Book binge.

Back to the dull daily drudgery. Wait, was that an alliteration? Does that even count? Coz I'm hounded by figures of speech for weeks now. It's like guilt. Counting the official LOA yesterday and the extended 2-day stay in Manila, I was out of the office for 10 days. If my official 1 day trip had been scheduled earlier, I could have planned for a trip to the North, which I have silently longed for the past couple of years. But then, I had spent whatever was intended for that trip on my brother’s graduation, so the longed-for trip was remotely possible unless I start an early Holy Week sojourn and self-flagellation. And so I just gallivanted the polluted, labyrinthine metropolis and tripped on the MRT courtesy of the humongous ass of Mr. Ginormico. I was stuck at home during the long break and surprised myself with an unquenchable gusto for reading. Well, not that I read less, in fact, I read everyday, even managing a single or two pages of my current reading despite exhaustion or self-imposed sluggishness. But Holy Thursday, I just grabbed the remainders of a hardbound I was reading and just read like nuts. When it becomes monotonous and I feel a certain kind of stupor that can only be attributed to hours of reading, I will start on another book, then repeat the process until I end up book-hopping with Smith (Zadie), Perrotta, Niffeneger, Yates, DeLillo, Ellis. Even at the airport, while waiting on the packed flight to Davao, avoiding the unavoidable traffic that would have mounted to unbelievable proportions, I had three hours idling away with Tom Perrotta. Surprising also that I haven’t spent the time catching up on the bootleg films I’ve amassed for the previous month, which was the more likely thing I would’ve done. Along with watching tons of films, I could live on an everyday book binge. It's one of those things that I know I can do for the rest of my life, every single day, and not regret about it, if only it is possible. Well it technically you can do that, cross off every single title in the list of 1001 books to read before you die, which I found an online version of (I just dunno if it's the same one as that voluminous version I found at NBS). If only life was book-simple and as always fascinating and adventuresome as reading. But then it isn't. And so we settle for the more interesting lives of distressed men, young and old, the enchanting women, lustful and devious, the loonies, misfits of this generation and bygone eras, even hobbits, elves and giants-as if we too have lived theirs.