Reading something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue
Happy Christmas, book lovers! I hope you’re enjoying the holidays with your loved ones.
Mine’s especially bookish this year. I didn’t have time to put up a tree (remember last year’s HP Christmas tree?), but a friend (thanks, Carl!) got me an ornament tree so I put it to good use on top of one of my bookshelves — I’ve always wanted a Nutcracker Christmas tree!
Because our house is scheduled for renovation by next year, I’ve been exploring shelving options, as I’ve sequestered asked for the upstairs hallway for floor to ceiling shelves for my books.
Got lots of interesting ideas not only for the shelves, but for the house plans as well, at “Jak en Poy: Bato, Gunting, Papel, Atbp.: An Interior Design Exhibit of Sustainable Proportions,” the graduation exhibit of the PSID Advanced Class of 2011, which runs until Nov. 6 at the former Super Sale Club, SM City North EDSA.
In “Jak en Poy,” sustainable interior materials, such as stone, steel, concrete, paper, glass, wood, bamboo, rubber, plastic, clay and mud, are applied to interior design booths that evoke different moods and styles, conscious of the concept of designing for a better world.
Some booths featured bookish spaces, so naturally I took pictures to show you. Check ’em out!
I’ve been away for a spell as the whole family flew to Bacolod to pay our last respects to my paternal grandmother, Lola Binyang, who passed away last week.
I was too young to remember the death of my paternal grandfather or my maternal grandmother, so losing both remaining grandparents in under two years is painful. Growing up with grandparents make you feel they’ll last forever (because to you they’ve always been old), and no matter how old you get, they still make you feel like a kid again, so losing a grandparent is a bit like a death toll on your own mortality.
Lola always spent part of the year with us when I was younger and she was still mobile. I remember endless summer afternoons playing cards on the bed with her — she was quite the cardshark — paris-paris (“pairs” in Ilonggo), blackjack, and even solitaire, as she’d leave a pack of cards behind to tide me over until she returned to our house the following year.
Second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning! — Peter Pan is currently playing at the Meralco Theater!
Peter Pan is the first collaboration of Repertory Philippines and Stages, and the first time this particular version, by Stiles and Drewe and the late Willis Hall, is being staged in Asia. The musical is, of course, based on the timeless tale written by J.M. Barrie.
I’ve always loved Peter Pan, and I was excited to watch it on stage. Lucky I caught the press preview over a week ago (special thanks to my boss and Rep).
As promised, here’s the post about my marathon trawling of secondhand bookstores in the Central District of Hong Kong.
On the itinerary my sisters planned, I had the Central expedition moved from Sunday to Tuesday, because I knew the stores weren’t open on Sundays. The downside of it was that we’d come from Disneyland and I was lugging half my luggage and a big bag of Disneyland souvenirs with me. I left the sibs at IFC mall and armed with the street maps in the appendix of my trusty guidebook (and my cousin Dianne’s instructions).
My older sisters told me I only had a couple of hours, and I knew that wasn’t ample time to browse, especially because I had to locate the spots first, but I really wanted to scope the stores out so I could blog about them, at the very least. I was right in that, as I spent most of my time surveying the streets, ended up scanning the shelves at each stop, and then went back to meet my siblings empty-handed. But I have notes for future visits (hopefully with people who understand my passion for books!), and I hope you’ll find them useful, too, if you ever find yourself book hunting in Hong Kong.
