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Roger Federer has beaten Andy Murray in the Australian Open quarters in four sets. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Remember when we used to take victory for granted? Bring back 2006!

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Juan is at a conference in Melbourne and his hosts took their group to the Rod Laver Arena for the Federer-Murray match. “Andy was very noisy,” he reports, “Roger so relaxed and calm. Andy was very powerful while Roger was very precise. Close fight.” He took these photos from the stands.

Fine, we’re a bibliophiliac. We lust after books. We cannot restrain ourselves from acquiring new ones (and no restraints in the form of spawn to feed, clothe, and send to expensive schools). Part of this is because we grew up in the age before import liberalization, when new titles were not as easy to come by and you had to grab them the minute they appeared on the bookstore shelf or they would disappear forever. Most of it is probably because we like books better than people.

This is not a print vs. e-books issue. If we use an e-reader our book acquisition mania will just grow exponentially. At least with printed books we have space constraints (Where did the floor go?) to stop us.

Periodically our backlog becomes alarming and we must admit that we’ll never get to read the books we already have if we keep bringing in new ones. Some bibliophiliacs just cut down on their sleeping time, but without our 9 hours a day we go insane. We have to declare a moratorium on new acquisitions until our backlog goes down to a rational level. No new books until every volume in our bedside shelf has been read. (Note: This shelf was acquired round Xmas. It was empty.)

The moratorium begins now. As soon as we pick up Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, which we reserved at National Bookstore. No, as soon as the copy of Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (the British writer, not the star of Cleopatra) that Chus ordered for us. And then no new titles until this shelf-load has been dispatched. True, we’re not likely to read The Anatomy of Melancholy in one go—we’ll be noshing on it for years. But all the others must be finished.

If you see us lurking in a bookstore with a guilty expression, shake your head in a disapproving manner.

Althea Vega is the star of the Cinemalaya historical sex-drama Amor y Muerte, and of Metro Manila, the British-Filipino production which was the Audience Favorite at Sundance, and Best Film at the British Independent Film Awards.

Yesterday we had coffee with Althea and Amor y Muerte director Ces Evangelista and AD Arman Reyes. We had requested a dvd screener for Amor, which we’re pitching to the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy (in the distant event they consider our suggestion). Of course we’re fans of Althea, a powerful screen presence; we think she could have a good career in foreign films (think Tetchie Agbayani).

We figured that with all the attention and awards Metro Manila has garnered abroad, Althea would already have an agent in Europe and the US. It turns out that she hasn’t had a chance to tour with the movie—she hasn’t been to a single film festival outside of Cinemalaya. Our indie filmmaker friends travel with their movies, and they’ve explained that festivals usually invite the directors and defray their airline and hotel expenses. The bigger events will invite actors and crew, but for the most part costs are shouldered by the producers and Metro Manila is a low-budget indie.

“But I’m going to the BAFTAs (the British Academy Awards, their Oscars) next month!” Althea announced. The awards ceremony will be held on February 16.

“That’s great!” we said. Metro Manila is nominated in the Film Not in the English Language category.

“Who are you wearing?” asked Chus.

Designer Ito Curata is very kindly sponsoring Althea’s gown for the Baftas. “I had to buy my own ticket to the awards night,” Althea said. “It cost 810 pounds (Php60,376 at today’s exchange rate)! Luckily, I had commissions coming in.” Althea is a real estate agent, a flamenco dancer, and a martial arts practitioner.

“You bought your own ticket to the Baftas?” we chorused.

“Yes, I really want to go,” she said. The girl is obviously thrilled.

Ordinarily if someone says they’re going to the Academy Awards, the first thing we would do is help design a catapult to launch them at Tom Hiddleston or Michael Fassbender. However, there were more pressing issues to consider.

“You’re not part of the official delegation for Metro Manila?”

“No.”

“So you’re not sitting with (director) Sean Ellis and company.”

“No, I’m far from the stage. Up in the balcony. But I’m so excited!”

“If you’re not with the group, then you’re not walking the red carpet,” we said. “You’re going a long way, you can’t sit in the back. You’re the star of an acclaimed movie! You have to walk the red carpet and get photographed.” (Clearly we were more stressed than she was. Yes, we do this a lot: interfere in other people’s lives.)

“You have your visa, plane ticket, hotel booking?” Chus asked.

“Yes,” Althea said. She didn’t have an official invitation from London, but she collected news features and reviews of Metro Manila and submitted them with her visa application. Smart.

“Okay, please message Sean Ellis and ask him to include you in their group.”

“Good idea,” she said, reaching for her phone.

“Who’s doing your make-up and hair for the BAFTAs?” Chus demanded.

“I’m doing them myself.”

“Do you have friends in London who can arrange photo shoots and interviews? As long as you’re there, might as well get some coverage. Hand out your portfolio or something. People love your movie.”

“Well…I have one friend there, but she’s not in show business…”

So there’s the situation. Althea Vega is going to the British Academy Awards on her own. She doesn’t need financial aid—the girl kicks ass—but she needs help to make a little noise while she’s in London, to get recognized for her work, and to get some really cool red carpet photos with Cate Blanchett, Leonardo DiCaprio, everybody.

We’re calling on our friends and readers in London, their friends, the friends of their friends, to drum up support for Althea—media coverage, styling, public appearances, introductions to agents, even a simple mention on Facebook and Twitter.

Let’s get Althea Vega to the BAFTAs in style.

Please post your suggestions/ideas in Comments or email us at saffron.safin@gmail.com and we’ll relay your messages to Althea.

It just popped into our head. Mind those random thoughts, they tend to become real. It’s when we plan things that they don’t happen, or else take ages.

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

This is Miag-ao Church in Iloilo, one of scores of heritage sites in the Philippines. You can win a round-trip ticket to Iloilo or any other Tigerair domestic destination by joining our Heritage Tourism Photo Contest.

Here’s how to join our Heritage Site Photo contest.

1. Pick the best photos you have personally taken of heritage sites—places that have been designated by municipal governments as significant to their cultural heritage (Usually they have a plaque out front explaining why they’re important)—anywhere in the Philippines. These could be fortresses, churches, houses, monuments, etc.

2. Email them in jpeg files of not larger than 1MB each to koosi.obrien@gmail.com. Include your full name, a brief description of what’s in the picture, when and where you took it, and with what camera or phone.

3. You can submit up to ten photo entries, but send only one photo per email. (So ten photos would require ten emails.)

4. Entries will be accepted until 11:59pm on 31 January 2014.

5. Finalists will be posted here on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the deadline.

6. The winner will be announced here on 5 February 2014. The prize is a Tigerair domestic travel voucher covering one round trip to Iloilo, Cebu, Puerto Princesa, Kalibo, Bacolod, Tacloban, or other Tigerair domestic destinations.

This contest is sponsored by Tigerair Philippines. To find out more about Tigerair deals and promos, follow TigerAir Philippines on Facebook and Twitter.

If you think of yourself as a serious reader (or a future serious reader), you have them on your shelves…or your bedside table…or stacked on the floor…or in a box…or doing part-time duty as coffee tables. Big books, thousand-page novels, doorstops, stuff you’ve heard is great and have resolved to read even if it kills you—which could happen if you’re reading in bed and you fall asleep with the book on your face and it smothers you.

We have a number of them in the house—enough to make the question “Have you read all these books?” sting a little. (And we also have the new translations of Proust, but that’s another story.) We picked them up, started reading, finished a few chapters, and then for some reason or other or no reason at all, stopped. It’s not what we didn’t love them; it just wasn’t the right time. (Hmm, that’s a good line for breaking up with humans.)

Of course we’re going to go back and read them. Eventually. We finished War and Peace, and lots of Dostoevsky and Dickens, and The Lord of the Rings (though we were kids and had a longer attention span). We can do this!

When? Uhhhh….

Here’s an idea. Gather those massive volumes you’ve been intending to read as soon as (Put your personal excuse here) and pick the one you’re going to read this year. Then announce your choice in Comments, and we will check on you periodically to see how far you’ve gotten (and give you a collective nudge when you’re flagging). Yes, like a support group. It worked for War and Peace, no?

Our doorstops include:

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, 1400 pages with assorted indices. A medical treatise written in the early 1600s, during which it was a popular success. An attempt to cover every form of melancholy, from vainglory to “overmuch study” to diet, the humours, witchcraft and love, and how people have dealt with it.

Why we bought it: It was a birthday present from our friend, a severe melancholiac.

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West, 1189 pages with index. Ostensibly a journal about a trip she took to Yugoslavia just before the outbreak of World War II, Black Lamb is really an examination of the history, culture, politics, and people of the Balkans. West, a novelist and journalist, delved into the troubled relations among the many ethnic groups (Croats, Serbs, Bosniaks, Turks, Albanians, check out the CIA fact book) living in the region (which we’d only heard of because we watch tennis). When war broke out in the Balkans in the 1990s, journalists, diplomats, pundits, anyone who wanted to understand what was happening turned to this book, written half a century earlier.

Why we bought this book: Ted recommended it for a trip to Turkey. If we’d brought it we would’ve incurred overweight baggage charges. (Yeah, yeah, the e-book would’ve been convenient, but we need our arm exercises.)

The Greek Myths by Robert Graves, 794 pages. This we’re definitely going to finish. When we were a kid our parents thought we should be socialized so they would drop us off at our uncle’s house to play with our cousins. It didn’t work. We found a copy of Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes in a bookshelf and hunkered down to read it while our cousins played hide and seek, tag, etc. That was our entire education in Greek and Roman mythology. Little did we know that it would serve us in good stead: as a Lit major, we understood the classical allusions.

The Greek Myths goes deeper into those myths and reinterprets them according to Graves’s theory of an ancient matriarchal religion (Have you read From Hell?) The scholarship has been contested, but the book looks like so much fun.

Why we bought it: Excellent comic book-style cover design by Ross MacDonald. And we paid with gift cards, so it was also a birthday present. Our friends are nerds.