Sotto Voce's Blog, page 7

Edit: I thought I had published this, but apparently it stayed in Draft. Oh well.

I met a long-time friend last week, driving all the way tothe airport early in the morning so that I could catch up with her for twohours. She was in town, in transit for an article's job in a magazine.

I don't have many friends, and I have less the older I getbecause most time, I'd rather be alone than hanging out with those withdifferent frequencies. But those who remain are the ones I would make a goodeffor...

Two weeks ago, there was a blackout in my area. I thought nothing of it, even though it was quite unusual. The power was back after one and a half hours and went off again. Finally, in the afternoon, the power was up, and I put on my computer to catch up with things I should have done. Not too long after it was on, the screen went black.

My laptop was old in today’s standard. It was almost ten years old and had gone through a lot of life preservations. I had changed the screen after I endured the...

 

Reading this book feels like I am sitting opposite arelative I haven’t met for a long time and trapped in a circle of conversationthat I try so hard to understand. At some point, I nod my head in agreement. Atothers, I can’t really digest the concept and keep throwing my glance at thedoor, looking for an escape.

I am a mood reader; I need to be in a reading mood/situationto get started, but once I’m in, it depends on the book to keep me there.Unfortunately, I have to admit that it takes ...

I remember scouring a musty library to search for a book two decades ago. One book, because that was the only reliable source available. I took a two-hours bus from my uni and reached the library ten minutes before three o’clock. They denied my entry because three o’clock was closing time.

I didn’t have another day because it was the earliest I could escape from my lectures, so I begged for kindness from the sadistic, grinning librarian to let me in for just that ten minutes. She eventually agree...

I think this is the most entertaining history book I have ever read. The book follows the journey of Marco Polo, but instead of boring recalling of the trips, it includes fun snippets, exciting information about the culture of places he visited, how he viewed them, and the precious, here and there—a little bit, not too much—author's commentaries that are both funny and sarcastic. The comparison of the modern-day in the language at that time at the end of the book is also a gem. 
 The journey went...

Black Mirror used to be one of my favorite TV series. It goes down a lot after season four, but it's still better than most of the other shows out there. I am a sucker for realistic future scenarios, and as scary as it is, many 'fictional' scenarios in Black Mirror have come true all around the world, but that will be the topic for another day. Today, I want to list my favorite episodes based on how they affected me the first time I saw them. Many of them might be off of others' popular lists, b...

Here I am again, staring at another brochure of an appliance manufacturer, advertising things I don’t need, using colorful thick papers that are hard to tear, just because I bought something from them almost twenty years ago. I didn’t sign up for anything except to register for the warranty, and they appear in my email inbox and home address. Almost two decades.

I used to like National Geographic magazine. It has a lot of interesting articles and beautiful natural pictures. In fact, I liked it so...

This book feels much shorter than the previous ones in the series; this one feels like a repeat and rushed. I barely know much about the world or planet, and the ending leaves many questions because it is majorly destructive. At this point, I'd expect that readers must have read the previous books, so seeing more character developments and backgrounds in their real-world would be great, like the previous books, because they are almost non-existent here.

I also expected it to go in a different dir...

This is certainly a different travel book because it's not the kind of travel book that casual travelers would want to bring along for holidays or casual visits. However, if you are interested in the history of the place, this book is for you.

Sometimes I feel the book is all over the place and wish that it focuses on certain interests instead, it doesn't have to cover everything that ends up with an imbalance of details. Between the historical background of the culture, the architecture, snippet...

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A Tale of One Weird Glove

I want to keep my life in order and start clearing stuff I don't need around the house. My goal is to live with only the things that I need. Things that I have used for the last decade. But as usual, it's hard. Two of the hardest ones for me are books and things with memories, ...