Reading My Neil Gaiman Books

I read four books this year, all of them by Neil Gaiman: American Gods, Anansi Boys, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and Neverwhere.

My Neil Gaiman Books

American Gods is the first book I read. It's highly rated, with a 4.1 rating on Goodreads at the time of this writing, and it was even made into a series on Amazon Prime. The premise is very intriguing: gods from different mythologies walk amongst us here on earth and their power and immortality comes from the belief people have in them. But as more and more people in the world start to believe in technology, new gods are created and this stirs up a battle between the mythological gods and the new technological gods. I did have some difficulty reading it since there were a lot of characters introduced through flashbacks or different scenes that deviate from main storyline. I realized that I have difficulty with that writing style and it took me a while to finish it. That said, I fully understand why many people love this novel. It's inventive, the pace really picks up as the story comes to its powerful climax, and just when you think the story is done, you get hit with a very surprising and even chilling denouement.

American Gods

I next read Anansi Boys. While this isn't a sequel, there is a character here - Anansi - who is also in American Gods. I gotta say, I really love this book. I think a large part of that is because I really like the lead character, Fat Charlie Nancy, around whom the story revolves. There is something charming and captivating about his insecurity and his struggle and it was great to see his evolution as the story progressed. The antagonist (or one of them) also seemed almost benign before it is revealed just how diabolical he is. The discovery of Fat Charlie's history is surprising and there are a lot of really interesting twists and turns that kept me really engaged. I personally prefer Anansi Boys to American Gods, maybe because there are less characters and the storytelling is a bit more linear and straightforward, making it easier for me to follow.

Anansi Boys

The Ocean at the End of the Lane was unexpectedly heavy and haunting. We get introduced to Lettie Hempstock when she becomes friends with the narrator and it is this friendship of two "kids" that becomes the core of the story. While we never truly understand who Lettie is, we find out early enough that she and her family are far from ordinary. When a mortal threat presents itself to our lead characters, we don't exactly get worried for Lettie and her family but we do get worried for the narrator. His dread and fear are very palpable and I felt his despair. The climax is shocking and heartbreaking, and what is revealed after that adds even more layers of depth to the sadness and emotion I was already feeling. I was very affected by The Ocean at the End of the Lane and it really stayed with me after I read it, which is a sign of a great book. While it isn't a happy ending by any stretch of the imagination, it is powerful, moving, wildly imaginative, otherworldly, and very well-written. It's also a short book so you can finish it quite quickly.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The last book I read is Neverwhere. This was fantastical, whimsical, and absolutely fascinating, which are things I have come to expect in Gaiman's works. The story is practically a quest, with our lead characters searching for something and having to overcome many obstacles and challenges along the way. While it's not as heavy as The Ocean at the End of the Lane, it's pretty dark and grim in its own right. The situation that our lead character Richard Mayhew finds himself in early in the story is quite distressing and I truly felt his desolation. Also, the loss of a character early on was jarring and disturbing, to say the least. The villains are also pretty sinister and menacing. This book is fast-paced, action-packed, and riveting, with many twists and turns that lead towards an explosive climax. Despite the fact that I am a slow reader, I finished this novel quite quickly even if it's more than 400 pages long. 

Neverwhere

One bittersweet thing about all this is that three of these novels I read were inherited from my friend Karen who passed away a couple of years ago. In her will, she left her books to her friends. I still miss her but I find solace in the fact that I have now read some stories that she herself read and enjoyed when she was still with us.

I'm also happy that I was able to find enough time this year to read four books this year. Many of my friends who saw my social media posts suggested other Gaiman works but I will most likely go through other authors next year since I still have several other books at home. Hopefully, I can continue to find time read next year.

Random Stuff

I just got my New Zealand Badge! Since I started using my Fitbit, I have now walked a total distance of 1,593 kilometers, which is the entire length of New Zealand. This means my daily average is now 7.11 km. Awesome!

My New Zealand Badge

What has helped me get my new badge so shortly after my previous one is all the walking I have been doing this Christmas season. For the last 3 weeks, I was clocking in anywhere between 52 km to 62 km per week. That's because of all the gift shopping, errands, and get-togethers I was attending. It was also on one of my gift-searching and gift-buying days that I got my Trail Shoe badge. This meant that I walked more than 30,000 steps in a day!

My Trail Shoe Badge

I walked so much that day that I actually covered a distance of more than 21 kilometers. That's the distance of a half marathon! As such, it's not surprising that I burned more than 4,000 calories that day. Needless to say, my legs and my feet really hurt after that hahaha.

My best one-day stats on Fitbit

All that walking deserves some good food too. My youngest nephew celebrated his birthday my family decided to throw him a party. We couldn't organize one for him the last two years because of the pandemic but we felt that it was safe enough to do it this year. My cousin Mark and his family were in the Philippines and they were able to join us so it was a bit of a mini family reunion as well.

My nephew's birthday celebration

I got to try Gan Hotpot in Alphaland Makati Place in the Malugay area. Normally, when I go to a hotpot or shabu shabu place with friends, I prepare my own dipping sauce or someone in our group does. This time, the wait staff shared their recommendations of the best sauce for what we ordered and it was quite good. It was the tail-end of the World Cup when I ate there so I had to take a photo of their World Cup-inspired decor.

Gan Hotpot

I also found myself in Estancia one day and I decided to try Hanamaruken Ramen for lunch since I had never eaten there before. It's not at the level of Mendokoro (then again, for me, nothing is), but what I loved about this place is that they had a meal set that included a bowl of ramen, gyoza, and fried rice. I can't remember how much it cost but I did feel it was a sweet deal.

Hanamaruken Ramen

Spotify recently shared analytics on the listening patterns of its users. I was surprised by my results. I was actually one of the top 3% of listeners of The Clash. I don't know if this is just in the Philippines or worldwide. I will be honest though. All those 139 minutes were spent listening to Rock the Casbah over and over again.

I'm in the top 3% listeners of The Clash on Spotify in 2022!

So it's not surprising that my Spotify profile is the Replayer. I stick to the songs I like by the artists I like.

My Spotify listener profile

And which artists did I listen to the most in 2022? It's a pretty eclectic combination: (1) The Clash, (2) Beyonce, (3) Kuh Ledesma, (4) Andrew Garfield, and (5) Florence + The Machine. The top 5 are all from different genres of music and Andrew Garfield makes it to my list because of how frequently I listened to music from Tick, Tick... Boom!

Artists I listened to the most in 2022

And since we're on the topic of entertainment, I finally got to watch a couple of movies I had been interested to see for a while: Pixar's Soul and Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon. I watched both one after the other on Christmas eve and I really enjoyed them. Hopefully, I can find more time to watch more films and shows on the many streaming platforms to which I'm subscribed.

A Hectic but Happy Holiday Season

Christmas is always a very busy time socially and this year was no exception. Not that I'm complaining though. I'm really happy that I got to spend time with many friends, some of whom I haven't seen in ages. Let's start with the most recent one. Yesterday, I joined some of my ex-colleagues for dinner at Locavore. My friend Ana told me that Cholo, who moved to Canada several years ago, was in town and some folks would be joining him for dinner. It turned out to be quite a fantastic evening. I got to catch up with Cholo, Ana, Earl, and Migs. We were also joined by Mark, JP, Nono, Cori, and Noy. I think the last time I saw most of them was when I was still working in my previous job! We all went through quite a lot together so it really was nice reconnecting with all these people with whom I have a lot of shared experience. The fact that we enjoyed my favorite Locavore dishes, specifically the Lechon and Oyster Sisig and the Sizzling Sinigang, made the evening even better.

Lechon and Oyster Sisig and Sizzling Sinigang from Locavore

Later that evening, I caught up with Marco and Cha. They were having dessert when I swung by although I didn't order anything anymore because I was still stuffed. It had been years since I last saw Cha so it was really good to see her with Marco. Since I was double-booked that evening and joined them late, we didn't get to spend a lot of time together. Still, the conversation was great as always.

Christmas with my board gaming friends happened earlier in the month. We got to try some really cool and interesting games that night, including 5-Minute Mystery which is quite possibly my favorite deduction game right now. It's very quick to play and it's cooperative in a way that gets everyone involved so it's a lot of fun! I also decided to bring a Chocolate Swiss Roll which I bought from Dylan Patisserie and I'm glad to say it was a hit. It was a good chiffon cake and it wasn't too sweet. It also looked quite fancy!

Chocolate Swiss Roll from Dylan Patisserie

I had written about my Pizzulu dinner earlier this month and that was also a Christmas get-together with ex-colleagues. After dinner, we moved to Starbucks for coffee and dessert. We also did a simple exchange gift. While we initially wanted to do a more elaborate white elephant set-up, we ended up just doing the basic pick-a-number-that-corresponds-to-a-gift arrangement. I got a bamboo-scented room spray from Mickee. Aside from the planned exchange gift, a few of us also brought some gifts for everyone else. I had yema with pili nuts for everyone, Pao gave everyone goodies from his family's bakeshop, Mon and Chelle gave everyone homemade ube, and Nat gave us black garlic from his garden. Cool! I really love this team and I'm happy we continue to see each other every year, whether virtually of face-to-face.

Another dinner with ex-colleagues happened earlier in the month at Grace Park in Rockwell. Pia booked a table in the semi-private area on the second floor. It was a night of wining and dining as we feasted on several dishes. We ordered a few appetizers to share and almost everyone had dessert but as if that wasn't enough, I ordered two dishes for myself: the Duck Ragu and the Seabass Acqua Pazza. I'm not particularly sure how I managed to eat everything haha.

Seabass Acqua Pazza from Grace Park

It wasn't all ex-colleagues that I met. I also joined Irish and Michelle for brunch at Tyler Cafe along Katipunan. Since we stayed there for a few hours, I started by ordering their incredible ricotta pancakes and later on, Irish and I shared a pizza from Gino's. Michelle had just graduated from her MBA class so she very generously treated us. I also attended a couple of company Christmas parties. Our company-wide Christmas party was actually held in late November and I stayed until the after-party, dancing like a crazed madman to 80's music being performed by a live band haha. About a week later, we had our department Christmas party. The theme? Denim. I didn't have a denim jacket but thankfully, I was able to borrow one from a friend. Since I don't normally wear this kind of outfit, I had to have my photo taken haha.

Denim-themed Christmas Party

I also had one virtual get-together with my high school friends. Lia lives in the US so during the pandemic, we started having an annual virtual party. Even if people are a lot more comfortable to meet up face-to-face now, we decided to continue doing this so that we would have an opportunity to spend time with Lia and her husband Ferdie. Iona recommended a Secret Santa website back in 2020 and we have continued to use it. I ended up getting a couple of shirts that I included in my wish list and I'm really happy with them. We will have a face-to-face dinner as well for those of us who are in Manila, but since some of us will be traveling during the holidays, we decided to just meet up in January for that.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone!

It has become my annual tradition to bring food to my family on Christmas Eve that would last until Christmas dinner the next evening. This year, I decided to order from two places. From Dulcelin, I got the US Beef Belly Roast Beef, Lola's Chicken Relleno, Cannelloni, and Blackened Fish Fillet with Dirty Rice. Since Dulcelin doesn't have any vegetable dishes, I decided to order the Caesar Salad from Matchpoint Catering. (I also tossed in Matchpoint's Gambas and Scallops al Ajillo so we would have a shrimp dish because one of my nephews loves shrimp.)

For dessert, I wanted something really fancy that we would normally not order. Dulcelin has a lot of great desserts but we've tried many of them already so I wanted to get something that I wouldn't normally get. I kept seeing Serendipity Gourmet on social media so a few weeks ago, I messaged them to ask if they still had available pies for pick-up the day before Christmas and they did. I decided to order their Bellissimo Blueberry Mango Gourmet Pie. It looked really fancy and it has really great flavors. It was very expensive but it was a special occasion so I thought it would be worth it to splurge.

Bellissimo Blueberry Mango Gourmet Pie from Serendipity Gourmet

We also got to do a couple of things for the first time in years: (1) we physically went to church to hear mass and (2) we had Christmas dinner at my aunt's house. Over the pandemic, my aunt and her family would visit us during Christmas. But since my grandmother has been going out  a lot more recently, my aunt and uncle thought that maybe we could all have dinner at their house this time around. So we did.

It was a really good Christmas celebration with family. Hopefully you all had a great time too!

RIP tWitch

Very sad news. Stephen Boss, more popularly known as tWitch, passed away.

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A post shared by Allison Holker (@allisonholker)

I used to watch So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) back when it was shown on one of the channels on Skycable and tWitch was one of my favorites. He placed second in Season 4 where he performed one of his most memorable routines on the show with Katee. He returned to the show three years later as an all-star in season 7. It was here that he put in a performance that quite possibly made him a bit of a household name. He and Alex did a hip-hop routine choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo that went viral. Check it out here:

video uploaded in YouTube by roman0102

This dance was such a hit that Ellen wanted to perform it, which she did with Twitch in the Season 7 finale. A few years later, he became the resident DJ of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, where he remained until the show ended in 2022.

I also love the fact that tWitch ended up marrying Allison Holker, who may possibly be my all-time favorite contestant on the show. His proposal to Allison is on YouTube. It moved me the first time I saw it and now that I watch it again, it moves me but in a different way now.

Sadly, he took his own life. I have known for a while now that people who struggle with mental health issues sometimes look to be the happiest people we know and his untimely passing reminds us of this sad and painful truth.

Rest in Peace, Stephen "tWitch" Boss.

Pizzulu

I found out about Pizzulu during the pandemic since ads for this Italian restaurant kept popping up on social media. It looked interesting and a friend of mine who had tried it said he enjoyed the food so this place was definitely in my radar. When my ex-colleagues and I decided to meet up for an early Christmas get-together and people wanted to have dinner in BGC, I suggested Pizzulu and everyone agreed.

Pizzulu BGC

Most of us were eating here for the first time so we picked a few recommended dishes. I didn't really care what other items we ordered as long as we got truffle pasta. Pizzulu had a couple of truffle dishes and we chose the Black Truffle Casarecce Pasta, which is Barilla casarecce pasta with truffle cream sauce, shiitake mushrooms, and parsley (P1,275 for the platter, P850 to share, P425 solo). I loved it!

Black Truffle Casarecce Pasta

We also ordered the Ragu Bucatini Pasta which is bucatini pasta with premium grass-fed beef, tomato ragu sauce, and parsley (P1,197 for the platter, P798 to share, P399 solo).

Ragu Bucatini Pasta

Dinner at an Italian restaurant for a group our size wouldn't be complete without pizza and the ones we got were pretty good. The Shrimp & Roasted Garlic Pizza (P675) has garlic cream, Italian mozzarella, peeled shrimps, shrimp oil, roasted garlic cloves, and parsley.

Shrimp & Roasted Garlic Pizza

The Spinach & Artichoke Pizza (P699) has Pizzulu's original spinach cream, Italian mozzarella, goat cheese, and artichokes.

Spinach & Artichoke Pizza

I gotta say, I really enjoyed the food here. The only watch-out is that due to the size of the restaurant and the volume of customers, they strictly follow two seating schedules for dinner, one from 6pm to 8pm and another from 8pm to 10pm. We reserved the first seating and as it got closer to 8pm, we were politely told that our seating was almost over. As such, I highly recommend making a reservation if you plan to eat here. Hopefully, I can visit this place again in the near future.

Pizzulu BGC
https://pizzulu.com/pages/pizzulu-bgc-restaurant
Address: G/F Eight Forbes Town Road, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City 1630
Number: 0917-127-2548

Hidilyn Diaz: World Champion!

Congratulations, Hidilyn Diaz, for winning three gold medals at the 2022 IWF World Weightlifting Championships! Amazing!!!

WORLD CHAMPION 👑

Hidilyn Diaz rules the SNATCH (93kg), CLEAN & JERK (114kg) and TOTAL (207kg) in the women’s 55kg division, sweeping all three golds at the Weightlifting World Championships!

📹: International Weightlifting Federation pic.twitter.com/Xmaelv0tLA

— INQUIRER Sports (@INQUIRERSports) December 8, 2022

She lifted 93 kg in the snatch competition, beating the 90 kg achieved by silver medalist Ana Gabriela Lopez of Mexico. For the clean and jerk, she cleared 114 kg, exceeding the 110kg of silver medalist Rosalba Morales from Colombia. Her combined total of 203 kg got her a third top podium finish. Hidilyn has now won gold medals at the Olympics, the World Championships, the Asian Games, and the SEA Games. Wow! Her sensational world-class achievements continue to make Filipinos everywhere proud. 

Unfortunately, the 55 kg weight class in women's weightlifting has been dropped from the Paris Olympics in 2024. She is now training for the heavier 59 kg weight class. Whatever happens there, she has already shown the entire world what a supreme athlete she is.

Congratulations, Hidilyn, and thank you for being such an inspiration to Filipinos all over the world.