Finished A Clash of Kings over the long weekend. It’s about as good as A Game of Thrones, if not a bit better. The saga goes on and there’s still the political maneuverings, the cloak-and-dagger stuff, the skirmishes, and the battles. There’s also a little bit more of magic and sorcery, edging the series from medieval and towards fantasy. Unexpected was the battle outside the walls of King’s Landing towards the end. The battles in A Game of Thrones were rather smallish or seemed like so but this one was HUGE. Though it could have been more epic by adding more detail and perspectives, but it’s good enough as it is. I read there’s going to be a TV version and I wonder, considering the low budget of TV productions, how they’re going to pull this off. It would be sad if they couldn’t.
Jeanne, Michelle, and I went to High Street for a Father’s Day dinner. After dinner we dropped by Animaland and she grabbed this black bear. Michelle tried to show her a giraffe, an elephant, even a polar bear but she wouldn’t let go of the black bear. So we decided to adopt the black bear. And since it was my day, I got to name him Mormont.
Last night, Michelle was off to an office dinner so Jeanne and I were with each other from about 5PM onwards as Lola, who was with her the whole day, had to go sleep. We played till she eventually got tired/bored, we had dinner, she fed Mickey and Violet, we read books, we played some more. I tried putting her to sleep but she didn’t want to and got cranky. Or was it the other way around? She usually gets cranky when she gets sleepy. Eventually, as I was hugging her and she Mickey Mouse, she slowly fell asleep. I lay back and slept. So there I was, baby and stuffed toy on my chest, sleeping until Michelle arrived.
Back in the old days, PLDT owns the only large-scale communications infrastructure: the huge network of telephone lines. Not that it was huge enough: A large part of the country lacked a telephone infrastructure. It was a huge business opportunity but the costs and logistics involved is overwhelming and there were few if any entrants. PLDT enjoyed a monopoly as virtually the only telecommunication provider.
Then there was a disruptive technology: cellular phones. It eventually developed to the point where costs and logistics became more manageable. Quite a few cellular phone service providers (Globe, Smart, PilTel, IslaCom, ExtelCom, DigiTel/Sun Cellular, etc) cropped up to exploit this now lucrative market and compete with PLDT. Of course, PLDT didn’t stand still and soon acquired Smart, the fastest way to get your own cellular phone infrastructure.
I persevered and eventually went through the book and soon after The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. I also went through the Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys (one book every afternoon after class). During high school, I kept reading: going through Tolkien’s books again, suspense/thrillers notably The Bourne series and even crap like Mills and Boons(!). During college, there was a whole bunch: Robotech, the Robot Series, the Foundation Series, the Clancy books, a bunch of Crichton books, the Dragonlance Chronicles, and more.