A few of my favorite things

I’d been meaning to write a piece like this for some time now — an omnibus review of assorted things that have caught my fancy that my readers might want to check out for themselves. They’re not really about books or paintings or movies, but you can think of them as the hardware of art and culture, the odd objects and little pleasures that make life just a tad more bearable and comprehensible.

I’ve been talking a lot about music and radio lately, so I’ll begin with an accessory that I never leave home without these days. First, let me just say that I’ve long subscribed to the notion that you shouldn’t skimp on things you’ll be using every day — your glasses, your phone, your watch, your pen, your shoes (not that you’ll have just one pair, of course). You’ll want these to work well and to be comfortable all the time. You won’t want them to be too expensive that you can’t afford to lose them, because you likely will. But you also don’t want to be so cheap that you’ll be starting your day with a complaint about why you can’t understand a thing on your tinny, gurgly P1,000 car radio.

That brings me back to the art of listening, which requires not only taste but a little technology. Having grown up in a time when “stereophonic” and “hi-fi” were big words describing what the fellow next door had and you didn’t, I’m still amazed by how clear and pure sound can get, even if it’s just some polyphonic cellphone ringtone. You can imagine my surprise when I first used earphones that didn’t come in the box with the phone or the iPod, that I actually had to pay good money for. These, I remember, were Shure E3c’s that cost about $99 when new, and when I put them on the only thing I could say was, “Oh my God, I feel like my mother cleaned out my ears for the first time since 1966!”

Like I said a couple of weeks ago, I’m no audiophile, and surely can’t find my way around an audio shop. But I can appreciate a good pair of earphones, and those Shures became my constant companion for more than a year; I liked them so much that I gave my new son-in-law his own set as a present. Then one day I just couldn’t find them, and I felt bereft. By this time that specific model had gone out of production, so I had to content myself with replacing them with Shure SE115’s, in the same price range but not quite the old pair; these were so big and round that I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was sticking a beetle in each ear every time I used them.

The Shures were followed by a succession of other pretenders to the “best earphones” throne: two models of Ultimate Ears, another couple of Sennheisers, and then, finally, thanks to a blog post I came across, I discovered the A-Jays Four, which had everything I was looking for in a pair of earphones.

Made in Sweden, the A-Jays Four not only has great sound (don’t ask me about highs and lows — all I can say is, it’s all clear and sharp to me, from the Rolling Stones to Yo-Yo Ma); it also has flat cables (like black fettuccini) that minimize all that twisting and tangling, it has an L-shaped plug that puts less stress on the connection, and best of all, it sports a microphone that also contains the remote to control the volume, song selection, and (perhaps the coolest feature of all) voice commands, including voice dialing on the iPhone 4.

Pages is well-stocked and comfy.

If you’re looking for a better alternative to the stock earphones that come with your IP4 (or most other phones, for that matter), it’s hard to do better than the A-Jays Four. You can get it online from Hong Kong for about US$70, but if you can’t stand the three-week shipping wait and can afford the mark-up, you can get them from www.jaysphilippines.com, with free and fast shipping, for P4,500. The earphones will come to you impressively packaged, with spare buds in several sizes for that perfect fit. I’ve been using them for a couple of months now, and have even gotten myself a spare set, against the day when I lose the first one or when it wears out (loss is the greater likelihood, these earphones being made of materiales fuertes).

Let’s move on to something different altogether. I was at Shangri-La Mall a few weeks ago to have some vintage watches cleaned by my suki guys at WorldWatch, near the Rustan’s escalator. (They say that I’ve driven so much business to them that they keep insisting on giving me fat discounts on their services, and I just as insistently pay them fairly, because I don’t ever want them to go out of business, for the sake of my vintage Hamiltons and Wittnauers.) But this has less to do with good watches than good food.

As it was approaching lunchtime, I went back up to the ground floor in search of a place to eat, and remembered a restaurant that a friend of mine had opened. It was called Pages, and I’d been there once before with my friend Jojo Paje and her daughter Maita. I’d wanted to write about it afterwards, but not until I’d paid for my own meal (I’m sure you’ve heard a thing or two about food bloggers and freebies), so I snuck up to Pages (along the walk, streetside), and had the same thing I had before, just because I liked it so much: the Hungarian sausage — big, fat, and juicy, served on bread with a tangy mayonnaise and potato crisps. There was much more to choose from — “Animal Farm,” a turkey and ham sandwich, and “The Red Badge of Courage,” a pastrami treat described as “a soldier’s sandwich through and through, pastrami on rye with Emmental cheese and sauerkraut — no deserters allowed!”

You can credit Pages’ literarily smart menu (the chicken sandwich is, of course, “To Kill a Mockingbird”) to the talented Maita, a French-speaking bookworm who’s been helping Jojo out at the restaurant (while dad Ramon battles illegal loggers and other environmental miscreants as Secretary of the DENR). But don’t judge these books by their covers or titles: the food is genuinely yummy, at prices that won’t make you weep. Give Pages a turn one of these days — it’s a great place as well for beer, coffee, and spirited conversation.

Lastly, for my fellow lovers of fine writing instruments, I’d like to introduce two lines of ink that you might want to buy as much for the stylishly collectible bottles they come in as for their coloring. I won a bottle of the Pilot-produced Iroshizuku ink in the dark-brown Yama-Guri shade as a prize in one of our pen-group meetings, and I haven’t stopped looking at the bottle since. I know, I should be writing with it, but that’s almost like guzzling a bottle of Chateau Mouton-Rothschild 1945 just because you’re thirsty.

Iroshizuku and Edelstein inks to die for

I also received a gift of three bottles of Pelikan’s new high-end Edelstein ink in onyx, topaz, and the lovely green aventurine, none of which will make my penmanship more readable, but again, for those with more expressive hands and worthy pens, these inks are as exquisite as they come. For now you can get the Iroshizuku only by ordering from abroad, online, but the Edelsteins (along with the J. Herbin line) are available at Scribe Writing Essentials in Eastwood Mall. Happy cursive trails!

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E-mail me at penmanila@yahoo.com and visit my blog at www.penmanila.net.