spoiled even before reading the first page (or, trying to read a book in jollibee on a sunday evening).

i'm still struggling to read christopher priest's the prestige, not because it's a badly-written book (on the contrary, it's really good); thing is, i've seen the movie and therefore know the secret.

last night, daryl pointed out copies of monster that are available in a comic book shop. "it's becoming more and more depressing," he said. he's not spoiling himself of the series because the point of suspense is you shouldn't know in advance what's going to happen in the story.

unfortunately, that's where i fail at the prestige. the movie is significantly different from the book, but the secret of one of the central characters remains the same. so to what might be a puzzling character trait of one of the narrators is already fully explained to me, and it's keeping me from fully enjoying the book.

i was reading the book earlier at jollibee, but was often distrated by the family seated in the next table. there was the man, the woman, and four or five kids (i was trying not to pay them attention). the man, at one point, took out his camera-phone, held it at arm's length, and tried to take photos of the family eating in the restaurant while trying to have him included in the photo.

camera-phones have made cam-whoring so much easier. i will not fail seeing people who have their phones held at arm's length, taking a photo of themselves. one could also do this using compact digicams, but camera-phones offer more utility features for roughly the same price than digicams so they offer more value for someone's money. camera-phones have further democratized the ability to take photos of oneself without asking someone else to hold the camera.

of course this also meant the proliferation of photos with the subject's arm stretched and extending outside the border of the photo, as well as having contorted necks to ensure the subject's face is oriented towards the line of the arm leading to the hand holding the camera-phone.

that personal digression aside, it's somewhat reassuring (yet at the same time depressing) to know that local fastfoods like jollibee and mcdonald's are still the usual destination of families who are eating out on sunday evenings.