JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

We can’t write at home all the time because we get stir-crazy and the cats sit on the pages and engage us in a staring contest. We end up watching DVDs, binge-watching TV series, or reading books we forgot we had, or taking naps.

We write in restaurants and noisy coffee shops where we’re forced to block out the noise and concentrate. When we get tired of sitting, we walk around the mall. This works for us, but we end up buying stuff we hadn’t planned on buying, and there are too many distractions.

Recently we discovered the Filipinas Heritage Library at the Ayala Museum. The library used to be at Nielson Tower on Makati Avenue, the beautiful old building now occupied by the restaurant Blackbird (Go have weekend brunch in the tower, it’s nice). Now the library with all its collections is tucked away on the sixth floor of the Ayala Museum down the street, accessible by its own elevator.

It’s a great place to work because it’s very quiet, very cold (the books, manuscripts, microfilm etc have to be kept in a temperature-controlled environment), and working among bookshelves scoots you back to school when you had to finish your assignments. There are computers to access the online library and the internet, or you could bring your own computer. There’s a washroom on the premises, not far from the tables so you have no excuse to wander off.

The library is open Tuesdays to Saturdays from 9am to 6pm. The Php1,000 annual Ayala Museum regular membership fee entitles the cardholder to unlimited use of the library, free WiFi access in the library, and unlimited visits to the museum with one guest. That’s less than ten coffees at a coffee chain where we usually end up writing. Members also get a 10 percent discount on cash purchases at the museum shop, on museum-produced lectures (including ours) and workshops, and at M Cafe.

Ask about museum membership at the lobby, or email membership@ayalamuseum.org.

We tried working there on Tuesday, and we finished writing two articles. It’s so cold, you have to keep your fingers moving so you get more work done. Bring a jacket.

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Thanks to everyone who came to our Game of Thrones and Geekery talk at the Ayala Museum last Saturday. We hope we were coherent; sometimes the link between brain and mouth breaks down, brain flies somewhere else, mouth goes on automatic pilot. What happened was, five minutes into the talk we realized that not everyone in the audience had finished watching the four seasons of the TV series Game of Thrones and we didn’t want to spoil their viewing. Then again if you come to a talk about Game of Thrones you pretty much know what to expect. We apologize to the guy in the bird costume because no one else thought to appear in character. We would’ve brought a sword but it was too hot.

There’s one more talk in October, and a two-session writing workshop.

At the bookstore we ran into a lady who said her daughter read our books and asked about our next talk. We said it was about World Domination. “Don’t you have a topic for old people?” she said. “Uh…no,” we said, because we didn’t know there were old people topics and young people topics.

Interesting question, because we do hang out with people who already have senior citizen cards, and they talk about the same things people 27 and below talk about with us: literature, tennis, cats, the cinema. Or maybe we’re all just immature.

You can’t stop aging, but fight feeling old! There are advantages to being older than the general population. You can have actual conversations with your friends instead of sitting around the table taking pictures of yourselves or the food. And you have more money. As Raul says, “Luxury is the revenge of Age upon Youth.”