the brothers were sentenced to die.

The Bonifacio Shrine in Mt. Nagpatong is rather difficult to get to. There is only a dirt road that leads to it. We had to hike the 2.5 km (times two... that's 5 km!!) to and fro... we're talking rocky, sandy, uphill walking here! In the terrible heat.  NOT for the faint of heart.

Ate Mimai and I sang "Bayan Ko" as tribute to Gat Andres before we left the shrine. It was sad because I think we were the only ones in the class who knew the song. Our prof wanted all of us to sing but only Ate Mimai and I actually did. (sigh) It's as if they don't care...

It's very disheartening to think that this great hero, arguably our REAL National Hero, is fast being forgotten by us Filipinos. How ironic, when we owe all the freedom and rights we enjoy now to this man.

The story of Bonifacio and Aguinaldo is very telling of human nature. We would do well to study our history, because THIS is what they don't teach you in grade school and high school textbooks. 

The Supremo founds a noble organization, and puts his sweat and blood into it. Aguinaldo, a mere general under this man, becomes envious and starts getting ambitious. He finds a way to rally others to his sadly misled cause, and sabotages the well-laid plans of the Supremo [the Katipuneros WOULD have overrun Intramuros if Aguinaldo had fulfilled his part in the battle... but the coward stayed in Cavite, against the Supremo's orders]. This underling general wants to lead the organization by himself. Next, he assassinates the character of his noble political adversary (spreading rumours about the Supremo's incompetence, saying that his sister is the kabit of a prayle, etc.) And then, he lures Bonifacio into a trap. Bonifacio, never thinking for a minute that a fellow countryman and comrade-in-arms would betray him, goes to Cavite [Aguinaldo's territory] to ask why the underling general didn't follow orders. He never leaves Cavite alive... nor whole, for that matter.

Human nature. ;)

Anyway, I'm really sad that Bonifacio is barely remembered by us Filipinos nowadays. May 10 SHOULD be marked red in the calendar, should be a national holiday, in fact! In truth, we owe this man our FREEDOM.

I like what our prof said. "Rizal may be our national hero, pero si Bonifacio ay ang ating Pambansang Bayani."

Mabuhay si Gat Andres Bonifacio!!

[none]

From ellimac_00 
c/o hitaka
 
* bold those books you've read
* italicize started-but-never-finished
* (put in parentheses if you've seen the movie ;))
* underline the ones you actually like
* "" those you'd like to read
* add three of your own
* post to your livejournal
* comment to let me know you've been infected

1. "(The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien)"
2. (Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen)
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams)
5. (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling)
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. "1984, George Orwell"
9. (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis)
10. "Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte"
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. "(Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte)"
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. "Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier"
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)
19. (Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres)
20. “War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy"
21. (Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell)
22. (Harry Potter And The Sorcerer's/Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling)
23. (Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling)
24. (Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling)
25. "The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien"
26. "Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy"
27. "Middlemarch, George Eliot"
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. "The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck"
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. "One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez"
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. (Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl) (I watched both versions!)
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. "Emma, Jane Austen"
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. (The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas)
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. (Animal Farm, George Orwell)
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. "Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy"
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. (The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett)
52. "Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck"
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. "Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy"
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. (Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden)
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. "The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough"
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. "Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman"
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Susskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. (Matilda, Roald Dahl)
75. (Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding)
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. "Ulysses, James Joyce"
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. "The Twits, Roald Dahl"
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. "The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy"
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. "Brave New World, Aldous Huxley"
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. (The Godfather, Mario Puzo)
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. “The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett”
94. "The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho"
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. "Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez"
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. (The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot)
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie
101. Three Men In A Boat, Jerome K. Jerome
102. Small Gods, Terry Pratchett
103. (The Beach, Alex Garland)
104. (Dracula, Bram Stoker)
105. Point Blanc, Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker, Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks
109. The Day Of The Jackal, Frederick Forsyth
110. The Illustrated Mum, Jacqueline Wilson
111. "Jude The Obscure, Thomas Hardy"
112. The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole Aged 13 1/2, Sue Townsend
113. The Cruel Sea, Nicholas Monsarrat
114. (Les Miserables, Victor Hugo)
115. "The Mayor Of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy"
116. The Dare Game, Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls, Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
119. "(Shogun, James Clavell)"
120. The Day Of The Triffids, John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose, Jacqueline Wilson
122. "Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray"
123. The Forsythe Saga, John Galsworthy
124. House Of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski
125. "The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver"
126. Reaper Man, Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs And Full-Frontal Snogging, Louise Rennison 
128. The Hound Of The Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle
129. Possession, A. S. Byatt
130. The Master And Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov
131. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
132. Danny The Champion Of The World, Roald Dahl
133. East Of Eden, John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl
135. Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
137. Hogfather, Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan
139. Girls In Tears, Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers, Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind The Scenes At The Museum, Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby
144. "It, Stephen King"
145. (James And The Giant Peach, Roald Dahl)
146. "(The Green Mile, Stephen King)"
147. Papillon, Henri Charriere
148. Men At Arms, Terry Pratchett
149. "(Master And Commander, Patrick O'Brian)"
150. (Skeleton Key, Anthony Horowitz)
151. Soul Music, Terry Pratchett
152. Thief Of Time, Terry Pratchett
153. "(The Fifth Elephant, Terry Pratchett)"
154. Atonement, Ian McEwan
155. Secrets, Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword, Ian Serraillier
157. "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey"
158. "Heart Of Darkness, Joseph Conrad"
159. "Kim, Rudyard Kipling"
160. "Cross Stitch/Outlander, Diana Gabaldon"
161. Moby Dick, Herman Melville
162. River God, Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song, Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News, Annie Proulx
165. "The World According To Garp, John Irving"
166. "Lorna Doone, R. D. Blackmore"
167. Girls Out Late, Jacqueline Wilson
168. "(The Far Pavilions, M. M. Kaye)"
169. The Witches, Roald Dahl
170. Charlotte's Web, E. B. White
171. Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
172. They Used To Play On Grass, Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. "The Old Man And The Sea, Ernest Hemingway"
174. "The Name Of The Rose, Umberto Eco"
175. "Sophie's World, Jostein Gaarder"
176. Dustbin Baby, Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox, Roald Dahl
178. "Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov"
179. "Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, Richard Bach"
180. The Little Prince, Antoine De Saint-Exupery
181. The Suitcase Kid, Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
183. The Power Of One, Bryce Courtenay
184. "Silas Marner, George Eliot"
185. American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
186. The Diary Of A Nobody, George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting, Irvine Welsh
188. Goosebumps, R. L. Stine
189. Heidi, Johanna Spyri
190. Sons And Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
192. Man And Boy, Tony Parsons
193. The Truth, Terry Pratchett
194. (The War Of The Worlds, H. G. Wells)
195. (The Horse Whisperer, Nicholas Evans)
196. A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry
197. Witches Abroad, Terry Pratchett
198. The Once And Future King, T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle
200. Flowers In The Attic, Virginia Andrews
201. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
202. The Eye of the World, Robert Jordan
203. The Great Hunt, Robert Jordan
204. The Dragon Reborn, Robert Jordan
205. Fires of Heaven, Robert Jordan
206. Lord of Chaos, Robert Jordan
207. Winter's Heart, Robert Jordan
208. A Crown of Swords, Robert Jordan
209. Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan
210. A Path of Daggers, Robert Jordan 
211. As Nature Made Him, John Colapinto
212. Microserfs, Douglas Coupland
213. The Married Man, Edmund White
214. Winter's Tale, Mark Helprin
215. "The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault"
216. Cry to Heaven, Anne Rice
217. Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, John Boswell
218. Equus, Peter Shaffer
219. The Man Who Ate Everything, Jeffrey Steingarten
220. Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke
221. Ella Minnow Pea, Mark Dunn
222. The Vampire Lestat, Anne Rice
223. "Anthem, Ayn Rand"
224. The Bridge To Terabithia, Katherine Paterson
225. "Tartuffe, Moliere"
226. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka
227. "The Crucible, Arthur Miller"
228. "The Trial, Franz Kafka"
229. "Oedipus Rex, Sophocles"
230. "Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles"
231. Death Be Not Proud, John Gunther
232. A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
233. Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
234. Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton
235. A Raisin In The Sun, Lorraine Hansberry
236. ALIVE!, Piers Paul Read
237. Grapefruit, Yoko Ono
238. Trickster Makes This World, Lewis Hyde
240. (The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley)
241. Chronicles of Thomas Convenant, Unbeliever, Stephen Donaldson
242. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
242. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
243. Summerland, Michael Chabon
244. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
245. "Candide, Voltaire"
246. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More, Roald Dahl
247. Ringworld, Larry Niven
248. The King Must Die, Mary Renault
249. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein
250. A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L'Engle
251. "The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde"
252. "The House Of The Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne"
253. "The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne"
254. (The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan)
255. The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson
256. Chocolate Fever, Robert Kimmel Smith
257. Xanth: The Quest for Magic, Piers Anthony
258. The Lost Princess of Oz, L. Frank Baum
259. Wonder Boys, Michael Chabon
260. Lost In A Good Book, Jasper Fforde
261. Well Of Lost Plots, Jasper Fforde
261. "Life Of Pi, Yann Martel"
263. The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
264. A Yellow Rraft In Blue Water, Michael Dorris
265. Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder
267. Where The Red Fern Grows, Wilson Rawls
268. Griffin & Sabine, Nick Bantock
269. Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare
270. Mrs. Frisby And The Rats Of NIMH, Robert C. O'Brien
271. "(Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt)"
272. The Cay, Theodore Taylor
273. From The Mixed-Up Files Of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, E.L. Konigsburg
274. The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster
275. The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
276. "The Kitchen God's Wife, Amy Tan"
277. "The Bone Setter's Daughter, Amy Tan"
278. Relic, Duglas Preston & Lincolon Child
279. Wicked, Gregory Maguire
280. "American Gods, Neil Gaiman"
281. Misty of Chincoteague, Marguerite Henry
282. The Girl Next Door, Jack Ketchum
283. Haunted, Judith St. George
284. Singularity, William Sleator
285. "A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson"
286. Different Seasons, Stephen King
287. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk
288. About a Boy, Nick Hornby
289. The Bookman's Wake, John Dunning
290. The Church of Dead Girls, Stephen Dobyns
291. Illusions, Richard Bach
292. Magic's Pawn, Mercedes Lackey
293. Magic's Promise, Mercedes Lackey
294. Magic's Price, Mercedes Lackey
295. The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav
296. Spirits of Flux and Anchor, Jack L. Chalker
297. (Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice)
298. The Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, Brenda Love
299. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace
300. The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
301. "The Cider House Rules, John Irving"
302. Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card
303. Girlfriend in a Coma, Douglas Coupland
304. The Lion's Game, Nelson Demille
305. The Sun, The Moon, and the Stars, Stephen Brust
306. Cyteen, C. J. Cherryh
307. Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco 
308. "Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson"
309. Invisible Monsters, Chuck Palahniuk
310. Camber of Culdi, Kathryn Kurtz
311. "(The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand)"
312. War and Remembrance, Herman Wouk
313. "The Art of War, Sun Tzu"
314. The Giver, Lois Lowry
315. The Telling, Ursula Le Guin
316. Xenogenesis (or Lilith's Brood), Octavia Butler
317. A Civil Campaign, Lois McMaster Bujold
318. The Curse of Chalion, Lois McMaster Bujold
319. "The Aeneid, Publius Vergilius Maro (Vergil)"
320. Hanta Yo, Ruth Beebe Hill
321. “(The Princess Bride, William Goldman)”
322. Beowulf, Anonymous
323. The Sparrow, Maria Doria Russell
324. Deerskin, Robin McKinley
325. Dragonsong, Anne McCaffrey
326. Passage, Connie Willis
327. Otherland, Tad Williams
328. Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay
329. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry
330. "Beloved, Toni Morrison"
331. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, Christopher Moore
332. The mysterious disappearance of Leon, I mean Noel, Ellen Raskin
333. Summer Sisters, Judy Blume
334. (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Victor Hugo)
335. The Island on Bird Street, Uri Orlev
336. Midnight in the Dollhouse, Marjorie Filley Stover
337. The Miracle Worker, William Gibson
338. The Genesis Code, John Case
339. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevensen
340. "Paradise Lost, John Milton"
341. Phantom, Susan Kay
342. The Mummy or Ramses the Damned, Anne Rice
343. Anno Dracula, Kim Newman
344: The Dresden Files: Grave Peril, Jim Butcher
345: Tokyo Suckerpunch, Issac Adamson
346: The Winter of Magic's Return, Pamela Service
347: The Oddkins, Dean R. Koontz
348. My Name is Asher Lev, Chaim Potok
349. The Last Goodbye, Raymond Chandler
350. At Swim, Two Boys, Jaime O'Neill
351. "Othello, by William Shakespeare"
352. The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas
353. "The Collected Poems of William Butler Yeats"
354. Sati, Christopher Pike
355. The Inferno, Dante
356. The Apology, Plato
357. The Small Rain, Madeline L'Engle
358. The Man Who Tasted Shapes, Richard E Cytowick
359. 5 Novels, Daniel Pinkwater
360. The Sevenwaters Trilogy, Juliet Marillier
361. (Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier)
362. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
363. Our Town, Thorton Wilder
364. Green Grass Running Water, Thomas King
335. The Interpreter, Suzanne Glass
336. The Moor's Last Sigh, Salman Rushdie
337. The Mother Tongue, Bill Bryson
338. A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
339. "The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Stephen Chbosky"
340. ("The Phantom of the Opera, Gaston Leroux")
341. Pages for You, Sylvia Brownrigg
342. The Changeover, Margaret Mahy
343. Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
344. Angels and Demons, Dan Brown
345. Johnny Got His Gun, Dalton Trumbo
346. Shosha, Isaac Bashevis Singer
347. Travels With Charley, John Steinbeck
348. The Diving-bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby
349. The Lunatic at Large by J. Storer Clouston
350. Time for Bed by David Baddiel
351. Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
352. Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre
353. The Bloody Sun by Marion Zimmer Bradley
354. Sewer, Gas, and Eletric by Matt Ruff
355. Jhereg by Steven Brust
356. So You Want To Be A Wizard by Diane Duane
357. Perdido Street Station, China Mieville
358. "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Bronte"
359. Road-side Dog, Czeslaw Milosz
360. "The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje"
361. Neuromancer, William Gibson
362. The Epistemology of the Closet, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
363. A Canticle for Liebowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr
364. The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault
365. The Gunslinger, Stephen King
366. Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare
367. Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke
368. "A Season of Mists, Neil Gaiman"
369. (Ivanhoe, Walter Scott)
370. The God Boy, Ian Cross
371. The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie R. King
372. Finn Family Moomintroll, Tove Jansson
373. Misery, Stephen King
374. "Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters"
375. Hood, Emma Donoghue
376. The Land of Spices, Kate O'Brien
377. The Diary of Anne Frank
378. Regeneration, Pat Barker
379. Tender is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald
380. Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina Garcia
381. A Farewell to Arms, Ernest Hemingway
382. The View from Saturday, E.L. Konigsburg
383. Dealing with Dragons, Patricia Wrede
384. Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
385. A Severed Wasp - Madeleine L'Engle
386. Here Be Dragons - Sharon Kay Penman
387. "The Mabinogion (Ancient Welsh Tales) - translated by Lady Charlotte E. Guest"
388. The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
389. Desire of the Everlasting Hills, Thomas Cahill
390. The Cloister Walk, Kathleen Norris
391. My Antonia, Willa Cather
392. Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
393. The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
394. Conceived Without Sin, Bud MacFarlane Jr.
395. Pierced by a Sword, Bud MacFarlane, Jr.
396. "Tully, Paullina Simons"
397. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
398. Cat's Eye, Margaret Atwood
399. Earth Abides, George R. Stewart
400. Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy From Mars, Daniel K. Pinkwater
401. The Talisman, Stephen King and Peter Straub
402. Black House, Steven King and Peter Straub
403. Please Don't Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr
404. The Golden Spiders, Rex Stout
405. Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren
406. "Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand"
407. The Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams
408. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter
409. "The Man Who Was Thursday, G.K. Chesterton"
410. "Wizard's First Rule, Terry Goodkind"
411. Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine
412. The Blue Castle, L.M. Montgomery
413. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling
414. Truman, David McCullough
415. Tanamera, Noel Barber
416. A Time To Kill, John Grisham
417. Curtain, Agatha Christie
418. Eleven Minutes, Paulo Coelho
419. "Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman"
420. "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke"
421. Strange Pilgrims, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
422. New Spring, Robert Jordan
423. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
424. Redwall, Brian Jacques
425. Little Men, Louisa May Alcott
426. And Then There Were None/ Ten Little Indians (aka THE BEST MYSTERY NOVEL EVER WRITTEN!), Agatha Christie
427. The Bronze Horseman, Paullina Simons
428. Pollyanna, Eleanor H. Porter