“Easter Everywhere” A memoir by Darcey Steinke

“Easter Everywhere” is one of the most inspiring books that I have read so far. It’s a life’s story of famous New York Times author Darcey Steinke. This book tells about Steinke life experiences from her unforgettable childhood up to a fulfilling adolescence. In one breathtaking scene after another, Steinke tracks her complex and changing ideas about religion and her faith in God. Darcey seeing his father’s struggle with his parish and his own faith and her mother’s nervous breakdown. She knows that her problem with her stuttering makes her more vulnerable with the people around her. The story is absolutely magnificent from the very start until the last part of the book.

For my point of view “Easter Everywhere” is one of the best literary books that have been written. It is definitely a beautifully crafted, riveting personal story with a huge emotional impact to whom who may read it. Steinke really puts her very soul to this special spiritual memoir which I had learned a lot of values and lessons that I will treasure for the rest of my life. I adore this book because as I read it I felt the realization of the world around me that is very challenging out there and knowing that my faith in God would always be there in all times.

Darcey Steinke pleasantly leads me through her lifetime of spiritual seeking, from a childhood spent in the basement of her father’s church, through a young adulthood of rebellion, into a mature and profound personal reckoning with the divine. She writes emotionally, fairly, and wisely about a theme of her life which is not always easy to address. “Easter Everywhere” is a must read memoir for all especially for those who lacks faith.

'New Moon' sets Box Office Records

The most awaited movie this year finally opened in theaters worldwide last November 20, 2009. It was a very successful debut on its first day until its first week breaking nearly all box-office records. Stephenie Meyer’s teen cult novel New Moon, which is the sequel of 2008 movie Twilight set records as the biggest midnight opening in domestic box officehistory, grossing an estimated $26.3 million in 3,514 theatres in United States and Canada alone.

The movie grossed up to $72.7 million on its opening day domestically, becoming the biggest single-day opening in domestic history, breaking The Dark Knight's $67.2 million set last year. The opening weekend of New Moon is the third highest opening weekend in domestic history with a whopping $142,839,137, and the sixth highest worldwide opening weekend in history with $274.9 million total. These weren’t a surprise considering that many Twilight fans, just like me, anticipated the sequel eagerly.

Humans, vampires and werewolves are all in one epic movie that surely makes a name for itself as it continues a journey toward an everlasting forbidden love. The Twilight Saga: New Moon is one of those few so called chick flick films that hit the big screen successfully with a little twist when a teenage girl falls in love to a 90-year old vampire.

When I watched the movie in the cinema, I was really amazed on the movie, two thumbs up on New Moon director Chris Weitz. I was not disappointed when I watched the movie mainly because of the excellent cinematography of the film as it rides alone with the story in the book. Compared to Twilight, New Moon has more action scenes and the dialogue works are more profound.

The movie looks great, entertaining and excellent acting from both Kristen Stewart who plays Bella Swan and Robert Pattinson who plays Edward Cullen. I read the book, seeing it to come true is like a dream that’s why I’m planning to watch the movie again because it’s one hell of a story to miss out. It’s definitely an unforgettable and immortal love story that touches my heart as I watched it.

The Classic Nokia 3110

My Nokia 3110 Classic cellular phone model has been with me for almost a year now. It’s a candy bar shape cellular phone which has a RM-237 software type version V5.50. The battery of my cell phone is a Nokia BL5-C same as the battery of a Nokia 6230 and a Nokia 1110 cell phone. Its talk time, my estimation, is about 4 hours and standby time of up to 15 days.

The dimension of my cell phone is 108.5x45.7x15.6 and it weight 87 grams as stated in the user manual. It is slim, slick, handy, and easy to use compare to other recent Nokia cell phones that’s why I bought it.

My Nokia 3110C has a 1.3 megapixel camera with an 8x digital zoom for capturing photos. Its video is unlimited, depending on the remaining memory of the phone or the memory card. The stillness of the camera is not that effective compare to other cell phone models resulting to blurred photos.

My cellular phone also has an integrated music player which I used to play my favorite songs and a stereo FM radio for enjoying music. My cell phone also stores up to 2000 contacts for a larger capacity in my phonebook and it has an expandable micro SD memory card slot; as a matter of fact my memory card is 2 gigabytes for more storage space to upload my images, songs, wallpapers, videos and install useful applications and fun games because the phone memory only has a built-in 7.8 megabytes free storage space.

My Nokia 3110C cellular phone can only support .nth theme formats but it mostly support all audio and video formats such as mp3, wma, mid, midi, avi and wav. It can also support almost all wallpapers format such as jpg, jpeg and gif.

My phone’s connectivity includes Bluetooth, infrared, packet data, USB data cable, and data transfer. My cellular phone have also some unique features such as a flight query which gives my phone a better flight profile, and a voice clarity feature which enhances speech intelligibility during calls especially in noisy environments. It also has a power saver and sleep mode to save battery power. The applications currently installed in my cellular phone include a dictionary, a Twilight e-book and 65 games. Overall I rate my Nokia 3110C cell phone 7.5 out of 10 based on my experiences of using it.

Popularly hip and flip Havaianas

Havaianas sandals hardly need an introduction as they have become a mainstay in everyone’s wardrobes over the last couple of years. The appeal of Havaianas is that they come in such a dazzling array of colors, styles, and shapes that there must be a pair for you and … how can you have just one?

In practical terms these flip-flops are really durable and undeniably hip – especially when worn with a string of bikini and Gisele Bindchen body (which I really love to think every hour, every minute). The ultra-high quality of Havaianas is due to a top-secret rubber recipe created exclusively by Alpartagas. Hmmmm... sounds like that they one-upped the Colonel.

The Havaianas website claims that since their, 2.2 billion pairs of Havaianas sandals have been produced and sold throughout the world and that if the sandals were laid end to end, they would go around the world 50 times.

Talk about being popular. Well, quality sells. These sandals are extremely wearable, versatile, and are touted as “best rubber sandals in the world.” Wear your Havaianas now and be popularly hip.

Afriques Pizza and Pasta

When it comes to pizza and pasta, it must be Afriques. Pizza and pasta are home-made in this restaurant by no other than its owner. These must be something special. The restaurant has a homey ambience for diners. The place was once part of the owner’s house transformed into a dining area for the restaurant. Afriques is located at Seminario St., Jaro, Iloilo City, Philippines. The diner’s best sellers are Afriques’ Special pizza and Sicilian pasta.

Being a newbie to this new food haven, I ordered a regular plate of Afriques’ Special pizza and a serve of Sicilian pasta over a glass of iced-cold tea. Afriques’ Special pizza is delectable to your mouth with a grandiose blend of Spanish sausages, crispy bacon, freshly chopped tomatoes, parmesan cheese, black olives, onions, herbs, and a specially concocted Afriques pizza sauce. The pizza crust is freshly baked and gives a delightful bite. Not too crusty, not too soft. The taste is superb with the combination of all ingredients. It is sweet, a little bit spicy and creamy to your mouth. It gave me a moment of break to think of what makes this pizza that left a delightful flavor to my mouth. The special pizza sauce spelled the difference for its taste. I found out that the pizza sauce used is a concoction made by the owner himself.

The diner’s Sicilian Pasta is an exceptional sumptuous blend of finely cooked fettuccini serve with sausages and vegetables sautéed in olive oil and topped with rich tomato sauce. Parmesan cheese and sliced black olives complete the pasta serving for a mouthwatering meal. A quite unique combination of different taste that pasta lovers will agree with me.

They also have Oriental Supreme Pizza for a more healthy, kind of sweet, and simple pizza flavored with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, herbs and Afrique’s Oriental sauce with minced chicken to complete its distinctive flavor.

Prepare your hankies and wipe those sweats with Afriques’ Matador Pizza. It is a Spanish-inspired pizza topped with Spanish sardines, bell pepper, olives, red and green bell pepper, sausages, chillies, parmesan cheese and Afriques’ chili pizza sauce. A distinctly Spanish flavored pizza that will heat up your day and perfectly paired with an iced cold soda.

Afriques also serves other palatable food recipes like Ox tongue in creamy mushroom sauce, Tenderloin steak, Lamb chops, Korean beef steak, Burger steak and Chicken in a basket. All food servings are affordable with worth-your-money delight. Afriques has established its own unique and distinctive blend of flavors more delectable than fastfood pizza and pasta parlors.
These are the reasons why I kept on coming to their place to have a break from work and enjoy Afriques mouthwatering pizza, pasta and other home-made recipes.