JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

In Frankfurt airport. The temperature outside is 36 degrees…Fahrenheit. Sweater weather. Yesterday we were in NAIA Terminal 3, sweltering. NAIA 3 is not bad, but they really need to turn up the airconditioning because even we natives are melting. Yes, it’s the fault of climate change, but humans have invented airconditioning and our airports get maximum use. And they need more toilets because the toilet nearest our boarding gate was a 7-minute trudge away in the vaporizing heat.

Where our day went:

Trip by car from Makati to NAIA 3 at 11am usually takes 10-15 minutes but in heavy traffic: 38 minutes

Check-in, despite fairly short queues and Internet check-in option (with side trip to pay travel tax because ticket purchased in Europe): 52 minutes

Passport control (Terminal fee was waived): 5 minutes

Security check and X-ray at boarding gates: 3 minutes

Trudge to bathroom: 7 minutes

Queue for toilet: 5 minutes

Boarding for Singapore Airlines: On time

Departure: Delayed for 30 minutes, presumably due to runway traffic

Arrival in Singapore: On time.

* * * * *

In Udine. Half-conscious.

Where we’re staying.

Around the neighborhood.

At the film festival.

Off to Venice-Udine-Vienna-Budapest. Today, airports—Manila then Singapore then Frankfurt then Venice. It’s our second least favorite thing about traveling, next to enduring the angry stares of three cats the night before a trip.

In the weeks before departure we spend a lot of time deciding what book to bring. We like to read something set in the place we’re visiting, written by a native. The candidates were:

For Udine: As A Man Grows Older by Italo Svevo, set next door in Trieste.

For Vienna: The Sleepwalkers by Hermann Broch, The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth, The Snows of Yesteryear or An Ermine in Czernopol by Gregor Von Rezzori (technically not Viennese, but set in the Habsburg Empire). We’re taking a break from Stefan Zweig.

For Budapest: The Adventures of Sindbad or Life is a Dream by Gyula Krudy, The Door by Magda Szabo. Which have not yet arrived as our sister hasn’t ordered them yet, having decided that working 12-hour days, raising three kids and going to spinning class is too light a schedule so she started on her MBA. Just writing that made us tired. We need to take a nap after watching a movie.

For Venice: Not Don’t Look Now by Daphne DuMaurier or The Comfort of Strangers by Ian McEwan because they’re scary.

Then we wandered into a bookstore and saw this new edition of The Interpretation of Dreams. Which we’ve never read, even if we feel like we have because we’ve seen so many movies with psychiatrists in them. And we misquote Freud a lot, and attribute to him stuff he never said, so we owe him.

This, then, is our travel read (and the Svevo). If the prose is impenetrable, we can throw it from a great height onto the heads of the people who swore it was accessible.

* * * * *

Great big thanks to Ms Del Rosario at Asia International Travel for booking our train tickets on such short notice. We love trains and do not mind 11-hour journeys. Planes are faster, but when you factor in the time you spend waiting in airports and inhaling recycled air, bleecch.

Gather all the clothes you no longer have any use for, including the ones that no longer fit but you’re in denial about, and put them in two bags. (All, meaning even those that are not from H&M. They can even be very old or damaged.) Take them to an H&M store. Bring only two bags per day, don’t bring your entire wardrobe.

Take the bag/s to the cash point checkout next to the I:CO (I: Collect) display box. The sales advisor will look at the bag to see if its contents are safe.

The bag will be placed in the I:CO box. In return, you get a “15 percent off 1 item” discount voucher per bag. You can only get a maximum of 2 vouchers a day.

How many pieces or what is the weight of one bag? There are no rules on quantity or weight, but remember that these are clothes you were going to get rid of anyway, so the more the better.

Again, you can only bring 2 bags a day, for which you will get 2 “15 percent off 1 item” vouchers.

I:Collect will sort the clothes and figure out how to reuse them. Clothes still in good condition will be re-sold as used goods. Clothes that are no longer wearable (meaning they’re ruined, not that they’re polyester mu-muus or I heart Alanis T-shirts one cannot be seen in) are made into cleaning cloths (Yes, trapo). Clothes that cannot be reused are recycled into damping or insulating materials or new textiles. If there is no more conceivable use for those clothes, they are incinerated to produce energy.

For every kilo of clothes H&M collects, I:CO will donate 2 cents Euro to UNICEF Philippines. They will not make a profit from this project.

For more information, go to hm.com/longlivefashion.

One Summer’s Day from Spirited Away

The 17th edition of the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy opens on 23 April with a concert by the great Joe Hisaishi, who will perform his music for films by Hadao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra.

Tonari no Totoro from My Neighbor Totoro

Even if we have committed the crime of not having seen every single film by Miyazaki, hearing the music of Joe Hisaishi elicits a powerful reaction.

Ashitaka sekki from Princess Mononoke

Melancholy and happiness distilled into notes.

Main theme from Howl’s Moving Castle

And cats, lots of cats.

Of course we have a Pavlovian reaction to the new trailer, because of the John Williams music and the sight of Han Solo and Chewbacca. But it is best to view all matters pertaining to the new Star Wars movies with extreme caution. Remember what happened last time: basically they took our childhood and turned it into compost.

True, the three prequels whose titles we won’t even mention set the bar so low that any new Star Wars movie that is Not Terrible will get rave reviews. Cheer for mediocrity, we must not. Prove himself, J.J. Abrams must. Diverting entertainments he has made but thus far greatness has eluded him. “Visionary”, he has not yet earned.

Do it brilliantly, or do not. There is no try.

Over the past decade, contractors and subcontractors have earned billions of dollars providing half a million Asian migrant workers, primarily from India, Nepal, and the Philippines, to perform the menial tasks in American war zones that soldiers will no longer do: cooking, cleaning, laundry, construction, and base security. Employing these workers—an invisible support army with no domestic political constituency—has allowed Washington to keep troop numbers and casualty figures artificially low. Over the years, prompted by worker unrest and some media attention, conditions for workers have somewhat improved on the bases. But the very first phase of their exploitation—the manner in which they were recruited—has not changed, and they continue to be hired through the same extortionary system that supplies labor to the Gulf countries.

Read The Men in the Middle at Dissent, via 3QD.