Girl Crush: Simone de Beauvoir // I want everything //

“I am awfully greedy; I want everything from life. I want to be a woman and to be a man, to have many friends and to have loneliness, to work much and write good books, to travel and enjoy myself, to be selfish and to be unselfish… You see, it is difficult to get all which I want. And then when I do not succeed I get mad with anger.” - Simone de Beauvoir

At times I feel like this—greedy, wanting to be everything and do everything all at once, getting overwhelmed with the emotion of wanting to swallow the universe whole—the urgency passes after a while, but the yearning remains. It keeps burning. Today, I try to flame the fires. Oh Simone, how to deal?

Girl crush Simone de Beauvoir in my favorite cafe in Paris, Café les Deux Magots

Gone Girl

I'm back from Kuala Lumpur! It's been a busy Holy Week for me—in fact it's only my second 'working' Holy Week. The last time was three years ago for a trip to Boracay for Nivea, and this time I was invited to attend the Louis Vuitton Pre-Fall presentation. I'm not prepared (meaning, I'm too lazy) to discuss the fine points of the LV collection so instead I'd like to share with you a fantastic discovery from that trip—a new author.

A lot of people don't know that I'm actually a big fan of crime fiction. I've always thought I'd become a lawyer or a doctor (or both), and just as well, I've long held a fascination for mysteries and suspense. Later on in my life, I realized that studying the law wasn't as 'exciting' as I made it to be, so I proceeded to pursue my other interests—space travel. As to how I ended up in architecture AND journalism is another long story, but suffice to say, the love for crime fiction is still in me, which is probably why I read The Daily Mail every night before going to bed (for the sweetest dreams).

In any case, in one of our idle moments in KL (right after a big lunch in Din Tai Fung), we chanced upon probably the biggest book chain in the city, Times Bookstore. Knowing my propensity for all things explosive and riveting, Bea Ledesma recommended Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, and even before I left KL, I knew I was a goner. I finished the book the day after I arrived in Manila.

The crime noir-reading heroine, image that accompanies the Jezebel Book Club page for Gone Girl

The novel is spot-on—there were simply aspects of myself I found in the character of Amy Dunne, or Amazing Amy. For one thing, I always needed to be Amazing G—mediocrity was never an option, I had to be the best, the coolest girl on the block. Seriously, it was difficult to live like that for twenty-plus years, but my environment also cultivated that kind of yearning for the amazing. There was one part that resonated so well with me, the idea of the 'cool girl,' and I thought I'd share the passage with you.

“Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl.

Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who’d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them. I’d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: The bitch doesn’t really love chili dogs that much – no one loves chili dogs that much! And the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: They’re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they’re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be. Oh, and if you’re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn’t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version – maybe he’s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he’s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics. There are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fucking thing he likes and doesn’t ever complain. (How do you know you’re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: “I like strong women.” If he says that to you, he will at some point fuck someone else. Because “I like strong women” is code for “I hate strong women.”)” 

I've come to believe that I've molded myself into a Cool Girl without realizing it, and now that I'm much older, and have started to feel a little uncool, I'd like to allow myself to be a little less than [perfect, excellent, fantastic] for once.

Read it now and discuss it with me over coffee (or Twitter)!  

Searching for rarities: Bill Cunningham New York

There's a fashion ball tonight and I've got nothing to wear. Instead of moping and skipping out, I think I'll just go out and look for the rarities tonight, as inspired by Bill Cunningham who said in his documentary:

"See, a lot of people have taste, but they don't have the daring to be creative. Here we are in the age of the cookie-cutter sameness. There are few that are rarities: someone who doesn't look like they were stamped out of ten-million people looking all the same."

I'm still halfway through the documentary, I try to watch a bit of it everyday because it inspired me to find similar birds. Anyhow, I'm off! I've got a full day ahead of me.

                                        From Harper's Bazaar 

Paris Haute Couture exhibition

I'm currently in a couture mood so I'm so excited to see the Paris Haute Couture exhibition curated by Olivier Saillard in partnership with Nadja Swarovski.

Here's a sneak peek of the exhibition, c'est magnifique!

For more information, visit the exhibition event page 

V-day!

Happy Valentine's Day!
I've been remiss in my blogging duties but no matter, I wanted to greet all of you on this special day!

This photo is a rendering of sculpture by BIG Architects, installed at the Duffy Square, at 46th Street and Broadway ni NYC.
http://www.designboom.com/design/big-architects-valentines-day-sculpture-in-times-square/

Stuck, help me Susan Orlean

I’m stuck.

As I find myself in the process of writing another career story (when I say career, I don’t mean kinareer, in the vernacular—that I worked extra, double hard on something—but rather, that the bosses are paying more attention to this piece than any other celebrity piece I’ve written before), and at this moment, I am stuck. Grasping for straws, so the idiom goes, but thankfully I still have a few hours until I’m supposed to turn it over. In moments like this, when I’m stuck and need rhythm, I turn to writers that I like. One of those is Susan Orlean, probably one of the living writers I have most respect for. Why do I love her? She knows how to launch a kicker, charm you with unique turns-of-phrase, and install milestones to launch spurts of dopamine to keep you reading from paragraph to paragraph.

I have three books of her that I refer to all the time:

My Kind of Place

The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup

and Saturday Night

I also have a copy of The Orchid Thief but for the life of me, I can’t seem to finish it.

Times like these, I distract myself by walking around to find that elusive lead, one that will lead me from beginning to end. I hope I find you soon.

New Year, New Perspective

Against better judgment, I've decided to start blogging again. I've had a pretty good year this 2012—of actually ‘living’ and not just reporting or assuming the role of a spectator in my daily affairs—and much of this has robbed me of the energy for introspection. Which brings me to the idea of the blog as a medium for self-discovery, perhaps it will help me slow down and enjoy the scenery, instead of zipping from one activity to the other. As a tactile thicker, I need to form thoughts on paper or onscreen for me to process them, the case is the same whether in writing or designing—my hands are necessary for me to understand the greater scheme of things. 

In any case, I’d like to welcome you again, dear reader, I’ve been blogging since January 2005 but I’ve never taken it seriously, until now. Enjoy!

Me and my fiancé Aurelio in Versailles, France, several hours before he proposed. (Obviously, I didn't know what was coming, or else I would have worn heels!)