xanana ventura en la red

NEW BLOG

2009-06-13T11:30:00.002+08:00

from this point on, i will be leaving this blog for a new, spankinly better one.

my friends, please redirect yourselves from now on to "I am Dano Tingcungco" at danotingcungco.posterous.com.

there, you'll see photos, videos and music that are relevant and important to me.

of course, also a glimpse into where i'm at now, definitely a farther place than where i've been on this one.

please change your links, and enjoy the newness (apologies to the Palm Pre ads) that is
"I am Dano Tingcungco."

see you there!

xanananananananananana

TAXINOMICS

2009-01-28T12:42:00.003+08:00

On my way home from extended graveyard duty last Sunday, i ditched the car and the MRT commute and decided to take a cab. I didn't know how to react when I found myself hailing a cab that looked like an airport taxi.

No it wasn't one of the nauseating yellow cab types that normally line up in NAIA 1 or 2. It was the average white cab with the sign on top. Unlike the sunburst cabs, it didn't charge an exorbitant P70 flagdown, nor did its meter drop at P4 per three minutes at full stop or so; like its ordinary siblings, the cab had the usual P30 flagdown, and an average P2.50 a pop meter. What gave it away though was the logo it had on the side. It sported the logo of the Department of Tourism. And when i stepped inside, the cab had no traces of the usual cigarette smoke or expired air freshener sent commonly found in average cabs; it was surprisingly comfortable: it smelled of disinfected flowers, the white cotton upholstery looked immaculate, and the window handles were all intact.

The cab's driver (because I was too engrossed in what he told me, i got down and paid and forgot to ask his name. Let's call him Ted) told me he's been driving cabs for more than a decade --- since 1993. And unlike the million cabs I rode before his, Ted was actually proud of his profession. No traces of remorse, regret, sour graping, or having white-collar delusions. Nor was he complaining about how Manila's driver tend to be jackasses 90 percent of the time. He loved his cab, even if it wasn't his own. He didn't have a potbelly. He had salt and pepper hair and lines in his face are competing for attention, yes, but he had the air of someone who's lived a full life. Anyone could even wager he came from a old rich family and cut himself off to live his own life, and he wouldn't be far off from the truth.

He was the first pleasant taxi driver I've had in a long time, outpleasanting even my own. Except for one thing: his taxi meter was running at a furious pace, popping P2.50 in the virtual piggy bank meter every chance we got to stop for more than three minutes.

Not wanting to spoil the overall nice mood, I diverted the conversation to his meter. "So, your meter's not like the sunburst cabs, no?"

"Nope, they're of a different breed." I was expecting overtones of suspicion, shiftiness or just a slight flicker of uneasiness on his face or his voice. I didn't get any.

He continued: "Actually, they get to charge more in flagdown and meter cos they're limited to getting passengers from the airport. They're supposed to go back. Now, if they get themselves passengers outside, it has to be along the way back to the airport.

"It's crazy. Look at their cabs. They can't have the signs we have, like the one on top of mine. And they can't pick people up outside the airport. That's why they get to charge more. My cab, NAIA approved us getting people from the airport. But we have to have our signs on top taken off everytime we drive inside the airport. When we drive outside, we have to get our signs back up, or we get ticketed. It's crazy."

I had to ask about the meter at this point. "But at least your meters get to charge like the ordinary ones. And you get to pick up more passengers. And i just noticed your meter's not like the airports that charge through a 3-minute countdown. But why does it seem to me your meter's a bit off?"

"Off? How come?"

"i must tell you, at this point in Kamias, our meter should at the very least go to P45 before P50, at which point we should've already been in Xavierville. It's kinda fast for me. Cos now it's at P55, and we're not even in Xavierville yet."

He didn't drop his cool demeanor. "It might drop too fast now, but believe me, you'll get to your rate when we get to your house."

At this point, I unknowingly entered myself into an impromptu crash course on taxi meters.

Ted told me apart from the actual meter itself (the big amount line on the lower center line), a meter measures by distance traveled and length of time the cab is in a full stop.

The upper left numbers in the meter measure the time the cab's on full stop, popping P2.50 every 3 minutes. It moves everytime the cab stops, and measures by the second. So when the time reaches 3 minutes, the meter moves P2.50.

Another way, Ted told me, taxis charge is through the distance meter, which is on the upper right hand corner of the meter. The distance meter pops P2.50 for every kilometer traveled. Like the time meter, it adds up the cumulative distance traveled by the cab, and moves the meter when it reaches one kilometer.

"There was one time a passenger asked me, 'Boss, why is your meter so fast?' He told me the meter dropped to P5 in less than a minute, P2.50 every thirty seconds. I explained to him it's because the distance and time meters simultaneously filled up to their required distance and time. It was purely coincidental that it looked to run so fast because the time and distance meters work solo, and don't depend on each other

"Actually, sir, it kind of irritates me when people tell me my meter's fast. It's not fast, it just looks that way because there's a system behind it. And for post 2004 model cars like mine, it's hard to put in cheats on the meter anymore."

"Why so?" I'm usually skeptical, but in this instance I believed him.

"You know about the batengteng? The switch drivers use to push their distance turnup faster? That's usually done on older cars, like the old 90s model Corollas and the old Sentras. You know how their cambio has the leather cloth covering at the bottom? That's where they put the switch. So if you see a driver touching the bottom of the cambio too much as if looking for something, you got your batengteng right there."

But how does it work?

Ted told me a batengteng switch boosts up the speed meter in the car --- without putting any excessive force into the engine --- to fool the cab meter into thinking the cab has travelled so long. "That's why when you see drivers putting towels on the dashboard to cover the speed meters, you have a reason to suspect they're using the batengteng switch.

"But we also have another way to cheat on the meter. See this U-turn in Aurora? Have you ever asked yourself why most taxi drivers make a U turn or turn on the outer corner of the turn? That's because the outer turn adds a few meters to the distance meter.

"i tried it myself when i drove along Elliptical road (in Quezon City). When i drove on the outer lane, I had at least 300 meters added to my distance, as opposed to when i drove on the inner lane, i had 400 meters less.

"Another way we cheat is with the speed. Drive fast, and on the outer lane of any turn, then we get to make the most out of the road, without the passenger ever knowing we cheated. He can check the meter for the batengteng, but he won't find any."

But even as he told me all these, he never practiced what he exposed, at least while I was in his cab. I looked at his cambio, he wasn't holding it too low, and it didn't have a leather base but rubber, making it hard to implement a switch. I looked at his dashboard; no towels covering the spedometer. And when we made that U-turn in Aurora Boulevard, he took his time to make a U-turn on the inner lane.

"It makes me feel bad when i learn all these. I mean, I've only found out about this when me and the other driver gather and talk about it. We earn money anyway; it's not a losing business like everybody wants to think. Why do they need to do this?

"When I was new to this job, one of my passengers asked me the same question you were asking now. My answer was like that of many drivers today; 'Sir, I don't know anything about that.' It just made me feel stupid and it made my passenger suspicious because I couldn't explain why my meter was being that way. So I took my time and studied how my meter works. I just hope everyone else learns how to explain to their passengers. Because even if they're not doing anything wrong, it becomes a losing battle when passengers start to get suspicious.

"The drivers who tell me about these ways to cheat are usually the ones with vices or more than two families. They have to make money fast in the shortest time possible so they can have time for their vices. Like the drivers who sniff shabu or play tong-its after only two hours on the road. It's a thriving business. There's no reason to cheat on paying passengers."

When we got down to my house, true enough, my meter stopped at my usual going rate: P105 from GMA 7 to my house in Marikina. I paid him P150. He told me jokingly he was charging me more for his stories. So when I made good on it, he took the cash with some hesitation. "Sir, really, I was only joking. Let me get you your change."

"It's okay, it's yours. Let's just think your meter had a batengteng on it."

over the past year

2008-10-23T12:22:00.002+08:00

over the past year and a half since i left this blog to focus on what antoine de saint-exupery's little prince calls "matter of consequence," so many important things have been kept away from this blog.

since leaving this blog, i met my partner, the love of my life, my d2. i finished my thesis, won an award for it in university, got hired as a reporter for a major television network, and had an all-access pass to people some would only dream about brushing into at the mall. i brushed into some of these people and realized how some of them never really deserve their vip status. over the past year and a half, i changed phone numbers twice, had all my phones with my old phone numbers stolen at different occasions, got mugged, got harassed at different occasions, and found a way to turn everything in my favor.

i've been out of town, i've covered major stories i would only hear or read about in the news before, covered small stories, had people asking me for help, had people refusing help from us, covered crime stories, had a first look at brains freshly escaped out of their skull cocoon. i've seen rich people in all their gaudy excess, poor people in their cramped shelters, i've seen mangled corpses in cars that fell victim to drag-racing, mangled bodies killed in the least dignified ways possible, rape victims who pretend nothing happened to them just to mask the pain they nurse inside, and dead babies stuffed in things the catholic church will shudder at.

over the past year, i lost weight, gained weight, lost it, and gained it back twofold. i changed wardrobes, lifestyles, and brought one back. i discovered how to make music and not just be a critic of it. i lost my cultural capital by getting myself focused on work and work alone. i lost my nightlife, and got it back by getting myself on the night shift. i've been a cunning bitch to colleagues from other organizations, and incidentally had that same quality gain me friends from most of them.

i've been an ear, a mouthpiece, a megaphone, and a muffler. i've been a shoulder, an arm, a hand, and a fist.

i've shed tears and made some people shed tears for me. i've lost my pride and gained too much back. i've had fat and put myself in the painful process of losing it. i felt like i stagnated and found a way to get out of the rut. i lost friends, lost contact with friends, gained friends, and gained too much contact with the new ones. i gave birth to ideas that never saw the light of day. i got exposed to the light of day with a terrible drought of ideas to serve as my shade.

i've learned to forget, and i've learned to remember. at some point, i've learned that some things are best forgotten, while some work best when they're kept fresh in the memory.

i've learned how to write fast, and learned how to write simple. i've learned how to ditch my notebook and pen for the notes app in my phone, and the memory app in my brain. and at some point i forgot how to write.

i've grown.

one by one, the memories of the past year and a half will flow as another chapter in my life sets in. they will flow together as context to the more recent events in this life i'm leading.

i've once built a fortress of a dike to stop the water from flowing. now it's time to demolish the dike.

muscle spasms

2008-10-23T12:11:00.004+08:00

one night, i was testing IM+ one of the 70++ apps i've downloaded and installed in my iPhone. despite the crappy EDGE connection i've had to live with, i was able to update my Facebook, read the NY Times, and log on to YM using it. if i'm lucky to have linksys as my internet service provider for the day (read: wifi hotspot), i get to call up some skype friends using Fring. but that night, i was testing IM+.

first order of business was chatting with this friend. what was originally a hi-hello message turned out this way:

by the time i went online properly, he'd already signed out.

my last line was really a knee-jerk reaction, not an attempt to sound smart. but it made me think. beyond the physical, literal bullshit, can you really sprain your heart? and when you do, what's the cure?

makes me feel sorry for this friend, who's almost sworn himself to celibacy.

suddenfiction1: numerology

2008-10-15T20:36:00.003+08:00

i hate the number 4.

i don't understand.

i should hate the number 3: oro, plata, mata. death.

4 means gold, half of number 8, eternity in bliss. eternity of bliss.

fuck it. even fuck has 4 letters to its name.

but everytime tragedy enters my system, i look for any piece of wood and knock 3 times.

damn it, i knock three 3-knock sets just to drive the thoughts away and keep them there.

i should blame family friends for this.

one of them's psychic.

he told my mother never to use number 4, or have anything associated with it.

bad luck. supposedly.

so i trained myself to hate the number 4.

4 means even division, a selection of sides. two sides. i liked to fencesit.

at least three gave me a good bench to sit on while i dilly-dally which side to take.

maybe i should hate myself in the process.

my name has four letters.

VOTE FOR MY REMIX! ITAAS ANG BANDERA!

2008-09-01T01:42:00.001+08:00

for the past couple of weeks, i have silently shuttled back and forth between work and working on this remix of the mariah carey song "i'll be loving you long time." vote for me asap if you like it, and pass the word to your friends and lovers and fiends! the more votes you have cast in my direction, the more chances this remix could get included in an official international release. so help me push my luck! VOTE NOW!

love y'all,
xanananananananana

there are so many things i want to write about

2008-07-23T21:41:00.002+08:00

but i guess i just don't know where to start

more than a year since i put this blog on tempo leave, so many things have happened.

i have not been the same xanana ventura. i have changed into someone, well, practically different i'd like to believe.

i'd also like to believe i had been a better person.

there are so many photos in my arsenal i want to post.

another 60 gigs of all-new music i have gone gaga over the past year i want to stream in a revitalized media player.

but a little more time, i guess. the mojo will find itself back. hehehe

later, xananananananana

i'm BAAAAAAACK!

2008-07-02T21:25:00.000+08:00

after a loong time of absence (reasons for which are work-related), i am happy to announce:

to everyone who's been looking forward to seeing another post in this hellhole of a blog, this will be my first one in over a freakin year!

it's not polished, i know, and blogging for me these days still feels like a baby learning to walk, i'm confident, though, that in no time, i'll be relearning the ropes that i've been so familiar with in the past, and i'll be happily typing away like it's second nature, so much like last year.

so many things have happened to me since my last post, and slowly, i'll let you in on my life and how it has transformed.

in the meantime, the blog is now officially open!

loveliness, xanananananananana

sa plumang baliko

2007-02-24T01:57:00.000+08:00

Sa plumang baliko
ang sikong nakayuko
sa puting ginahasa
sa abaca ng mesa

sa plumang baliko
sa poder ng may takot
ang panghalip ng sigalot
pusil na kumislot

sa plumang baliko
ang pulang mantsa sa balisong
sa Hanford na bago
pati sa utak na ginago

sa plumang baliko
kapalarang maharot
pinanday na loob
pero tinintang baliko.

xanana ventura / 2007

smellscaping

2007-02-06T01:12:00.000+08:00

If there is any other place near the UP Diliman campus that could serve as a playing field of sorts as far as power/class relations are concerned, it must be where the rich and pretentious rich stereotypically hang out after classes (or even during classes), and its contrast with the rest of the scene’s elements. I chose to do a smellscape of Starbucks Katipunan not only because this is where I usually go to study for big exams, or meet friends and other people there. It is also because I have long noticed a striking contrast in the nature of the place, and the poverty of the setting it is situated in.

You can smell the dank, polluted Katipunan air the minute you get down the UP-Katipunan jeep near the overpass going to Ateneo de Manila. The stench – reminiscent of rotten garbage fused with engine smoke – could be, if you’re lucky, blown off with the constant breeze and the fast pace of cars passing by the highway. Then again, if you stay long enough at the foot of the overpass, you might inadvertently introduce yourself to engine smoke from cars pulling over to parking, or cars leaving their rented parking lots. At any rate, you won’t stay here too long. Because you want to go to Starbucks.

A swing of the glass doors with “Starbucks Coffee” vulgarly emblazoned on them usually means a rude introduction to high caffeine. But this is not a simple case of warm, ground coffee beans – the air-conditioning turns the supposedly warm scent into something cold, metallic, and strong, like a coffee-scented cologne with preservatives and additives polluting the integrity of the original scent. There is also a certain saccharine quality to the scent (calling it sweet would say so little about it) that makes it impossible to bear for long. If you smell it long enough, the cold, metallic coffee scent could suddenly have traces of sugar, mint, chocolate, and mocha to it. Thereby, if you’re into such a scent, inducing you to order an overpriced cup.

A little tour around the relatively small shop also lets out metallic scents of elelctronic gadgets (cellphones, laptops, digital cameras) laced with different fragrances (fruity for the ladies, musky for the men). However warm and fuzzy these scents might come across, though, their base scent is still metallic and industrial. Like a slab of steel sprayed with coffee-scented cologne.

This metallic coffee scent extends to the restroom, although it is in this place where competition between coffee and soap begins. If you’re sensitive enough, you might make a distinction between the coffee and the soap scents, and where they lay in that enclosed cubicle.

Once you’ve had tolerably enough of the caffeine, you might want to step outside and pair it with nicotine to give your heart a full palpitation workout. Because the lanai of the Starbucks Katipunan branch is, by default, a smoker’s garden, almost everyone smokes in this area. If you can discriminate, you can smell smoke with mint (Marlboro Lights Menthol, Capri Menthol, Yves Saint Laurent Menthol, West Ice), smoke with a sweet acerbic tone (Gudang Garam), smoke with fruit (DJ Mix) and just plain smoke (Marlboro, Winston, Dunhill, Camel), all dancing together like they are in their own parallel universe. They dance and mingle, but they never mix. There are no intermarriages here, but the nicotine smoke, which is less assaulting than engine smoke but more insidious, overpowers the virgin nostrils and turns the experience into some sort of a duel.

But step outside a little more, beyond the air-barriered confines of this mass-production coffee shop, and the caffeine ceases to exist. Amid the scandalously expensive cars that line the Starbucks pocket lot, the scent of elbow grease, mud, rain, cheap cigarettes, engine smoke, and dying foliage fill the air. The smell of frying/grilling meat from nearby restaurants Tia Maria’s Cantina and Chiggy’s occasionally make a surprise appearance. But still, in is in this area that the posturings of safety that expensive caffeine and nicotine no longer mean anything. The smell of the parking lot and the adjacent highway in this long Katipunan stretch is the predominant outdoor smell everywhere else. Unlike the scent of the sanitized confines of Starbucks, the smell outside is alive, strong, overpowering and real.

afritada / late night dinner

2007-01-11T02:43:00.000+08:00

This short story has a fragmented history. - xanana

________________________________

Ingredients/ 1 kilo chopped chicken. 2 cans tomato sauce. 3 potatoes, sliced. 3 carrots, sliced. 2 green bell peppers, sliced. 1 cup oil. 2 tsp sugar. 1 bulb onion. 1 clove garlic. Salt and pepper to taste.

Red is a nice color, don’t you think? I love the way it livens up my kitchen tiles. Oops, I forgot. Our kitchen tiles. It’s been three years since we had this house to ourselves. I remember kissing you in all places uncovered with articles of clothing. You were only in a soiled white tank and house shorts torn at the crotch lines then. In any case, you looked hot. Putting your presence side by side with this house, you’d have 10,000 pogi points to your name. Of course, now, I only know the nearness of you through these red tiles. Fiery red. Shock-rock red. Slut red. Scarlet red. Warms me up any way. Too warm, perhaps, with this boiling oil on my skin.
My potatoes and carrots run from my torn plastic bag to the aluminum sink. I take hold of what I could catch, two potatoes and a carrot. Suddenly I remember how you made me so proud of my pineapples then, back in my father’s farm. Too bad I couldn’t add pineapples here. Even tomatoes had to be squashed. But I don’t mind. This is for you anyway. I’ll have my pineapples and lanzoneses as you make love to the bed.
My hair ruffles with the smoke of now-burning oil, but I don’t care. My skin cooks itself in oiled sweat in the process, to hell with it. This has to be perfect. In any way possible. I slice the potatoes, carrots, and bell peppers like I always do. Thick, and haphazardly elongated. With the utmost care. You wouldn’t want to eat just the sauce, would you?

Step one/ Sauté garlic and onion in hot oil.

I crack open this garlic clove, peel the skins with my French-tipped nails, and use the marble mortar to grind them up. I know it would make my hands smelly and you wouldn’t want to kiss and lick its tips like you used to, but I know I’d make up for it with a perfect dinner. I know you won’t mind. You’ll even want to lick my hands over and over. Garlic is pungent; but admit it, you’d eat it even if it would kill you, right? Garlic is even an aphrodisiac, right? Right.
Now with the onions; I take out a bulb, peel it with my nails, again. And chop it up nice and slow. I’m not cooking anything else, just our dinner. I need nicely minced onions. Then I tear up. But I guess I need it, my face has been dehydrated for so long anyway. Hell if I could bottle your saliva, I would’ve done it long ago.
My oil is burning. Smoke blurs my vision. I open the windows and stash the garlic and onion in the wok. Kitchen clears up quite dramatically. I look at my nails. I stare at the floor for a second. Then I decide to wear gloves.

Step two/ Add chicken. Add salt and pepper. Simmer for 5 minutes.

I take out the chicken from the plastic wrapper, and realize I had the butcher chop it three hours before. I take the largest breast, redolent with its own juice, take off my gloves in one hand, and begin to stroke the skin. Hard. Then I touch my nape. My hand moves to my neck, until it reaches my collarbone, finally stopping at my cleavage, redolent with sweat.
Suddenly realizing the mess I made to my body, I dump every piece of chicken onto the wok, wooden spatula coercing the group to socialize with the garlic and onion duet. I shower the batch with salt (2 pinches) and pepper (half pinch). Spatula swims with group one more time. Stop. Cover wok. I set my cellphone’s alarm to 5 minutes. I turn on the radio. Annie Lennox’s ‘No more I Love Yous’ playing. Language is leaving me in silence, changes are shifting outside something, she says. I stroke my breasts once more and do back-up caterwauling, while looking at the dogs from my window. Mimi is fucking another son of a bitch, again.

Step three/ Add tomato sauce and ½ cup water.

I get back to the blue-and-predominantly-yellow supermarket bag to find the can of tomato sauce I expertly chose from all the dented-and-bent others in the aisle. From the drawers I produce a semi-rusted can opener and push the sharp pointed end against the top of the can. Takes me a while to get the opener to travel around the can, but I stop as three-quarters of the tin gets ripped. I try to lift the torn lid, but apparently I’m in no good terms with tin tonight as I rip the skin of my index finger, blood building up. By instinct, I suck my finger. Red has a nice taste. Mellow, yet penetrating.
By the finger’s instinct, I no longer feel the sting. I now feel in my mind, your lips pressing in my fingers with mine. I’m used to opening cans of tomato sauce every night, but surprisingly, I hurt myself just now. Language is leaving me, again. I can’t explain. I just have to finish the routine. The same nightly routine, no fail. Dump every drop of tomato sauce onto the wok. Don’t leave anything hanging. Good. Take a cup. Half-fill with water. Dump it in. I wonder if I had my blood mixed in somewhere.

Step four/ Add potatoes, carrots, and bell pepper.

No matter what I do, even with different brands of tomato sauce, I still can’t get the color of my slut-red tiles in my afritada sauce. You won’t mind, right? Oh, you don’t know. Good. Better that way. I distract this fault instead with color. I dump the potatoes in. I smile. I dump the carrots in. I smile wider. I dump the green bell pepper in. I look up the ceiling, then to the quaint crucifix somewhere above the curtain fixture. I see my eyes somewhere in that bronzy sculpture, smiling with distress. But I distract myself anyway, with my wok getting colorful. Remember that art class before where we first met? You were so in love with color, you won me over? I was always the black leather type, but something in your mismatched rainbows scraped the leather off me. I always loved your portraits of me, with my candlelight-blue hair, orange skin, and pink eyes. But you never do that anymore. I always wonder when you’ll paint me a portrait of my afritada. You won’t even need a mismatched rainbow palette for that anyway. You won’t even have to think; it’s all laid out for you.
I keep my portraits too, you know. This is the only masterpiece I’ve got, in several repetitions. But unlike yours, I never had to just look. It’s something more than that to bring it to life. Lips dripping with it, fast forward to a smile is worth more to me than an expensive frame or a high-profile exhibit, with lips dripping with sallow bubbly. But you don’t know that. So I look at that crucifix again. And look away. And cover my wok. And head upstairs and bathe.

Step five/ Let stand for 15 minutes

Dripping wet from the shower, I open my closet. And pull out a little black silk dress, gleaming against the fluorescent light. I finish the ensemble with a pair of black stilettos. I spray on the perfume you gave me three weeks ago. With no note, no wrapper, nothing. But I’ve been okay with it. It’s like telling me I smell like vanilla, and I should forever smell that way. Sweet. I appreciate your quiet honesty. I know for a fact I can only open your mouth and hear your voice in bed. But even that I now barely remember.
I fasten my damp, wavy locks with a pair of black chopsticks. I guess I can now look like a geisha without even trying. I finish with a swipe of lip gloss. Plum. Sweet. Then I walk down the stairs, imagining my first prom night with you. Except now only time can fetch me and tell me I look radiant, for you’re not around anyway. I head to the kitchen, and turn off the stove.

Step six/ Serve.

I am now on the verge of making love to this chair. I may have to use this red wine bottleneck in place of you shoving happiness in me. The candles are melting. The thin lights are losing their dimness. I must have stared at them for too long.
Beep. Beep. Doorbells are music.
I walk to the door. I clutch my breast, hard. I fear what might happen next. But my silk dress might ruffle. As a matter of fact, it already is. So I grab the doorknob instead. But I don’t see you. I don’t see any semblance of you. I now stand face-to-face with a stranger masked in black pantyhose. With a gun. Hard and loaded. I know it because it clicks. Loudly. I walk back, my stilettos in silent opposition. I stumble backwards. Unzipping his jeans, he takes off the pantyhose. Gun still pointed at me, slightly crossing the creases of my dress, imperial silk still gleaming against the thin lights. And then Gun slowly climbs to my chest. To my neck. To my chin. In slow succession, at the expense of my speeding heartbeat, Gun now smothers my face, skirts my powdered cheeks, stains my plum lips. And it stops there.
My lips must have dropped; Gun makes its way to my tongue. Slowly. Playfully. My mascara-filled eyelashes curtsy back; I see a semblance of your face, with your potato complexion, your carrot nose, and mismatched rainbows all over your head. I could’ve stopped and looked. Yours has those rough edges like most movie stars I adored with a bottleneck. But I couldn’t. Gun pulls me back, playfully teasing my plum lips. Holding it hostage, Gun shoos language away. I lean back.
As if I have any choice. I’m held at gunpoint.
My afritada is getting cold. But if it’s any consolation, I now see red tiles covering the carpeted floor both of us are enveloped against. Must be peripheral vision, but I can’t stop to verify. I don’t want to stop and verify. They look so red. Scarlet red. Slut-red, if you may. Red is a nice color, don’t you think? Like my kitchen tiles. Oops, I forgot. Our kitchen tiles.

repost: on the tuition increase.

2007-01-08T23:17:00.000+08:00

in june last year, i wrote the post below displaying my intense opposition to the tuition increase. the reason is pretty obvious: up is a goddamn state university, therefore the burden of subsidizing it falls squarely on the shoulders of the state. there is no negotiation, no compromise. it's provided for in the 1987 constitution. and no one ever questions the constitution.

then again, that's not exactly the case now.

not only has the up board of regents (made up, in bulk, by malacañang appointees) betrayed the up community by deliberately uninviting and misleading the student and faculty regent to the unorthodoxly-set bor meet (friday, noon, right before the cancelled lantern parade), it has also, in effect, railroaded the eventual and (almost) complete state abandonment of education.

sure, not all people get to go to college, especially if you can't sustain the lifestyle changes it demands. but everyone should never be denied access to state subsidized tertiary education. up serves as the last resort for most students who cannot afford commercialized colleges. it's mandated to be one, and its integrity as a STATE university should never be marred by a cheap attempt by the BOR to get a quick buck by jacking up tuition 300 percent.

i was figuratively leafing through my previous blog entries, and i found this one below, written june 30, 2006. i didn't edit it or even update the events that took place as i wrote it, precisely for the reason that the arguments i posited in the article - however vitriol-filled the language i used for it was - still are my arguments until now.

by the way, since the decision has not been technically "ratified," we iskolars ng bayan still can do something to turn this around. especially for us who know people who are still in high school, with dreams of going to up but can't realize it because of the astronomical costs these tuition hikes will bring, it's time for us not to betray them. there's a january 24 mobilization that will come to a head in quezon hall, and this is one occasion where we can show these Board pipsqueaks that they might hold the highest policy-making body in the university, but we UP students and faculty have the greater power to turn things around.

it has been done before. diliman commune, the collapse of sb 2587, the reintroduction of the nstp program. there is no reason why it should not work now.

xanananananananana

__________________________________

oh. my. god. something that hasn't happened in more than 16 years is bound to happen again. the up board of regents is planning to jack up tuition rates by more than 200 percent.

if the bor gets its way, incoming up freshmen will have to pay P1,000 per unit in up diliman (where i go to school, byy the way). which, by the way, is waaaay far from the current P300. so if right now, the average tuition for a up student is P5,400 for an 18-unit load, the tenetative charge for the next year's up freshman would more or less go to P18,000 or more, if he/she wants to take in more units.

now this might look puny to the six-digit tuition other students may have at the ateneo, la salle or ua&p, and you might buy in the stupid argument that the government does not have enough money to provide for education. but let me stop playing devil's advocate here and tell you why this could just be the biggest sin the bor can commit against the up community, and by association, the country.

first of all, up is a state university. meaning, the government should provide for the university. like, allot a budget. and if the government in question is decent/effective enough, it should place education on top of its priorities. but with the fucked-up government we have right now (lorded by that shorty parrot over there who has no sense of discretion or conscience), the only excuse up students have been getting is that the government has no money.

yeah right.

how about putting more than 80 percent (this is a 2005 figure; not sure about the final statistics for this year) of the national budget to paying ONLY the country's interest in world bank-imf loans? and how about putting the remainder to it to the military? and how about the last morsels of it to corruption and "presidential funds," which mostly go to the cronies? and where the hell does education factor in this picture. ask the kids who had to hold umbrellas when they go to class.

however, under any and all circumstances, the government is under obligation, whether it likes it or not, to fund education as a human right. the government has no right to condone, worse to instigate, the commercialization of education. bwecause then it would only benefit those who have the money to do so.

second (addendum to the last point), education is a universal human right, that's why state universities such as up exist. and being a state u, it caters to all social classes. if you introduce higher tuition, how is it supposed to benefit the students who have to take out loans now that tuition is still at 300? what are they supposed to do? drop out? quit? file an indefinite leave? whore themselves? where's your mandate in that picture?

third, if the justification is that the fees will be "at par" with that of more exclusive schools, it's total bullshit. you cannot measure education by the size of your school bill, in the same vein that you cannot measure the intelligence of a child by the size of his/her parents' bank account. if the goal is to keep the university at par with the others that it's always comaring itself with, why waste your time with such artificial/cosmetic change? it's like repainting the facade of the up health service just to make it look like it can do brain surgery now. it's preposterous at best, insipid at worst.

and fifth, it sets a precedent. if they can raise tuition like that, then they can raise labfees like that. sooner or later, they can have an sb 2587-ish charter ratified in congress and relieve the government of its obligations. and then the university will no longer be any more respectable than the diploma mill colleges advertised and scattered all over the metro.

the last time such a drastic tuition increase took place was in 1989, when then up president edgardo angara (never forget the name) jacked up tuition from P40 to P300. more than 500 percent! atty. victor avecilla (my mass media law professor at cmc, and one of the people i greatly respect) filed a case against the bastards, but the supreme court ruled on angara's favor. the not-so-original rationale was that the fee increase was supposed to put up at par with ateneo and foreign universities, and because the budget was going down.

but if you want to get back the teachers who left, the facilities that have disintegrated with disuse, give the students better quality education, we go back to the core argument: IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE FOR EDUCATION. BECAUSE EDUCATION IS A UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT. say no to budget cut!

all of this, while i attended a book launch at the university of the philippines press, where the academic elite were there and the new logo (which i didn't really like. i like the alibata logo better) revealed. they acted as if up was your typical brady bunch university where all is bright, happy and gay. i wanted to strangle them one by one, but i had to keep my composure.

putang ina bakit nila ginagawa sa atin ito?

xanananananananana

getting to know you

2007-01-06T02:03:00.000+08:00

Today, you will not notice me passing you by.

Too preoccupied with your own thoughts, you will not give a moment to glide your back my way as I make some room for myself to walk on. But I will not hunch over and pretend you are God. I will still put my chin up and walk through your path, or the path that will hold me nearer to you, whichever comes first.

My eyes, the brown of which fading to a noticeable cashew with every year added to my resume, will be covered in glass for added sparkle. My long and rumpled hair, white streaks on which gaining companions with every day added to my work schedule, will not pose a threat to your stick-straight locks. It will just kill it with ease. As cliché as it sounds, rumpled hair with a macho yet bohemian stance, I like to believe, gains more pogi points than a clean-cut straight-haired kid with absolutely no sense of culture. Or at least my bias to the artsy-fartsy side of it

But I do not believe in pogi points for the sake of getting it, just the same as appreciating or making art for art’s sake. I call to higher motives, higher intentions, higher desires. Vanity is all about fitting in, right? And vanity only speaks of approval from others, am I not filibustering? With Interest comes Appreciation. And Interest lays the tracks to Respect. Unfortunately, Love railroads it. But do not tell me you didn’t like the idea.

But you will not think about those things as you casually flail your eyes past me. You will not even think of anything, I suppose. Anything, of course, except keeping that black hair straight. Which I can kill with my rumpled set with perfect ease.

But you will see the colorful chains constricting my wrist. Those colorful wooden cuffs, increasingly closing in on my hands, ruling it, admonishing it not to do anything, to not be anything. Just be. You will look closer without really moving a step, and see that the Hands cradling those chains have given up in completely killing it. The Hands are now like rogue prisoners, locked and chainballed. You will want to take them off me, to finally set those prisoners free on parole on a fault not exactly their own; but you will not try it yourself.

You will look at me from Rumpled hair, confused head, to Grimy shoes, tired feet. You will see my cashew eyes midway and stop there. But it is just that. You will just stop there. And looking for any fragment of beauty trapped inside, you will give up. And walk farther away. You will not realize that I have given up that beauty for something else. And you will never come close to fully embracing it either. You are dyslexic to anything deprived of glitter. Which explains why

Today, you will not notice me passing you by.

task force monico atienza (please, tumulong po tayo)

2006-12-31T02:45:00.000+08:00

URGENT HELP FOR PROFESSOR MONICO
ATIENZA
Message: Dear Friends,

We are writing you on behalf of Prof.
Monico M. Atienza, who has been
comatose
since December 23, 2006. An undetected
mass in his throat gradually blocked
air
passage, which finally led to
successive
heart seizures.

Monico is the president of the First
Quarter Storm (FQS) Movement, an
organization of activists in the 1960s
and 1970s. In various ways, he has
continuously helped and inspired
activists of people’s organizations and
institutions, especially the youth and
students.

As a political prisoner during martial
law, Monico was heavily tortured and
held in solitary confinement.
Government intelligence claimed that he
was a ranking member of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the
Philippines and head of its National
Organization Department when he was
arrested in 1974. Released in 1977, he
went back to the university.

As secretary-general of the militant
Kabataang Makabayan (Patriotic Youth)
in
the late 1960s, he was among the
indefatigable architects of the youth
and student activism that eventually
expanded to help establish today’s
formidable progressive mass movement in
the Philippines.

In 1987, he survived an assassination
attempt by a death squad of the
Philippine military which claimed the
lives of two colleagues. Monico’s
health, already deteriorated by the
torture in 1974, all the more worsened
with the injuries he sustained in the
incident. A shrapnel remains imbedded
in
his head and a leg wound would not heal
to this day.

Now confined at the Central Intensive
Care Unit of the Philippine General
Hospital, Monico is kept alive by a
life
support system. His condition remains
critically stable.

Monico has no source of income other
than his teaching at the university.
The meager health benefits available to
him are not enough to sustain the cost
of hospitalization and probable
therapy.

Let us all help a great comrade, mentor
and friend.

Donations may be personally given to
Bernardita “Didith” V. de Guzman of the
First Quarter Storm Movement or
deposited to:

Bank: Bank of the Philippine Islands

Address: Diliman Branch, Quezon
City, Philippines

Account Name: Alberto S. Aguilar

Savings Account Number: 4259-0220-91

Swift Code: BOPIPHMM

For Task Force Monico M. Atienza,

(Sgd.)

Bonifacio P. Ilagan

Chair, First Quarter Storm Movement

quadruple.

2006-12-20T00:29:00.000+08:00

Solid

Three beats down
Two more to go
Sounds gain strength
To topple down
The loudspeaker

Liquid

Imagine two red mounds of
Mush
Mixing
Trying to be solid
Until hands decide
They are made for a spatula and a bowl
a board betrays them

Gas

Your needle penetrates with the subtlety of
a sledgehammer making love to a rose
that
on a very windy day
decided to live with
gravel.

Plasma

Specks of you come in special delivery
of a cloud of orange
And pink
And yellow
The blue cloud pulls me in
my face melts away
And makes an encore performance
Of your special delivery

quadruple / xanana ventura / 2006

one more.

2006-12-19T04:04:00.000+08:00

You Are A Jealous Ex

You're not quite over your past, and you are hurt that your ex is moving on
You're no longer in love, but you're not done with being pissed
Jealous of any happiness that comes your ex's way, you still can't let go

What Type of Ex Are You?

ouch.

2006-12-19T04:00:00.000+08:00

Your Love Life Secrets Are

Looking back on your life, you will only have one true love.

You're a little scarred from your past relationships, but who isn't?

It's important to you that your lover is very attractive. You like to have someone to show off.

In fights, you love to debate and defend yourself. You logic prevails - or at least you'd like to think so.

Break-ups can be painful for you, but you never show it. You hold your head high.

Your Love Life Secrets, Revealed

i'm a big sucker for blogthings. haha

2006-12-19T03:34:00.000+08:00

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

You are excellent with words and language. You explain yourself well.
An elegant speaker, you can converse well with anyone on the fly.
You are also good at remembering information and convicing someone of your point of view.
A master of creative phrasing and unique words, you enjoy expanding your vocabulary.

You would make a fantastic poet, journalist, writer, teacher, lawyer, politician, or translator.

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

i'm a sucker for blogthings. haha

2006-12-19T03:31:00.000+08:00

Your Dominant Intelligence is Linguistic Intelligence

What Kind of Intelligence Do You Have?

2006-12-19T03:15:00.000+08:00

How You Are In Love

You take a while to fall in love with someone. Trust takes time.

You give completely and unconditionally in relationships.

You tend to get very attached when you're with someone. You want to see your love all the time.

You love your partner unconditionally and don't try to make them change.

You are fickle and tend to fall out of love easily. You bounce from romance to romance.

How Are You In Love?

2006-12-19T02:56:00.000+08:00

Your Birthdate: May 8

You love being in love... so much so that it's very hard for you to be single.
Unfortunately, it's difficult for you to stay in love over time. Too many people intrigue you!
Only your true love will be able to keep you interested over time.

Number of True Loves You'll Have: 2

Number of Times You'll Have Your Heart Broken: 3

You are most compatible with people born on the 8th, 17th, and 26th of the month.

What Does Your Birth Date Mean For Your Love Life?

tuition hike and betrayal

2006-12-16T23:33:00.000+08:00

accurate as of last night, seven members of the up board of regents approved the 230 percent tuition increase by unanimous vote. it is still subject to confirmation whether the new tuition is really P800/unit or still at the controversial P1,000, with the P2,500 miscellaneous fee from P615.

if you think this alone is the major issue here, think again.

we were so betrayed.

turns out, it wasn't so unanimous because both the student and faculty regents, the sole representatives of the sectors greatly affected by the hikes, weren't notified where the meeting was to be held. in effect, they were uninvited.

another telltale sign of betrayal was the odd time and venue for the meeting. bor meetings are usually done every last thursday of the month, at 10am, in a designated room at the topmost floor of quezon hall. it's never done on a friday, in the afternoon. so this is a very patent indication that the up administration is hell-bent on railroading the increase. and, in effect, voiding any justification for the university to demand for greater state subsidy. if we stretch the argument further, it is an indication of complete state abandonment of education.

in one of the forums of a personals site touching on the tuition increase, i was shocked to see people actually agreeing to something that defeats the entire thesis statement of the university of the philippines being a "state university." my arguments flowed as follows:

i will have to disagree with the other posts in this thread about the increase being a nice move. first of all, the university is duly entitled by the constitution to state subsidy. to source income from outside this state subsidy bracket runs against the entire thesis statement of up being a state university.

second, an increase is not automatically tantamount to high standard education. if we look at the state universities of other countries in the asean region, bulk of them are fully state-subsidized. and their quality of education is superior to that of private universities in the country (not that i'm disparaging the high-profile private universities here, because i also came from one before i went to up).

third, the proposal is shady. bulk of the university's expenses, such as maintenance, personal services (salary) and security are directly funded by and allocated for in the university's revolving fund, which runs to the billions. an increase does not automatically guarantee higher salaries for teachers, because the university, being a government institution, is controlled by the salary standardization law. there was no direct and explicit proposal by the up administration as to where the revenue generated by the increase will go to. also, the budget for the construction of new buildings is allocated in the budgetary proposal of the university to the lower house and the senate. none of it come from the revolving fund. that's why kapag niriri-enact ang budget, nauuwi sa wala yung subsidy for up, lalo na kung tapos na ang building na itinayo last year.

fourth, the relative wealth of up students is no justification for the increase. just because nauubusan ng parking space sa as kapag enrollment does not mean mayayaman ang mga taga-up. bulk of the university's students are either below the poverty line, or are from the provinces. and the only reason that they're thought of as rich is because bulk of these students are placed under bracket 9 of the superiorly inefficient stfap system. this increase is tantamount to total disregard for the basic right of these students to have a stab at tertiary education that's actually good for them.

and fifth, sure, tertiary education is not a right, but a privilege. but we have to argue in the context of up as a state university, which is mandated to provide education to those who don't have the capacity to enroll themselves in commercialized private universities. these students you give education to in up will eventually give back to the country in terms of public service, as indirectly stated in the verbal student contract a student has with up the moment he or she steps in. to deprive these students of the right to gain the capacity to render service to the country is tantamount to treachery to the country. and, in effect, its people.

and this is what we have to stop.

_______________________________

to tell you the truth, when i got the message from two close friends of mine, last night and early this morning, i cried. i shouldn't have a reason to, other people would posit, because only incoming freshmen would be affected by the increase. but that's hogwash. the sole idea that the university is being betrayed by the people who are supposed to help it rise from the cesspool it got itself into, by rhe people who should be at the forefront of fighting for greater state subsidy not just for up but for education as a whole, is downright disappointing to say the very least.

and this, my friends, is a call to drastic measures.

xanananananana

Nashki oti chazak, nashki ad sheyich'av

2006-11-27T02:55:00.000+08:00

because of one film, i went on an odyssey tonight looking for a 10-year old hebrew song.

last year, i had an obsession for this israeli film, walk on water. not only was it very subtle, it had so many layers to it as well. anyone within the metro manila area who wants a copy of it, better email me soon. hehe

however, what made me crazier about the film was not the film itself, but the soundtrack. if buffalo springfield's "for what it's worth" was hard enough finding on limewire, ask me about sivan shavit's "nashki oti (kiss me)." it was pretty much hell looking for it. but, well, i did. i think i invoked more probabilities (mathematical ones, take note) in this search experience than in anything else. i never thought math could come back to me like this, ever. hehe

the song should be playing in "hoy en la toca" anytime now. and because it's in hebrew, i'm throwing in the lyrics (and the translation as well). you'll see why it took me this long and this hard to find the song.

enjoy!

xananananananana

________________________________________________________

NASHKI OTI

Shneinu nos'im bamechonit
ani lo yoda'at le'an nagi'a
kshehahegeh nimtza bayadaim shelcha
atah tamid chayav lehafti'a
ani lo yecholah lehafsik
lehistakel al hapanim shelcha betoch hare'i
ve'ata margish kol tnu'ah
shole'ach letifah el hasfataim sheli.

Shneinu nos'im bamechonit
atah omer li haderech tihyeh arukah
ushe'ani yecholah lahiradem
acharei zeh tesaper li kol mah shekarah
ani lo yeshenah
soferet kochavim derech chorim basmichah
ve'atah im sigariah bapeh
shar li im haradio shir ahavah.

Nashki oti chazak
nashki ad sheyich'av
vehashemesh lo tishk'a
at achat veyechidah
ahuvati hamufla'ah
va'ani ohev otach.

Shneinu nos'im bamechonit
halevai sheyacholnu linso'a lanetzach
atah choshev she'ani
mizman kvar nirdamti velo makshivah
ech atah im sigariah bapeh
shar li im haradio shir ahavah.

Nashki oti chazak...

KISS ME

The two of us going in the car
I don't know where we'll arrive to
when the steering is in your hands
you always have to surprise (me)
I can't stop
to look at your face in the mirror
and you feel each movement
you send a caress to my lips.

The two of us going in the car
you say to me the road will be long
and that I can fall asleep
afterward you'll tell me all that happened
I am not asleep
I'm counting stars through the holes in support-frame
and you, with a cigarette in your mouth,
sing a song of love to me with the radio.

Kiss me strongly
kiss until it hurts,
and the sun won't set
you are one and only
my marvellous love
and I love you.

The two of us going in the car
if only we could go forever
you think that I've
already been asleep for a while and not listening
how you, with a cigarette in your mouth,
sing a song of love to me with the radio.

Kiss me strongly...

the fiona apple sountripping continues

2006-11-24T00:29:00.000+08:00

but this time, it's dedicated to nobody.

was shuffling through old fiona apple cds and downloads when i chanced upon this song. now, like i said in my livejournal blog, i don't usually post song lyrics for the sole reason that i think it is pastiche-y to a certain point. then again, screw it. if the lyrics do pull it off, and besides i have the audio streamer anyway, i think i can get away with murder on this one.

fiona apple+coke light+yosi=moments of uselessness, er, idleness

xananananananana

FIONA APPLE
"Paper Bag"

I was staring at the sky, just looking for a star
To pray on, or wish on, or something like that
I was having a sweet fix of a daydream of a boy
Whose reality I knew, was a hopeless to be had
But then the dove of hope began its downward slope
And I believed for a moment that my chances
Were approaching to be grabbed
But as it came down near, so did a weary tear
I thought it was a bird, but it was just a paper bag
Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills
'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up
I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love
And I went crazy again today, looking for a strand to climb
Looking for a little hope
Baby said he couldn't stay, wouldn't put his lips to mine,
And a fail to kiss is a fail to cope
I said, 'Honey, I don't feel so good, don't feel justified
Come on put a little love here in my void,' he said
'It's all in your head,' and I said, 'So's everything'
But he didn't get it I thought he was a man
But he was just a little boy
Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills
'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up
I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love
Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills
'Cause I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up
I got to fold 'cause these hands are too shaky to hold
Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love

and now, for moments of unapologetic kabaduyan

2006-11-19T14:30:00.000+08:00

i was tweaking my radio blog (the annoying little green audio streamer under the "hoy en la toca" tag) just last night when, suddenly, in the middle of bouts of thinking that somersaulted between my thesis, overdue articles for "the broadsheet", and my shitty personal affairs, thalia's "chika lang (el venao)" played in my head.

and i'm telling you, i know it's out and out baduy, jologs and stuff. but for me, at that very moment, it was cathartic.

you see, i was a thalia fan. no, scrap it. i still am a thalia fan. she's the reason why i endured the many years i had to learn spanish so i could have a decent conversation with some of my relatives down south. she was the first person to ever introduce me to the dynamics of torrid french kissing (remember maria la del barrio, where she was kissing fernando colunga like the latter were juicy tenderloin?). she's my first stab at an orgasmic record buying experience (oh, those days when i laid my hands on a premiere copy of her "amor a la mexicana" cd. i was too young then to cream my pants, though). and yeah, she was pretty much my heroine.

and a little retrospection's good. so that song, from the nandito ako cd, is playing in the radio blog now.

but likewise, since moments like these come ever so rarely, i'm also throwing in another jologs classic. mae rivera's "sabi mo binata ka pa." you know her from "arayyyyy," but arayyy's tooo overrated. this one i like better.

because you see, you don't have to obscurist and drop seemingly elitist, deliberately-out-of-the-mainstream names to retain your creative integrity.

and since we're ni the mexico-filipinas subject, as of this writing pacquiao won to morales by a mere 3-rounder. yes, a 3-rounder.

so! now that i've seen an exclusive "pacquiao" line at nike, will there soon be a louis vuitton "jinkee pacquiao" luggage line? or maybe, an osh kosh b'gosh "princess pacquiao" clothing line?

it's not a very far possibility. he's hogging all endorsements these days anyway. i'd daresay a little crossdressing and extreme whitening and he'd be the next kris aquino.

xananananananananana

saturday nights in chavacano

2006-11-13T01:03:00.000+08:00

since josh has posted in ilonggo recently, i decided, over greasy yellow cab charlie chan noodles and ny style pizza, to post my saturday travails in my mother tongue, chavacano zamboanga.

have fun. hehe
____________________________________

esta sabado pasado ya anda yo na cumpleaño de uno de mio maga buen amiga na up, si camille. actualmente, no hay man yo anda; ya segui yo con di mio maga otro amigo na up, sina apple, tom, mark m, tj, dennis (amigo di camille na colegio/high school), arnold (compañero di tom na di ila iglesia), emman, josh, y por supuesto, con carey (sorry camille que no sabe yo como man-spell el nombre disuyo).

timora no hay gane yo puede anda, que no quiere manda anda conmigo di mio nana y tata que tiene daw fuerte borrasca al llegar. pero gracias ya lang na ayudo di tom (tambien na di mio saber que ya sale ya quel peste borrasca da aquel),ya puede yo escapa na casa y segui na pista di amun.

bien divertido gayot el pista di camille. cerveza sin limite, videoke hasta ya falta falta ya lang diamun maga voces, compañia de maga amigos y maga amigos nuevos (ayyy, cosa gaja puede sucede con nosotros di ------? hahaha!). cuando ya man una kami alla, kami kami lang di camille, carey (lo siento camille que no sabe yo como deletrear tuyo nombre), tj, mark, tom y arnold. dos horas o mas despues di amun maga canciones y comidas, ya llega sila josh y emman. ya vuelta si emman na inquirer, cuando si josh tamen nuieva salida lang na di ila fund-raising event. pero no hay man quel caso, que ya puede sila hace apas na hora.

(fotos en proximo)

despues mucho's cerca na metrowalk (poco caminada lang desde na starbucks ya puede kami llega alla), ya monta kami todo na maga coche di camille y josh para andar na un club. no sabe man kami otro que el club parece como un pegasus, o mas grabe pa. kami dos di tj ya no puede aguanta nuestro shock and awe na cosa kami ya mira, y cuando ya sale kame na bar, bien pronto tamen kame ya sale alla, que risas lang na di amun maga cara. tiene alla un mujer que ya man all the way, y ya hace pa split masqui no hay mas ya pantaloncilla di suyo coño. espantao ya lang kami todo. well, hende man todo que ya sabe man maga otro con cosa al sucede alla antes pa kame llega.

sin embargo, club o sin club, bien alegre gayot nuestro noche. cumpleaños feliz camille! masqui no hay tu puede entende con este blog post que ya escribi yo. mira sos, ya olvida ya gayot yo di miyo chavacano. hehe. ta mezcla ya lang yo el castellano y chavacano, masqui sabe yo que bien otro idioma gayot quel dos. haha

xanananana

losing my religion*

2006-11-04T02:17:00.000+08:00

don't ever think i'm taking you for granted.

i love you too.

the day you came into my life i somehow knew you'd be sticking around for quite a while. and not only did you stick around, you struck me in ways only you have done.

i love you too.

it was only a simple back and forth text exchange; if i had half a brain i wouldn't even be taking them seriously. but it was different with you. sure there was already a precedent. and being the usual self-reflexive me, i should know better. and i did know better. i knew you've only been sincere from the start. and in the middle of my breakdown you were the one who stood by me in spite of everything. that, knowing everything and the propensity of you getting hurt, you still chose to stand by me is something i'll forever cherish.

i love you too.

i may be acerbic at times, to say the least. i may turn into someone you didn't fall in love with at the mention of their names. and i am sorry for that. but please understand that i've only been honest because i love you.

i love you too.

and over the course of this relationship i ask this early that you shouldn't ever have to compromise anything for me. i love you because of who you are, not because of an image of the person i'd like you to be, which doesn't exist. you will never have to give up your delight for me. i understand everything, and i am trying my best to wrench myself out of the ugly precedents. i still love the other, yes, but now there is this growing will in me to stop doing so. and over the next few days, eventually act on that growing will.

because i love you.

*apologies to r.e.m.

after the long online slumber

2006-10-31T23:52:00.000+08:00

i'm still the same.

after a semester of nonstop work, acads, thesis and issues, i'm just barely getting myself ready to face the semester ahead.

except of course, i feel i'm grossly unprepared for it.

it has been especially difficult for me to write lately. there was this blog post i had before about the inner odyssey i always get myself into everytime i write. that unlike the intellectual masturbation i do everytime i do graphic design projects, writing can be more like having a sledgehammer strike down my head in hopes of having productivity potentially ooze out of it. it's hard for me to do. then again, i don't know anything else. i just write, dammit.

and i best put that to good use. and by good use i mean thesis good use.

***

i had a friend tell me fairly recently that he'd rather have me kept all the weight i've lost all these months (50 something lbs, as of my last weigh-in) and lose everything i'm holding on to inside, than have me lose the weight and still have those demons bug me to idle depression.

in short, i'm holding on to so many things. and those things are what's stopping me from getting ahead with my life.

now, i don't know about him but he just said it, plainly, nonchalantly. and all i could suddenly do was lose my pompousness, slouch in the car and laugh. not sarcastically, but in more of a dammit-he's-right kind of way. and lose my big ego.

which should already be all right, except for one little glitch: i don't know what those things are. okay, so maybe this is not one of those situations where i only have to draft a well-worded plan of battle, stick to it in execution, and sit back and wait for the results to show. but this is one of the many gray areas postmodern people like to wax existential about. and as much as i don't want to be part of it (because really, there are many other things to deal with than be existential) i find myself unwillingly suckered in it. and as much as i want to define what i'm holding on to so tight, i cant. either because they're just too many, or because they're so insidious i myself cant even pinpoint them.

which is why for those i ask time for, please understand that i'm at a point where i'm really trying to figure myself out. adolescent rubbish, you might say. but really, i have good use for this. you see, thesis season is fast coming up. and if i don't get myself together real soon i'll fall apart. i know it. it's not just a matter of relationships; it's a matter of self.

i remembered what sir arao (during my j 199/thesis proposal days a year ago) told the class about that particular time in our lives where we have to finish our thesis and try to graduate. for those who take their theses seriously, it's a time of waging a personal battle with the self. this is the time when i'll have to get out of my comfort zone and push myself like i did in the past, only harder anmd farther. and it will be a time when i'll have to exceed myself. myself in terms of my own concept of what i can and cannot achieve, and to what degree/extent.

this is my personal battle now. i have been too complacent this semester. i have diverted my frayed attentions elsewhere. and it has caused me even more distress just thinking about the time i have wasted.

it's now time to pull myself together and finally do this. and do this right.

and unlike in my previous thesis posts where i'm still tentative about it, i'm sure on this one. there's no "i hope" here or any sarcastic-natured wanderings like that, because i will do it this time. and i have no other choice but to do this now. now or never.

***

to all my dear friends, if i disappear for a bit, i might just be doing legwork or research somewhere. i won't be as visible in the college as before, but i guess we all would be out of cmc over the coming months naman eh. you know where to reach me.i'm always up for yosi and talk, wherever it may be. hehe

***

because of this, i'm quitting dating for a while. it was fun finally immersing myself in the dating scene, but it just isn't that fun anymore when you're talking to someone and all of a sudden lose your concentration remembering other things you should be doing instead.

i firmly believe in what my dear friend arcie said about love: it comes when you lesse expect it. it was that case for me, although shame on me i anticipated the tentativeness and ultimate demise of it all.

i'm finding myself in a crossroads. i have someone who dearly loves me, and one i dearly love as well. but the ghost of the relationship before ours is taking its toll on me, and on us. so i best use this time to figure things out for myself. to gain some perspective. and finally get ahead. with no baggage. no issues. no undisclosed shit.

and that involves a drastic change in how i'll run things in my life from this point on.

what those drastic changes will be, we'll just see. but it'll all be for the best.

xananananana

waiting

2006-08-29T22:17:00.000+08:00

i'm not sure what it i am waiting for right now, but i am definitely sure that my mind and body is assuming a pensive position right now.

sort of my waiting position. los dos piernas en la posición "a las cuarto", conmigo que tomo un vasito de café, cola, o cualquiera forma de alimentación liquido. puedo también fumar, aunque ya lo he evitado. lo basta que espero al algo, alguien. no sé porqué. pero es bastante para mí que esperar. cualquier lo puede salir en esta situación.

i don't know. i'm not looking for relaxation. i have been sleeping quite my quota this week. no, i'm not depressed; i'm quite happy right now (or so i think). i'm not looking for work; i have too much backlog in my hands, not to mention my thesis, thank you. my office has just been renovated, and all my stuff had just been moved back from the other room over the weekend. my favorite phone's battery got busted last friday, but i'm having it repaired tomorrow. i have deadlines coming up this week, which includes a big retrospective assignment of the late ang kiukok (big, because me and my brother daniel practically worship this guy) whose angle i still have yet to resolve with myself.i have big exams, reports and papers that won't just stop coming in, one after the other.

but i still feel like i'm waiting for something. like i'm expecting something. like i'd be more than happy to stop doing what i'm doing just to welcome it - whatever it is - into my life and my collective consciousness. like i'm willing to compromise and just fucking take it.

and i can feel it. i always feel like i'm palpitating. i always find myself worried. over what, i can't be sure. when i turn on this computer, everything seems a haze to me. the gym is the only place for me where i can really let loose and play it hard. especially when i'm killing the punching bag. still, everytime i take a break, i worry. i palpitate. and i kill that punching bag again. and just when i thought i already had that apprehension behind me, it's back in me when i go home, head to my office, and put down my bags there.

i really don't know what i'm worried about. it's not my thesis, that's for sure. but still, everything feels tentative right now. like i'm negotiating every step i make, literally and figuratively. like the success of those negotiations wholly depend on the moves i make. technically, if it fucks up, it'll be my fault by default.

i remembered this same time last week when my really good (psychic) friend nike did a card reading on me. i found out that (this will sound out of context, but i will not spill what was talked about in full. just this one) that in my current state of affairs, nasa akin ang alas. meaning, whatever move i make right now (status quo) will determine the success and failure of what i want to happen in the immediate future.

which sounds a little empowering, since i have full control over my state of affairs right now. but it is at the same time distressing, since i have no one else to blame (and/or not forgive) but myself. and i'm sick and tired of getting hurt, frustrated, and disappointed.

(quick anecdote: i have this knack for feeling so heavy that i am so close to crying. but when i finally give my body the go-signal to cry, nothing comes out. i just feel like exploding. i tried many ways to make myself cry, even if what i'm carrying inside me is really too much to bear. sad songs, sad movies, sad stories. nothing works. so i take it out on anger. and the punching bag. and i could feel a tear or two everytime i punch or run the sportscenter track oval. but i just end up tired, and more frustrated than ever)

i've been hurt, disappointed, frustrated and hurt a shitload of times before. but unlike violence (which desensitizes the viewer after a few runs of the same thing), hurt doesn't. it hurts me still. it hurts me like i've never had it before. and it paralyzes me to a fetal position, all crying and loserly.

i like being tough, impenetrable and cold. it makes things so much easier to deal with. okay, scrap that. i like being bereft of any vulnerabilities. it makes the recovery time after a bout of failure much, much shorter. i bounce back easier.

but that's not the way i am right now. i am feeling vulnerable once again. my emotions are feeling raw and tender once more. and the risks i've been taking this time are much scarier than the puny ones (note how i call them puny now when they were just as big as those in the here and now) i took before.

but unlike my bouts of coldness, i've never felt more real. even if it hurts, i'll take it.

still, this short line is nothing compared to the massive temptation for convenience. i'm fighting it, though.

wish me luck.

xanananananana

in moments of frustration, it's okay to be a little unstructured

2006-08-22T23:26:00.000+08:00

there are a lot of times now that i feel i've misplaced my necessary, precious and hard-to-cultivate time and energies doing something i shouldn't really do given the time frame and nature of my critical academic-professional situation right now (thesis), and instead channeling it into things that may have nifty aesthetic and emotional implications on me over the long run, but won't get the job done on the short (but critical) run.

hey, i'm not complaining, but the backlog just gets me a bit apprehensive now. what the hell am i talking about?

i've been doing a lot of bonding sessions with people these days. listening to personal angst, commisserating, sharing my personal angst myself, going out to coffee, shopping with a friend (even if it means maxing out my monthly debit budget. forget credit), phone calls, chats, and even the simple on-a-whim spontaneous stuff (like my fairly recent brow threading gig with arcie and her beloved irving at katipunan while we're drunk on red horse. hehe). i even went as far as having my really good bff and business partner apple join me and say or do nothing (except ogle at guys checking her out perhaps) while waiting for me to finish my crazy comm 140 midterm reviews at starbucks katipunan a week ago. i usually like to study and wallow in my pressed-caffeine palpitations on my own, undisturbed, unstructured and unguided. then again, i thought it was a refreshing bit for me if i tagged someone along (she wanted to join me and she was in the area; it was okay with me and i needed company as well). so i did.

it was the aame thing when i went out (on a weeklong promise) with my really good film friend pet and co. to see the philippine premiere of john torres' "todo todo teros" at the escaler hall at the ateneo, and then crave for wings afterwards at flaming wings (best wings ever. totally recommend it to anyone) (btw, my review for todo todo teros is another blog post. hehe)

i don't know. i know i shouldn't be doing this, that i should go about my usual journalistic duties and try to finish my thesis by chasing around the people i need to hunt down and catch on video/micro/digi-tape, survive early mornings on coffee and fictional nicotine typing stupid transcripts with undecipherable words and anecdotes, forget that i have a body i have to take care of, and grow my hair long, wear the same torn ratty jeans everyday, look like i don't take a bath everyday (i do, by the way), and revel in my being active once more.

but i'm not complaining. i mean, i have had more meaningful relationships now, and have built up my older ones better now than a few years ago, when i was at the height of immaturity and recklessness. and it definitely feels nice (and validating) now that i am confident enough in myself to not be afraid of getting into any situation that comes my way, be it professional, emotional, or physical. and i definitely want to keep doing this, because it does me good. and it does the people i love and care about good. and it keeps the metaphorical bonds stronger. and i like that. who doesn't?

except that i should be doing this together with my thesis, not with my thesis on the sidelines.

but no, i've unwittingly been trying to live out an average college freshman's lifestyle. you know, the type where i have time to go to the gym, go out on weekends, pamper myself in pseudo-spa stuff as if i'm preparing for a go-see (i did that before), and basically hang out and loiter and act like the cool, pretentious fresh-out-of-hish-school-brat-who-don't-know-no-better that i was five years ago.

that was so five years ago.

a lot has changed since then. and i acknowledge that. and i have proven to myself, at least now, that i can raise my market value so high while doing my job right and extremely fucking well. that the two are not mutually exclusive, that i can actually have the best of both worlds. so really, there is no reason for me to not have a time and reason to work and transcend personal shit in my most critical time, this point in my life that can trace and charter the path i chose to take for the rest of my life. and in so much as i'm taking it seriously, my actions apparently do not speak for my intentions.

i have taken brash steps to try and motivate myself to finally have a look at my thesis and begin work. i've organized my incomplete archives, bought file boxes, cabinets and dividers to make them look more organized (even if they really aren't), reorganized files in my computer, and subscribed to an alert service that lets me know when and where my subject appears online.

despite that, i end up just collecting random stuff about my thesis. random meaning, no organized flow. no plan. all spontaneous. all unstructured.

and it scares the hell out of me because if i keep this up for longer, i may completely lose sight of the direction of my thesis. and it's hard, especially for a soloist like me, to be placed in this kind of situation. sure, other people can tell me that i was the one who placed this upon myself, so i shouldn't complain. but really, those people have no idea what kind of emotional and psychological turmoil your thesis can put you through. no matter how many you are in it (sorry for those who had partners before and swore by it, but this is how i feel. understand where i'm coming from. it's no joke now)

it's like a fly that refuses to part with your hard-prepared peanut butter sandwich, a ghost that never fails to haunt you, a test that never fails to break you, and a burden that never fails to pull you down.

then again, if i could take that last metaphor home with me, if i pull myself together and overcome that burden square on my shoulders, i'll have really nice-looking muscles.

gym metaphors are really bad. but i love the point this one makes.

i know this blog post is too unstructured and too random for comfort, but i seriously need help. i need motivation, a shove, a push, anything that'll get me past the job i signed up to do since day one. i know we somehow all need something like that, so why don't we make it mutual? how about that?

xananananana

the bitch (with the steel alloy heart) is back!

2006-08-01T00:38:00.000+08:00

since it was the last day of my brother's exhibit yesterday, and since it's already august, xanana ventura will officially post BOTH at livejournal and blogger! yes, you heard it right, the bitch is back!

and what better way for comeback than to introduce new stuff and new updates in this site, no?

first: the XananaRed podcasts. if you have a broadband connection (or are willing to wait it out on dial-up), you'll have the chance to hear me talk on my first podcast! it's actually an idea i got from a friend (thanks ivan) that i'd like to get into a little further. then again, i don't want to just dj my favorite songs. i'd like you to ask me whatever's in your mind about me, about this site, and just about anything related to the xanana network. so email me: xananaventura@gmail.com. i'll be accepting questions until the 15th of august, so better keep those questions coming in!

i also have new links in this blog. i'm thinking of giving away a luxury overnight stay for 2 at the mabuhay manor to the reader who guesses all my new links right. i'm not talking b.s. here. this is the real thing. what do you think? should i hold this contest? hmmm. :-) (btw, go to www.mabuhaymanor.com.ph if you want to know how luxurious this luxury overnight is. hehe) if i get more than 50 petitions for this contest, we'll have it. :-)

also, for those of you who'd like to get a little intimate with me (as in get some good blackmail dirt on me), add me on your lj account. it's still xananaventura.livejournal.com. contrary to the perception, i post different stuff in my lj and in my blogger. so there. add me sexy people!

also, my streaming audio will only get better by the day. after a month-long hiatus, i'll be posting new music to the radio.blog, and i want you to let me know what you think about it. email me: xananaventura@gmail.com. i'll be waiting!

finally, as the three people who regularly visit this site often notice, i took out my comments function. that's because i just wanted to. period. now, though, it's back up and running! although, of course, i'd still like you to post stuff on my tagboard, so it'll be easier for me (and everyone else) to know who's reading this site.

that's about it for now, i'll be posting more significant stuff over the next couple of weeks. i'm near to the third of my thesis, and it can only get better. will post about it soon. stay sexy people!

xananananananananana

my brother's first art exhibit (for the old and not-so-old mapera matronas out there)

2006-07-09T20:23:00.000+08:00

My brother's gonna get sooo expensive in a few years (his works, i mean), so why not go to his first group exhibit?

Click on the large thumbnails to get the larger version. Then print it out and use it as an invite.

This is my brother's personal invite:

(Design credits for all of this exhibit's publicity materials belong to him, by the way)

The exhibit officially starts at 5p tomorrow, July 10, at the Corredor Gallery, UP College of Fine Arts aka Bartlett Hall. Cocktails will be served, of course. And, you can buy the works of the artists as well.

And make this brother dear of mine famous:

Nyahahahahahaha!

But seriously, you have to go to this gig. Just love it. :-)

xanananananana

i'm officially an udd convert!

2006-07-05T02:04:00.000+08:00

remember my post about me loving up dharma down to shreds? (sure you have) well, i'm not officially a convert! i love them to the last bits and pieces of the shreds i shred!

i came home a little late but not too late to blog a bit and check my mail. it wasn't hard for me to decide what to wear because, for the first time in a fucking long time, i decided to repeat an outfit. well, you'll never see me wearing this old shit again (at least, not in this combination). but really, have you ever figured that some of your ensembles deserve an encore performance because they're both sexy and comfy, something you can't really achieve to the hilt these days? yea sure i did feel that. and i did feel it good!

old, old Guess? eyeglasses; old, old black Puritan camisa de chino; 522 Slim Square Cut jeans (Levi's; my favorite off-the-rack pair so far); xanana ventura cocobead bracelets (i.e., i made them); Oleg Cassini Uomo clutch; Cole Haan belt; Guess? By Marciano Combi loafers

before we made our way to mag:net katipunan for the udd gig, i confirmed my reservation with jenny, and i asked her to place us a little nearer to the front, just enough for us to see the band more comfortably (ever been through a gig where you had to stretch your neck just to see the frontman's neck? been there. many shitload of a time).

but no! when we got there, we were placed right smack in the middle, up front where we're nearer than my full arm to the band. scary? kinda. awkward? hell yea.

thank god i found rina, cat and jihan standing on a corner. no, i think they found us. (no, i think it was mutual. hehehe). at least for the rest of the night me and my brother didn't look like we were going out on a date or something.

but i was thinking it over one more time over smokes, and i figured, we did look like vip there. because when i got there, it was like, a big flaming "dano" sign taped to the napkin stand on the table. i could only guess how many people wondered who the hell that "dano" guy was until yea, we ramp-walked our way there. and somehow, we made good with the "image" anyway. little did they know that on ordinary days, i can be (and am) as grepa as i can be. nyahahahahaha!

check out our camwhore photos before the opening act:

(from left, cat, jihan [sorry dear if i spelled your name wrong], rina and wasted moi)

gawd, i look like a cokewhore.

(rina and the cokewhore)

rina, why are you laughing? is it because i look like i just got fucked up or something?

(jihan, rina, and the bitch with the steel alloy heart)

rina and jihan did major justice to this photo. i think i fucked it up a little. yea i'm wasted, and i ain't down my first beer yet!

the night was a lot of fun, did take my mind off a lot of things, including THE thesis. and it did mark one of the few but really precious moments where i did bond with my brother. remember my other post where i resolved to have a rico yan type'a relationship with my siblings? step one, done!

(brother dear, and cat)

the night started with a new terno recordings band called outerhope. their sound reminds me of a lot of the band ivy, and its sister band paco, as well as nordic duo club 8, with the jangly drums (at times) and the bittersweet happy-sad seesaw mood they generate with their songs. i particularly liked "5 miles," where the only lyric set "5 miles to go" took on different meanings in the continuum of a single song.

but up dharma down is undeniably the agenda of the night, and it's an agenda i'd like to meet over and over. i guess i'd be parroting everyone else if i said the band's just so good. but yea, i did say it. what i like about them, though, is their lack of pretension when they play (for more of my gush-gush notes on udd, read my previous post, after the big brother post. they make you feel like it's okay to relate to them, or to their songs. unlike in some gigs where people tend to get too precious with their music that they forget they have an audience to connect to. that's just bad.

what's also special about this gig is that they played a lot of songs they don't usually play in their other gigs, like "sleeptalk," "malikmata," "layag," and the new standard (in my mp3 player, that is), "hiwaga." if for that, and that alone (and you know there are a shitload of others), it's worth being a udd convert! (gawd, i never felt this way about any artist in such a long time, or maybe ever. could i, finally, be having a heart? hehehehe)

udd finished their set close to 1a, and i was supposed to catch this other band, mang temi's canteen, where my gym trainer plays the drums. but the gig's at saguijo, and qc's just too far from makati for me to be able to catch them midway through their set. so after i apologized for missing it, we headed straight home.

now, even if i have no time to do some serious writing for the magazine, and i'll only have a few hours of sleep before i get to my first appointment a few hours from today, i'd say it's really worth it. new friends, new bonidng moments, new passions. gawd, i'm no longer a cold, heartless bitch. i'm finally having a heart!

xanananananananana

pinoy big brother is a day care center and other musings

2006-07-04T18:20:00.000+08:00

if you thought our version of pinoy big brother (at least the first season) was too racy for philippine tv (remember the sam-chx liplock?), get a hold of this story i found on the auusie big brother at theage.com.au and at perezhilton.com (the dirt on perez hilton describes the "sexual incident" much clearer and more graphically, if there's such a word). apparently, according to perez hilton, the two guy housemates (evicted by now and under investigation by aussie police) held down a girl housemate on her bed and rubbed their penises all over her face. it's not clear whether the girl consented to it (but if had to be held down, she wouldn't have. duh), and network ten (which shows aussie big bro) won't run or promote the footage.

don't get me wrong; i hate anything that this big brother thing is trying to machinate into our collective consciousness. but really. think about it: it makes our big brother pale in comparison, and in a really good way. (this is one of the days i'd like to think philippine tv is not as trashy as what's out there, even though that might not exactly be the case)

here's the link to the site. but in case y'all lazy to click on the link, i copied the text for you. but please, for the love of gawd, click on the link ( :-D )

______________________________________________________

Uproar over Big Brother footage
July 2, 2006 - 9:55PM

Footage of an incident which led to the removal of two contestants in the reality television show Big Brother will be reviewed by Queensland police, the Federal Government says.

Security guards yesterday escorted "Ashley", a pseudonym for 20-year-old Michael Cox, of Perth, and 21-year-old "John", whose real name is Michael Bric, of Melbourne, from the Big Brother house on the Gold Coast following what the show's producers said was a "breach of the rules".

It is claimed the two were involved in a sexual incident with fellow housemate "Camilla" in the early hours of Saturday morning.

"Clearly this is a matter for the police and I am advised that Network Ten has provided the footage of Saturday morning's incident to the Queensland police," Senator Coonan told reporters today.

She said it was now up to police to determine if any charges arise from the footage, but confirmed that fellow housemate Camilla had been interviewed by police.

Senator Coonan said she would seek an urgent assessment from the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) which regulates television content.

"I have spoken with the chairman of ACMA this morning and he will be providing an urgent assessment about possible breaches of codes of conduct relating to television content," she said.

Senator Coonan said it was understood that footage of the incident was not broadcast on television but was streamed via the internet to an unspecified audience who logged on in the early morning of Saturday.

Queensland Police later said there was no investigation, and would not confirm if they had received footage of the incident to review.

"We have not received a formal complaint on the allegations," a police spokeswoman said.

Senator Coonan said that as a parent and a viewer she regarded the incident on the footage as very serious.

"I today have been in touch with the chief executive officer of Channel Ten and have obtained an undertaking that this incident will not be promoted or shown by the channel," she said.

"I think you have to be extremely careful about what you allow to be depicted on television as appropriate behaviour."

Although she had not seen the footage of the alleged incident, Senator Coonan said "it seemed to be very inappropriate".

"It makes me very concerned if there are these sorts of incidents on television and I do think we need to get to the bottom of it," she said.

The reality television show has had its share of controversy, with Network Ten last month withdrawing the Adults Only version of the show after complaints by government MPs.

The weekly one hour program featured footage not shown during the early evening version of the reality show.

"I am not in a position to say what might happen with the ordinary version, if I can put in that way, of Big Brother," she said.

"But I think it is appropriate if we take urgent action and have a look at it."

Ten had toned down Big Brother-Adults Only after complaints last year about its late night show, then called Big Brother Uncut.

But it axed the segment after Government MPs again complained about what a party room spokesman said was "gratuitous language and displays of sexuality".

Last year, the broadcasting watchdog found two episodes of the show's "uncut" version had breached the industry code by screening sexual antics, nudity and foul language.

"I am not at all pleased about that fact that these matters keep surfacing," Senator Coonan said.

"It's important that the producers of these shows keep within the rules and if the rules aren't sufficient to deal with matters of taste and matters that offend a lot of viewers I think it might be something we (should) have a look at."

Senator Coonan said she would hear back from the AMCA tomorrow.

"I expect to have more to say tomorrow," she said.

Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley also waded into the issue.

"If my advice is worth anything to the folk who run Channel 10, and how they choose to conduct themselves is their business, I'd say 'make this Big Brother the last'," he told journalists.

At the start of tonight's eviction show, host Gretel Killeen said it gave her "great sadness" to announce that John and Ashley were "no longer housemates" after a breach of the rules.

"Today, and presumably for the remainder of the week, you may be inundated with exaggerated ill-informed stories in the media which do nothing but perpetuate ignorance and hurt those involved," she said.

"Ashley and John were fantastic housemates, bringing joy not only to their fellow housemates but to Australia as a whole, and we're very sorry that one foolish incident on their behalf has led to them leaving."

She also wished both well for the future.#

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i figure that if they do that here, we'll either have one of many things: either we'll never from big brother again, or the "housemates" will star in their own "duda" porn flick. also some things to consider: if the future pinoy housemates who do that are goodlooking enough, they might even do a keanna reeves turnaround and be matinee idols of some sort. the church will enjoy cajoling "told you so! told you so!" in all high-ass moralist glory.

gawd, it'll be hot, if it happens. IF it ever gets off the ground.

____________________________________________

i just was looking at the photos of the two evicted housemates. odd that they use aliases instead of their first real names. and it's even odd that they don't look good to begin with.

they look sooo fugly, except for "ashley" (guy on the right). he looks like one of the american idol finalists, the guy with the jacked-up teeth and the disturbing jawline (i forgot his name). he looks a lot more doable than the guy on the left. but really, trailer park trash don't turn me on so much.

____________________________________________

at any rate, it doesn't make me like pinoy big brother any more than i like champoy for candy. ugh, iba pa rin yung first season. actually, iba pa rin yung walang big brother.

xananananananananananana

up dharma down is the new... local band i really like!

2006-07-03T23:10:00.000+08:00

i just finished calling mag:net cafe a couple of hours ago to make reservations to catch the up dharma down show with my brother at mag:net katipunan tomorrow. grabe, this is the only time, in such an effing long time, that i officially turn myself into a fan of a local band.

not that i'm being discriminatory and stuff. but the last time i felt (and acted) this way was with barbie's cradle, back when barbie almalbis was still singing well and the band was still together. in a musical landscape where that putanginangbandcueshe and starbucksandallothercoffeehousespressreleasepaolosantos were really hogging radio airplay everywhere, i just kinda tuned out on local acts.

i mean, sure, bamboo is kinda cool. but all the kids listen to 'em. all of them would throw their undies at ira cruz, and they'd swear bamboo isn't a druggie. orange and lemons sounded kinda cool also when they atarted out, with the new wave sound and all. but the whole pinoy big brother thing just turned me off big time. now, which leaves me to sugarfree, kamikazee or parokya ni edgar, among the many bands i can choose to be a fan of. but really, they just didn't fit my personality, the way i think, and my sensibilities, whatever categories they might cover. i can feign attraction or whatever, but it's just really come off plasticky. one thing i've learned from my many trips to the record store: magic has to happen. spontaneously, that is.

which brings me to up dharma down. i didn't really dig them at first, figuring the whole "broken mirrors and screaming turtles" sounded too western and precious for my taste. but everytime my brother daniel gushes over them like they're the best band ever (aren't we all like that with the bands/artists we really love? i used to be like that in my tori amos days), i couldn't just let the opportunity pass without trying a listen.

the first song that wooed me bigtime was "pag-agos." very trip-hop, very me. that's sooo my poppy guilty pleasure, without the sour overplayed aftertaste of "oo" (which i also liked, until love radio started playing it like it was on shabu or something). my brother got the "fragmented" cd on special pre-order at tower records, and i just had to know why he'd go to that length to get a copy. sure enough, i owned "sleeptalk," "we give in sometimes," "hiwaga," and "this is our playground and we will always be home." those were my songs, ang they were speaking to me like a memento lost to convenient amnesia.

i've heard angsty music before, but not like this. they're really good. and they have this penchant for losing the western on western themes and instrumentation, which i really like. like something that borders on cultural androgyny, however politically incorrect-sounding that term may seem. (maybe magnanimous is the right word?)

i'm really looking forward to tomorrow night, my first night out officially sanctioned by the parents in a fucking long time, and my first night out with my brother. too bad my sister's too underaged to stand the smoke and beer tomorrow night. but we'll bring home an autographed cd, photos, and just a really nice vibe. hehe

right now, i'm trying to get a copy of drip's official debut. for the uninitiated, drip is an local electronica band, probably the country's first electronica act after sound, which my brother and myself also really love. and also looking out here for the new radioactive sago project cd: "tangina nagugutom ang mundo fashionista ka pa rin." or something like that. i love the title!

__________________________________________________

for those who care to know, my thesis is still on a snail's pace. gawd, i really have to get rid of the distractions and start working. but hey, the distrations work. they help me keep tabs on myself. i just don't know when enough's enough.

__________________________________________________

budji's pr person emailed me this weekend, marked me and photographer jay as the "quickest and most hassle-free photoshoot in budji living history." yeah!

__________________________________________________

still haven't started official work for the magazine (i.e., drafts). i'm still trying to figure out why i'm slacking off.

__________________________________________________

speaking of slacking off, i didn't go to the gym today (for those who care to know). not because joints ached or whatever. i just didn't want to. after doing the usual thesis rounds, i got home, slept until 9p. this is serious slacking i'm doing here. i need help, i know.

__________________________________________________

i looove the new close-up tv ad, the one where the announcer was telling the tale of the man with two thumbs. i thought it was an ad for a nokia two-way or something, then when he said breath so fresh, i thought it was a smint ad. and then it was close-up. misleading tendencies aside, i looove it! too bad it was just an import, though. i know the european context is different from ours, but is the whole song-and-dance pa-chicks bullshit the only way for us to market vanity stuff? remember sam milby and that whole rocksteddy jingle? add the new angel locsin endorsement for head and shoulders to the mix. scary.
__________________________________________________

i just dropped by gateway on my way to some offices in the area, and i find, in my shock and horror, redloop jeans in the gateway levi's store. i thought it was the premium line? why, oh why, do i have to see it in a mid-end mall such as gayway? shit, diesels are the only way to go. too bad i can't stomach the idea of coughing up P14,000 for a single pair of jeans when i can use the same amount to buy three (or four) equally well-fitting pairs at levi's.

__________________________________________________

nightcap for now, got class. wish i could blog like this more often. you know, in a staccato tone and stuff. too bad i might get a reputation for sounding clipped. not that it's a bad thing, though. hehehe

xananananananananananana

the post i forgot to post (please also read the post before this, though :-) )

2006-07-01T00:47:00.000+08:00

i now love clutch bags. the "manly" clutch bags, that is. and the real big brawny macho italian leather types. not the puny mesh-type plastic girbauds.

wednesday night, i was digging up my closet for something to wear to the jaime v. ongpin awards. the dress code's smart casual, meaning something dressy but not too dressy like prom. i was eyeing a blue/gold shimmery balenciaga shirt i just got last week to match my newly-updated levi's 522s. but when i tried it on, i just looked like a yuppie (read: pretentious minimum wager like you and me) with the wrong pants on. so i settled for a black puritan camisa de chino i found in my closet when i was doing my "spring" cleaning three weeks ago. i don't know why i fell in love with it. i guess the idea of a black camisa de chino used as a dressy top is soo new and soo untried that i jumped at it almost immediately.

when i looked at my shoe collection, i thought a little distressed brown leather would complement the blackness of the the entire outfit. so in go my classic cole haan (classic=prissy) brown leather belt, and my ol' guess combination canvas/leather loafers. my outfit's old, i know, but i need to be comfy. (and being a taurus, i hate to do anything too drastic)

the look i was putting together looked smashing enough to boost my confidence, and discreet enough to slip into the awards in case i got in late (i did, fashionably of course). i have my self-made bead bracelets on. i look like a punk with class, but there was a problem: my trusty dirty ol' vomit green jansport trinity isn't just gonna finish my outfit well. i need to get a bag to tie the entire ensemble together, but it had to be something dressy. and not too gay.

so i go to my dad's leather archives, and founf this really manly oleg cassini clutch. all four squares of it are made of brown italian leather. the base and the sides were very rigid and durable, and the leatherness of it (and just because it's from oleg cassini, one of my all-time favorite basics designers) just gives me that dignified and exclusive air. but it was so small i wasn't able to fit all my shit in. but a little creative work (from all the moving i've had to to in my life) made me fit all these. as in ALL:

1 pack dunhill lights.

zippo lighter (silver basic)

5 oz marks and spencer autograph series body spray

nivea creme

my siemens c60 (in a black samsonite stylish horizontal 1 case)

a mead brights fat li'l notebook

keys

flash drive

leather lv coin purse

my iriver ihp800 (it's really small, though, so i ended up pocketing it instead)

small mirror (clinique)

the body shop vitamin e lip balm

1 pack extra joss

lifestyles condoms (you never know)

tempra tablets (2)

eyeglass philips screwdriver (not that i'll need it that often)

parker sonnet pen

a power bar

2 bic skater pens

2 bic power grip highlighters

press id

invitation

sunscreen

(i'm describing the items i brought so you can google everything and see how much shit i was able to put into this really small leather bag)

(probably the only thing i couldn't fit in the bag was my trusty mead bungee 8 1/2 x 11 notebook. then again, i needed its pockets to keep thesis documents,org flyers, booty calling cards and stuff)

it was really small, and i couldn't really carry it any other way than to hold it like you'd hold a manila envelope, or loop the handle around your wrist and let it dangle like a handbag. but when i walked (no, swaggered) my way to aim conference center from greenbelt 4, i couldn't help but notice peopel staring at my leather bag. and then i looked around. swear to god, i'm the only one in my age bracket carrying a P15,000 brown oleg cassini men's clutch. the others were flaunting their cheap P800 mesh canvas girbaud toiletry bags and nike shoe bags (used as clutches).

i really got rave reviews from friends during cocktails, like it's soo not me to bring something like that, of that maybe i'm starting a new trend in "manbags" or something. well, not really. the next day (yesterday) i was back in my old grepa ways, carrying the vomit green jansport and wearing torn fatigues and a trashed-up blue shirt.

but really, it does feel different when you're carrying something like an oleg cassini clutch. it changes the whole look, and it changes your whole demeanor too. not only did i look polished wearing that bag, i also got preferential treatment by the guards that whisk people into the mall. i also got many flyers from outdoor publicity people desperate to sell condos, townhouses and discounted mickey d's food.

maybe i'll use the bag more often. maybe it'll be part of my permanent wardrobe (i can't leave home without at least something to carry my obligatory stuff with). maybe i'll finally go to louis vuitton and get a new one in the same tradition as my oleg cassini. maybe i'll do it sooner than i projected. who knows? i only tried it once in a long time. who knew i'd love it that much?

anyway, i miss my already-graduate friends emman and klara, who i saw at the jvos. and those who weren't there, like anna and arcie. we need a coffee night, i know. one awards cocktails ain't enough. (especially if i had to leave early to catch a margie holmes class) hehehe.

(will upload fotos in a bit. :-) )

xanananananananana

hello, can i rob you? sure, be my guest.

2006-06-30T23:23:00.000+08:00

oh. my. god. something that hasn't happened in more than 16 years is bound to happen again. the up board of regents is planning to jack up tuition rates by more than 200 percent.

if the bor gets its way, incoming up freshmen will have to pay P1,000 per unit in up diliman (where i go to school, byy the way). which, by the way, is waaaay far from the current P300. so if right now, the average tuition for a up student is P5,400 for an 18-unit load, the tenetative charge for the next year's up freshman would more or less go to P18,000 or more, if he/she wants to take in more units.

now this might look puny to the six-digit tuition other students may have at the ateneo, la salle or ua&p, and you might buy in the stupid argument that the government does not have enough money to provide for education. but let me stop playing devil's advocate here and tell you why this could just be the biggest sin the bor can commit against the up community, and by association, the country.

first of all, up is a state university. meaning, the government should provide for the university. like, allot a budget. and if the government in question is decent/effective enough, it should place education on top of its priorities. but with the fucked-up government we have right now (lorded by that shorty parrot over there who has no sense of discretion or conscience), the only excuse up students have been getting is that the government has no money.

yeah right.

how about putting more than 80 percent (this is a 2005 figure; not sure about the final statistics for this year) of the national budget to paying ONLY the country's interest in world bank-imf loans? and how about putting the remainder to it to the military? and how about the last morsels of it to corruption and "presidential funds," which mostly go to the cronies? and where the hell does education factor in this picture. ask the kids who had to hold umbrellas when they go to class.

however, under any and all circumstances, the government is under obligation, whether it likes it or not, to fund education as a human right. the government has no right to condone, worse to instigate, the commercialization of education. bwecause then it would only benefit those who have the money to do so.

second (addendum to the last point), education is a universal human right, that's why state universities such as up exist. and being a state u, it caters to all social classes. if you introduce higher tuition, how is it supposed to benefit the students who have to take out loans now that tuition is still at 300? what are they supposed to do? drop out? quit? file an indefinite leave? whore themselves? where's your mandate in that picture?

third, if the justification is that the fees will be "at par" with that of more exclusive schools, it's total bullshit. you cannot measure education by the size of your school bill, in the same vein that you cannot measure the intelligence of a child by the size of his/her parents' bank account. if the goal is to keep the university at par with the others that it's always comaring itself with, why waste your time with such artificial/cosmetic change? it's like repainting the facade of the up health service just to make it look like it can do brain surgery now. it's preposterous at best, insipid at worst.

and fifth, it sets a precedent. if they can raise tuition like that, then they can raise labfees like that. sooner or later, they can have an sb 2587-ish charter ratified in congress and relieve the government of its obligations. and then the university will no longer be any more respectable than the diploma mill colleges advertised and scattered all over the metro.

the last time such a drastic tuition increase took place was in 1989, when then up president edgardo angara (never forget the name) jacked up tuition from P40 to P300. more than 500 percent! atty. victor avecilla (my mass media law professor at cmc, and one of the people i greatly respect) filed a case against the bastards, but the supreme court ruled on angara's favor. the not-so-original rationale was that the fee increase was supposed to put up at par with ateneo and foreign universities, and because the budget was going down.

but if you want to get back the teachers who left, the facilities that have disintegrated with disuse, give the students better quality education, we go back to the core argument: IT'S THE GOVERNMENT'S RESPONSIBILITY TO PROVIDE FOR EDUCATION. BECAUSE EDUCATION IS A UNIVERSAL HUMAN RIGHT. say no to budget cut!

all of this, while i attended a book launch at the university of the philippines press, where the academic elite were there and the new logo (which i didn't really like. i like the alibata logo better) revealed. they acted as if up was your typical brady bunch university where all is bright, happy and gay. i wanted to strangle them one by one, but i had to keep my composure.

putang ina bakit nila ginagawa sa atin ito?

xanananananananana

fucking rich people

2006-06-29T00:29:00.000+08:00

today is a day of pure, unabashed debauchery.

i was supposed to meet jay at power plant mall, rockwell, to do a photo shoot on the budji layug showroom at bel-air makati, but i went to rockwell 3 hours early, so i decided to run some errands. and some shopping.

like i said in my earlier blog post, i officially downsized to a 33, so i had to have some pants altered, and some jeans downsized. first stop: levi's, where i got my favorite pair, square cut 522 slims in broken-in wash (second to brand new wash) in 33. the 34 was falling off, and i could no longer wear it without a belt, so that was a go-signal for me to change sizes. anyway.

since the levi's store is attached to dockers (and the fitting area's at the dockers side), i couldn't help but stare at a couple trying on pants at the dockers area. the guy's an expat, and based on his accent i could guess he was french, and he was with his filipina girlfriend, a woman who's 5 inches smaller than him, and just couldn't keep her arms off his waist. she was carrying three shopping bags: one from lacoste, another from zara, and still another from french connection. it's obvious that the bags contained girly items, and it's obvious from the impression she's giving everyone that the money came from her expat boyfriend. the guy was acting all tough, macho and mighty against the staff, flinging the pants he already tried on, acting all arrogant and bitchy to the manager (who i managed to befriend over the many times i've been to the store), while the girl played second fiddle to him.

i don't know, but there's something just awfully wrong with this scenario. first, there's that racial and sexist metaphor that a filipina woman can never have enough money to buy her own stuff, so she's clinging on the white trash bitch. second, just because the staff can't buy their own jeans is no basis for them to lose their humanity. in my case, i always make sure i fold back everything i touch, and never try on more than 4 items at a time. i know what it's like for the staff, so i try not to be a bother as much as possible, even if i buy P8,000 worth of jeans.

but attitude towards the staff isn't really the issue here. it's the whole system of power play we have in this urbanized society. the state apparatuses have been working double time to make sure we never get the idea to survive on our own, that the nationalization of local industries is only gonna make us all broke, and that pinay women should be whores to rich expats to move up the class ladder. but wait. there's more.

after we did the shoot and interview (it's for another blog post), jay dropped me off to greenbelt 4 where i trudged to louis vuitton to get my mom the spring/summer 2006 catalog. and just as when i finished looking at the P24,000 coin purse, i saw a woman, with an older guy, carrying four big shopping bags of prada, yves saint laurent (rive gauche), gucci, and, surprise surprise, louis vuitton. i got depressed for a second (that they have more cash [or credit] than i do), and guilty (why the hell am i basking myself in the bastion of those who have robbed those belonging to the socio-economic peripheries of the right to live decently), and agitated.

i went to diesel at greenbelt 3, to check out their new jeans. and tried on the lemmon jean that's part of their new wave collection for s/s 2006. the denim shitload costs P14,000. the fit is perfect. the details are convincingly genuine. the fabric is durable. but at that price, either the target market's crazy or the store won't be moving inventory too soon. but no! when i asked their in-store concierge if there were still stocks for lemmon, she told me it was the last piece. all 25 other pieces were sold out. in a week. for a minute i asked myself: who the hell buys these fucknig jeans? then i remember: who the hell owns the country's wealth right now? smackdown logic.

i decided to take the mrt instead of having anyone fetch me at the ayala/makati area, since it was raining hard and if i did call someone, it'd take longer for me to get home. it was 8p, and i was pressed against the bodies of a shitload of other men in an mrt that can only be compared to a sardine can. i thank myself for having had the mrt to take me near home faster than a bus or jeep. then i remember: whatever revenue the stores i went to generate is more than enough to support another wage hike. and another. and another.

and then going home from gateway, i listened to the car's am tuned to dzmm. guillermo luz, donald dee and the rest of the business "community" are complaining that the wage hikes are not gonna help their businesses stay "afloat." which means they might have to lay off people. but one of them (i forgot) was wearing balenciaga the last time i saw him. the other one, prada. this, while some people go around town with only a couple of sets of clothes on heavy rotation. so heavy, their seams are unraveling faster than they can say "sastre."

fucking rich people can do whatever they want in this society. they can do whatever they want in manila. hell, they can do whatever they want in the country. they have it by the neck.

putang ina. it's all i can say. but i guess putang ina alone's not gonna feed anyone a decent meal.

xanananananana

tired, but ready

2006-06-28T00:17:00.002+08:00

in a few hours today, i'll be doing a photo shoot/interview for budji layug's be@home showroom at bel-air, makati, for this magazine i'm writing for (while i'm doing me thesis, to balance things out, ya know). i should be excited over this gig, since it took us ages before we got through to budji's pr person. but i don't know. i'm just tired now.

maybe i'll do the interview like how i've always done it in my past articles with this magazine. maybe i'll make them feel like they're absolutely not giving me a hard time (because in my mental disposition by then, i won't be feeling that at all). maybe i'll have a ball. maybe i'll even have time to get myself some new jeans (for levi's square cut jeans, by the way, i've officially downsized to a 33. bitch's got his groove back!) at rockwell, since i'll be meeting jay the photographer there. maybe that's something i can look forward to. and i will. (yuck, i can be so emotionally ambivalent sometimes). but these past few days, i end up going home tired.

it's like my schedule's on crack every time. i sleep early (well, except for now!), like 9p or something. but i wake up EXACTLY one hour before my morning class, which i get to 15-30 minutes late. and then i waste my time with 3-hour breaks smoking and lounging in a not-so-loungeable place (aka cmc lobby). i can't work the phones like i should do, i figure going home to do that is useless and tiring, so i stay. but my mind gets so distracted by the people i meet and the proportion of my smoked-out dunhills to the coke light i'm using for a chaser that i find no time to study.

then i go to class and end the day at 4p. but there'll be meetings and org duties and then i'll have to stay until 5.30p. until i have to get home finally about 6p. and then i'll have to work out to keep my size to a humane minimum. i'll end at 8.30, in which case i will have absolutely no staying power to study. i may go online (like i'm doing now), but instead of working google to get info on my thesis, i stick around bloghopping, checking out spring/summer 2007 collections (dolce and gabbana rocks!), reply to fun-to-reply emails, and download songs. and then i stick around until 1a, when i'll have to sleep. and the cycle repeats itself.

it's been going on for the past 2 weeks, since school opened. i hate my bowlie-inspired long 'do right now (a provisionary style since i have no time in the morning to work the hair dryer), i'm wearing the same jeans and shirts on rotation, i'm perpetually broke, and i feel shackled.

i need to break through something to end this bullshit.

suffice to say, i'm ready for this semester, thesis pressure and all. i just don't know how to cope right now.

maybe spring cleaning could help this. but i already did that to my closet one month ago. and there's no "spring" in the philippines (yea, if you talk about the humidity and the rain, it's always spring here).

_______________________________________

i was bloghopping around, and i found the blog of an old flame. we never ended on a note that suggested closure. i still don't know what we are, or how we are, or if it's even okay for me to say hi to him. or send him a casual text. last i checked he deleted me from his phonebook. but we never fought till violence. we never did. he just sent a longish message and told me he's still not ready, and that's it. i never spoke to him since. and he never did as well, but it left me with a big question mark. something i still can't answer till today. i guess that's what you could call, "drifted apart"?

many times we'd be in situations where we'd bump into each other. many times i ignored him, but secretly longed for small talk. even the plasticky "how are you" ones. i'd take that, just because it means hearing his voice addressed to me. i'd grab a friend and make it look like i'm doing good, but secretly i'm dying inside. he doesn't know it because i always play the role of the cold, heartless bitch (i can be/have been that sometimes) in front of him. i've always had delusions of him feeling the same way. but i'll never know for sure. maybe he doesn't. maybe i don't exist to him anymore. maybe it's self-inflicted, like my actions placed it upon myself that he'll be that way, so i shouldn't complain. but i now know what i did wrong. i was cold, insensitive, selfish and calculated in my ways. i loved loving him more than him as a person. i loved the situation, not the person. i'm very sorry i did that. i've acknowledged my mistakes, and i want to start over. maybe he knows that, he's just waiting for my next move. but does that mean we're on a clean slate? does that mean we can start over, like the past never happened? never existed?

maybe this is why i never liked working while lugging around a heavy backpack. i always leave it somewhere. and then i move around. same thing here. i've been carrying this baggage for so long, it's getting too heavy for comfort. it's weighing me down so bad that the the plates i load at the gym pale in comparison. i really want to start over and prove myself again to him and everything that he represents in my collective imagination, but where do i begin? and how do i begin?

i need to break through something to end this madness. i'm tired, but i'm ready.

xanananananananana

public service announcement, before i go to the gym

2006-06-26T15:26:00.000+08:00

to the one who this blog thingie alludes to: shy ka ba? don't be shy. you know what i want. okay lang, i don't bite. i just lick. nyahahahaha!

hit me baby one more time! nyahahahahahaha

just a nonsense post for now. i'm liking this day. i only have one class, i can afford to slack around (for the meantime), and i'm catching up with friends online. add a bowl of creme brulée by my side and some coke light, i'm so gonna be dead when i get to the gym later.

xanananananana

beautiful: the bitter life

2006-06-25T22:30:00.000+08:00

after i slept the entire day (i'm in hibernation mode this weekend; will officially start official thesis work this week), i dragged myself to my pc to check mail and reply to some. and in my routine of checking out news websites, i came across this beautiful retrospective of hacienda luisita at gma news. check out www.gmanews.tv and click on bitter life: hacienda luisita revisited by jes aznar.

maybe beautiful is not the most apt word to describe how jes aznar repainted hacienda luisita, but rather poignant. in a 52-slide flash presentation, he stirs you with photographs (beautiful at that) of how the workers managed to live every day while in the hands of the tyrant cojuangcos, and makes you remember how, despite having won the battle over the hacienda, the war is still far from over.

i really don't really know how to describe how i feel when i see the photos. maybe it's the music, or how the military trucks were arranged on one of the photos that makes suffering in itself, in a perverted way, a beautiful form of resistance. i say beautiful more times in this post that in anything because the photos make it look so beautiful that you want to be there, but you very well know that it's far from it.

i guess the best form of beauty is the kind that agitates you, and rouses you from the slumber of complacency to act, fight, and create something new. in the case of jes aznar's photographs, i suddenly remember how i felt when i heard the news of some 9 farmers (including a couple of children) were killed while military troops were trying to disperse the rallyists. and it makes me guilty that i'm not in their position. that my material circumstances don't allow me to feel their pain up close. that everytime i feel something that vaguely resembles how they felt for so long it sometimes feels so fake, because then when i feel it, and it gets a rise out of me, i'll get a text message that tells me to take an air-conditioned cab from covering a morayta rally so i could meet my mom at the podium because i would have to go home with her. because really, just my covering rallies entails a great deal of negotiating her and my dad, which makes me feel bitter about not being able to "transcend my inner contradictions" as much as i want to, or can.

maybe that's why i fought to keep this thesis. so many times my parents convinced me to change topics because they're scared of what might happen to me when i finish this, have it bound and have everyone in the college read it. so many times i was offered a different topic, something that's way easier and could get me in a couple of cocktail parties, or let me do a couple of days off doing shopping in my spare time. so many times i felt this topic was getting me nowhere. so many times my parents would make me feel like this topic will get me nowhere.

but i made a promise to the victims, to their families, to my thesis advisers (one who suggested me the topic, the other my official thesis adviser) who both were victims of the system that bore personalities like him. i made a promise to the stakeholders of this issue. i made a promise to myself, that once and for all, i won't fail them.

so many times i failed different people in my life, simply because i felt powerless. maybe that's why i hold such high regard to this thesis, to this time that i'm doing it. because this is the best time that i can prove to myself that i'm not powerless before my own failures. that i am equally as capable of not failing myself as i would.

that i won't fail myself this time. no, not this time.

thank you, jes aznar, for making me feel this rise again in my spirit.

i know agitation should be something that's within, something that's easy to invoke in one snap. i think i've invoked mine.

i'm charging on.

xananananananananana

when i rant, i bitch

2006-06-24T03:19:00.000+08:00

no, this is nothing really serious. the title's just there to get your attention. nyahahahaha

after what's been a pretty long time coming, i finally had the energy to pick up the remote and turn on the tv. i finally saw the hed and shoulders ad my brother daniel was telling me about. the one where the likes of sugarfree and up dharma down, among bands that i and my brother really like (and actually listen to on my mp3 player) singing in chorus (and in turns) about some cheesy guy liking angel locsin because of her dandruff-free hair or something to that effect. which reminds me of the song-and-dance phenomenon in manila's advertising.

i'd like to compare the parallels of this to others, including nina for goldilocks (who can forget that nail-scratching, silently caterwauling voice making birit "happy birthday"? scary), rocksteddy for close-up (i like the visual styling in this ad, except for sam milby. he's quickly turning into a jay-r. and not in a good way), the hellomoto bus (featuring a shitload of bands. i like how they did the whole graf-art thing to the styling of the ad, but it just gives me this cartoonish aura. i'm just not sure). and of course who can forget barbie almalbis' slightly annoying "summer day" for sunsilk? i liked her when she was in barbie's cradle. i have all her cds. but when she turned away, gone solo, and married that honasan scion, things just weren't the same. and not in a good way. (it somehow makes me want to believe that the aiza rumors were true. and make her go back to that stage. then again, it's an equally scary thought a well)

i'd like to reiterate a point i made earlier. the whole song-and-dance thing in most ads i see this season just give me this whole cartoonish vibe, like the filipino target market is one big bunch of "conservative," shallow, tight-wedgies who had too much okay ka fairy ko, estdyante blues and mid-80s commercial movies where no 30 minutes would pass without a production number a la bjork's "it's oh so quiet," except thati t would be done with no sense of taste. (btw, that eight o clock ad with the kid prancing all over the place like she was on red bull and steroids? definitely "oh so quiet." no question). it's not a bad thing to have a little light(headed) fun, but when it's too much, it's just too much.

but there are better ads i've been seeing these days, like that new hapee vignette about kids absenteeing themselves and eventually dropping out from school because of (gasp) toothaches and tooth decay. reminds me of a michel gondry visual styling with sofia coppola melodrama. except that this one found a connection with dental care without looking like it tried really hard to. and it didn't even act like a sneaky press release with an arrested climax and an abrupt hardsell of the product. no,they didn't do that. it just showed the logo. and i like the subtlety.

and now that we're on the hapee subject, there was another campaign that preceded that one, the a la joucy fruit smile campaign, where supposedly poor people (minimum wagers like you and me) try to allay the frustrations of the comfortable middle class by making an air-stenciled smile. i really like how it tried to do a class act while at the same time stayed true to its target market.

hapee is so cool for me now, that i might just forget the horrible "smile mo, kita ko" jingle ad nauseam days of rainier castillo (when he still looked like a circuit queen with that trying-hard f4 hair) and angel locsin. it was so horrible, i found myself singing the jingle to class. it's that bad.

what agency worked on the new campaigns? anyone who knows, please drop me a line. hapee's so cool now, i might buy a tube just to demostrate that the ads were really good.

of course, nothing still beats alice dixson's "i can feel it" days, back when palmolive wasn't corny.

when i flipped the channels to fashion tv, i chanced upon the campari ad i've been seeing in a while, one where a female model pours campari cabernet sauvignon all over the tuxedo shirt of a willing male model, licks part of the shirt, and gives the guy a dirty, cheeky grin. the ad is so racy yet to sophisticated that it's almost a sin to let my eyes see it in song-and-dance philippines. in fairness to us, there have been really nifty attempts at sophistication, like fita (remember the red sports car?), pepsi (bamboo's almost-pleading eyes are just hot), and dove (the cucumber bar ad just oozes classy to me). but the rest? look at krim stix, magic creams, that holiday thing (with the fat guy playing second fiddle to his friend, who was ignoring him because he's with his girlfriend), and well, many freaking others.

just got home from the freshman orientation party, where i spent the remaining 1/4th of the program smoking my lungs out with dunhill lights while catching up with longtime (pero definitely not freshie) friends ina, jean, ana a. and mike (kuya, may ginto na ba po sa bahaghari ninyo? i just love that line. sorry took it out on you. hehehe). when i had to do online work and surrender the den remote to my dad, daniel told me on my way to my room that there's this new ad by dennis trillo for some brandy (i forgot) that's allegedly kinda bad, like in the tradition of emperador brandy with the vignette of contrived, convoluted portraits of excess in a country full of abcesses. i won't have time for that right now. maybe tomorrow, when i accidentally flip the channel to star talk and wait for the commercial gap.

god, i'm so outdated right now. this thesis is driving me nuts. so i'm taking it out on the ads. nyahahahahaha

xanananananana

more favorite ad campaigns

2006-06-21T22:55:00.000+08:00

okay, maybe this is just one. for now. this is from levi's square cut jeans in malaysia. for the record, levi's square cut jeans are my favorite jeansline ever, and probably the only jeans i can (and possibly will) buy from levi's, apart from their redloop range (which i already have a couple of pairs of in 34. never thought i'd say i'd fit into a 34 again). first of all, i'm a fat-ass person, so the low waist and wide waistband give really generously to my hips and butt. second, the details really give you that oomph, especially the "money pocket" (in place of the watch pocket) in 523 a-type jeans, which are apparently sold as "limited edition" jeans here but get replenished regularly in malaysia. third, the stitching and tailoring just makes me look thinner and better than i really look.

and fourth, the washes really look natural, not stenciled like they can get in other brands. and lastly, they're priced humanely; i got my 522 slims in broken-in dark wash for just php2,250, and the 523 a-type for just php3,000. i checked diesel the other time at powerplant rockwell, and the same wash goes for over php11,000. that's just their spring-summer "new wave" range. even if it doesn't cover the others, the price is too obscene for me. (the redloop's a litle more expensive at php5,800, but it's still more humanely-priced than diesels or armani exchange jeans, which i learned, are "sensitive". now, jeans aren't supposed to be sensitivec, should it?)

i get the "sampayan" metaphor in the local levi's square cut campaign, but their website's just horrible to navigate. the "balloons" are irritating, and the upside-down models look like they're asphyxiated. at least in the malaysian campaign the website's fun to navigate.

here's a snippet of the campaign:

that's the malaysia one. here's the local campaign (taken from the website):

although the local campaign is, in the technical sense, better strategically and idea-wise than the malaysian campaign, the malaysian one's visual styling pretty bowled me over to their direction.

kinda makes me a little disappointed with the way advertising's going here. like, cg-to-death shampoo commercials, mongrel-breed models, young-and-struggling bands singing to the tune of a dandruff shampoo to stay afloat. is pandering the new trend in campaigns that make it past the client pitch? can good advertising just get consummated with a powerful visual, with no need for long copy with nothingness words? can we lay off the song-and-dance for a change? can we use curly-haired girls instead of rebond/plancha to death retocada mongrels for shampoo ads?

just musings from this direction. anyway, i nicked the photo from a good blog i found a while ago. check this out. really good campaigns. it'll make you pee you pants. the campaigns, i mean. ha!

xanananananana

a quick, friendly, cracked-up snippet of a blog post before i go to the gym

2006-06-17T15:24:00.000+08:00

i'm officially a bar ho: i now officially barhop for a living. then again, not really! after the debauchery of last time's foray into conspiracy, corik's and m cafe for THE magazine i now predominantly write for, i was called back to do another round of interviews with 2 more bars (well, the other one was a resto), di' mark's along tomas morato, and the still-fresh manila dj club beside zirkoh, greenhills. i'll upload my reviews as soon as i get them done, but all i can say from this gig is, i have to work hard to get my body back to 145. i ate so much stuff (di' mark's pasta, i like. di' mark's big "22" pizza, i love! one small slice is a meal. i can live one day with the small order. it's that filling) i started to second-guess my skinny-fit purple shirt. mdc's obligatory vodka bull sure did crack me up.

sorry no photos, can't camwhore at "work." then again, you can always get the august issue of mabuhay magazine to see how our aventura looked like.

______________________

random quote from one of my classes this sem (specifically, soc sci 3: sexuality and gender something under dr. margie holmes):

"is there a possibility that a straight guy fall for a gay guy, and not just because of money?"

i can't help but crack up inside laughing. so what are gay men now, piggy banks for the straight gigolos? azucarera de papá? there are loads of others i can't say for fear of the academic firing squad. i haven't outed myself yet in this class, but being the rhumcake that i am (a term my brother coined to describe my campness. think fruitcake, just a little more butch.), i'll drop hints here and there like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. watch out!

______________________

as much of an iconoclast as i am (or believe myself to be), i'm a sucker for haute couture ad campaigns. my recent shopping sprees have largely been dictated by ad campaigns. style ideas now come from metaphors i, as a creative person for an ad agency at some point, used to draft ideas for ad campaigns. the brands i choose are dictated by 1. tailoring, 2. quality, 3. ad campaign. my recent music collection's been influenced by ad campaigns the strike my fancy (i.e., rjd2's "the horror" is used in the european tv adverts for levi's "moonbathing" campaign). check salvatore ferragamo's "i love salvatore" campaign, for instance:

i think that's jessica stam. that snarly-lipped model reminds me of a classy avril lavigne.

or the classic - dior:

kate moss this time.

of course, havaianas ads are ALWAYS very witty. i wonder why beach walk/islander never thought of doing these kinds of campaigns:

i'll add more photos, especially that kate spade ad where the photo kinda mimicked newton's apple or something. but these are what strike me right now.

except that i'll have no real use for advertising/creatives for the next couple of months: i'll officially start with my thesis.

turns out, it's my adviser's last semester in the university. for real this time. meaning, i'm his last thesis advisee. and he knows a lot more about my subject that i do.

alta presión. omg.

need to hit the gym and get this pressure off. except that i'll only get home tired and nauseated.

xanananananana

the last supper, painted by marithé et françois girbaud

2006-06-13T04:53:00.001+08:00

i was flipping around the web today, and i came across this photo, supposedly as an ad campaign for the girbaud brand in italy and france. the premises, as far as the advertisers are concerned, were plain and simple: for the longest time now, women cna only be equal to men if they shed all traces of femininity (think mulan or something), so much that this ad campaign wants to celebrate that femininity by putting women, as feminine as they are, in a position of power and placing men in "a position of fragility."

turns out, not only is manila too hung up on anything that makes a satire of the christian "sacred." the ad was rejected by the adboard in italy for the most obvious reasons: that it trivialized the "drama" of the last supper by replacing the apostles with "female fashion models."

i smell condescension in the adboard's tone here. girbaud has long been known for producing racy ad campaigns, but could it have finally struck a vein with the conservatives? could it have hit that bigotry and sexism, which, if you ask me, is no lesser offense than racism or homophobia, with needle-sharp precision that it was just too hot to handle?

let's backtrack a bit to the da vinci code. when mary magdalene finally wasn't a whore, but the argued queen (who demands respect and not flogging), people started talking. and the tight-wedgy people started screaming "heresy" and all that. is it because the leader has no cock?

why is it that the only acceptable form of female empowerment is dressing girls skanky, ditzy and fragile (think of the high heels. i tried walking on them for 5 minutes on a dare. i then had a deep respect for ramp models everywhere)? or why is it that the standards of strength for women are patterned to those of men? do women still have to be both butch or slutty to be accepted? why can't women have their own identity in this fucking society?

i'm a man (so maybe it's not socially acceptable for me to ask these questions), but my mom raised me well.

to see it full-size, check this link out.

xanananananananana

i've been duped: the case of the fake samsonite phone case

2006-06-10T01:08:00.000+08:00

roughly a month or so ago, i lost my trusty ol' tiangge phone case (where i keep my rare siemens c60 scratch and scot-free. don't ask me yet why i refuse to upgrade. it's another blog post) in a jeepney while i was texting someone that i won't be late in a business meeting. that trusty tiangge case is made of black canvas, with a zip-up seal and a aluminum beelayer snap. it keeps the phone space in my pocket so small without compromising scratch protection.

oh well, so i lost it. so i needed to get myself another one. i tried the velvet pouches they sell at the quezon avenue gutter. my phone kept sliding off. i tried the kipling-ish snap cases they sell at mrt stations. too bulky and tacky. i tried the mesh pouch. too sleazy.

so i gave up and tried to look for a case in megamall. and in one of the cyberzone stores there, i got a velcro case made of faux nyltex weave and airmesh material. for P300. i thought i had a fuckin cool phone case. industrial design, clean, smart, a little cracked up yet sohpisticated. until four weeks later when one of the seams broke down, and i had to put on mighty bond to seal it, which made it even worse and hardened the rip into what looks (and feels) like a plastic glass shard. so off i go again in my phone case search.

enter gateway mall aka gay-way. i went to levi's store (to have some jeans altered), guess (i needed some socks) and nike park to run some personal and family errands. and at nike park, i saw this really cool-looking arm wallet that can safely house my mp3 player when i do my cardio, and can also double as a cellphone case. it even has an id slot inside where i can put in my phone number, tax number and stuff. and it's soo cheap at P600 something.

but because the strap is permanently sewn in, and because the wallet is too bulky to lug around (and there's no other way of wearing it than to strap it in my arms), i figured i'd kinda look stupid and too fasyon (in a bad way) in it. so i had the nice saleslady reserve it for 15 minutes while i scoured some other shops.

until i reached travel club. i knew samsonite and victorinox make phone cases and stuff, so i figured i could check them out before i finally get the stupid-looking arm wallet. and when i scoured the case racks, you can only paint the horror in my face when i saw a samsonite case with the same design as the case i got in megamall a month or so ago.

this is what i got at that el cheapo knockoff store-slash-welfare-center for snatched cellphones with fake hello kitty covers:

and this is what i got at travel club, the REAL THING:

at least the megamall case didn't pretend it was a samsonite or whatever, but both cases were really the same in design (they even used the same fuckin airmesh material!). except the samsonite case had a different nyltex weave to the ersatz one, which was harder and used pathetic black felt board to hold it together. goddammit, both holster cases even had the same bias tape sewn at the inside seams, except the the faker used felt paper on the inside, while the genuine article used padded polyester with a repeating logo.

this fakester, with FELT PAPER, of all conceivable inside seams....

or this original digital loot bag, with premium-looking polyester padding?

the sammynite case, i also noticed, took some effort when opening the velcro, while the samsonite velcro was easy to open. and the belt band of the original was also softer than the fakey, which apparently didn't want me to stick it on anything.

and the hardest part of it all: while the megamall shit cost me P300, the real samsonite only cost me P430, with a surprise 10 percent discount because of the mall wide sale (and because i was nice to teresa, the really nice saleslady at travel club. you should get your next jansport, samsonite or victorinox bags from her!). and the real samsonite had a 10-year warranty (meaning, if the seams get ripped off, i don't have to put mighty bond on; i'll just bring it to the samsonite brand store in either podium or rockwell, and they'll do the repairs for free). i didn't even get a fucking receipt on the fake!

at least the fakey didn't pretend to be anything; there were no tags, brands, or misspelled bezels on it. just a clean face, which enamored me to it. but still, that was P300 worth of nonsense. i could've seen three films with that, or gotten a good book with that, or paid a unit of my tuition with that. the whole incident just sucks.

moral of the story: follow my mantra: it's either all highbrow brand, or no brand at all. no fakes!

seriously, this has been my shopping mantra for a loong time. i guess that's why i love thrift/secondhand/ukay stores. if i go to an upscale mall, look for me at the specialty stores (m&s, diesel, florsheim, nautica, lacoste, levi's, the list goes on) looking for premium items at top peso prices (after a good pair of khakis i got on irregular sale broke down on me after a couple dozen wearings, i will never buy an irregular/defected item on sale again!). if i go to "u.k.", look for me in the no-brand/young fabulous and broke t-shirt section. but you'll never see me at divisoria trying to get a good deal for an ersatz lv. i tried to wing it before, but it just doesn't work. trust me. REAL THING, OR UNBRANDED AT ALL. it's not really about the brand you wear, but whether or not it fits your body, your way of thinking, your budget and the weather report. in short, your PERSONAL STYLE.

at least i had my good friends commiserating with me. i saw camille, tj, mark m, mark u, and josh while i was doing my solo shit in gateway, and they helped me forget that i did such a stooopid stooopid thing like this.

my best bitches (from left: camille, josh, and yo):

and my best bitches, batch 2 (from left, clockwise: mark m, tj, mark u, and camille [again!:-)]):

(thanks josh, for sending me the photos! i know i should get myself a new digicam to replace my busted old one, but with the shitload of options out there, i just never have the time. ;-))

the night ended well for all of us. we busted our throats caterwauling "wannabe," "thank god i found you," "dreaming of you," "that don't impress me much," "through the rain" and all our other guilty pleasures at timezone until the mall closed down on us. but not until we hogged dozens of restaurants looking for that perfect dinner. they had the jamaican patties, donuts, and that sickeningly sweet taco bell non-alcoholic margarita drink. i had doppio iced mocha at gloria jean's with ysl lights. the caffeine and cigarettes diet works, people!

(i like this photo, i look so butch in here, and it shows off my newly-recovered jawline nice, although i still have that irritating cheek fat. but now that i'm back at the gym, gaunt workout-bullimic overtrained male model look, here i come!)

(one of these things (a large gloria jean's iced white mocha) will get all your day's calories. and with a pack of ysls handy, who needs food?)

btw, really sorry if you can't hear anything in this blog. my radio blog server's down at the moment. i just contacted the nice people at global web, and it looks like they're doing maintenance work. anyway, it'll be back up soon. patience is a virtue. coming from someone with no concept of patience, ha!

xananananana

the best watering holes in the metro a.k.a., bar reviews!

2006-06-07T14:56:00.000+08:00

i did this as a commisssioned piece for the same magazine i'm doing cd reviews for, for next month's issue. this is what kept me busy last week, with all the barhopping stuff and stuff. i must've smoked an entire ream of yves saint laurents last week, because everytime i finish an interview with the owners, i couldn't help but step out and light a stick. i know it's bad for my health, but i can't help it. cigs are the ultimate stress reliever. at least it's waaaay better than crack or crystal meth, or those pathetic poppers. and besides, ysl makes smoking look sooo glamorous. hehehehe

(btw, after marl lights, this is my next preferred brand. it's soo light on the nicotine like capris, but with the same kick as average marls. think of it as like marlboro ultralights silver, only in more glam packaging. i'm swearing off davidoffs because they give too much kick, and dunhills make me want to throw up after 3 sticks)

enjoy

xanananananana

____________________________________

Maybe you’re bored with your surround sound. Maybe your ears are dying for a break from your 10-year-old headphones. Maybe some of your mp3s have that pathetic cracking sound with the slow bitrate. Or maybe you’re perfectly happy with your sound system, but you need to save your atrophying social skills. At any rate, it’s time to head to the very few places in the metro where iPods are useless, and beer bottles may offer you something more profound than a screaming hangover.

Conspiratorial
A sparsely-lit driveway with a black sign for an entrance may make Conspiracy look like a sublime watering hole to the casual outsider. But like its name suggests, Conspiracy’s great details are bursting inside. Conspiracy is the three-year-old brainchild of “conspirators” and Pinoy music greats Joey Ayala, Gary Granada, Noel Cabangon, Cynthia Alexander, Bayang Barrios and even Philippine Daily Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros, who turned this former Italian restaurant into a regular tambayan (hangout) and outlet of both established and up-and-coming artists, writers and musicians. The name attracted so much attention and intrigue in the past that police, thinking Conspiracy meant some code for an underground meeting place, almost raided it when a political group staged its press conference there. But Conspiracy is anything but a cold and sinister underground. This place combines an al fresco grill and dining area, an open art exhibit, a music room, and a bar/café in a free-flowing Filipino ethnic/bohemian-inspired space that encourages people to move around, be friendly and lose all pretension.

Although Conspiracy aims to be more of a “dining” place now, it still doesn’t run out of great music, with nightly gigs by the “conspirators” themselves and the occasional big band gigs (Parokya Ni Edgar/ Edgar’s Parish, Brownman Revival and Rivermaya are equally popular acts). The artsy crowd will find a home in this place, with weekly exhibits and open poetry reading sessions. And where there’s great music, there’s great food: Conspiracy’s specialties include crispy pork tadyang (thigh), creamy chicken cordon bleu (chicken cutlets filled with ham and cheese), and the classic “balut” (unhatched duck embryo). Conspiracy is one secret you won’t doubt sharing.

Conspiracy is located at 59 Visayas Avenue, Quezon City, Tel. +63 2 453-2170
Open everyday, 4p onwards; Php 100 entrance fee (music room only)
Writer’s night sessions most Tuesdays
Conspiracy serves Appetizers (Php 25 – 180), Grilled specials (Php 55 – 150), and Dishes for sharing ( Php 110 – 320), and vegetarian dishes Php 50 – 150
Drinks start at Php 30 (beer)

Where the world meets Corik’s
A dispenser of irreverent punch-in-the-gut humor and “kilig (swoon) to the bones” music, Corik’s prides itself in its very diverse clientele. With the slogan “where the world meets” proudly emblazoned in the bar’s neon-lit entrance, Corik’s proves the sign by having expats, politicians, students, yuppies, and celebrities packed together and enjoying the antics and jam sessions of its owner, Pinoy music legend Rico J. Puno (Corik’s is Puno’s nickname, given and used by his friends). This former pastry shop plays trendy acoustic, jazz and alternative beats most days with the likes of up-and-coming group Metafour and Pure N Simple. You can even do karaoke here. But come any given night, and you might just be pleasantly surprised with an impromptu jam session by Puno and his friends, among others fellow Pinoy music icons Hajji Alejandro and Nonoy Zuñiga. And if Puno’s sharp-witted antics aren’t enough for you, there are the bar’s well humored signs (check out the witty “Wiwi” (Pinoy childspeak for “pee”) room). The humor extends to the names of bar’s specials, among them the Macho Guapito (vodka, orange juice, and three parts grenadine syrup), Dirty Sucks (blue Curacao, orange juice, apricot brandy, and cherry brandy), and the Bartender’s Midnight Kiss (vodka, tonic water, three shots Tequila Hombre, and cherry brandy).

There are no entrance fees for regular gigs, although for those who have something else in mind, Corik’s holds special shows at least once a month. Everyone knows everyone in this place, but Corik’s runs under the guiding principle that a bar should never intimidate the customer, especially the first-timers. So even if you’re just a newbie, you’ll surely be treated like you been there from the get-go.

Corik’s Bar & Café is located at G/F Kingswood Condominiums, Vito Cruz corner Chino Roces Avenue (formerly Pasong Tamo), Makati City.
Open everyday, 6p onwards
Corik’s serves chicken, pork, beef, goat and seafood dishes (Php 220 – 380), sizzling dishes (Php 240 – 250), apéritif (Php 100 – 240), pasta (Php 200) and salads (Php 120 – 280)
Drinks start at Php 50 – 75 (beer)

Kitchen art
By the power of suggestion, M Café (or Museum Café) is a place for those who want to see and to be seen. The artsy factor is not the only one behind this (it’s next door to the iconic Ayala Museum), or its sheer location (it’s right smack in the middle of Greenbelt 4, haven to Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton fans this side of the planet). M’s ultra-modern interiors by designer Budji Layug, architect Royal Pineda, and original artwork by design group Movement 8 command instant sophistication the minute you walk in, making you want to check if you wore your Fake London top or Goyard bag right. But the apparent high-fashion vibe of the place is immediately balanced out with the domestic comfort of its Modern Asian cuisine specials, which happen to be cutting-edge marriages of Filipino and Western-style food. Prepared by Filipino chef and culinary artist Sau del Rosario, special must-tries at M Café include the guava scallop sinigang teapot and the chicken adobo foie gras. The innovation doesn’t stop at desserts, though, which include the Choc-Nut Valrhona cake and the jackfruit Sans Rival.

Although as a fine dining place M Café is cool enough, it’s not until Friday that M Café gets really hip and happening. Transforming into Kiss MyHOUSE every Friday night, the café epitomizes its high-fashion reputation and hosts a sexy house party spearheaded by resident DJs Elian habayeb and Mark Cali-Jentes, with drinks (“liquid art”) courtesy of M Café chef and owner Martin Wisniewski. If you’re lucky enough, you might even step into special gigs by renowned artists and musicians the world over. And when it’s time to cool down, M Café dishes out soothing live jazz and mellow music on Sunday afternoons. But when you’re in a café this sophisticated, any setting, any situation gives you a high, like walking into prized artwork.

M Café is located at the G/F Ayala Museum, Greenbelt 4, De La Rosa St., corner Makati Avenue, Makati City, Tel. +63 2 757-6000
Open from 8a-12mn (weekdays), closes later on weekends
Kiss MyHOUSE every Friday, 10p onwards; Jazz Sunday Brunch every Sunday, 10a-3p
M Café serves aperitifs (Php 225-460), soups and salads (Php 110-260), wok dishes (Php 240-275), sandwiches (Php 120-275) and main dishes (meat, seafood, rice, poultry, curry and vegetarian; Php 220- 550)
Drinks start at Php 70 (iced tea), Php 75 (beer)
Cigarettes start at Php 65 (Dunhill)

xanana ventura, now with streaming audio!

2006-06-05T12:22:00.000+08:00

yaay! no more mp3-emailing for me! hehehehe. anyway, i really wanted to stream my music (i.e., the exact hard-to-find songs i have in my mp3 player) into my blog, but the youtube/bolt/49media codes are fucking up the layout. so finally, i found a way. thank god for radio blog!

it was hard to set it up at first, since i know close to nothing about rbs file conversions, rbs-compatible hosts, and all that stuff. i also had to do some ftp uploading (because the files were waay too huge for a browser transfer) and remember some of my html classes before i can finally set it up. but, the effort was worth it. now you can listen to what i listen to, and let me know what you think.

btw, the player's configured to automatically play goldfrapp's "ride a white horse," a 2006 cover/homage to t-rex's "ride a white swan," and one of my biggest obsessions to date. if you like the song, and notice that it plays a little shorter than you expected, just try clicking on it over and over. when you hang around in my blog long enough (ha! self-promotion), pretty soon the connection will iron itself out and the song will play in whole.

so far, the player's in its beta stages, but over the next few days i'll add a few more songs to the mix (now that i know what i'm doing), notably my trademark hed kandi/stéphane pompougnac classics, and that paris hilton song. if there's anything you want me to add, hit me up and i'll try to consider it.

in the meantime, enjoy the songs! and while you're at it, visit my website, www.danotingcungco.tk. this is pambubugaw to the maxxx!

later

xananananananana

so you thought they were prissy back then...

2006-06-02T22:00:00.000+08:00

... i don't think so!

from the same flickr site , vintage caronia, in pussy pink!

i love that color!

this picture paints a million words

2006-06-02T04:52:00.000+08:00

just gone bloghopping last night (as a diversion from the intense writing load i have this weekend, which involves barhopping as a form of work, not of leisure), and from the archives of chuvaness (chuvaness.livejournal.com), i found this foto (http://www.flickr.com/photos/thirstyfish/1368965) :

di kinaya ng powers ko ito. priceless!

fucking flu

2006-05-28T17:59:00.000+08:00

i just officially got out of the flu today, and i have to say i still don't feel better.

it all started last monday, when i met up with my concept teammates in an ad campaign i'm currently working on. i had to order doppio espresso servings of macchiato in the cafe we drafted our workplan in, just to ease the headache that was, apparently, slowly stripteasing and lapdancing its way into my brain. when i got home that night, i felt the immediate symptoms of a regular flu: malaise, the hot feeling of a fever, some colds. i took some pills, and went to sleep. last thing i knew that was the last time, for that week, that i was ever gonna have good, orgasmic sleep.

it was total mindfuck from there.

from tuesday to friday, all i can feel are the steady ding-ding of a throbbing headache at the left side of my head, an equally throbbing ear as if i had an ear infection, snot the color of camouflage (which used up 3 rolls of toilet paper every 3 hours), fever that acted as if i was liking the adventure, and toothaches that made me feel like my bicuspids were about to fall off. every night, i couldn't put myself to sleep because of the headache, no matter how many oranges i chew or milk glasses i down like tequila. i tried yoga poses (the corpse pose most especially), mantra (i am more than the headache, i am morethan the headache ad nauseam), gymnopedies (elevator muzak with ocean sounds that claim to relax you), turning off the lights, total silence, lavender oils, everything. nothing could keep me from having to pound my head on the wall (that didn't work too).

except for one thing: my mom's chinese pharmacy menthol stick. it's like the vicks stick, except that the menthol is exposed. i became a junkie to that, and also to a steady overdose of advil. i'm actually still snorting it right now as i type this. menthol sticks can trump crystal meth anytime! it makes you feel that good.

curiously though, even i i had that horrid toothandheadachecombination, i could still eat normally, watch fashion tv (that was more relaxing than the lavender), and do normal things to a certain point. i had the campaign presented to the client this friday, and i must say that going out of the house was, in a way, healing for me. at least when i got back, the headache was no longer that bad. but the snot still makes my nose rival a fire hydrant.

i've been hearing a lot of people having the same mindfuck as i have (good thing, since i wouldn't have to speculate), which means that it's as common as the flu pague to hit this coutry everytime the weather acts up. but i have to say i'll also have myself to blame for my shit. last saturday (not yesterday), i broke my vow of clean and healthy living. during a dear aunt's birthday party, i joined my cousins at the garage and downed 2 1-liter bottles of red horse (RED HORSE. i only drink cerveza negra/super dry. i swore off the san mig light a looong looong time ago, and pale pilsen makes me look like a d.o.m.) AND smoked off 2 packs of marlboro reds (REDS. i don't do reds. as much as possible, it's marl lights or something lighter, like capri or davidoff white. i'm totally killing myself). i didn't have a hangover until sunday afternoon, and i kept myself awake until sunday morning, 10am (10 am! that's like, more than 10 hours of non-stop online work. i'm a walking suicide case, i'm sorry). and that's when it all started.

of course, my whole gym schedule is fucked up; i didn't do gym for a whole week, my parents wouldn't let me go, and i couldn't do it either even if they pointed a gun at me. but maybe i'll try it again tomorrow. experience tells me that a little physical activity clears the airways and the bad air. i feel better now than i did last wednesday, but i'd really like it if i don't get a relapse, like everybody claims they're getting by working so hard.

and maybe getting my clear snot back. i only like camouflage in my fatigue pants.

mall of asia: shop it like you own it

2006-05-24T20:31:00.000+08:00

what's a ridiculously huge mall doing...

... in a place where poverty is ridiculously huge?

xananananananananana

my traffic

2006-05-24T20:20:00.000+08:00

well, i'm not exactly an internet superstar (...YET! how pretentious can i get/ hahahahaha), but when i downloaded the latest traffic stats for my other website www.danotingcungco.tk, i'm surprised that the site, shabby as it is right now, still gets visited by people outside the country.

check this out:

turns out, my site also gets visited by people from the usa, spain, the uk, canada and singapore.

wow, that's a mouthful.

maybe this is a sign for me, to finally spruce up my site? hell yeah.

maybe later. i'm soooo sick right now i hd to lie down all day purging the evils out of my head.

later

xanananana

M.I.A.

2006-05-21T21:46:00.000+08:00

i don't usually listen to hip-hop and rap (too much Louis Vuitton-dropping), but this one got me going. maybe to her, exclusively. M.I.A. aka Maya Arul, is a west london rapper whose family had to leave sri lanka in the middle of the tamil tiger war. she released her album, Arular, last year, but i only got wind of it when wendell garcia played one of her songs (actually 2), Galang and M.I.A., on Wave 89.1. the beats are really hypnotic and soo electroclash/experimental, and the lyrics are very political and profound.

she's my new guilty pleasure right now. but she talks so much sense that maybe it won't be long before she moves up and away from that category.

check out the lyrics to M.I.A.
Sound familiar (especially the call center bit)?

xananananana

M.I.A.
M.I.A.

You can watch TV and watch the media
President Bush doing takeover
Kate Moss in ads for mascara
All my youth the young offender
The bill payers, the drug dealers
Girls who are magazine covers
The part-time jobbers at the call center
No career plans cause you won't go far
Put away change for Ibiza and
Check your credit on your new Nokia

You can be a follower but who's your leader?
Break the cycle or it will kill ya
You leader, you lead, uh, do what you do
What really good's gonna happen to you?

Your prime minister to your employer
Ego lovers need more power
Trendsetters make things better
Don't sell out to be product pushers
The gyro casher and baby makers
Try something new cause it ain't over
All poor people from all over
Lottery's got a rollover

You can be a follower but who's your leader?
Break the cycle or it will kill ya

Cherokee Indian, Iraqi and Indians
Girls and me girls when they come to the fellas and
Japanese, Moroccan, Caribbean, African
That's your life but who the fuck's your president?
You don't get my life cause I don't have a side and I
Spread dat boy 'im a mile wide and I
Got brown skin, I'm a west Londoner
Educated, but a refugee, still.
You wanna boy, you're old, you go
You wanna fight, you suck, you blow

there was nothing controversial about the "code"!

2006-05-19T11:49:00.000+08:00

If anything’s to say at all about the film, the Da Vinci Code’s a really good spy thriller, waay better than anything MI:III will ever want to be. But really, there’s nothing sex-and-violence-y about the “Code”, unless of course you consider Tom Hanks’ potentially sugar-daddy look against his female lead Audrey Tautou (Amelie) disturbing. But if anything at all, the “Code” is nothing more than a film that tackles and dissects a topic taboo to many. And that “topic” just happens to become one of the cornerstones of the Western “civilized” world’s biggest religions. Ever.

We caught the last full show of the “Code” last night in one of the local posh malls nearby, since we didn’t want to go too far. Nobody in the house had time in the morning, or in the early afternoon, to see the “Code”, and besides, it’s always more fun with family. So we decided to skip the dinner and head to the theater.

We were really hoping that, since it’s the last full show, we’d be able to get my sister Daphne in. But when I stepped of the escalator and into the theater, I immediately smelled that despite the film hitting a gold mine at the box office, everyone was uptight about it, including the ticket seller. As soon as my mom walked up to her, she asked who she was going to see the film with. And when she saw Daphne looking all uncomfy in my mom’s Fendi handbag I made her carry on her shoulder, she declined to sell my sister her ticket.

So we decided to have a little spy thriller of our own. Okay, maybe just a thriller. We decided to walk up to the supervisor and explain our case with Daphne. First of all, we understand that it’s rated R-18 (in the Philippines, it means for adults over 18 only). But for one, BOTH of her parents are with her, and WE, her adult brothers, are with her. So she’s really gonna get all the guidance she’ll never need, being my mature, forward-thinking sister (and besides, I really don’t want to see that Aquamarine flick). When that didn’t work, we walked up to the manager and she saw the light. So off we go to the “Code.”

Turns out, there’s really nothing to go R-18 about in the film. By far, the only sex-and-violence-y about the movie is Silas’ self-flagellation, and a quick shot where Sauniere was humping a girl apparently for a Priori of Zion ritual. There wasn’t really anything else brow-raising about the film, not even a cheek peck. Which gets me and my mom to conclude that the R-18 was probably a concession from the MTRCB for the film not to get banned in the country. And I later learned that the film was banned in the city of Manila. Which is total hogwash, since it was just a really good film. They should’ve banned MI:3 instead.

Which gets me now to the theme. What is it about the film (and the book, by association) that gets all the conservative people freaky? What could be the most obvious “blasphemy” of the film was the theory that Jesus was a every bit as human as we all are, even to the point of being a family man himself, having a wife and kids with the Bible’s resident “whore”, Mary Magdalene. Now, if you dig Jesus having extra “ghetto superstar” points like that, you’d have no problem. In fact, you’d even like how Ian McKellen’s character rolls the story out.

You’d also have no problem with the “Code” if you’re feminist, since it gives forum to the idea of matriarchy, what with Mary Magdalene being the rightful heir(ess) to the Church, until Peter had to step in, screw it all up for her, and take the post for himself. Gives light to the theory that Magdalene was never a whore to start with, that it’s just a smear campaign against her, and by association, to all strong women everywhere, just because she’s a threat to the men who want a piece of her rightful power.

But the problem starts with the very idea itself. In so much as Jesus’ humanity is discussed, there is no mention of his divinity. Which is great for Catholics, because where there’s no mention, there’s no questioning (Hanks’ character Robert Langdon makes this explicit). But here’s the beef: the mere theory of Jesus’ humanity as the “Code” sees it, rocks the very core of Christianity, or at least Christian doctrine as we know it, and has every potential in the world to turn this core, this “foundation,” into nothing more than a little ol’ lie.

Now, here’s how I see it. If the theory is true, then Jesus, by association, is on a level playing field with the Muslim prophet Muhammad. Now, if I get my history right, Muhammad was just a regular guy with wife and kids, and every trapping of humanity there is, except that Allah entrusted him with the holy Koran, thus, being the caretaker and founder of Islam on earth.

Jesus was as every bit as Muhammad was, but the Church just had to turn him into the big guy he really never needed to be and transformed him into this universal entity something who came to earth riding a big shiny white Bentley of a motorcade (figuratively), swaggered and swashbuckled his way like a celebrity into converting everyone, and when he was done with his “assignment,” went back to heaven like it was one, big old gig. Vacation package included.

Kinda makes me question why the Church has been so insecure of other religions right of the back. Although Langdon won’t speculate as to who made the attacks on whom (the Church said they defended against the pagans, the pagans said they defended against the Church), history will tell us that this brand of insecurity has been so great that great travesties that could ever be committed by mankind (mass murders, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch trials, the friars, mass looting and plundering, the decimation of indigenous tribes everywhere there’s a colonization happening) have either been sanctioned by or actively participated by no other entity than the white man’s Church. You never hear this sort of thing happening from the end of other religions, although they also do have their own set of problems.

Which makes me now think, had the theories been true? Dan Brown only made a fiction disclaimer to the storyline, not the historical accounts and documents. So is Christianity, in all of its foundations and all, a big lie? Consider this, even if the theories aren’t true to begin with (scientific proof still has yet to arrive), what’s the biggest entity that made the biggest atrocities on women and minorities? What’s the biggest force against free thinkers and science right off the back? What was the biggest entity that implicitly stood against freedom of expression, just because its interests weren’t sought? What’s the sole entity from which the basis of the conservative WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant)’s culture and set of beliefs, which many view now as bordering on fascism, spring from? What’s the one thing Dubya Bush resting on when he launched an all-out attack against gay marriages and non-traditional family statuses (divorcee, single parent, etc)?

These questions are not merely formed out of conspiracy theories, but by history itself.

I know my musings border on heresy, but you have to understand. After having this country looted and pillaged for centuries by Spanish friars, and looted and pillaged once more (up to now) by the American WASPs, as Filipino I really can’t find it in my heart to ditch the very freedom the Church is implicitly seeking to take away from me by trying to have the “Code” banned from theaters. It’s not just a matter of whether the “Code” is controversial or not now, it’s all symbolic at this point. This is a jump-off point to everything else that can be labeled “blasphemous.” Not just by the Church, but by any powerful entity that seeks to have its interests protected by screwing free thinking and free speech.

After the film (I think we left the theater around 12 midnight), we all schlepped to a nearby Yellow Cab where we had a quick dinner. And when I saw Debate on GMA 7 that night, I was really turned off by that arrogant monsignor, and really rooted for Sir Danny Arao. After all, shouldn’t I be the one who’s capable of forming decisions for myself and choosing the beliefs I feel are the best for me, and not some random priest whose idea of me is based on the rare times I went into confession?

Afterwards, I learned from Daphne that she didn’t get a thing from the film, and dozed off just before Ian McKellen’s character uncovered some lively twist to the “Code.” At least I didn’t get to see Aquamarine. That one I’ll probably see on pirated DVD.

Gawd, that was a damn good movie.

i want a rico yan sibling relationship

2006-05-18T19:38:00.000+08:00

okay, so before y'all gesticulate wildly and accuse me of blaspheming the name of the dead matinee idol, hear me out.

when i woke up early this morning, i recall myself dreaming about how nice it wold be for me to have what relationship rico yan (in one of his interviews) had with his siblings: closer as you get older. he admitted to fighting with his siblings every sinlge living day when he was youung, but the tables turned over when they reached legal voting age. now they're close as ever.

i always hear my parents telling me that we all should be close right off the back. but somehow, i can't avoid fighting petty bitchy wars with my sister and brother (with whom i've grown close over the year; just proves rico yan's hypothesis). i never indulged myself in chummy sessions with my sister except for the increasingly frequent times that i style her hair and do her makeup for the parties she's now allowed to go to. and i only talk to my brother at extended lengths (like, powerhouse 10 hour bonding sessions) if it's about work and stuff.

i don't know. i mean, bickering's pretty normal in a family of fewer than 10 (we're 5 in the family, excluding all the help). and i'm really getting the hang of hanging out with my siblings and not overly fussing over how "cool" they will or should be. i'm slowly getting the hang of the rico yan hypothesis, and i'm gonna prove it right to full potential in five years or less, when we're all working, thinking adults capable of going dutch on each other everytime we go out for coffee or chow.

btw, i'm posting this half-naked, wrapped in a towel, and with a toothbrush stuck to my mouth. we're catching the last full show of the da vinci code tonight, and i hope they let daphne in. i mean, she's 12 and all, but her sheer size can pass her off as a debutante. hehehehe

i'm gonna start applying the rico yan hypothesis right now. maybe tonight, after i step out of the shower.

xanananananananana

software update

2006-05-18T02:33:00.000+08:00

okay, so i lied.

when i said i was gonna post a few hours after the last (okay, i said "later," but isn't that the effect? ha!), i hadn't really done it. and the difference between may 9 and may 18 can't really be equated with the term "later." so empirically, i fell short of my promise to post "later." but hey, i always have options, ya know.

anyway, on to my "software update."

y'already know that i "celebrated" my birthday two weeks ago. if i had to include stories about my mandatory shopping+dinner, nothing really mind-blowing happened. then again, what happened to that day was different from what happened in any other day in my life on hibernation mode (i.e., breaks, summer, christmas, vacation, etc). i expected to do something more profound and something to remember that day by months after it's over. but what did i do? i slept through the morning (for no apparently urgent reason at all; i just stayed up really late surfing the net), worked out three hours after i woke up (noon), and waited for a go-signal from my mom for us to meet in some restaurant to cap my birthday night off.

here's the thing: this is what i ALWAYS do. well, not always, but this is what you would normally see me doing had you picked any other random day. i wake up at noon (earliest) or 6pm (average), work out, and go out to dinner. and when i get home, i'd check my mail, bryanboy.com, news sites, my friendster, and download a few new songs off limewire to distract me when i'm at the gym.

but if there was something i did (that week; it's a long-standing tradition at home that people keep themselves safe on their birthdays) that i haven't done the past few months, it was mustering enough courage to walk into a levi's store (in two branches, actually: megamall and gateway) and get a pair of slim jeans (the 522 slims and the 523 s-type, respectively) in my actual size. not that i logistically can't do it any other day. it's just that i was holding myself from buying any new clothes (except socks, oleg cassini handkerchiefs that i really love and exclusively use since i was 10, and underwear) until i get my waist 2 to 3 more inches down. i haven't achieved that yet, so i could evaluate these new purchases as either a wardrobe savior (i can wear chucks now without having to cut/pin my pants!) or a frivolous, expensive mistake (the reason why i got myself levi's jeans instead of schlepping to 168 and getting myself a knockoff is because mother experience has told me that original levi's jeans shrink to fit your body with every wash. and the fits are fabulous to begin with. then again, was i right in dissing my instinct not to buy them until 6 months later?). i could say it's all about perspective, but perspective can't give me back the good money i shelled out for these.

anyway, on to more significant stuff.

if this had been a good greeting, let me know: when i went to the gym on my birthday, my trainor's good friend/drinking buddy complimented me on how much fat i lost since i enrolled four months earlier. now, being little old vain conceited me, i had to fish deeper for compliments. same response, only more enthusiastic and with more cajoling than i could've normally handled. i personally couldn't see the fat i lost; maybe because i keep on seeing the little belly pocket i have everytime i pose like nicole scherzinger in the mirror, and it bugs the hell out of me. it surely made me feel good the whole time i was there doing 90-lb squats, but then i felt stupid for telling them that it was my birthday then, because then i would have to order pizza and lattes for the guys and i can't really punish myself like that right now. not at this point.

the next day was a combination of work and fun. in the morning, i went out and worked my thesis by going on scheduled data-mining searches. for those of you who know what my thesis is about, you'll know how especially hard it is for me to get precious dirt on my subject. in the afternoon, i joined my brother and sister at celebrity sports club, where we spent the afternoon with our really closest cousins on the tingcungco side, nica, chesca and leica. we had fun diving until our ears begged us to stop at the 9ft pool, binged on cobblers and banana split at the cafe, and proved once again that my evil younger fArtist brother daniel can send us all home crying and penniless with his nifty bowling skills.

it was fun, and i'd never trade that day for anything. then again, it meant that i had to cancel some appointments i made for the day, so i compensated by doing online work the minute i stepped into my room four hours later. leaving early wasn't really an option for me, since we were under close watch by the driver, who was in cahoots with my mom and aunt. and besides, i got some scrubbing earlier in the morning because i wasn't apparently playing the responsible elder brother role. so i had to pretty much prove my worth by staying around and entertaining my little sister daphne as she paddled her way through the 3ft section of the pool. it was exhausting, since i couldn't do all the deep laps i wanted to do for the day, but it was a relief to prove to myself that i'm not such a cold, heartless, selfish bitch after all.

it was pretty much downhill for my body since then. it was like the compliment was sign that told me, "you're gonna screw up real soon." after i left the gym on my birthday, i went for seconds downing spaghetti al pesto and philly steak pizza (take note: philly=fat) at the nearby don henrico's. the next day at celebrity, i binged on 2 servings of chocolate cobbler, a shitload of servings of regular (REGULAR=SUGAR LOADED) bottomless iced tea, and a plateful of pasta. during my sister's birthday three days later (we stayed home and played "who's the cook?" while preparing special dinner dishes), i dined on redsauce pasta as if my life depended on it. take note: the whole week i was doing this, i slept around 6a and woke up around 12nn to 3p, which pretty much leaves me unprepared to work out and focus. and the amount of work i had to handle within that week and into this week (thesis, sideline writing and creative design jobs) leaves me with no time and no energy to do pathetic 40lb military presses.

right now, i'm trying to get my gym program back on track, and my thesis progress on an existent pace. i'm occupied right now with thoughts about my current workload, a creative/design campaign for a local beverage company. my thesis work is on a standstill. i still can see the one thing in my tummy that's keeping me from having cheeky girl abs (okay, maybe brandon boyd abs). my contact with friends and the rest of my social circle no longer exist. and i still sleep around 6a.

but hey, i doubled my milk intake (which makes me not have to reach for oily peanuts for my after-gym protein fix), loaded my songs with more hed kandi, and started drinking the same slimming tea my sister's drinking on a 2x-a-day basis. i can see directino from here. then again, maybe it's just perspective.

btw, thanks a lot to everyone who greeted me on my birthday. even though i wasn't able to thank each and every one of you, you know that your greetings mean a whole lot to me. you know who you are. i love y'all!

now playing (i know these are old songs, but hey, the memories make them more special):

Sia - Breathe Me (Mylo Remix)
Zero 7 - Destiny
Goldfrapp - Ride A White Horse
Shakira - Día Especial
Alejandro Sanz - No Es Lo Mismo
Goo Goo Dolls - Slide
Toni Braxton featuring Loon - Hit The Freeway
Lene Marlin - You Weren't There
Kelly Rowland - Can't Nobody
Maria Rita - Encontros E Despedidas
Nelly Furtado - Forca
Paris Hilton - Screwed (yes, i'm still listening to her)

email me if you want a copy of these songs: danotingc@gmail.com. this is p2p baby, blog-style!

my favorite line/phrase right now - "orthopedic nightmare" (a term i unintentionally coined when one of my gym-mates sprained his ankle)
my favorite motto right now - "Dance like a slut, but don't let the horny wankers touch you." (Paris Hilton, as told by Bryanboy in his much talked-about blog, www.bryanboy.com)

don't ask me why; i can't give a philosophical meaning to it. it's 6a and i still can't think properly. hahahahaha!

xananananana

i'm hooked on paris hilton, and happy birthday

2006-05-10T13:16:00.000+08:00

i have to confess: i'm hooked on paris hilton.

not the porn, dammit! what i meant was that i'm hooked on her leaked songs right now. "screwed", one of the ironic-sounding tracks in her upcoming album Paris is Burning (or Paris; i'm not really sure and not really care), is on heavy rotation right now in my workout mp3 player. it sounds techno-meets-candy-pop, and it's soo paris. it's a guilty pleasure, but i don't really see myself listening to this over the long term. maybe when i'm doing those "beloved" military presses? maybe.

will post properly later. so many things happened in between my last post and this one. my birthday, another day at celebrity with cousins, and compliments about my weight at the gym (i wonder if they're just coming on to me or something. ha!). right now, i'm trying to finish two sets of articles for two different publications, as well as working the phones for my thesis and sex life. ha!

later my dears,
xanana

special post - on the arrest and torture of musician alexis uy

2006-05-04T12:48:00.000+08:00

This post is forwarded from a forwarded email message I got this morning. This regime's goin' down people, if not for the many human rights violations like this the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo administration is getting. Please forward this to as many people as you can. We just can't let another second pass to let out our outrage.

_________________________

Go Not to the Silence of the Graveyard

We in the Artists for the Removal of Gloria (ARREST
Gloria) condemn to high heavens the arrest, detention
and torture of our fellow artist, Alexis Uy – an
gifted musician and recent UP Diliman graduate who
helped organize the Artistang Pangkultura ng
Mamamalakaya sa Timog Katagalugan (APLAYA), one of our
member organizations.

Uy, who also works as a researcher for the Kalipunan
ng Samahang Magbubukid sa Timog Katagalugan
(KASAMA-TK), was arrested April 30 in Lucena City
together with Joey dela Rosa, also a researcher for
the said peasant organization; and 12 peasant
activists from KOMPRA-Quezon. They were preparing to
join a caravan to Manila for the Labor Day rally when
arrested.

The 14 are now detained at the headquarters of the
military's Southern Luzon Command (Solcom) in Camp
Nakar, Lucena City, as confirmed by its chief Lt. Gen.
Pedro Cabuay Jr. Human rights workers handling their
case have disclosed that the authorities have refused
to allow counsel and visitors for them.

When Uy and his companions were arrested, they were on
their way to Manila to join a rally intending to
articulate the grievances of workers, as well as their
brothers and sisters in the rural areas, against a
government that has imposed a good number of the most
anti-people policies in decades.

This is a perfectly legitimate cause. For advocating
this, Uy and his companions were arrested and are now
detained.

We are concerned for the safety of Uy and his
companions. Too much have we seen of what is visited
upon perceived "enemies of the state" in the custody
of government forces. Because President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo is the commander-in-chief of the
Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), we shall hold
her accountable for whatever happens to Uy and his
companions while in detention.

The arrest of Uy and his companions is an attack
against the freedom of _expression – a basic human
right held especially sacred by artists. It shows that
artists are free only for so long as they refrain from
challenging the ruling clique and the manner in which
it "orders" the country.

To prohibit dissent is to curtail the freedom of
_expression. As lawyer and historical conservationist
Trixie Angeles said, "Without freedom of _expression
there can be no artist."

We in ARREST Gloria cannot but condemn the arrest of
Uy and his companions – and not simply because Uy is a
member of our alliance.

We cannot bring ourselves to be silent at a time when
the forces of darkness have begun to haul artists to
the silence of the graveyard. To be silent at this
point is to put the gun to our heads and pull the
trigger.

Artists for the Removal of Gloria (ARREST Gloria)
May 3, 2006

Southern Tagalog Exposure + KASIBULAN Women Visual
Artists' Collective + KUMASA (Kulturang Ugnayan ng
Manggagawa at Uring Anakpawis sa Timog Katagalugan) +
ARTIST, Inc. (Arts Research and Training Institute in
Southern Tagalog) + Kilometer 64 Poetry Group +
Tambisan sa Sining + APLAYA (Artistang Pangkultura ng
Mamamalakaya sa Timog Katagalugan) + UPLB Umalohokan +
Pokus Gitnang Luson + Paolo Martinez + Andrea Muñoz +
Gian Mayuga + Jeffrey Ferrer + Onin Tagaro + Bobby
Balingit + Winnie Balingit + Lourd de Veyra + Dong
Abay + Ninj Abay + Con Cabrera + Roselle Pineda +
Heidi Takama + Boom Dizon + Rommel Lozano + Mary Rose
Abano + Aba Dalena + Sari Dalena-Sicat + Gari
Buenavista + Tudla Productions + ADIOS GMA-NCR

Rihanna's SoS (Rescue Me) video on Nikewomen.com - my latest guilty pleasure

2006-04-25T21:39:00.000+08:00

new website

2006-04-25T20:50:00.000+08:00

i just had the much-needed enthusiasm and guilt to finally, rebuild my website from the cesspool it had been. so finally, after so many nights of thinking over how my website should look like, i finally made up my mind. hehe

visit my website: danotingcungco.tk

or just click on dano angelo tingcungco online on the links page to your right.

the site's really patchy in places, but that's because it's still a work in progress. tell me what you think!

by the way, the danotingc.tk site's still up and running, but that's just a redirect page for the people who have my business card with the "danotingc.tk" in the web information slot. at any rate, please do enjoy the site! tell me what you think about the painting-with-light theme i did for the site. i'm dying to hear it. hehe

xanana

random bitchings 1

2006-04-24T11:16:00.000+08:00

On rotation:
“Hide U,” Kosheen (Resist)
“Fast and Loud,” Stéphane Pompougnac featuring Juli (Hotel Costes Vol. Quatre)
“Dream Machine,” Mark Ferina featuring Sean Hayes (Hotes Costes 8)
“Did It Again,” Kylie Minogue (Impossible Princess)
“Be My World,” Milky (runway music for the Zac Posen Winter 2006 show)
“LSF,” Kasabian
“Soul Sista,” Bilal (Love and Basketball Soundtrack)
“Love Song,” Tori Amos
“Candy Man,” Cibo Matto
“Muscle Car (Sander Kleinenberg’s Fast Pace Mix),” Mylo feat Freeform Five (Hed Kandi Twisted Disco 03.06)
“Doctor Pressure” Mylo vs. Miami Sound Machine
“Train,” Goldfrapp (Black Cherry)

I just love it when my fingers dance around my keyboard as if I was playing the piano and paying more attention to how the ivory keys feel instead of whether they gave me the right note or not. Which happens, like, 90 percent of the time I try to write. I often misspell words and often I have to prod the Backspace key many times before I could start over with remembering the poor sentence that just flew out of my head midway in the process. When people come into my room, they complain either of two things, or of two things at the same time: either music’s playing too loud, or my typing’s trying to do a loud, clicking karaoke improv of “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head.”

It’s crazy, and I’m thinking maybe this is the only reason I got myself into the whole writing business. Maybe I’m just giving myself a reason to tap the keyboards more often.

I’m a frustrated drummer. In a dear friend’s studio apartment I tried joining his band’s sessions by jumping at the percussionist’s gracious offer to take his place in the African drums. The song, more than half of the time, would mercilessly get butchered by my off timing and my half-hearted tap (which is caused more by my self-consciousness to the other people in the room than anything else). And most of the time, I’ll just try finishing the song doing a controlled beat that sounds so labored, calculated and mathematical that I’m often better off clapping my palms red and counting the cigarette butts I made for the entire session.

But that’s not the point. Sometimes I’m just wondering whether I should just drop this whole writing schtick altogether. Just this morning, I tried to try finishing work on a commissioned article for a national daily. It took me three hours to finish my interview with my subject. Pretty easy; I had my questions all planned out 10 minutes before she walked in. But because the article has no deadline, it took me three weeks later to get all guilty about it and finally sit down and write it.

The outline came in easily enough, but the gap between writing the outline, the transcription, note-skimming (I love transcribing taped interviews as much as I love doing military presses. Ew), and the actual writing itself (I call that the writing lump. Not exactly a lump in my case, more like a goiter) was so wide and far in between that it’s often torture alone to watch me do it, much more to experience. This has happened before, many many times before. And even if I know I can do everything in an hour if someone stuck a knife to my throat, still. It still takes a knife to my throat for me to make any form of clockwork headway.

Although I often attribute this to what sir Pete Lacaba calls his “agony writing” in one of the interviews he gave for Ateneo de Manila’s Heights literary folio in 2002, I often wonder whether I’ve taken it too far. I always had to have the right music. I always had to drink some Extra Joss/Red Bull/Lipovitan/pure concentrated caffeine. I always had to watch at least three hours of trash TV beforehand. I always had to write really late at night, when it’s quiet and everybody’s asleep or less prone to making irritating sounds and moves to disturb me. And I always had to reverse my body clock (Read: I have to sleep through the day), judging my output to how much I email my bosses at 6 a.m. before I jack myself off to sleep. I had to go these pretentious lengths – under the imaginary assurance that these will help me yank out a good story – that it just sucks. And in those times of frustration, I dance around the idea of giving up. Sometimes I do; I just default altogether.

It’s so frustrating, that sometimes I’m wondering if I’m just a poser in the midst of all this. I have to confess this: the CD review you saw below took me four hours (and dregs of minutes later to trim it to size, check for accuracies and fire it off to my bosses via email) to write. The Candid Camera article way below (it came out in Sense and Style by the way, August 2005 issue), took me 7 hours and four shots of combined Extra Joss and Red Bull. Revising my thesis proposal (which involved substantially rewriting large chunks of text) took me a day and double the Red Bull. And now this.

Years back, I’ve consulted some of my best bitches (“really really close friends” in Danospeak, hehe) about this. Some say I’m holding back, that maybe, I’m not really letting go when I write. Another holds that, maybe, the process of organized writing could hold meaning to my mind as what a saddle could mean to a wild horse. That I’m so caught up in giving my pieces cadence that I end up depriving it of any. Still, another possibility could be that maybe, I’m just born this way. I just don’t write fast enough. Deal with it. But maybe, it could be that I’m having such unreasonable expectations of how my final drafts should look and sound like that I tend to see the entire writing experience as daunting instead of exciting. Like constipation to diarrhea, I suppose.

It’s not like I suddenly slowed down. I’ve personally taken pride in myself giving every story I write much thought before anyone else sees it, sometimes to the point of risking a butchered deadline. But the chronic-ness of the whole situation makes me question the normalcy of it. Do I really have the heart for this? When I do graphics design work, either for print ads in my advertising class/gigs or layout work for a website or a publication in journalism class, it’s always a light, feel-good session. When I do art direction, when I style people, it’s always adrenaline rush. When I do staccato-structured scripts for video pieces, the whole process just slides right through me. It’s a different story with writing. Sometimes I have to yank myself, turn myself inside out, or spearhead a vendetta against myself for something good (or acceptable, at the very least) to come out of it.

In case you’re wondering, this didn’t take half a day to make, or three bottles of Red Bull. I am writing this while I took a self-declared break off writing my commissioned story. I gave myself one hour for this, and I didn’t fall behind schedule. Maybe because I won’t get scolded for having the outline of wayward pick-up sticks in this one? You betcha.

Right now, it’s really my family, my convictions and everyone I care about who’s making me push myself a little more, allow myself those little vendettas and the occasional knives to the throat. I want to create my own person, I want to give justice to everyone who believes in me like you don’t want to fail anybody who believes in you, I want to give myself direction in my life, I will have to work with what I have to do that. Not that I can’t do anything about it. I’m thinking right now, of course I’ll work on my productivity. I’ll have to feed myself on my own eventually. There’s really no excuse out of it. But maybe, I’ve been craving the feeling all this time, it’s just that I’ve been keeping it as a secret from myself for so long. Maybe the feeling’s great after all, especially the climax, everytime I write my last sentence before hitting Ctrl+S.

Until I finish this dang story, which I just now realized needs a follow-up interview to finish, I wouldn’t know even if I tried.

cd reviews for april

2006-04-13T16:24:00.000+08:00

these reviews were published in the april issue of mabuhay inflight magazine. since not all of us are taking pal flights out of town, or out of the country, for that matter (not that i'm endorsing it; it's just a gig to keep me busy), i'm posting it here.

i'm looking for other cds to review for the next issues. if you want to recommend some names, new or old, drop me a line. thanks.

i really have a lot of stuff going on in my life, like art directing gigs, new writing gigs, and of course, who can forget THE thesis. but all of these are tentative yet, no real progress on my part, so i can't really spill any beans yet. i'm still waiting for holy week to pass before i can start flexing my muscles and getting to work. so in the meantime, i'm just hitting the cardio booth in my nearby gym, and lifting weights at the same time to the beat of hed kandi on my mp3 player. (hed kandi's my new obsession right now, as well as stéphane pompougnac and café del mar. i highly recommend them to anyone craving for a summery sound without having to listen to the mass-produced cliche'd ibiza shit)

to my graduating friends: my warmest congratulations! you deserve it. let's go out and celebrate your welcome emancipation into the real world. hehe. call me.

xananana

___________________________________________________________

Sitti / Café Bossa
(Warner Music)
On its first spin, Sitti's debut disc sounds very familiar, like a song at the tip of your tongue. In Café Bossa, the economist-turned-model-turned-singer starts her mojo on in old and comfortable territory with the Astrud Gilberto classic "Girl From Ipanema." She adds bossa flourishes to D' Sound's "Tattooed On My Mind," Julia Fordham's "Invisible War," Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me To The Moon," and the Lighthouse Family's "Lost In Space." Aware of the dangers of being predictable, Sitti mixes it up midway with her cheeky medley of The Carpenters' "Close To You" and Basia's "Half A Minute." But Café Bossa's true gem lies not in the covers, but in its two originals. The cozy folky sound of "Samba Song" and "Para Sa Akin" (For Me) are a welcome shout-out to OPM (Original Pilipino Music) greats Ryan Cayabyab and Apo Hiking Society. Because of its ear-friendliness, its refreshing nuances and just because the camera loves Sitti (check out her album photos), Café Bossa looks primed to take over the food chain. Hence the question: Will bossa nova be the new acoustic? Will she be a genre trailblazer like acoustic singer Paolo Santos, only prettier? We can't tell for sure. But the arrows of Café Bossa do point to that direction.

Green Day / Bullet In A Bible
(Reprise)
"Why are there no clouds in the sky?" asks Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt while waiting backstage. Answers drummer Tré Cool: "Because God wants to watch his favorite band again" Maybe it's not just God, but the planet as well. The band's first live album, Bullet In A Bible, is a testament to how Green Day has turned into the biggest punk band in the world. Recorded during the band's two-night run at England's Milton Keynes National Bowl in June 2005, this CD/DVD set essentially starts with front man Billie Joe Armstrong, Cool and Dirnt doing a reprise of tracks from their Grammy-awarded disc American Idiot, while making a show of their political activism by throwing barbed statements at war and "the redneck agenda." The second half puts the band in greatest-hits mode, with trademark songs like "Basket Case" from Dookie, "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)" from Nimrod, and "Minority" from 2000's Warning. True to their roots, Billie Joe fuses punk antics to their trademark rock opera in "King for a Day," wearing a crown and cape while sampling Eric Idle's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" and Lulu's "Shout." Not everything is represented in Bullet (No "She," "Jaded," “Maria”or "Homecoming"?) Despite this, Bullet is a pretty solid album that sees the band's jagged path to massive commercial success without having to deny their punk roots. For a band that's been on for 16 years, they prove that the punk attitude was never a publicity stunt, but proof of their artistic integrity.

Maharlika Singers / The Best Of Pilipino Folk Songs
(Tech To Sound Records/Synergy Music)
First released in 1998 to mark the country's centennial, The Best of Filipino Folk Songs is a collection of local folk songs that, in a nutshell, represent this country's upbeat, laidback demeanor to music. And it is not too shabby either; the Maharlika Singers provide a flawless, snappy vocal delivery that offers references to popular music genres, while staying true to the original arrangements of the songs. A highlight is "Pandangguhan," (The Candle Dance/ Fandango) a native Tagalog song that adopts a rap-like flourish. "Sinisinta Kita" (I Love You) is a cheeky Tagalog song that boasts of staccato arrangements, snappy vocal delivery and smart lyrics. Of course, any folk song collection won't be complete without the staples: the Ilocano "Atin Cu Pung Singsing" (I have a ring), "Ti Ayat Ti Maysa Nga Ubing" (For the Love of a Child) and "Manang Biday" (Old Sister Biday), the Waray "Dandansoy," and the Tausug "Sarung Banggi" (One Night). The drum programming and synthesizers distract in places to the entire experience. But talent is talent and the Maharlika Singers deliver successfully.

Various Artists / Favorite Philippine Folk Songs
(Alpha)
Filipino folk songs sound good when they're done right. In the case of Favorite Philippine Folk Songs, they sound majestic. The 16-track affair mostly features a re-mastering of the Filipino folk staples with a twist - artist credits belong to Filipino greats like Nora Aunor, Lirio Vital and Freddie Aguilar. The album sleeve, curiously, does not advertise; perhaps not to distract the viewer from the entire cultural experience. But even if you don't try, you can feel Nora Aunor assuming a playfully cheeky personality when she sings "Paruparong Bukid" (Butterfly) and "Leron, Leron, Sinta" (Leron, Leron, my love) or Freddie Aguilar's wailing guitar in "Ang Dalagang Pilipina" (Filipina girl). The album's instrumentation also helps to the experience, making the songs sound classic, but timeless. It's not just a sonic cultural trip. It's a trip down memory lane. If all works well, this can replace your lounge music too.

i'm back!

2006-02-25T21:05:00.000+08:00

after so much time off this blog, i'm officially back! xanana ventura is officially en la red!

that's kinda it. hehe.

btw, this whole state of emergency status quo really bothers me right now. it's like history repeating itself. and not in a good way.

but, as my father told me over dinner, if the people managed to win a BLOODLESS war they raged against a formidable dictator with an impressive 20-year track record of repression, there is no way we can't stop a 4'11" parrot from mowing our lives down right now.

i'll be back with my random musings. friends, i'm alive! link me!

xanana

that candid camera

2005-07-24T23:15:00.000+08:00

July 13, 2005
That candid camera:
Reality TV’s best and worst

Some fifty girls living together in one house flay each other alive in attempts to win the affections of an aging Casanova. A ex-porn star heiress, tagging along her equally rich rockstar scion girlfriend, rough it out in the hills of (gasp) suburban America in US$3,000 stilettos. Five gay men maul an unsuspecting straight guy, turn his pad upside down, smell his bad breath and armpits on national television, and leave him looking like a contorted repetition of David Beckham. Couples bitch, whine and complete the multi-faceted meaning of ‘cultural insensitivity’ as they race and bitch and whine everyone they meet around the world for a prize they should bitch and whine about when they get home.

Torturing my remote control one night, I realized that there are as many of these ‘reality TV’ shows now as there were, say, hairsprays in the 1980s. And these ‘reality TV’ shows don’t multiply in a vacuum either. Most, if not all, of these shows always have something so controversial and taboo that it’s hard for simpletons like myself not to take notice. From the seemingly innocent beta stages of ‘Candid Camera’ in the 1960s and the experimental curiosity that came with the global celebrity of ‘Survivor’ in the early part of this century, reality TV has since gone forth and multiplied, taking upon itself to turn any and every human situation into a gossip-worthy spectacle.

But while this concept of multiplicity and diversity feeds the ratings at best, reality TV eventually grates everyone’s nerves–mine, at least–after a while. Especially when every cable channel known to mankind has, not one or two, but five or six reality shows on heavy rotation daily, it becomes blatant that this multi-billlion dollar industry is just that – a multi-billion dollar industry. The idea of “keepin’ it real” suddenly waters itself down to the best face angle, the most provocative miniskirt, and the most high-pitched of histrionics. And of course, you have the “vox pop” segments that demonstrate the full spectrum of human backstabbing and pretense. Then again, nobody in the industry said they’d shoot feel-good home videos anyway.

Don’t get me wrong. I love reality TV as much as I hate any form of entertainment blatantly designed to turn us all into cash cows. Reality TV’s own brand of reality, that there is no such thing as subtlety and that life should at least include two or three points of high drama and eight broken glasses a day, offers us an idea of how we collectively appraise our daily existence. Reality TV, whether we like to admit it or not, turns us all into voyeurs. It’s a comfort for the rest of us with sordid lives to know that someone else is going through deeper bull than we are, even if it’s not exactly the most real.

‘You’re fired’
Some reality shows are decent, some are pleasing to the digestive system, but most just don’t have the right to take up valuable airtime. Either the show completely lacks any logical sense, reinforces current yet inherently flawed aesthetics and prejudices, is clichéd, or is just plain trashy. Just because it turns out a so-called pop culture phenomenon doesn’t mean it is any more decent. Be warned.

Average Joe (ETC) – ‘Joe’ is high school theory put to practice. It pits the beautiful girl with the “average Joes,” in an attempt to make her fall in love with one of the geeks. At first glance, ‘Joe’ could be seen as a trailblazer, breaking the ages-old stereotypes of lopsided aesthetics and dating. But subliminally, ‘Joe’ is indeed high school theory put into practice: Life is always unfair for the ugly. If we follow the ‘Joe’ doctrine, the girl would always pick the jocks over the Joes, the jocks would always ditch the girl, and everyone would feel rejected. Nothing like high school angst to ruin your day.

Who wants to marry my dad? (ETC) – A show featuring menopausal women acting like 20-year-old girls fighting hell and each other for the attention of a 46-year-old divorcee is hardly appealing to the senses, not to mention sensibilities. The show’s producers try to save it by adding elimination drama (i.e. blackmail, ‘Survivor’-esque challenges and that infamous lie detector test). Suddenly, the thrill of the lie detector constitutes the more interesting part of the show and becomes the show itself. Still, it doesn’t save the show from kitsch, which it has too much of, starting with the concept.

The Apprentice (Star World/ABC) – A blatant publicity stunt for the purported greatness of the Trump empire, ‘Apprentice’ not only appears contrived, but also epitomizes the word “brain drain.” ‘Apprentice’ tells you that success is, and only is, being a slave of a magnate with a bad toupee. Therefore, you must lie and backstab your way there. It even takes screaming at your co-workers, throwing impossible tantrums and pompousness for good work ethic. It’s not bad at all, though, if you are self-employed.

Amazing Race (Studio 23/AXN) – ‘Amazing Race,’ despite its accolades and a following that rivals that of CSI, actually epitomizes First-World oppression of Third World countries (like ours, by the way) in an hourlong skit. Best intentions aside, ‘Amazing Race’ flaunts political incorrectness by reinforcing the predominant Western concept of exoticism on countries or cultures that it deems exotic, i.e. uncivilized. Arrogance and cultural insensitivity is also the name of the game in this game, which sees the entire world as revolving around the caprices of 24 incredibly bitchy people. Since when did haranguing people for airline tickets, lodging, taxi or American food become a right and not a sign of bad manners?

Outback Jack (Star World/ETC) – In the same vein as ‘Who wants to marry my dad?’, ‘Outback Jack’ is all kitsch and no originality. And it’s not difficult to spot it: the show is a literal clone of both ‘The Bachelor’ and ‘Survivor.’ But what is most irritating about this show is the idea of male superiority endemic in all the show’s aspects. ‘Jack’ is a strong, attractive and sensitive Australian adventurer who captures the hearts of some 30 high-society women, and the problem arrives when the women are supposed to adjust to jack’s lifestyle, not the other way around. Straight-up macho-shit, says my friend.

Starting Over (ETC) – This is another one of those subliminally macho-shit shows made exclusively to reinforce male superiority on television. At first glance, ‘Starting Over’ comes off as a female empowerment show, teaching women how to tap their inner strengths and learn to stand up to their problems and angst. How ‘Sound of Music.’ Thirty minutes into the program, I realize that the show reinforces exactly what it is purporting to break: that women are weak, are easily burdened by problems men give them, and need the help of people other than themselves to get over such problems. The weakness clearly shows when the women in the show fight and cry over trivial things, like pinning a paper heart that says “I love myself” on it. Clearly grating.

Fear Factor (AXN/ABC) – The show that made eating earthworms such a normal party trick, ‘Fear Factor’ could have been a highly kinetic reality show (and it is) if only not for two things: too much gloss, and too little imagination. ‘Fear Factor’ was a fresh concept in its early days, aiming to show how people respond to their inner phobias when it stares them in the eye. Since it gained a mass following, however, the extend of the show’s concept of ‘fear’ has only gone so far as eating perfectly edible animal parts and jumping to an ocean with a thick life vest on. It’s like saying a haunted house is scarier than a real body in a grassfield.

‘That’s hot’
Reality TV has its lapses, and there are lots of them. But it also has its hits, with shows that may not always be pretty, but nonetheless exist for the right reasons and the right reactions.

Blind Date (ETC) – The show that put thought balloons on the mainstream reality TV map, ‘Blind Date’ comes across as an not-so-innocent dating show. In essence, however, it is actually a satire of societal conventions, exhibiting the ironies of what people do in social situations against what they actually think. We may not know if those though balloons actually came from the producers, resident psychiatrists, or the participants themselves, and the results are amazing.

The Simple Life (Star World/ETC) – The ‘Simple Life’ makes this list not exactly because Paris Hilton is on it (although it could), but because of the glaring political contradictions of its concept and structure. Even if the producers would not admit it, ‘Simple Life’ is a political statement of inequity in America, a satirical and rhetorical question on why Hilton, her small-town hosts and the unequal material condition they represent exist in one continuum. It doesn’t explicitly say the inequity is wrong, but the portrayal of Hilton and Nicole Richie being able to get away with anything sends me a glaring signal. And beyond the snickering and the amusement anyone always gets from Hilton (no pun intended), it makes me think of the show not for what it is, but for the oppressive culture it represents.

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (ETC) – There is a very good reason why this show became such a hit, and it’s not just because there are now so many gay men on the planet. ‘Queer Eye’ is symbolic of a new role given to gay men in society and an effort to break down age-old prejudices against gay men, although the role itself is debatable. In the show, the “Fab Five” are not skittish in asserting themselves before a throng of straight people, while at the same time not making such a big deal out of it. Which is so much more than the women in ‘Starting Over’ could say for themselves.

Boiling Points (Mtv) – Like ‘Blind Date,’ ‘Boiling Points’ could be seen as a satire of society as a whole, that a single, crisp US$100 bill, not diplomacy and things you were taught in good manners classes, could single-handedly cool down “boiling points” among people. The show’s approach is fresh, although obviously contrived at times. But what redeems the show is its focus. Unlike other reality shows, Boiling Points focuses more on the circumstances that warrant the prize money, and not the prize money itself.

Wife Swap (Hallmark Channel) – In reality shows, there is a profound difference between portraying conflict just for the heck of it, and portraying conflict because the context requires it. In ‘Wife Swap,’ the conflict between families and their swapped wives, though predictable, is founded on the solid context of (mis)adjustment within the show itself. But what is refreshing about this show is that it knows how to contain the drama and not commit an overkill of it. Everything is introduced and resolved in one hour. And because there are no prizes to be won, the participants are spontaneous and fresh.

I Want a Famous Face (Mtv) – ‘I Want a Famous Face’ is probably the most disturbing reality show I have come across so far, besting even the most gruesome episodes of ‘Fear Factor’ or the ‘Amazing Race’ on subject matter. In ‘I Want a Famous Face,’ Mtv tracks down the dangerous foray of fans into plastic surgery in attempts to look like their idols. What sets the show apart from others is that it makes an explicit statement, through video, of the irony and material implications of society’s lopsided ideas of beauty.

‘The ultimate survivor’
Despite the surge of reality shows over the past decade, television news programs are still the best reality shows thus far, if we consider the entire essence of reality television as purporting to capture realism. Unlike conventional reality shows, nothing in television news is explicitly contrived as a premise. Everything is shot, told and retold from an authentic perspective and an authentic setting, regardless of pre-conceived persuasions or biases. There are no grand prizes on television news, no bloated promises for its stakeholders.

Unlike reality shows, television news has no actors, contrived situationers or a predisposition to deceive. Everything is real, raw and spontaneous. And because the business of reality TV thrives on the idea of realism, even the most successful reality shows can’t even begin to charter the scope and influence of the greatest reality show of them all: our very own sordid existence.

IS SOME ONE IN LOVE WITH YOU
Name
DOB
Favourite Color
Is some one in love with you right now	lust not love
are you in love right now	nope

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