The Wanderlust

Facing Facebook

2011-11-25T17:10:00.008+08:00

True to my late bloomer fashion, I was underway to exploring something I thought was very novel: Facebook. But just when I eagerly joined the site, I discovered that many of my erstwhile friends have already been happily prancing about on it for a few years. Late again, as usual. Nevertheless, I thought that being able to touch base with people I have not heard from for decades was just swell. And the fact that some of them remembered me from way back when we were still just short of being Cro-Magnons was really, well gratifying , to say the least.

But early on, I’ve learned a thing or two about being part of such vast site like this.Facebook is essentially an open venue to showcase our personal bragging rights and getting instantaneous reaction to what we share to our circle---photographs, videos, memes, thoughts, name it. Just about anything really. And though I am the kind who would always shy away from blunt admirations, or as is not often the case, criticisms---I certainly get a kick out of knowing how people from different backgrounds would respond to me, or more technically to how I represent myself out there in a throng of a thousand friends and acquaintances, or in my case a measly 333. Have they always known me to be the way that I am? Have they found out something about me that they never knew before? What kind of vibe am I sending by posting this particular stuff? I ponder these questions prudently, since honestly, that is how I would regard people in my Facebook list as well.

So saying that, I would like to sound off very briefly about how I think we should use social networking sites more effectively--to our absolute homecourt advantage.

Thing is, not all of us have a good grasp of what powerful social utilities like Facebook can be—that if we express positive stuff, inspiring quotes, or simply frivolous status, it reflects the state of mind we are in. Our words can resonate to many, if not to all .In the same manner that we if spew out vitriol or animosity, we become brittle, weak and emotionally puny in the eyes of the very same people who read us at our better moments. It’s then hard to not be judged, no matter how others would like to hold back, if our wall is so written with words that are screaming for notice and --get it--- judgment, no?. So before you hit the What's on your mind? button, reconsider. Positive or negative?

Second, we get too caught up in trying to be sincere and upfront with who we are that we stop thinking about how others would perceive us. Sure it is our wall, and we have the sole right to paint our own graffiti. It is good after all to be honest and a little forthcoming with ourselves. That is individuality. But we have to be careful not to wound others in the process, just to gain credence. Keep in mind that when you whack people in the head, you don’t do it in front of a hundred. Because no matter what you say, you are the bad guy.

Third---respect. Respect is innate. You cannot expect people to look up to you when you parade yourself in skimpy clothes, or post inanities and vulgar words, or wear your grieving heart out on your sleeve that it all just becomes one sorry picture. Not everyone is inclined to empathize and sit through your sob story. It's okay to share it once, but everyday of it would weigh heavily on anyone's shoulder, no matter how sturdy. And if there's one piece of advice that should really shake you up---get a life, a new one for all it's worth. If it’s fame you’re after, do something original and inspiring that will make your friends notice and go effing wow. Or at least try to. And don’t be afraid to pay it forward. Give respect---to people who endeavour to become better, in spite of their shortfalls. In general, just be courteous and observe a sense of propriety. Not everyone is flattered to know that you echo their every word on your wall. In plain simple language—don't be lazy.

I hope I've said this loud enough to myself that not only I can hear. Like life itself, Facebook is a great wonderful place to be,only if we make it so.

ps...i need a goddarn good editor. i keep coming back to correct grammatical mistakes, it's so frustrating.
pps....i remember i can't afford an editor.

purple sun

2011-11-15T02:00:00.003+08:00

to compensate for the weightlessness, and an obviously tepid blogging moment, here are photos i took of sophia last weekend. did this mosaic via bighugelabs. everyone seemed to stay indoors to watch a boxing bout that day, but my daughter and i got out to catch the waning sun, and savor the quiet of the afternoon. the streets were deserted and as sophia was swirling around and walking away into the urban sunset, i felt desolation and a strange sense of peace, both at the same time. she's in her absolutely super purple-y outfit and grey boots, and we picked a beautiful yellow flower from the sidewalk for effects.

When It Rains....

2011-08-02T14:01:00.013+08:00

Much as I love the monsoon rain and how it seems to envelop me in a kind of invisible protective veil, muffling the cries of a rather dissonant world outside my bubble---- of late it appears to have exactly the opposite effect. Suddenly, I wake up in the middle of a street finding everything around me soaked in the rain. I tread ever so gingerly to avoid muddy potholes, yet I lose footing and get myself drenched. The car horns blast at me, cussing me at my inability to make sense of the danger that lies ahead. Just as I turn to the direction of safety, a vehicle sweeps past and almost collides with me. And then, I wake up. From the dream within my dream. From the more unsympathetic reality. That for the nth time, I had overslept and was going to be late for work. As they say--when it rains, it pours.

This post is not exactly about my bizarre déjà vus, or my millionth attempt to go into raptures over rains. They are in fact quite becoming a nuisance now, considering how many days my kids will miss school and therefore miss learning, of how our laundry system has gone haywire because nothing can dry up quickly enough, and how it seems people (aka my kids) just feel more famished in the cold, or rather wet, weather that we are compelled to buy everything by the double. And, most frustrating of all, of how my runners are easily gathering dust because I cannot run outside.

This is about my kids’ health. Gabby's, in particular. Last year, I had my bouts of ill health and was confined in the hospital twice. And so did my son, once. He passed out at a doctor’s clinic, and had to be hospitalized for a week due to a very bad case of respiratory infection. Although we were one happy family camping inside his room, and Sophia was allowed some nights to sleep over, for my husband and me, it was something that we hoped would never happen again. Gabby at the onset, has tested positive in G6PD during his newborn screening test. I wouldn’t want to assume that because of this, and despite his diligent attitude towards eating the right foods, he still gets sick. Because when he gets sick, boy does he ever.

G6PD has been relatively unknown until the recent past, when hospitals and birth clinics require all newborns to undergo such test. Wikipedia describes Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency as a “hereditary disease, linked to abnormally low levels of G6PD or G6PDH, a metabolic enzyme involved in the pentose phosphate pathway, especially important in red blood cell metabolism. G6PD deficiency is the most common human enzyme defect. Individuals with the disease may exhibit non-immune haemolytic anemia in response to a number of causes, most commonly infection or exposure to certain medications or chemicals.Abnormal red blood cell breakdown (hemolysis) in G6PD deficiency can manifest in a number of ways:

Prolonged neonatal jaundice, possibly leading to kernicterus (arguably the most serious complication of G6PD deficiency)

Hemolytic crises in response to:

Illness (especially infections)

Certain drugs

Certain foods, most notably broad beans (favism)

Certain chemicals

Diabetic ketoacidosis"

In other words, there is no sure-fire way to tell which food or scenarios would give Gabby a trigger. We are left to grope in the dark, and have to learn the hard way, as we go along. One of the instances that we recognized how worrying it can get is when he puffed up over an allergy with Taro pie, courtesy of Mc Donald’s. In spite of the anti-histamines, it took almost a week for the bloating to completely go away and get him back to his normal appearance. Poor kid almost couldn’t eat because of his swollen tongue. What is strange about it is that his illnesses are all asymptomatic of G6PD, that it’s almost silly to blame it on his deficiency. I mean others are on worse boats, and yet something tells me the culprit is exactly that. Do I contradict myself?

Lately, his struggle is with constipation. We had brought him twice at the ER paediatrics in the middle of the night because of complaints of stomach pains. After a battery of tests (abdominal xray, urine, blood), we always come home with the same verdict----that he only needs to "pass", to be relieved of the pains. Hilarious and off-putting, if you come to think of it, but really! As a parent nothing of that just casually comes to your mind and not worry about the underlying cause of such a discomfiting situation.

His constipation has probably nothing to do at all with his G6PD, and yet we cannot help but think that something must be done at the root of it. As of the present, we have decided to modify his diet—and that includes the whole family in the process. We buy more fruits, and bring in more fiber on the table. I took out my blender the other night and made some mean pineapple smoothies as alternative to our dessert, when in the past we always had iced tea or colas. This is a sacrifice that has to be made. Again as they say, sacrifice one thing for the good of the others. But as it is, I’d sacrifice many other things for the good of one. The one that is my precious boy.

Sunshine Saturday

2011-07-17T12:21:00.011+08:00

The rains had finally let up. Many an afternoon, I looked outside of my office window, longing for a dry pavement that I could jog on---but no such luck. I only had one opportune day last week to go down and run. Even then I could feel that I have missed out on my regimen and noticed how laboriously I had to heave my legs off the ground. I was careful not to get my knee injured, so three turns at the oval was all I could muster. I must get my act together and make a purposeful start next week. As the kids' exam week also lurks just around the corner, I welcomed anything to relax us before then. Sophia and I, together with the young girls, hopped on the jeepney to Sunken Garden yesterday. Armed with my camera and my only prime glass, a bottle of ice cold water and some biscuits, we were off for a few snaps. I am quite happy with how it turned out. The sun and its warm, magnanimous self was smiling down on us. And dear Sophie, she loved the grass on her feet....

Grateful Project No. 9

2011-07-14T18:04:00.013+08:00

So here I go, finding myself in a state of gridlock again, perpetually doing things that keep my hands busy and my brain half done-in, while poor Wanderlust has to endure this tiny bit of misfortune as a consequence, begging to know whether her existence is a bane to her owner after all, and that she’s been nothing but dead weight these past seven years. But owner reassures her---No, it’s not you. It’s me. I created you, therefore it is only right that I nurture you and let you grow. But well you see at some point, I feel that you have got to be on your own. You know, go out to the world and find whether you’ll carry on just as you are, without me. Just then, owner is left feeling flustered at her cruel thoughts, and in a counterbalance, gets into a panic and feverishly thinks of ways to make up for the damage. She combs her hard drive for photographs that might be natty enough to please Wanderlust and recoup her losses, photos which of course she would need to have something to say about. Mind, the words have to be as clever as she can manage them to be or else she’d be tormented no end with such inadequacies. Only then will she be able to sit back and breathe deeply, pleased with herself and her exploit, and reassured that she had the month of July 2011 covered. And that, People, is how agonizing one single pointless blog entry can be. Drives you stark raving mad.

Today, blog owner is thankful for colors. She feels that when she is not being some kind of an imp marauding as a mother and a law-abiding citizen with a day job—she is a child who revels in cheap thrills. Like crayons.And fairy tale books. And whimsical characters. And frog princes. And tiny cars. And all things awash in the beautiful colors of the rainbow.

Grateful Project No. 8

2011-05-10T15:48:00.005+08:00

Sometimes luck has a way of falling on your lap without warning, just like that. The knee jerk reaction would be to involuntarily jerk a knee of course, open your mouth in disbelief, and then slowly curl it up into a smile, a really big smile. A few days ago, I did just that. I had recently expressed my thoughts on starting to run, for the sake of my health. I am not a sporty person, and had never once taken an interest in signing up for any gym or exercise club. But after my close brush with the grim reaper late last year, I've decided to take control of my life and turn it around to something more physically beneficial.

Then there is the slight angle of vanity, which any self-respecting woman would probably understand, especially if nothing she owns seems to look or feel right on her anymore. She either must surrender to the higher powers of obesity and resign to wearing baggy clothes, or just darn do something about it.

So, like manna from heaven, my husband gifted me with these beautiful running shoes on Mother's Day. I know that Oliver has got the proverbial good provider quality down pat. Yet I've got to acknowledge the fact that we are not the kind to splurge on things that seem to be beyond our means. Simply put, we are misers. That's because we believe that a stuffed cupboard is better than empty stomachs in expensive garbs. Or something like that--I know how shite my metaphors can get. But that's my idea of a good provider anyway. So imagine my surprise when I got these. If I hadn't had blisters on my feet, I would have broken in on them at once and made a mad dash to the door and sprinted my way to a trail nearby. And then the rain decided to be a drama queen, too. So I had to wait for a few more days.

I would like to shout out a big thank you to my husband who believes in my capabilities as a woman, who goes the extra mile, who opens up avenues for me, in big or small ways, so that I can enjoy the many aspects of my life---as a mother, blogger, photography enthusiast, and now a social runner--or better put, a health advocate.

Today, I am starting a new chapter in life. I am getting outside!

Big Four-O

2011-05-04T16:27:00.004+08:00

Celebrating birthdays every year is gradually turning out to be an oxymoron. How I’d reflect on my 40th birthday, in a nutshell --is bittersweet. Bitter as I get to concede with the fact that some things are inevitable—our ostensible photo aging, the aggravation of illnesses that seem to plague our bodies at an age when it is touted to be just the beginning of life, my significantly diminished value in the workforce, let alone in the social front. Life can be fair and square, eh?

And yet, it progressively becomes sweet--- to realize that in every birthday, indeed there is a life---breathing, moving, talking life, where one gets to be the phoenix that burns and rises out from the ashes to start anew. It may not be that obvious to others who consciously try to curb their fascination in foolish things--- but for this day alone, I will gladly suffer the fool that I am.

photo by Gab

So, what is it like to be forty? Oh man, like any other day. I walk to work, sweat under the same unbelievably hot sun like everyone else, grounded in the fact that I am no better than the next person, except perhaps that I have mellowed, that I have a constant song in my head, that I have 360 degrees of happiness around me—that I know I only have to find that little unique indentation on Mother Earth’s crust and dig deeper and deeper so that I can create my own master work of art, that is my life.

At forty, I’d like to learn many things---to play the guitar and channel my inner Mitchell, which my son will probably scoff at, seeing that I am a little late in the game. But why the heck not? I’d like to finally take that driving thing off my shoulder and get my driver’s license. At forty, I know. And because a friend was aghast that I’ve never had a facial in my life, I’d most possibly consider that one, too. Then I need to get my pair of runners, and scamper off to better health if I had to. Wax a record, or maybe just get a youtube account and sing my heart out. Cook my very own cabbage rolls. Learn to use makeup. Get a Lasik. Dress better. Laugh more. Love more…..

PS: What I got for my birthday:

a little serenade from my son

love notes from gab and sophia

from true blue artzooka fans, these recycled cards are worth millions for me.

Vignette- Bacolod City

2011-04-28T13:22:00.009+08:00

The trip with my family to my hometown in Bacolod last week can be best described in three words--short but sweet. Very short in fact, that we only had two whole days to frantically go around and somehow trace back the remnants of my Ilonggo roots, something which I had longed for my husband to savor and experience. Until this trip, he only heard about it in my oft-repeated stories, and it was vague to him at best. Never mind my kids as they are too young to understand all this, and Sophia thought we were actually going to another swimming foray. Well, swimming there was none. I'm sure she and Gab felt a little disappointed as suddenly it got impossibly hot in Manila and the prospect of flying over to a much cooler place and soaking in a glorious body of water would have been really nice. But Bacolod was all about seeing Angustia again, and my home folks, and understandably being sober for the occasion, so I felt that except for the kids, we had kept our expectations to a minimum.

For someone like me who has seen things in a bigger scale, Bacolod to my eyes now has become rather feeble and sleepier than it seemed back then. Maybe owing to the fact that we came here at the deadest season of the entire year, Oliver remarked that the streets were practically deserted of people. The roads from Silay to Bacolod impressed upon him because of the lush and verdant trees, and I found myself pleasantly surprised as well. However, when we reached downtown where our hotel was, there was the undeniable stench. It crossed my mind that this part of the city is on the verge of decay---that people who have had centrifugal tendencies to stray away and live in other parts of the country, or the world, would someday go back and realize how small and poor and half-forgotten this place had been, that this very truth could be seen in everything---the toothless old people, the homeless who sleep on the plaza benches, the dirty kids who mill around with blank stares on their faces, the dilapidated shops that are now swarmed with flies and not with people, the San Sebastian Church which used to be very huge and was considered the bastion of all the grandiose that symbolized the sugar plantation capital of the country. But the thud on the road shook me up and made me realize we were now cruising along the Bredco port and probably the stench that threw me off-kilter came from all the talaba (oyster) and sisi. And then as we drove nearer to the heart of the city, I could see not far beyond that SM and more modern shops had risen from where the Reclamation Area used to be. Bacolod life, in my absence, has indeed happened, however snail-paced it did. It has become a mixture of the old and the new, and I was rather torn.

But the moment I went to Sum-ag it was totally another story. I was transported to the days of yore when I was just a little kid climbing up the sarisa tree to spend an idle afternoon with my cousins, while the folks would take their places on the mahjong table, and asked to be served their cafe, or send us out for some loose change. There was warmth in all the smiles and hugs and the lilted accent accompanied with such animated hand movements, that the hot sun, for all its worth, did not seem to bother me for a moment. Oh Sum-ag, I love you the most for my childhood days, for the bad times and good times, for the titas and titos, for the cousins and grandparents, for abundance and hunger, for the tears and the laughter, for making me touch the ground again and say---I was here.

As for the photos, I have really often struggled with landscapes, and going to Don Salvador Benedicto on the third day of the trip would have been a wonderful chance, but more often than not, you get carried away in the moment, of touching base with everyone again. A simple bisou-bisou would not do, it's the only time to catch up with people who have forever been close to your heart but don't get to hear from, in more than a decade--that photographing has to take a backseat for a bit. However, I had to look for that small window of opportunity, and I'm glad I was able to take a few shots of my nieces, cousins, aunts, and of course, Sophia, my wanderlust muse.

San Sebastian Cathedral

for a taste of authentic ilonggo--manokan country and batchoy

preparing the Angus at a workshed

first cousins

nieces from Davao

cousins of varying degrees

Procession of Saints--Sum-ag Parish Church

Sum-ag Parish Church where I attended Sunday mass as a kid. Across the street is my old elementary school.

titas and cousins again

taking part in the two-hour procession

paying a quick visit to my second cuz and bestfriend Lorena

Don Salvador Benedicto- hidden paradise

Photos taken at Don Salvador Benedicto, a municipality in the more remote parts of Negros. The first ever appointed mayor is Tito Nene, mother's cousin. He owns a very beautiful home here and oversees the place as a Board Member, while his son serves as the incumbent Mayor. Had we the privelege of another night's stay, we could have trekked the mountains and enjoyed the waterfalls, but as it was, we only took mementos of that charming and seemingly unbridled agricultural life back there through several photos.

with Tito Nene (in blue shirt)

flying back to Manila

Sophia going back home

Updates-March

2011-03-22T17:43:00.010+08:00

I honestly have no idea what to write today, given that many unfortunate events have taken place in the recent weeks, reminding us so palpably of our fragility in the face of nature and man's wrath. It is no consolation either that my country sits above the earthquake belt, and there seems to be no safety net at all for the possibilities of some such disasters. There is a certain amount of trepidation that I feel, pretty much like having a hangman's noose around my neck, that at any infinitesimal moment I can be swept from under and that noose will most certainly tighten and strangle me to death. But I have to be sensible, don't I?

Last week had been crazy around the household, as our help has gone away for good, and I am left with the power to save my little domestic world from pandemonium. I kind of exaggerate, but as they say, with power comes responsibility, and I cannot even begin to describe what kind of responsibility has suddenly fallen on my lap and has presented itself in quite a self-aggrandizing fashion. I have to be a cleaner, laundrywoman, nurse (Sophia got bitten by a stray cat), tutor, iron woman if you may, and above all, peace keeper. All that on top of my being an office woman. I should cut my husband some slack as well, he's been doing more than his fair share of cooking and soldiering in the home front. So, I think I may have just to stay on tangent and do my job as quietly and as efficiently as possible. I cannot wait for April to get here and have someone help us out in this mayhem.

But although I may sound like I have been ravaged by my domestic woes, I surprisingly found time to take some photos of Sophia outside the yard this weekend. And here, I have managed to do some PS tricks to put some angel wings on her. It makes her giddy with excitement at the sight of her sporting some nifty fairytale stuff , and you bet it makes for an opportunity to photograph her again without fuss. Let's just say, I am getting a bit more enterprising at this. So yeah, this is unintelligible mumbling at its best, but I'm glad to talk.

flowers and prayers for the displaced. and the disenfranchised.

pirouette.she dreams of doing a perfect arabesque someday...

Incidentally, I am uploading a few photos of my brother Nikkos, taken by his friend, from his trip to Melbourne a few weeks ago. I've never been to Oz, but I have heard much of its strange beauty from erstwhile Aussie friends. Needless to say, I believe.

downtown Melbourne

Brighton Beach

Philip Island

feeding the joeys

St. Patrick Church

Grateful Project No. 7

2011-02-27T22:06:00.005+08:00

Flowers, though of ephemeral lives, are truly some of the most eternally memorable things to touch and behold. They can take the place of our human emotion, when there are not enough words to say it, when there is not enough courage to admit it. Flowers soothe our frayed souls, rebuild our faith, rekindle our friendships. They remind us of the simple things in nature that we ought not take for granted, and should be always grateful of. And indeed, I am.

Sunken Garden

2011-02-21T18:41:00.002+08:00

Spent early Sunday morning with our neighbor-friend Anna at the Sunken Garden for some photos. There were kids having a dip in the muddy river, and a couple of them went up to me to ask for a photo op. Sunken Garden is a scenic hillside with some war artifacts, and a riverbank, all situated within the prison compound in Muntinlupa. It's a little jagged and under-developed, but it's ironically a beautiful, peaceful place to go to and unwind. The breeze is a welcome change from the stifling heat of the city, and the sun is often just gorgeous. There are a lot of bikers and joggers especially on the weekends, and a few stay-out prisoners doing the gardening and maintenance of the place.

taken by Oliver

Grateful Project No. 6

2011-02-19T15:26:00.012+08:00

Years ago, when I was living alone in the city, I had longed to quit my life and move back to a much more remote place like my province. I hated the state of things I was in, I was in bad health, I hated the people around me. I had developed an aversive stimulus to the clutter of garbage, graffiti, beggars, traffic, heat, and the fumes that would probably best describe an urban jungle that is Manila. But I did not leave, I wanted to challenge myself to rise out from the din, and to make my angst known to the world. I must have been lingering on the remnants of a melancholic, if not exactly troubled, youth--that I thought it was alright to engage myself with feelings of anger, fear, regret, or maybe even resentment, particularly on the unfortunate circumstances brought about by my mother's early death. I didn't use to have a blog then, but I wrote vicariously on paper, and have kept the notes intact until today. Now however, when I get the chance to read my old thoughts, I would somehow stifle a laugh, and amuse myself with the vagaries of my youth, of how I had unwittingly turned into an emotional sponge and inflicted a kind of grievance on myself for living a less than perfect life.I will leave 39 in a few months. It would be safe to say that I have immeasurably grown, and am not the same bitter person I was once. There is a degree of acceptance that I have now allowed myself to feel towards things that don't happen in my favor---it's not passiveness I would say. I believe that all things, bad or good, shape us into what we are at present. So, instead of depriving myself of happiness, it would be nice to do the opposite, for a change. Thus the gratitude project. However, today I would like to express my thanks, not for something that I have, but for a person who has been there--and was a big part---in my life.

Ma. Concepcion, or Connie, or Tita Nini to others, will always be Mama Nin to me and my immediate cousins. She is the third child in my mother's huge brood of 15. She has always been someone that everyone had to prepare for whenever she visited--and that always entailed clean house, clean nails, clean clothes, clean everything. Why, she's a doctor after all, and a stickler for hygiene. It didn't come as a surprise then that we had stuck with the idiom cleanliness is next to godliness, owing to the fact that she was a very devout Catholic as well and had always made it a crede that in our household, like being clean and tidy, there can never been too many excuses for not going to Sunday mass. It was an imperative. A few years ago, she told us, her nieces, she belatedly realized that she must have come off as a "fastidious" woman too all of us. I bet she did--but because of her fastidiousness, I have learned many things, much more than I could have ever hoped for. Mama Nin is a hero in our family, and personally for me, a symbol of courage and selflessness. I didn't get to know her full history, and even as a grownup now, I reserve that kind of diffidence towards her, maybe because I had always looked up to her from the point of view of a small girl, that she always appeared larger than life, and I would never overcome the habit of seeing her that way. It would be nice to go up to her one day, sit idly on the patio, and spend the afternoon over coffee just listening to her life story, like equals. There goes my wandering mind again...

I have been rather astute in recalling the stories that surrounded her when I was a child. It has been said that Mama needed to finish her final year in medical school in UST Manila, and as my grandparents were mere office workers back in Bacolod,they could not afford to send the kids to school, all at the same time. So that a compromise had to be made, that Mama would graduate and some of the children would have to take a year off. She did graduate and went on to become a physician-surgeon. But because of the sacrifice that was made for her, she would devote the better part of her professional life, serving the poor in remote La Castellana, and her personal life--helping her family. She never married, and took two of my cousins under her wing. I often spent summers in her place in La Castellana, helping out in her pharmacy, learning stuff around the house, getting rigorous training like sewing or catechism --but also enjoying the perks of eating delicious healthy food, having new clothes, falling blissfully asleep with my cousins at the back of her volkswagen as she makes an afternoon drive along the mountainous part of La Carlota, swimming in hagimit, going back to Bacolod with a renewed sense of self.

The part, however, that I have truly to thank Mama for, is how she gave her unwavering support, financially and emotionally, during the months that my mom battled with the big C. The doctor in her proved to be more than useful in mechanically sifting through the possibilities of a cure for my mother's illness. But the sister in her must have been pained to see the truth that my mother was going to wither away, and that a cure was not in sight, and everyone else would have to deal with her fate. Mama Nin saw to us, made sure we children were fed and schooled, and became a mother figure until the very end. There are possibly a lot more that I would never come to know about her, but its enough that I have seen her benevolence, and the strength with which she carried the burdens in her life, and how mightily she embraced them.

Mama is now in her 70s, but she always has that dignified aura about her. The nephews and nieces fuss over her, yet she seems to point out, all that is needless, and she will not allow herself to saddle us with her weight just yet. She has retired from her medical practice, but she's never one to be idle. All those years that I have seen her knit, smock, crochet, cross stitch, paint, create wonderful things besides being a doctor, I thought she would have hung her mitts and called it a day. But, not really. Last year, she was making these rosary beads, have them blessed in church----one of which she gave to me as a gift, and which I have kept close to me everyday. She herself is a gift to us, her family, but she would probably not wallow in that. So, thank you, Mama. You will always be loved.

Grateful Project No. 5

2011-02-16T17:11:00.013+08:00

In professing my love for reading, it comes without saying that I am also a rabid fan of books that come at a bargain price. Of course, I buy books legitimately, and mind, they do not come cheap, so I mull over more practical options. But even if I am not reprobate enough to subscribe to any form of piracy, I must admit that I have requested e-books once in while from the Burgomeister. It's not really something clandestine, or to be guilty of. As long as the download is free and legal, I think it's fine to have it. I'll even be the first taker. However, I've noticed that reading e-books easily strains my eyes. I try to avoid the monitor screen if I could, given that majority of my day job requires me to sit like a zombie in front of the computer eight hours, five days a week. There's something about holding a physical book, turning the pages over, and smelling an old print that not only satiates the senses, but lulls them as well. I often find myself knocked off to sleep in the middle of reading, but that's why they call it a form of leisure. I am old school like that, and unless by some freak of nature I get to own a Kindle someday, I am rather happy owning and reading second hand books for now. Which brings me to say, it's a godsend indeed that something like Booksale exists in my part of the world. Booksale is a small franchise store found practically in all malls in Manila, where you will discover a menagerie of old and contemporary books on topics that range from a to z. It's like a comfort nook which I never fail to check out whenever boredom strikes. There's always something of serendipity that you can find, and once you do, the happy feeling of triumph, of unearthing a gem, becomes priceless. It seems, however, that the people in Booksale do not really have a clear guideline of how to evaluate books. They make standard prices for paperbacks and hardbound, regardless if they are good or crappy. Case in point, I got a Willa Cather novel for five pesos (very small fraction of a dollar), and nota bene, in mint condition. I was once tempted to say aloud, Unbelievable! don't you people know this price is too laughable for such a treasure find? Of course, that's why their tagline says "We Make Reading Affordable". I should learn to hold my tongue at times.I have gradually since stacked my shelves with purchases from Book Sale, but that's only because I truly want to read them, and not for anything else. So there, another grateful day!

a classic for five bucks!

magazines do come handy for my kids' school projects.

how do i love thee?

Grateful Project No. 4

2011-02-07T15:12:00.004+08:00

In my alternate universe, I see myself donning elegant things like a Patek Philippe, a bespoke Chopard, or a Rolex oyster on my arm--- but in reality I am just someone striving to keep my grand delusions to myself, and at a minimum. I have passed by watch republic many many times, and eternally gloated on that tiny titanium skagen dress watch made of the most unique copper color. It’s not an overly ambitious choice; it sells at a moderate price in fact. But I am always bitterly reminded that, in my state of things, I can ill-afford it.

I do not have expensive jewelleries. What I have are baubles and a few watches, and it’s fine by me. But you see, watches are my thing. Really! I feel that they are precious possessions that can last me longer than my lifetime, and are probably some of the more decent things I can bequeath to my daughter long after I’ve been gone. You know those stories about fathers passing on broken timepieces to their sons, and the subliminal connection to stuff like personal redemption? Well, hackneyed though that may sound, I now admit, I am such a sap for it. Is it accurate then to label me as closet optimist? Gah.

Some three years ago, I became a proud and grateful owner of a Swiss-made classic tank Classima Nuova from the company named Bernhard H. Mayer ,depuis 1871 (since 1871). My husband gave it to me as his 5^th year service award from his company. He could have chosen a men’s watch for himself, but he did not. It's probably manifest of how deeply I should be humbled by gestures like this. Sometimes, I dismally fail in the appreciation department. My watch has an uncomplicated face design, covered modestly in a domed sapphire crystal. It's presently in a white faux leather strap, but I will put back the original black croc strap when I’ve finally become bored of the other one.

This is the closest thing that I’ve come to owning something Swiss-made, but it's not even like devouring a thousand sinfully delicious Lindt chocolates. It's a beautiful, simple, but elegant watch nevertheless. And it hits its mark right on me. It's for me a symbol of giving, of trust, of kindness, of a big heart. And I intend to leave these very same values to my children.

I may have said this rather plentifully, three years ago, but THANK YOU again, my dear!

Ties that Bind

2011-02-04T01:44:00.013+08:00

One of the nicer things that had happened in the past year was that my brother got relocated at work next to my building. Every so often we'd try to meet up for lunch, occasional dinners, or coffee breaks. Some weekends he drives up to our place with his adorable brood of three. Years ago, we had missed happy opportunities like this, for the simple reason that he was living and working in another country. At our recent get-togethers, I would sit across the table with him and become a bit lost in thought--recalling the years when he was in college in far-flung Marawi, living alone, living on his meager scholarship stipend, and making ends meet for himself. I imagine the hardship he must have gone through while his immediate family was never around to care for his needs. Today, he works as a senior software analyst in a huge firm, has set foot to many places, and proves to be a very valuable part of his industry. As siblings, we share a lot of loves--for Tolkien, for Tracy Chapman, for the cult classic X-files, for torn Levi's, for Harry Potter, for Scrabble, and yes for coffee.What makes me inordinately proud of him however, is the fact that he has hardly changed, and had remained a quiet, unassuming and modest person. And, if I have to be my sentimental self again, I feel an effusive sense of happiness and deliverance for being one-third part of that tie that eternally binds us together, the other two-thirds being him and my youngest brother.

I took pictures of him while we shared muffins and coffee at the nearby park this afternoon. I am not too happy with my shots, as I faced some focusing problems when I switched my camera settings. It occurs to me that I might have to be more mindful of my shooting now, and aim to get more quality photos rather than fancy about colors or bokehs. And saying that, I realize that sooner or later, I will have to consider upgrading my camera body.

urban sunset...

muffins and americano for a quick fix

taken by bro

As an afterthought, I am including this last photo, because the city where I live is now officially plastic-free. The incumbent mayor has done a good job of putting up street lights, paving roads, bringing Maynilad to our households, creating jobs in the first years of his office, and recently passing an ordinance to disallow the use of plastic and styro at any establishment. And for good measure. In effect, we happily go around in recyclable totes and brown bags feeling more like civilized human beings. There's ample amount of inspiration in that, to finally do away with useless, hollow platitudes, and just really walk the talk.

Grateful Project No. 3

2011-02-02T17:46:00.002+08:00

This is my nook at work--my little sanctuary, my home away from home. It's the little details around me that help keep this corner warm. And for that, I am truly thankful.

about the coke, it has become a staple.
supposedly to prevent some serious mental meltdown...

pens and other crazy stuff. i am a child that way. the light in full swell behind me is softened by

the powder blue blinds. don't mind the clutter.

this little sweet thing was given to me by my husband as an advance birthday gift.

now, i have no excuse for not tidying up my files.

and a token to seriously remind me why i should never
allow mental meltdowns, especially at work.

Shutterflies

2011-01-31T04:17:00.001+08:00

Had an impromptu mini-session with Sophia as a trade-off to her new hula hoop. She is quite the negotiant, my daughter. The sun was almost gone when I started shooting, so I had to hurry while she was goofing around and was in the mood to sit for me. As usual the hospital rough parking and work-shed provided the backdrop for us, as if we have another choice. The last photo was of me taken by her. Not bad at all.... I am thinking about getting a cheap lomo camera, but I wonder whether they only come in films, or is there a digital version...

Grateful Project No. 2

2011-01-28T17:13:00.005+08:00

I admire and envy skilled people. I have always secretly dreamed, among others things, to be a good cook, a pattern maker, an illustrator, a modiste, a web designer, a milliner, and heaven forbid, even a locksmith. In my maternal side of the family, my aunts have provided us a good training ground for creating things when we were much younger--sewing, knitting, cross stitch, crochet, fabric art and other crafts. But the one skill that stuck with me was hand sewing. I can pretty much darn anything, baste anything, hem anything. And although I don't have the same deft fingers nor the sharpest eyes like I used to, sewing has unquestionably grown on me. Many Christmases ago, I bought this tiny thing out of my gift card---and I never once regretted it. I have sewn many things with it, and nothing comes more handy than when I suddenly find myself unable to mend something by hand. Sewing is one my great joys, and I am simply grateful for this.

Grateful Project No. 1

2011-01-26T15:49:00.003+08:00

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts

are conscious of our treasures.

::Thornton Wilder::

Instead of coming up with my own version of a bucket list, this year I would like to start a gratitude project--a photo each time--of simple, even rather obvious things--that I own, that I have been given, that have been lying around in the house, and the the intangible ones that have touched me, made me marvel, appreciate, and explore life, in and outside of my familiar bubble. By the end of this year, I hope that I would have said and meant the words "thank you" more than enough. Today, I am thankful for my camera, the story of which is written here...

Will Smile for Phone : )

2011-01-25T18:26:00.003+08:00

At the risk of sounding a bit desperate, I have joined a contest here where the blog owner Jayvee is giving away a shiny new Blackberry Curve 9300 3G. The only requirement is to share a photo with your smiling face to convince him that you rightfully deserve that phone. And seeing that I am not the kind who possess an easy smile, this can be something that will probably get me working. A free phone is a free phone after all. And dang, it's a BB! Well, here's hoping......

For Ate Ben

2011-01-24T20:11:00.005+08:00

I would like to take a moment today, to think about a dear friend who passed on last Christmas....

Ate Benny,

you will be always be fondly remembered

and deeply thanked

for your unpretending friendship

for the generosity of your soul

for the solicitous,warm hugs

the unbridled laughter

the unspoken sisterly love

that we have regrettably been unable to give back

these past few years

because of the ironies of our being human

and having to carry on

seemingly parallel lives.

Maybe we need not say

how much we love you

and miss you

because in our hearts we know

that you

know so.

Love,

Bel . Whinnie . Shane

Family Bonding

2011-01-23T21:47:00.004+08:00

Paid my brother Nikkos a visit on his birthday last Saturday. The kids, as usual, had a blast. I am glad for the opportunity to photograph loved ones other than my children. It's an arduous training, the fact that people become instinctively shy in front of the camera, and you are left with the intimidating task to make them comfortable. Someday, I'd like to progress to photographing strangers or acquaintances and have the confidence to capture them at their best.

me with my nephew Miguel. taken by my brother.

miggy, taken by kaz. processed by moi.

miggy and mika with dad.

The Way We Are

2011-01-22T13:08:00.007+08:00

A slice of our weekend lives....we are simple folks with simple pleasures....

my own little kasparov (cough!), he's learning the ropes.....

Chess can be a very intimidating game, so for now I'd stick to my chick lit....

...and my piece of heaven by the door.

Spring Cleaning

2011-01-22T01:04:00.002+08:00

Trying to figure out how to round the edges of my photos. These were taken a month ago when Sophia got a new box of crayons and was keen on coloring her workbook, while the cat dozed off cozily beside her. The afternoon light, by the way, was rather gorgeous...

I have begun de-cluttering my closet at the onset of the new year, and was horrified to learn how much stuff I have amassed these past few years. My son always reminds me that I might be close to becoming a hoarder, something he has seen on tv again, so that in my embarrassment, I have resolved right away to get rid of my excesses and start on a new slate. There is absolutely an exulting sense of freedom in letting go....

Sophia and the Teddies

2011-01-19T15:16:00.005+08:00

Yesterday, I took out my camera to give it some good cleaning, and Sam was sitting next to me by the window. There was a tinge of gold on her hair, an effect of the midday sun streaming from behind, and I thought it was just a glorious sight. I cajoled her into "picture picture" and she obliged. This was one of my lucky days....

Flashback 2010 Part Deux

2011-01-12T19:12:00.007+08:00

So, again for no discernible reason, I got sick mid-year of 2010. I had to have a fibroid removed (myomectomy) because of abnormal and heavy bleeding. Each time I mentioned the (bloody) situation to my husband, I would get an earful from him, telling me to have myself checked already. But because I am such a daft prick who had fashioned the daft idea not to fix anything if it ain't really really broken, I did not heed his advice.

Honestly, it's because I am always petrified of what I might discover when I see a doctor. I normally have that apprehensive twinge when I enter a clinic or hospital---something which comes off now as an involuntary reflex towards an imagined pain—that I'd rather not do it at all. It takes a lot of courage from my end, and a lot of wounding words and almost an attempt to manhandle me by another, understandably so--before I'd consider going. As the rather gory circumstance then presented itself by early November, I had to make that call, and decide on my fate, or else suffer the dire consequences. The surgery went as planned, and save for the part where the daft prick of an anaesthesiologist cost me a couple days lying down flat on my back because of messing with my spine and killing me with a headache too awful for words, I survived the bedlam on bourbon street. Apologies for abusing my british slur...

It's strange actually, the many times I have gone under the knife in my 39 years of existence, as I would even joke about my body being a needlework in progress, that I would still fret and mentally obsess about dying every single time. It's just the anticipation of pain—the kind of pain that begs for description, the kind where you dread just thinking about it, exacerbated by the hours you'd have to wait until you are led into the operating room, even when half of your brain has wandered to la la land, musing whether the faint whispers you hear all along are of ghosts of the netherworld, or of nurses telling you to put your feet up and feel the sheets, and because the better half of your brain would indubitably remind you that you are about to be cut in pieces. I've had an appendectomy, breast excision biopsy, one aborted pregnancy, two caesarean deliveries, a lap-cholesystectomy and then the myomectomy. The prospect of anything sharp and metallic in my body, the biting cold, the acrid smell of disinfectant, all that, barely a few months apart from my last gig ,would scare the living daylights out of me, so much that I promised this has got to stop at some point. I have to get healthy. And that, 2011, should be the slogan of the year.

At the home front, things went okay. We are still at our jobs, Oliver and I, and hanging on to our dear life as usual. We had family goals that we were unable to fulfil last year, which we could easily blame for things beyond our control. Like illnesses and career setbacks, you know. If it were not for the kids who take away the pessimism every time they do something rather unexpected, yet ultimately brilliant, I wouldn't know if we had done anything useful to our future at all. But being a parent is by itself liberating. And I am proud of my kids. Any mother is proud of her offspring.

Gabby is decidedly something of a reader. He loves science and muses about the aurora borealis, or the currency of Riyadh, and the invisible planets. He spent part of his Christmas money to buy a chess set, and now teaches me about the concept of castling. He put his lunch money aside and had saved enough by the end of year to open his very first savings account. Apart from the occasional childish squabble he gets into with his sister, he considers himself a tweener, and that I should never submit him to the humiliation of joining kiddie games again. At times, it cracks me up, but I try not to show it, in deference to his feelings. Sophia is just well, Sophia-- light hearted, funny, and radiant. She does good in school, too, being consistently on the top of her class. She loves to dance, draw, sing—all indicative of a desire to be great at something, maybe the arts? I do not wish to be too forthcoming of my children, but I have earned some bragging rights on them, haven't I?

When I come to think of it, the failed expectations, the goals that didn't come to fruition in the past year--- they were thwarted endeavours, only because we didn't try hard enough. I guess everyone carves up to his own share of bad years and good years, and 2010 was neither good nor bad for us, but just in between. It's not a very good thing, if I have to be very honest. Complacency is never a good thing. But as long as there is a resolve to do better, and as long as I can learn to be content, then I am sure to triumph.

Yet time isn't much of a friend. 2011, hello, you're a bit scary to ponder. You're one year away from the so-called apocalypse, and I wonder whether my kids' shocking questions, courtesy of discovery channel, about who dies first when the world comes to an end—is it by order of age or inconsequence---shakes me up in the sense that I feel something must happen now, something definitive, or I will really really miss my train…

Flashback 2010

2011-01-06T17:13:00.004+08:00

I believe that the illnesses I've had in the past year were somehow brought about by the insidious effects of internal stress, something that I keep inside myself and have chosen to ignore because there were many things, outside of myself, to worry about. First off, there are my kids. They are good kids by anyone's standards, but the mere logistics of having to prepare them for school everyday, to look after their needs, to make sure they are safe while my husband and I are away at work....it simply takes its toll on me. As a result, I seem to neglect my own needs. I always tell myself that I don't need that much caring about, that I can roll with the punches and still stand strong---well strong yes, but not always healthy.

Around July, I started having episodes of severe stomach pains, which radiated to my back. I thought it was one of those cases when I've had too much acid on my food. I've heard about GERD, and all symptoms seem to point to that direction. I am a sucker for all things acidic, including softdrinks, iced tea and coffee. The frequent migraines and shoulder pains that I've had to endure did not alarm me enough to seek some medical intervention. I am sometimes unforgivably lazy. Not until the night that I could not move my body an inch without wincing from a kind of stabbing sensation.Oliver wheeled me into the emergency room of a nearby hospital, as I was capitulating on the terrible pain attack, and almost giving myself up for dead. But after I was given a shot of omeprazole, I felt a bit of reprieve and came back to my senses. I wasn't going to just die there after all. I had to face the truth that my imminent case wasn't to be taken lightly. I had to see a doctor, pronto.

It was a full-on medical checkup afterwards, and true enough, bless the existence of technology, I've had those little stones inside my gall bladder silently lurking for probably years and years. They had happily mutated and grown in number each time I salivated on that delectable cinnamon pretzel, glazed with a slab of the most luscious butter (aka cholesterol) at Aunt Annie's. It crossed my mind after my laparoscopic surgery that I had loved butter so much when I was a kid. It was long ago when I would secretly sneak into my aunt's kitchen in La Castellana that I felt my happiest. Food--good or bad-- has a way of etching themselves into one's memory. And, and blurring the lines of indulgence and practicality, it is how food makes one happy that would still make the difference. However, as adults we'd have to suffer the price. And how costly it could be indeed---physically, mentally, financially.

Now, I can see myself in my little girl. By golly, how she loves to dip her finger into that soft creamy stuff. I have to watch her like a hawk and caution her about food. I don't worry too much about the boy, he is a good eater. Unlike my daughter who can be very picky with food, and yet is infatuated with sweets, Gabby prefers leafy vegetables and just plain no-nonsense meals. He loves tofu and string beans. He is conscious about his acid and sugar intake, and always reminds himself of a line in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, that candies "can be stuck between the braces, and are really cavities on a stick". It's admirable how he can purposefully stop himself from giving in to such temptations, while my daughter and I would compulsively reach out our guilty fingers when we see a box of chocolates.

This is a bit long-winded now, so I will break this down to another entry, hopefully very soon. A promise is a promise is a promise....

Hello Blog, look how far we've come!

2011-01-04T17:27:00.002+08:00

2011 finally!

I had been a slapdash all these past few months that I had carelessly relegated you to the sidelines. I have a thousand and one excuses why that came to be so, but I resolve to be more attentive to you now, and will write more often, no matter how impetuous I find my thoughts may be. I will be less of a drama queen, and stay calm and collected, not forgetting to pace myself whenever a thought rushes to me and throws me into such disarray that I will run into interminable sentences again, and as a result abuse my commas, with no sensible end in sight, very much like this one. And so let the transformation begin....

Snippets

2010-08-24T17:39:00.002+08:00

So, since it is common knowledge that I lack the ability of following through anything thoroughly, I will try to write in random here in my blog--stay long enough to warm the place, but not that long to contrive another senseless entry, just for the sake of.

Over the few months that I was away, life again happened. Some in a good way, as I see my children on the grind and enjoying school, I have finished the last Harry Potter book, yay!; after which I felt a frenzy for reading again, so it seems I had been in good company of Willa Cather, Isabel Allende---from which thought I derive much pleasure-----and some which happened in not such a good way, namely that I had been ill and was having episodes of stabbing pains that I was clueless about until an ultrasound told me that stones had been making a sanctuary of my gall bladder.

The surgery went fine, but the psychological pain was something I would not venture to talk about right this moment. Suffice it to say that I am gall-free today, but a slight amount of fat in what I eat would render my insides a wreck. The migraines are still there, but they are not as often anymore. This was a fair amount of warning for me not to take my health for granted, so I am right into that.

2010-06-17T11:41:00.002+08:00

I'd like to think I'm at
a crossroads.
Discovering a path
which does
converge with
the old
familiar one
but on which
is more promise
of change
of goodness
of everything
that is
better.

In Praise of Food

2010-06-10T12:18:00.013+08:00

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

George Bernard Shaw

I am not a good cook thus I content myself on appreciating what is served on the dinner table. I am no certified gourmand either so I cannot claim to be a reliable source of opinion on culinary fares. I wouldn’t possibly even identify what’s in the food that I indiscriminately stuff into my mouth, just that if it’s not spoiled, then it’s a go; but if it’s laden with cyanide and I suddenly fell stiff on the floor , then it’s a bit late to do some complaining, ain’t it? And try as I might to whip up something good in the kitchen, I do so with very little success. It’s a relief, hence, to have a husband who is skilled with his meat and herbs, like he is with his graphic designs. My only critique about Oliver’s cooking is that he gets homicidal with the pepper, and dashes it like there’s no tomorrow, that everyone in five feet radius of him gets crazy with their sinuses. I am a living victim of that.

Over the years , I’ve done the rounds of Italian, French, Thai, Mediterranean, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, American, and of course Filipino restaurants---not frequently as I would have liked to, but thanks to our company dinners, I get introduced to these different cuisines in my lifetime, something which I wouldn’t even possibly have come across, had I relied entirely on my own pocket.

But like all fundamental human cravings, there are particular food that don’t really have to be chef -anointed, or labelled “cuisine” for us to appreciate and hank for it. That is why there is such a thing as comfort food. In fact, I discovered early on, that I am just a girl with simple carenderia taste. Not that carenderia food is something to be mortified about. Filling one’s stomach with home-cooked meals, no matter how common or simple, brings a sense of nostalgia, and yes comfort--- a feeling of being in a warm, comfortable place, of being a child again, wandering through a kitchen full of cooking women, of waking up in the morning, the aroma of coffee and newly baked bread wafting in the air, of your first taste of wine and t-bone steak, of easy days when the sunshine is bountiful and pretty, and everyone is dressed in summer clothes, drinking lemonade, taking turns on the barbecue grille, dancing merrily across the lawn, looking fondly at the rowdy kids joshing each other by the poolside, just being happy knowing you are a part of that beautiful memory. I know I am just dreaming some of these up, but one will get my drift.

I found out that most of the food that had left a lasting impression on me, and have in the long run become my favourites, are actually those associated with recollections of my childhood. The fact that they were all humble family recipes and that I will probably never taste them again unless I spent a fortune dining at an authentic Spanish restaurant, makes me respect my roots all the more. And even now that my gastronomic experience progressively stretches to much broader horizons each time I eat out with my work bosses, my strong desire to indulge in what I would call my happiness food is becoming more and more homeward bound.

Cabbage Rolls—one of my most beloved Ilonggo dishes. I say Ilonggo because I only tasted this from my grandmother who called her version “meat in blanket” . It is seasoned ground meat wrapped in cabbage leaf, and tenderized by pressure cooking it in tomato sauce and spices. Even some of my aunts, who took after my grandma’s expert kitchen skills, have never tried this recipe. Save for a friend’s New Year dinner I once went to in Baguio, I have not tasted this dish again after my grandma passed away. The cabbage rolls in Baguio was of a slightly different variation, it tasted good, but there was perhaps an ingredient missing to remind my palate of the special blend I so treasured as a child. One day I’d like to get my culinary flair working, if there is one hidden at all, to whip up this dish for my family. Until then, I’d have to keep imagining it in my head and on my taste buds. Sigh....

Lengua Estofado—again another Ilonggo cooking I grew up into. This was a staple on special occasions like fiestas or birthdays, and has become a conversation piece among the foodies in my clan. Years ago, when my son was baptized and we threw a dinner party for family and friends, I asked my aunt to cook this dish for us. I went with her to the market to pick up the best ox tongues, but little did I know that these things, when raw, looked, and quite honestly, smelled disgusting. It takes a lot of scrubbing and cleaning before the dirt comes off, it’s a tongue after all, and I firmly saw to that until I was mentally convinced it was clean enough for cooking. The moment one sees and tastes the finished product though, one forgets all her skivvies and eeew moments.

Pancit Molo and La Paz Batchoy—I’ve tasted a few variations here in Manila, but nothing comes up at par with the authentic ones I’ve had as a child in Bacolod. Even the sweaty fat Manoy who cooked and owned the batchoyan across the street at the mercado in La Castellana had more appeal to me than the well-groomed crew at the pricey air-conditioned Ted’s restaurant in Filinvest. Again, it’s the secret ingredient, which my cousins would teasingly tell me was Manoy’s kili-kili power. But could I care? If it was, then I certainly loved me some of Manoy’s power. But that was long ago, and last time I checked, standing in the batchoyan was now an internet cafe. My only consolation at Ted’s here in Manila is their soft puto manapla, which makes me sorely miss my hometown each time.

Paella Valenciana—I prefer valenciana more than seafood paella because of its more subtle taste. Like any paella dish though, it’s a meal in itself and one could get generous helpings. I love it when the pork liver and peas and bell pepper and boiled egg are fused together in the mouth ,that creates an interesting texture. If cooked very thoughtfully, the paprika flavour surfaces and the nice saffron coloring on the rice makes it all the more delectable.

Drunken shrimp—aka nilasing na hipon. Don’t care much whether them shrimps imbibed beer, or wine, or just plain Sprite before their lives passed on, right smack in the pan, perverse though it may sound. The mere pleasure of peeling off their shells, eating them with bare hands, dipping them in a mean mixture of sinamak (spiced vinegar) and soy sauce, and wolfing them down with a palmful of steaming hot rice, leaves me in one word----delirious!

Softdrinks Chicken—or Coke chicken, to be more exact. This is a simple dish I stumbled upon when my sister in law came to visit one day. Her chicken was wrapped in foil, stuffed with whole bulbs of onion, cloves of garlic, lemongrass, and carefully turned over in the fire, in a mixture of coca-cola and soy sauce which serves as its basting. The steam on the pot cooks the chicken to the tenderest bit .It tastes pretty much like the local lechon manok and to borrow Max’s byline, is sarap to the bones. I have since tried cooking this on my own, and somehow I would never get the exact same taste again. Gah, now I’m reminded of the spicy buffalo wings I used gobble up every night at Jollibee when I was working on a graveyard shift. It was the kind of food that leaves one finger-licken and happy as a clam in butter sauce, to put it quite literally.

In brief, my other "happinesses" are:

Peach and tangerine yoghurt--- I can have it every day of my life

Dark Chocolate—any kind. The darker, the better (translation-60% cocoa and above)

Blueberry Cheesecake---makes me cry , because it’s so delicious and expensive.

Barbecued Chicken Ass--alright, you can now laugh your ass off at me....

There are several other dishes that are incredibly too mouth-watering for words, and which for sure I have hugely enjoyed and make me smack my lips with gusto and say, mwaaah!

La vie est belle!

Thirty-Nine!

2010-05-04T18:10:00.002+08:00

What I got for my birthday.....

sweet notes on my bedside table...

nice simple dinner.....

a roll of sinful, sumptuous (dark!) chocolate cake....

yummy cheese ice cream....

....and lots of family lovin.

Can't be any more perfect. Merci beaucoup!

Movie Time

2010-04-27T10:22:00.002+08:00

Some of the most notable movies we have seen recently, aside from Up,Diary of a Wimpy Kid which preempted my plans to read the series, and How to Train your Dragon (yet to see), are stop-motion animations that on the surface seem to be made for children, but really contain underlying observations of our true human behavior. I also find them very good even when they are marketed for kids, because unlike other films where parents have to sit down and suffer through them in the name of adult supervision, I myself really enjoyed them and don't have qualms if my children watched them over and over again.

Mary and Max

Very touching story about a lonely Aussie girl and her pen-friend, an obese New Yorker who suffers from Asperger's syndrome. Their friendship spanned twenty years through letters, how they made each other's lives less sufferable by discovering common grounds like a love for chocolates. The ending made me cry, but no spoilers here..

Coraline

Based on the Neil Gaiman 2002 novel, Coraline is a horror-fantasy film about a girl who wishes for something to take her out of her boring existence when she feels neglected by her writer parents. Being brave and curious, she discovers another world where The Other Parents seem to be much cooler and more attentive. Gab and Sophia were horrified with some scenes, especially about Other Mother with the button eyes, and so was I. This is a keeper though, I would not tire of viewing this again. And by the way, it's Coraline, not Caroline : )

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Even in animation, George Clooney (Mr. Fox's voice) proves to be hot, and a force to reckon with. The movie is based on the Roald Dahl classic book about a wily fox who returns to his old wily ways, two years after nearly losing his life when he and his wife Felicity (Meryl Streep) were once caught in a fox trap. The events lead up to his attempts to steal fowl and apples and alcoholic cider from three dimwitted farmers- Boggis, Bunce and Bean--and how they tried to outsmart him by not-so-smart means. Full of sarcastic humor, I was worried at first that it may not be appropriate for kids, but what do I know, they laughed and winced at the right moment. Lesson 101, never underestimate the kids' grasp of the english language. They may be young and little, but they get it. Got it? : ) Lots of laughs in this movie, and also something to learn about greed and over-estimation of one's self.

Relax, see a movie!

Mindoro

2010-04-06T16:34:00.006+08:00

The weekend that my cousins and I were supposed to fly down to Bacolod for the Holyweek, it was called off and we made an alternative trip to Mindoro. I had been to Puerto Galera before, but I had not explored the other side of the island. This was for me another journey with zero expectation, but with a hundred percent optimism.

If we’d pushed through with Bacolod, we probably had been busy participating in the Semana Santa with our Angustia. Born from a family of devout Catholics, Angustia (aka Pieta) was an heirloom passed on to us from the great great grands. Our aunts travel every year from as far as Davao and Manila to prepare the carroza and dress up the Angustia (a figure that depicts Mother Mary cradling the wounded Jesus Christ on her lap). This is especially meaningful to them because my grandfather painstakingly restored it from the state of serious decay, after years that it was noticeably missing from the Santo Entierro procession. I remember as a grade schooler, that Holy Week would coincide at a time when my mother would cut my hair really short, like a bob (being summer and all), and as we were the ones helping out on the carroza after the procession, folks would ask for their handkerchiefs to be wiped on the Angustia for blessing, calling out to me “Ari pa, toto” (here, boy!) –apparently mistaking me for a male. With a sour face, I would grudgingly take their handkerchiefs while I’d silently curse them for the slip-up, thus somehow taking away whatever potent powers they believe was caught into the handkerchiefs. My aunts have been saying it’s high time they pass the responsibility on to us, I mean our generation. Because of that, by default we are expected to be in Bacolod every year, and thereafter, to look after the Angus.

Nonetheless, Lisa and I, together with our families, found ourselves on the bus heading to Batangas port on the early Wednesday morning. It was a perfectly hot sunny day and the kids were running up and down the roro vessel while I was battling a bit of seasickness. My cousin Ed was kind enough to use his uhrm, authority, to exempt us from having to get into a long line of passengers to buy our tickets. We were privileged enough to almost be the first ones to sit on the air-conditioned lounge. Bad idea, however. Five minutes into the trip, after a small meal of beef strips and rice, Gabby was nauseous and was vomiting his guts out. I led him out of the lounge for some fresh air, but he fancied being outside more, so I had to endure the clammy, salty air for the rest of the trip.

When we got to Calapan port, my aunt was down at the ramp waving at us. It was nearing sunset, there was an aura of quiet and calm, and I suddenly had that instinct to sing “Ploningggg!”, as I remember the movie being predominantly set on some seashore, and everything was small and quaint and nostalgic. As an aside, I love small and quaint places---the more off-beaten, the more shy and self-effacing the people appear, the more I am attuned to it. I found it rather ill-bred therefore when someone once off-handedly declared that Saigon (Vietnam) was “one big toilet”. Wow, I would never say that of another country, unless my opinion had been borne out of a very bad encounter, or I was just plain bigoted. Even so, there must surely be something in a place that would more importantly reflect its history and culture, in its artifices and people, and not its urban planning, or lack thereof. To travel is to keep an open mind to new things and experiences, and to give due respect to the territory. Unless otherwise I went on a business or shopping trip, then I will be compelled to shut up about it and keep my ignorance to myself .

At 4pm we headed down to Anahaw. Personally it wasn’t much of a beach, but I didn’t expect much either. We didn't choose Galera because it was peak season, and all we were looking forward to was a breather and the company of family. My cousins and I treat each other like sisters, it’s a bond that I have to thank my aunts for instigating, as their brood of 15 is not a joke, though they have somehow managed to pull the clan together and kept the closeness firmly on ground level. The sand on the beach was as black as the night, there was nothing very appealing about the resort, but the kids couldn’t care less. They scampered off with their swim rings and buckets and shovels before we could even admonish them to stay close by. My shooting chance proved nil as the light was gone, but still I tried. I was wishing I had a wide-angle lens, but I wasn't about to rant and go mental about impossible things. I consoled myself with a few snapshot moments, and forgot trying to be a flickerite. Dinner was spent lounging at the pool side as we went on and on about our childhood, joking good-naturedly about the way we were back then, and the way we still are presently, while the children were just being gloriously happy in the water. It was all I hoped for in a way.

The next day, more cousins arrived. The women found an occasion to walk around town a bit before we did our marketing. There were no malls in Calapan, just one two-storey building where everyone does their grocery shopping. The folks prefer to get their stuff from the wet market and small shops for their dry goods, but otherwise, they seem live a simple, almost primordial existence here. But the traffic light was a revelation. One time, we reached an intersection where a modern-looking traffic post loudly went tick tick tick, almost like a bomb was counting down to explode. We crossed the street in a huff, but in our confusion thought it was a go light, and someone behind us shouted that it was a stop, but we walked on anyway. They were very mindful not to get caught or be penalized. Funny thing is, the streets were a mere one-third size of a city street in Manila, and in Manila people are foolhardy enough to cross the wide streets at any time they fancy, even if they risk colliding with a speeding vehicle. In Calapan, you sense the discipline, you’d hardly see a candy wrapper on a gutter, and people cross on pedestrial lanes, and not anywhere else they please. Hard pill to swallow, eh?

Well, anyway, it was all a swimming affair in Mindoro, as we spent Thursday in another resort, and Friday in a different beach. It was a great experience among our little kids and they hit it off admirably. So it was with us and our spouses. Oliver suffered a bit of a snag though, as he had a gout attack, but all that paled in comparison to the other things. The food was marvelous, fresh and splendidly cooked by my able cuz-in-law Jona. Our hosts were great, and it helped that we had service deluxe anywhere we went, and vip treatment at the port, courtesy of my aunt : )

I also learned how to play tongits, and took pleasure in my so-called beginner’s luck (hey I won around a hundred bucks!). I used to frown on card games, and I kept repeating this story to everyone, that I spent most of my teenage years with grandparents who never passed an afternoon without a session of mahjong or Panguingue, but I never learned to play them because I had a self-imposed aversion to it. Someone taught gin rummy though, and I really enjoyed it, but as long as it didn’t involve money, I never considered a game chancy like gambling. Now that I am adult though, I regret not learning to mahjong, especially on occasions where the skill becomes your meal ticket to inside conversations and witty repartees. So, I’ve resolved to learn mahjong this year and bug, even niggle, my cousins about it. Saturday afternoon, we were on the roro back to Batangas, and we heaved our tired but blissful souls back home.

I have not forgotten about Bacolod and our Angustia, eventually. The thought subdued me from all the noise in my surroundings during the bus trip home. Even if I wasn’t physically present, I mentally walked with my aunts in the procession, closed my eyes in unison to their prayers and reflections, and on a very personal level, acknowledged God in the center of what I had done in the past three wonderful days.

Thoughts—On Birthdays and Life Lessons

2010-03-17T18:28:00.002+08:00

I will be 39 in a couple of months. Just looking at the prospects makes my insides go suddenly rigid. How could have life gone away in a blink? I used to think that 25 was the benchmark, an age where a woman finds herself in a standstill and eventually leaves the mockery of youth forever. Beyond that, she begins to shape herself into an ideal of grace and virtue, bearing the wisdom of a sage and the efficiency of a well-oiled machine. So it was a bit of shock to me that at 26, I still felt that I have not moved up a rung and mapped out my life more clearly. I was way past my quarter life and had not started my own family, at the very least. I was still hanging out at cafes and associating with uncommitted friends.

Maybe I am just the perennial late bloomer. Everything comes to me long after others have gone on to revel at new things and make pioneering choices in their life. When my colleagues have decided to find themselves some fine chap, get married and have children, I was still at the stage of aspiring to meet a boy. I was caught up in the romantic notion that if a certain Jay Gatsby comes by, tries to sweep me off my feet, throw lavish parties and shower me with a parade of worldly goods and excesses, I would turn him down like Daisy did; but in favor of a financially-strapped sickly looking artist-type boy who would impress me, with only a tattered copy of his Foucault-despite not understanding Foucault--- just because he is too broke to afford anything else. I had the belief that if he was bold and honest enough to present himself as thus and win me over, then all is good. For me it was a young, passionate and quixotic idea, enough to make me fall in love. But even if I had sounded foolish and impractical then, I was not being superficial at all.

Now that I am married, with kids, and about to become an official member of the joy luck club, I have to be more grounded and realistic. Good news is that I am a late bloomer and therefore amenable to change. Bad news is I feel that in two months’ time, I will be hanging on a precipice, where 40 looms over more closely than 39, and everything will be too late. Whatever I will learn now won’t do me much good. One day soon, I will slip over the hill and become too old and antiquated to even remember how to get up, much less reflect on things like love and passion. Rather, I will be apprehended by incontinence and the chaos of grandchildren. There’s realism for you.

We all emotionally grow up at some point that our priorities and our stances change. For the worst or the better, only we can know. But while I’m at it, I continually struggle to discover the more fundamental lessons in life. Take for instance, Contentment. If you ask me today-- and I would never admit this years earlier-- I will say that money, is a necessity. It pays the bills, it puts food on the table, it sends my children to school, it ensures my retirement years, it sets me off to buy some occasional womanly trifles for myself. What I failed to account though is that with money too, I can lose sleep over outstanding debts, I can lace my feet with a pair of Louboutins and still feel grossly inadequate, I can habitually sip a cup of Starbucks and create the idea in my head that I belong with my imaginary in-crowd, I can warrant myself a free pass into private soirees of the rich and what haves, and assimilate in their lifestyle by acting like one, I can buy friendships and loyalties and people’s souls, I can stand out and be exasperated by the curiosity of irrelevant humans even if their candor had once been my source of happiness. I never thought that money had that much power, and seeing how people change and become spellbound to it and even become, well greedy, for lack of a better term; I begin to suspect that money indeed can be more important than goodness, and that it all becomes a matter of worshipping the hero of one’s choice.

But I choose goodness, over money. Of course, if I had the money I’d probably be singing a different tune. Imagine the liberties it would afford a working-class woman like me! With money, I’d probably be jetting off to Europe basking on some Parisian afternoon sun, tasting the finer things, carrying about the air of a well-traveled woman with that so-called je ne sais quoi--- instead of skulking at some ratty second-hand bookstore, surreptitiously reading and daydreaming about stories set around a Parisian afternoon sun and a well-traveled woman. But does money need to change me, ingratiate me with the thought that I can be perceived as a better person when I have it or smell like it? How long will it make me happy? Will it ultimately make me happy? I have always thought that we have to be content at some point. If I had enough of it, will I be content then and not want anything? Are there things that can be had without having to mention money? Are they a better option?

In two months, I would like to start something. I would like to advocate simplicity and contentment. I would like to believe that we work to live, and not live to work. I am not wont to be in the forefront of some angsty crowd, crying battle cries of the oppressed or weak. I don’t need to level any playing field and seek equality from anyone, such that my personal values and fulfillments become lost on me. I would like to think that motherhood, and wifehood and womanhood is an act of faith and whether it has set disadvantages from what I had wanted to do, it has certainly done me more good than harm. I would like to convince myself that money can be used for good things, very good things.

I would like to have the answers above and see how it can make me a better person, at 39.

Hello 2010

2010-03-11T16:41:00.001+08:00

So, although it seems like I have completely abandoned blogging in deference to being a full-time something (maybe a mom, worker or photography enthusiast), my heart still hankers for a space to go home to, where I can unload my emotions or thoughts. Do thoughts really need to be unloaded, yes perhaps, because it drains me to have that much to keep inside my (almost) pea-sized brain and not have the means to elucidate myself about them, on account of people around me being busy living their lives as well. My only consolation is, I have a life, and am not moping around waiting for things to miraculously move from point a to point b.

Well sometime ago I have created another blog on which I intended to post my photos. I did, for a while. But as per usual, I tend to start my little ventures and fail to finish or follow them through. Honestly, I get a little overwhelmed with having to keep a lot of things up, I have admitted that I am not good at multi-tasking and that's why maybe my focus is singular in one thing, but any more than that, and I crack down. It's not having an excuse, it's just the truth. So I guess I will keep things simple instead and maintain this original blog. Hopefully I could post more often, or if I lack the initiative to write, I can put up photos of my Sophia my daughter, who happens perhaps to be the only willing model in my, well, photographic pursuits, which honestly causes my self-confidence to vacillate at times. As Henri Cartier Bresson would say though, your first 10,000 photographs are your worst, and seeing that I am probably just on my 3 thousandth, I am not too worried about it. I just get a little impatient, especially after having assumed lots of my shots were good and end up cussing them to varying degrees once I realize the exposure mistakes I've made, and the opportunity I've wasted. It's just me, I can be that single-minded that if you ask me what I ate last night, I wouldn't have remembered.

Things have happened so fast in the last few months, it seems such a daunting task to recall now what they were, but darn I am trying very hard to redeem myself here. Alright, so my little Sophia is not so little anymore. She celebrated her 4th birthday in October of last year. She had her first pink/purple bike from her dad and couldn't have been any happier with it. But I think the bike was just a tad too big for her frame that after a few frustrating tries, and some cuts and bruises to boot, intrepid soul that she is, she shoved the bike in a corner and gave it up for good. I watched her silently hoping that she'd pick it up again one day, but so far she hasn't. Fortunately though, she is one to always have her hands onto something, like drawing. I have observed how she would wiggle happily when I come home with a box of crayons for her, and although she is way past the stage of writing on walls, she comes up with these fascinating stick figures and colorful copies of princesses and mermaids that she sees in her books. I can't say that they exude anything so genius that would make me suspect her of being gifted, but being a mom and someone who appreciates art, I would like to be the first person to give her that latitude she might need to grow into this kind of passion, and even encourage it. I see that she enjoys it and proudly shows me her work when I come home, so I can't help but be positive about it.

My son Gabriel is now 7 years old. He is in grade 1 and becoming much more independent than we could have prepared ourselves for. He is immersed in television, and has outgrown a lot of his toys which reminds me that I should now have to decide whether to keep them or give them away, and should stop buying anything unless he absolutely begged for it. Isn't it true though that when you are a parent, you go through stages of compulsion to provide for your children and smother them with the most colorful little plastic stuff just so you know you are being a good mommy and not depriving them of the essentials of a happy childhood? But yeah, well I've learned, and now I suppose I'll be stubborn about it.

So how about me? What's up with me? Lotsa things, but now I have to go see if I can take a break and come back in a few days.

2010-03-04T16:21:00.001+08:00

thoughts on ondoy

2009-09-30T16:18:00.000+08:00

The lady who goes up to our building selling books at discount price came with an armload of new books some two weeks ago. I immediately noticed one and bought "The Story of Natural Disasters". I thought, great, this should complete Gabby's series, as he already has The Story of Dinosaurs and something else I can't recall. Gabby is an avid follower of shows in Discovery Channel. He likes watching Mega Disasters, Air Crash Investigation, Gone in Seconds, stuff like that, and though the images can be quite graphic, there is still a very logical approach as to why things go amiss and how people could prevent it from happening in the future, so I leave him be.

Gabby, who has a not-so secret ambition of becoming a fighter jet pilot (cough, cough!), has to be coaxed into reading books too, apart from watching tv because, I tell him, that's basically how people learn stuff and go on to become what they want---like a fighter jet pilot. Of course, he believed me. My son however has a new-fangled habit of taking interest in new things for exactly 24 hours, on the dot, and dropping them to the pit of certain oblivion the next. So I decided to put off taking the new book home and shoved it in my office drawer. At one time, i scanned a few pages and came to these facts about Hurricanes:

"The thousands of islands facing the Pacific Ocean to the east and the South China to the west are particularly at risk (from giant hurricanes). They experience typhoons from June to December, corresponding with the region's rainy season. In the Philippines, in 1984, two major typhoons sank 11 ships and caused more than 1,600 deaths".

I thought whoa, so we bear the curse of being geographically located along the typhoon belt, and that is something we've all had to live with. Well, unless some future technology makes it feasible for us to be transported to planet Mars and abandon Philippines, then there's a glimmer of hope, we can leave and start life anew there. I shoved the book back to my drawer and shrugged at my silly thought.

Two weeks passed, and one Saturday, I wake up to ominous clouds. I could feel the ground spew out heat, and I angrily cursed the weather for acting up. I had wanted to go to Divisoria, or get some photos of my daughter in the sun-drenched garden of the city hall. The storm came, and there was nothing much to do except wait it out, curl up in bed and read an old book. I even washed my clothes. It was a storm alright, but we have already been used to it around these months, and it was just something you weather, so to speak. I was miffed that my husband even took his sweet time lounging around and not doing his usual grocery shopping. For me, it was nothing more than another storm, and life should absolutely go on as usual.

And then Sunday, I woke up to the din of frantic news reports on TV, and Kris Aquino's non-stop babbling and self-praising. And then, looking closely at the footages and images on TV, I recalled that little trivia I read from the book and momentarily forgot about Kris.

It was as if a rug has been swept from beneath me, shocking me to my core, suspending me in a disbelief that all these happened in a mere twelve hours that I was being a bitch about the bad weather. Twelve hours, and everything has become so dissonant---cars and houses getting swept in currents, children losing grip of their parents' hands and getting lost in murky waters, people shivering in the cold and getting hungry, people crying for help and getting none, people marooned in roofs and trees and electric wires, fear and dread eating them up slowly as they wait for something to intervene them from being killed or killing themselves, people who suddenly become just an anatomy of helpless bones and muscles and weak flesh, pliant to the strong winds and the wrath of mother-fucking-nature. And I sit here at home, warm and dry, hot coffee cup dangling on my fingers, watching the scenes being retold as if I'm from another world, fear gripping me. It runs in my head, this fear, this shame, that ALL THIS so close to home, and yet I could do nothing but bawl my eyes out crying.....

And so, is this how easily we become statistics in Discovery Channel, mere numbers or footnotes in the Story of Natural Disasters?

The world is screwed, and I am utterly useless.

PS....After picking my brains up, I decided not to be so useless. The world can do away with one less fucked up person, so I am doing my little share in helping the victims of Ondoy. I hope everyone of us should, in whatever little way we can.

Remembering Ninoy

2009-08-20T17:33:00.003+08:00

Pusila! Pusila!

Those are the only words that lingered in my mind while marathon surfing about Ninoy Aquino on you tube today. Being Ilonggo, it's bloodcurling to hear it. Pusila is Visayan word for barilin (in English, an order to shoot someone). This was uttered I believe by one of the soldiers who escorted Ninoy out of the plane on the fateful day of August 21, 1983. "Pusila! Pusila!" This was shouted at Rolando Galman while he was down at the tarmac waiting for Ninoy to step out of the plane. But because Galman was clueless as to what "top" mission he was going into, until that very moment, it was quite evident that he was taken aback at the gruesome murder he was about to commit, at someone very popular and loved nonetheless, and hesitated to do it. Then one of the soldiers said, "Ako na, ako na"....and shots were fired. Galman was shot. At the very same instant, a hero falls.

Tomorrow I'll offer a moment of silence to the memory of the person who bought us freedom with the price of his life.

Life's Heroes

2009-08-06T16:51:00.007+08:00

Many are still in the state of euphoria I guess over President Cory Aquino’s burial yesterday. It was an event reminiscent of Ninoy’s burial back in 1983, when everyone was boiling over with nationalistic ardor and passion. Everyone has his own moment or experience to savor, now that the same things seem to unfold again, reminding us jarringly of what we once were as a nation, and that somehow we have already come full circle.

I was only twelve when Ninoy was assasinated. I didn’t take much stock of what was happening to places outside of my hometown, and owing to my poor memory, I can only remember my grandfather one night, knocking on doors of our neighbors and telling my uncles and aunts what had happened in Manila. It seems at that time, there were only two simple truths: either you were a Marcos loyalist, or a Ninoy lover. I found it rather strange why my grandfather would be overzealous when no one else seemed to share his reactions. Apparently, majority of the families in our family compound were for Marcos. We were the odd ones out. But like anything else that didn’t really interest me, these things passed before my eyes like snippets of an insignificant dream.

My more vivid memory of Cory therefore, was in 1986, three years after Ninoy passed away. My mother was traveling to Manila to receive her cobalt treatments, and I was a 15- year old kid, who processed events in my mind still no more differently than I did when I was twelve. Simply put, politics were beyond me. I was just happy doing teenage things in a partly obscure place like Sum-ag. But in the months leading up to People Power, I had suddenly began hearing more frequently, things like oust, revolution, snap election, leftists, activists, summary killing, church and state unification. It just felt like something imminent was coming. I just didn’t know what.

Back in Bacolod, I was suddenly thrown into a whirl of events that I am just recalling now with faint amusement, because I felt like it was just the most spontaneous thing to be in. I was a middling character even back then and was never destined to have any voice about anything. Besides, blogs were not in fashion yet so even if I had wanted to write about it, the effort would have proved futile and easily forgotten. Doy Laurel was running for president against Marcos, under the Nationalista Party, but people were keener on having Cory run. What I understood was that Doy gave way and would run as her Vice-President. The reason why Doy Laurel came to mind is because his wife Celia Diaz-Laurel happens to be my grandfather’s first cousin. And one of the Diaz grandchildren was my good friend and classmate in St. Scho. I used to come over to their big ancestral home in Lacson Street. As a caveat though, I didn’t intend to speak of these people as though I have a direct affinity to them. I maybe a distant cousin, but if we had any relationship at all, I was definitely that proverbial poor relation. Moving on….

The hub of Doy’s campaign in Bacolod is in that house in Lacson, so you probably get the picture of how busy things got there. This was one of the many occasions that I was invited to come around, and since they always treated me well, I tried to make myself useful in the process. Rizza and I, together with her young cousins, were tasked to go around the city in a pickup van to place Doy stickers on virtually everything we could legally get our hands on. Later on, more cousins and relatives began to volunteer. Our new job was simple. We just needed to put stickers with Vice-President over Doy’s posters that says for President. There were hundreds and thousands of those posters, but I never questioned anyone of the change. I was just there happy being in the middle of all that flurry, excited to be of help, and elated at the chance to be in the same room with Senator Doy Laurel, and one of the sons, Cocoy who was fond of singing all the time. No one was probably aware of my existence there in that small capsule of time, and there was definitely no life-changing paradigm shift taking place inside of me, but yeah, it’s an amusing memory altogether.

In February, my mother and father were still in Manila, and then the People Power happened. Mother called long distance to tell us, not about her treatment, but that she was in the Edsa rally, taking part in the historic event. It was great to imagine her exhilaration although I still didn’t fully comprehend why it was such a big deal. Now in my adult mind, 1986 becomes a year of importance—a year we had our first woman president, a year the Philippines was catapulted into global consciousness, a year my mother finally lost her battle to cancer. And probably also a year I emotionally grew up.

So, where is Cory in all of these? Well, after Cory was proclaimed president, life went back to its normal state. I was motherless, and the price of commodities inflated sky-high. All of a sudden, everyone was skimping on food, foregoing vacations, feeling utterly poor. Nothing much changed for us. If at all, life turned for the worse. It’s not because of her administration; it was just my state of things at that time.

Fast forward to 2009, I am a mother to two children who have little peculiar quirks as I do. I still cringe at the thought of discoursing politics with anyone, let alone myself. I am just not born with an astute mind to analyze, or an acerbic tongue to critique, or an ample amount of confidence to speak up and be in the know of things intelligently in that general scale. I leave that to the experts. I am content to be one of the nameless millions who make up the productive sector of our society and that is good enough for me. I feel that my role is to live a life with benevolence and compassion towards everyone, to pay my taxes dutifully and obey traffic rules, to buy groceries and bring my own brown paper bag so that I don’t in essence cut more trees, to be a conscientious mother who makes sure that my children do not grow up delinquent and freeloaders so that more taxpayer money is wasted on unsustainable causes because I should know I am a taxpayer myself, to give to charities whenever I have the means, to donate or recycle old things so that I don’t have to keep buying new ones, to try not to watch pirated DVDs which is a hard habit to break but absolutely feasible. My role is to be a good person in very minute, even traditional, ways. And that is okay for me. My reason is that if millions of us do these things every single day, only in realistic proportions, and not in a sweeping radical sense that is good only as our fifteen minutes of fame and media mileage, then certainly we do not have to be overwhelmed like children and join the anarchy in the streets for the right passions but the wrong reasons.

But I veer farther away from Cory. Now there is a woman, who accepted the burden of steering millions of people to the right path even if she was only a housewife, who stayed the course of her presidency with utmost decency and integrity in her character, who esteems her country more than she does her life, who for the many adulation she is given remains to be humble and distant from the trappings of materialism, who believed that everyone has equal chance at everything, who until the very final chapter of her life wanted nothing much but tangible human resolve to be better and do better, whose name Corazon (heart) is simply the embodiment of what she really was in her life. Her heart was bigger than life itself. That was her role in life--to be herself and inspire. Her son said that for all the praises about his mother and father, being heroes of our life, the fact remains that they are just human and ordinary like everyone else, that they were just thrown into extraordinary circumstances, and did the right thing. In this entry, I will label them "angels".

In life we encounter people who have done illustrious things and possess characteristics that we can only draw inspiration from. They are the brand of people we’d like to look up to as our personal heroes. But, we should also not forget that within us is an innate goodness that we need to tap—that quality that makes us ourselves little heroes in our own right.

Ex Libris...

2009-07-22T14:14:00.014+08:00

If I were very rich, I would build a really humongous badass library full of great books. I'll have every single book its own smug Ex Libris label: From the library of XXX, collector extraordinaire. But it's not very likely I'll be, so, I'd settle on getting them bit by bit, probably even second-hand. That was just me dreaming a tad late in the day. Anyways, these are the titles I'd like to get my hands on, pronto, in no particular order of importance or literary value:

Diary of a Wimpy Kid Series- Jeff Kinney

Witches of Eastwick

Widows of Eastwick- John Updike

HP 6 The Deathly Hallows- JK Rowling

The Mysterious Benedict Society- Trenton Lee Steward

I happened to watch this feature of JK Rowling in the Biography Channel one day, and was impressed about her rags to riches life story. Not one without its twists and turns, there was a point when she was living on her social security checks, she was suffering depression after her first marriage crumbled, and was close to committing suicide. Yet, shy as she was, she was also an avid lover of literature and was able to channel all of her life experiences to create a story that now, without question, goes down in history. The first of Harry Potter series (The Philosopher's Stone a.k.a The Sorcerer's Stone) started out as an idea during a long train journey, and whose manuscript she typed on a very old typewriter. It was not a very smooth ride before she got published, but many already saw the big potential in her writing. From obscurity, she would soon rise to fame and become one of the best loved writers of children's books.

She said that Harry Potter is representative of her, although characters like Hermione Granger are also loosely based on her from when she was a younger. I suppose then horrid things like the Dementors need not be explained further. When she sold the rights of her first book to a movie outfit, it made her an instant millionaire. And it follows that she broke publishing records by selling milllions of copies of the rest of her seven books, the last installment of which she finished and published in 2007. It sold overwhelmingly, hotter than hotcakes, not only in the UK, but all over the world. Even the cheapskate that I am got five of her books and am now willing to cut a limb, if it would cost me that much, to have the two remaining books.

In the feature, A Year in the Life, the story revolves around JK Rowling working on the last of her HP books, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Snippets of her life are shown--- she hies off in a secret hotel room to slog on her manuscript, also a brief look at her house in Scotland, and a few miles away, her old tiny apartment (or what they call flat in the UK ). I am quite blown away at her real fortune----a castle-like home, great family and husband, and a very peaceful life. But it also showed a part of her tearing up at the recollection of her less than perfect childhood, and her life as a single mother. She visits her old flat in Edinburgh and looks back at a time when it (the HP idea) all started and where her life finally took a big turn. She largely remains a private person, and is often seen to be an aloof media personality. But she explains that the fame thing is something she still constantly struggles and is never comfortable with. Presently, she is someone who probably never has to worry about her finances for as long as she lives. But also because of that, she has focused a part of her fortune to philanthrophic causes, being an advocate in helping women and children cope with situations in single-parent homes. Great story, ain't it?

All that can be said though, why Harry Potter is such a hit, is that it simply made children (and even adults like us, admit it!) find love for reading anew. And on that alone, I think Joanne Rowling deserves whatever fortune has come her way.

Don't Be Hatin'!

2009-07-16T12:49:00.004+08:00

These past few days, I have been trying to analyze a person’s actuations---the long face, the sudden silence, a defiant silence that says “leave me alone, people”. It’s very easy to understand that, the wanting to be alone part, except that nobody knows where it’s coming from, and how unexpectedly. The awkward feeling is really unwarranted, especially in a place where only a handful of familiar faces deal with each other everyday. I mean, sure there are no catfights and open animosity to worry about. But pretending that everyone is collectively okay about it, for days going, while the other person marches in and about as if she’s on a global strike, well isn’t it easier to just join the picket line and boycott her the same way?

But I wouldn’t want to. I want to understand how the other person is feeling. Have we done anything wrong? Was it a slight? PMS maybe? Or just plain bad mood? Well, it’s easy to assume things, especially if the person is not so keen to keep her body language in check. So do I go up to her and talk about it? But how, when she suddenly storms out of the room at the first opportunity, avoiding everyone like a plague? I probably have had enough of this sour face that I’m really close to losing my top, and tempted to rant about it in the open. I guess I won’t.

Thank goodness for blogs where I can vent out all of these maddening thoughts, and yeah, expose my vulnerability in the process. But who cares. Isn’t this a better option, than ruminate a fight plan and eventually get myself into an epic verbal scuffle with a person? So, blogging is the answer. I promise, the moment I get over into my last sentence, I’ll feel better. I just needed to get this off my shoulders. I hope though that the bone of my contention realizes what an emotional aggravation this whole thing is to me, and to the rest of the clueless world….

It’s funny that as we grow older, the harder it becomes to open up and be forthright with our feelings towards other people. There are such things as a heart-to-heart talk, but I believe with people our age, it’s more of the head that does the dealing. Often, we hesitate to lay down all our cards, and only in a tiny moment of vulnerability will we reveal more of what’s inside us. But we would withdraw once again, with such alacrity, because it always seems imperative to be in control of the game and be poker-faced about it.

Children are different. They are brutal with truth, but once they say what’s in their hearts, there is no emotional baggage or excesses that’s carried over. They'll leave, move on with life lightly, and without apprehensions. It is only around their growing up years that they learn to fib and distort the truth. It’s a rite of passage, a milestone that sadly marks their entry into the corrupt world of adults.

If I were to be a child again this very moment—blunt and honest--- all I can say about this whole commotion is:

It’s just jealousy, honey.

Get over it.

And don’t be hatin’!

Mourning for Michael

2009-07-13T16:24:00.006+08:00

Can you sincerely cry over the death of someone you do not personally know? Can emotions really be evoked in you, seemingly out of nowhere, when you learn of a person who unexpectely crossed to the other side? If it was someone who had an imperfect past, was caught in moral crossfires, was famous in different but opposing contexts, who only sang and danced his heart out and did many wonderful things, but has faced eternal public persecution for the things he may have not, would you have the same level of sympathy for him , like you would for a person related to you by blood?

As one who has invariably professed sadness and trepidation over the passing of people she knows and loves, I think my only true emotions of sadness lie in the fact that the sudden demise of a person, regardless of who he was, would affect the people he left behind, in a way that will leave them painfully empty and out of touch from anything real for a while, numb to say the least, until they are able to allow proper emotions to well up in them, and make them come to terms with what had happened.

Much like the millions of others, I was shocked with the news of Michael Jackson’s death. When the memorial for him aired live on CNN, my husband and I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning. I believe I cried a bucket, going through similar emotions that gripped the millions of people who watched the proceedings that day (or night from my side of the globe). But I cried, also because a lot of things were stoked up in me. It wasn’t until much later that I found myself really thinking about his death, unconsciously rummaging for explanations that baffle my ordinary mind, and what it was that got me involved in this sort of emotional upheaval that had every other man talking about, both in public and in private.

I think it is because I am a mother like Katherine (Jackson), a parent who derives intense pleasure in knowing that my children are safe in my arms and that this shocking loss is something I have not prepared myself for. Also, I am a daughter (like Michael’s children), who do not know what to make of my parent’s passing, at a time when I least expected it, because there was so much promise of tomorrow, of the years that we could share together, of the experiences that would imprint in me emotionally, as I slip into adulthood, but was suddenly cut short because the one person I leaned on to isn’t there anymore.

The death of Michael Jackson has brought out a flood of differing opinions from people of all walks of life--people who feel they are authorities to his life, people who wax philosophical about what he really was and why he was what he was, and people who are quick to dismiss his death with ridicule and contempt, because they say so. Sadly, in life and in death, Michael Jackson had to suffer for his art....

I have no useful opinion of Michael Jackson’s history and life, or the intricacies of it, as I believe I am one of those segment of society who prefer to stay in the periphery of things, whose social mediocrity and lack of strong estimation of who he was is eclipsed only by my simple appreciation of his music, the music which lulled and still lulls my heart and fences it within, every time Childhood plays, the groove

I get into with the infectious beat of Billy Jean, the awe I hold in the majestic simplicity of his moonwalk, and many things else that encompass what I know of him, as an artist---not the distortion of a persona who wore surgical masks and who was believed to sleep in a hyperbaric chamber, or was an extra-terrestrial. He could have been a wasp in another dimension, for all I care.

I won’t even allow myself now to use the word “iconic”, which begs yet another question as to why in spite of many choosing him an icon, someone who is supposed to rise out and above the din of society’s woes and frailties, many others still found pleasure in ripping him apart and depriving him of basic human respect.I am tempted to say, leave him alone, now that he is gone, as his brothers begged---but I think people would not yet relent, not until they probably prove themselves right. Not until they have torn up every shred of his poor soul. At least, not for a while.

Because of his music, I only saw Michael Jackson as a distant star, an idiot like Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s book, who was the quintessence of both humility and greatness. His naive belief that people would appreciate and love him, simply for himself and his music, had instead come down to earth to suffer, without reason, a taste of human bigotry in all its ridiculous proportions, throughout the major part of his creative life. It’s a Michael who wanted to do good and positive things, but was thrown in the pits of derision and isolation, because of the fallacy that surrounded him, fallacies that rose out of prejudice in human eyes, eyes that claimed they knew good from evil.

My heart rains for his soul...

Photography-Things I Learned

2009-06-19T18:59:00.012+08:00

I am tenacious, in the same way that I can be a drifter, yet learning my way through photography is something that I can proudly say of as my own. Scouring the web for anything that might prove useful in getting the whole concept of "a picture", I had gone to so many websites where I study beautiful photos, to forums where others share their tips and tricks in editing, while some others are just too uppity to express their mild aversion to post-processing.

However, some of the best photographers I have come to admire admit that they process and proof a hundred percent of their photos before these even get to see the light outside of their digital darkroom, and on to their sites. So, that's probably saying a lot. I have tried many fancy stuff myself in Photoshop, and hell, I even get to keep a small notebook with me where I chronicle my constantly evolving workflow, hoping that one day I can shout my eureka to the world, and settle on the very most perfect kick-ass workflow ever, and be the next Annie Leibovitz of the 21st century. But well, one has to be grounded and wake up to the real world. As always, I would go into my lengthy and tedious mini-speech before I even get to my main beef.

So, anyway, this entry is a sort of amalgamation of all photography-type things I have learned, technically on my own, but with the aid of many sites where people are just too happy to share what they know. Even if I sort of sound like one of those counter-productive asses who complain about things but shamelessly filch company work hours to do personal stuff, seriously, this is something I'd also like to share with whoever is interested, in keeping with my pay-it-forward project:

* Nothing beats learning your camera first before you even get out there and expect for it to do the work for you. Too often, we start out with wrong settings, or without understanding the basic functions of our camera, and blame it for our blah photos. Of course it helps if you own a first-rate gadget, but it's only as good as you know it.

* Proper exposure equals great colors, shadows and highlights right on. If you made a mistake firsthand, there is still hope, a way to salvage a photograph. When post processing, always look at the histogram of your photo before you do anything else. Correct levels is synonymous to appropriate exposure, which almost eliminates the need to sharpen images after post-processing. If your camera is capable of RAW, so much the better. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that you are using a middle range point and shoot or dslr, and that you were just too eager beaver to take your shots. Then don't fret.Your next best bet: editing.

*ISO-I always wonder how others achieve those creamy photographs. The secret: use the lowest possible ISO setting you can get, and never bump it up unless necessary.

*Composition-something I am still working on, even as I speak, but this is probably the key to all beautiful photographs you see and drool on. You just have to try and try, until you get the hang of it. It doesn't matter if you get one good shot out of a hundred crappy ones. Everyone starts there. I am still there. Try all techniques in the book, and then through your own eyes or perspective, until you learn that creative approach, such that you are able to bring images into a unique visual form, something that will differentiate a photo from your usual snapshot.

*Much as I appreciate originality, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong about admiring other artists, whose work inspire you to try out their techniques until you are able to fetch ideas of your own. If at all, it is a serious form of flattery. The more fickle you are with your style, the more likely you will be able to understand what you really finally want. And, remember there is no rule that says you can't change your style. I wouldn't want to get stuck in one, and realize too late that I could have done better. There are two photographers that I really admire so much, Wynona for her very clean, evocative images, and Beth Jansen for her amazing colors and unique, bold style (links coming up). Both photographers are mothers like me, who also started when they had their first child, and who were self-taught. It's a fact that gives me quite a headstart, that one is never too old, or obscure to learn things. Copying blatantly or stealing images from these people who worked so hard on their images, however, is another thing. As the beautiful Anna Scott said, "Rufus, you belong in jail"..... Eeek.

*I found that to get tack-sharp images, you have to tinker with your camera's f-stops. Sometimes we misunderstand, because it's not necessarily the lowest (widest aperture) in our camera that gives us the most pointed photos. For instance, my kit lens give me very good results at f5.6 or f8. Or, I heard, that a lens with 1.8 max aperture is in its sharpest at 2.0 or 2.2. So, it's all relative. Maybe, we should all get a pair bionic eyes to determine that.

* 85% of the time, my subjects are my children. The 15% are self-portraits, my other family members, and things in my surroundings. You know how children can be uncooperative when you take photos of them sometimes, I mean most times? Yes. The more your force them into your frame, the more disinclined they will be at posing for you. But although, they are some of the most difficult subjects to photograph, they can also give you some of the most delightful photos you'll ever have. You'll just have to be very patient with them. And then of course it helps if you're always ready to aim at those special moments when they're not really looking, but they are there. For me, that is a lot of hard work, but there is where I find my joy.

That's it for now. I'll try to give this topic another whirl when I find myself here again. These are my observations as a beginner though, and I'm sure a lot of seasoned photographers who happen to get lost here would find themselves raising a hairy brow at some things I said. This is no bible truth, totally, and one is welcome to challenge or even correct me, but let me be the first to say I am a perennial work in progress, so next time, I might just possibly disown my words here.

On Gratitude

2009-06-09T13:36:00.010+08:00

Not so long ago, I signed up with a photo sharing site Flickr, and met some virtual friends who shared a mutual interest in photography. From their photostreams, I would find an overwhelming amount of inspiration and knowledge--in the way they perceive things, their techniques with the camera, their processing workflow, and more than anything, a slice of their personal lives...what they do, where they go to, who they are with. Where I stood, I had absolutely nothing much to show to my small newfound circle of friends, except photos of me and my family, especially that of my two little children. The camera I was using then was a 6megapixel point and shoot that my husband got me one Christmas. But in Flickr, it wasn't about your camera or your gear. It's first and foremost about the story you want to share. Then, it's about the people you share that story with.

You see, I had always thought there are certain things that polarize us human beings, that give us that explicit, glaring distinction from one another-- like good and evil, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly---and that sometimes, we are caught up in that grey area in between those two extremes, where we can't really point out where we belong. That's why we can be confused, or worst, delusional. But I also think that there are things that even us out, balance us, or to put it bluntly, equalize us, regardless of who we are and where we are at in our lives. And that is where Flickr comes to mind, as all other user-generated sites do, where everyone, and I mean everyone, can say and has a say.

A year into joining Flickr, I had made friends with a very kind couple who, from the little that I've gathered about them, are very artistic and are living a quiet albeit very successful life in Europe. They are also Pinoys who have ventured far, and simply put, are just blessed with everything, probably brought about by being both born with silver spoons. C is an artist, a painter, sculptor, singer--a beautiful woman with an even more beautiful spirit. I say this because I have once met her in person and I was just truly overwhelmed at the fact that she welcomed me with so much sincerity and warmth, that it was almost a little silly of me to act coy towards her, when she was trying to reach out like she'd known me for a long time. But you know, you get a little star struck with people whose personalities are just like the sun, you want to bask in their warmth, and yet they are too huge for you to take in suddenly? I wish my daughter, who I brought along with me when I met C, have already had the sense to know what a great experience she got into---because for me, that was something I would like for her to remember in a long, long time and when she grows up.

The other half of this couple is R, and he is the big reason why I continue on to try better at my photography. He was my very first friend, I suppose, in Flickr, and probably the most consistent one to rally me on to keep uploading my photos---and even my writing. Intelligent, artistic, on the same creative pursuits as his wife, and like all the other people who comment in my photostream, he says the kindest things, and appreciates the candidness conveyed especially by the images of my daughter Sophia. There is a great empathy in what he does, and though I am one to express my gratitude a little too sweepingly sometimes, I had never wished for more than just being able to relish the pleasant words being exchanged in the affable Flickr circle I was in--- a small circle of people from different parts of the earth, brought together and equalized by the same love of photography, looking through but beyond cultural differences, financial status, and skin color.

So it was indeed a tad too....what's the proper word.....well, I'd say humbling, yes that's how it felt really, humbling-- that one day, I'd get an email asking how I would like to have a DSLR. A digital single lens reflex camera? from a stranger friend? I mean, they're not strange people at all, but to be offered something like that from someone you'd never met---- and it’s certainly not just a box of chocolates, although a box of chocolates would have been prized just the same, it’s an expensive camera, darn it!---well don't things get a little too much twilight-zonish strange??? And do I say yes, or no? To be honest, it was a little embarrassing at first. I had to check whether I had insinuated about wanting to get a new camera, somewhere in my photo stream or blog, and probably yes I had, but I had wished it aloud, to myself, and no, I had not wanted to impose that wish on anyone, outside of myself. But again, if a person had very magnanimously offered you something he owns, because he felt that he had learned much from it and would like to pass it on to you so you can benefit from it the same way, and simply because he believes you got a chance at something, do you refuse? out of tact, or pride, or sheer embarrassment? I had to struggle with it all for a while. I just realized though, that refusing the offer, would have meant a lot more--- letting a good person down, letting myself down, letting my dreams down. And it was something I thought I would hate to regret about someday. And yes...., I said yes.

Far from suddenly owning a precious object, absolutely free of charge, what was even more humbling was the value of a person’s trust and friendship that comes with it. That even though the selfless act of giving was something I l had long convinced myself of as entirely real, there is a definitive part of me that feels I have the responsibility to emulate this kindness in the everyday things that I do. Not that I’ve never been kind. I believe that I had done my fair share in the compassion department, without heralding those few things. But when luck falls on your lap, as big and as overwhelming as this one, you can’t help but feel that you must be accountable to take care of it and make it grow, and love it with all your might, and spread it far and wide, so that others will also sow and eventually reap the same seed of kindness. A little act indeed maybe for people like Clarissa and Ramon.......but I just had to have grand illusions about it.

And again, it is never too late, or out of fashion, to say THANK YOU.

2009-05-12T14:23:00.003+08:00

This blog is my catch-22, only because I am such a bipolar kind of blogger. That means I am always stuck in a writing dilemma---either I have too much to talk about, or absolutely nothing to talk about. Either way, I get frustrated. So do the handful of people who stumble here. As they say about rolling stones....well, they gather no moss. Sounds like me. I am going to attempt another style—talk about my life at random, by way of bullet points. Maybe I’ll achieve some sort of cohesion with my thoughts if I try to go small, pigeonhole events or ideas in my head, mainly to avoid the spate of emotions that comes with suddenly being able to uncork that sort of mental block I had thought would never ever let loose. My challenge now is to sustain my middle ground and stay on an even keel:

. I am still frustrated that I am not able to buy my nifty glass. But I am debating whether to wait for a bit more and get the 1.4 which would render me 15k pesos poorer, not that I have that amount to dispose already. As it is, my photography is put on hold, except for random shots that I have little time to go over and process. I think that I put too much pressure on myself to come up with better shots---but I am itching, itching to know how crucial a change my prime glass could bring to my photography. I have made up my mind to stick to portraiture.

. Google sounds like ogle---and that’s what I do. Everyday of my working life, I try to find that window of opportunity to read up on different things that can help me understand better. Books, music, news, opinions, photography, cooking, shopping, sewing---very motherly things if I may say so. But also, I lurk in gossip and fashion blogs, you tube, kid channels, and (probably the only sports I read up on)….boxing. Needless to say, it’s all about Manny Pacquiao.

. Random facts about my kids, besides physically growing at an exponential rate:

GABRIEL

Favorite TV shows: Phinneas and Ferb, Chowder, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Clone Wars, How Stuff Works, Myth Busters, Smash Lab

Food fix of the moment: kfc famous bowl; fried sharksfin and green rice

Favorite wear: old tattered shirts and board shorts

Current catchphrase: oh boy!, hindi kaya?

Peeves: his sister, the humid weather, pop music

On his wishlist: a ginormous LEGO hovercraft, which costs shitload of pesos

SOPHIA

Favorite TV shows: Spongebob, Animal Mechanicals, Dibo, Word World

Food fix: chocolate pretzels

Favorite wear: dresses and a faux tiara; also my black office pumps

Current catchphrase: Barbie girls!

Peeves: her thin feathery hair, her things out of place (some daughter I have!)

On her wishlist: Ariel’s thingamabobs, a pink bike or scooter

. I spent the few remaining weeks of April reading the four Twilight saga books. I saw the movie, and read the books again, and again (make that the third time) including the leaked copy of Midnight Sun. I must admit now that I am hooked on all the twilight gossip, and am short of saying that I am bowled over with the british hunk Robert Pattinson. Well, big deal. He is not after all my first brit obsession, taking into consideration the major crushes I’ve had for years running for these dudes--Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Jude Law….and shucks, even Clive Owen. And, just to illustrate my little point, not that anyone has to contend with it:

See what I mean???

Is Edward Norton british, by the way?

But, well it doesn't matter, I am sure he is the one exception.....

I had wanted to write something about Gratitude but...go small remember? I mean, let's just say I just unexpectedly had gone off-tangent... because.

So, I’ll save that up for next time.

2009-04-27T15:19:00.000+08:00

Two Lovers

2009-03-17T16:38:00.012+08:00

I love tales of reclusive dreamers who look for chance meetings, thinking it would somehow change the course of their lives. I myself for one, am a dreamer, who often, and deliberately, draw emotions from the things that I watch by, at a safe and concealed distance. I know it reeks of timidity, but it is probably the dreariness of everyday life that makes me alienate myself a tad bit from the happenings of the real, tangible world, and position myself from a vantage point. By allowing myself to watch the world go by before my eyes, there is a kind of simplistic but dispassionate approach to believing I am a part of the great scheme of things. I would like to think that there is spontaneity in feeling happy when I see people happy ; or sad when it is raining or when I see a lonely man retire in a park bench---but it is because they are unaware of the intensity of feeling their actions bring to me. It is probably the only way I can fully see my real self and fathom the deepest of human emotions, and how inexorably I am involved in all of it. It is this kind of personality that I was aware of having-- growing up as a teenager, with no family or established friends, and which never really deserted me--- introspective and emotional, to the point of being dark and moody. But although there is a particular sadness rooted deeply to everything that I feel or do, I am sure that there is, too, an enormous sympathy for everyone, and everything.

In this blog, I have been told by a few, and heck, even by myself, that I have the tendency to be verbose and probably over-sentimental, admitting to a lot of drama-queen moments. But I guess it is a fact that I am trying to exorcise myself out of it, of the emotions that I cannot otherwise articulate in spoken words to other people. I am not the most eloquent talker you would meet, you know, and certainly not half as lucid, but I am capable of being in normal relationships, and of functioning as a rational human being. Even as a wife or mother, I try to be practical and level-headed, although I still always thrive to be more disposed to my roles. But, I find there isn’t enough balance to how I feel. Somehow the other side of me still leans more heavily to the force of depression, in the same way that I am conditioned to read stories with sad endings, or to see the outcome of things with a degree of disappointment---thus, the sometimes brutal honesty with which I express myself. I will for instance, prefer to read my old, deteriorating copy of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, or Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, over my husband's shiny motivational bestsellers---It would be unlikely of me to pander to my half-truths and pretend I am happy.

Of course I admit that I’d sometimes like to be happy. Or maybe always. I believe too, that true happiness emerges from having a healthy spiritual life, and it would be liberating to feel that level of optimism in many things, to be awash with love and joyfulness and the feeling that the world is in absolute agreement with you, so that you can shout it out at the top of your lungs, at the risk of appearing manic---but nevertheless happy, happy, happy!

Yet there is something profound about suffering and misery that keeps me sane and whole. It leaves me with genuine and valid respect for the people who have the power to describe in words the moments of human consciousness when it hits rock bottom, of being in pitch dark, devoid of rationality and hope—a place where others dare not follow, but are curious of. Think Dostoevsky, Woolf, Hemingway, all the dark writers and suicides! I am not too proud of the way I am, because I always seem like I am ready to dive head on to the murky waters of my own self-recriminations and failings. But I am not planning on suicide. Much as people think those who commit suicide are cowards, I see them as very brave ones who only ceased to find rationality in their existence, but were not afraid to stagger through their darkest tunnels and confront their most frightful demons. The irony is they did not live to tell their tales. What they left is a chasm, an ocean of emotional confusion and moral misjudgment which would live on for years and years.

This movie I just saw brought all this introspection into meaning. " TWO LOVERS is a classic romantic drama, with Joaquin Phoenix giving a raw and vulnerable performance as Leonard, a charismatic but troubled young man who moves back into his childhood home following a recent heartbreak. While recovering under the watchful eyes of his parents (Isabella Rossellini/Moni Monoshov), Leonard meets two women in quick succession: Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), a mysterious beautiful neighbor who is exotic and out-of-place in Leonard’s staid world; and Sandra, the lovely and caring daughter of a businessman who is buying out his family’s dry-cleaning business. Leonard becomes deeply infatuated by Michelle, who seems poised to fall for him, but is having a self-destructive affair with a married man. At the same time, mounting pressure from his family pushes him towards committing to Sandra. Leonard if forced to make an impossible decision-between the impetuousness of desire, and the comfort of love---or risk falling back into the darkness that nearly killed him..."

In human relationships, there is a proverbial question: Would you rather be with someone you love, or with someone who loves you? Well, we all certainly are inclined to build love castles in the air, empty and far from reality, in the same way that we can suffer needlessly for things and people that cannot understand our motives for doing so. Have you ever found yourself in a situation of feeling what is called unrequited love? Or of the experience of being cared for by another human being, but that it is impossible to draw the same emotions or even to estimate the value of such love to you, so that you can then respond to it fittingly? In the movie, this is how the character of Joaquin Phoenix was torn in between.He was a depressed man to begin with, and I should assume that whatever was going to happen to him shortly after his failed suicide attempt, would hold heavily in his heart, a childlike heart worn down by repressed emotions, and the pain of contradiction he has in his life, mainly because of his broken engagement, and of wanting to please the parents who love him unconditionally. But also it was a heart, so honest in its form, that it exalted even the most undeserving of people. Two situations presented to him —to settle comfortably and continue the family legacy, ensconced in the safe world of familiar faces and a caring girl, or to step out of his home, take charge of his life with a self-destructive woman he is obsessed with, face the uncertain future, but nevertheless experience love’s highs. Can you imagine that he chose both, in succession as well? Is it even possible that life can give you multiple choices, and that you set your whole heart in one, and can then choose the next best answer should the first one fail, say in a series of events not even one hour past of the other? Darn, I don’t think it’s realistic, but well, there’s Hollywood for you.

It is amazing though, how love---between a man and a woman, can alter us, can turn us into something beyond ourselves, ennobling us to be selfless enough and realize that it is better to care for another human being, than be at the receiving end of it.

But also, love is such a terrible human flaw that can destroy us and our whole life, when we lose grip of it and subject ourselves to its torment and destruction. It makes us distrust humanity and ourselves, it makes us escape from the world of reason and compassion, it alienates us from the rest of humanity while we lick our wounds in silence, at least for a while. But in a more permanent sense, it leaves us with an infirmity, a kind of neuroses or pain that we have to endure and live with, in every relationship we get in and out of.

The Glass Menagerie

2009-03-11T00:43:00.002+08:00

One of my favorite things in life is reading. I had always thought to myself that if I could never be a good writer, then I could at least be a good reader—someone who enjoys books immensely and keeps an open mind for them. Over the years, I had picked out books here and there, mostly classic literature, and spent many hours walking around bookstores to skim through them, or to add them to my collection. In all those times that I was to be found in this sort of dreary ritual--sitting quietly alone on inconspicuous corners----books had provided me an ideal company, a shield for unwanted advances, a good reason to stay put when I was financially down and out, just generally a good way to feed a constantly hungry soul. Used to be that in one day, I could devour no less than a couple of books. And I still wasn’t sated over.

Now that I am a working mother, however, sneaking a book into my routine is an indulgence, and has to be dealt with a lot of patience, and delayed gratification. Delayed meaning, one book could take up a week, or a month, to finish. But, no complaints hey. So, apart from my oft-repeated outbursts about the harassment of motherhood, I wanted to talk again about the book I just recently finished reading: THE GLASS MENAGERIE. Typically, I would say that I am probably better off twittering about my children, or how I am trying not to appear too self-absorbed by making small attempts to talk about them, but really, it’s the diminutive things that kill me, those little things that go on in our household everyday that I would want to pick anecdotes from and share in my blog. But having a shitty, pathetically substandard memory, I will not even attempt that. Suffice it to say, that I suck in the story-telling department. So, again, bear with my incoherent ramblings. .

THE GLASS MENAGERIE is a play written by Tennessee Williams. It is about the Wingfields- Amanda, her children, Tom and Laura—a family struggling through the difficulties of their life, from the fact that the father had left them and never had returned. Amanda is the mother who lives in the memories of her past glories as a child of a genteel family, a southern belle who married a telephone man, but was left to wage a solitary battle in raising two unusual children. Laura, her daughter , is a cripple who is painfully shy and confines herself to her world of little glass ornaments of animals-what her mother calls her glass menagerie. Her mother worries that Laura will spend her days as an old maid and would have no one to take care of her. Tom is a dreamer who hates his job in the shoe warehouse. He is constantly annoyed of the pressure his mother puts on him to become financially successful so he could look out for his sister, and he turns to literature and movies and drinking to allay his frustrations. He secretly dreams of running away to join the Marines. But before he did, he obliged his mother to find a gentleman caller for Laura. Jim Connor was invited over to the Wingfields for a dinner elaborately prepared by Amanda. It wasn’t shortly after they discovered that Jim Connor was engaged to be married—shattering all their dreams, like he accidentally broke Laura’s glass unicorn. Tom finally gets to step out of the house and run away. The play ends with Tom narrating how he had followed in his father’s footsteps and had travelled many places, but that many times something had pulled him back, and reminded him of his sister Laura. As he exclaimed “ Oh Laura, Laura , I tried to leave you behind me, but I am more faithful than I intended to be…..for nowadays the world is lit by lightning! Blow out your candles, Laura---and so goodbye…..”

How tragic, I can just weep all day about it. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference, reading something like this, then you begin to realize how circumstances of your life resonate with what you read in print, or when you dismiss and say it’s just pure fiction. It gives you an eerie feeling that the author might guess your emotions at precisely the same moment it is being played out in the book, to convince you of its veracity. It must be fluke, too, knowing that this book was written way back before I was even a dot in the face of cosmos, and surely I wasn’t yet involved in the great scheme of anything for the writer to guess someone in a remote part of the earth would be able to come across his work . But very cunningly, real life is reflected in the words and situations presented here, that it feels politically correct to say how true it is of my life, as if it was written just for me, thereby I affirm the aphorism Life Imitates art….?

Well, my thoughts on this are …. I think it is human and universal for everyone to be in a point of their lives when they feel some degree of helplessness, of being stuck, of feeling disappointment over unrealized dreams. Some of us tend to censure the harsh everyday realities by turning into illusory objects of diversion—books, music, liquor, drugs, even retail therapy (read: compulsive shopping). Still others, not being able to communicate this frustration openly, rely on the grasp of old memories and the vestiges of their past—a form of escape and coping mechanism from the dysfunction that incessantly rage within them, or us. We endeavor to do or achieve things that make us feel fulfilled, or useful, and for years and years, there is almost a sense of undisrupted normalcy, of a feeling that we are alright with the world. But reality has a way of rearing its ugly head, a peculiar way of making itself felt, time and again. We can’t just ignore the fact that problems and feeling of inadequacy arise at different stages in our lives-whether we are of school age, adults, or in our last breathing moments. Such is the tragic beauty of our existence.

It is how strong our personalities are, how tough and conditioned we are to take its blows. As someone who was born and lives in the third world, I can say I have seen and been through a lot. We are not in a fortunate enough place to do what we really want to do, but that is by no means an impediment to dream sky-high, or should take joy out of our imaginings. If anything, having limited resources makes our struggles and the fulfillment of our dreams all the more bittersweet. We learn to be more resilient, to appreciate the little we have, and come to terms with what cannot be ours.

Tennessee Williams also portrays the familial association we are inevitably drawn to towards our loved ones- mother, father, child, sister, brother. In the same thread, they are emblematic of the fact that our connection to them means there is no real escape in this world. We may physically abandon them from our life in search of a different situation; we may, with strong decisive will, run away from our present struggle and disappear from the face of the earth, but they will never be completely out of the way, nor are we able to edit out our feelings for them, not while we have the “unrelenting power of memory”, that will pursue us endlessly and haunt us, in the form of things we will eventually come across---a waft of music, a particular scent, taste of food, the changing weather, faces of people, etc.

Like any other person, I feel there is no end to these entire human struggles- the ups and downs and the suffocating realities of life. I think that we are able to overcome that no matter how. What I am just concerned about is the constant bout man has with his stronger and more vicious enemy that can ultimately defeat him---- himself, or his inner turmoil--- my inner turmoil, the possibility that I will one day become stagnant, and like Laura, live in a world of my glass menagerie, immovable lifeless things, that while pretty and interesting to look at, are fragile and are really just illusory and not lasting. I wouldn’t like to be the kind who would crumble and wallow in the memories of my former glories, and then find out that I can nothing be more than the shadow of my distant past. What are the chances that I will live in total dependence to others, useless to myself or to my environment, and as Amanda quite accurately put it, stay home and watch the parades go by, live upon the grudging patronage of folks, and eat the crust of humility for the rest of my pitiful life? Will I ever allow myself to get to that? “Is that the future we’ve mapped out for ourselves?”

But we fight to find our dreams, to make enough difference in our lives and the lives of others so that there is a purpose to our being, so that we can emancipate ourselves from our mental prison walls. Being different from others, being mythical unicorns in the sea of horses, should not snuff out our inner candles. I know that it is lonely to be different, but don’t we already know that each of us has felt lonely and stuck all along, and that no matter where we go to escape, we would someday converge in the same path of this realization anyway? Well, such is the beauty of life and the struggle to see it through the end….

The Reader

2009-02-27T15:36:00.006+08:00

Catching up on the Oscars fever, last night I saw the movie The Reader. It is a post-War drama based on the best-selling novel by Bernhard Schlink. I haven’t had the opportunity to read the book, but watching the film, I was left drenched in many questions about love and humanity, as opposed to the morality and justice expected to be followed in our society- something we call Ethics. I have probably pondered these questions a time too many here in this blog, from the books that I’ve come across or movies that I’ve seen in the past. And well, it presented itself again.

I don’t want to explore the historical angle of the film, although briefly, it is about the time of the cataclysmic Holocaust where the character of Kate Winslet figured in a crime against the Polish Jews in Auchwitz. She was held accountable for the death of hundreds of men, women, and children, after allowing them to perish in the fire while working as a guard in Hitler’s concentration camp.

In 1958 Germany, Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet) was a middle-aged tram worker who came across a fifteen-year old Michael while she was walking home one rainy day and saw him retching near her apartment building. She helped him get home where he was diagnosed with scarlet fever. A few months after he recovered, Michael visited Hannah to thank her. The boy develops an almost immediate sexual curiosity about Hannah, although she was twice his age, and calls him "kid". Hannah was an unsmiling woman, gruff and stubborn. But an affair developed between them in no time. Despite her obstinate front, and a vast reserve of unspoken sadness, they seemed to fall into a sensuous sexual relationship. During their liaisons, Hannah would order Michael to read his schoolbooks to her after they make love. Together they explored the literature of Anton Chekov, and the Odyssey.

One day, she was told by her workmate that she had been promoted and would no longer be working in the tram, but inside the office. She didn’t take this news kindly, and she suddenly disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a confused and broken-hearted Michael.

Almost a decade later, when Michael is a law student, he comes across Hannah again He was observing a Nazi war crime trial, where she was a defendant, along with a few others who worked as guards in the concentration camp. She was singled out as having been responsible for drafting a report that put hundreds of Jews to a gut-wrenching tragedy. Michael was torn in the discovery of a horrific truth that the woman he once loved was guilty of a crime against humanity, and of personally betraying him. But in the course of trial, he also discovered Hannah’s most important secret, when he had brief flashes of memory---that she was illiterate, and could never read books nor write her name, and was visibly not capable of writing a damning report. So that he was suddenly caught up in the convolutions of being a man of law and upholding justice, and on the other hand having the power to speak out what he now knows, thereby helping Hannah reduce her prison sentence. He almost spoke of it, to his law professor, who quite perceptively suggested that what people feel or think isn't nearly as important as what they do.

As Michael's character is so layered---inflexible and deeply hurting at the same time, and probably even too young to see beyond the fact that he was shameful of his affair with Hannah and its unknown implications, he ended up keeping his secret and putting Hannah to life imprisonment. In fact, it can be drawn that he never talked about this dark part of his life to anyone, until very much later. After the court sentence was read, he sits on a train home devastated, retreating in the shadows of a dark corner.

The next second we see the same figure emerge from the shadows, but this time he is the middle-aged Michael (Ralph Fiennes) bearing sad eyes, and a face that mirrors years of emotional paralysis and the weight of guilt. He was divorced, and left his daughter to the care of his old mother. Alone in his new home, he goes through his old things, and makes voice recordings of a few books he used to read to Hannah. He sends them to her in prison. She fumbles with the player at first, but soon begins to enjoy listening to the stories, just like the old times. This started a new ritual between them, he was to send her many tapes afterwards, and Hannah, a stickler for cleanliness and order, would stack them neatly on the wall of her tiny prison cell.

Hannah, who was by now an aging woman, got up from the prison grounds one day and walked over nervously to the library to ask for a book, The Lady with a Dog by Chekov. She began to slowly decode the words that Michael was saying from the tape, and marked them on the book, initially encircling all of the “the”. Thus, began her self-education. Later she sends one-sentence letters to Michael, asking for more stories of adventure and romance. Michael never answered the letters. But he would continue to send tapes in parcels, for which she would eventually complete her education in reading and writing.

One day, Michael got a call from the prison ward telling him that Hannah was to be set free after 21 years because of her unblemished behavior in prison. He was the only known contact that they are aware of, as indeed there was no other character in the movie that was akin to her, nor was it a part of her that was explored in the story. Michael reluctantly visits her for the first time in prison after so many years. Their meeting was odd; he was perfunctory in his arrangement to get her a job and a place to stay. He was clearly mortified by seeing her again and thinking that he is thrown in the position where he is responsible for her amalgamation back to society, and back to his life. By this time, Hannah was a literate, and was reading a lot. She perceived the uneasiness in him, although once again, she was obstinate enough to not talk about it with him.

Later that week, she killed herself in her prison cell.

When Michael returned to get her, he discovered about her death. He was led to her cell and was given a tin box that contained a sum of money that Hannah had saved, and left instructions for him to hand it to the daughter of one of the holocaust victims. He also discovered writing on her wall, the first words she ever learned to write that were from the opening pages of Chekhov’s novel The Lady with a Dog.

He tried to redeem himself by visiting the woman in America, who wrote a book about their death march to Auschwitz. For the first time, he talked about his relationship with Hannah to her and how we was trying to make amends for all his guilt. With Hannah’s money, he proposed to set up a fund in her memory, to help fight illiteracy among the Nazi survivors. The movie ends back in Germany, with Michael and his daughter visiting Hannah’s grave, as he walks away with her, talking about the story that all started that rainy day in 1958.

The fact that the reader has characters that are deeply troubled, and are solely accountable for their failures, it is probably best to reason that man do reckon with their conscience many times in their lifetime, but the circumstances in their lives make them do things differently from what they believe in or feel. They run afoul of the behavior that is expected of them, thus putting their social or moral ethics in question, but it can’t necessarily mean they are evil.

The nuances of this film are too raw for me, there is nothing melodramatic, especially in the way Kate Winslet portrayed her character that was tough, and is perpetually troubled by something. You can see that she is not easy to be with; her face was fraught with sadness, a frown in the corners of her mouth, and almost a kind of physical fatigue that she’s had to deal with all her waking life. Yet, she is very strong and seems to be the commander of her life. She is not easily intimidated by emotions, but peels off a layer of herself once in while to make us construe that she is after all human. Forget about the fact that she was nude in many scenes, which reminds me that is how a married woman’s body is supposed to look like although she makes no bones about hiding it in any guise, and that is why I think that Kate Winslet is a gem.

But indeed, can one be part android and part human at the same time? Human in that she nursed a stranger in the streets and took him safely home, android in that she willingly gave her body away to a sexually charged fifteen year old boy with not much of a word. Human in that when she heard choir music, she was reduced to tears of joy, or was rapt in the story of the Odyssey. Android in that she unceremoniously left everything behind her one day, simply because she couldn’t be found dead in her dark secret, thus negating anything emotional that had been born out of her relationship with Michael. Human in that she was said to have been unusually kind to prisoners and had gathered a group Jewish women in prison every night to ask them to read out loud to her. But android, in that she sent the very same women to death row, because that was what she was ordered and paid to do.

She was living a life of contradiction, she sent herself to life in prison, and only because she was too proud and scared to be discovered an illiterate. Even towards the end of the film, she was caught up in her ambiguity, hanging herself in the cell because she could not stand having to inflict her unsolicited presence in Michael’s life. Once, while in the trial stand, she was questioned about her work as a prison guard. She reasoned that a new group of prisoners would come every time, and that there was barely enough room for everyone, so that they were given orders to send people to death camp in batches. A judge asked her why she even allowed this human atrocity to happen, there was a long awkward silence, and in her seemingly pure countenance, she answered “What would you have done”? To which, another long moment of silence ensued.

Yes, what would we have done indeed, when we are powerless to do something outside our abilities, when doing otherwise could have meant disrupting our little lives and standing up against people who are bigger than we are and who can take us over with malign abuses of their authority, mainly because they know they can do something that we can’t? Of course today, that is not a question anymore. But back then, she was illiterate, many were probably illiterate, and despite appearing to have no moral core, her question made a lot of sense. It leaves a question, too, how love in its unsullied form could be the same reason for people to betray, hurt, abandon, scar and shake up each other, just to be proper and ethical----while we all secretly come to grips with our collective guilt for something that we shouldn’t have done, but did; something we could have done, but did not---and how we can finally and completely learn to forgive everything.

2009-02-13T18:23:00.003+08:00

My little princess is now three years old.
There are lots to say about her, but for now
A photo will have to do...

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

2009-02-06T20:26:00.007+08:00

The swiftness with which the days have gone by is out of my grasp lately that it is no longer possible to sit down and process the everyday things. Time just seems to come and fleet by, that before I even have the moment to reflect on something important and understand the underlying significance of that reflection so that I can then write about it at length, all is gone and suddenly it’s February of 2009. Sometimes, however, I feel that time is in a standstill, that no matter how I try to delude myself out it, I seem to be warped in it for a very long time and I am locked up in that peculiar capsule forever, that when I awake, all my efforts of trying to get on with the times and accomplish useful things as a human being turns out to be an absolutely thwarted endeavor.

Anyway, the upside of being warped into time, at least these past weeks, is that I had been able to finish reading a couple of books. One was The Pilgrimage by Paulo Coelho, a gift given to me by my officemate last Christmas; and the other one which I just put down, is a very old book I picked up from Booksale many moons ago and has sat gathering dust on the shelf, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers. I would like to talk a bit about the latter. A caveat though, by a bit I mean that I might be inclined to go off-track with my thoughts again, seeing that I am notoriously known to start off with crystal-clear head and wind up with various random inane things that I just mentally disintegrate into a drunken stupor.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a study of the lives of five different people, a deaf-mute John Singer, a strange girl Mick Kelly who is faced with the predicament of growing up and taking responsibilities early on while obsessively nursing a passion for music and its magnitude to which her whole young existence lies; a crass but well-read alcoholic Jake Blount, an idealistic black doctor Benedict Copeland who struggles to be respected in the white world and is frustrated by the helplessness and blind ignorance of his own people; and Biff Brannon, a restaurateur who has lost his love for his wife, but chooses to feel compassion for the deformed.

Although the novel focuses on John Singer and the effect he has on the other central characters, it was mostly through the girl Mick Kelly that the story is viewed and unfolds. These five characters lead lives that are often mired by feelings of isolation and loneliness, an inner torment to be understood and accepted for who they are and what they think, and the apparent lack of reciprocity for how they feel towards the people nearest to them, thus worsening their silent agony.

Without going into the finer details, these four people’s lives began to revolve around the deaf-mute John Singer, with whom they each had private interactions. John Singer is a kindly man who unselfishly shared his time to listen to each of them on their visits. His benevolence reached out beyond skin color at a time when colored Americans were discriminated against, as reflected by the black doctor Benedict Copeland who remembers him as the only white man who offered a light to his cigarette on a rainy night. The fact that he was deaf and therefore never learned to speak was overlooked by people, who were increasingly becoming curious of him, and on whom he unwittingly left an impression of being a mystic, someone short of a god who, while perpetually silent, harbors the strength and dignity they can trust their burdens on to. In him, they felt strangely comforted, and saw the chance to heal and liberate their souls, to speak freely of whatever was inside their convalescent hearts while being aware that he does not hear. It was if his silence was answer enough to all their questions.

The altruistic way with which he shared his friendship with them, however, concealed the fact that he was just an ordinary man, a man who misses a dear friend locked up in a mental asylum. He tried to visit him on a few occasions, at one time desperately thinking that he could turn his back from the friends he had begun to like and enjoy, if only to be able to live with Antonapolous in that odd sanctuary.

The dear friend he cared so truly about was in fact a slothy Greek deaf-mute he had lived with in a flat for ten years. At the beginning of the novel, everything seemed roses between them, two friends walking hand in hand, doing things together each single day, and getting by in the evenings with simple things like playing chess or going to the movies. Then Antonopoulos begins to act strangely after falling ill, often appearing dirty and disheveled, deliberately stealing food and things, hitting at people he didn’t like in the streets, and acting lewdly in public, that he was always to be found in the town court for the many infringements he had done. John Singer was always there to redeem him, even when his savings had been used up to settle and keep his friend out of jail. Eventually, against Singer’s wishes, Antonopoulos was committed to a mental asylum by a distant cousin.

It was the start of great distress and loneliness for Singer, who felt a void in his life when his friend had gone. But Antonopolous was never interested in giving back the kindness shown to him. However, because of his unremitting love for his friend, John Singer tried to ignore the bad things, and only remembered the good things in him, which were in truth, very few and far in between. The next time he tried to see Antonopoulos in the asylum, John Singer learned that his friend had died of an illness. He went home despondent, and killed himself.

His tragedy bore different circumstances on the friends he left behind. The black doctor had to give up his profession as he spent his remaining days suffering tuberculosis in the care of the very same people whose ignorance he abhorred, disillusioned of his failure to make a change. The alcoholic Blount left the town in hope to meet someone who would be willing to sit through his outbursts again, much like the deaf-mute did. Biff Brannon lost his wife to a fatal surgery , had slowly began to find himself, and get in touch with his unrealized passions, while remaining to be a quiet and astute observer of the things that go around his world, or at least his cafe. Mick Kelly finds a measure of peace and hope in that she is resolved to achieve things for herself and her family, keeping the music within her inner world, and sharing whatever was left of the selfless desire to be that was unsuspectingly imparted to her by the dead John Singer.

A peculiar fascination about human nature had lingered on me long after I put it down. I am concerned in the central theme that is about the desolation we each feel in our hearts, especially when we try to be understood and accepted, but are not. That others, even the ones we love the most, would not always share the same fervor we have in our hearts and that we are like square pegs to their circles. We trudge the earth, among a sea of souls who are themselves wandering far and wide, to be able to find, or hunt, for that familiarity we can clench close to our hearts and forever latch on to. Thus, the heart is a lonely hunter. But what if it's suddenly gone or taken away from us?

I believe this is when we turn to divine intervention. Silence becomes our earnest friend and companion, when words are not spoken to affirm what we think. Sometimes, it's a fallen leaf, or a whiff of air, or intimation of music, or a gentle smile from a little child that come to answer us in our deepest human longings. I was touched by the scene where Mick Kelly, hiding among the bushes in a neighbor’s yard one night, listened to the radio and heard Beethoven for the first time. Being a non-believer, she had an epiphany, suddenly convinced that indeed there is a God who can create such beauty that can well up her eyes with tears and melt her young, volatile heart.

My Baguio Chronicles - 1

2009-01-23T17:57:00.007+08:00

645 am. Arrived Baguio.

The kids were able to sleep on the six hour bus trip but husband and I had hardly been able to relax, what with him trying to check on us every then and now, to my obvious annoyance, as he keeps getting up and walking the isle, asking if we were okay. Every time that he did, the other passengers would let out a dagger look, or something that sounded like a grunt…..or maybe it was just me getting too self-conscious. It would have done me much better if he had held on to one of the kids, because I was cramped in the two-seater with all bits and pieces of our luggage but both children physically cling on to me for dear life, as if all sense of safety is lost on them, were they with someone else, in these temporary but rough conditions. This was the first time that we will travel this far, and I being the mother, know how difficult it was for the kids to settle down where comfort is in short supply. However, it amazed me how easily and fast they could fall asleep. All I could manage to do after that is put Sam in front of me and try to catch a few minutes of rest, while she was beginning to fall deep into slumber and was now lording it over sleepyland with her loud snoring. That little girl, she terrifies me with her sound sometimes...

After a couple of stops, and leaning over to check where we were, six hours had gone by, and I caught the first light of morning. Marcos highway was covered in fog as our bus climbed uphill on the zigzag road. It felt like an endless trek, and the higher we went, the thicker the fog seemed to grow. In spite of the bus driver meandering the roads with such confidence, my fear started to seep in again, unfortunately at a time when I had wanted to use the last few minutes of our trip to catch some shuteye before we hurtle ourselves off the bus . I felt terribly tired from my daughter’s weight, but my mind was relentlessly creating scenarios of us falling of the cliff accidentally and me waking up to find out that I have lost a limb, or worse, a life or lives other than mine. So that in the course of all that horrible mental fumbling, I never had the opportunity to rest for a second more. It was such a relief however, that finally we reached a plateau, and a "Welcome to Baguio" sign told me that my worries were now pointless….

We arrived at the Teacher’s Camp. The lady I talked to on the phone a day earlier wasn’t available, so the night guy, offered to deposit our things at the reception, and told us that we could get some breakfast and come back in half an hour. It was drizzling outside, but the cool air, the log cabins, the fresh smell of pine trees, and the faint morning light was such to behold, that I could only remember it in one of those dreams I’ve had way back in years, and really it would be strange if I got carried away into a trance so early in the day, but I rather tried to soak in it and felt humbled at the beauty, unmindful of the fact that all this has cost me a precious night of sleep. My body wasn’t caving yet anyway, so why the fuss. I decided to take out my camera and do some snapping. I had made a mental reminder to myself back in Manila, that getting to Baguio would be a perfect time for me to hone my skills with my new DSLR, a gadget which I would like to proudly blabber about at a later time. When finally, I had enough photos to warn me that we still had two full days left for photographing, I stopped and we took the first cab down, or rather up, the street. One thing, I would most certainly promote about this place, is that the taxi drivers are the most respectful, honest, and cool drivers one could ever ask for. For a moment there, you stop being wary of being robbed off of your precious hundreds, and they can cruise you to your destination like a breeze. Anyway, we were told by our driver that we were lucky to be up there at such a time when it was the real “cold” season. He did not warn us, however, that it was going to be biting cold at night, and we would be literally freezing our asses off in bed. We were thrilled nonetheless at the fact that we had made a good decision to come here after the holidays and experience the real “cold”. Down south, it would have been nippy too, but not like this one, that stings your face and gives you the unqualified pleasure of knowing you’re way above the sea level, and pretty much on top of the world…..

To be continued….

Knock, knock!

2009-01-23T17:09:00.004+08:00

Hey, it's me, do you still remember? It's been a long journey, and I had wanted to come back sooner. But I got sidetracked, by different things, at different times that I have somehow lost my way... But I tell you, what is important is I am home, well and alive, and it was all worth to get back here with much hope that I can begin to tell you all about it----the people I've met, the places I've been, the emotions I've experienced, and the lessons I've learned.

So sit back there, while I click my tongue and wink my eye....
and I'll be back shortly.

Starting Today

2008-01-23T17:19:00.001+08:00

Lately , I have begun to organize my office files. In the last few weeks of 2007, I got overridden by some chaotic plague in my life that there was hardly any chance to sit down and put things in their proper places. Over the weekend, I will have to be rid of many others at home, those which I have indiscriminately tossed inside bags or unlabeled envelopes, pieces of paper torn from something and on which are scribbled random numbers or words that now have absolutely no meaning to me, but which I had snuck in obscure corners anyhow, hoping that I would have to sort them out one day but obviously never got round to doing so, seeing that it’s a colossal waste of time having to go through each of them and determine their importance to my future. Blech…

Now that I have piles and piles of notes that contain different things or memories, I can’t seem to begin cataloging them – are they stuff that bother me or delight me? I am not a generally messy person, but this is one aspect of myself that I can’t seem to get to the bottom of, why I buy diaries, organizers or notepads, every so often, but why I prefer to scribble somewhere else, at random moments, knowing that I am bound to lose it immediately soon after.

Be that as it may, this year, my penultimate goal in life is to Simplify. Not only on the physical things that I am embattled with, but also the events or milestones of my life in the last year that are in a completely cluttered state of my mind at this point. It seems that in the past few months, everything has come to be one big blur or indefinable grey mass before me, like a dream or recollection that is so vague but stays close to the edge of my consciousness that while I try to deny its existence, I know nonetheless that it is there. I wish I could totally exonerate it off my memory, or begin to file them into their respective folders and subfolders. Here for instance in my January folder, I could write daughter, or son, or husband and what it was that took place in their lives that was of significance, or concerned me somehow. Or maybe in December, what was it that I had tried to accomplish and planned about, but then forgot in the months that were leading up to it, as something else pressed on and unexpectedly? But digressed, I have. I can’t even answer that one hypothetically.

I believe that something must be done with my memory, and the way I lead my life. Work, too much of it, or too little of it, and the clumsy way I’ve sometimes handled my affairs as a mother, or just generally as a person who breathes, have considerably taken much of the time that I ought to be spending in much nobler pursuits ---like what, it’s not clear to me. Maybe reading a great book again, or learning languages, or getting my daughter to understand a poem, I don’t know. I just know that there are so much more in life than the daily office grind, or shopping for groceries, or gossiping about the new neighbors, or getting new prescription glasses. I just know that I would rather worry about not being able to listen to this awesome musical show in the weekend than make sure the water bill gets paid on time. I am such an oddball I know, but those are the things that make more sense in what life really is to me.

Well, if only I can do something with that life simplification/organization thing and start somewhere, maybe today, or now that it’s undeniably 2008, I am pretty sure that both my domestic and whimsical lives (you know, feeding my young to dinner, and taking off to a fancy flight of imagination in the same breath), would go just fine and dandy…..

Oh to be away....

2007-11-09T16:06:00.001+08:00

....From life, for a little while, the life that I have known to have been fawning over like a hapless slave-sometimes at work, and belatedly of children growing under my anxious but overwrought shoulders. One day in October, with my children not far out from my sight, I got to sit on the beach, basking in the tangible beauty of the world, realizing how strange the sand filling up between my toes felt, but enjoying it nonetheless, the yonder horizon slowly turning into different gradations of blue as it crawls towards me, the whiff of the salt in the breeze, stretches of powdery white earth, the sun fiercely hitting my skin, children hanging on to their colorful life rings and letting out screams of excitement, their mommies and daddies frolicking in the water like eager but bashful lovers, marine life silently spawning under the foams of waves as the people swim carelessly above, lonely seabirds trotting on the breakers like nothing else exists for them but the vast sea, small red bancas plying every then and now, men bronzed from the sun dragging their day's catch in nets, and many many other wonderful things besides, that I watch with half-closed eyes and a wistful heart. I think that I could live here forever....

my filipina thoughts

2007-09-19T17:52:00.000+08:00

I found by chance a website that encourages Filipinos to write positive things about the Filipina on the internet, in hope of bringing “relevant results to search engines and topple those that exploit the (word) Filipina”. I feel compelled to chip in, and say something, even though as one stumbles upon this blog, he’d be hard-pressed to discover that I am NOT into making any pertinent social commentaries or spewing off happy mantras for the collective good, much less, lifting a finger to enlighten my own befuddled self. If at all, he might recognize that he has largely snuck into a lemony snickett world, a cloudy sphere of juvenile, foolish thoughts, trapped inside the brain of a woman going through midlife crises. Or something.

At any rate, my being filipina in the face of all these, makes me rather unique, if a little peculiar. I don’t fully comprehend it. Blogging , for instance, has made me discover that there are quite a number of women from the Philippines who are actively making forays into wider territories, and are creating beautiful impressions to many, from their thoughts and knack to assimilate with other far-flung cultures. But on the other hand, there have been some who are sadly misunderstood. The saying now goes, anonymity breeds…..animosity? I am not sure. I am just saying….

But what is to be Filipina? For the longest time, we are generally perceived to be women who conform and obey, who meekly say yes on many occasions, even when we don’t have to, or don’t mean to. And let’s face it, there is a grain of truth to it. I can’t fault the look of amazement, or sometimes incredulity, in the eyes of others who have not fully understood why we do it so, or of what holds us back from asserting our right on things. It’s not that we don’t have a choice, and I can most certainly say that it is not being stupid, nor for lack of a better judgment. Believe me, I’ve been there and I can’t be gullible at all. I think that it well may be a case of having too much respect for elders or authorities, a plain sense of propriety that we have inadvertently practiced all of our waking lives. We have been born to it. And that is not a bad thing. It’s just that it seems everywhere we go, we aim to please. Please others, older or younger, with blind worship---unfortunately much to our ruination. We value harmony in our little rustic world, much as we do in the big world, that calls us a third world, a world that has gone a bit haywire in the age of internet and overblown-grown egos. We are often seen as easy preys to the supercilious regard of others, or even of our own.

Well all I can say is, damnation! Why don’t we start getting crazy? Forget about being cinderellas or some weak pushover damsels, and put on our ruby slippers like Dorothy who ran away from Kansas did? We should embark on our own giddy adventures or misadventures, and leave all narrow thoughts behind. This is the time of the weirdest imaginations and epic surprises, wherever we are in the world wide web, so that we should not be afraid to commit some unforgivable faux pas or make absolute fools of ourselves. Why, others do every it five seconds, methinks! We should write our thoughts boldly, and speak more loudly of what we feel! We should laugh at the funnies, and bawl over sad dreadful b-movies, and not apologize for it! We should sing our hearts out in karaokes, hitch up our skirts, and dance in bayles with our corniest moves! We should get off our horses, and stop caring for once!

And then when we had our fill, when we have soaked in all that craziness and simple exuberance that makes us uniquely and truly Filipina, we should spruce ourselves up, smooth our hairs back, and mind our proper manners once again. The things we are proud to be of---the choices we make to overcome our own obstacles, the character that endear us to the appreciative few, in spite of the prejudiced lot--are that which we should continue to espouse and do, or write about. Maybe not always in this blog, but in a better place, so that we will ultimately read “Filipina” with something affirmative and good about, in google-s.

Somehow, by writing all this I seem to be contradicting myself. I shiver at my momentary uproar. As I said, I can’t often be trusted with positive things or thoughts …..

So, I’ll pretend I never said.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

2007-09-07T17:03:00.000+08:00

One of the saddest and most beautiful songs I’ve heard is Ne Me Quitte Pas (Don’t Leave Me). It was originally written by Jacques Brel, a Belgian French-speaking singer-songwriter who passed away in the 70’s. I have heard this sung by someone that I admire profoundly--Nina Simone, the one who refused to be called anything--but was everything a goddess of soul is, and all else that spelled excellent, as her voice and piano skills were. Nina was an American but embraced France as her final abode, much like Jacques Brel did. Although I remain largely clueless about France, I must admit that I love almost everything french---the cinema, the actors, the fashion alright, the food, the music, the gritty attitude, and especially the language. Here is an incredible video of the song done by Helene Segara in a touching duet with a 3d hologram of Jacques Brel. Way below are the french lyrics and engligh translation, sort of, of the song:

Ne me quitte pas -
Uploaded by jsuismoi

Ne me quitte pas
Il faut oublier
Tout peut s'oublier
Qui s'enfuit deja
Oublier le temps
Des malentendus
Et le temps perdu
A savoir
Oublier ces heures
Qui tuaient parfois
A coups de pourquoi
Le coeur du bonheur
Ne me quitte pas.

Moi je t'offrirai
Des perles de pluie
Venues de pays
Ou il ne pleut pas
Je creus'rai la terre
Jusqu' apres ma mort
Pour couvrir ton corps
D'or et de lumiere;
Je f'rai un domaine
Ou l'amour s 'ra roi
Ou l'amour s' ra loi
ou tu serais reine

Ne me quitte pas..

_______

don't leave me
it is neccesary to forget
everything you need to forget
that is already over
forget the times
of the misunderstandings,
the lost time
you need to know how
forget the hours
that sometimes kill
the reasons why
the heart is full of joy

do not leave me.

i offer you
pearls of rain
coming from countries
where it never rains
i will cross the world
until after my death
for to cover your body
with gold and bright light.
i will give you a kingdom
where Love will be king
where Love will be the law
where you will be queen….

do not leave me.

ho-hums

2007-09-05T18:47:00.000+08:00

There's nothing much to say today, and as usual I've been suffering what one blogger calls a blogorrhea. So off I go with my rumbling. Our director has been around for a couple of days now, spending the whole time in the office, doing important business over phone and net----the whole nine yards---- except make small attempts to talk to us. Sure, we had been privileged to lunch out at hotel mezzanines of late with him, but back at grind time, there are the usual furtive glances, and tiptoeing, a funny stance that all of us, rank and file, are guilty of taking when the big guns are around. I don't remember for the life of me why we do it anyway. I mean, our bosses, considering that they are foreigners, are not really the kind who would give a dope as to how we conduct our business around the office. Outside of it, we are as equal to them as we damn please think we are, except that they foot the bill, and we reciprocate with all-encompassing gratitude. They are as natural as can be, but it seems that we are the ones who balk at the idea of behaving as we do when left among ourselves. And, as if that is not enough, we discuss things behind their back, belaboring on the minutest details of the time they were in our presence.

Are we that of small minds, after all?

nothing thoughts

2007-08-28T17:36:00.000+08:00

It’s almost like waking up from a long dream, this business of motherhood. When I gave birth to my son, I never expected to feel such pain and distress, although I was fully anesthetized during his delivery. It would not do even that I had people around me, especially my husband, willing to help ease whatever it was that discomfited me. There was just an overwhelming amount of physical hurt that my body was trying to bear up, and I sometimes found myself crying and gnashing my teeth in angry silence. But slowly, everything seemed to alleviate.

One day, I found myself getting much stronger and ready to appreciate life again. The years that followed with our little baby seemed to hover and pass before our eyes. It felt like I was in a sweet limbo, a dream of thousand nights when I’ve cradled him in my arms, fed him close to my body until he is sated over, and ready to fall into an oblivious slumber again. Soft hushed-up moments of being with him, when all I could hear was his impassioned breathing, and the gradual struggle of the body for nourishment and life.

I have attached a great importance to these instances. Of course, there too, were those fine qualities that a mother would most readily admire and esteem about in her offspring. I smiled and closed my eyes at the beauty of it, an emotional bliss that lulled me into a long almost interminable sleep, recreating scenes in my heart, with deadened intensity, like a mime or a silent movie, interrupted every then and now by only the faintest mewling, but never really quite remembering the terrible physical suffering once attached to it.

Many years and sleep nights later, another day breaks with such zealous light and a jolting sense of something raw. I stir from all the softness, and welcome a new, harsh reality. A baby girl. Came nine months of the same anxiety and discomfort, all over again, or maybe even worse. I cannot begin to say how bad it was, as I never tried to look at it that way. But the pain that I thought I’ve most certainly forgotten, well, it was still there to remind me after all.

Of how it is to be human, and to relinquish fear.

It's been five years since, and today I am rearing up a wonderful daughter and son who would eventually cast a shadow over those months that I’ve had to endure. Presently, a long restful sleep will do me good, far from being with child.

Gabriel is almost five and has gone away to school. He asks never-ending questions of everything he sees, why or how they came to be. He watches Discovery Channel and talks about caves and mummies. It scares me that we don’t have the answers to all his curiosity, but we will go to lengths for his learning, while we are around to guide him. He exhibits an odd temperament that my husband says screams of Me. Sure enough, I am slowly recognizing myself in the many things he does, in the way he sharply looks sideways with a pout when asked to repeat what he said. My impatience. It tells me to check on myself, lest he grows up to be as dark-minded as his mother .

On the other hand, is a sunny girl, Sophia. Always going about with much gaiety, like her father. Her little childish laughter resonates around the house, it would be a shame not to smile about it, if at least in secret. Sometimes, she exhausts me, with her boundless energy, but never in a way, that I would give up enjoying her smarts or unreserved affection. Laughter should be indispensable in a home, shouldn't it? And I would like my children to always laugh, and guffaw if they had to, for what it's worth.

Many days I wake up with a worrying fit, of how my children will fare, of how we can make it better for both of them. It burns a hole in my head, and pushes me to fight for it. But other mornings, I become easy, feeling I can leave it all up to fate, as I stir and become aware of them nearby. All I can just say, is that life is odd, and phenomenal.

Lost In Translation

2007-08-10T15:35:00.000+08:00

Last night was probably the fourth time I’ve seen the movie, and yet I never grow tired of it. Bill Murray has such impeccable comic timing and wry mockery on this you can’t help but laugh about it. I do not at all find this movie an affront on the Japanese race as other pedants may claim. For me, it is a bird’s eye view of someone who has stayed briefly in the country, seen a bit of things, tasted a small part of its culture, but has never really understood what it embodies. If it was set in my country and had portrayed some of our idiosyncrasies, I might have initially been offended too. But then I would think, that is how outsiders see us, and it can be pretty amusing in the end. Lucky for us who have been brought out to a wider audience, unlucky for them who saw only too little to comprehend what it’s all about.

However, what I remember more deeply, and probably more importantly about this film is life’s tragedy and the complexities of human relationships. The emptiness, the white nights, the feeling of displacement that both the central characters in this movie feel, the need for companionship, and on a general scale, the mechanized way that we conform with what is proper, as opposed to what we honestly want. These emotions are present in, and I think equalizes us humans, regardless of our age, social stature, or mental maturity. There comes indeed a point where no measure of material wealth or gained wisdom is sufficient to make us understand why life is empty and without a meaningful purpose, and that we are oddly lost in the translation of the very obvious things—love, sadness, joy, family, ourselves .

In the story, two Americans met in a lobby of a posh hotel. Charlotte (the beautiful Scarlett Johannson), a philosophy graduate and wife to a rather neglectful celebrity photographer on assignment, and an aging actor Bob Harris (Bill Murray’s character), a movie star nearing the end of his career and who has come to work on a whiskey commercial . After a few brief innocent encounters, Charlotte and Bob began to share feelings of their odd transitory life in Japan, the way that they are trapped in their marriages, and the uncertainties of their individual future lives. They became increasingly close as they spent more time together fleetingly, in the Tokyo region of Japan which provided the interesting backdrop, where they roamed the streets, sushi bars, bonsai gardens, arcades and karaokes—singly, or both-- apart from the married lives they were excruciatingly trying to cope with. On the eve of Bob’s departure, Charlotte finds him with another woman in his room, and there seemed to be a falling out between them. Not soon afterwards, they see each other in a hotel lobby and make up, and express how they would miss the other when one has gone. When finally they had to say goodbye the next day, the tension of wanting to be physically closer, or be able to say something but could not, of trying not to linger with the dizzying feeling of, maybe love, or longing, kept me on the edge of my seat. Yes, I too, am an incurable romantic.

The final scene is where Bob sits in the car on the way to fly back home, and he sees Charlotte in the crowd. He motions the chauffeur to stop and he runs to find the girl. He calls to her, and she turns to see him. They look each other in the eyes, for how long I cannot care enough to complain, they hug and he whispers something to her ear, and then they kiss. So much for all the tension. I can only mutter…sweet jesus….. And then a whiff of air blows and gets them back to their senses, with a certain feeling of resolve, evident in the smile on both their faces as they again part and go each other’s ways. Which left me thinking, what did he say to her? And kept me guessing--about the future, if any, of their ambiguous relationship.

I had to turn to wikipedia for a bit of enlightment, or gossip. There were many speculations about what Bob whispered to the girl’s ear. It was said that Bill Murray did it impromptu, not part of the script, and that he would not repeat what he said, in the interviews later. However, some nosy individuals might have gone the extra mile and used a device to make out the audio, and it is very likely that he had said “I love you. Don't forget to always tell the truth…”.

Well, whatever, we could always make up our own lines to our satisfaction.

But then, I am left vague in the mind and asking questions. Are encounters like these, where we find a kindred and share a mutual feeling of connection, in a disconnected world, meant to be a catalyst, a door at the end of a dark passage where we can finally shed off all our emotional layers and walk at a definitive moment where there is a blinding light, a cure to all our emotional ills, to all our manic worries, and all our interminable sadness, thus declaring our life’s denouement?

Or we resign ourselves, back to what is real and expected, to what is asked of us, but to where we can deal with things and relationships a little braver and stronger, and come to grips with the same hell all over again?

Life's Stills

2007-08-03T17:37:00.000+08:00

Early this year, I had begun to get a little serious into my new hobby—photography. I had initial doubts as to how long I would nourish this newfound skill, as in the past I have had several pre-occupations that I really enjoyed at first, and eventually found my interest waning and getting measly for. There was drawing, calligraphy, cross stitch, beading—things that happily manifest how sedentary is the lifestyle I live. True enough, I’ve never been into sports, or something that involves sweating off or showing my physical prowess. I remember that back in school, I had always been a failure at try-outs and would cower at any sports that involved balls. I was never any good and, as a matter of saying, didn’t have the balls for it. In deference to these shortcomings however, I read a lot, gluttonously I may add, that I eventually forgot what I was supposed to be missing out in the field. And so it came to be that as I grew older, I pretty much stopped caring about things where I would suck, while other people might excel in; and instead put a high personal premium on the arts---and many of its forms. There was music, dance (which is something that, I am sad to note, never loved me back), books, poetry, painting, needlework, etc etc. It was a happy experience and indulgence, a love affair which I carry on up until this day. And now, there’s photography.

As I have written in this blog earlier, it was my husband who bought me my first digital camera. A point and shoot, no-frills Olympus that allows me to take as many pictures as my one gigabyte card would allow. It is not anything that I would call an “equipment”, but it sure does work and I do appreciate owning it. With it I am able to take photos of my little children, of flowers, of the skies, of myself, of people whose selves sometimes refuse to be taken of. In every photograph I take, in those little tiny frames of a few million resolutions, a thousand memories are frozen and committed into my family’s emotional bank. Walks in the park, the growing up months, the one where he was looking coyly at nothing, or the one where the sun gleamed on her baby hair…

I took lots and lots of photos and had fun looking at them, showed the kids off to the old folks and the relations. But then, I found out that I needed not stop there. My husband encouraged me to put up my photos, in a sharing site like Flickr. This is where I discovered people who shared the same interest and passion in photography, and who eventually became my virtual friends. I traipsed around and saw many of their wonderful photos, images that anyone in any part of the globe would be looking at with lustful eyes and admiration, or maybe even a bit of technical judgment. But flickr is in fact rather kind to greenhorns like me. So far, no one has been verbally abrasive or nit-picking on my photos, as far as the comments in my photostream go. But neither have I been getting into raptures over little praises, even though I think that most of us need to pat each other’s backs a little sometimes, as if to say we can do better and better. My thoughts are I should be able to get a better grasp of what makes a good photograph—subject, light, composition, the rudiments, and more importantly, the story that it conveys. In the light of my learning those things, and I’ll whisper this confidentially for now, I want to be PRO.

But as they say, one tiny baby step at a time.

I’ll get there.

Flickr

2007-07-31T17:22:00.001+08:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

reflections

2007-07-25T16:55:00.000+08:00

I’ve been working nearly 8 years with the same company, and I am still the same subservient slave that I was since the day that I got here. I am working with people who I feel doesn’t deserve where they are, and maybe I don't deserve to be where I am anyhow, but one person in particular has become such a clever ass that he gets his way with everyone, beats the shite out of me every time, treats me and everybody else like shite, not all the time but majorly, and there he is enjoying what he could squeeze out of the firm, before our very eyes. And the rest of us are like hostages in a movie, trying to be jolly good and obedient, all shackled up to a tree, unable to move, fear gripping us all over, us helplessly watching our very own corporate ghosts repeatedly vandalized, threatened and trampled upon---as we wait only for our caped heroes to rescue us from the eventual throes of morbid death. The horror and the pathos of it.

But one might ask, how come I never moved out and moved on, so then I wouldn’t be this ornery middled-aged woman complaining about things, and instead be climbing up the corporate ladder, dressing up to the nines, driving a town car around with cappuccino in one hand, and the steering wheel on the other, while flicking her cigarette out the window with her perfectly chiseled blood-red manicured nails, and dreaming up big dreams for herself? Yes indeed, whatever happened to me all these years? Last time I checked, I had high hopes and a promising future. But then I got kids and I got grounded here. For life. Today, I got split-ends on my hair and a plain, pallid face full of worry lines. I have no regrets about it really, and I am absolutely sure now that I have wanted this. But there are buts and ifs that egg me on to consider how and why everything stopped there. Or so it seemed. Well, one would wisely say, it’s all about choices, my poor dear. And I can’t agree more.

But I never thought myself a poor dear. Deep inside me I know that I have something that I can hold on to as my strength, or my redeeming virtue. But somehow I am not one to really wallow on them, or to publicize my accomplishments. I smile inside when I do believe I have done the right thing, but always—and I do not know how I’ve managed to go about life with this---I always fear that exulting too highly or openly on what I have done might make me fail twice as much. In my mind, I am sometimes guilty of condescension towards other people, that whatever they are proudly blabbering about today is archaic to me, I have been there, done that, read that, heard that. Yet, I can never be too rude to tell them off. And that is why in the course of my silence and gentle acquiescence, I am being the one construed as old-fashioned, outmoded, or maybe even dumb? Ouch. But that’s my sad reality. I only blame myself and nobody else. Because really, life goes around and we can't mope around hoping that change will take us under its wings. I am so very well aware of that.

I have a small worlds where I can express my creativity, and reel in it without having to make an excuse of who I am. However the idea of putting myself up or my abilities for sale is still new to me. Yes, even at this age my self-confidence is very elementary. Many times I have met people who tell me great things about myself, and I do believe in them. The candidness of their appreciation towards me is really quite embarrassing at times for me. I know I do deserve it. But, I hate press releases. My main assumption is that, there is always someone better, greater, more than what I am. And goodness, how I clap my heart out when I find out about something that is far greater, that gives me joy, because I know that I can strive higher. Maybe that is what keeps me grounded. Or untrusting? It may be, it seems to always be. However, for once, I want to learn how to take it graciously. Without excusing my candor. Without caring how I would look, as I jump around like a little girl shouting at the top of my lungs “ I am good, I am good!”…

colors.

2007-07-09T14:06:00.000+08:00

The one time I had experienced discrimination in life was when I had a relationship with a foreign man. I met him when I was a little orphan girl back in the province. My friends and I were doing volunteer work one hot summer for an orphanage near my home, and there were a bunch of blokes from australia who came over to build classrooms in poor communities, under the auspices of apex, a civic club probably equivalent to our jaycees. Not having had any close brush with people of a different skin color, the girls and I, naturally couldn’t contain our curiosity with the white people. You know how in your naïve mind you generalize people with white skin color as americans? It wasn’t a few times that I heard an exchange of hey joes with the whites and the local people who looked permanently wide-eyed, agape, or an O forming on their lips.

I mean could you tell the nationalities anyway, when you are young, or even old enough, never been outside your province, and already half-condemned to a life of veiled realism, and obscurity? It was only many years afterwards that it sunk in, that australia is in fact, not anywhere near america, but many worlds apart. I wonder how the aussies felt at the allusion then, but I am sure they did not mind a lot. I think it was enough that people had regarded them with such interest, as though there were aliens from outer space, with completely curious eye colors, hair colors, skin colors, and an absolutely indiscernible speaking tongue.

There was a bunch of them from different walks of life –doctors, engineers, teachers. They traveled and came here together as builders with their own tools and a lot of eagerness to meet people and to immerse themselves, however briefly, in a rather bewildering culture that is ours. As volunteers, we girls taught catechism subjects to the little orphans for the length of summer. Since the classrooms were being built, we held these short classes under the trees. Working in rather close proximity and a warm atmosphere with them, the girls I was with had started to inch their way to becoming friends with most of the men. But I had remained quiet, unrelenting, timid and shy.I don’t remember ever once having talked with any one of them as I was afraid that their words would be incomprehensible to me, or worse, I would be caught tongue-tied when spoken to, and end up looking like a total fool. Nonetheless, their project and the summer came to a close. We were employed to plan a culmination program when they, the apec guys, would turn over the classrooms to the nuns who were running the place. The event went well. But before everyone could turn to leave, there was an exchange of addresses, and tokens to give and receive. The girls were ecstatic, but I could only manage to say hello and goodbye to one guy, and in fact had someone give me a rather unpleasant elbow on the rib so I could trade addresses with him. Thus ended my summer when I was fifteen. I put everything behind me as school begged in.

Little did I know that the guy would figure mainly in my single life.

He sent me his first letter the moment he got back home and settled in. He wrote from when I was fifteen until I was already working here in Manila a decade later. In every ten letters he wrote, I answered one. I’d moved to different places, but he always managed to seek me out. He wrote endlessly about his life, and even though I volunteered very little information of myself and was on the brink of writing him off, he still wrote. Then one day he came again and I met him. And as he had always hoped, we were now both sitting across the same table, face to face, smiling, he much older, and I all grown up and a woman. And there we were, exchanging pleasantries and talking about our respective lives. It was the first time everything he wrote all those years really made sense to me. Things got better and better, and when I woke up from all the pleasantness and reverie, I realized that we were a couple.

Suddenly we were doing things together, planning trips together, and I was spending my weekends with him up the cold north. The six-hour bus trips I had to endure on the way up and back down felt nothing when I had only held on to the excitement of being with him again. In other words, it was nice and fuzzy feeling to be with someone who cared a lot for you, and vice versa. Then I started meeting his friends. They were all rather pleasant and good people, but as I was an insufferably timid person, I didn’t always get to advance my friendships with them, not without some prodding from him. Now that I think about it, I think it’s really me. But you know that when you’re trying not to be overly sensitive about things, you feel worse about it ? That unbeknownst to your partner, you are ill at ease with the crowd he is with, but still you try to meld in, because it is what pleases him?

I think he wouldn't have known about how I felt, because I never told him so. But in one or two instances, I think that I could not anymore close off my eyes and say it was pure coincidence, or I was deliberately trying to make a poor excuse of my sorry prevaricating self. I felt that I was being looked down upon, and regarded with different eyes because I was with someone whose skin color was different from mine. Is it bigotry? I sure hope not.

But there were others still. An incident when I overheard a conversation between a hotel owner and our common friend who called to book us but was asked if I was “dirty”, and she was assured that I wasn’t. And another time when we had to stay overnight at his friend’s house, and there were looks that doubted who I was and from whence I came, or maybe, what I was doing with a white man. But nothing could have been more hurtful than having to be invited at an intimate party of predominantly white, in fact I was the only brown girl in the crowd. I was told a few days then, the owner has lost her diamond ring that night, was looking all around the next day, saying that there only a “few” people in the party---but found it down the kitchen sink soon afterwards. I mean, what??? What did I have to be told about that for? I had to take a careful look at myself in the mirror once and ask… Did I dress like a slut? Certainly not!!! Did I talk like a trashy bitch? As far as I know, I had only been most polite and careful with my words. Do I look like someone who would steal?? Now, this really enraged me inside. Because I had never ever found myself, nor an infinitesimal fraction of who I am, having been interested in another’s possession and coveted it to want to steal it. Not me. Not in this lifetime. And that is why I changed towards him, or them, all for the worst of it, or maybe for the better of it. I don’t know. He was still full of candor and childish naiveté, or maybe a warped mind, until the day we said goodbye.

That is not really why we ended our four-year relationship though, but sad as it is, I recount those incidents now with a slight regret, of why I never really rose up to it and said something, why I evaded having to show umbrage and perhaps teach them a lesson about condescension and arrogance. Why I always believe that people are good, or not so bad as they are and that they deserve some kind of chance and redemption….But why I always end up hurting, even when I thought the ball had already been bouncing the right way.

swig

2007-06-22T16:47:00.000+08:00

Woke up this morning with a bang in my head, and a thump in my stomach. I spent the better part of the bad night getting intoxicated at east 21, while putting on my best behavior towards our work colleagues from abroad. Obviously, somewhere in between two shots of tequila and a couple glasses of whiskey, my aim to be prim and dignified somewhat fell apart. Drinking has been part of a social function where my work is concerned, as that’s where everybody seems to gravitate after a particularly long dinner and lots of senseless conversation with people you only get to meet every three years or so. Earlier that night at dinner, the boss came over to each of the girls, and there’s not a good many, to talk us sweetly into joining the boys for a few swigs afterwards. It’s been several years since we have done anything like this, so I felt that I couldn’t say no. Neither could Jo.

I remember all those years back when some, or rather most of us, were still single, that drinking seemed an essential part of our work life. There’d be days in a week when we would look forward to settling down comfortably at our nook in the Bronx, and our favorite waitresses would be waiting to serve us with our favorite frizzies. Just chilling out, singing ourselves senseless at the karaoke, making little conversations about mostly nothing….it was the quintessential single loser’s life. Yet, good in a way. But after we all got married, the habit seemed to naturally drift away, as everyone, too, drifted apart. The smoking went, the incorrigible flirtings went, and so did the love for liquor. I for one, never really tried to look back, as I have no good reason to be proud of, whilst I was under the influence. There was never a time that I managed to stay sane and sensible, as I have never been accustomed to drinking an iota more than what I am supposed to.

Last night was not an exception either, for me whose relationship with alcohol is not casual and light, like having a quick puff of cigarette outside and flicking it gingerly with the finger, and after a few more, I get done and back to my routine. So anyway, as I have obliged our visitors, I started out with a light beer. I never intended to drink any more of it at first. I had my heart fixed on just sitting silently in my corner and watching the loud band playing, not really keen on getting into tête-à-tête or feigning to want one, with the boys or the girl. The officemate next to me discussed about getting cocktails next. To be honest, I’ve never been socially educated about bar drinks, the margaritas and daikiris are greek to me, but I am willing to imbibe anything to my limits, and be acquainted with it every then and now. So, it is with a twist of irony that we settled in ordering a concoction named “sex in the beach”. This was after all a night of fun and team building, and I was not worried about raised eyebrows or wry admonitions. Not when I absolutely aimed not to get wasted.

But before the “sex” could come, the boss started passing glasses around, something on the rocks, and he was aiming for the girls, while the boys cheered us on to drink. Needless to say, I obliged again. And again. And then before I could hold out for breath, there were little jiggers for the cuervo floating on the candle lit tables, and one landed on the spot next to my sanmig. To drink or not to drink? Perhaps something was beginning to take place in my head, that suddenly things started to look a little easy and groovy. You know…people were loosening up and smiling more silly, and I knew for the life of me I was heading to my destruction. And yet, I drank it all up. Second shot of cuervo, washed it down with beer where the tube ice has completely thawed and joined the yellow liquid. For the boys, or the men, this bravado for drinking was a matter of who was more virile amongst them, and whose culture (all Asians) definitely could hold it best….I didn’t give a damn. For me, it’s my devil beer or the deep blue sea. I was slightly aware that I’m beginning to get red in the face like a devil. I was flushed and free-wheeling….

We had all walked out of the bar for some whiff of the night air, and we went to the nearest gazebo where we could overlook the laguna. There was the flickerite in me saying that I should take some photos of the beautiful lights, but there was no way I could get myself to do that. Not anymore. I was beginning to feel my temples tight across my head and the throbbing pulse inside became more and more pronounced. I had decided to hold my drink down now. But what’s the use? The shamelessness of my act had oozed itself into my bloodstreams and I have begun to lose track of who I was, or who I was with.

I wouldn’t say that I acted a fool, but I had definitely said some things that I might not otherwise say when I am sober. That’s me. I have lucid awareness of what I was doing, unless I fell asleep and be elsewhere in my mind, away from the rowdiness and incoherence of my surroundings. But I was woken up, not a few times, and I know that a mix of drinks, and drinking uninhibitedly one night in every three or so years, ultimately lands me into something I would half-regret the next day. Because people will start telling me, with a slight sardonic chuckle, that I had pointed to an idiot or a sucker, or whispered some insolent,mean quips, that made them laugh out loud at the amusement of it all, while the idiot i try to ruin sits across me, wondering why this girl is so boozed up and suddenly looking rubbish. I lose.

awakening...

2007-06-06T16:25:00.000+08:00

Reflecting on the events of the past weeks, I cannot help but suspect that something is up with the year 2007. Many unpleasant things have happened, not to me but to people I know and care about, and I can only wish the unfortunate string would be cut off this very instant and we can go about our business like we’ve always used to, minus the hard luck. As for my own life, it’s still the same…not so good and not so bad. I have a lot to be thankful for everyday, especially that the kids are growing up fine and healthy, but personally I have not found a good reason to really inhale and say “this is the life”. I am not complaining, but God knows I would be shamefully lying to myself if I said it is sweet and nice. There is the perennial pattern of being poor and sucking up to the system, and I mean all systems. In my mind I am a grand dame of some neverland, but in reality I am one of the nameless millions who carry on with their lives wishing for something better, and yet not getting as much as a notch higher, where comfort and quality of life are concerned. Is it because I am married into poor money, and that having children has been a poor choice as well? Oh god I wish not, because really I wouldn't trade any millions, if I had it, for the happiness I feel with my little children. But still, you wish for those millions, don’t you?….not for yourself, but for the children who right this very minute play in the yard, blissfully unaware of the worries and consternation you feel, while you look at them with sad eyes. I think that I have completely owned up to my responsibilities as a parent, and I can never be selfish enough to think of my needs, in deference to theirs, but it is the apparent truth that to fulfill whosever needs, we must provide….

On the other hand I recently finished this book, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. It is a story of a married woman , Edna Pontellier, whose life seems to be in a cage, but not in a bad confining way, as it seems on the surface she has everything: a wealthy life, a generous husband and two lovely boys. However, deep inside her she wanted to be free of society’s rules, to be unlike all other women who conform and do as they were expected. She was awakening to a new sphere where she comes to be her own woman and appreciates her physical and external powers, which were pregnant with sensuality and the passion she otherwise found lacking in her relationship with her husband. She took on a lover, believing that she could sacrifice the unnecessary things and reject society’s expectations, and find the self she thought she had lost in the roles she was condemned to.

However in the end, she had to make her own tale’s conclusion, as her discovery of maternal giving and loving had led her to understand that she could not go on with her unique and independent sense of self, by being what she wants, and having to be a mother to her children and a wife to her husband, all at once. As her lover rejects her, she walks into the water and swims away from the shore and from everything, thus the suicide. And, probably, the belated purpose to find herself again.

Once I put the book down, I thought…is this me? I don’t mean the lover or suicide, even if to be honest I had entertained the thought of the latter vaguely once or twice, but yeah what the heck, any form of dying is painful unless you’re born with case of catatonia. But seriously, is this how some mothers or married women must feel? Somehow? Is there a minutest moment in our lives where we feel that having married and raising kids have made us lose our sense of womanhood, of self, of personal growth? And if like Edna, we live in a society, that in spite of its modernity, has double standards, and still frown at women who indulge in their individuality a little too openly that it threatens to tear up their so-called moral fiber, well…are we to assume a mute compliance, and be the perfect mothers and wives, loyal only to our masters? Maybe I can, or will not.

I am afraid though, that when I feel I have too much to fight for my evolution as a woman, in the event that I have the full command of my freedom that I could finally grasp it on my fingers, I would be much too old and useless to enjoy, or even want it...

Three Six

2007-05-07T16:14:00.000+08:00

Was wondering whether I should say something about my birthday that just passed, as a thousand other thoughts swim in my mind like a teeming mass of little dots waiting to burgeon before me in a frenzy. Maybe I should anyway. As per usual, nothing of significance happened that day, except that I finally saw Makati after having been cooped up in the south for so long. I brought my little boy with me, and I am glad that Gabby seemed to flash back the same feeling of delight that I have at having seen some sort of civilization. It’s awesome to see that buildings have scraped the skies much higher than when I was last working there, and with growing curiosity I started taking snapshots, however much to Gabby’s annoyance in the end. People were getting busier and were dressing up much smarter. I felt like Gabby and I were like country mice meeting up with city mice cousins in a big scary place.

We had lunch with the cousin and my brother, they were both on a short break from work, and so it was down to the usual small talk of the urbane, and eating hastily while glancing at their wristwatches every so often, which I excuse them for, as I understand the corporate culture. I had a feeling though that I will never succeed in living in their kind of environment anymore, the hurried and harried life, as I prefer to spend and vacillate my slaving days in a mound of brambles, meaning the not so modern dusty south part of manila.

After saying our goodbyes and blowing kisses in the air, I dragged my son to glorietta. The afternoon heat was dreadful and I needed to down something on my parched throat. Gabby was complaining that he was tired and I had for a few moments needed to carry him to the shade. While in glorietta I was assailed with a tempting itch to buy something for myself, probably a new pair of shoes—fortunately I resisted the urge and remembered that my son has been egging me for a “yellow truck”. I know that a matchbox car would be quite harmless, but what do you know, I wasn’t prepared for the realization that my afternoon with him would lead me to.

We had left glorietta for toy kingdom and were walking around in circles for half an hour inside the store as he could not decide which one to get. We pretty much walked past hotwheels and matchbox cars, and I thought that he might ask for something really big and expensive, and I was gearing up myself up to say NO, just in case he hauls a thousand peso worth of toy from the shelf. He looks from one aisle to another, and this time I didn’t say a word. He took my hand and he led me. And after looking up and down the shelves, he made his verdict: let’s go home. I uttered an almost inaudible yes, but I said wait, are you sure. And the little boy couldn’t have been more resolute: Yes mommy, let’s go home.

I’ve been waiting for many a weary years to avenge myself for some unreasonable habit of spending in the past, and I finally see it coming, to save my life on my thirty-sixth birthday. My son, a little four year old thing, teaches me how to say no and mean no, and never look back.