Hunter Gatherer: Old books

Of the many blogs I discovered while doing the Blogging Your Way e-course a few months back, Carousel is one of the few that I follow religiously. The woman at the helm of Carousel is Chi Feasey, a London-based fashion designer with a great eye and a bold, fabulous personal style. Chi first got me hooked by blogging about her brave decision to wear just Six Items or Less for an entire month. Her 30-day fashion diary is filled with fun and creative outfits, and had me virtually applauding by the time of its grand finale. 

One of my favorite features on Chi's blog is her "Hunter Gatherer" series, where she posts a collection of photographs revolving around a certain theme. From a skateboarder's haunt to folds of fabric, each series is intriguing and inspiring, with lots of details to get lost in. 

Inspired by and as a shout out to Carousel, I've decided to put together a little "Hunter Gatherer" collection of my own from my visit to Van Dijk en Ko. They had a large-ish selection of second-hand books, with many dating back to the 1900s. 

I love books and I love paper. Make them decades, even a hundred years old and you'll have me in a puddle on the floor. 

Most of the volumes that caught my eye were published between 1900 and 1930. It was a time when every printed book was precious and expensive, a work of art. This beautiful book on Dutch paintings, for example, has a stunning trifecta of binding, endpaper and bookplate. 

Old endpapers with a hand-drawn feel. The last really eye-catching endpaper I saw was in a hardbound copy of Harry Potter, but of course it was missing the character of a paper like this.

How they did branding in the old days: the bookseller's label in each book. Even the tiniest stamp had room for two fonts and a couple of flourishes.

Another art book with an amazing embossed hardcover.

And a tiny book of prayers that fits into a palm or pocket.

I love books with surprises, like a letter or postcard tucked into its pages. Jumping ahead a few decades,  I found this personalized astrology chart in an art book from the 1960s.

This "Electric Cookbook", which taught Dutch housewives of the 1960s to cook with that newfangled contraption known as an electric stove, held a sheaf of handwritten recipes. Check out that cursive.

This recipe lists currants, raisins, brown sugar and apple juice as its main ingredients. Sounds yummy.

Books and paper can be so lovely. This is why I'll probably never get a Kindle!

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This is my first Blog of the Month feature. Every month, I promise to send a shout out to one of the bloggers on my blogroll, in the form of an "As Seen On..." type of post. Let me know if you like the idea... and the post, of course!

MangoJuiced: A review of "Decorate"

Holly Becker’s blog Decor8 is one of the most successful interior design blogs in the blogosphere today, and one of my regular sources of inspiration. After five years of creative, pretty and inspiring posts, Holly (with co-author Joanna Copestick) launched her book, simply titled Decorate, last year.

Reading my copy of Decorate—signed by the author!—inspired me to shake up our own living room with a midwinter reshuffle, which will be the subject of my next post. In the meantime, check out my review of Decorate in this week's post on MangoJuiced. Take a peek into this book's colorful pages, inspiring images and sound advice, by clicking on through right here.

MangoJuiced is a webzine for anything and everything that interests women—from fashion and family, to pop culture and beauty, to travel and lifestyle. Follow MangoJuiced on Twitter and Facebook... and don't forget to check back in for a new post from me every week!

Library love

I love libraries. So I don't know why it took me eight whole months to finally haul my ass down to the Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam (OBA), or the Amsterdam Public Library. 

At 28,000 square meters, the Central Library down by Centraal (no, that is not a typo) Station is Europe's biggest public library. Brace yourselves for a huge photodump, because this is the most photogenic library I have ever seen in my life.

Some quick facts and figures about the OBA:

• 7 floors
• 1,375 seats (600 with computers/Internet/MS Office)
• 110 catalogue terminals and 26 lending machines
• Underground parking for 2,000 bikes and 1,200 cars
• 2.5 million users and visitors annually
• Awarded Amsterdam's Most Sustainable Public Building in 2008
• Also houses a theatre, radio station, conference rooms, exhibition spaces, "study pods", cafe and restaurant

The library is impressive in numbers, but it's even more so when you actually visit. For a bookworm like me, stepping into the library for the first time was like walking into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, without the impending doom of weight gain.

More than a bookworm's wonderland, though, this is everything I love about Dutch design. 

Modern details everywhere, even on the couches and the floors.

Standing in the lobby, you can simply look up to see how the library is organized at a glance. It's a clever and irresistible invitation to explore.

Explore with me, after the jump. 

Skeletor

After having the hardest time selling our Ikea Expedit bookcase (see related cheapskate woes), Marlon and I vowed to move on from Ikea and give our beloved books storage they truly deserved. The number of books we now own have nearly doubled since we first moved into Singapore, and this time I was on the lookout for something that would be for keeps. 

I've realized that I've outgrown my Indian/ethnic phase and moved into a rustic/industrial phase, or today's more kick-ass, far less chintzy version of shabby chic. So some form of industrial shelving was on my mind, inspired by relaxed, modern images like this.

Eep, I can't remember where I pulled this from. 

I found a gorgeous version from Anthropologie online. But it was too bank-breaking to be even considered. Besides, they don't ship these outside of the US or UK.

Marlon and I spent a good part of an afternoon trekking to De Troubadour in Amstelveen, where we found this. But at nearly €1,000 for the size our books required, it was just way, way over budget.

After a few weeks of obsessively searching online, I was thisclose to taking up Marlon on his offer to build it himself from steel ladders and a few planks of wood. But then I came across Roeg Holt, a website featuring some thoroughly kick-ass furniture made from recycled wood. A lot of the pieces were too chunky for my taste, but there was this. 

I emailed the designer to find out about having this made to our specifications. My first email to him started off "Dear Roeg..." thinking that Roeg Holt was a person's name. When he answered, hindi pala Roeg ang pangalan niya. Oops! The designer, Gert Valkema, agreed to build a custom 2.1m x 2m shelf for less than €650, including delivery from Groningen, where he lives. Winner!

When he issued me an invoice, I had to laugh out loud. The bookshelf is called Skeletor! This is obviously a designer with a sense of humor.

Gert drove two hours from Groningen last Monday with Skeletor. I welcomed him with tea and some biscuits and we had a nice chat while he assembled the steel frames and wooden planks in our dining room.

The planks are recycled industrial scaffolding, so you know they're sturdy.

Skeletor after assembly, waiting to gain control over all Eternia hold all our books.

Finally, after over a month, the books are off the floor! I was forced to give up my idea to intersperse them with little knickknacks. Stacking them made me realize how many books we actually have. And so many are still unread!

Marlon was not a fan of my color-coding scheme back in Singapore, but now he agrees with it as it just makes this whole mass of books look better and neater. He gets one shelf for his comics and business books (and for Spiderman, who is on his knees in agony after the death of Mary Jane), and I get one shelf for my notebooks, work files, and writing and creativity books. 

Since Rogue used to knock books out of our bookshelf all the time, we decided to stack the books in vertical piles to make them more Rogue-proof. Rogue also did an inaugural climb of Skeletor all the way to the top shelf yesterday (don't ask me how) and made it safely back down. I guess that means they're friends now!

Take home

When I'm in Singapore, home is husband, house, work and routine. But the moment I touch down in Manila, home is my friends, my mom and my mad, unbelievable city. Every trip becomes a search for and rediscovery of pieces of myself to take back with me, so that I never really leave home... and home ends up being wherever I am.

And so after a week and a half back home, this is what I have brought home with me.

Triple-certified birth and marriage certificates for our Dutch work visas. The main purpose of our trip was to get our NSO-certified documents authenticated by the DFA, then legalized by the Dutch embassy, before submitting them to the relocation agency, who will be applying for our visas in the Netherlands.

I must say the process was a lot less painful than I thought it would be! I was really impressed with the DFA; I went in my grottiest outfit, ready to sweat it out for at least half a day, but both our visits (to submit and to pick up the documents) lasted for no longer than half an hour. Progress at last!

New clothes. Thanks to the miracle that is foreign exchange, Manila always means cheap shopping for me now. (Oh the days when Landmark was the pinnacle of my consumer ambitions!) I scored a dress from Cecile Van Straten's new collection for Heather Miss Grey, a jewel-print tee from the Ramon Valera collection at Freeway, plus a funky cat-print blouse from one of the small stores at Anthropology in Rockwell. 

A whopping crush on Akihiro Sato. On Friday night in Bantayan, I flipped on the TV while getting ready to go out to dinner. Big mistake. Survivor Philippines: Celebrity Showdown was on, and it kept us glued to the boob tube for a full hour. That must have been the most telegenic final four on Survivor, ever. I'd seen Aki before but with the full grizzly beard... rawr! Kume-Keanu Reeves ito!

New books for my already tall pile of unread tomes. After cheap clothes, cheap books are always a great buy. I found Beauty and Spindle's End by Robin McKinley (highly recommended by Gutsy, the YA lit expert), The Fashion File (a book on the style of Mad Men, by its costume designer Janie Bryant), and Nina Garcia's Little Black Book of Style, each for less than I'd pay for a taxi ride in Singapore. By far, though, the best book buy of the trip was Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew.

I've never sat through an entire PBA game in my life, but I was astounded at how many memories this book dug up for me, how many names rang so many bells. Everything people have told me about this book—that you can't put it down, you'll laugh out loud, you'll love it even if you don't like basketball—is absolutely true.

A few new pounds. I managed to check off quite a few items on the list of my favorite comfort foods on this trip. Chocolate chip pancakes at Pancake House, a Regular Yum with Cheese at Jollibee, coffee pie at Cafe 1771, and pritong saging na saba at my mom's were just a few of the highlights. And of course, danggit and Cebu mangoes every day in Bantayan!

Freckles and a tan. Thanks to four days of sun and surf in Bantayan (plus two more beach trips scheduled for December), I am now well on my way to being the envy of all the Dutch with their pasty midwinter complexions!

A papier-mache and resin horse. How random is that? About two years ago, a hundred different Filipino artists took part in an auction that had them apply their own artistic touch to a taka, or a traditional papier-mache figure from Paete, Laguna. I got wind of it online and ended up buying a taka by sculptor Juan Sajid Imao, son of National Artist Abdulmari Imao and perhaps best known to us Ateneans as the maker of the crucifix at the Church of the Gesu.

I bought it sight unseen and it turned out to be huge! So the taka got stuck at my mom's for a while, and eventually it had to be repaired. I sent it back to Sajid, who was gracious enough to repair it, fortify it with a hardier structure and pack it for transit. 

We took it on the plane back to Singapore with us, and we get to bring it with us to Amsterdam with no shipping costs involved. It was also awesome to meet Sajid and his wife, who are such a warm and gracious couple.

Food for the heart and soul. Friends, family, music, and laughter... all the stuff that home is about.

I also ended up taking home a whopper of a flu that leveled me for four days after I got back. But considering how ragged I got running around and zipping back and forth to get this huge bounty of take-home goodies, maybe I should've expected it!

Books to commute by

Since I started working in Tanjong Pagar, the central business district of Singapore, my commute to and from home has become longer. Four more stops, or at least 15 more minutes, have been tacked on to my old MRT route. Sometimes I even end up taking the bus (which I don't normally do). And because my work hours are no longer always in sync with the hubby's, I end up commuting alone more than I used to

So I started reading books on the train. They sure beat the intellectual pambalot ng isda that is the local free paper. I've managed to finish five books purely while commuting. All of them are short; the longest is Ian McEwan's Black Dogs at 221 pages.

The thing with reading on the train is that I like whatever I'm reading to be light and uncomplicated. I always see people reading heavy instructional or self-help tomes on the train to work and I always wonder how they can absorb the material properly. That said, I tried to pick books that were brief and light without sacrificing quality. So if you're looking for some light reading, all these books are highly recommended!

The first book I read on my solo commutes was this one.

It was utterly perfect: one story for every day of the workweek. I would neatly end one story at the end of my commute home and begin a fresh one the next morning. And I loved that all the stories were about music. 

This book on creativity and out-of-the-box thinking would have been really inspiring and useful given the kind of work I do, but it kept reminding me about the actual work I do! I didn't find it ideal to read before or after work; maybe I'll re-read it on a sunny Saturday morning by the pool. 

In Black Dogs, I finally met an Ian McEwan book that I didn't like. I felt strangely uninterested in the characters, which made the climax of the book (close to its very end, which felt like eons to get to) much less satisfying. I had such a hard time finishing it. But I did and I still haven't lost faith in this author.

I've been a huge Vonnegut fan since I first saw a battered, yellowed copy of Galapagos in my mom's bookshelf almost 10 years ago. This used copy from Green Apple in San Francisco is my latest purchase in my efforts to own all his books. It's told from the first-person perspective of Vonnegut himself, in a fictitious attempt to use controlled near-death experiences to nab interviews with dead people. He never fails to crack me up, which can make one look a little silly on the train.

Reflecting the current state of mind (a.k.a. obsession) is Ian McEwan's Amsterdam, a city that does not make its appearance in the story until the last few pages yet holds the key to the resolution of its central conflict. I had wanted to actually read about Amsterdam from beginning to end so I could start imagining myself in it, but no matter. Highly recommended.

Do you read while commuting? Any books to recommend to a fellow commuter?

An epic buy

My trip to the San Francisco book lovers' mecca known as Green Apple had set my head spinning. The cashier had already rung up my and Marlon's armfuls of books, second-hand and new alike, but that didn't stop us from heading back into the aisles. Unadulterated book lust had seized me and dragged Marlon's wallet into a blazing inferno with me in the process -- and guilt was starting to set in.

I had gotten to the point where, while waiting for Chris to finish browsing through cookbooks, I plopped down on a small wooden stool facing a corner and kept my eyes glued to the floor JUST SO I WOULDN'T SEE ANYTHING MORE TO BUY. Finally Chris finished his browsing, and we made our way through the aisles towards the exit.


And then I saw it. A single word that jumped out at me from my childhood. A beat later, the art on the cover registered and I knew I couldn't leave without having it.

The Ramayana.

One of the most vivid memories I have of visiting India as a child was reading Amar Chitra Katha's comic book adaptation of the epic Ramayana, widely believed to be the first poetic work ever written in Sanskrit. My relatives gave the comic to me and my sister along with a compilation of stories about King Vikram and the vampire spirit Betal. I must have read it countless times growing up; I know the whole story of the Ramayana by heart. 

(Image via Amar Chitra Katha)

The comic must have been written sometime in the sixties, and thinking back the writing was really old-fashioned. The characters always addressed each other as "O Rama!" or "O Sita!" and if you look at Sita on the cover with her ample curves and moon-shaped face, you'll see a very traditional ideal of Indian femininity. I always found it strange that Rama was blue, and it was only fairly recently that I found out that was because Rama was believed to be an avatar of the god Vishnu, who was also blue.

But do you think any of that mattered? Nope. I loved all the characters: strong and handsome Rama, loving and beautiful Sita, evil twelve-headed demon king Ravana (it must have been a real b*tch every time the artist had to draw all those heads!), loyal brother Lakshmana, powerful and mischievous prince of monkeys Hanuman, even the power-hungry and cunning Queen Mother Kaikeyi. I loved them and all the absurd and wonderful things that they did.

(Images via Sepia Mutiny)

Naturally when the extravagant musical Rama at Sita was staged at UP Theater in 1999, I was obsessed with it. I remember saving a spread from the newspaper that showed the stellar cast in their amazingly crafted costumes and makeup. I would look at it over and over again, marveling over this decadent reunion with old friends, over this marriage of the two halves of me: an Indian story captured by Filipino artistry. 

(Image via Gibbs Cadiz)

I've thought back to the Ramayana comics now and then, with the vague hope that I can still find a copy someday to hand down to my kids someday. Although my kids will only be a quarter Indian, I still want them to learn about it; for all the little I learned about my Indian side, it's always been a tremendous source of pride for me. 

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to find a beautiful reimagining of this (heretofore fairly obscure) childhood favorite, in San Francisco of all places. This particular retelling is illustrated by Pixar artist Sanjay Patel, which makes it all the more fantastic. 

The hero, Lord Rama

His nemesis Ravana

His ally, Hanuman the monkey god

And the center of the conflict, his consort Sita

Consort! I mean who uses that word anymore? The comic always used to refer to Sita as Rama's consort, not his wife, woman or spouse, and it's idiosyncracies like these that have stuck with me. 

I'll have to wait a little longer to pore over these beautifully illustrated pages. Marlon is reading it now, and it feels wonderful to introduce him to the characters who may have new faces, but are still the same old friends to me.