Steep mountain

I have the tendency to finish what I started, come hell or high water. I don't know if I'm like a horse with blinders on the side, or have the blinders already covered my eyes that I get blinded of things that really matter.

Anyway, all I wanted to yak about now is the prospect of immersing myself to an ardouos back-breaking task of research to finish the master's degree that I started almost five years ago. Just the mere thought of ransacking the shelves for dusty books in the library already makes me nauseated. Geeshh, I can't imagine spending hours, days or months in that cold, lonely place that is enveloped with an air of intellectual nerdness.

I just can't do it! Here's the loser in me taking center stage. Waaahhhhhhh

Flabbergasted

Packaged with a limited vocabulary and an enemy of prepositions, I have never considered myself a writer, much less a good writer! I still have so much to learn about the English language or I still have to eat truckloads of rice before I can explain what supercalifragilisticexpialidocious really mean. That’s why you just don’t know how flabbergasted I was, and still am when a real awesome writer, a much-revered magazine editor would suddenly want me to send him my articles!!! And he even went at asking me how come I had not sent a writeup for a long time, sayang daw! I had a few articles published in his magazine when he was not yet the editor. I thought those were published because the editor he replaced was a friend. “More power to your writing. Keep your pieces coming. You've got what it takes to write more and more. God bless...!” were his final messages to me in one encounter. Whoa, was I floored! Did I win a multi-million lotto jackpot? Tell meeehhhh!!!!

Worshipping Brad Pitt

Watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith (topbilled by Brad Bitt and Angelina Jolie) with cool girlfriends --Yani and Rhea the other night. I’d never been interested on the plot of the flick. Aside from enjoying girl-talk, the very reason that I dragged myself to the theater and paid a jaw-dropping P110 (the amount that I could have spared for the Children’s Hour) for the kill is to drool (ooops…) at a sight of a lovely piece of art called Brad Pitt. How can there be a sinfully scenic sight like that?! To me, he will always be the sexiest man (alive or dead) on Earth. Lol!

Alright. Brad Pitt might be the “most beautiful mark” my keen eye for beauty would ever see, I’ve never dreamt of marrying him (hahaha!), I mean, his kind. Sadly, I just don’t want to end up a Jennifer Aniston nor an Angelina Jolie (and the naming continues?)....

of photography and violence

I had an exciting basic photography lesson with Boss RBL lately. I thought taking pictures was just all that-- peeping through a lens, aiming the target and click!

I would have never understood that there are such mammals called F/stop (an insect that would determine the size of aperture or the amount of light needed or something like that), Shutterspeed (the amount of movement of the shutter that you desire depending on the subject or something like that), Flash (when to use and not to use it), Rule of Thirds (in framing subject) and Stealing (which is not a crime).

And there is also decorum in holding the camera while on the act of shooting photos. The general rule is to ensure that you don't appear more choreographed or emote than the subjects of the shoot, otherwise you have to decide to reverse roles or change career at once.

First, Tristan, my only classmate, and I studied the use of a still camera, then a digital camera a bit later. In the workshop, we took pictures and then critiqued what’s wrong with the shots taken. There were also a little experimentation on getting some effects and adding drama to the subject like forced perception.

The use of technology like computer softwares in editing photos has given photographers, especially the neophytes, a huge privilege to correct errors in the take. For instance, the cropping tool allows the misframed photos to become Rule-of-Thirds compliant.

Now this tool also proves to be useful in accomplishing “virtual crimes”. Like if you wish to get back on someone who did wrong to you and thought of slowly decapitating or amputating the subject of your wrath without having to face an attempted murder trial, you just have to secure some of the target’s photos and cut whatever parts of his/her body to your satisfaction.

Little did I realize that photography can be a bloodless, seamless, slick form of revenge.

Lol!!!

50 words (or so) of the night…

03 June 2005

Friday. Flyday. Colleagues. Grand Convention. Marissa. Plaque. Dinner. LOLs. Touch Move. Black&White. Maryvel. Photoshoot. Toothpick. Emote Galore. Pfizer. Geoplan. Tristan.Free food. Four Seasons. Fried Rice. RBL. Pink. Fruit Salad.Gobblers. Tuxedo. GIS. Clappers. Speech. Summer Tales. Escapade. Rose.Big Apple. Audience. Bryan. Underwater. SCUBA. NASA. Boss. Party. Lotlot. Dancefloor. Riot. Margarita. Showdown. Emelyn (aka Gamay). 80's. Live Band. Cocktails. VIP Card. Hiphop. Gerard. Generations A-Z. Gollum. Cab.

I believe...

A good friend sent this to me and I thought it's worth keeping, because I too believe...

- that we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

I believe- that no matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

I believe- that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.

I believe- that you can do something in an instant that will give you heartache for life.

I believe- that it's taking me a long time to become the person I want tobe.

I believe- that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It maybe the last time you see them.

I believe- that you can keep going long after you can't.

I believe- that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

I believe- that either you control your attitude or it controls you.

I believe- that regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first,the passion fades and there had better be something else to take its place.

I believe- that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when itneeds to be done, regardless of the consequences.

I believe- that money is a lousy way of keeping score.

I believe- that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.

I believe- that sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you'redown, will be the ones to help you get back up.

I believe- that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

I believe- that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

I believe- that maturity has more to do with what types of experiencesyou've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I believe- that it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I believe- that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I believe- that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

I believe- that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don'tlove each other. And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.

I believe- that you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It couldchange your life forever.

I believe- that two people can look at the exact same thing and seesomething totally different.

I believe- that your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you.

I believe- that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

I believe- that credentials on the wall do not make you a decent humanbeing.

I believe- that the people you care about most in life are taken from youtoo soon.

Walking with a goddess named Lu-Ann

Lu-Ann, the fairest of goddesses that I’ve ever known is leaving for Brisbane today. My heart sank, I didn’t know she’s leaving too soon.

Lu-Ann is a new-found friend from Down Under. A mixed brand between a Filipino-Chinese mother and a full-blooded Spanish father, she perfectly looks like a clone of who else but me. Joke! The truth is we’re both drop dead gorgeous: I look dead, she’s gorgeous.

Let her trudge the streets and you see necks craning and heads twisting just to worship her.

We hang out together just a few times not long before but we easily hit it off as “beacchy sistahz.”

I have the hard time decoding the “Haleerr” accent. She has the patience to act like a parrot for me, repeating every single word that made up every sentence that she’d blow into my eardrums. I call it a language barrier. She calls it a hearing problem.

A certified shopping addict, she crashes into the mall like a daily habit terrorizing every shop that plies with fashion accessories, bling blings, jewelry, bags, shoes, clothes and a lot more of kikay stuffs.

Mention of a shop that sells chocolate cake and she’ll get there in a flash. One time, we made a stop in a café that is famous for choco desserts. In between gobbles, we babbled everything about chocolate and the 5 million and one boyfriends she’s got (“ssshhh, don’t tell Momma,” his hazel brown eyes warned me). Funny, how stories aplenty can be told about chocs and boys.

Now that she’s heading for home sweet home, I just wish her all the best. OK, I will surely miss her but I know she’ll miss me more.

Breaking Into Dance

It’s summer! And I’d been gearing up to embrace it with reckless abandon. For someone like me who loves to do lots of (crazy) things all together most of the time, summer is the most relaxing part of the year. Or so I thought, not until I joined a dance workshop.

Over the weekend, I signed up for a two-day dance workshop with The Manouvers. Jason Zamora and Jon Supan (of The Manouvers) , together with US-trained professional dancers Chennie and Mabel taught us the foundation of hip-hop or locally known as street dance. Viola, only then I learned that hip-hop is just a hodgepodge of ancient moves like strut, funky and break dance!

“Are you sure you wanna do it?” I told myself. “Why not?” said the half of me. I think I have a fighting spirit that my body doesn’t understand.

I love to dance, no doubt about it. My solo dance performances, apart from the group presentations some of which I choreographed, in every Christmas or induction party I had in my elementary and high school classes can prove it. Looking back now, I wonder aloud how my classmates never launched a protest for seeing me dance in every class party we had; maybe because they saw me as an authoritarian class president. But who cares, I had fun.

But hey, dancing is not just about having fun, I learned from the workshop. It requires discipline and a lot of practice. I realized I don’t have the luxury of both, for now.

Nevertheless, more than anything else, I learned that DANCE means Decision, Action, No Compromise, Commitment and Excellence.

So I tried to strut my funky way until I broke my bones into dance. Literally, that’s hip-hop. My way. Urrghh?*&^%@!!!

Summer Fire!

i was in a middle of conversation with a long-lost friend who visited me at work when suddenly a colleague came out of the door behind me and shouted "there's fire in the neighborhood!" i was terrified not by his breaking news but by the way his lines pierced my eardrum... i went outside to check things out and true enough a black smoke billowed just above some structures which are a stone's throw away from our office...

that was about 4.30- p.m. (11 april 2005)

shortly, sounds of wailing sirens, of traffic cops' whistles, of honking cars, of raging fire and the shouts of victims and the cries of children dominated the airwaves while curious onlookers started to mill around the fire scene...

with the presence of international consultants and volunteers in our workplace, the scene of multi-colored people helping one another hauling computers, printers, books, files and everything their adrenaline can muster looks like a magazine feature story that had this title: "Filipino bayanihan goes international"

while everybody else was in frenzy, i went back inside and picked up my purse and two envelopes of personal files including photos (which I guess are one of life's valuable possessions), then i went out for safety..

i thought it was weird because i never did panic nor felt some surge of adrenaline; (maybe my exposure to a number of shocking realities, thanks to my stint as a news reporter, had something to do with it) there was something in my gut telling me that our edifice would be spared... i had all the presence of mind to utter a little prayer for the fire to stop, that no limbs and lives would be wasted...

and God heard my prayer....

on Spanglish

the movie may appear so simple as it depicts everyday-life of a family, but there are a number of insights that can be drawn from it...

here are a few :

lesson #1: a mother would rather die so her child may live

lesson #2: language difference is not much of a barrier if you have a translator

lesson #3: a monotonous almost involuntary day-to-day activity such as lying on a bed or stepping on the floor sometimes demand a very difficult, life-changing decision making process

lesson #4: sometimes an analogy such as floor:working brain or bed:damaged brain makes SENSE (go figure!)

lesson #5: for a child, 5 cents is 5 cents

lesson #6: guilt has a Spanish equivalent

Of men and chasing skirts (Part 2)

If women, attractive or otherwise, love to be chased, count me in. It's not because women are simply mean or playing hard to get. It doesn't take a genius of a man to tell if she does so. They just buy time. Unfortunately, buying time is not men’s business. Well, as I see it. In this day and age.

Most women I know need time to get to know the person better. They get the feel of the water first before taking a plunge. While a number of men I encounter immediately wants to take that plunge only to find out that the water is burning hot and want to snap out of it in a heartbeat.
If she decides to go out with him on a date or two, he's assured of some degree of likeness, if not attraction, from her. But stop being a high-jumping hysteric, dude. It doesn't mean you have already completely won her. Not just as yet. Unfortunately, some guys would think this way too soon. And when the reality dawns on him, whalla--a romantic drifter is born (or is it burned?)!

I can’t seem to find a convincing reason why a lot of men are always on the rush of winning a woman’s heart. Wise men say only fools rush in, so a song goes. Does it have to do with social acceptability? Macho culture? Or is it sexual fever? I wouldn’t know.

There’s one reason I know, though.
In this swirling world of instant coffee and noodles, a drifter's life is just as short-lived as batting an eyelash -- the moment you open your eyes, he's already in a table next to you sipping coffee with “another” dream girl. And the only thing you can do for the time being is wish him the best of luck, hoping that his antics work this time. But you see, this is not really something back-breaking, talk about the glaring statistics of women outnumbering men. Banking on such a phenomenon, some men can always find a way to abuse their “homecourt advantage”— throwing easily grandpa’s trusty virtues of patience, persistence and perseverance out of the window. And this leaves many women especially those who are riding the bandwagon of “Generation Instant” to settle for less.

If there’s one “general” characteristic that is annoying about skirt-chasing drifters, it is their inability to forge a platonic friendship with the once-object of their affectionate gaze . Put any innocent femme in this scenario and a cry for justice can’t be helped. For a man to put women in a box-- girlfriend or nothing-- is plain sinful. Worse, to swear at her as a “woman with a heart of stone” or an “enemy of the State” is gross.

Now the drifter ceases to be one, but the question is: “Is he getting the kind of woman that he’s ever wanted?” But should he doesn’t want to settle for the best, is his’ to keep. Anyway.

In my book, men don’t have to be a Brad Pitt to succeed on attractive sensible women. But this is another story.

Published in Sunstar Weekend Magazine as"Who's Chasing Skirts". August 6, 2005. All rights reserved)
http://www.sunstar.com.ph/weekend/index.html

pirated love story

Yani said I had to share my "love story" now, otherwise I will not be able to make a real one ever, at all. So meantime, here's My (Pirated) Love Story. Thanks to http://www.love.2loop.com.

----------------------
A LLLOVE STORY ...STORY ...STORY...STORY (Now, you know when something is pirated!..lol!)

One dazzling summer day at Boracay Island you see the most incredible creature you have ever seen. His name is Sean, and every move he makes just turns you on more and more. You nudge your best friend Yani and say, "Wow, that has to be the most wonderful body I have ever seen." Suddenly, he looks in your direction and starts walking right towards you!!! he says, "I noticed you staring at me from over there. I just had to tell you, that I think you are so
fantastic , and was wondering if you'd like to go to Milky Way with me and dance ?"

With a stupid smile on your face you say, " Cool " and go with them. When you finally get toMilky Way , he moves closer to you, and gives you the biggest kiss ever. The two of you are passionately kissing, when you feel a star hit you on the back of the head. You open your eyes to find out it's all a dream, but there is a note left next to your bed. It reads:

"Sean is the love you've been waiting your whole life for. He will ask you out in 3 days or less, but only if you send this e-mail to at least 10 people within the next few minutes. The more people you send it to, the sooner they will ask you out, and you both fall in love. Do not take this lightly, because if you simply ignore this, you will have bad luck in love for the next
3 years!"

Hmmnn...we'll see......