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Intramuros

When I first set foot here in Manila I remembered Intramuros from Neal Stephenson’s novel Cryptonomicon, so, since we got some time off on Saturday, we went to take a look.

Intramuros is a walled city created during the Spanish colonial times, and has been occupied and  destroyed several times throughout its history, by the locals, the americans, the japanese, and the americans again and again. The main portion is Fort Santiago, which was originally surrounded by a moat. Large portions of the moat have now been converted to a golf course.

The history of Fort Santiago is a very sad one. Hundreds of people were tortured and killed during several occupations, including around 600 filipinos and americans during WWII. Due to the strategic position of the fort at the entrance of the Pasig River, it has been a very tempting target everytime the Philippines has been involved in an armed conflict.

Now Fort Santiago is a tourist attraction. It has lots of history and is a very interesting place, but the facilities could definitely be better. The part of Intramuros outside of Fort Santiago is not very well mantained, and the locals run to you asking for money and trying to sell you all kinds of things - especially religious simbols near the Manila Cathedral.

LDA is the best team in Costa Rica… but what are they thinking???

Liga Deportiva Alajuelense is the best soccer team in Costa Rica. Now, that statement is going to be contested, especially by the followers of Saprissa who’ll draw to my attention the fact that they are the current national champions, but that’s ok. There’s a reason why I have moderation turned on for the comments.
In the past week “La Liga” announced that they were changing their image, with a new logo, new slogan, and new marketing in general. That is fine (more on that in a minute), but two small details were reported by the media:

• First, that the new logo resembles the logo of a well-known Las Vegas casino:

• Second, that the new slogan “Liguista de corazon” is a rip-off of Saprissa’s “Saprissa de corazon”, that they trademarked over three years ago, so Saprissa is going to sue them for stealing it.

… 1 … 2 … 3 ….

Ok, let me repeat. Liga Deportiva Alajuelense is the best soccer team in Costa Rica. It has the most championships, is the current regional champion, was recently invited to play in a prestigious South American tournament, then WHY DO THEY NEED TO CHANGE THEIR IMAGE AND MAKE SUCH ASSES OUT OF THEMSELVES IN THE PROCESS?!?!?!!?!?!????

As a fan of the team, and of soccer in general, I feel disappointed by what they are doing. Let me start by ranting about the logo. You can say whatever you want, but those two lions look way too similar to just be “a coincidence”. Maybe it was “residual memory”, maybe it was trickery on behalf of the advertising agency, or maybe it was just taking a shortcut to design a new logo quickly. I DON’T CARE. All the big teams in the world have had the same logo, with maybe slight variations, for several years. Why the need to change it? Oh, yeah, I think I know:

That Pokemon, my friends, is Saprissa’s logo. They changed it from the classic “S” logo when it was bought by a Mexican mogul around three years ago, with the objective of making it more marketable. And they have succeeded - Saprissa is now economically powerful, and makes tons of money on merchandise alone. Although I sometimes wonder if the real reason why they are so successful is this….

My point is that LDA, seeing the success of Saprissa, wanted to do the same thing. But here’s the difference: one of the richest men in Latin America, who already owns a soccer club and several companies, KNOWS how to do marketing. The people running Alajuela obviously don’t. The way they do it is to try to blatantly copy the strategy that worked for the guy across the road, without looking at their weakness and strengths and acting accordingly. And the saddest thing is that it is so obvious that even the statements by Alajuela’s marketing director were sad.

This is actually a symptom you’ll notice all the time in Costa Rica - somebody puts up a successful business, then the neighbor from across the street sets up a blatant copy of the business. And that is exactly what you’re looking at, only that this time it is being shown to the world in the online edition of all Costa Rican newspapers.

And don’t get me started on the slogan. I have a coffee mug right next to me with the old logo, and the old slogan “Garra y Corazon”. I won’t even comment, the facts in this case speak for themselves. I feel sad, disappointed, and pissed…

I needed to vent, and there are too many Saprissa fans at work.

The 5 1/2 Minute review

Last night I finally finished reading House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski ’s first novel. All I can say is WOW. I enjoyed it so much that I’m actually writing a mini-review of the book (and adding a Books category to the blog in the process).

The story of how I came across this book is a funny one. A friend recommended the CD Haunted, by singer Poe. I fell in love with her music, and started digging deeper and deeper into her world - the music includes recordings from her father, answering machines, and, it turns out, references to this book. Poe’s real name is Ann Danielewski, Mark’s sister, and the disk is played out as a soundtrack of sorts to House of Leaves’ history.

The book has been compared with The Blair Witch project, but that is a bit unfair to the book. Both may be based of a similar premise, but House of Leaves goes beyond Blair Witch’s proposal, and has layers over layers of narrative that add a lot of complexity and depth to the story (stories?), like no other book I’ve read. In order to describe the overall plot, I’ll start by describing each overlapping story.

The main premise is that you have the story of Pulitzer Price winning photographer William Navidson. Trying to sort out the issues he is having with his wife, ex-model Karen Green, they move to Virginia along with their two kids, to a quiet house on Ash Tree Lane. Navidson fixes cameras all over the house in order to create a family documentary about the move. After a trip, when they come back, they start finding new rooms and doors in the house, and realize that the house is all of a sudden bigger on the inside than from outside. Baffled by the anomaly, he enrolls the help of his brother and some other friends to try to figure out what is wrong. As you can expect, strange things start to happen, and slowly tragedy involves the family and everyone that enters the house and its dark hallways. All of this is documented in a feature film that is known as The Navidson Record.

Zampano is a blind old frenchman that dies and leaves behind what appears to be a very thorough examination of The Navidson Record, including physical and psychological aspects of the film. It also includes reviews and comments by great luminaries such as Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, and other famous filmmakers, quotes from the hundreds of books and treaties that have been written about the film and overall a dissection of the world-wide event that The Navidson Record became. This examination of the film forms the basis of the novel.

Zampano’s work is found in his house by a young drug-user called Johnny Truant. He starts reading and transcribing the material, looking up all the references made by Zampano, translating the pieces from foreign languages, and adding footnotes about Navidson’s and Zampano’s life, as well as documenting the things that are going on in his life at the time. He eventually publishes that book: An annotated book about a book about a movie about a house. He, however, is never able to verify any of Zampano’s references, nobody has ever heard about the film or Navidson, and he makes it clear in the footnotes that none of it ever happened.

While Johnny is working on the book, he becomes obsessed and slowly descends into darkness and sorrow, and hints that something beyond our comprehension is going on with the book and with his life. All of it is written in this footnotes. The complete title of the book, spelled between the second and third pages, is “Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves - by Zampano - Edited by Johnny Truant“, which shows you all the different layers that I just tried to describe.

There is an additional layer of narrative on top of all that. Johnny’s mother (Pelafina H. Lièvre) has been institutionalized since Johnny was a young boy, and the book includes a collection of letters that detail her descend into madness at the Whalestoe mental institution. At the beginning these letters look like just another appendix to the book (and are actually featured in their own book, called Whalestoe Letters), but once you start reading them, you realize that there is more going on than it appears to be. Let’s just say that this is the first time I’ve ever devoured the appendixes in a book with the same interest as the main story… they are just as important!

The book itself plays with the reader quite a bit. Each one of the narratives is written in a different font (i.e. Johnny’s in one, Zampano’s in other, Editor’s in yet another, etc), which helps out a bit when sorting out what is going on. The layout is also very interesting. There are parts of the book where the fonts and paragraphs are really small and spread all over the page, even with different orientation, so you have to turn the book around to continue reading. At other times, there are several pages with just one or two words on it. Also, the word house is always in blue, there are crossed-out paragraphs, the narrative suddenly stops and you have a few blank pages (Truant allegedly lost or burned the pages in between), etc. Overall, reading the book is more of an experience than anything else.

The book also shatters “the fourth wall“, since there are codes scattered all over the place, and even Danielewski’s name appears on one of the codes. There is also a reference to Poe as one of the critics of the film, as well as references to her songs all over the place. Even the book is play on words - House of Leaves refers to the leaves(pages) in the book, and the cover of the book is actually smaller than the pages (house bigger on the inside than outside?). Zampano’s book (in the novel) is also called House of Leaves, Navidson reads a book called House of Leaves at some point in the documentary, and there are even other appearances of the book inside the narrative. This reminds me of High School and Don Quixote…
I have to admit that it was after reading the book’s Wikipedia entry last night that I realized most of this, and I actually went and re-read large portions looking for this clues - like the now famous “My dear Zampano, who did you lose”. The book becomes like a scavenger hunt of sorts. Just do yourself a favor - DO NOT read the Wikipedia article on this book if you ever plan on reading it. I fortunately didn’t, and I think it paid off big time.

All in all, I can say that this has been one of the most demanding, but at the same time, rewarding reading experiences I’ve ever had. It is definitely worth it, so if you have plenty of spare time and can get your hands on it, give it a shot. And stick with it to the end, even if you get tired of Zampano’s ranting about the physics of sound. Believe me, you won’t regret it.

On the way back.. Hong Kong IA

On the way back we had a stopover at Hong Kong International Airport.

The airport is pretty big, really clean, and very organized. Hong Kong itself looks like a really interesting place. Everybody tells me that the British did an amazing job, that the city has an incredible mass transit system, and also some of the best restaurants around.

The Cathay Pacific lounges “The Wing” and “The Pier”, are simply amazing. It’ll be hard to top a Business Class lounge with its own Noodle Bar and a huge selection of beers from all over the world.

Manhattan Beach

My itinerary for this flight sucks. REALLY sucks. I had to spend 12 hours in LA going to Manila, and 13 hours on the way back.
When waiting for the flight to Hong Kong, we took a taxi over to Manhattan Beach. The beach is really nice, event though, as a Costa Rican, you kinda miss the vegetation all the way to the sand.

The beach has a ton of Beach Volleyball courts, a nice pier, and you can watch an awesome sunset from the Beaches Restaurant:

Give you a discount. Triple A quality. Good deal, good deal.

Both on Friday and Saturday we headed to the infamous Greenhills Shopping Center here in Manila. In this Shopping Center you can find ANYTHING you want - it is amazing how blatant (and good :-D) the “copies” of well-known brands are…
The place itself is fairly hot (no air-conditioning), crowded and the vendors throw themselves at you to make a sale. Bargaining with them is also fun - you can get things sometimes for as little as half the price they asked at the begining. Just be firm, drive them crazy with questions, and wait until they just want to get rid of you and you’ll get a fair(er) price.

For electronics, there is a complete floor that sells them really, REALLY cheap… these are not “copied” or “surplus” goods, but actuall chinese and korean brands. Got some good deals there as well.

And you thought traffic in your city was bad??

Traffic in Manila is crazy.C-R-A-Z-Y. Since there is no well-developed mass transportation system, people rely on Jeepneys and tricycles/pedicabs, which are basically Motorcycles or Bikes with a sidecar,  for their transportation. There are buses as well, but my impression is that they are not as common as Jeepneys.

The traffic is just nuts. How bad? Well, getting to the Greenhills shopping center on Saturday, with light traffic, took us around 20 minutes. On Friday, it took us a little over an hour – most of the time spent waiting in traffic!!
Jaywalking is the norm, and drivers just throw the cars into traffic hoping that alll other cars stop. The amazing thing is that they do – more surprising than the traffic is the fact that I didn’t see a single accident while I was there.

Another downside of all this traffic is the pollution. You can actually taste the smoke of the cars, so much that some people that drive a bike or walk on the streets wear a SARS-like mask… which doesn’t look like a bad idea.

Malls, Megamalls and Condominiums

Here in the Makati area of the Philippines there is a lot of development going on. There is a huge mall a couple of blocks from the hotel, that connects to other malls and department stores with elevated walkways:

These malls are very upscale, the place overall is great, and there are tens of restaurants and bars lined all over the place:

Another big things in the area are condominiums. There are condo buildings everywhere you look:

The price for these babies is pretty high as well. A two-bedroom condo goes for about 6 million pesos, roughly $120,000. That’s a LOT of money, especially for this country, that has a lower average income than ours!!

Who? Here? At the mall?!?!?!?!?

Guess which famous fivesome was doing a presentation at the mall where we went to eat here near the hotel in Makati?
Give up? Well:

Yes, none other than the guys from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy…I have to admit that I like the show (guilty pleasures…) but come on … if I ever thought that I would run into these guys, the Greenbelt mall in Makati would be one of the last places on Earth were I would think that would happen. Then again, it was one of the last places of the world were I though I would end up, so…

Where is the knife???!?!?!??

This is all the cutlery you’ll get at filipino restaurants:

What is wrong with the picture? Thats right, another cultural shock… here in the Philippines people eat with a fork and a spoon. It is the norm. Even in food courts, those two are the only utensils available. So, what do you? As the saying goes, “When in Rome…”

BTW, that place, OODY’s, serves the most amazing noodles in the area. Give them a try if you’re ever in Makati, they are on the Greenbelt 3 Mall.