When the songbird sings

My sister and I were walking out of the Makati Prime compound yesterday evening when we smelled something that resembled burnt wires, and then saw dark smoke coming out of a fourth floor unit of the building next to ours. There were only three other people on the street, and one of them was a clueless guard to whom we pointed out what was initially just a slightly ominous dark smoke. He didn’t respond.

I found another security guard and alerted him about the smoke from the unit, and luckily, the guy had a working panic button. He ran immediately to the building and asked for help from the now not-clueless-anymore guard whom we first alerted.

About 5 minutes later, we started to see red flames inside the unit. Someone managed to hose the flames out with a fire extinguisher, but the stubborn flames re-emerged, and by then everybody knew that professional help was really needed. A full 10 minutes passed after the fire was reported when two fire trucks from nearby Makati Fire Station arrived.

I decided to hang around and make usi a little to see if the firemen would be able to put out the flames and stop it from spreading to other units, as well as the nearby building where our apartment was. After knowing that I wouldn’t have to pack my stuff (basically, my entire life’s worth of whatever are in our apartment) and taking a footage of all the excitement with my phone, my sister and I decided to go ahead with our shopping plans. Order was restored in the universe.

Inquirer came up with a slightly inaccurate report about the incident.

The film is not bad at all. It’s the kilig movie of the year aimed mostly at teenagers, but mature moviegoers can also find it entertaining at the very least even if only for the fact that even when news of depressing economic developments, terrorist attacks, global warming, and the forthcoming season of craziness that cause taxi drivers’ horns to reappear, romance happens among the living and for the most part, the undead. But because I’m the type who misses an entire movie for one frame, here be the notes. I will take time to enjoy the film when I watch it again because I missed a couple of key scenes.

• Pacing is too fast. There is not enough time to establish story lines, sub-plots and characters. Could it be that because the target audience for this film are teens and tweens whose attention spans are too short that the filmmakers had to make sure the plot moved at a hundred miles per minute?
• Bella is pale, but Edward and his clan is pale in an obviously “I am wearing ten layers of cake foundation” way. And why in the world is Edward wearing much, much redder and thicker lipstick than Bella? I’m predicting a jump in glutathione sales because of this movie. Met should have made an advertising tie-up with Twilight distributors.
• Edward is handsome, but is less than what readers had in mind. However, Rob Pattinson’s screen presence made up for what fangirls had initially hated him for.

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