JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

My friend Joey Campillo got his aluminum Macbook stolen last Wednesday, 8pm at the Starbucks at The Columns on the corner of Ayala and Buendia (Gil Puyat) in Makati.

Like a lot of people, Joey was in the habit of taking his laptop to a coffee shop and working there. Considering how much time he spends in various Starbucks, his passport should be Frappuccinese. Last Xmas I think he amassed a dozen of those planners.

Naturally he feels safe in Starbucks. Most of us do, and thieves know this. Last Wednesday he was sitting at one of the outdoor tables, sipping a coffee, smoking a cigarette, and surfing the net. He turned away from his computer screen for a moment, and heard his computer snap shut. Then he saw a man running away with his Macbook.

Joey yelled at the man and gave chase. The security guard and the guy sitting at the next table also gave chase. The thief ran towards the Zuellig Building and jumped behind the rider of a waiting motorcycle. Vroom, they were gone.

The loss has been reported to the police along with the serial number of the stolen Mac. According to our Apple dealer, they’ve received reports of 25 Macbook thefts in the last 18 months, and that’s one dealer selling one brand. Think of how many laptops there are in this city and how many people take their laptops to coffee shops.

There are CCTV cameras at The Columns, and the Ayala Land people allowed Joey to look at the videos. The thief was caught on camera, but the image is too grainy and low-resolution to be of much use. Unless someone has that software on C.S.I. that enlarges and clarifies murky images. (Unless the thief really is grainy and pixelated in real life, Noel adds.)

If you find the Macbook Joey says you can keep it, he just wants his files back.

“Did you have any embarrassing, incriminating photos or videos in your Macbook?” I had to ask. “Something of a Hayden Kho nature?”

“Nooo. . .” Joey said. “But I did have an iTunes playlist called Senti.”

Oh the horror!

* * * * *

Why, when someone is robbed, do we immediately blame the victim as if he had brought it on himself? Of course we have to be wary out there to the point of paranoia, but doesn’t this automatic reaction strike you as a little warped? We have a right as citizens to expect safety and security. That’s so funny I forgot to laugh.

My favorite accessory of the week is this flyswatter which costs 88 pesos at the 88-peso Japanese store.

It’s a serviceable replacement for my riding crop, which I lost on my birthday in 2005. It probably fell out of my bag in a taxi. That riding crop in finely-tooled leather is sorely missed, so if any of you happened to pick up a little black whip in a taxi in 2005, that’s mine. Turn it over to claim a reward.

Meanwhile I have this flyswatter in faux leather with a hand at the end. It is useful for walloping creatures who encroach on my space, slapping the annoying from a distance and expressing general discontent, jousting with my cats—their favorite exercise, raising your hand when you’re in the back of the classroom, and actually swatting flies.

Ernie and Bert wanted to try the new restaurant in Salcedo Village near Makati Sports, across from Apt 1B. ‘What’s it called?’ I asked. ‘La Cuisine Francaise,’ they said. It’s a bit like naming beer Beer na Beer, but it preempts the next question, What kind of food do they serve?

‘Is this one of those chi-chi restaurants with tiny servings that I’m expected to ooh and aah over even if I don’t know what I’m ooh-ing and aah-ing about?’ I asked. When I eat, I like to know I’ve eaten. Inhaling mesclun does not constitute a meal.

‘I hope not,’ said Ernie. ‘They have an excellent pecan pie.’ Ernie judges restaurants on the basis of their desserts. Bert periodically turns vegetarian on us, so he prefers restaurants that serve dishes that contain no meat. I like restaurants with waiters who do not interview me after each course to find out if the food was to my liking. Is there anything in my demeanor that radiates peace and goodwill to all? I really should carry my sword around but it’s heavy.

Ernie and I arrived early and ordered the Chicken Liver Pate. It was so good we finished all of it before it occurred to me to take a picture. Next time I go there the appetizer will be my main course.

For the main course we had a choice of roast chicken, roast pork, and sole. According to the menu the roast chicken contained 40 cloves of garlic. I cannot resist the idea of 40 cloves of garlic, so I ordered that. I didn’t count the cloves but there were a lot. Ernie had the pork and Bert the vegetarian lasagna.

They had run out of the vaunted pecan pie, but we had a rich chocolate cake and the macarons which the proprietors sell at the Salcedo weekend market. The owner Michele d’Orival said hello. She described their food as “Provencal housewife”—good, hearty meals.

The meal—appetizers, a carafe of the house red, main course, dessert, coffee—cost us P800-1,000 apiece. So we probably won’t be dining there everyday, but we’ll be back. La Cuisine’s website: www.lacuisine.ph.

Re your question: Alas, our $60 (for 3, including taxes and tips) did not qualify for public funding.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is about a girl (the lovely Rachel McAdams) who falls in love with a guy (the Eric Bana) who keeps disappearing uncontrollably and then turning up in another time. Sounds like many couples we know of, except that when he disappears he literally disappears, i.e. fades out and vanishes. Somehow they manage to have a relationship despite the obvious impediment, except that it doesn’t unfold in chronological order so there’s a lot of confusion, and if you think the lovers are bewildered try being in the audience.

I for one think it’s a charming premise because nothing kills romance faster than seeing the beloved every single day until you just want to enter a witness protection program. But that’s just me. There are filmmakers who could’ve done something with this plot; director Robert Schwentke, working from a screenplay by the man who wrote Ghost, is not one of them.

For starters he insists on trying to anchor this improbable story in workaday reality instead of letting the fantasy fly. The movie tries to explain the time traveling as a genetic anomaly called ‘chrono-impairment’, which sounds like an excuse a kid might make for not doing his homework (‘I was suddenly transported into the Jurassic and a dinosaur ate my homework’). So this bizarre thing happens all the time, and no one sees the sheer wackiness of it or the surreal humor of cheating on someone with himself from a different time period.

By the way the time traveler keeps meeting himself at different periods of his life, which means that whenever he jumps through time he creates a copy of himself. However, the appearance of Eric Banas from the past and the future doesn’t affect the present, and the future remains the same, which means that no parallel universes are created. Which means there may be an infinity of Eric Banas walking around the same universe, and we want to move there, even if some of them have terrible hair.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is muddled and maudlin, but see it anyway if you like rewriting movies in your head. True, there was another reason we saw this movie.

Q. Why does the time traveler Eric Bana lose all his clothes whenever he jumps through time?
A. Because clothes cannot travel through time, a convention established by the Terminator movies. (Why can flesh and bone travel but not fabric? I thought everything was the same at quantum level.)
B. Because it’s in the novel by Audrey Niffenegger. (We haven’t read it, so please enlighten us.)
C. Because it’s Eric Bana, and this is our Low Expectations Movie of the Week.

As my friend put it during one naked Bana scene, “I’m getting this movie in Blu-ray.”

“But you can’t see anything in the dark,” I pointed out.

“That’s why I’m getting it in Blu-ray.”

The movie reminded me of Alan Lightman’s fascinating novel Einstein’s Dreams, particularly the chapter about time displacements.

“When a traveler from the future must talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He whispers tortured sounds. He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future. At the same time, he is forced to witness events without being part of them, without changing them. He envies the people who live in their own time, who can act at will, oblivious of the future, ignorant of the effects of their actions. But he cannot act. He is an inert gas, a ghost, a sheet without soul. He has lost his personhood. He is an exile of time.”

A Hundred and One, the Free Press editorial.

On its 101st anniversary the Free Press pays tribute to President Corazon Aquino with reprints of classic pieces from the magazine including the late Teodoro M. Locsin’s editorial on Mrs. Aquino, Napoleon G. Rama’s essay on martial law, pre-martial law interviews with Senator Benigno Aquino Jr, political cartoons by E.Z. Izon, and Gregorio Brillantes’s profile of Rolando Galman, the other casualty of the Aquino assassination.

FP101 includes The Ruling Money—a business story by Nick Joaquin (writing as Quijano de Manila), Kerima Polotan’s critique of the thriving Sixties bourgeois scene The Woman of Fashion, and Jose F. Lacaba’s variation on Susan Sontag, Notes On Bakya. It’s a feast.

The Free Press was padlocked on the eve of martial law and its publisher-editor Teodoro Locsin Sr imprisoned. The magazine was revived in time for Cory Aquino’s historic presidential campaign.

Free Press 101 is available at National Bookstores and 7-11s. Call 844-2316, 844-2251, 844-2275, 0919-583-8487 for orders.

P.S. Just called National. This issue is expected Monday. Best to reserve your copies.

Deleted previous post. Private jokes annoying, too much information.

From Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan

Chris Eigeman as Nick. Photo from dvdbeaver.com.

Nick: I know. You’re opposed to these parties on principle.

Tom: Yes.

Nick: Exactly what principle is that?

Tom: Well—

Nick: The principle that one shouldn’t be out at night eating hors d’oeuvres when one could be at home worrying about the less fortunate.

Tom: Pretty much, yes.

Nick: Has it ever occurred to you that you are the less fortunate? I mean there’s something a tiny bit arrogant about people going around feeling sorry for other people they consider less fortunate. Are the more fortunate really so terrific?

The SFRP. Photo from bbc.co.uk.