A Boned Life, Books, Comics, & My New Job (Yay!)

After some writing stints in various companies (8 all in all) for almost 3 years, I am once again in this mood to re-examine my life. Like that old fish in a story told by David Foster Wallace, I ask myself this question: So, Jonas, how's the water? Well, there's only one word to describe it: BONED. Yes, boned water. Go figure.

Also here are some updates of latest happenings since my last post:

Read two books

1. The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula K. Le Guin)
2. Side Effects (Woody Allen)

I was quite busy this past two weeks. I wrote my last article for Rambo, which he will probably hate or love (that depends on his mood). And last July 30, Friday, was a blast night with my former officemates in Kitteric. Here, let Xan tells you the story. You’ll love her blog, too. I'm especially digging this:

I... remember him coming to the office ever so timid and silent, smoking a stick or two, and wearing the most decent clothes among us all, he looked boring to me. But it didn't last long, thank jeebuz! The real Jonas was pretty much an alcoholic and talks of so many things in a span of, oh I don't know, let's just exaggerate it to 5 minutes. He's got tons of stories to tell, books to share, and words that sends me to look them up in google.

Xan's story complete with pictures explains why that Saturday morning didn’t do well for me to open a book. And I just realized again that two cappuccinos and a couple of biogesics won’t go well with a hangover, or maybe still don’t enough. But I may again forget.

The hangover was still with me till Sunday. The rest of the day was spent trying to stay sober till evening, and succeeded, of course. Monday was my first day on the new job. So you can surely get the picture. I did finally find to chuck some minutes to read the second book of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle in the weekdays.

And I have to tell you, Woody Allen’s Side Effects is pure hilarious. But still, in my opinion, the man is a lot funnier and more wicked in movies.


I am now again starting to read Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe. Maybe this is the best time to read him. I am also nibbling some pages of Tribute, a true treasure to me, thanks to Genica for this great gift. Also gave her one of my favorites, Frank McCourt’s Teacher Man.

Read 15 comic books

Yes, kids, I am an awesome hoarder of comic books. And I don’t want to finish them off in just one go. That wouldn't be proper. The best thing to do with comic books is to consume them one dose at a time. You have no idea how it weakens me trying to keep myself from taking more than two comics a day. I have to control my impulse. And I tell you, it takes a lot of discipline.

Put up a new blog about SEO

I know it would be a boring site to keep. But when I started toying with the idea in my head, I was surprised when I find my self loaded with ideas to put there. I already have some rough drafts in my laptop that I’ll soon publish there. I am also reading blogs about passive income. Maybe writing articles about SEO content is my best niche to generate some dollars in the internet. Yes, Internet, you can’t keep me from getting rich someday.

Got a new job

My 8th job in three years since I left the university. This time I am the staff writer of Live2Sell Group of Companies. I average 7 articles a day and I think I can improve on that. I am targeting to produce 10 500-word articles, SEO techniques applied, per day. The company pays me higher than my previous jobs in the past, and I can still do some freelance writing on the side.

It’s early yet to tell, but I love the location and the environment in the office. The Boss seems a good man, too. I also work with an awesome team of SEO specialists. SEO people are best kind of people in the world. I have never met one whom I don’t like, except perhaps the one side of Rambo when he’s on one of his epiphanic moods, which could turn you to stone or bore you to death as they put it, deluding himself to think that he is the fricking Justin Bieber of SEO. Maybe he is. Or at least he has that spirit.

A Tale of Two Piles

You see, I started late. I was not much of a reader till one book changed all that. Said book led me to another, and then that another to another till it's too late. I am hooked and became aware of the gaping horrible void in my life. And I think only through reading the great lore of awesomese can save me from total self-destruction.

Those two piles above show the earnestness of my goal to read 100 books this year. I have yet to get past that number since I discovered my passion for reading only in college.

Like any virgin bloke to reading and with no one to guide me which one is a good read and which is not, I read any books available in a library near me. Or when one good soul told me that I could find cheap books in Booksale shops and when I have enough money to buy them, I would pick ones that have fancy titles and covers in them regardless of who wrote them. More reading made me wised up a bit, and became more informed, biased, and a little intelligent in my taste on books.

That said, here are the books I've read so far since the start of the year. Apparently, I'm much behind schedule but there’s still enough time I think to catch up.

Since January 01, 2010

1. If You Really Want To Hear About It (Edited by Catherine Crawford)
2. Capote: A Biography (Gerald Clarke)
3. The Dark Side of Genius (Donald Spoto)
4. My Lost Mexico (James Michener)
5. V. S. Pritchett: A Working Life (Jeremy Treglown)
6. Siddhartha (Herman Hesse)
7. Of Human Bondage (W. Somerset Maugham)
8. A Moveable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)
9. 21 Great Stories (Edited by Abraham H. Laas & Norma L. Tasman)
10. Walden and On Civil Disobedience (Henry David Thoreau)
11. The Greatest Salesman In The World (Og Mandino)
12. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
13. A Century In His Life: Alexander Solzhenitsyn (D. M. Thomas)
14. Waiting For Godot (Samuel Beckett)
15. Where Angels Fear To Thread (E. M. Forster)
16. F’D Companies (Philip J. Kaplan)
17. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
18. Welcome to Hard Times (E. L. Doctorow)
19. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (Stephen King)
20. 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939 (Anthony Burgess)
21. A Portrait of The Artist as Filipino (Nick Joaquin)
22. Education of a Wandering Man (Louis L’Amour)
23. How The West Was Won (Louis L’Amour)
24. The Ferguson Rifle (Louis L’Amour)
25. Scott Fitzgerald: A Biography (Andrew Turnbull)
26. A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. Le Guin)
27. Tropic of Cancer (Henry Miller)

Second pile comprises of some classics I've missed and contemporary books that I want to read. This is only a short list. I still need to find more books to include in it. If you have some titles in mind, kindly drop me some lines in the comment below.

Thanks guys as always for reading.

What do you read?

Been trying to catch up with my reading quota this year. My goal is to read 100 books before the end of 2010. To keep me going I'd occasionally buy supplies of good books from Booksale, or from other regular bookshops.

Some days ago, I went to La Belle Aurore, a modestly well-stocked bookstore located just about 600 meters away from our office. I walked that distance out of a whim, originally thinking of eating my lunch when I found that I wasn't really hungry for food, but of something else. So I skipped lunch and went to La Belle and was very lucky to find a rare copy of Education of a Wandering Man by Louis L'Amour. A good rush of delight swept over me. I've been trying to find that book for months and finally held it in my hands and would never part with it come hell 'n high water, till I claimed ownership to it. Mon, that's the name of the bookstore gay assistant, who is kind and very helpful, asked me if I have any particular author or title in mind. I doubted her at first if she knows John Cheever or Louis L'Amour, or Education of a Wandering Man. But she proved me wrong and commended her for it when she got me just exactly what I wanted and then more. I paid for Education of a Wandering Man. Also bought two of Louis L'Amour novels How the West was Won and The Ferguson Rifle, and Yondering, a collection of stories. While at it, I wasn't able to resist temptation and took two more books from the shelf. One is A Biography of John Cheever by Scott Donaldson, the other is A Biography of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Andrew Turnbull.

It was raining hard when I got out from the bookstore. But the owner (whose name I should remember) was kind to offer me a cardboard which he procured from a stockroom somewhere and gave it to me. It would at least help you not to get too wet when you reached the next corner, he said. I said thanks and went my way with the books securely wrapped in cellophane.

The thick cardboard did help a lot.

After dinner, I took a quick bath, dressed, and commenced to reading Education of a Wandering Man. It tells about the author's journey to educating his self by leaving his home, his 10th grade school, for good, at age 15. He became a nomad and traveled the United States, embarked to many travels around the world as a seaman, and explore various places and times through his omnivorous reading. He said to have read over 20,000 books. Cripes, that's quite a lot.


(This post is still in progress. Will write some more after I eat my dinner and drink my milk. Thanks for following my own little journey to awesomeness.)