Home For The Weekend

After the first week of my acting residency in Cebu, I flew home for the weekend, the primary reason being Iron Man 3.

My high school batchmates planned to watch IM3 together, and I am not one to turn down any chance to see Robert Downey Jr. The movie turned out to be pretty good; much better than the second one anyway. But nothing trumps an origin story, I think. Plus the music in this film was severely lacking and completely deviated from Ramin Djawadi's original musical concept for the first Iron Man. I think that was the only problem I really had with the movie: it didn't have any of the sass shown in Iron Man. The finale was spectacular however.

But the real happy news was when I went to Fully Booked and out of boredom rather than expectation, I asked if they had The Elite (sequel to The Selection by Kiera Cass) yet. Imagine my shock when they actually said the shipment finally arrived. And so I was directed to a cardboard box, and I grabbed my own copy literally hot off the presses.

Then today I spent my morning lolling about Fully Booked at The Fort, and once again, out of sheer boredom, made my way to the biography section, where two books immediately caught my eye.

I am beyond excited to read both these books about two very different daughters of monarchs. This is the first biography I've found about Anastasia that focused solely on her. As for Marie Therese, I've been curious about her since I watched Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette, when Kirsten Dunst whispers to her newborn daughter, "Oh, you were not what was desired, but that makes you no less dear to me. A boy would have been the Son of France, but you, Marie Therese, shall be mine." That tender scene is one of the reasons I decided a while back that I would give my firstborn daughter the middle name Therese (the other reason is that I want to name one of my children after my mother). I've never read that much about Marie Antoinette's daughter, especially what happened to her after the revolution.

So now I'm well equipped, book-wise for my second week in Cebu.