My first half of the year was uneventful. I cannot remember what I was up from January-May. No black holes, no bright sparks. Things only started picking up last June. I went to a new beat, saw old friends, made new ones. Was diagnosed with NVLD, and possibly AS. Fell in love with a city. Got a training scholarship. Went backpacking in Europe. ( Read more... )

Ahh, livejournal. Long time, no post and I've  missed you so ( Read more... )

I just finished my first week in my new assignment. If I don't screw this up, I'll stay here and won't go back to the police beat; so I'm crossing my fingers that I'll get things right here. The best thing, so far, is that I get to ride the river ferry to work almost everyday. It's less stressful than traveling by land, which translates ( Read more... )

Last January, I wrote a story about a town official who was killed, execution style, by 2 or 3 gunmen. At that time, the motive for his death was unclear. Like all other deaths in this unfortunate country, he became a statistic, a footnote in his neighborhood.

Last week, The Editor sent me an email from a 20 year old guy in Ohio, who had ( Read more... )

 
It was only a matter of time. I knew I was going to write a Loretta Bobbitt story one day. That one day happened last week and the tabloids had a field day. What sells more than sex? Sex and gore!  Severed penis crime! It was truly one of the most bizarre, funniest story I've ever come across, although the Guy wouldn't be too happy about it, ( Read more... )

By its premise - two outsider kids, one of them a vampire, finds love and life in each other's company - John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let The Right One In should be sappy. Emotionally manipulative, like the Danielle Steel books. I was apprehensive buying it, but I haven't read horror in ages, so I gave it a go. And Lindqvist's a Swede - who knew those ( Read more... )

Me and the dead white male Russian novelists, we don’t agree much. I’d love to finish a novel from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, but they always defeat me. I tried reading The Brothers Karamazov in college, but gave up. Same thing with the Idiot, which was a gift from a priest who went to Peru, I think. And Anna Karenina, just thinking about it makes me ( Read more... )

This is the list of books I finished reading in 2007. The magic number is 70. That means I’ve read 1.3 books a week.  Not bad, although I wanted the number to be higher. I excluded the rereads and the magazines and the journals (The NYer, Believer, Granta, etc.), although the time I spend reading NYer, for instance, is equivalent to one Agatha ( Read more... )

After the funeral march last Saturday, we headed to Elaine and Suyin's house where I slaved away in the kitchen for the belated birthday lunch. The menu in mind was pasta with tomato vodka sauce and couscous salad. But since I couldn't find couscous in Shopwise, we ordered pizza instead.  I got the recipe from epicurious.com, but I slightly ( Read more... )

D didn't know about the short hair cut. So on the train the other night, he thought he saw my doppelganger.
-It looked like her, but I wasn't sure so I didn't say hi, he told C, who knew about the drastic hair cut, but hasn't seen it yet. She stopped typing and squinted at him.
-Ok, what was she wearing? C said. 
-Some kind of a jacket or a sweater,  ( Read more... )