JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Our last Bibliophibians Reading Group discussion for the year was held at Tin-Aw Art Gallery last Saturday. We watched Nicolas Roeg’s film of Don’t Look Now, then had a brief discussion of the Daphne Du Maurier story. Shortly afterwards we learned that Nicolas Roeg had died. My useless clairvoyance strikes again. (And then Bernardo Bertolucci died, so I’m going to watch The Conformist again.)

We all agreed to take a break in December and have our next meeting in January, when everyone still believes they can fulfill their New Year’s resolution to read more books. As for the book assignment, the nominees, presented here with the help of our bookrest Drogon, were:

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki

Dawn wanted to read something longer and more “classic”, so I suggested this Tanizaki, which I read recently when I was flattened by a cold. I have to read it again because I was so involved in the story that I skimmed some of the later chapters because I wanted to see how it ended. It’s a deeply satisfying book about a once-prestigious family in pre-World War II Japan that is trying to marry off the beautiful third sister (I wanted to kick her in the head, she’s a dolt) while dealing with the headstrong youngest sister and her “modern” ideas. I kept thinking of Pride and Prejudice (the daughters, the almost casually-mentioned war) and Anna Karenina (All happy families…).

Bonus: The film adaptation by Kon Ichikawa

First page of The Makioka Sisters

Note: All the nominees are in English translation, except for this next one, by a Japanese-born Englishman.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

A perfect novel, really. A deeply repressed man, the butler Stevens, goes on holiday, looks back on his life as a gentleman’s gentleman and considers that his revered employer might not be the great man he believes he is. Then he has a meeting with the woman he might have loved if he wasn’t so…aargh. Ishiguro is best at presenting you with a calm surface and then creeping up on you and unleashing an emotional tornado.

Bonus: the Merchant-Ivory movie with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson

First page of The Remains of the Day

Flights by Olga Tocarczuk

Winner of this year’s International Man Booker Prize. I looked for it in Poland, where it was sold out everywhere, and finally asked Pat in Bangkok to get me a copy at Kinokuniya. There are copies at Fully Booked, I just saw them. Flights is not an easy book to summarize: it involves travel, an amputated limb, a cabinet of curiosities, the heart of Frederic Chopin and a mysterious disappearance. I don’t know what it is exactly, but it’s gorgeous.

First page of Flights

Young Once by Patrick Modiano

Modiano’s books are so thick with atmosphere that the minute I start reading, I am in Paris. I was going to suggest this to the group because it is short, but since we have over a month to read the assignment, we can do this later. In Young Once, a couple in their mid-30s look back on their shady past.

Bonus: Some of Modiano’s novels have been adapted for the screen, but not this one. Modiano himself co-wrote the screenplay for Louis Malle’s Lacombe, Lucien.

First page of Young Once

All Souls by Javier Marias

I am going to read this because we’re filming in Spain next year and I prepare for a trip by reading a novel set in the destination. This year, after several attempts, I finally finished a Marias novel (Thus Bad Begins)! Jose at Instituto recommends this one, about a Spanish visiting lecturer at Oxford, campus bitchery and gossip, schemes and affairs.

The winner chosen by the group: The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro.

See you in January!

Lord went a little overboard with the filters.

In this episode, our guest explains mindfulness. What is it? Is it a kind of meditation? I’m an overthinker—will mindfulness make my brain explode? Do I need it? What can it do for me?

Our podcast is powered by WeSellIt. We know IT, we sell IT.

Post your comments, questions, suggestions, requests, confessions of affairs with Kit Harington in Comments, or on Instagram @jessicazafrascats.

And then get copies for everyone you know! (Xmas is coming…)

To buy 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.

Read our interview with Don Jaucian here.

To set an interview for your newspaper, magazine, blog, zine, Instagram, etc, email saffron.safin@gmail.com or send us a message on Instagram @jessicazafrascats.

Tin-Aw and Jessica Zafra invite you to the Bibliophibians Reading Group discussion of Daphne du Maurier’s DON’T LOOK NOW.

Saturday, 24 November, 4-6pm at Tin-Aw Art Gallery, G/F Somerset Olympia, Makati Avenue, Makati (beside the Peninsula).

Wine and popcorn will be served. The film adaptation by Nicolas Roeg will be screened. Everyone who has read Don’t Look Now is welcome.

Humans have to be over 18 to attend this event.

The Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce launches its #ZEROto100PH campaign to educate companies on SOGIE. This is from Evan, who is project lead on this report.

You say LGBT workplace discrimination isn’t real? Thirty-year old transwoman Grace (not her real name) begs to differ.

While she now runs her own beauty business, she had to face prejudice and bigotry as a transwoman professional before she decided to become an entrepreneur.

One morning, the sales director at her previous workplace in Metro Manila called her for a meeting. She was one week on the job and had her hopes up. Little did she know that she was about to have a taste of transphobia.

“He told me that I should dress appropriately,” Grace says, recalling how her superior singled her out for wearing casual female clothing in the office. This despite the fact that other women in the office were freely wearing the same kind of clothing she was called out for.

That wasn’t the only time she experienced that kind of discrimination. In 2010, she applied at a company where the hiring executive strongly suggested that changing her gender expression would make her a more suitable candidate for the position.

“I asked for feedback kasi, if open for diversity,” she recalls. “Then the interviewer said that it would help if I had ‘clean’, short hair. I’ve had long hair since college.” She was forced to have her hair cut, despite the fact that her hair length wasn’t really a part of the job description. While this opened doors for her, she decided that she no longer wanted to pretend.

“At the last company I worked in, I finally asked if I could grow my hair back. I didn’t get any response. That’s when I decided I was going to start my own business.”

In the absence of a law that protects LGBT people in the workplace, professionals like Grace will continue to face discrimination, hindering them from reaching their fullest potential and contributing to society.

Filipino companies have failed dismally in the country’s first-ever Philippine Corporate SOGIE (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression) Diversity and Inclusiveness Index??, a study pioneered by the Philippine LGBT Chamber of Commerce, an organization which champions the LGBT contribution in Philippine business.
(more…)

Episode 3: Last Days at the Huremana Cafe with writer Alfred Krip Yuson.

Huremana is the name of a cafe he owned in the early 70s with 19 friends from college. Huremana is what someone’s lola called weed, as in “Hoy, naghu-huremana na naman kayo diyan.”

The podcast was recorded at Krip’s house last month. The entire recording is over two hours long. I cut it down into two half-hour segments.

In the intro I talk about “life without whisky”. Correction: Mr Yuson is not living without whisky. He took a break some years ago, but he and whisky are back together.

Thanks to Nexus Technologies for supporting our podcast!

You can get our podcast on Podbean
https://therealjessicarulestheuniverse.podbean.com/