No, it's not what you think.
It wasn't some random stranger, a fated young man on the far
side of the cafe, our eyes meeting and lingering as I sit there in the corner
of my booth, book in hand and the sweet aroma of brewing beans in the air. No,
I don't turn my eyes away, my cheeks burning, half expecting him to get up and
walk over to me until he finally does. He doesn't slide over, charm me with his
smile, and strike up a conversation that will forever be immortalized and
hailed as the most romantic conversation in the annals of history. No, I don't
smile and he doesn't smile and we don't decide right then and there that this is
it, the thing most people spend their whole lives searching for, rare and
unadulterated and pure, the white-hot fire of raw love burning deep inside our
hearts and threatening to consume us completely.
No, it was nothing like that.
But there was a young man. There was a lingering of eyes, a
runaway fire, a coy smile, a spark.
There was a coffee shop.
And I fell in love.
.....
A secret meeting in a bookstore, when he called me and I
turned around to see him. To this day, I still keep turning around for him,
seeing his face light up and feeling my heart skip a beat. A trip to the comic
book store. Some embarrassing geekiness. The realization that we are kindred
spirits—broken and found and pieced together—and despite taking forever, our time
has finally come.
.....
Falling in love is nothing grand.
On that first date, it's the twitch in the corner of his
lips, a hint of a smile. It's him leading me across the coffee shop, the touch
of his fingers on the small of my back—light, unsure, afraid. It's the endless
stories we shared and the beauty of our silence, nodding our heads and feeling
like we understood each other even though no words were said. It's him leaning
forward on the table across from me, eager to hear everything. It's the wave
goodbye, the promise of another meeting, the giddiness that reached up to our
eyes. It's the way I bit my lip, my heart racing, thoughts of dancing in my
room and me gazing out the car window on the way home.
I was twenty-three, and there I was, in a cheesy Taylor Swift
song, one that I never wanted to stop. I’ve had my share of heartaches, but her
song was right: on a Wednesday, in a cafe, I watched love begin again.
.....
It’s been five years. Now I'm lying in bed in the dark,
listening to the soft rise and fall of my husband's chest, my hand over his
heart, his hand over mine. I can still see the hint of a smile on the corner of
his lips, the same one that captivated me all those years ago. I can still feel
the spark in his touch, the gentleness in his fingers. I can still see him,
that shy stance and those hopeful eyes, as clear as the day we first met.
He is still that same boy in the coffee shop.
And every day, I fall in love with him.
Another long overdue post, this short photodump on the Comic-Con equivalent in Hong Kong will hopefully be the start of a series where I get to explore the different toycons and comicons around Asia (at least, since SDCC is quite an impossibility). The Ani-Com & Games Hong Kong 2015 was held at the Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre last July 24-28, 2015. It's the biggest geek event in the country, so naturally, the hubby and I were ecstatic. 
“One bright April afternoon in 1978, I attended a baseball
game at Jingu Stadium, not far from where I lived and worked,” writes Haruki
Murakami. “The satisfying crack when the bat met the ball resounded throughout
Jingu Stadium. Scattered applause rose around me. In that instant, for no
reason and on no grounds whatsoever, the thought suddenly struck me: I think I
can write a novel.”
If you haven’t spent the whole of 2015 reading, then it’s not too late for you yet. Here are the most popular literary works in fiction for the year according to online rankings and critics, so grab your copies and get reading!
Already dubbed “video gaming’s biggest night”, The Game Awards 2015 certainly delivered last December 3rd in Los Angeles when it gave the fans what they wanted from the industry. The event aired live on gaming screens all over the globe, featuring much coveted awards, musical performances, exclusive world premieres, and major announcements from the industry’s biggest players. The Game Awards also offered huge discounts for gamers when they purchase titles at that very moment during the show on Steam, Xbox Live, and PlayStation Network. These sales include The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (which won the coveted Game of the Year award) for 50% off, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain for 25% off on PlayStation Network, and 25% off for Pro Evolution Soccer 2016.
Now that the hectic holidays are upon us, you’re no doubt
facing year-end deadlines left and right—not to mention all those family
reunions and barkada get-togethers
you just can’t excuse yourself from. Because everyone (including yourself) is
fighting for your spare time and your weekends, it helps to have some
life-saving productivity apps on your ever-reliable smartphone. Here are some
of the top picks that you should download this season for your own sanity’s
sake.
While it’s true that writing can be revised, editing your novel to perfection is anything but easy. Now that we’re midway through National Novel Writing Month, do you already have something worth showing the world, or have you not even begun to jot down a single word? Writing your masterpiece is extremely difficult—we can all agree with that. But thanks to an editing master class I attended last month during the Asia Pacific Writers and Translators conference that our home country hosted this year, I at least got a glimpse of how editing actually works.
Gone are the days when in-car navigation was tedious and only available to the most advanced cars. “If you want to update the maps in your car, it’s an expensive and complicated process of having to go to the dealership,” Strategy Analytics’ John Canali says. Now, with Web-based navigation, updates come easier than ever. “We’ve historically had these onboard, embedded nav systems. That’s just not going to cut it anymore,” says Tim Nixon from OnStar, the navigational service from General Motors. “The game has changed, and the bar has been raised by these always-connected devices that bring fresh information into the car.”
If you’ve always thought that ball sports were too mainstream, then trading that ball for a flying disc might just be the perfect thing for you. Move over, basketball. Ultimate Frisbee is steadily growing more and more popular in the country today—because isn’t badminton or bowling too last season? 
Speaking of dying young, the following day is a day of celebrating one of the most amazing and ingenious human inventions in all of history—the sandwich. Imagine: anything you’ve always wanted to scarf down between two slices of hearty bread? What an inspired creation! Today is the day to celebrate your fave PB and J with your best buds, or perhaps whip up your own concoction in the kitchen. Whatever you decide to do, just dig in and indulge—it’s a “holiday” after all.
Everyone knows that Stephen King has the genre down pat, but there are a lot of other bone-chilling horror novels worth losing sleep over out there. Now that Halloween is almost upon us, lock yourself up in your room and feast on these horrific delights—just be sure you don’t turn the lights out afterwards.
November might mean Christmas trees and stuffed turkeys for most people, but for writers, it’s something else entirely. It’s here—the dreaded month all frustrated authors have been waiting for all year. NaNoWriMo brings sweat, tears, and countless hours holed up in a room like a hermit with the sound of fingers tapping keyboards well into the night, but it also brings the irreplaceable triumph of finishing a 50,000-word novel by the end of the month—if you know what you’re doing. Instead of rushing through the 30 days unmotivated and unprepared, get that rotting old story idea from outside of your head onto actual paper with these NaNoWriMo tips for success.