After securing (and now reading) The Map of All Things (Kevin J. Anderson, Book 2 of Terra Incognita), on the way home to Laguna, I passed by Powerbooks, which like its sibling NBS, was also having a massive Price-Cut Booksale. I happily indulged and got myself three books for Php 75 bucks each.
One is an anthology from the Warhammer 40,000 universe of Horus Heresy. Edited by Christian Dunn, The Age of Darkness is a sampler of sorts for me, an introduction to this far-flung galaxy adventure, the principal of which is based on a role-playing miniature wargame Warhammer 40,000.
The two other books will complete my Eddings' collection. I've already completed The Belgariad, The Mallorean series and their companion books -- Belgarath the Sorcerer, Polgara the Sorceress, and the Rivan Codex; The Elenium and The Tamuli; as well as the stand-alone fantasy novel The Redemption of Althalus. The only remaining series I've yet to finish is The Dreamers which, thanks to Powerbooks, I've already completed when I bought last Friday the last two books -- The Crystal Gorge and The Younger Gods. I do however have to sort through my book pile and check whether my copy of either Book 1 or Book 2 is still intact. I remember distinctly that one was damaged when termites invaded my room in Laguna and destroyed several of my books and papers (including my copies of Dungeons & Dragons rulebooks and adventures).
In any case, I still have until August 21 to scrounge for any more books. Their regular books are at 20% off so I'm looking at acquiring the first two paperback installments of A Song of Ice and Fire, which are being sold at Php 252 each (or maybe the first three then!).
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I'm bone-tired. That's not a nice way to start a work week expected to be quite loaded with, err, work.
But I've got priorities and responsibilities so even if the body is exhausted, I still have to get up the next four days and drag my rather big arse to the Desk and plunk down to work.
Hopefully, caffeine will be helpful this week. At this early, I already can't wait for the weekend (but then again, I'm expecting I'll be working some hours on Saturday, aarghh!)
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Oh, by the way, the opinions, views, mindset, behavior, rants, and baloneys expressed in this blog are those of yours truly and not representative of the Desk. Just thought I'd put that out. I'll need to put that out on a more permanent basis -- probably on a widget on the side one of these days.
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The SM Mall of Asia is huge. Too freakin' huge that I dread going there because I know I'll just tire myself out.
The family went there yesterday to meet up with Edward, my hilaw bro-in-law who brought pasalubong from my sis, Rochelle. It was the first time we ever met Edward (although he has already met my parents when they vacationed in the US a couple of years back) and the guy is cool, reminds me of one of my kadas who's now in Iloilo.
After a little chit-chat, we parted ways and we went off to run some errands. And what errands they were, forcing us to walk from one end of MOA to the other. I've been to MOA something like only 4 or 5 times before and I've never really taken a liking to it mainly because:
a) It's freakin' huge (sorry for being redundant). It's like you're walking a million steps just to get from A to B then move on to C and back again to A then move to Z.
b) There's always a million people congregating in the place. Just like TriNoMa and SM North EDSA, people are everywhere in MOA as in every nook and cranny that it feels like there's always a sale in this mall! CRs are clogged, queues are long at the food establishments and ATMs, and you need to wait in line at cashiers.
c) It's out of the way. I live and work in Makati -- there's Ayala Center and Rockwell. On Sundays, we go to church at Taft-Ermita so Robinsons Place is the mall to go. Every now and then we find ourselves at my folks in Laguna so there are five mall options -- Festival Mall, SM Sta. Rosa, SM Tunasan, Alabang Town Center, or even SM Southmall. But MOA, in Pasay?
So, unless there's a perfectly valid reason for me to go to detour and find my way in MOA, I'll be sticking to my usual haunts.
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Two shows that have caught my curiousity and interest of recent time are two shows I will not likely see for the longest time -- Pawn Stars and IRT Deadliest Roads -- both shown on the History Channel.
Unfortunately, our Sky Cable subscription package doesn't include History. To get it, I need to ask Sky Cable to install the channel for, I think, an additional monthly fee of Php 100 (hey, Sky Cable guys, you still haven't fixed the problem with our second cable TV and it's already been a month!).
Though I knew about Pawn Stars from a while back, I managed to catch four episodes while Elvie and I were in Davao last last weekend. It was great fun to watch and I guess the show resonated with me because I did work for a pawnshop company before. The more entertaining aspect however was that pawnshops in the US (and in many parts of the world) accept anything of value for pawning -- as in anything from jewelry to guitars to heirlooms and an old washing machine. Here in the Philippines, only a few items are accepted -- mostly jewelry and gadgets.
So, Pawn Stars was interesting because people came into the pawnshop to (mostly) sell interesting items. In the course of the four episodes I watched, items sold (attempted) to the Harrison's Gold & Silver Pawn Shop included a George Washington-signed lottery ticket, fake baseball cards, a WHO contract to perform at Woodstock (which backfired horribly), a helicopter, a Winchester rifle, a hand-cranked washing machine, Liverpool-made duelling pistols, and a saddle supposedly used in the Kevin Costner film, Dances with Wolves.
The second show, IRT Deadliest Roads, caught my attention mainly because one trucker in the show was a woman -- and a lovely woman at that. While whiling away the time at Parañaque at my sis-in-laws home with the rest of the family, I tuned into History and caught two episodes of the show. I guess it's just the driver in me that made the show interesting to watch.
North American truckers Rick Yemm, Alex Debogorski, Dave Redmon, and Lisa Kelly brave India's deadliest roads, manueavering and piloting wooden framed Tata trucks laden with cargo through treacherous paths, blind curves, and steep and narrow stretches all the way evading incoming and overpassing traffic.
These two shows are actually enough to get me thinking of getting History Channel on the cable. Probably cut off Discovery which has been a disappointment so far.
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Eyes are starting to dip ... will have to wrap this up. It'll be a long week this week, folks.
