JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

No one has ever cried or had a nervous breakdown at our workshops. But everyone has written something.

There’s plenty of technology out there, but how do you pick the hardware and software that will work best for you? Here are some tried and tested solutions from our sponsors at WeSellIT.ph, the people who know tech.

1. If you do design and drafting, AutoCAD is your friend. The computer-aided design program for 2-D and 3-D design and drafting improves design quality and increases productivity. This intuitive drafting software includes a complete set of drawing, editing, annotation documentation and migration tools for drafters and designers. Prices start at P 14,480.00.

Check out AutoCAD at WeSellIT.ph.

2. Phoenix is a UPS that is both a power supply and a device to protect your devices from unpleasant surprises in the power source.Phoenix UA650 prevents data loss in the event of a power outage. It allows operators to shut down computers and other network equipment safely and effectively. As soon as it senses an electrical problem, it switches to battery mode, providing high level protection for your machines. Price starts at P 1,666.07.

Check out Phoenix UPS at WeSellIT.ph.

3. The Scanpartner SP1120 20ppm scanner from Fujitsu comes with convenient, flexible and simple button routines to secure digital images. The SP Series features a simple operation panel with only two buttons (Scan/Stop and Power), and software-enabled push button management. Price starts at P 22,099.00.

Check out the Scanpartner at WeSellIT.ph.

4. Every office depends on the classic Microsoft apps. Office Professional 2019 includes the essential premium versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher installed on one PC or Mac. Price starts at P 24,743.55.

Check out Office Professional 2019 at WeSellIT.ph.

5. Office Home & Business 2019 also comes with these baseline apps (premium versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access and Publisher), and is good for 1 PC or Mac. It comes with 1TB OneDrive cloud storage, and chat and phone support from Microsoft-trained experts. Price starts at P 14,772.21.

Check out Office Home & Business 2019 at WeSellIT.ph.

* * * * *

I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day in the mid-90s, just before the Merchant-Ivory movie came out. I may have speed-read it and missed many of its subtleties, and it is the sort of novel where the most devastating revelations are purposely unsaid.

Every time I read Ishiguro I am lulled by the tranquillity of the language, only to be whacked upside the head by a sudden emotional upheaval. Here are my notes on re-reading The Remains of the Day. (Spoilers abound.) Please join the discussion in Comments or send me your notes at saffron.safin@gmail.com.

– The protagonist is Stevens, a butler, and his entire life is summed up by that one word, “butler”. His manner is formal, very careful not to give offense, sometimes pompous. This is a man who never forgets his place in the class hierarchy.

– We see the gap between what Steven knows and doesn’t know—the situation gives him away. Note how Faraday quickly guesses Stevens’s feelings towards the former Miss Kenton, and how flustered Stevens becomes.

– All this ruminating on “greatness”, Stevens really is a snob. Then he spends a lot of time defining “dignity” and stresses that it requires emotional restraint. Haha, he’s not so much restrained as sealed-in.

– Wincing at his very formal relationship with his father, who was also a butler.

– Stevens attempts to explain sex to his employer’s godson. Comedy ensues. In the movie the godson is played by Hugh Grant. There is much hilarity.

– Like St Peter, he denies his beloved Lord Darlington to the villagers.

– Ribbentrop the Nazi foreign minister was a frequent guest. Granted, most people had no idea what the Nazis were at the time, but it never even occurs to Stevens to ask questions. To him, Lord D can do no wrong, even after the matter of the Jewish maids.

– Stevens’s defensiveness when he is caught reading a romance novel. He is so trapped in proprieties he even discontinues the daily meetings that give him so much pleasure. Not that he admits his pleasure.

– Similarities to An Artist of the Floating World and Never Let Me Go: Intelligent, thoughtful narrator/protagonists who are clueless about themselves: one because he can’t deal with the truth, one because the truth is kept from her, and Stevens because he is willfully obtuse.

– Stevens is somewhat alarmed at the farmers who “do not know their place”. The place he has chosen for himself is ignorance—his employers’ guests use him as an example of why the masses cannot have power. The perfect butler has no opinion; he exists to smooth edges.

– When Miss Kenton makes that announcement, I yell at Stevens.

– “Today’s world is too foul a place for such fine and noble instincts” = Um, yes he was a fascist sympathizer, but he had good qualities.

– When I read it for the first time, I thought Stevens a tragic figure. Now I think he is a clod, a self-important buffoon, a man to be pitied.

– When the emotion is too huge, simplicity works. “…at that moment, my heart was breaking.”

– “I can’t even say I made my own mistakes…what dignity is there in that?” A moment of self-awareness.

From our friends at Nexus:

On 26 October, Nexus celebrated the topping-off of the Nexus Center, the new headquarters of Nexus Technologies. The new HQ is along Metropolitan Avenue in Makati City. By early 2019, the entire Nexus and Nexus subsidiary bneXt will move to the 11-storey Art Deco building with eight floors of office and commercial spaces and conference facilities, plus three floors of parking.

And then get copies for everyone you know! (Xmas is coming…)

To buy Twisted Travels Central Europe online use these links:

Shopee

Lazada

You can also get them direct from Visprint here. Use this link for foreign orders.

Read our interview with Don Jaucian here.

To set an interview for your newspaper, magazine, blog, zine, Instagram, etc, email saffron.safin@gmail.com or send us a message on Instagram @jessicazafrascats.

Tin-Aw and Jessica Zafra invite you to the Bibliophibians Reading Group discussion of Daphne du Maurier’s DON’T LOOK NOW.

Saturday, 24 November, 4-6pm at Tin-Aw Art Gallery, G/F Somerset Olympia, Makati Avenue, Makati (beside the Peninsula).

Wine and popcorn will be served. The film adaptation by Nicolas Roeg will be screened. Everyone who has read Don’t Look Now is welcome.

Humans have to be over 18 to attend this event.