My words are tasty.

I told myself I wouldn't go on CUT this week because I had so many CUTs last week, plus my AUT for Wednesday is approved. But there really wasn't a lot of calls last night -- in fact when I arrived at the floor, only 3-4 agents were logged in!! Even Kaye had gone on CUT.

As expected, the minute I logged in, 5 or 6 slots are offered. So tempting! I was only able to resist at first, but after lunch I gave in. I'm so undisciplined. And will be so poor!!! Ang laki na ng kaltas sa suweldo ko, hahahaha.

Besides, I'd finished the book I was reading, so I was pretty bored already. (Uh, weren't we supposed to take calls?) And the magazine I had didn't have a lot of interesting articles.

...

The book I finished was Anderson Cooper's Dispatches from the Edge. I had just bought it on my last Book Sale run... and it cost only P20! (The other book I got was only P10, Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone, which is also a memoir.)

I was aware his brother committed suicide, I may have seen that on Oprah, but I wasn't aware his mother is Gloria Vanderbilt. What really struck me was that he went to Somalia on his own he was 25 years old to make his own news footage, just so he could work as a correspondent. If that's not initiative and bravery, I don't know what is. (I left the book at the locker, so I can't check right now...and it's killing me. I want to quote properly.)

It was a pretty quick read, finished it in two days in between calls. (I could've read it in a couple of hours straight if I was a bum.) I read some of the reviews on Amazon and they said it wasn't "personal" or insightful enough. But it is -- it's through his work and coverage of the wars, the tsunami & the hurricanes that he realizes his feelings on the loss of his brother, and his father's efforts to show the importance of roots and family. My own complaint is it was short -- it ended 2005 with his reporting on Hurricane Katrina (incidentally, there's a good photo of the hurricane on the Wikipedia.) I'm kinda hoping he'll write another one; he's an engaging writer and it is interesting to know a journalist's viewpoint.