Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 121

A strongly-worded gardening taboo

Photo from Wikimedia Commons We know nothing about gardening—we could barely keep a mongo plant alive in Science class—but after Rene pointed us to this bit from the 1,000-year-old Japanese text on gardening, Sakuteiki, gardening sounds fascinating. Regarding the placement of stones there are many taboos. If so much as one of these taboos is […]

Waiting for The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell

Over coffee we confessed that we are literary snobs. We judge people according to what they read. We think the label “Young Adult” disparages the intellectual capacity of adolescents. Deo does not read popular books unless they have been deemed worthy by the critics he listens to. Angus took some unfortunate stranger to task for […]

Locking up the “monkey mind” in Luang Prabang

Notes from Luang Prabang by Joven Cuanang Our favorite neurologist Dr. Cuanang recently retired as chief medical officer of St. Luke’s, giving him more time to teach, see patients, attend to his art collection (Pinto Art Museum in Antipolo), travel, and write. This piece on his trip to Laos appeared yesterday in the Philippine Star. […]

Lav Diaz’s Norte opens in cinemas Sept 10-16. Help us spread the word.

Hailed as a masterpiece by the world’s critics in the New York Times, The Guardian, NPR, The Telegraph, Total Film, The Independent, Film Comment, Grantland, The A.V. Club, Sight and Sound and many others, winner of the Gawad Urian for Best Picture, Norte, Hangganan Ng Kasaysayan finally gets a theatrical run in its own country. […]

Win 2 tickets to our Game of Thrones and Geekery talk at Ayala Museum

Let us know what your favorite fantasy novel is, when you first read it, and why you love it. Word count: Knock yourself out. Be epic. Criteria: Grammar and clarity. We think of ourselves as the Grammar Watch, defending The Wall against incoherence and unacceptable usage. We are the red pencil in the darkness. We […]

Coloring books for clever kids or adults who need therapy

Crayons, 96 colors, Php409 at National Bookstores Your crayon coloring technique says a lot about you. As a kid we would press the crayon heavily onto the page, leaving a thick layer of color, and then we would scrape off the layers so the color would look light. Why didn’t we just color lightly, then? […]

Doggy Drama: The mystery of the smelly hallway

Anton and Kiko on the couch, from which they have been barred as they have been exiled to the kitchen. Our friend Edd has two pampered Shih Tzus, Anton and Kiko, both eight years old. We kid him that they are high-maintenance because they have a full-time yaya to clean up after them, they have […]

Reminder: We called dibs on Cary Joji Fukunaga.

While everyone is gushing over Cary Joji Fukunaga at the Emmys, here is proof that we saw him first, before True Detective, just before Jane Eyre. True, it was while we were googling Michael Fassbender, but the point is, dibs dibs dibs. We know someone who went to school with him, but she did not […]

Geraldine Javier made us a pair of earrings.

Nyahahahaa!!! Assortment of unattractive gloating noises! You can’t buy them in galleries. You can’t buy them at auction. You can buy a Geraldine Javier artwork for a million bucks but these earrings are priceless. We don’t have space in our apartment for artworks (Unlike our friend the BLB who rents apartments for his collections), so […]

Girls and Advertorials

Lena Dunham in Girls Girls grew on us. When we started watching Lena Dunham’s HBO series a couple of years ago we found it irritating—all those self-obsessed, privileged, whiny 22-year-olds—and alarming. By the third episode we were hooked and by the fourth we were quoting it like Whit Stillman movies (“I’m not on Facebook.” “You’re […]