For JSC, Sec. Raul Gonzales is beneath his level and wouldn't say a word about him. I'll say one though: curmudgeon.

I found the following answer to the secretary's statements, touche for lack of a better word.

It's not that UP students are always against the government. It just so happens that the government keeps on failing the people it's supposed to serve, and we see that.

I am a sucker for cosmogenesis stories, but reading the following passage amused me. Didn't we all know back in grade school that the first man and woman emerged out of a bamboo and peopled the world?

Aside from getting curious if they did the nookie while inside the reed, how did they exactly make people? Bamboo people cutouts?

"One day the man asked the woman to marry him, for there were no other people on the world; but she refused, saying that they were brother and sister, born of the same reed, with only one knot between them; and that she would not marry him, since he was her brother. Finally, they asked advice from the tunnies [fish?] of the sea, and from the doves of the air; they also went to the earthquake, who said that it was necessary for them to marry, so that the world might be peopled."

There were also some paragraphs which could make feminists search for Miguel de Loarca's soul and cut it further into bits:

"While Pandaguan was dead, his wife Lubluban became the concubine of a man called Maracoyrun; and these people say was the time concubinage began in the world. When Pandaguan returned, he did not find his wife at home, because she had been invited by her friend to feast upon a pig that he had stolen; and the natives say that this was the first theft committed in the world. Pandaguan sent his son for Lubluban, but she refused to go home, saying that the dead do not return to the world. At this answer Pandaguan became angry, and returned to the infernal regions. The people believe that, if his wife had obeyed his summons, and he had not gone back at that time, all the dead would return to life."

Ah, childhood. We can take "just because" for answers. Look what happened to us now.

I have this feeling that I am the object of a cosmic bet.

IthinkI'mparanoid.

Finished two stories in time for PSFV2. Dean's call looks, from an engineer's pov, the equivalent of the ASEMEP NTS. Always anticipated, always obliged to think of something new. Grammar slips included.

I'm still torn whether to pass the fetish-based slipstream or the satirical dystopian turn-of-the-century detective noir (mouthful alert!). In the meantime, I've abandoned a bildungsroman set in the 90's. Too short to be a short story, and it's already scattered into different plots. Too revealingly biographical, and biographically revealing as well. Et tu?

Pregnant women surround me everyday and they hover like planets. They very much conform to the IUA criteria, particularly the third in which they clear every object in their path. Me included, by choice.

I'm having post-verbal diarrhea symptoms again. Small chunks. Ilocanos call it pugtit.

I'm not in the right season (except if I'm in Europe but right now I'm not), I know, but I'm reading Alex Garland's The Beach whenever I can.

The man's been frequenting the Philippines every year and he slips right under our noses?

I admit, I am one of a few sitting on the tip of the Filipino couch potato iceberg. Because I believe that watching television hours on end can lead to short term memory loss, we managed to live for two years without cable or antenna. Only GMA7 is on, with the requisite snowflakes, mosaics and ghosting--the works of poor reception.

I am way behind those series that everybody is watching. Take Desperate Housewives for example. I bought the full first season DVD and me and the wife are hooked.

It's been a few weeks since I installed a UHF antenna (Ernie Baron, God bless your soul) on a ten-foot pole just so I can start watching Philippine Idol but there's still the noise. Next goal is to get a longer tube to get all the channels right.

Heh, including ABS CBN.

WILL: Wow, that's a toughie. Somebody's mad at you for not reading a script. If only there was a way to scan the letters on the page and somehow relay the information to your brain.

JACK: Uh, there is. It's called Braille.

--"Will & Grace" EP7.18 (The Fabulous Baker Boy)

Right now I find some of my stories, published and otherwise, downright cloying. Possibly because I've birthed them but unlike children, they don't develop on their own and I have to live with them. I feel that they're too, er, starbucksy, for lack of a better term, especially the dialogues when executed in English.

I once asked Dean and Ian on the matter of injecting Filipino sensibility in their stories. I had this vision of writers thinking in their local language before writing down in English. Or, for writers with deep pockets, hiring a competent translator. Talk about a two-step process that can marginalize world literature from the hegemony of English. I've heard that F. Sionil Jose thinks in Ilocano before writing down in English, but I still have to read some of his works and confirm (as if I'm native to Ilocano sensibility, but I'm a keen observer of our household).

Then there's also Manuel Arguilla whose famous work makes me want to step into an Amorsolo pastoral painting. I just don't know how he cuts himself apart from, say, John Steinbeck. If there is a literary counterpart to the concept of umami then this is it.

On top of holding proof that they are both citizens of the islands, one technique that Dean and Ian employ is the use of elements like "naming conventions, language patterns, choice of words, setting, character quirks, cosmetic details (ensaimada and mamon instead of pancakes and French toast)", or bringing in "loan words in Cebuano merging it with the English" but this is just the surface. Dean says subject and theme are still important. Bottomline, they both think in English and write in English.

Oh to write for an international audience ("fuck, I’ll write what I want, damn it", wrote Dean) and explain what the tabo is for.

Last time I mentioned that I've been searching for the perfect car. I'm working on it and for the life of me, getting one notch higher in terms of the letter after the numbers "1.3" equates to a 5-digit difference that could spell financial disaster.

I don't know. I like my door handles to be the same as the color of the body, in which I am torn between Shoreline Mist Metallic (gold, or a kind of metallic beige) and Nighthawk Black Pearl (which is, er, black). I like 5-spoke mags and an mp3 player. All the small things.

I sound like a celebrity columnist in Philippine Star so I'll stop.

I just don't get it. It seems that I am the only one remaining committed to the original closure date of my project. The good thing was demand decreased (favorable for project planning, but businesswise, it isn't) and everybody relaxed. I am my own pep squad and the team is sleeping on the last two minutes. Strange, I don't shy away from commitments.

Spirit of Bree van de Kamp is that you?

Tomorrow, it's like 19 turning on 20 again.