I heart Moleskine Helvetica 9:05 PM

My latest love.

I've used Moleskine for years. I use it to list all the books I buy and read on a monthly basis, to write down the books I want to read (and every time I finish one, I tick it off the list), and to make personal daily notes. Even in the age of Blackberrys and digital planners, I still find great comfort in jotting down stuff on my Moleskine notebook's acid-free paper using an ordinary tech pen.

When I saw the Moleskine Helvetica special edition (in celebration of the font's 50th anniversary) in Fully Booked, I nearly had a seizure. I love both Moleskine and the Helvetica typeface, so it just made perfect sense to buy it. I got it though for a pretty hefty price (Php 1,300 for a frickin' notebook?? some would say), but it's worth it.

If you love typography and if you've watched the feature-length documentary film Helvetica, then you'll find yourself wanting this notebook as well.

writers' rooms 12:04 AM

The Guardian's Books section is one of the best sites ever for checking out what's new in the book scene and for reliable book reviews. One of my favorite subsections here is Writers' Rooms, (a pretty much self-explanatory title) which gives mere mortals like me some insights on where and how these writers work.

Showing here the rooms of writers I read:

George Bernard Shaw. I would have expected Shaw to have a grander-looking room; this little country house tool shed-like room seems a little out of character. But whatever floats his boat, right?


Mark Haddon. The room's quite messy but it seems to match the owner's playful writing style.


Roald Dahl. I will forever be in love with Roald Dahl's books. They are a big part of my childhood. I got my little sister (who's 10 years younger than me) hooked into reading at a young age when I insisted that she start on Roald Dahl. His books are very much a part of our little family library. I like how he keeps certain memorabilia on his desk--probably to serve as inspiration? Here's an excerpt on the feature on his room, which was written by his illustrator (could it be Quentin Blake??):

I didn't go into the shed very often, because the whole point of it as far as Roald was concerned was that it was private, a sanctuary where he could work where no one interrupted him. The whole of the inside was organised as a place for writing: so the old wing-back chair had part of the back burrowed out to make it more comfortable; he had a sleeping bag that he put his legs in when it was cold and a footstool to rest them on; he had a very characteristic Roald arrangement for a writing table with a bar across the arms of the chair and a cardboard tube that altered the angle of the board on which he wrote. As he didn't want to move from his chair everything was within reach. He wrote on yellow legal paper with his favourite kind of pencils; he started off with a handful of them ready sharpened. He used to smoke and there is an ashtray with cigarette butts preserved to this day.

The table near to his right hand had all kinds of strange memorabilia on it, one of which was part of his own hip bone that had been removed; another was a ball of silver paper that he'd collected from bars of chocolate since he was a young man and it had gradually increased in size. There were various other things that had been sent to him by fans or schoolchildren.

On the wall were letters from schools, and photographs of his family. The three or four strips of paper behind his head were bookmarks, which I had drawn. He kept the curtains closed so that nothing from outside came in to interfere with the story that he was imagining. He went into the shed in the morning and wrote until lunchtime. He didn't write in the afternoon, but went back later to edit what he'd done after it had been typed out by his secretary.

He wrote in the shed as long as I knew him - we worked together for 15 years from 1975 to 1990 and I illustrated a dozen of his books. I would take my drawings down to Gipsy House for him to look at while sitting on the sofa in the dining room. I don't think he let anybody in the shed.

And here's a nice write-up on his wife, Felicity Dahl, who talks about her 7-year-marriage with the beloved children's writer.


Louis de Bernieres. Birds Without Wings is my favorite among his books. Still looking for his novels Red Dog and Labels, as they are pretty hard to find here in Manila. His shed-slash-writing room is as quaint as the settings in his novels.


Martin Amis. A really nice room for writing. It looks like something I'd like to have for myself. Well, not for professional writing, but mostly just a place where I can keep my books and spend some quiet time by myself. The skylight is a nice touch. One can always look up when bored or stuck in a writing rut.


Jane Austen. The winner in the entire series, in my opinion. She wrote most of her novels in this table, which actually has the size of a side table. Just goes to show one doesn't have to have all that writing space and ambiance to be a brilliant writer.

Here's the full text from The Guardian feature on her writing space:

Not long before her death, Jane Austen described her writing as being done with a fine brush on a "little bit (not two inches wide) of ivory". Her novels are not miniatures, but she did work on a surface not so much bigger than those two imagined inches of ivory. This fragile 12-sided piece of walnut on a single tripod must be the smallest table ever used by a writer, and it is where she established herself as a writer after a long period of silence. Her early novels had been written upstairs in her father's Hampshire rectory, and remained unpublished when the family moved to Bath in 1800, where writing became almost impossible for her. Only in 1809, when she returned to Hampshire and settled in the cottage on the Chawton estate of her brother Edward, could she devote herself to her work again.

Chawton Cottage was a household of ladies - Mrs Austen, her daughters and their friend Martha Lloyd - all taking part in the work of the house and garden. But Jane was allowed private time. Having no room of her own, she established herself near the little-used front door, and here "she wrote upon small sheets of paper which could easily be put away, or covered with a piece of blotting paper". A creaking swing door gave her warning when anyone was coming, and she refused to have the creak remedied.

From this table the revised manuscripts of Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice went to London to be published in 1811 and 1813. From this table too came Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion. Here she noted down the encouraging comments of neighbours - Mrs Bramston of Oakley Hall, who thought S&S and P&P "downright nonsense", and "dear Mrs Digweed" who volunteered that "if she had not known the author, she could hardly have got through Emma".

Austen died in 1817, and after Cassandra's death in 1845 the table was given to a manservant. Today, back in its old home, it speaks to every visitor of the modesty of genius.

from my officemates, with love 4:00 PM

I have very sweet officemates. Work indeed becomes easier if you have great rapport with the people you see everyday.

While I generally like most of the people in the office, I am close to a selected few (naks). They are my friends, my ka-chika, and--because I think every person in UNICEF is incredibly talented and dedicated in his/her own way in our work for children--they are a source of inspiration to me.

Naturally, it also feels good to be at the receiving end of praise. I shared my blog with these close colleagues of mine, and some of them wrote back (via the office email, haha) to say that they like this little blog. *blush blush*

Writing is not an easy process, and it can be pretty frustrating at times. And even if I think that some of my writing is just mindless drivel, it feels nice to know that others appreciate the random stuff I put in here.

From Marge: gins, why am i checking mail on a sunday at 3am? i dont know either. i love your blog. here's mine. margeee.blogspot.com. love you!

From Tin: Thanks for sharing this, Gins! Really good writing! It makes me want to return to writing myself.

From Cecil: interesting blog gins. my running playlist in my nano is simply called "run". hehehe. i am such a dork. (Cecilia Masagca, I'm grateful to you because you got me into running. And you are definitely no dork when you run. Hope you run a 15K race very soon!)

From Reggie: oist. i read your blog. i loved it haha. you are an amazing, creative writer. true talent comes in raw form--not from some overzealous editor! galing. keep writing, keep rocking!!!

Thank you for the encouraging words, you guys! =) And please feel free to post comments and, er, violent reactions any time.

back after a 2-year hiatus 7:45 PM

Well, I've been lazy, I admit.

I've pretty much abandoned this blog for 2 years. A lot has happened since then: breaking up with two boyfriends (ugh, 2007 totally sucked), a major operation involving the removal of a dermoid cyst in my right ovary, my dad's death (so many things I should have said and done for him, and I feel grieved, just thinking how I wasn't really that good a daughter), very stressful fundraising goals in UNICEF, cross-training exercises to lose weight and feel healthy once more, casual dating, etc. I'd like to gloss over the details for now and start again with a clean slate.

Basically, i just want to go back to writing. At least, as a sort of cathartic exercise to ensure that I'm maintaining a good command of the English language, which I love to pieces. Haha. I'm not pretentious; I've never considered myself to be a good writer even though other people think otherwise. I gotta love them for thinking that way. But I've always felt that those who can't write, just read--and I honestly believe I fall solidly under that category.

And the most appropriate thing for me to do, as my way of returning from this dreadful no-writing state, is to come up with a list of books to read/finish this 2009.

It's a running list by the way. I'm an impulsive book buyer, and I tend to buy books that aren't on the original list, so this list isn't really carved in stone:

1. My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. I've been so silly. Started this book 2 years ago and I haven't gotten around to finishing it.
2. Atlas Shrugged: Centennial Edition by Ayn Rand. Read a dog-eared mass market paperback copy of this back in college and didn't really appreciate it. I bought this edition in KL last year, and it's been sitting on my office desk, screaming to be read.
3. Patience and Fortitude by Nicholas Basbanes. Okay, I'm a complete nerd for wanting to read this. But honestly, any bibliophile would have read any of Basbanes' works on the printed word.
4. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. Not done with this book yet, and I probably won't finish anytime soon. The book is as mad and as excruciatingly long as Frodo's journey to Mordor, but necessary for me to accomplish as well.
5. The History of The Hobbit: Part One: Mr. Baggins by John D. Rateliff. If you've managed to read J.R.R. Tolkien's numerous drafts of The Silmarillion and The Lord of the Rings (and his son Christopher's dry commentaries on the said drafts) like I have, you can basically read anything. Harhar.
6. The History of The Hobbit: Part Two: Return to Bag-End by John D. Rateliff.
7. The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology by Joseph Campbell. Joseph Campbell rocks. Joseph Campbell is the bees' knees--next to J.R.R. Tolkien, of course.
8. The Final Solution: A Story of Detection by Michael Chabon. Saw a copy of this in Borders, KL and I totally regret not buying it. Now I can't seem to find a copy here in Manila. Drat.
9. Natural Flights of the Human Mind by Clare Norall
10. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. I bought an amazingly good secondhand copy in RCBC Plaza's Books for Less branch at a really cheap price. A good book find always counts as a small victory.

This list actually constitutes my backlog. Some of these books are on my office desk to remind me that I gotta finish them before I even have the right to buy new ones. Obviously, I plan to read more than 10 books this year, but the ones mentioned above are my priority reads.

A good friend once told me that the mark of a serious reader is that he/she will always have a decidedly huge backlog of books (that pretty much cheered me up and made me feel less guilty about the pile-up of books on my desk). And according to Philip Roth, a reader is not one that just reads a lot, but obsesses over what he/she is going to read.

Yup, that's me alright.

blog fatigue 5:01 PM

I haven't written here in months--partly due to a hectic work schedule and partly because I simply have more important things to take care of then to just sit down and write. I suppose others have the luxury to sit and update their blogs all day. Lately, I can't even find the time to surf my favorite lit blogs.

As I am in the blog doldrums, I'm thinking of just publishing random thoughts, or the occasional book review, or quoting some book passages that really strike me. Not a very intellectual blog endeavor, I must say. But I'd rather read than write anyway.

Wisdom is realizing that I can never sustain a love for writing very long when there is an increasing number of books to devour every day.