It’s true. I had the shock of my life last night when I heard. What’s more uncomfortable is that he’d been dead for more than a month before I knew. The man who was the most influential part of my love of fantasy; in truth the one who cultivated it, flourished it along with my love of writing and prose is dead.

Yes, the master writer for the Wheel of Time series succumbed to his death because of complications due to cardiac amyloidosis on September 17, 2007; a few days before my birthday. The funeral was held three days after. An blog post on the day of his death was posted immediately on his official blog. It was during those first moments that I wanted nothing more than be quite and listen to a world that no longer has Robert Jordan in it. It was unsettling.

What will happen to the conclusion of his Wheel of Time series, you ask? The twelfth and last installment in the series is entitled A Memory of Light and will be finished by his wife Harriet and his various assistants in whom he imparted the plots and outlines of the last book, as well as his taped comments and plots. So yes, the twelfth book will be done in his memory.

One would think that Mr. Jordan, or James Oliver Rigney, Jr. in reality, somehow knew that the twelfth book will be a final one for him, with the title A Memory of Light, in which symbolizes how his fans would now think of him; a ray of light in their memories that gave us joy through his wonderful writings.

Though it pains my heart, I bid you a safe journey to the afterlife, Mr. Jordan, and may you encounter glimpses of your beloved characters from this new adventure you’ve undertaken.

Goodbye.

Stuart is dead.

My little black and white puffy cottonball, otherwise known as my guinea pig Stuart is dead. Just a little over a month old.

Please pray for his soul and may he now be in heaven playing among the other guinea pigs.

As I was eating lunch the other day I noticed that the cured meat I had for lunch was a bit hard. I thought for a while that the meat has just been aired too long that it became hard. So I ate it without preamble nor complaint.

It wasn’t until I got home that I’ve learned that the meat wasn’t pork, as I thought it was. I was carabao (kalabaw) which is native here in the Philippines.

My reaction? I was surprised of course, but I wasn’t disgusted. I’ve already eaten some exotic dishes before like *censored to avoid readers’ disgust* and they weren’t that bad. The one main reaction I had though was that I suddenly remembered that when I was a kid growing up in the province, I’d go home riding a carabao after a day of playing in the fields.

Then I looked down at my plate again. ^^