Baguio Food Trip

Wrote about my Baguio Food Trip, sponsored by Appetite and Carnation, which Luis and I took a few months ago, in my GMA News blog.

This is the text that goes with the pictures that I posted a few days ago.

One of the best things I like about my job is that I get to meet a wide variety of people who I might otherwise have not come across in real life. They don't have to be celebrities. Some of my best interviewees were 'regular' folks, like the grandmother who talked about how she stepped out of the house carrying her son in the middle of WW II, only to have a stray bullet hit the boy in the head and the interracial couple who regaled me with stories of their courtship.

Another great thing that I love about my job is having the opportunity to experience things I would normally not have access to, like the time I rode around Binondo on top of a fire truck even though there was no fire. And then there is the Carnation Family Food Trip, where a bunch of people, some press, some food bloggers, enthusiastic eaters all, were taken on a food tour of the north. The event was hosted by Apetite Magazine, in cooperation with -- surprise -- Carnation milk -- and the point of the two day trip was to eat, eat and eat, then eat again.

Read more here.

I'm in 2008 Year's Best Fantasy and Horror!

As an Honorable Mention, but still!

Thanks to Kenneth Yu and Charles Tan for letting me know.

One of my fellow honorable mentions (I'm not going to say which just yet so you'll have to go buy it) is also in the horror edition of The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, as the cover story, no less. Yay!

The other works featured in the horror issue of PGS are from equally exciting writers, all of them I'm proud to have had submit to the issue I'm editing. We got a lot of great stories, but alas, I couldn't put them all in.

Nelz Yumul from WeWillDoodle did the cover art, which was well received, if by well received you mean people asking Kenneth why it's so scary.

So guys, save the date: October 31st is when you go out in your mosnter/ witch/ starlet costume and grab yourself a copy of The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories Halloween issue. It's the trick that keeps on treating.

An Inspirational Book

Just recently, I was asked to answer something fora contributor's page that aksed the question "What reading material do you have on your bedside table?"

I decided to answer truthfully, so I said: a horror anthology (Charles' horror anthology, to be exact), a business book, a fitness magazine (I train in my mind's eye) and a Bible.

Yes, a Bible. And I read it, too.

Putting down "Bible" was actually a minor dillema, as I didn't want to be one of those people who put down "Bible" just to souond deep or religious. Because, as you know, I'm not. I will say this though, it's one of the scariest books I've ever read, and a good inspiration for horror stories.

For example, from Deuteronomy 29: 53-57 (the Lord's warning to the Israelites for sinning -- this was when they were still in the desert just before Moses dies)

"Because of the suffering that your enemies will inflict on you during the seige, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you.

"Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the seige of all your cities.

"The most gentle and sensitive woman among you -- so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot -- will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son or daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For she intends to eat them secretly during the seige and in the distress that your enemy will inflict on you in your cities."

Now that is hard core. Can you imagine that on the big screen? Stephen King has nothing on The Lord. But that is to be expected. After all, The Lord made Stephen King.

Business Tips from Issey Miyake

This was posted in my GMA News Blog some time ago:

A few weeks ago, the Philippine Star's Y Style sent me on a mission: to find out about Issey Miyake's newest scent. Reflections in a Drop is the designer's limited edition take on his classic fragance, l'Eau d'Issey, which was introduced sixteen years ago and continues to remain a classic favorite.

To my surprise, I didn't just learn about the perfume. Thanks to Jean Marie Eudes, Issey Miyake's Asia Pacific Trainer, I got to learn about the designer himself, and the ideas behind his creative process. As a result, I ended up learning a thing or two about how a creativity-driven business could be run. Oh, and the perfume smelled really lovely, too.

Here's a look into what makes Issey Miyake tick:

Read the rest here.