travel bug

So last year, my new year’s resolution was to get more culture in my life. I’m pretty satisfied with my results. I saw some plays (on and off Broadway), went to a few museum exhibitions and concerts, participated in live action theater, took salsa lessons and attempted to teach myself Spanish (I’m still working on that one!) 

This year, besides being more fiscally responsible — I’m getting old, gotta think about that stuff. I want to travel more. 30 years old, and I NOW finally have a passport. It’s time to start collecting stamps. I figure if I actually put my top ten of places I want to go — I’ll start knocking them off. Here they are in no particular order — just off the top of my head.

1. Manila, Philippines

2. Havana, Cuba

3. Rome and Naples, Italy

4. Valletta, Malta

5. London, England

6. Dublin, Ireland

7. Montreal, Canada

8. Cartagena and Bogota, Colombia

9.  San Juan, Puerto Rico

10. Cairo, Egypt

Obligatory ALA Annual Post

What a totally different experience from my first conference in Chicago in 2009 — if you are curious to see that, check it out here.

Last year, when I went to ALA Annual in DC — I was only there overnight, and I felt guilty about not doing the programs, and just networking and researching. Once again, if interested, check out that post here.

But this year I realized it is the most important aspect of going to ALA — networking and finding people who have that same passion that you do. This has been said numerous times in numerous blogs, but I will say it again!

I was an ALA Emerging Leader this year. I must say that I was fortunate to have a worthwhile project to work on, and a great group of people to work with!

Team (N)asty

I ended up joining LLAMA and NMRT, and I have volunteered to work with both for next year’s conference and meetings. Yes, I am getting involved and stepping up, which is definitely because I was involved in Emerging Leaders. But the most important takeaway from the Emerging Leaders program, I now have a core group of friends within my profession, and that is more important than any program/session/workshop I attended. One of my team members, Lessa Pelaya Lozada summed up the Emerging Leaders experience pretty well — so I’ll link to her blog post here.

And, I attended quite a few programs, and yes, they were inspiring, especially ACRL’s President’s Program. The speaker, Jason Young, said one of the cheesiest phrases, but it fired me up, and I thought I want to BE that person. Ready for the quote, don’t say I didn’t warn you:

When you inspire someone, you literally breathe life into them

But, as fired up as I was about that session. I got more out of just chatting and sharing ideas over a really powerful daiquiri –

taken by @shinyinfo

Or mingling with one of my favorite vendors, Mango Languages (in the exhibit hall):

pimpin’ out mango mobile

Or even better over an infamous hurricane –

first hurricane of the night — in my hand

And, this leads me to my favorite lesson from housekeeping lady at my hotel:

girl, don’t you know if you have more than one hurricane, it’s gonna be trouble!

I don’t think I really need to add anything after that gem.. maybe a pic of my book swag.

ala book swag

Save NYC Libraries, please. :)

It’s that time of year and unfortunately, the threat of budget cuts looms, and NYC libraries are in trouble. Last year, I wrote a similar blog post: Help NYC Libraries and here I am again… asking for some help for our beloved NYC libraries.

Urban Librarians Unite and Save NYC Libraries have a few advocacy events, and one in particular that is going on this Saturday, June 4th, at 2 pm exactly. 400 people will be needed to pull off this event, so if you are reading this, and you are in the NYC area, or can be in the NYC area this Saturday, please come out and lend a hand — and be apart of the Hug the Library event: http://tinyurl.com/4xu8not

Read more about it here: Hug The Library 

There’s also the We Will Not Be Shushed 24 Hour Read IN  and for those who can’t make it to these events, there’s the Blog IN (you can easily share this blog post with friends, and you will have helped out, it’s that easy.)

For more information about any of these events, visit the website: Save NYC Libraries

Also, if you haven’t done so already — please contact your elected officials to keep NYC libraries open and funded, here are the links to do so (see, I make it easy for ya!)

Brooklyn Public Library

New York Public Library

Queens Public Library

Thanks

An Evening with Bruno Mars

Yes – Bruno Mars deserves his own blog entry. I was going to add this to my Culture Challenge blog post (which I’ll probably post soon!) — but I couldn’t just throw him in.

If you follow me, you know about my (slight) obsession with Bruno Mars. So, when I saw that Meet and Greet tickets were on sale, I naturally had to purchase them, and the result is below:

I seriously thought I might faint, and he smelled wonderful. I just wanted to run away off into the sunset with him… a girl can dream.

After meeting him, a brief moment that will last in my memory forever (yes, I am being way dramatic, haha) — I couldn’t wait to see him perform live, and all the waiting was so worth it.

I discovered Janelle Monae, she’s pretty bad ass, and I will be downloading her songs on itunes after I post this.

I’ll just post two videos to sum up the evening — I am contemplating becoming a groupie and following the tour across the country.

You can just imagine my thoughts during this –

Love the dancing!

For International Women’s Day – my favorite women writers of Filipino heritage

Inspired by @shinyinfo‘s tweet:

“Do you know what would be great for International Women’s Day? Recommendations for books written by not white american women”

I read this, and I definitely agree, and I decided to share my favorite writers, who are not white American women. I also made the decision to highlight my favorite women writers of Filipino heritage. I have a special place for two women in particular as I spent a lot of time reading and re-reading two of their books for my master’s thesis back in 2005-2006. While, they have written other books (which are fantastic as well) – I’ll list the two I used for my thesis, because they inspired my thesis topic:

1. Tess Uriza Holthe

2. Cecelia Manguerra Brainard

I suggest you’d check out these writers as well, the book covers that are featured are my favorites  –

3. Jessica Hagedorn

4. Arlene J. Chai

5. Eileen R. Tabios