How proud would the buildings of Rome look without a single stone?

Current System Configuration: Coughing up blood. For some reason I cough up blood in the morning. Just a little, but it's alarming enough---but I stop after a while. Weird.
BGM: The Glory of Rome from Avantasia: The Metal Opera by Tobias Samett. I still can't get over Avantasia. This song is sung by the bailiff Falk von Kronberg, bishop Johann Adam von Bicken, Brother Jakob, and Pope Clement VIII. Cool stuff. An excerpt:

Heading for the angels, heading for the feast,
heading for salvation and the ruin of the beast.
Let us fight the outcast, let us brin 'em fire,
let us lock the center of their wicked, mad desire.

Breakfast: English muffins with scrambled eggs and bacon.
Lunch: Spaghetti with tomato sauce.
Dinner: --
Current Read/s:
+That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis (Difficulty: Hard)
+Guildpact (Magic: The Gathering) (Difficulty: Medium)

I went again to Manhattan yesterday with my brother. (The last time I'll be spending the whole day with him) I managed to buy two new books at Barnes and Noble:

-A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, which is a well-written natural history book. It talks about the Big Bang and comets and other stuff without being overly scientific. I haven't really gotten into reading it, but it's pretty good from what I've seen.

-Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss. A hilarious book about punctuation. Yes, punctuation. Ever heard that panda joke?

A panda walks into a restaurant holding a dictionary. It motions for a menu as it sits down and with a few growls points out the items it wants to order. After eating, it stands up, pulls out a pair of Uzis and sprays the restaurant's clientele with bullets, killing most of them. The panda then begins to walk out the door, but not before the restaurant manager accosts it.
"Why'd you do that?" asks the manager. The panda opens its dictionary and points at the following entry:
Panda. Large animal. Eats shoots and leaves.

Of course, the entry should read "Eats, shoots and leaves" if one is to follow the panda's definition. In any case, the book is a fun read for English teachers. I'll definitely be using some excerpts in my lessons next year. There is, after all, a huge difference between the following lines:

A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.

Interesting, is it not? I haven't read through the book yet, but I'll get to that. Right now I'm reading Guildpact, the second book in the Ravnica cycle of Magic: The Gathering. This novel looks deeper into the dealings of the sinister Orzhov Syndicate. Although Agrus Kos is still around, the book focuses more on Teysa Karlov, the Syndicate's most gifted advokist (lawmage). Haven't gotten that far yet, though.

I'm leaving the US for Singapore on Thursday. I have to stay in Singapore for a day because the trip back is really tiring (almost 24 hours) and once I get back to the Philippines I'll have to take a bus from Clark (The airline I'm taking only lands at Clark airfield in Pampanga) all the way back to Manila. That's just exhausting. I'm gonna miss my brother, but thankfully it won't be very long before he goes back to Manila. I guess it's back to the heat and sweat of the Philippines. Good thing I still have yet to touch my summer pay. I've saved an entire month's worth of salary just by not being at home. Awesome.

~Be Just or Be Dead~
#2504AD20061339
ー黒獅子アスラン