After a long day of tasks and errands, it was off to Caffe Firenzo for some All-Day-Breakfast of Hungarian sausage with scrambled eggs and served with rice.

What a great way to end my day. A heavy serving of breakfast for dinner. And some Almond Toffee Frappe to go with it.

And there’s free WiFi, too.

Watched Joseph Castelo’s The War Within (2005) yesterday (after the delayed telecast of Pacquiao’s victory over Hatton, and after agonizing over the endless ads in-between the two rounds — which they replayed twice).

I remembered Julia Loktev’s Day Night Day Night while watching this movie. Castelo’s The War Within tackles the same issue, but this time goes into the motivation that drives suicide bombers to sacrifice themselves for the higher cause they believe.

I liked how the movie follows the morose Hassan (played by Ayad Akhtar, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Castelo), soon after his cell’s failed terrorist attack on New York City targets, as he hides from the authorities by trying to meld into the New Jersey community where his childhood friend Sayeed (Firdous Bamji) now lives the American dream.

Throughout the movie we see two sides of the Muslim faithful — the fanatical Hassan who is ready to blow himself up for the injustices against his fellow Muslims, particularly his older brother; and the liberal Sayeed, who finds nothing wrong with trying to make a successful life beside his Jewish and Christian American neighbors.

The dire circumstances at the movie’s ending opens up a whole new set of questions as we see Sayeed’s son, taught how to pray by Hassan, going up to his room and we see him kneeling and bowing in prayer.

Watched the Pacquiao/Hatton 24/7 HBO Sports documentary series on GMA 7 last night. This is a must-see not just for Pacquiao or Hatton fans but also for media students out there. Great photography, great writing, great editing, great everything. This is a documentary you’d love to watch over and over again. 

By now you know that Pacquiao knocked out Hatton in just two rounds. (I still have to watch the match on free TV, though, as of “press” time.) Going back to the docu after the fight is like enjoying the icing on the cake.

Here’s the trailer to this great docu:

Must see.

Watched the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007) yesterday. Was I floored.

As usual, I was looking for a Hollywood kind of ending to the movie given that it was a holiday yesterday and i didn’t really want to ponder abstract concepts like “fate and circumstance.” So yes, I was kinda let down that no such resolution to the thrilling plot was in the offing. You know, where all the loose ends are tied neatly together like a ribbon on a gift.

But more than the plot really were the characters, particularly Javier Bardem’s Anton Chigurh. This character is tops on my list of movie villians. But also because in that last scene with Kelly Macdonald’s Carla Jean, where the latter doesn’t call Chigurh’s play, you can see the loneliness in Bardem’s eyes that ultimately shows us a glimpse into the source of Chigurh’s coldbloodedness. Great performance by Bardem.

But the other characters are played just as amazingly by Tommy Lee Jones (as Sheriff Bell), Josh Brolin (as Llewelyn Moss), and Kelly Macdonald (as Moss’s wife, Carla Jean).

A must see.

Just finished Jose Saramago’s novel, Blindness. Such a timely read, what with the news about Influenza A H1N1 all over. And with the alarming warnings of pandemic proportions. While there is cause for concern, some of the serious stuff is overriden by the sensationalized reporting — moreso on TV. Some of the reports even quotes government and health officials talking about the need to call in the military.

Which brings me to the novel, Blindness (1995), and how it portrays a city and country turning into a version of Hell as one by one the citizens are struck blind. The first few who lost their sight are quarantined in an abandoned mental asylum, with the military keeping watch so that no one escapes to infect others.

But soon everybody, inside and outside the quarantine, are struck blind. And soon humanity becomes its own nightmare. Except for a group of individuals led by a woman, the doctor’s wife (no name is given her in the novel), who wasn’t afflicted with the sudden blindness.

She becomes the sole witness to the degradation around her, and sometimes she wishes that she were blind too. But ultimately, she is able to lead her group to a kind of sight — a kind of hopefulness that lives on in everyone who doesn’t forget their humanity.

And after all our chores, it was off to the beach at the back of my lola’s house. And we would spend the whole day there, going home only for meals and the obligatory nap. After siesta, we would rush back to the beach and swim and build sandcastles and swim and …

We wouldn’t go home until the sun would set and our aunt would fetch us back.

My lola’s garden was the envy of her neighbors, including the former First Lady Imelda Marcos who hails from the same town. The latter built their family’s mausoleum right across the street from my lola’s house. Whenever Imelda would visit, she would drop by and cajole my lola to sell her flowers. My lola, who knew Imelda from when she still a kid, would politely refuse of course. In a way, I felt that that was my lola’s way of protesting how Imelda and her husband was running the country.

We didn’t really begrudge these tasks of watering the plants and sweeping the yard. Except that we had a strict, then-single aunt who would watch over us doing our chores. “We” meant around ten or more cousins staying in our lola’s place for the summer. The chores were divided among us — it was a huge yard and garden.

We would spend our summer vacation in my maternal grandmother’s house in Tolosa, Leyte. Part of our summer chores, before we were allowed to run off to the beach behind the house, was to water our lola’s plants. She had lots of flowering plants, including orchids like the one in the picture above.

I uploaded my first collection of poetry, Child’s Play and Other Poems. It’s long overdue but, what the heck! Thought I’d just get it over with so I can move on to my next collection. Hope you enjoy this. (I’ll just link you to the issuu.com site, as I can’t have the automatic link here.)