Twisted Travels with Jessica Zafra

The ummm ... collection

          

I am putting Marcel Proust's "The Way by Swann's" aside and I'm taking a break from all the Woody Allen films to take on  Jessica Zafra's "Twisted Travels" for now. I must say I have been a bit severe on myself by taking up a book that can be too exhausting to read and I have devoted too much time ogling at Woody Allen films that I feel like I've taken on a personality akin to his. Taking up Zafra is like reacquainting myself with a college buddy and just immersing on the kind of familiar fun and zany-ness that used to dominate the unspeakable boredom, help survive sub-dermal irritants and make ranting a satisfying leisure. That is of course sans the influence of a spiked drink. I have quite a collection of her books which were dubbed "Twisted". She was the reason why I wanted to be a bespectacled bloke so badly that I purposely read in the dark till I was unfit enough to wear them. I took after her existential anguish, her broody world views. She loved books, same as I. She wrote movie reviews that made me want to watch them, got myself hooked on P.O.V, NU107 and was once on the look out for her on Friendster and F.B. I was close to sporting an article of jewelry that had the initials "WWJZD" (What Would Jessica Zafra Do?). I had a "Zafra" phase that spanned all through out my college years which was longer than any romantic entanglements than I can bring myself to admit. But since I had to leave the Philippines, I haven't had even a glimpse of her books after Twisted 7. But really, this blog post will not be about THAT phase or my "exaltation to the rank of a goddess" for her, she would possibly hate me for it. This is just really some fragments of her book "Twisted Travels" which I bought 5 years ago.  

"Ah, the food. We eat our meals at the dining hall of Morse College. I use the word eat more loosely, as in "to chew mechanically, and as swiftly as possible to prevent taste buds from noticing they have nothing to do, upon mysterious objects with the consistency and flavor of recycled cardboard, in order to gather sustenance to be processed into energy for negotiating vast distances on foot". The food is beyond awful, it is 100 percent flavorfree. I never realized how great the food is back home until I landed on an American college campus. I have a terrible yearning for streetcorner barbecued chicken feet, intestines, and aborted duck fetuses (balut). Perhaps the general blandness of their cuisine is what spurred Americans to become the most powerful country on earth-- they have to dominate something to take their minds off dinner. The Pinoy situation is the reverse; we love food and spend so much time preparing and enjoying it, who has time to conquer the world? (Hey, excuse for my zero culinary skills: "I'm working on universal domination") When you've subsisted on heinous cafeteria cuisine, it'll seem like a fair trade. In any case, bad cafeteria food must be an incentive to graduate, get out of here, get rich, and hire a personal chef from France, Italy, Spain, Japan, any place that has real food." 

---- Twisted Travels, New York (1999)  

Italian is a melodious, hyper emotional language; the most innocuous statements sound like declarations of passion, or death threats. 

--- Twisted Travels, Venice (2001)

Singapore is what your city could become if everyone obeyed the rules, did their jobs diligently, and just shut up. When your city gets to be this paragon of efficiency and discipline, would you still want to live there? Singapore is a model city, which is terrific if you happen to be a model human. Not that I'm knocking the place -- it's the perfect vacation spot for the Manila resident weary of doing battle with the city. It is the complete antithesis of Manila: clean, orderly, modern, and organized. Everything works. When I saw an actual non functioning escalator in a pedestrian underpass, I had to slap myself to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. The people move briskly, with a sense of purpose. They do not mill around or get in your face. The taxi drivers give you exact change. The air is invisible, and if your car stops at a red light for more than forty-five seconds, it is considered heavy traffic. The difference between Singapore and Manila became apparent the moment we emerged from the tube into Changi Airport. The atmosphere seemed to grow thicker. I thought there was a constant buzzing in my ear, and then I realized that it was the absence of buzzing. It was quiet. 

---- Twisted Travels, Singapore (1998)
    

Jessica Zafra (born 1965) is a fiction writer, columnist, editor, publisher and former television and radio show host. She is known for her sharp and witty writing style. Her most popular books are the Twisted series, a collection of her essays as a columnist for newspaper Today (now Manila Standard Today), as well as from her time as editor and publisher of the magazine Flip. 

 I also follow her here: http://www.jessicarulestheuniverse.com/