Without fans, celebrities are nothing.

There were plenty of entries and articles that I wanted to write here, but because of this huge delay of server shopping, they’re already as outdated as a rotten apple if you know what I mean. I even thought of how I can organize this entire website as I can see that there’s just too much clutter in here. It was seriously time for me to do some spring cleaning for this site and even the rest of my websites hosted in this account. Seriously.

I’ve got new ideas for this site. In addition, I’ve got another upcoming commentary blog site on the works also with a pretty nifty domain. I’ve also got new trips for me to get by while still living unemployed: PBB Teen Edition 4² and Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side 1st Love Plus.³

And that’s about it. Just a quick entry. Will write more later once I get things organized once again.

1. as I can’t afford having a VPS (virtual private server)-like web hosting to support all my sites…
2. Myrtle FTW~!! Anime otaku cosplayers represent!
3. Oh Hazuki-kun, please be my prince…

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

Union City Sports Center

Usually once or twice a week, I would hog my parents Wii just to work out through Wii Fit Plus. Though it’s still a fun way to work out without spending membership fees to get fit in a sports club, I guess you could say that it got boring a little bit. Not just that, but I realized that the exercises were quite hard (especially the yoga and the strength training exercises) to just do them on the Wii board that it made me wonder if I was actually getting my body sculpted the way I wanted¹ or if I’m actually controlling my sugar level through exercise the right way, that kind of thing.

I needed something a lot more interactive and eclectic, you could say. I also realized that it’s easy to get lazy when you’re at your home doing all these tasks that you should always be responsible and making a habit of it. As a diabetic, the guides stated that it’s now important for me to do exercise everyday for an hour a day. Staying home would definitely make you lazy, plus I feel that my legs are not as strong as it used to for me to ride my bike in long distances. I remember when I was in my teens that my brother and I used to ride through the Coyote Hills trail that can reach up at the high points where we could even see the view of the SF Bay on the way. Those were the good ol’ days. Now as we’re way past our 20s, we’re getting weaker and couldn’t do the usual outdoor things like we used to. Seriously, when I get my legs strong enough again I would go back to that wonderful trail and bike it again. It’s always a refreshing feeling you know.

So, while Mom is going through her first cycles of chemotherapy after her mastectomy a month ago, Dad decided for the two of us to finally get in shape and get strong again by joining the local sports club. Luckily it’s just a 2-block walking distance away from where I live so we can just walk there back and forth. Sadly we signed up when it was raining so we had to drive instead. Anyway, I was reluctant at first because I know how broke I am with the membership fees but Dad was willing to split it. The price for two adults for all access throughout the center is around $500, but because Dad is a city official (Parks and Rec Committee), we get 50% off. Apparently the membership fees are 50% off for city officials and their families. That includes the mayor, of course.

So far I’ve been completely worked out and sore, a lot more than what I get from playing Wii Fit (though I still love to play Wii Fit), but the classes are fun. I’ve already tried Yoga to Interval Blast to Fitness Boxing and even Zumba. I could see the rage behind Zumba and I really enjoyed the class. I’m not exactly the dancer type myself, but it was really easy to follow. Mom and Dad used to love to cha cha and I finally got the chance to learn some cha cha moves (as well as samba and merengue) thanks to Zumba. I’m definitely going to come back again, that’s for sure. I also took an “On the Ball” class, which is a very light but fun exercise class mostly designed for senior citizens and those post-injury individuals. I needed to freshen up since I was sore all over so this really helped.

I’ve been going to the sports club almost every day now. I didn’t go on Sunday because of church and all the classes were in the morning during church hours. I wanted to take Tai Chi (but it’s too dang early) and also Pilates. Maybe next time perhaps?

So, even if this isn’t exactly part of my New Year’s resolution, I’m doing this for myself and for my mom. Once Mom is finished with her chemo cycles (which is probably going to be early next year) for sure she’ll join me in working out together. Now that would be a lot of fun.

1. I may have lost a lot of weight compared to my weight back in my 20s, but you don’t want to see my actual shape right now…

The Observations by Jane Harris

After reading and reviewing Jane Harris’ latest novel, Gillespie and I, I became interested in Harris’ fresh writing style that I also learned that she came to the literary limelight via a critically acclaimed debut novel, The Observations. I read the advanced praises and reviews to see what the fuss was about and became convinced to read the novel that made Jane Harris a familiar name in Victorian fiction.

The Observations, like Gillespie and I, also takes place in 19th Century Scotland, and it tells the story of a15-year-old Irish city girl going by the name of Bessy Buckley, who escaped her rather eccentric and dysfunctional family back in Glasgow to seek a new life in Edinburgh. She accepts a job as a maid in a lone house known as Castle Haivers despite the fact that she lacks basic housekeeping skills. Arabella Reid, the lady of Castle Haivers, simply hired Bessy to be the new maid because of her basic ability to read and write. At that time, Bessy realizes the rather strange behavior that the lady of the house displays, from being ecstatic to being angry from out of the blue, back to being ecstatic again. As part of Bessy’s tasks in her job, Arabella provides her rather odd tasks from sitting and standing up repeatedly to requiring her to record all of her daily tasks and personal thoughts with the empty journal and pen that was provided.

What the readers are seeing from Bessy’s journal entries aren’t just about her duties, but also her observations of her new surroundings, in particular the “missus,” Arabella, which I thought at first was the basis of the novel’s title. It turns out later that the mistress herself is writing about her own observations through a manuscript titled The Observations, writing her observations of her current and past servants before Bessy’s arrival, listing out characteristics and features of each servant in order to provide tips and analysis on what the ideal servant should be like. By the time she comes to her own section, she discovers that Arabella may have found out about her past at the peak where she and the teenage maiden were already forming a close bond with each other. With this, Bessy decides to take a little revenge by playing a childish prank involving a former maid who recently died and was also a highly-regarded servant by Arabella. Sadly, Bessy’s little prank backfires, causing her beloved missus to break in to inexplicable madness, and the past Bessy left behind was gradually catching up to her in the present.

Anyway, I’m on a new server now.

Right.

Earlier today, my mom and I attended our local church, St. Anne Catholic Church, for the Ash Wednesday mass and to celebrate the beginning of the Lent season when we were both stunned at the wall facing the parking lot with disturbing graffitiand other forms of vandalism. What was more appalling were the messages being spray-painted on the walls: inverted pentagrams symbolizing Satanism, along with the message “Carpe Noctem” (seize the night) and “Satan” underneath the inverted pentagram. They were spray painted on the side of the wall near the entrance facing the parking lot and another one at the top side of the roof. That part isn’t really that disturbing to me.

What disturbed me in this type of vandalism was that the faces of our Holy Family statues were defaced with black spray paint, the Beatitudes tablet broken and toppled on the ground, and worse, the wooden crucifix standing at the lawn of the church was also broken. For the deeply religious, this would affect them greatly and emotionally, believing that there is indeed evil out there (and there is evil out there after all). Me, on the other hand, I consider this a hate crime.

Now, I have seen religious worship centers being vandalized before with messages of hate, especially with synagogues and mosques, but I never thought that something so disrespectful, not to mention insulting, such as vandalism with connotations of hate here on my very diverse, very open, and more or less liberal hometown such as Union City, here in the San Francisco Bay Area. What I’ve witnessed earlier today already gave me a reminder that hate of any type and form is everywhere. I have faced discrimination before when I was younger, starting from being prejudiced about my foreign background and beliefs to even my age and gender. Today, for the first time, I’ve faced discrimination based on religion.

Set in Victorian Scotland, 35-year-old spinster Harriet Baxter is an independent Englishwoman who traveled from foggy London to the bright lights of Glasgow, in order to enjoy her newly earned independence from nursing her ailing aunt. An avid fan of art, she attended the International Exhibition to have a chance encounter with a young artist named Ned Gillespie, who at an early age destroyed his artwork and committed suicide. Through Ned and a chance rescue with Ned’s mother Elspeth, Harriet eventually became a trusted friend to the entire Gillespie Family, making herself a fixture in their lives. The accounts of her life and friendship with the Gillespies were written in a memoir account by the lone, elderly Harriet in her Bloomsbury home. Bearing that this is a Victorian mystery, you as a discriminating reader should be expecting the unexpected in this story, and Jane Harris’ Gillespie and Iexactly illustrates that fact.

The story alternately switches scenes from the present to the memoir itself and back to the present again. At first I found the beginning a little slow as I was trying to find a connection between her present life and the memoir itself until I reached about quarter of the story. The memoir’s purpose from Harriet’s point of view was to commemorate the struggling artist Gillespie and to recognize him and his art, giving him the credit and fame that he deserved during that time. With a few clues provided during her present life — from craving cigarettes and liquor to seeing delusions of the household help tending to her and her home –  it made me wonder if some parts of her memoir were actually credible. As a general knowledge we do know that at that age many or us may show or suffer signs of dementia and that our thoughts and memories may not be as keen as we thought unlike the times when we were younger.

Either that would be the case or there must be something else behind the nature of the rather descriptive, rich, and vivid memoir. Something unexpected and in certain cases, something a whole lot more sinister than meets the eye. It’s with this thought that I began to think if Harriet truly is a kindhearted independent well-to-do woman to a struggling young family or possibly a wolf in sheep’s clothing. For instance, unexpected, abnormal things within the family began to occur, in particular, Ned’s elder daughter Sybil. With such events going on I already had a feeling that the story of her friendship and life with the Gillespies isn’t going to have a happy ending, emphasizing that the ending would be a lot more menacing than tragic. The climax of Ned’s younger daughter Rose’s kidnapping and eventual death really hit my reader’s trigger, with this criminal tragedy leading the narrator Harriet as the prime suspect, most notably an English prime suspect facing Scottish Law.

I won’t say any more in terms of the novel’s plot, but this particular novel is very well worth reading. This is one of the books that I would recommend for open discussions within book clubs. When I read the past reviews from creditable publications such as Kirkus Reviews this book really peaked my interest, and I felt honored to write a review for this book. Harris’ style of writing isn’t just clever and witty but so vividly detailed and evocative that the setting, its descriptions of the scenes, not to mention the inclusion of two old maps of 19th Century Glasgow (which gave me a few clues to the setting of the story overall) easily hooked me to the story. With an open mind and patience, Gillespie and I would really pull you in to deep contemplation, particularly regarding to the “I” from the title.

The book reminded me a lot of two other books (written by English authors in fact) that I truly enjoyed reading: Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Kate Summerscale’s non-fiction The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House. I also read from the previous reviews that Harris’ debut novel The Observations also has a similar feel and tone to her second. Gillespie and I is actually the very first novel that I’ve read by Harris, and because I found this book enjoyable I look forward to reading The Observations in the near future. Just with Gillespie and I alone, the name of Jane Harris should be added alongside mystery greats such as Edgar Allan Poe, Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle.

Even my parents, though married and still very much in love with each other, also hate Valentine’s Day. Yeah.

1. For me it’s a dangerous day for diabetic people— waste your money on chocolate and dessert and then get overdosed by too much lovey-dovey sweetness that even when you’re bitter, the sweetness still attacks you.

No Plot? No Problem by Chris Baty (with its companion kit)

It’s the brand-new year, two months since the end of the novel-crunching event of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and for all the NaNoWriMo writers participated, it is time to go through post-novel composition mode. For the writers who reached the 50,000 word count goal this year, congratulations. For those who didn’t, now is the right time to reflect and re-plan for next year’s NaNoWriMo. Maybe some of these writers decide to just stop at the last day of the challenge, but for those who want to improve their craft through revision of their first draft prose or for those who want to start a brand-new prose for next year’s event, The Office of Letters and Light, the organization behind literary challenge events such as NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy, prepared and published a series of textbooks and tools to provide the writers and would-be writers a guide to preparing for NaNoWriMo and tips during the event itself.

The Office of Letters and Light presented so far two textbooks: No Plot? No Problem! (along with its optional companion writer’s kit) and Ready, Set, Novel! writer’s workbook. For this review, I am going to feature the first guide book and its companion novel-writing kit: No Plot? No Problem.

This book was solely written by Chris Baty, freelance writer, writing coach, and founder of both the NaNoWriMo event and its organization, The Office of Letters and Light. This book primarily focuses on providing tips and guides to the NaNoWriMo writer and the would-be NaNoWriMo writer in two separate periods: months before November (the official month of NaNoWriMo when the challenge takes place) and during the challenge event itself. Baty used a lot of wit and humor throughout the entire book, making prose writing in 30 days a lot more user friendly, rather than presenting the text in the usual textbook language aimed towards students and professional.

For those writers who are just starting off or planning to participate in NaNoWriMo for the first time, No Plot? No Problem! should be the very first book that they should look in to to provide a good start to their preparation. The preparation period of the book does not only focus on how to find inspiration for the prose you plan to write, such as general observation on public areas to watching TV or reading novels. The book also provides tips regarding the best locations, such as your own bedroom or your local coffee shop to your local public library, that you can make yourself your personal writing station and even tips on your other daily habits, such as your eating patterns while you write or the types of food you eat during your writing process. It also provides suggestions regarding mapping your word count goals per day according to your daily routines and schedules. Lastly of course, the book also provides tips on research and character building, depending on the type of prose that you plan to write. Fiction, non-fiction, or simply just freewriting, this book has various tips per prose type.