Mockingjay

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I saw The Hunger Games movie a couple of weeks ago, and found the world of Panem and the character Katniss very interesting. I had to know the succeeding stories. Last night, I finished the final book of Suzanne Collins’ trilogy.

Book 2, Catching Fire, was exciting enough. It’s the 75th Annual Hunger Games, and past victors are called back to the arena to compete. Katniss has to go back after winning the title with Peeta just a year ago. If that isn’t intriguing enough I don’t know what is.

In Mockingjay, Ms. Collins is the one on fire: refusing to let her readers rest until we know what happens in the end. The rebellion is taking over the Capitol, and Katniss is right in the middle of it. She’s the symbol of the rebellion: the Mockingjay who survived tampering by the Capitol. She’s a soldier now, and though she’s part of a rebel team, she has one personal mission: to kill President Snow.

There are so many twists in the story, it’s like a twizzler. There’s also so much tension and suspense, you have to keep reading to find relief.

A very satisfying read.

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Portion control

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Recently my husband and I went to eat at a restaurant called Petite Syrah.

Emphasis on “petite”. Everything we ate was in miniature. I felt like I was in Lilliput.

Don’t get me wrong. The food was incredible. Pear lavender crème brulee, grilled hanger steak, purple haze goat cheese, etc.

But it’s not the place to go to when you’re starving, because you’ll end up ordering the entire menu and subsequently putting a hole in your wallet. Because everything there is little except for the bill.

This reminds me of that Filipino joke: a man dining at a restaurant wonders why the bill is so expensive. The waiter tells him, “Sir, I think it’s the ambience,” and the man says, “Who ordered ambience?”

In this case it wasn’t the ambience either. The restaurant was located in a little shopping center, and our table was one of those set up outside the restaurant proper and in the walkway of the shopping center.

The service was impeccable and the food was delicious. So I guess it’s the best place to go to when you’re on a diet.

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“Happy Hunger Games”

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Every year in a place called Panem, children between the ages of 12 and 18 are randomly collected in an event called “the Reaping”. A male and a female, called “tributes” are taken from each of the twelve districts and sent to the Capitol where they will compete against one another in a gladiatorial event called The Hunger Games (and by “compete” I mean “kill”). Only one will become the victor and will go home. The Hunger Games is a punishment for a rebellion against the Capitol many years ago.

Katniss, a sixteen-year-old girl from District 12, volunteers to take her younger sister’s place as a tribute to the Hunger Games. Katniss loves her sister fiercely, and takes care of her after their father died and their mother became catatonic with grief. A boy named Peeta is also chosen from her district.

They are taken to the Capitol, where people eat chocolate-covered strawberries and lechon (roast pig) and live a life of opulence. Meanwhile, people in the twelve districts are starving. Women in the Capitol are made up like geishas and dress like drag queens. Men have blue-colored hair and stylized mustaches. Everyone is happy and “smell like roses”. They don’t have a sense of reality outside the Capitol. After all, they’re a society who think it’s okay to watch children kill each other. Even the Romans saved this for steel-hearted men. They say “Happy Hunger Games” as if they were saying “Merry Christmas.”

The Hunger Games is like the Olympics; a beloved game to the people in the Capitol. At the presentation ceremony, the tributes ride Roman chariots and greet the public for the first time. It’s important to make a good impression. Not only are they warriors, they are also beauty queen contestants: they must please the crowd so they can earn sponsors. During the games, sponsors are allowed to send medicine or food to their favorite tributes. It’s all about theatrics. For example, Katniss and Peeta’s mentor says a love story between them makes a good show and could earn them sponsors, so they play along.

The tributes receive training before the Hunger Games commence. They learn survival skills because the games take place in a manmade “jungle”, where the hostile setting is as much a threat to them as their competitors. And they learn to fight with weapons. Katniss, at least, is a hunter back home and is adept with a bow and arrow.

Before the games, the tributes are like celebrities, housed in posh suites and eating lavish food. None of them have experienced such luxury before.

But it is short-lived, since the Hunger games soon begin and they are thrust in the jungle which is completely under the Gamekeeper’s control. At any time, trees can fall, fires can start, night and day can be manipulated and man-eating beasts can materialize.

The Hunger Games deals with a tough subject matter, but it really is a good story. I have a strong feeling I would enjoy the books.

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What Would You Do With Your Time?

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I love the idea behind the movie In Time with Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried: people get old only up to age 25. After that, they only have a year left, but they can work for additional time, or acquire it by other means. They can transfer time to one another, while others steal it, like the time robbing gang called the Minutemen.  A glowing barcode appears on their forearms indicating the time they have left.

On the first scene, there is a beautiful woman (Olivia Wilde) in a blue satin nightgown pouring coffee in the kitchen. We find out it’s Will’s mother, who is celebrating her 50th birthday that day. They don’t age past 25 years, which might be exciting to people from our world. But in their world, the uncertainty starts at age 25. People from the ghetto like Will and his mom live from day to day.

People in their world gamble with their time, buy coffee with their time, and pay bus fare with their time. Time is their currency.

“2 hours,” says the bus driver to Will’s mom.

“But it was just 1 hour this morning.” She has an hour and thirty minutes left on her clock. It takes two hours to walk where she is meeting Will.

And that is why she “timed out”.

Will encounters a man who is 105 years old and has over a hundred years left on his clock. He is from “Zone 4”, where the wealthiest and therefore longest surviving people live. Will saves Henry’s life from the Minutemen, but he finds out Henry doesn’t even want to live anymore. It’s nature; we all have to die, he says. They hide out, and in the morning Henry gives Will his time, saving only 5 minutes for himself. “Don’t waste my time,” is Henry’s last message to Will.

The Timekeepers (the cops of their world) suspect foul play, and hunt down Will. With his time gift from Henry, Will crosses many time zones to Zone 4, where he gambles with one of the wealthiest men, Philippe Weiss. Will meets Weiss’s daughter Sylvia, one of the three similar-looking redheads in Weiss’s family (the other two are his wife and mother-in-law).

Sylvia is a sheltered rich girl looking for an adventure. And she gets it when the Timekeepers confront Will in Weiss’s home. Will abducts Sylvia as he escapes, and the rest of the movie is devoted to the two of them dodging arrest and trying to correct the unfair system.

I didn’t like the ending, with Will and Sylvia becoming Robin Hood-type characters. And I really didn’t like Amanda Seyfried’s short red wig. What’s wrong with her beautiful long blond hair anyway? But I am intrigued by the idea of their world, where time is more precious than gold. Time is literally life.

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In Memoriam: D.V.P.

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March 12, 2012. It’s hard to believe it’s been thirteen years since Tiyo Dale, my mother’s younger brother, passed away at the age of 43. It was a sudden death caused by an aneurysm.

He was a bear of a man, six feet tall with a big belly that earned him the nickname “Budi” (a derivate of the word “Buddha”). But he did not growl like a bear. No, quite the opposite.

He tickled everyone. Like all of my mom’s siblings, Tiyo Dale had a great sense of humor and was always cracking jokes. He had this big, hearty laugh that made his belly dance and infected everyone within hearing distance. We used to gather around the dining table at my grandparents’ house, just laughing for hours at something Tiyo Dale, his older brothers or my grandfather said. And he was great with us kids. When I was in school, I wanted to see the cartoon The Prince of Egypt, but no one would come with me to watch it. So Tiyo Dale accompanied me.

Tiyo Dale was addicted to drugs when he was younger, and it messed with his head. But he wasn’t violent or dangerous or anything. He was just eccentric. He ate ice cream off a plate and made fake money for fun. He made a dinghy and took it to the sea at the back of their house. He wore things like purple Chuck Taylors with red pants and a green button-down shirt, or red socks and a purple long-sleeved shirt, and a captain’s hat.

He wore the captain’s hat while he was driving. One time he got stopped by a traffic officer and when he rolled down the window, the traffic officer saw his hat and actually saluted him.

Isn’t it our differences, our idiosyncrasies that make us special?

All I know is, he was special to me.

Though he never had his own family, he was loved by all his nieces and nephews. We miss you, Tiyo Dale. And we remember.

 

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