posting :)
Posted at 10:21 PM

post! she said, so post naman ako

couldn't post before this because piglet was in the shop...or the clinic as i call it. nothing serious - fans of piglet do not fret just had the casing looked into since last day na nya ng warranty, i thought i'd have some little things checked out.

anyway...

tis been a full day. which is good, which is good the workaholic is sated. ahehehe.

wow, can't think of anything to say. oh wait! i just thought of something

after looking around fully booked and bibliarch this evening, i feel really bad my birthday is over that philip pullman book is supposed to be very good. so is the traveling pants. and i haven't read anything by terry pratchett yet. oh oh and there was this collection of short stories by mario vargas llosa - the only one ever translated into english. there were more. oh man were there more. but ah well...

some other time

nick
Posted at 10:23 PM

this is an anecdote i got from jing hidalgo which i told a couple of people, but i thought i'd share it here.

during the funeral of nick joaquin, f sionil jose said: "Nick, you're the greatest Filipino writer."

what else can be said? sionil jose was right.

no drought
Posted at 08:11 PM

ok, i'll admit it - these are uncertain times for me. starting off with the 'will i have a job in june' question. there are other issues...all of which pretty much point to one thing: nothing's certain in this world. nothing.

i don't like to think of it as being pessimistic. just realistic. and i'm not that callous either. i keep dreaming despite the fact that there are many things, many dreams, many people that i do wish had been fulfilled. that i wish i hadn't lost. but i did. you have too. we all did.

but isn't it amazing how the little blessings remind us that it is still all good. that God's promise to work all things for our good still holds even if it sure doesn't look like it.

today i got word that my SET (student evaluation of the teacher) scores were pretty good. and as a teacher, really, what else is there? isn't this the indicator that i'm doing my job right? in a career that's about to take a sudden direction i can't predict in the next couple of weeks, this was profound reassurance for me. a teacher i am.

i have offers from colleagues and superiors to help them out with projects. thank you for trusting me to get that work done and believing i can do it well.

it's not really that i rely on the opinion of people to assess my worth. but i do take it as an indicator of where i stand in the scheme of things. i take it as God telling me: "chill. you're covered."

just lost
Posted at 10:06 PM

started watching 'lost in translation.' i gave up after 45 minutes. maybe it's just me. i'm sure it's a good film and all...but, well, i actually got a bit bored. not that the story itself was boring. i just figure it could've been told in about half an hour less than it actually took. yes, i saw it til the end - but after 45 minutes i was fast forwarding. ah well.

so i actually don't have anything to blog about...i might as well talk about my t-shirts

got one that say's 'bitch' from amboulevard. closest i could get to 'i'm that bitch.' ahehehe. if i still have a teaching job in UP in june - well, that's my first-day-of-class shirt i got another that says "3 second memory" and it's got this goldfish who has a brilliant idea and loses it. hay, so like my thought process

i was tempted to do a review of pooh ...but maybe next time

why i want a rott
Posted at 10:31 PM

this is Ghost (no, the dog is Ghost. the people are Stef and me).

anyway, after meeting Ghost (and his equally cool housemate Trixie), i really want a rott.

when i get one i will name him Silver Bells.

where You want me to be
Posted at 05:33 PM

i got a text message from our department chairperson saying that the academic screening committee recommended for my tenure.

whew.

sounds subdued? well, i feel subdued of course when i got word my smile was wide as a mile (to the point that i'm resorting to bad rhymes)...now though i'm at a state where i'm beginning to get an idea of how profound it all is and so i feel very happy, but hushed.

it was tense. i only realized now how much it was taking out of me emotionally when i felt a huge adrenalin drop.

the decision wasn't unanimous. somebody or somebodies didn't want me to get a permanent job with the department. it was tight enough for me to have to deliberately not think of anything but throw things to the wind and let God guide them where He may.

and so He did.

and now i feel better than happy. i feel tranquil

strange night
Posted at 09:14 AM

last night was a bit more unusual than i thought it would be. i was going to blog about it when i got home but was too sleepy. now it doesn't seem to be as strange anymore.

it was strange in the creepy sense. i had to take an alternative route home from makati because of a hijacked bus along edsa. there was a shoot-out and two people died. all the while i was listening to the coverage over the radio and the story was straightforward enough: 3 guys stood up and announced a holdup, they proceeded to take everybody's cellphones and wallets. i'm not clear why they started shooting. the good news i guess is that they didn't set off the grenade one of them was carrying.

the evening got strange when the driver got lost in the C-5 area. he realized this by the time we were close to alabang. the roads at that part were abandoned and we had to make a u-turn in a desolate part of the road where there were peple standing around under the bridge doing things i tried not to look at so they wouldn't think i'd snitch and then have to kill me.

and the whole time i was aware of the importance of taking notes so i wouldn't forget any of that...like now, the morning after, the whole experience has been diluted and i'd like to be able to go back to that same atmosphere. notes.

at least i didn't do anything as daft as get out of the car at that u-turn and walk around with pooh and take notes

powerbooks porn
Posted at 11:13 PM

ok, ok so it isn't really porn... but i sure as heck was surprised to see an album cover with a topless woman on it. no, she wasn't even subtly covered, she was topless, period. it was a love songs cd with stuff like 'don't cry out loud' - cheesy stuff (but i like that particular song )

anyway, i saw the cd, got surprised and moved on. to the rack of calendars. and the first calendar was... super butts. it was, as its name suggests, a calendar of butts. of different women in different poses. and right where the butt is, there's a sticker that says 'censored' - on all 12 butts, oh 13 including the one on the cover.

change in the wind
Posted at 09:43 AM

can you smell it? the seasons are changing. summer is almost over.

it rained the past two nights. about the same time - 4 in the morning. i'm up at 6 because of the palpable change in the air. it smells like june, like the first day of class.

my memory is so clear... me, about 10 years old, unable to wake up in time for class, being bundled off into clothes and into the car, being driven to school where i arrive late as usual. this is the age where i learned to skip breakfast because there was no time.

and the smell in the air... this is what it's been smelling like the past 2 mornings.

i remember a couple of months ago when i first smelled summer come in. that passed by pretty quick. but it's been a rather fabulous summer, hasn't it?

115-110 marquez? oh c'mon!
Posted at 06:03 PM

the guy fell three times, THREE TIMES, in one round. that's an automatic 10-6 on the score card. that means he should've won 5 of the next 11 rounds clearly to even be up by just one point. 115-110 in Marquez's favor means he won all the next 11 rounds. c'mon, he did not.

ok, so our fighter didn't completely outclass Marquez, but he could've won the fight. and except for that ridiculous 115-110 score, he would've.

and what's that? a champion only has to fight to draw to retain the title? the guy got knocked down three times and he keeps both championships? hmmm...

rematch. rematch.

political
Posted at 09:37 AM

i think i was an aberration in the Christian community for not voting for Bro Eddie. It came down to... I read his platform and didn't agree. But i think it was very heartening to see that there is such a thing as a christian vote and that one analyst was right in saying that within the hearts of the Filipinos there is a longing to return to some basic values.

but the process, i'm afraid, will be very difficult and painful and might call for more suffering than we are going through right now as a nation. the history of the world, biblical and post-biblical, has shown that for a people to prosper a lot of blood has to be shed. almost close to genocide. in the old testament entire races and nations were wiped out. in modern history (that is, AD), the same thing has happened.

in our country there is a class of people and a way of life and a way of thinking so entrenched that it almost seems we cannot get around them. well, we probably can't. which is why they have to go. how? i do hope not through a bloody revolution. that is a fearsome thought. i figure God's got something cooking - and maybe that's why He showed people the possibility of a Christian leader like bro eddie (of course the other christian head of state in the world is george bush, but that's another story). that maybe soon we will be ready for a return to the basics.

but it will take major cleansing. as i always like to say, the price to pay for having no poor people, is having no rich (i mean ayala, araneta kind of rich) people.

soon, i hope, our country will be ready for a new kind of leadership. dare i pray i'll see it in my lifetime? soon...maybe soon... maybe just in time for a certain law student i know to be groomed for a crack at it

one month and counting
Posted at 08:45 PM

starting june i'll be back in the classroom...

but i'm more excited to be back as a student. i'll be taking my first official writing class! i've got 3 units of fiction under jing hidalgo and 3 units of non-fiction under butch dalisay. i'm looking forward to it i'm even looking to being workshopped and critiqued because i know that that will work towards making me a better writer.

i've got a couple of stories which i know could be better but i know i've reached a dead end. can't see beyond my blind spots. and i'm looking forward to having people help me out and show me ways to improve and hopefully i'll be more aware of my own habitual shortcomings in writing and can work on fixing those.

wow, i must be taking this seriously.

what's gotten into me?

things still go right
Posted at 05:49 PM

piglet got some cracks around his screws. i think the screws were too tight. hehe anyway, i brought him to the apple center on the last day of the warranty. he sat there for a day for diagnosis then i took him back while the part was being ordered.

yesterday they called me to say that the part had arrived (a whole new top shell) and if i could bring piglet around. so i brought him in this morning around 11 and by 4 this afternoon he was done, ready for pick-up, with a spanking new top casing

was just very pleased that the whole thing ran so efficiently... and this is the second equally pleasant experience i've had with the apple center.

just thought i'd share that

ang daming badminton court sa maynila
Posted at 08:35 PM

a possible venue for the december show is a badminton court.

i asked my niece, bianca to rustle together a list of as many courts as she could find in the qc, ortigas, and makati areas. she did even better, she gave me the url of this website that listed all (or almost all) the courts in metro manila, and then some. i'm copying onto pooh those that seem to be promising enough to visit. so far i have 15, excluding makati pa. i must have skipped about 20.

that's a lot of badminton going on.

i guess i should've been cued in when i saw in the malls such products as badminton t-shirts and badminton skirts.

this is not a sport i do well in. and yes, i'm aware this last statement really doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the post

bali hai
Posted at 05:33 PM

Bali Ha'i may call you,
Any night, any day,
In your heart, you'll hear it call you:
"Come away...Come away."

Bali Ha'i will whisper
In the wind of the sea:
"Here am I, your special island!
Come to me, come to me!"
- from the musical 'South Pacific'

next week i am going back to the island of my childhood. the place that has, more than any other, made me. so many things, so many memories. i'm going back after a decade, after two lifetimes. and the me that's going back is a me that i had never imagined as a child.

i wonder what the me then has to say to the me now and vice versa? i guess i'll know soon enough when they meet.

preps
Posted at 09:49 AM

during the briefing for the shell gig, as the coordinator went through the list of guidelines, instructions, safety regulations, etc., my mind was off - focused on my shopping list.

first i needed to get a backpack. good, sturdy, padded, waterproof to bring piglet, pooh and all necessary plugs and wires. then a cap (and i felt an instant pang of regret not getting that laker cap in greenhills when i had the chance). then drugs - i'm not going to count on finding a decent drugstore that can supply my needs (plus i'm leaving with my health not all in so i need to be loaded). clothes, i went through my wardrobe and had to figure what else i needed.

by the time i was done with my mental shopping list the briefing was done and i missed the important thing about how to label the captions. at least the other guys were listening and i could ask them gads, i'm still a bad student.

so yesterday i got pretty much everything i needed. got looks from the drugstore lady who was probably wondering if i was going to set-up a drugstore of my own with the quantity of pills i was stocking up on.

still need a few more things now - have to run to the supermarket. then pack. then finish up all the things due this coming week and send them off by email. try to get some sleep since i have to be up at 3....

but first, the laker game

in a coaster for 10 hours
Posted at 06:51 PM

i'm home. i shouldn't be. there's something very strange about this night. i'm home in a storm when my momentum was carrying me towards an island in the sunshine. i'm sure the fact that in the last 33 hours i've gotten 30 minutes of sleep contributes to the weirdness of everything.

so yes, i was in a coaster pretty much for 10 hours. on our way to mindoro when we were told that the typhoon was heading pretty much right for us. so we stopped and waited for the forecasts then decided it was best to head on home and wait for the storm to pass. it should in 36 hours which means 48 hours from now i should be on the island, but again with 30 minutes sleep in the previous 33 hours. which means i should spend a good chunk of tonight and tomorrow sleeping

but spending 10 hours on a coaster this time around wasn't as terrible as it would have struck me in the abstract. the people in it were fun (though i really didn't know anybody, there was a lot of laughter - which is always great) and i had a few songs i could listen to over pooh...

so waiting for the storm to pass. that's a good thing to do. always wise to be waiting for the tempests to disappear before taking any solid action.

1,000
Posted at 08:49 PM

got my 1000th hit. that was a bit faster than in the previous blog

to whoever y'all out there who read this... thanks

40 and zonked
Posted at 12:25 PM

40 hours. that's as far as i can go. 40 hours without sleep while traveling and trying to get a work day done. when i hit my 40th hour last night at around midnight, i lost all sense of sense - started blithering on text and felt my thoughts go all incoherent. bam. just like that.

i got to sleep for a few hours but not enough. i had to get up a bit early to check on things regarding my admission and teaching load so i was in school around 9. everything seemed to be in a haze and i was yawning uncontrollably. still am

drove to the scout area before 11 and while i was on timog a naked man crossed the street in front of my car and paused momentarily. yes he was naked. well, he had a jacket tied around his waist - fat lot of good that did. gads. i so did not need to see that.

but it did give me a jolt that shook me awake for about 15 minutes. now i'm zonked again.

i shall try to sleep.

home
Posted at 02:01 PM

i'm home!

after 5 days of killer work. up at 5 on the road by 6:30, 2 interviews a day, back at 6, transcribing til 7. we'd travel over 3 hours a day and in the 5 days covered the entire oriental mindoro. 12 interviews in 5 days with no prior briefing.

am i tired? wahahahahhaha!

it was a great 5 days though. got very turbulent on one day. but that, i guess, had to be part of the ride. everything was rough and rugged but shell tried to make everything as convenient as possible. great hotel room (though the kitchen sucked), all logistics went smoothly... a gig i'd do again if i have the chance

after such intense activity, my team really gelled into a gang. there was me the one writing the thing up, myles the photographer, jerry who was part of the logistics team and served as a guide of sorts, grace from shell, and phi our driver. we had a drink together last night - and i did feel like was going to miss them.

got more stories tucked around somewhere... but right now i can feel my head swim with fatigue. to bed then...

highlights
Posted at 09:03 AM

still a bit dizzy from that trip. the more i look at the map and the numbers, the more i'm amazed how we managed to do it...

in those 5 days

i went to a barangay that could only be reached by a tiny pump boat that transports people and goods from calapan

i met the baker there who gets on his tiny boat every morning and supplies bread to 4 other barangays that can't be reached by road

i took a 3 kilometer jeep ride on a road that had foot-high ruts causing the jeep to swing at 45-degree angles, making all our packs fly and us fall out of our seats

i climbed a mountain on the way to a mangyan vegetable farm and had my breath taken away by a beautiful natural spring right there on the slope

i met a man who is fishing again after being paralyzed from the waist down in a diving accident

i've seen barangays so poor that they just got electricity in the last 10 years or so and indoor plumbing seems light years away

i stood on the edge of an isolated white sand beach and just closed my eyes and listened to the water

i went to a house i knew as a kid and saw it boarded up, dirty, with the windows broken.

i stood at a beach i knew ever since i was 7 years old and saw the ghost of a girl splashing on the shore

this speaks to me
Posted at 08:30 PM

and for my last entry about the mindoro trip, an excerpt from a poem. this is taken from "Room for Time Passing" by one of my favorite Filipino writers, Ricardo de Ungria

Whichever side of the ocean I'm on,
completeness will seek me and the world exceed
the surprises I spring on it with these same words.
No more playing with broken pieces not my own,
no more sentiments with needless omniscience
nibbling away at the stealth and wonder of moments.
Let an ethnic moon have its way with time.
Let sad fruitions ghost another paradise,
let absences seek their own level.

swamped
Posted at 12:54 PM

it hit me this morning: i have a lot of work to do.

got that shell manuscript to finish. 25 pages.
got 2 profiles to write for that comic book book
have to make a final selection for the supernatural book
have to take care of the teacher's guide for the comics anthology
need to make a lesson plan for a 2-day teaching gig at feu
need to make my syllabi for this sem's load

and this should all happen before june 15.

hmmm

i need to go shopping...

a place you most likely will never see
Posted at 11:16 PM

photograph taken on may 23, 2004

my favorite things
Posted at 09:33 AM

from "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants": Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures."

first of all, this is a really good book - if you find it, buy it and read it. guaranteed to be a satisfying read.

and that statement - i do believe it is true. i've come to realize that you'll never really have everything in your life in place. there will always be that tiny little detail that's out of whack, but then you figure that the bigger picture is good and stay with it. yes, the little moments bring happiness.

like a three musketeers bar, a good book, a good movie, vitasoy chocolate milk, working on a mac, a non-work text message in the middle of the day, laughter, a meal that deserves applause, ice cream (and frozen yoghurt), parking space, 20-minute trips to makati from qc, rock music, shiny things with buttons, hardcover comic books...

yeah, it's things like that.

getting personal
Posted at 11:54 AM

i keep telling people i've got a vicious temper. you don't believe me, that's your problem. but hey, don't say i didn't warn you.

i just thought i'd put a general warning out here... hehe

sometimes i'm good at counting to 10 or 100 or 1000 before i react, just so i don't react in full force. sometimes i can count, sometimes i can't.

i've found that it's better not to test my counting skills...

eureka!
Posted at 06:48 PM

i think i may have found the spot for the december show.

the old 'strip' along katipunan. it's roughshod, it's abandoned. sounds perfect

gotta track down the owner. anybody have any leads?

and man, i want an ipod. i don't need it. can't see how i'd be using it much. but i want one.

uh oh.

loaded
Posted at 07:55 PM

finally got my teaching load. about, um, one week before the start of class. will be teaching 4 classes, 3 different subjects. of the 3, 2 i haven't taught before. yeah, you figure i won't be showing up the first couple of meetings

but it is exciting to be back. i can't wait to be in the classroom again. and all my classes are GE, that means lower classmen, that means more impressionable and less argumentative students. a good way to ease back into the system i think. hehe

sigh back in the classroom...

yeba!