Spellbinding!

I'm currently engrossed reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's timeless classic "love in the time of cholera". Yes, I know what some of you are thinking... SHAME ON ME for reading the book this late in my life.

I know I should have read this last year when nanay sent it in one of her balikbayan boxes. But no, I didn't. I was too busy balancing work and school. But now, that I am having a break from my MA in Journ classes, I try to read more. GGM's classic is the fourth book I have gotten hold since June. I have yet to finish the three others, two of which I got on sale, a reflection of my erratic personality and short attention span.

So far, Im on page 24. And GGM has got me under his spell. The descriptions are vivid. The laws of reality are suspended, which makes reading the love triangle evolving in the book a great luxury.

Actually, it was a friend, Marc Reyes of Inquirer, who introduced GGM's work to me in one of our drinking sessions in Iloilo City, where we were covering the 2005 Palarong Pambansa. I've been eyeing the 100 years of solitude book at NBookstore but didn't push through with my plan buying it. Instead, I waited for my nanay to send GGM's works to me.

How GGM weaves his stories and links descriptions and takes you to a surreal world are stuffs writers should emulate. His book is a good reference for creative writing classes. Speaking of creative writing class, the book could have come in handy when I read it prior to my CW class under Rayvi Sunico. It would have conditioned my inept brain, squeezed out a little creative juice as I did assignments in class.

Return

I'm back after taking a break from blogging for a week. Truth is I wanted to stay away from the Internet but there's no escaping it. I need the wires for my sports page, I need to check my email for possible stories. Speaking of emails, I have this phobia of opening my gmail account and see something from Ms. Ingrid Rotmann of Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, the sponsor of my MA in Journalism studies at the Ateneo. My report is long overdue. Last April, she suspended my scholarship because I failed to submit my report. (So finish it immediately!). Fortunately, she didnt relay the news of the suspension of my scholarship to the Asian Center for Journalism class, hence, I was enrolled and got to spend the summer in the big city and had loads of cash, perhaps the biggest in my 23 years of my existence.

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In the local sports scene, I am closely following the turn of events involving the Bacolod-Negros softball team which is scheduled to compete in the Junior League World Series in Kirkland, Washington from Aug. 12-18. Members of the team were granted visas yesterday and are all fired-up for the tournament. Problem is they ain't got no tickets yet! Philippine Airlines is one probable company which can help out but that remains to be seen. The team has actually reserved tickets for a Thursday flight to the US but it is unlikely it will be released by the local travel agency, which granted them a fly-now pay-later deal last year. Unfortunately, their fund-raising campaign in the US last year wasn't enough to pay for everything, hence the unsettled account. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been covering the team since 2004. That year, three Bacolod teams made it to the World Series in Portland, Kirkland and Sussex, Delaware. Back then, the Ba-Neg girls carried the name Bacolod Central. Most of the players were students of Education Training and Center School.

It's a bit sad that the girls are hardly meriting attention from the national media. I recalled reading a feature on the International Little League of Manila Major League 11-12 squad that was also bound to the US. In full color and with several portraits and candid shots of the girls having fun, the feature came out on 2Bu of Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Reading the feature actually prompted me to rush to ETCS as well to gather data for my long-overdue feature on the Ba-Neg girls. I published my work the following day and actually got a positive review from my journ professor, Sir Allen Del Carmen. I sent the story to Inquirer, hoping to see it printed. But the sports pages have been tight the past few days and I was pretty much disappointed that it hasn't been printed. Self-doubt hovers whenever this happens. Was my story not good enough? Still, I remain hopeful.

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Meanwhile, the Philippine Basketball Association, Asia's first play-for-pay league, has suffered another blow with the resignation of disbarred lawyer Noli Eala as its commissioner. Eala's resignation came a week after the Supreme Court ordered his disbarment because of gross immorality.

It's been an awful August so far for basketball. An NCAA player, Paolo Orbeta, was arrested for alleged point shaving last week. And the well-funded Philippine Team missed out on an Olympic berth. Hope these three incidents would convince marketing people to stop putting their money in basketball.

There's always football, which still doesn't have a professional league, and of course, boxing, the sport that will give us our first Olympic gold medal.