kaya nyo 'to?
Posted at 09:56 AM

i just had to.

i'm putting here an excerpt from a piece i read (which jessica zafra quotes in 'purple prose of baguio') and which has been a source of much happiness for me the past couple of weeks. this is taken from the novel 'the fireless inferno' by one arnel salgado. may it bring as much joy to you as it has me.

"'Eh... Whither now is she?' Alexandria verified as she picked up a glass of strawberry juice and smoothly as she tried to solace her arid esophagus... she drinked and later took a sandwich with a slice of spam and cheeze placed amid the two pan like the clouds that located at the middle of the world and heaven."

i know, you have to have more... so here's one more:

"The real crocodiles lives in river and then you as a crocodiles lives in land... Once they were caught... with prolonged staying on land without water... he would be dying... and that is exactly what will happen to you now!"

"You mean, you'll kill me?" Benjamin nervously queried.

"That's really what will we do... sorry, but we need your life!"

"If then... do it now!"

"Nay... still perchance?" Luis answered.

"Perchance! What perchance? Do you give me another chance?"

yet another blank slate
Posted at 11:55 AM

i have to write a 1-page message that will be read by every single UP graduate all over the country this year. while nobody will know who actually wrote it, i'm still jittery because it will be my biggest 'audience' ever.

so what to say? without sounding cliche?

the following are out of the question:

"you are now all officially considered out of school youth."

"even though you didn't study at all in college, it's a miracle you're actually graduating."

"you seriously think somebody will hire you?"

and i need a good solid, meaningful, powerful ending:

may the force be with you?
nanu nanu?
the sun has gone to bed and so must i... ?

(see not even the entry has a decent ending. sigh)

a moment of silence.
Posted at 08:12 AM

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

where am i?
Posted at 06:58 PM

i look at the calendar on my computer. march 8 it says. i can't help but wonder: where did january and february go?

there was a whirl of work, but i didn't feel particularly busy - just a bit... ungrounded. i suppose that's the word.

last weekend sure didn't help.

last weekend was straight out of fiction, and bad fiction at that. within 36 hours

1. my grandmother died.
2. we buried her.
3. my book came out.
4. the miriam ballet recital happened.

i guess it would have been easier if all 4 events dealt with the same general emotion, but noooooo.

forrest gump said that life's like a box of chocolates because you never know what you're going to get. while that may be true, sometimes life can be like an unexpected bop on the face with a red polka dot giant boxing glove. or a purple flying crocodile. you know, those things that make you stop and ask: where in heck did that come from?

what's your sign?
Posted at 06:32 PM

you know those car signs, those yellow diamonds that say things like 'baby on board'?

 i got one recently, c/o my sister.

 it says:

 THIS IS A STUPID YELLOW SIGN

the central business district is not in makati
Posted at 10:43 AM

was in binondo yesterday for what felt like the first time.

i found myself looking out the window amazed at the state of deterioration everything was in. the buildings were cramped fire traps. flaking and falling apart. like mummies taken out of their tombs. outside them were all sorts of exposed wires. if one of those buildings were to burn, the whole district will be in flames in minutes.

the roads were ridiculously narrow and dirty. there was no flowing water to be seen. the esteros were clogged and full of trash - making even the pasig river look good.

then i looked into the buildings.

every cramped stall was full of things we all need: housing fixtures, paper, supplies, food... all in huge wholesale quantities. sitting inside each store was a Chinese single proprietor with an old calculator and a ratty notebook containing the accounts.

i had the distinct feeling that i had just stumbled onto the heart of the Philippine economy.

the person whose store i went to said that that area was the 'bagsakan' of these things as greenhills was to electronics, banawe to motor parts... and in all these places is the Chinese single proprietor, sometimes still using an abacus, giving orders to their Filipino help.

it's going on almost undetected. but it's here, in the places which are nowhere near as pretty as greenbelt or rockwell, that the country is truly being run.

wha...?
Posted at 10:20 PM

so we're on the road, along kamias, right after the anonas intersection...

up ahead is a silver civic signaling that it wants to turn left (its left, meaning our right). looks like it's been there a while, signaling forlornly, with nobody letting it through.

"let it pass," joanna suggests, and so i do. i slow down - actually i stop. precisely to let it pass.

it should have cut into our lane to park somewhere, but then ever so slowly it turns... in the other direction, opposite what it was signaling, and pulls up by the curb right beside it.

sheesh. 

are we moving yet?
Posted at 09:48 AM

so i have a big essay due tomorrow and i'm 8 pages away from completing it.

 didn't sleep last night trying (in vain) to finish. finally got a chance to sleep around 5.

 seeing as it's summer vacation, i thought that the school behind us would be quiet.

 wishful thinking.

 at about 8 somebody fired up a sound system and together with the music blaring a voice was calling out: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

aerobics. 

out of the lenten season
Posted at 09:42 AM

holy week is generally a time of retreat and retrospection... and yes, i was able to stay quiet and listen to things. many things i learned in and outside of me. 

and here's one of the best things i learned this holy week...

a really smashing dressing in the same vein as caesar's: 

mix together mayonnaise (if you're in the mood to make your own mayonnaise, go for it!), garlic, calamansi (or lemon), balayan bagoong isda 

i would say mix according to taste, but if you want to have an idea of the proportions you can try a cup of mayonnaise, 3 cloves of garlic for mild (5 for zesty), half to one calamansi, and half a tablespoon of bagoong.

good with greens - but make sure you put in suha. then it becomes really something else 

*smacks lips* 

code cracking
Posted at 09:19 AM

there are so many codes, people say. the Bible is supposed to be embedded with all sorts of predictions. makes you wonder what other texts contain mysterious truths.

to find out, again in the interest of science, we tried to apply the Bible code on another book - Arabian Nights and Days. we picked two random paragraphs and came up with this string of letters:

fgptosgrstewdihsrcedtewmnlmocbetabduondeodiaartrdelhseedwhchstniaoeapeeeiocedraswoeeh

picking out the whole words, we have:

stew beta (or be or bet) duo (or on) art seed ape (or pee) woe and eh (it is an expression after all)

trying to decipher its meaning is a little tricky. it could mean that a person named stew bet on art which turned out to be an imitation (aped) and this fact caused him woe. or the stew is in its beta phase but will be a work of art that contains seeds and apes or it could be made by ape (that's me) in a fit of woe.

we tried it again on another book. this time on 'stressed in the city.' maybe i was able to predict some future event and craftily encoded it in the book. the results were amazing.

from the first two paragraphs we got this string of letters:

giteyimtmaywnttcdeefcietttetfhhtumletwgbfnnnpthafndswrdth

using a clever combination of whole and real words, here's the sentence:

it may you let bf (boyfriend, best friend or bayani fernando) find sword.

at the start of the sem, joanna had a very strange registration experience and because of that she ended up taking fencing for p.e. and look! i predicted that a full year before it actually happened!

wow, is that uncanny or what? 

nuggets
Posted at 09:46 AM

just got a great new book called In Fact: the Best of Creative Nonfiction edited by Lee Gutkind with an introduction by Annie Dillard. Galing! It puts together 25 of some of the best nonfic pieces and after each piece is a short composition by the authors talking about their writing process. wow! (ok, i'm geeking out...)

but what i really wanted to post are some little gems that dillard places in her introduction. she opens with this passage:

"Dedicate (donate, give all) your life to something larger than yourself and pleasure - to the largest thing you can: to God, to relieving suffering, to contributing to knowledge, to adding to literature, or something else. Happiness lies this way, and it beats pleasure hollow."

and this i love...

"Read for pleasure. If you like Tolstoy, read Tolstoy. If you like Dostoevsky, read Dostoevsky. Push it a little, but don't read something totally alien to your nature and then say, "I'll never be able to write like that." Of course you won't. Read books you'd like to write. If you want to write literature, read literature. Write books you'd like to read. Follow your own weirdness."