The Ropes to Being "Astig."

One of my favorite places to get lost in will always be a bookstore.

And it was in those moments, probably about three months ago, that I was scouring shelf after shelf for which book, which author will be my mind's next victim. One book caught my eye, and it happened to be Tweet Sering's Astigirl--a sort of compound word for the word 'astig' (which would mean 'cool', 'hip', etcetera in the Philippine context), and the word girl, simply put.

It caught my interest immediately but I was saddened when I saw the price; I simply couldn't afford it at that time but I swore that one of those days I will have that book in my hands.

Today was that day.

I headed off to Alabang Town Center after my nephew's second birthday party--a kiddie party, mind you, that I immensely enjoyed, surprisingly--because my family and I couldn't suppress our inner jologs of catching ASAP Rocks Live Tour in that mall; it beats going all the way to Quezon City any day.

Since I had time to spare before the show starts, I was walking slowly thinking where I should head first now that I have time to myself: I needed to allot time for window shopping, I figured out my route, and just walked. As always, those walks would always lead me to Powerbooks.

I backtracked which books I have, which books I want, which authors I have in my collection, and while my mind was making that list, my feet automatically led me to the Philippine Publications section because I already knew what I was searching for.

Ta-da! Oh isn't it lovely?

It was clean, and not covered with plastic. I had in my hands Tweet Sering's Astigirl. I thought about reading it then and there, but then I was ashamed to get caught reading something that I had no intentions of buying at that time. In the end, I thought, "So what?" And plopped down on the floor and started to read.

It was on the second page of Tweet's introduction--"Disclaimer"--that I stood up and with no hesitations, bought the book. I was already gripped by her train of thought, her mode of writing, her language--she was really easy to connect with. Honestly, I see a lot of myself in her.

I didn't stop reading; I couldn't. Even as I was watching Angeline Quinto belting out "Kunin mo na ang lahat sa akin / 'Wag laaaang / Si Coco Martiiiin" (and cue screaming crazy fans). Even if I heard people behind my back whispering, "Ano ba naman ito. May ticket nga hindi naman nanood."

I just didn't care. All I knew was Tweet Sering was sharing with me how I can be an individual by following her footsteps--not to the dot--but in my own terms.

I'm halfway through and I can see how possible that is. If only I did buy that book months ago, things would have turned out differently.

Not that I don't like my life now. But another thing that I learned from Sering was about life having options. Always. The alphabet is a long range of 26 letters. If things don't go as planned as in Plan A. Go for Plan B. So on and so forth.

But I bet you, sooner or later you'll get tired of letting things go as planned and just start to "wing it."

So things didn't go the way you planned, the way you imagined it? So what? Make it work. Do what you need to do to make it work. (Sering 2011)

 Astigirl is 154 pages worth my money--even more than some of the things that I'm actually setting aside my money for. Things are about to change around here. And it's all thanks to one of the people that I'm starting to list under Astigirls I look up to: Tweet Sering. Again, thank you for this wonderful read.

I'm almost done, but just not yet... so here I dive in again in the hopes of becoming astig myself.