Benjamin Alves alias ‘poging nerd’
Benjamin Alves has been pretty much around for years now. But often, people think of him as Piolo Pascual’s nephew or Janine Tugonon’s ex-date. Look a little further because there’s more to this 25-year-old Kapuso actor than meets the eye.
A Summa Cum Laude graduate from the University of Hawaii, Benjamin isn’t just your typical boy-next-door. More precisely, he’s the bookworm-type of guy. This English Literature grad has read hundreds of books, prefers hardbounds over ebooks and is not ashamed of it.
Wanna know more about what’s on his mind? Read on because you might have something in common with this single (and ready to mingle) “poging nerd.”
1. I’ve always liked reading and writing. I've always liked the process of writing—the process behind authors and what they write. I love it when I get to know the biography of an author. I wanna know what happens during the times they write the book. If it’s a feminist author, during their time it’ll be very hard to have something published, but they do anyway. So you know that there’s a lot of courage in the way they write.
2. I’ve always wanted to become a teacher. I wanted to get an English program, probably a masters degree in English in Ateneo. I think if I wasn’t an actor I would’ve been an English professor. It’ll keep me young because you continuously meet a different set of people, different sets of ideas. And that’s the kind of classroom I want to have.
3. I like Robert Frost, Anne Sexton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Lalomilo Kamu, Kobo Abe. I usually take what my professors would give me. I usually take the classes of my favorite professors. Because of that I know the taste that they like and what I would like. I still email my professors now on what books to read.
4. I choose hardbound over ebooks. I love annotations. I love writing on the book… the feel, the smell of the book. Although it’s not green anymore--especially with the advent of ebooks, it’s really much better and much more mobile as well—but I’m old school. I just love the feeling of reading and turning a page, and feeling the thickness of a certain book.
5. I think when I started in showbiz they said that I was an English lit, but I never shared any of my work. I never wrote for any newspaper. I feel bad because sayang the opportunity to write. So now I started posting on Instagram, poems that are a lot more relatable to people, a little bit on the romantic side.
6. When I didn’t have the means, I had to borrow books from the library and return them for a certain time, which is nice because you have a discipline you can only have for 2 weeks. And now that I’m blessed with work, every time I go to a book store and I see a book, I read before I buy it.
7. Bookworm for a girl? Not necessarily. Because I want somebody whose interest I would take up as well. If her interest is the as mine, then that’s cool, too. So as long as the girl’s passionate about something and she can share that with me, that's fine.
8. Most compelling book I've ever read? Woman in the Dunes (by Kobo Abe) is really disturbing for me. Wind and Stone and Hotel Iris, too. If ever you get to read those, about borderline existentialism, it’s very decadent. I didn’t realize that you can learn those themes in class. That was really an eye-opener for me.
