Publisher's Note

Publisher’s Note
It was 22 years ago when I arrived in Canada and chose Calgary, Alberta to be my home. Leaving my family and friends behind, it was a new adventure for me to be in a new country without knowing anyone. That was the time I looked for a Filipino community paper and never found any, [...]
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Erwinism: On the Same Page

By Erwin D. Maramat

The discovery of fire did not only mean kebobs for the early humans, somewhere in time, a man was sitting around the fire and got bored, stood up and said, “Man, I’m bored. I’m going to get a tablet and invent a writing system so I can document how I wrestled with a sabre-toothed cat and make a legend out of myself.”

Primitive man started Adobe photoshop through hieroglyphs. Sensing the walls were not smart screen, they had to device ways to document their way of life more conveniently; hence, they started using wax tablets and stylus to jot down notes about how they would forage and hunt. This would eventually evolve into codex—scrolls that used papyrus. Books were hard to come by and were expensive that meant that authors who sold five copies of their books made it on the list of New York Times Best Seller—of course this is not true, nevertheless, they were still expensive. Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg who started the printing evolution in Europe through the introduction of mechanical movable type printing which served as a catalyst in diffusing learning to the masses. This revolution drove the prices of books down and opened opportunities for writers and publishers like Hugh Hefner.

Books have shaped human history. They are instruments used to communicate ideas and information, and as they entered the digital age it has again transformed. People can now carry a library on their respective e-book readers and mobile devices which conserves the forest and leaves a heck of a carbon footprint since we still need fossil fuel to power these devices just so we can stay in the washroom longer.

Metaphoric Figure of Speech

Okay; okay there is no such thing as metaphoric figure of speech since metaphor is a figure of speech. It’s just like saying ‘Milk-like Dairy Products’ the point being is that most books are written by using an array of rhetorical devices which is not limited to metaphors. The abstract concept employed in the art of writing has been a joy to readers, but Ernest Hemingway thinks otherwise. Books can take you places within your imagination or in real life, but you must open and read first.

The Perks of Being a Reader and the Kick You Get Out of It

Reading stimulates the mind. Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist, published a study on the impact of reading has on the brain. He found out that reading is a form of visual exercise. The study shows that reading is an awesome work out for the brain. Reading lights up the parietal lobe which works with the temporal lobe to store information. Like those who love games; reading has been found vital in cognitive stimulation.

Invest in yourself by reading. There is nothing sexier than a mind that is nimble and in good shape. It’s the best asset you have. While everything deteriorates in value, your mind holds its net worth. The mind is a portable Wikipedia that you can take anywhere, so you should read Wikipedia.

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”

― Charles William Eliot

Reading opens our minds and endows it with understanding and understanding something helps unlock the answers to illuminate the gray areas that impact our lives. Often people feel are intimidated by intellectuals. Their mere presence petrifies and overwhelms them, but knowledge has been made accessible for everyone, and as such, in the information age, everyone can indulge in acquiring information.

If you were to kill time give it a good death.

― Erwin D. Maramat

Every day, between the distance from my house to work, I always plug in a flash drive that contains hundreds of audio books. I usually finish about three books on the average in a week. This is not to say that I want to be smarter; it’s just a way for me manage the very little time I have productively. Reading is one of the most fruitful hobby or habit that you can have. If you want to be in the know, it pays to open a book regardless of what the subject is and often you are bound to find avenues that you didn’t know existed.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

—Carl Sagan

Books are not just paper fastened together; it is life in print. The words that your sight caresses on every page are the voices of the authors who poured their very hearts into them. What you have in your hand is a conversation that is beyond the realms of time. It is an opportunity to see life in a different light and in a way, live another’s life. It gives us the chance to have a quiet conversation with the writer. It allows you to perform incarnation by knowing what is like to be in the shoe of another.

There are thousand of reasons we can come up with when in comes to the benefits of reading, it frees the mind from the clutters of error and it is ticket that takes you places that you have never been before. If you really want to waste your neurons on something; you might as well pick up something from a book store. Read to achieve.

Erwinism: On the Same Page

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