JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe, my first new book in five years, is finally out! (All the other Twisted books are out of print, making this the only Twisted book!) In photo (L-R): Deo, Allan, and Evan, who hosted the short program and took tons of photos.

We had a book launch and signing at Fully Booked on Bonifacio High Street in BGC last Saturday. Watch video of the Twisted Travels launch at Instagram TV, @jessicazafrascats.

Thank you to everyone who endured hellish weekend traffic to come to the event. I hope you tried the Czech beer and Polish vodka. We ran out of books!

To buy copies of Twisted Travels Central Europe online use these links:

Shopee

Lazada

You can also get them direct from Visprint here. Use this link for foreign orders.

Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe is published by Visprint with Discover Central Europe and the Embassies of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in the Philippines. In the photo from left: Joanna from the Polish Embassy, me in the same dress I’m wearing in the author photo on the book’s inside back cover, Benjamin of the Czech Embassy, Gabor of the Hungarian Embassy, and my very patient and altogether excellent publisher Nida Ramirez, overlord of Visprint.

The mastermind of this project, Ambassador Jaroslav Olsa of the Czech Republic, could not be at the launch because he had urgent business to attend to in Prague.

The book launch was a meeting of everyone in my phone directory, including my favorite human beings and readers. This is my gene pool (L-R): my nieces Mika and Dany (as in Daenerys), my brother-in-law Bryan, and my sister Cookie.

Here’s Tina. The secret of publishing is to ask Tina to sleep with the page proofs under her pillow before you bring it to the printers.

With Royd and Pepe, matchy-matchy. Pepe and I co-host the travel show, The Flip Trip. He directs, I write, we produce. Our first season, Czech Trek, has been airing on CNN Philippines all year. Our next season will be filmed in Spain.

The Flavier-Alampays, Joy and Roby, who was my publisher at the online news site for many years.

Gabe and I co-hosted TV talk show in the noughties. Gabe acts, does improv, teaches improv, and premiered his first one-man show, a memoir called Raising Gabe, this weekend. Re-peat! Re-peat!

Aye and I go further back, to UP where we hunted for bootleg albums.

And Chris and I go even further back, to the Jurassic, when I was editor-in-chief of The Science Scholar and he was editor-in-chief of Ang Lagablab at the Philippine Science High School.

With Myrza, editorial director of Summit, and subject of one of my few psychic episodes. (I distinctly recalled Jay telling me Myrza had won a Palanca. It never happened. Myrza called the Palanca office. She had won a Palanca!)

I was Jeffrey Jeturian’s entourage when his film Tuhog competed at the Venice Film Festival. I took his photo in an Y Tu Mama Tambien sandwich with Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal. This was before phone cameras. The film was exposed aaargh.

Mark is the winner of the Most Books Bought At One Time contest and I owe him a pitcher of margaritas. He bought copies for friends living abroad, friends who couldn’t attend the launch, and for Xmas presents for everyone else. Be like Mark! Stop racking your brains to figure out what to give your friends for Xmas, give them all Twisted Travels Central Europe!

Several people asked me, “Who is the lovely lady in the silver jacket?” That elegant presence is my friend, the optometrist Nella Sarabia, without whom the world is blurry, literally. Her shop is at Acacia Hall in UP Diliman, Instagram @spectaclesbynella. That’s her youngest son, Momoy.

Dan and I are in the Cat Food Availability Support Group.

Von wishes to announce that he is not running for congress.

Bubbles manages the JessicaRulestheUniverse Facebook page and puts curses on people who hate cats.

Allan manages my cats’ Instagram, @jessicazafrascats, the various Bibliophibians accounts, and generally does too much.

And finally, here is my Weekends and Holidays family, with (L-R): Jose rocking the 70s look he has no actual memory of, Noel (Who flew in from Singapore to attend the launch! Naah he was in town for meetings, but great timing), Raul in his simple weekend outfit (He is dressed for a book launch…in Buenos Aires), Juan who is my de facto legal guardian (jet-lagged from a trip to Malta), Joey who knows everything Apple, and Ramon my supervising adult.

Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe, is available starting today at Fully Booked BGC and other branches, and at shopee.ph. It will soon be available at lazada.com.ph and National branches. If you live abroad, you can order it directly from Visprint, book_inquiry@visprint.net.