Get ready for a long one.

Current System Configuration: Congested
BGM: The Sign of the Cross from Avantasia: The Metal Opera by Tobias Samett. Not as epic and grand as The Seven Angels, but it also has a catchy chorus and a great melody---not to mention an awesome guitar solo. Most of Avantasia's guitar solos are done by Henjo Richter, and all of them are excellent. European symphonic power metal has really grown on me, since they're very different from the death and black metal that's usually associated with the metal musical genre. (Death metal has all that ogrish growling that I find reprehensible. Power metal has none of that--the melodies are soaring and pure if not rapid and exciting.)
Breakfast: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
Lunch: Lamb on pita gyro (Again! Yum!)
Dinner: Salmon fillet and salad
Current Read/s:
+That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (Difficulty: Hard)
+Ravnica: The City of Guilds (Magic: The Gathering) (Difficulty: Medium, though it's a relatively slow read)
+The Myths of Magic (Magic: The Gathering) (Difficulty: Medium)



Last week I felt cold. Now I HAVE a cold. Awful. -_- This cold doesn't seem to be the viral kind, but the allergic kind triggered by the Spring season's massive discharges of pollen. The weather's great, but it's hard to enjoy with all the pollen and my perpetually congested upper respiratory tract. Yesterday I was so sick that my body spontaneously generated a fever, but this morning I felt well enough to trek once more to Manhattan, this time with my uncle on the way to the office.

Okay, trekking with your uncle to the office doesn't sound great at all. Of course, your uncle doesn't have an office that's very close to all the neon glow of Times Square, all the awesome food on Sixth Avenue, or the Barnes and Noble on Fifth Avenue. My uncle's office (he's a paralegal whose business consists mostly of providing legal assistance to immigrants into the US.)

We arrived at the NY Port Authority bus terminal (the hub of all bus traffic in and out of New York) at around 11:15. By that time, most of the stuff that's worth seeing in the Big Apple is already open. However, lacking money (well, not really) and company (my brother's back at school), and having been to most of the worthwhile attractions already when I was last here 9 years ago (I haven't been to the Empire State building or the Twin Towers, but of course the latter was blown up 5 years ago), I didn't plan on going around much. Since I didn't have a camera, there wasn't much use in taking pictures of the view from the Empire State Building. I didn't plan on staying long, so I just went to Barnes and Noble on Fifth.

If I'm not mistaken, this is either the largest or one of the largest book outlets in New York. I have the general impression that the Kinokuniya in Singapore's Ngee Ann City is bigger, but Barnes and Noble still has a lot of stuff that you won't find on the shelves at Powerbooks or Fully Booked.

Of course by now you know I'm a nerd who likes reading, though I don't read as much as I'd want to. So in Singapore I bought That Hideous Strength, the last book in C.S. Lewis's Cosmic Trilogy. (FYI the other books are Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra.) The Cosmic Trilogy is early 20th-century science fiction, so it doesn't have hyperdrives or lightsabers or black hole bombs and the rest of the stuff we're familiar with. It represents what we knew at the turn of the century when we were just looking out toward the other members of the Solar System. It's also set in the late 30's to the mid 40's, so the sci-fi is relatively low key. Don't expect skyscraping utopias or post-apocalyptic deserts. However, like the rest of C.S. Lewis's work, it presents a coherent world view that the author holds to believe is true in real life. (As do I.) It's entertaining and insightful into both the human nature and the nature of the Universe and what's Beyond. It's basically a very entertaining theological lecture. However, the series is a lot more difficult than the same author's Chronicles of Narnia. For one, it wasn't written as a children's series. It's a lot more academic (the main characters in all three books are members of the academe), philosophical, and complicated. Of course, most of my readers are mature enough for that kind of reading. I highly recommend it for you guys. Ironically, I found this neither in Kinokuniya nor Barnes and Noble, but in Singapore's other premium bookstore, MPH. (At least, this particular edition of the book---I wanted my books to be of the same edition).

Ravnica: The City of Guilds and The Myths of Magic are explorations of the Magic: The Gathering multiverse. I'll get into those in a bit. Ok, you're about to foray deeper into my geekiness, so beware. (I proudly declare that while I may be a geek or a nerd, I'm not a gnerd. That's a different creature altogether.) Magic: The Gathering is a collectible card game I've been playing since 1996. The gist of it is that it's a strategy game that simulates two or more powerful wizards, called planeswalkers, beating the snot out of each other. The players employ various creatures (Humans! Goblins! Lesser wizards! Dragons! Angels! And yeah, Demons---I personally don't play those, but I don't think playing the game makes me any less of a Christian than playing the black side of the chessboard does.) , powerful spells and artifacts to dispose of your opponent in various ways. Beating him or her to death with big monsters is perhaps the most straightforward, and so is incinerating or shocking him or her. There are other, more subtle ways such as driving him or her insane (this is represented by running him out of cards), or poisoning him or her to death. (This is actually a lame way to win)

....oookay. You're bored. Lemme get to the book reviews.

I haven't finished Ravnica: The City of Guilds yet, but the novel tells the story of Ravnica, a gothic ecumenopolis, the setting of the latest block of M:TG expansions. The inspiration behind Ravnica is very Eastern European, with characters named with Russian-, Polish-, or Hungarian-sounding names. The main character is Lieutenant Agrus Kos, a wojek (cop) who serves in the Boros Legion, Ravnica's enforcers of fiery justice. Ravnica is governed by 10 guilds:
-The Azorius Senate, Ravnica's official government---guys who devised the Guildpact. These guys love order above all else and are dedicated to its preservation---at the risk of stagnation. Their guildmaster is Grand Arbiter Agustin IV.
-The Boros Legion, Ravnica's law enforcement---cops, soldiers, and fiery angels of justice, the Boros Legion enforces the law without being Azorius lapdogs. These guys enforce the law as swiftly as they can. No pencil-pushers, they are. Guildmaster is the archangel Razia.
-The Orzhov Syndicate, Ravnica's most illustrious corporation/church/Mafia. Under the guise of a Church, the Orzhov are actually Ravnica's savviest businessmen, lawmages and crime lords. These guys use their money (and worship it) more than any god. Their creepiest ability is to go after you for a debt, even after you're dead. After all, their leaders, the Ghost Council of Orzhova, are all dead too.
-The Simic Combine, Ravnica's biomancers. Originally they were supposed to be ecologists tasked to preserve what little of Ravnica's natural scenery was left, but they failed. Now they want to create their own brand of nature, whatever that is, and allow it to evolve on its own. This means that they're into magical genetic engineering and all manner of gruesome experiments. The guildmaster is the brilliant Elvish biomancer, Momir Vig.
-The Izzet League, Ravnica's resident mad scientists. Mad as they are, these guys actually constructed Ravnica's current infrastructure---its arches, aqueducts, and whatnot. The Izzet like making a lot of whatnot, too. They invent all sorts of weird gizmos and spells with tongue-twisting names like Schismotivate, Mimeofacture, Vacuumelt, and so on. Brilliance and passion all rolled together in one. Their leader is the smartest (and vainest) being on Ravnica, the dragon-mage Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.
-The Selesnya Conclave, who are generally perceived to be Ravnica's most benevolent guild. These guys uphold life and unity above all else, and offer all souls peace in Ravnica's rather turbulent afterlife. They're not above violence, however---the Selesnya can conjure legions of plant-monsters to their aid. Guild-leader: an ancient council of dryads (and a few others) called The Chorus of the Conclave.
-The Golgari Swarm, the Selesnya's direct opposite. The Golgari are death-worshippers and love working with death and undeath. They like plants too, but not the sun-loving kind. Their plants are the strangling, choking, killing kind. They like playing with plagues too, which makes them similar in a way to the Simic. Their leaders are the Sisters of Stone Death, a trio of Gorgons, although their high priestess Savra is trying to kick the stoner sisters out.
-The Cult of Rakdos, among Ravnica's most unsavory residents. These guys are demon-worshippers, sadists and masochists. Led by Rakdos the Defiler, an ancient demon lord, the Rakdos are thrill-killers and mercenaries. (The Ravnican term is "killguilder"). However, they have their uses---the Rakdos are Ravnica's primary source of labor and muscle. They also dig up the earth and mine it for the use of all Ravnica.
-The Gruul Clans, Ravnica's least lawful citizens. These guys detest law and order, and love stirring up messes. However, they're highly fragmented, and the many clans that make up the Gruul are prone to fighting (and eating ) each other. They're primal and chaotic. There's no actual leader---the Gruul answer to whomever is powerful and feeds everyone. In this case, it's the giant cyclops, Borborygmos.
-House Dimir, the Guild that does not exist. Many Ravnicans consider House Dimir to be a fairy tale, a story told to kids to scare them into bed. That's what the Dimir want, of course. These are the sneakiest citizens of Ravnica, plotting to take over the entire plane by subterfuge and all manners secret and deadly. Their guildmaster is the psionic vampire, Szadek, the Lord of Secrets.

The skinny on the story is that the Guildpact, the magical treaty between the guilds that keeps them in relative peace, is about to celebrate its 10,000th anniversary. However, something is brewing, and Agrus Kos is about to find out the hard way. So far I've found the book to be a challenge to read because of its numerous characters, but it interests me because Ravnica is, in my opinion, one of, if not the best M:TG blocks Wizards of the Coast has ever designed. It's interesting how they make so many opposing ideologies work together, just to have the whole thing unravel like so much thread.

The last book, The Myths of Magic, is an anthology of short stories based on the various stories set in the vast multiverse of Magic. Each "plane" of the multiverse is another dimension, each very different from the other. There's the "central" plane, Dominaria, which is about as diverse as our planet is. (Most of Magic's story takes place on Dominaria) There's the Japanese-themed Kamigawa, a world which fights its own gods. Then there's Mirrodin, a world made of metal, inhabited by diverse races that all have metal grafted into them. (Metal dreadlocks on lion-people, for example). I've already covered Ravnica, a world whose surface is one whole city. Then there's the sinister Phyrexia, a world full of twisted arcane biomechanical creatures, a hell governed by the self-proclaimed god Yawgmoth, who is perhaps the most powerful (and most evil) planeswalker in all of Magic. Myths of Magic has a lot of stories. The only one I've read so far is about an Argivian scholar from Dominaria ending up in the service of Phyrexia. It's pretty gruesome---they describe in detail the grisly operations used to "compleat" him as a full-fledged Phyrexian. This means replacing all of one's internal organs with...not very cool stuff.

....I've spoken enough. D: I hope I didn't bore you.

~Be Just or Be Dead~
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ー黒獅子アスラン