Sunday, August 31, 2014

The Sunday Currently

After having stumbled upon (and getting inspired by) Sidda Thornton's The Centennial Sunday Currently, I thought I'd try it out and check to see if it's a really good way to keep updating my blog in spite of my negligent blogger behavior.

Sunday Currently is  pretty self-explanatory. It's a round-up of answers to various current questions about yourself.

C U R R E N T L Y . . .

R E A D I N G  Just finished Neil Gaiman's Stardust (novel), and about to pick up the graphic novel.

W R I T I N G  html and css scripts. Random ramblings. Snarky tweets and comments. I think I'm blocked.

L I S T E N I N G  to Joshua Radin. It is a dreary sunday, after all.

T H I N K I N G  of what other books to pick up. Ideas for a friend's blog. Starting up a new business. Work. Teaching children.

S M E L L I N G  cigarettes. Always cigarettes. I reek of cigarette(s'?) smoke.

W I S H I N G  for opportunities to further my goals and dreams and ambitions.

W E A R I N G  a black polo from my university (and university days!) and red nails.

L O V I N G  family, friends, my dog, and dreary sundays. 

W A N T I N G  the new hazelnut milk tea from chatime. I was late to the milk tea game, only developing a taste for it this year (and being a much bigger coffee drinker than tea drinker), but Chatime's oolong tea and roasted milk tea are a particular weakness for me.

N E E D I N G  to start dieting. 

F E E L I N G  Anxious.

Friday, August 29, 2014

Inspiration: Boldini and Degas


From L-R: Giovanni Boldini's The Woman in Red, The Mondona Singer,
Princess Marthe Lucile Bibesco 

Not until historical romance did I begin to appreciate classical impressionist art, but Boldini and Degas are quickly changing the game for me.

My first encounter with Degas was back when my then 15-year old sister, Shutterhound, started painting ballerinas. I was a wee tot of 7 back then. I knew zilch in those days and just a little more than that now. At present, however, I am more able to appreciate their strokes of genius now. (Get it?! lol)

From L-R: Edward Degas's The Green Dancer, Dancer Resting, Reading a Newspaper,
??? Please feel free to email me if you know the title

Both Boldini and Degas produced work during the late 1800s through to the early 1900s. Their various art contain both a lightness and darkness to it, a whimsy that manages to carry a thick, blanketing malaise -- a hauntingly bright effect that is specific to these two.

Friday, June 27, 2014

The White Queen



Men go to battle; women wage war.

Just finished reading The White Queen, the first book in authoress Philippa Gregory's take on the infamous Cousins' War, The War of the Roses, a bloody battle between two rival branches of the House of Plantagenets; Houses Lancaster and York (the red rose the former, the white the latter).

Gregory's story follows that of one of England's most controvesial Queens, Elizabeth Woodville, through whom will begin Kings and Queens of the most famous royal line, The Tudors.

Elizabeth Woodville is also the mother of the famous Princes in the Tower, her two sons by the beloved York King Edward IV, as well as Queen Elizabeth who marries Henry Tudor (Henry VII) and is grandmother to historical England's greatest queen, Elizabeth I.

You would think that with so rich a historical basis that Gregory would build herself an enchating world of drama and political intrigue. In this instance, Gregory fails the Yorks. The first half of the book is woefully banal, even more disheartening as the two most interesting characters, Jaquetta Rivers (mother of EW who was tried and executed on charges of witchcraft) and the Earl of Warwick (widely known as the "Kingmaker") is featured heavily in it.

The second half picks up in pace which makes it a better read but one cannot help but grow bitter at the self-aggrandizing and ambition of the beautiful but prickly Elizabeth Woodville.

One can only hope that the next 4 books aren't as dull and lackluster as this one.

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Late Post: SINGAPORE 2012

CEBU 2014

Monday, February 24, 2014

SUBIC 2014

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Quotedump: Broken Empire Series


 I find it's the coldest threats that reach the deepest.

Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it. Heroes on the other hand, they make terrible torturers. They don't see what motivates a normal man.

Terror and entertainment are weapons of statehood.

I lived in a world of soft things, mutable truths, gentle touches, laughter for its own sake.

Assassination is just murder with a touch more precision.

Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.

Sometimes a bit of pain's just what we need: to cauterize the word, burn out the infection.

When in doubt, reach for the wisdom of others.

When in doubt, let your hate lead you.

Never trust a lettered man.

There are few things more satisfying than taking out your frustrations upon the bearer of bad tidings. 

Memories are dangerous things. You turn them over and over, until you know every touch and corner, but still you’ll find an edge to cut you.

I looked into my own darkness. I knew what it was to be trapped, and to watch ruination.

Each day the memories weigh a little heavier. Each day they drag you down that bit further. You wind them around you, a single thread at a time, and you weave your own shroud, you build a cocoon, and in it madness grows.

You sit here with your yesterdays queuing at your shoulder. You listen to their reproach and curse those that gave you life.

Hate will keep you alive where love fails.

It was a defeat, resorting to crude threats in a game of subtlety, but sometimes one must sacrifice a battle to win the war.

Is revenge a science, or an art?

There's something brittle in me that will break before it bends.

The road may ever go on, but we don't:  we wear out, we break. Age makes different things of different men. It will harden some, sharpen them, to a point.

Hold to a thing long enough, a secret, a desire, maybe a lie, and it will shape you.

I held to my anger, drank from my well of poison.

We wrap up our violent and mysterious world in a pretense of understanding.

The biggest lies we save for ourselves.



Some pain you can distance yourself from, but a headache sits right where you live.

There's something magical about a departed headache. It's a shame the joy fades and you can't appreciate not having one every moment of your life.

We're brittle things, us men.

When a game cannot be won, change the game.

With enough hurt, we all sound the same.

Wounded is good. Sometimes wounded is better than dead. The wounded cause trouble. If you let them.

A man who's got no fear is missing a friend.

To know thyself must be terribly dull.

We die a little every day and by degrees we're reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.

As a child, there's a horror in discovering the limitations of the ones you love. The time you find that your mother cannot keep you safe, that your tutor makes a mistake, that the wrong path must be taken because the grown-ups lack the strength to take the right one... each of those moments is a theft of your childhood, each a blow that kills some part of the child you were, leaving another part of the man exposed, a new creature, tougher but tempered with bitterness and disappointment.

Trust is a fine thing but try not to build plans upon it.

When pain bites, men bargain.

The thing about the path less travelled is that it is often less travelled for a good reason.

Anger always opens a new reserve, a little something you'd forgotten about.

So much in life is simply a matter of timing.

Disguise lies in how you move.

You can't present your good side to the whole world.

Sometimes you can only win if you're prepared to sacrifice everything.



After all, getting everything you wish for is nearly as dire a curse as having all your dreams come true.”

No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.

We're fashioned by our sorrows - not by joy - they are the undercurrent, the refrain. Joy is fleeting.

I maintain a balanced view of the world, but that balance is always in my favor.

Hurt spreads and grows and reaches out to break what’s good. Time heals all wounds, but often it’s only by the application of the grave, and while we live some hurts live with us, burning, making us twist and turn to escape them. And as we twist, we turn into other men.

There are hard paths and there are the hardest paths.

Too much soft living and peace can choke a man sure as any rope.

Sin doesn't stick to a child's skin the way it clings to a man's.

When age speaks to youth, it goes unheard.

Too much cleverness can be a torment to a man, setting his wits against his faith.

Even clever men could be fools.

A married man is always outnumbered.

The world eats good men for breakfast.

Fear and ambition, a good combination.

Lesson in life -- keep moving.

Men have far more to fear than boys.

Though I might walk where angels fear to tread, I try not to rush in like a fool.

We all carry the seeds of our own destruction with us, we all drag our history behind us like rusted chain.

A man who can't make sacrifices has lost before he starts.

If you must run, have something to run toward, so it feels less like cowardice.

Alea iacta est. The die is cast.

It's an unsettling business having to re-evaluate your world view.

It's an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war.

The worst traps are the ones we lay for ourselves.

My anger is never more than a moment away. It makes a fool of me more times than I can say.

My whole life has been a series of dangerous choices wrestled around to better outcomes.

Dark times call for dark choices.

Men to die with rather than for.

There's a power in the telling of a truth.

Whilst the holy man may fail in any moment, the damned may in any moment reach for redemption.