Before the Fall by Noah Hawley

 I just finished reading my first book this year: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley.

This novel centers around a struggling artist who, along with a four-year-old boy, survives a plane crash. This miraculous tale of survival and heroism gets turned on its head by the fact that all other passengers and crew perished. What started out as a story of inspiration slowly and insidiously turns into one of intrigue and innuendo.

While this book is classified as a suspense thriller, I found it to have a relaxed and easy pace. The writing switches back and forth between the present and the past, allowing the reader to learn more about the passengers and the crew which in turn this strengthens the reader's desire to know what caused the crash. That said, the climax was pretty intense and unexpected, and as I finished reading, I was left wanting to know more. Which is a sign of a great story: you get so emotionally invested in the characters that you want to know what happens to them after.

Now that I finished my first book of 2021, I'm hoping that I have gained enough momentum to keep on reading.

Nadal wins Barcelona Title #12

 Congratulations Rafa Nadal for winning the Barcelona Open for the 12th time!

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A post shared by Rafa Nadal (@rafaelnadal)

It wasn't an easy road to the final. Rafa dropped a set in his first two matches before finding his form in the quarters and the semis. In the final, he faced an in-form Stefanos Tsitsipas who not only won Monte Carlo the previous week (and without dropping a set!) but who also defeated Rafa in a tough five set match in the Australian Open earlier this year. Rafa actually held a match points in the second set of the final but it was on Stefanos' serve. Not only did Stefanos save the match point, he managed to win that set to even things out. In the 3rd set, Tsitsipas was on the verge of his second consecutive title as he held a match point against Nadal but he managed to save it. He then won that game, broke Stefanos in the next game, then served out the match. Check out the match highlights here.

 

video uploaded in youtube by Tennis TV

This win means that Rafa has now won at least one title each year for 18 consecutive years (from 2004 to 2021). This record in men's tennis is just absolutely staggering. I am hoping that this gives him confidence to defend his French Open title. The next generation players including Tsitsipas, Dominic Thiem, Alexander Zverev, Daniil Medvedev, and now Andrey Rublev are really getting closer to the top as they consistently challenge the Big Three now. I'm hoping Rafa can still hold on to claim Roland Garros #14.

Good luck, Rafa, and congratulations on your Barcelona title!

My First GForest Tree in GCash

Achievement unlocked: GCash will be planting a tree on my behalf!

GForest allows users to earn green energy when performing cashless activities such as bills and purchase payments. While I already enrolled most of my bills in my online bank app, I still had one credit card for which I didn't have an online payment option in early 2020 (during the first ECQ). I learned that I could use GCash to pay for it so that's when I started using GCash. I then told my mom and my grandmother that I could pay their bills via GCash so that they wouldn't need to go payment centers for Meralco, PLDT, and Maynilad. Now, after about 10 months of online bills and purchase payments through GCash, I earned enough green energy in my GForest to plant a tree.

Actually, I earned enough points to plant a tree months ago already. However, back then, there were only three trees you could plant: Narra (worth 9,411 green energy), Dungon (worth 10,080 green energy), and Yakal (worth 20,560 green energy). When I finally had enough points to plant Narra which requires the least green energy, all trees were out of stock. It took a while for trees to become available again but when they were, I was quite close to Yakal already so I decided that I wanted Yakal to be the first tree I would redeem. Unfortunately, when I finally earned enough green energy for it, it still wasn't available.

Then, a few weeks ago, several more trees became available in GForest, including Molave which was worth 18,410 green energy. Yakal was still not available but the green energy requirement of Molave was close enough to Yakal so I decided to redeem Molave instead. 

I have now planted my first tree through GForest. I'm starting to use GCash a lot more heavily now since I use it to make Lazada payments as well so hopefully it won't take another 10 months for me to have enough green energy to finally plant Yakal. And hopefully when I do, it will be available.

As of this writing, almost 7.4 million trees have been planted through GForest. This is amazing! Thank you GCash for planting trees on behalf of your users and customers.