what ive been up to (quickies)

My BIG WORDS lately: fitness, Tagaytay, Spanish

• Weekly Tagaytay trips: oh I really want to live there! Our house is starting to get homey! Furnishing stage. Still for sale. Please spread to friends!
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• Click for more info
  
• Click for pics

• June 13 to 18 - Six-day Batanes trip. Pics here. Detailed blog post to come.
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• June 23, Monday - Started futsal, my first real exercise for the year. Cheers to getting out of the sedentary rut!
  
• June 30, Monday - Start teaching Spanish again. 2nd year HS. M/F
• July 5, 12; Aug 9, 19 - Weddings! Cheers to all my dear friends, be brave! XOXO
• July 20, Sunday - Day 1 Monsoon League. Back under the frisbee sun (but it's rainy season, boo)!
• Others:
• Museum Volunteers of the Philippines - doing publicity and web communications for the "Philippines: Past and Present" 2008-2009 history course
  
• PREX bible study every Friday 8pm, Christ the King parish- open to all youth and young professionals!
  

UPCOMING:

• This month: Writing/reading club - revival of Thursday writers
  
• September 17, Wednesday - Museum Volunteers history course for 2008-2009 begins

WEBSITES:

• New sites:
  
• iammontalut.blogspot.com (in place of montalut.ph) - will soon integrate writings and art here
  
• mydreammenu.blogspot.com (for my food project)
• Existing:
• metrorealty.ph - Metro Realty website
• metrorealty.blogspot.com - Metro Realty blog
• manilarat.blogspot.com - My ode to Manila
• tagaytayrat.blogspot.com - My ode to Tagaytay (needs more loving!)
• magmunimuni.blogspot.com - Deposit page for good reads
• In the pipeline:
• Philippine tourism analysis/research blog
• Wiki for PPP (Museum Volunteers history course)
  

MOVIES:

• coming soon:
• Wanted
• July 18: The Dark Night
  
• July 25: The X-Files
• Hancock
  
• watchlist (new):
• August 29: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen)
• December 2008: The Spirit (Comic Book)
  
• May 2009: X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• X-Men Origins: Magneto
• Prince of Persia (Disney, Jake Gyllenhaal)
• The Hobbit (James McAvoy!)
• watchlist (old + missed -- catch on dvd!):
• Son of Rambow
• BBC Planet Earth
• Hihintayin Kita sa Langit
• Ninja Kids
  

BOOKS:

• now reading (new):
• The World's Religions (Huston Smith) - need my own copy!
  
• Jesus Before Christianity
• A Grief Observed (C.S. Lewis)
• New Testament
  
• still reading:
  
• The Essential Rumi (Coleman Barks)
  
• The Creators: A History of the Heroes of the Imagination (Daniel Boorstin)
  
• 33 Strategies of War (Robert Greene)
  
• Under the Tuscan Sun (Frances Mayes)
• Coraline (Neil Gaiman)
  
• Chronicles of Narnia (reread)
• just read:
• Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (Anne Rice)
• Christ the Lord: Road to Cana (Anne Rice)
• next in line:
• 3:16: The Numbers of Hope (Max Lucado)
• 12 Books that Changed the World (Melvyn Bragg)
• Zen Contemplation: A Bridge of Living Water (Elaine MacInnes)
• Book of Hours (Rilke)
• The Prince (Machiavelli)
• Negosyo: 50 Stories (Joey Concepcion)
• Reflections on Sociology and Philippine Society (Randy David)
• The Anti-Development State: The Political Economy of Permanent Crisis in the Philippines (Walden Bello)
• watchlist:
• Doors of Perception (Aldous Huxley)
• On the Road (Jack Kerouac)

MUST READ- Anne Rice's Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt

I've just finished reading "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt", an amazing book by Anne Rice, which has been sitting in my room for almost a year. I think perfect timing for me to have opened it just now...because there's already a follow up, released just last March :) Believe me, you'll know what a relief that sequel is once you've read the book yourself-- I literally forced myself to put the book down several times because I didnt want it to end!

Anyhooo, you know how I'm such a C.S. Lewis and Tolkien fan, and they were both devout Catholics who wrote widely acclaimed stories with strong Catholic leanings.. Would like to share with you, as my friends who are also "seeking", that this book by Anne Rice is of such stature--- but this time, with no symbols! It's literally a Christ novel, and what a heartfelt, sincere work of love for Jesus, written by a great fantasy novelist who happens to be an OC history buff and a returning Catholic... It is still fiction, but it fleshes out the life of Jesus during the "missing years" (i.e. when he was a kid), giving us an insight on how Jewish life really was back then: how people thought in general, how everyday life was, how they reacted to news of the Messiah, how it was like in Jesus' family, who did he grow up with, etc.:

This book seeks to present a realistic fictional portrait of Our Lord in Time. It is rooted in the faith that the Creator of the Universe became human in the person of Jesus Christ and “dwelt among us.” The magnificent mystery of the Incarnation is accepted and affirmed as fact. Scripture is the inspiration for the emotions and powers of the Child Jesus as they are envisioned here. History as well as the gospels is the source for this picture of a world in which Our Lord might have lived, as a little boy, in war and in peace, from day to day.


Ad majorem Dei gloriam. July 12, 2006

We all know Anne Rice as the author of The Vampire Chronicles (Interview with the Vampire, etc.-->yes, the tom cruise movie). she grew up Catholic, but at 18, she left the world of God, hounded by questions her faith couldnt answer, and became an atheist. She married stan rice, also an atheist and a writer. For about thirty years she went on her spiritual quest, mingled with other atheists and ventured into "dark literature", only to return to Jesus Christ in 1998. In her own words:

In 2002, I consecrated my work to Jesus Christ. This did not involve a denunciation of works that reflected the journey. It was rather a statement that from then on I would write directly for Jesus Christ. I would write works about salvation, as opposed to alienation; I would write books about reconciliation in Christ, rather than books about the struggle for answers in a post World War II seemingly atheistic world.

Galing, galing lang. It made me want to read up on the Bible and Jesus and anything I could get my hands on. In her footnotes, Anne Rice kept talking about the "questions" that kept tugging at her heart, the deep kind that dont just go away, and that level of honesty lent so much credibility to her work for me, showing that her conversion was painful and hard-earned and not without wrong turns along the way...

Best part, like I said, is there's a sequel, "Christ the Lord: Road to Cana"... this time, she tackles Jesus at 30, right after his Baptism until the Wedding at Cana..

Super recommended reading... it will make you want to read the bible, and dig deeper into who Jesus really was, and is, to you :))

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