Rain and Innocence

Weather in Manila has been terrible these past two days. I hate it when the weather is terrible because people match it with an equally dysfunctional and unpredictable behavior, myself not excluded. Last night, I was not able to sleep well because of the strong winds howling outside my window and today, most of Manila had to put up with power outages that stretched for hours on end. I'm a little bit worried since I have a week full of deadlines and meetings but I know my worries do not amount to a hill of beans in contrast to the damage of typhoon Nesat all over Manila.

Since I couldn't get things done, I went in and out of R.E.M sleep the whole day. I also tried to get myself to like Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence but I gave up halfway through the book and picked up Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient instead. The prose is definitely better: it's vivid, fluid, passionate, and very rich but not so dated. I feel it's going to be a favorite.

I have not given up on The Age of Innocence though, because I still dream of being well-read in the classics (a lofty dream, if you ask me, but I have my whole life to accomplish this feat). Being the Philistine that I am, I looked up the book online and found out Martin Scorsese directed a 1993 film version starring a young and beautiful Winona Ryder and a dashing Daniel-Day Lewis as main protagonist Newland Archer (who is kind of like a New York City multi-hyphenate in the 1870's). I'm going to watch the film first just so I can get myself to visualize the plot better. Heh.

New York high society, I have to admit, is always a hit or miss on my end. I like New York but I like the bohemian, artsy, tough, won't-take-a-crap-from-anyone city that is New York. It's kind of hard for me to like a satirical novel penned under the guise of old world traditions and high society entitlement. My issues, of course. One day, in the not-too-near future, I know I'll pick up The Age of Innocence again. Hopefully, I will learn to like it then.