Calamities and Technologies

It has been a week and a half already since the disastrous, shocking, and devastating tragedy that happened in Japan. The 8.9, then corrected as 9.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Japan shook the whole world. The earthquake left thousands dead and thousands more missing. Earthquake proof buildings stumbled down to dust. As one of the countries in the world that has the most sophisticated IT and telecommunication technology, Japan now suddenly "cannot be reached".

The tragedy shook not only Japan but the whole world as well as people suddenly worry about the preparedness of their own countries. Nations have been stirred up to check and double-check if their preparations are enough to salvage their own countrymen if ever the same tragedy hits their countries. Amidst the scare of earthquake and aftershocks, devastating tsunami followed suit as normally as it can be. Then, as if land and water are not enough to scare the hell out of human beings, air completed the cast as radiation leak threats hung over nearby nations leaving people with no choice but to speculate and be scared unnecessarily.

Here in the Philippines, as the world's texting capital, some of these moronic texters tried to steal the limelight from Japan. Text messages containing information, in fact too specific information about the supposedly radiation leak to be blown our way from Japan spread like forest fire. I do not know what their true intentions are, may it be simply to ride out the situation or to prove how powerful texting is as they sit back and watch people skitter out to buy betadine and iodine salts to "protect" themselves from radiation as what is indicated in the texts. These good for nothing people really do not have even a tiny bit of humanity in their souls. They perfectly know that most of the people here have little or do not have any knowledge at all about radiation and yet they happily took advantage of that to cause panic. I simply cannot fathom how idiotic and inconsiderate whoever created and spread that text message can be as to create panic and do something like that in the middle of the calamity in Japan. How can they be that ruthless, really. This is not something to joke about and I hope these people realize how serious this situation is. Earthquakes this strong cannot happen only in Japan. In fact after what happened last March 11, it prompted our own PHIVOLCS to explain more thoroughly and more frequently the real situation of the Philippines, which sadly, is not satisfactory. Philippines is as vulnerable as Japan as both sit on the Pacific Ring of Fire and I am sorry to say but if Japan lost that much inspite of being well-prepared, how much more would Philippines lose when the time comes that a nasty earthquake hits the country? I hope that even before the most dreaded "Big One" happens, the Philippines will more prepared for it and for once I will appreciate it if this study about the "Big One" would hopefully turn out to be a miscalculation.

People, let's pray.

女人花

I have been bumming around the house the other night and out of sheer pleasure, I started playing videos in YouTube. I have been revisiting my old favorites of Chinese songs and got a very overwhelming experience feeling all the memories attached to each songs rush back to me. Today, trying to recreate that ambiance here in the office, I played a long series of old favorites again. Unearthing from YouTube's database, I found the late Hong Kong super star, "Asia's Madonna", Anita Mui's music videos. Selecting a handful of her songs that I really love, I created a playlist of her songs.

One particular song out of the hundreds that I have played stood out distinctively. The moment its few notes played out, I got shivers and a very warm, fuzzy feeling all over. The feeling is just astonishing and at the same time unbearable. I haven't felt anything like that before and its just like magic. Its like she is singing directly to me. Its like the song was wrote just for me exclusively and that it is to be consumed by me and me only. Just a little before the chorus part, I find the song very familiar and thought I already heard it before, way way before. I looked at the title of the song and realized that the song title is also very familiar to me. In fact I think I already heard the song before and planned on having a copy of the song. I have a habit of writing down titles of those songs that I really love in the hope of someday I would have my own copy of that. I think this song is on that list of mine.

The song's title is 女人花 or when directly translated, Woman Flower. I love how this song touches my soul. I love how I feel like crying even though I have listened to it a number of times already today. I feel like it is touching my heart and moving me to the extreme. Really, it is very moving. I cannot possibly describe exactly how it can give me that kind of feeling but it is really superb. The melody matches Anita's low, soulful voice perfectly. I think this is one of her songs that seems like to be tailored-fit to her. At the same time, I cannot help but feel bad that she is not longer here to touch me with her new creations. She is a very big loss to the industry and to people who love her craft. In case you do not know yet, she can not only sing but she can act. Oh yes, the girl can really act. Her movie "Rouge" opposite Leslie Cheung, who I also love watching, which got her that major award is really good. I have watched it when I was a child and I really admire her although I cannot say that I understood the movie completely, I can feel the emotions surging through me. It really is a pity that Anita Mui has left us. I know that no one will surpass her. Both her craft, and her achievements.

As you can see, the title of this post is simply Anita's song title and it is because I simply cannot think of anything that I can use that will give justification to the song. No words can really describe how I perceive it to be.

Book review: The Millennium Trilogy

The past fourteen days of my boring life have been very busy. I was preoccupied during the night on weekdays and almost the whole day every weekend by my readings. I have read a number of praises and hypes about this series before but I cannot bring myself to buy it because I was afraid that I will get bored of it. I do get bored easily of novels that are too long and sometimes I find the flow very redundant and sometimes it feels like the author just prolongs it for the sake of prolonging it. After more than a year of preventing myself from buying it, I gave in when they released the complete set bundle of this. I thought this is just a trilogy so hopefully the author will not bore me to death with these three installments. And this is how The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson made me unavailable and locked up in my own universe for the last fourteen days.

I started with the first book with much skepticism (all of the books are very thick that I doubted that it will not bore the hell out of me). True enough, after reading the first few pages of the first book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I thought I won’t be able to finish the whole trilogy, let alone finish the first book. But when the book for the very first time introduced Lisbeth Salander into the story, it has managed to cling itself to me since. As I progress through the book, I thought “wow, no wonder this created so much hype”. It was absolutely entertaining and it just won’t let me go. I can read for hours and hours, in fact I have been sleeping way past my bedtime while reading this and I don’t get bored. The moment I finished it, I got worried. I was worried that the second book will finally meet my expectation of being boring and redundant. I was worried that the story will finally lose my excitement and become predictable. And yet I decided to continue with the second book right after the first book.

The Girl Who Played with Fire was really the heart of the trilogy. It demonstrated the real Lisbeth Salander. It speaks of her life, most especially, it speaks of her past. I think the second book reveals Lisbeth Salander’s core. It will make you sympathize with her and understand why she became how she is now. It makes you feel Lisbeth, makes you feel such intimacy that it is as if you are living her life instead. It makes you feel that you can reach out to her and she will feel you. One thing that I really appreciate is that when Lisbeth was blamed by the authorities of the murders, the story was written in a way that it did not make me frustrated and angry that Lisbeth is being blamed and framed-up. I have the tendency to be very affected, very frustrated every time I read or watch something wherein the character was framed-up and people scrutinize her and blame her to the point that I just want to scream that he or she is in fact innocent. But here, I never felt that frustration. I think it is because Lisbeth was created as intelligent as she can be. The story was also created intelligently and was not made to plow on your emotions alone. In fact, it will entertain you. It is also in this installment that I “fell in love” with Lisbeth Salander. Every day, I would be so excited to come home so that I can continue reading. It is as if I am coming home to her. I was obsessed with Lisbeth I admit; BUT do not think that I am a lesbian. I merely enjoy Lisbeth’s company. I admire her.

The last of the trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is what I liked the least. I thought that the “history” part, the one that explains “The Section” and the important members of it is quite too long. For one, I do not know Swedish government and their history. I also do not have any knowledge whatsoever of their politics. And there are few pages dedicated to these elements and I loathed it. I kind of just doze away while reading these. But naturally when the story came around to Lisbeth, it got my full attention again. Another thing that I would like to change if I would have a say about this is the affair of Figuerola and Blomkvist. Well, for me, like every character in the story, I have already accepted Erika and Mikael’s relationship but I cannot accept the affair with Monica. Secretly, I have been hoping that Lisbeth and Mikael will end up together. The reason is actually very simple, Mikael has been helping Lisbeth with her cases and he has already gone too far as a friend to Lisbeth and Lisbeth on the other hand have been alone for too long, albeit her own decision but her relationship with Mikael if I may say, is special. They belong together actually. Both of them will go out of their way just to help the other and they can’t just leave each other alone. I also love it that in this last installment all of the very few people who believed in Lisbeth’s innocence did their everything to help her. For all I know, this is the only time since she was locked up that anybody has treated her as a human again, except for Holger and Dragan who gave her chance to live her own life and gave her space in the society. My favorite part in this installment though is the court trial. I love how the "ice-queen" smothered the prosecutor with equally cold answers.

All in all, I love the trilogy and it is a shame that Stieg will never have another opportunity to create such a splendid series again. Lisbeth really got a very good grip on me. She managed to arouse my curiosity and filled me with compassion.

As what I used to post in my Facebook account:

I ♡ Lisbeth Salander