Recent Read: Looking Glass Wars

Of all the Disney movies that I grew up to, Alice in Wonderland has got to be my least favorite. As a child, I thought the story pointless, and the movie miserable. It felt so different from all the other happy and fluffy Disney movies that I’ve seen. The fact that I am deathly afraid of getting lost must’ve played a part in that. There you have Alice, lost in a place that made no sense to her, and everything that surrounded her seemed to be determined to be unhelpful. When it ended with Alice waking up from a dream, I felt cheated. After all that trouble, THAT’S how it ends? HRRR.

OFF WITH YER HEAD!

I was able to read the novel just recently, and though I learned to appreciate the whimsical writing style and admire the wordplay, I’m still not in love with the story. The book just seemed to ramble on without a definite purpose but to show a collection of bizarre dreams of a little girl with a very creative mind. I suppose it would help to read it as though it were poetry and not prose, but that’s a whole, different topic.

ANYWAY.

Looking Glass Wars, the first of a three-part series by Frank Beddor, is a twisted, upside down version of Lewis Caroll’s classic story. In this reimagining of the novel, Alice did not stumble into Wonderland, she came from it. Alyss Heart is crown princess to the Queendom of Wonderland and was forced to flee into the human world when her aunt Redd (the Queen of Hearts counterpart. No duh.) waged war to usurp the throne. There she struggles to live among humans who would not believe any of her stories. Eventually she stops trying to convince everyone and starts to believe that all her memories were only dreams until someone from her past tries to take her back to where she came from.

The book’s pacing was incredibly fast. I was able to finish it in a day, reading during particularly long rides. I really liked how Beddor transformed Caroll’s (and Disney’s) colorfully nonsensical world into a dark and sinister chaos. He interprets the familiar characters and elements into something slightly more complex. Silly Mad Hatter comes in the form of badass Hatter Madigan, the honor-bound front-liner of the Queen’s personal guard whose hat is not a fashion statement but a death sentence. The Cheshire Cat is a dangerous shapeshifting assassin, the White Rabbit a wise old tutor going by the name Bibwit Harte. What Caroll’s and Beddor’s main protagonist had in common was that they both had a powerful imagination, though in very different senses.

So badass, he has his own spin-off

There were a few things that I thought could be improved though. The Looking Glass Maze, for example, was supposed to be the biggest obstacle Alyss would have to face to be able to reach her full potential. The chapter of that trial felt glossed over to me, as though Beddor was in such a hurry to get to the impending war. I’m not entirely convinced of the whole “romance” between Alyss and her childhood friend Dodge either. I mean, come on. Normally, a ten-year-old boy’s and a seven-year-old girl’s only thoughts when dancing would be “Eww, COOTIES!”, not “D’aww, she smells nice, too bad I can’t marry her.” There was also the fact that most of the characters were too black and white for my taste, in the sense that good is good and evil is evil. I would’ve appreciated a bit of gray area, a little more depth.

The story had a very graphic-novel feel to it, which is always a good thing for me. Plus, I’m a HUGE sucker for remakes of stories from my childhood. So yeah, despite its flaws, I still found Looking Glass Wars a worthy read.

Check out the trilogy’s official site here.

A Fork in the Road

Remember when I said I am trying to venture out of the whole Nursing loop?

Well. One of my best friends, who also happened to be a classmate of mine in Nursing school, is now working for a shipping company. There is an opening in the company, they’re looking for an inside sales executive,  so of course she proceeded to give me an extensive list of reasons why I should apply and why I’m going to really enjoy it there.

I had my reservations with the job (my lack of non-nursing experience for instance), but I thought, what the hell, let’s just see what happens. So I sent in my resume, took the written exam and went to the interview.

I should probably tell you that I already had my fair share of rejections from corporate companies who didn’t want to risk hiring Nursing grads for fear of them leaving for the States. Disappointing experiences, those were. So for this particular interview, I didn’t want to get my hopes up.

I got a call today.

And….well. I think should go shopping for corporate clothes.

Preferences

So. I used to work with cute twin boys back in my pizza girl days. I stumbled into their Facebook pages today.

Looking through their photos, I just realized something. One of the twins had the chiseled look of a hottie, with a soccer player’s body to match the gorgeous face. He carried himself well, loped with feline grace and greeted people with a smile and a nod.

Judging from the many comments with hearts and smilies all over his wall, I figured that his type was quite popular with girls.

*catswipe*

However, I find that I always liked the sabaw brother better. He wasn’t as tall nor as hot as his twin, but he was random and funny and he had no problems with making fun of himself.

Like so.

Now what could that possibly mean? HEH.

Backtrack post: I’ve got a side-job!

(Written December 12 2010)

I have been named road manager today.

Well, I’m still undergoing training, and I have to wait until the current road manager leaves for the US to be officially called such, but still. I can’t tell why, but the offer to become road manager left me grinning like a giddy idiot. I’ve always been a music lover and working in the industry (in a matter of speaking) is like a dream. For now, it pays little, if at all, but I’m not counting on this job alone to feed me or anything. It’s more of a hobby that gives me extra pocket money, so yay!

Currently I’m learning how to set up equipment. Yes, yes I know, that’s a roadie’s job, but we don’t have roadies yet, so I’ll have to take over that job too. I don’t mind, really. Besides, if we do ever get roadies, at least I’d know what I’m talking about when I make ‘em do stuff.

I hope to one day learn how to operate the sound board. Tita Che, the main manager of the band, says it will take a while to train the ear, but I’m willing to stick around until I master it. Right now, my short term goal is to master which wires go where and which plugs go into which sockets and not blow anything up. Those effects pads are hella expensive.

This must not happen on my watch >:(

It’s been fun so far!

My 2010 is a Rom-Com

A little more than a year ago, I was one of the casualties of what my friends and I have dubbed as “Breakup Season”.

On the first day of my singlehood, I was introduced to new people with an ENTIRELY different view on dating and relationships. It was my first time to hear dating beliefs that didn’t include ligaw, exclusivity, and soulmates that I pretty much just sat there, in awe of all the things that I didn’t know of and have missed out on.

The conversation went a little something like this.

“I’ve been single for, what, two years now? And I still don’t feel the need to be attached to someone in that [relationship kind of] way,” he says. “Casual dating is fun. You meet a lot of interesting people along the way without all the complications of a relationship.”

And so I wondered how well that works, because really, at one point or another, someone will break and what started out as a “casual thing” will lead into something more for one or both persons.

“I used to think so too. But I think these days, people who are in the same stage of our lives are also looking for that one person. There are so many people in the world, so many of them that we haven’t even met yet. If you tie yourself down to someone now, how are you going to be able to meet all of them? We’re young, we have the rest of our lives to find and stay in love. For now…the whole world awaits.”

He also said that he was in it for the romance, for the challenge and intrigue of whether or not he can get someone to go out with him, and not for the relationship.

I don’t know if it was just my eagerness to recover from the breakup, or that person’s charisma and firm belief in what he was saying but I eventually found myself taking his words to heart.

And so ever since then, I followed the ways of the (dating) Jedi (although it’s more of Sith, if you ask me). I dated…a lot. When someone asked me out, I just said yes. It was so easy to say yes, when you don’t have to think about whether or not he likes you enough for it to work out because really…there’s nothing to work on. You go out on a date, have fun and get to know another person, maybe even get to make out with him if the date goes well enough.

Effortless. Painless.

I suppose when you’re not thinking of taking relationships seriously, it shows through, and you can’t really blame people when they prey on that. I mean really. Dating without the responsibility? That’s like eating as much cake as you want and never gaining weight. (I like cake, shut up.)

The fact that it felt like nobody wanted to seriously date me really didn’t matter at first. I was having fun anyway, and I didn’t want anything serious or long-term.

Then I met someone. Someone I liked enough for me to  gladly set aside the many joys of singlehood and commit again. But I suppose that person knew that I wasn’t looking for anything serious when we first met, so he and I just…had fun, in secret. (It’s a long and different story that will never be published online nor offline.) He never pursued anything more than that.

It really kinda sucked when he started seeing someone. As in actual dating, not just the fooling around behind the scenes that we did. When that happened, it unleashed a plethora of self-doubts, and what-if scenarios. (I really hate those things.) I kept asking myself, was I really just the girl of the goodtimes, and not all time? If I hadn’t been a “Padawan” at the time that I met that guy, would we have had that thing? Would we have had something a little more meaningful?

I suppose regardless of what I learned from my good ol’ Jedi master, part of me is still that same girl from a year ago, one who just wants to be appreciated for who she is. My rosy view on love and relationships may be a little more realistically coloured now, but I’m still not immune to the feeling of wanting a more substantial “thing” with someone I really like.

My 2010 really does have potential rom-com material, doesn’t it? If you ever use it for one, please share the royalties with me. I am poor.