2,046 Sutras

Just who is this poser?

2007-10-09T14:49:00.000+08:00

Who?

I'm posting from another server. Damn office firewall.

I'm no Bruce Chatwin

2007-05-23T17:39:00.000+08:00

What? No Happy Hooker?

2007-05-17T15:04:00.000+08:00

The top books for boys. I only have seven in my collection. A hundred and sixty to go for the two big guys in the house.

Alice, Jabberwacky. Jabberwacky, Alice.

2007-05-17T14:22:00.000+08:00

I remember back in the late eighties there used to be a software (whose name included the letters L, I, S and A that I now largely have forgotten) that can chat with a human. A question posed by the human called for a standard answer. A typical conversation would be as follows:

Human (H): What is your name?
Software (S): Why do you ask?
.
.
.
(I tell you I have forgotten everything except for the question part.)
H: What is the meaning of life?
S: Why do you ask?
H: Why am I talking to you?
S: Why do you ask?
H: Go to hell.
S: Ok.

Of course, I made up some of the parts. (EDIT: It was ELIZA.)

Now what if (standard question for spec fic writers) two chatbots actually talk to each other?

[Why do you ask?]
[...@%^*]

Looking at the transcripts of Alice (short for Artificial Linguistic Internet Computer Entity) and Jabberwacky, the conversations ranged from surreal to hilarious:

Alice (A): Do you dream?
Jabberwacky (J): Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

They're as good as office chats, imho.

via kottke.

Caveat Author

2007-05-11T17:36:00.000+08:00

Writer Beware is a good resource for authors excited to get published but don't want to be victimized by scammers.

So far I haven't heard of any local scam involving writers. But since I am also bent on reaching international shores, information from this site comes in handy.

Zooropa

2007-05-11T16:21:00.000+08:00

Still on TCLS

2007-05-08T16:15:00.000+08:00

I can imagine a stray punch on the Delete key drifted my gratitude to Bibliobibuli into cyberspace.

Hopefully she can understand this clueless ingrate, but I know that much gratitude is due to her for editing the rough draft of The Chain Letter Siege.

Rough, btw, is an understatement, so anybody can substitute lumpy, scraggy or nubbly.

What I learned to avoid: clumsy clauses that should have stood on their own, tenses that scatter all over the place, and catchy opening statements that frustratedly lead to spaced-out follow-ups.

TCLS would've ended a purple prose if not for her patience. Salamat, Sharon!

Another year of procrastination

2007-05-08T15:29:00.000+08:00

...because I chickened out at the last minute. I'll see you again next year, Don Carlos.

What happened to Warm Bodies?

2007-04-27T16:56:00.000+08:00

From an e-mail thread about Lasang Pinoy's months of absence, similarly I think I have a lot of explaining to do. At least out of courtesy.

We had trouble getting a sufficient number of entries to reach critical mass, we were busy, we were travelling a lot (work, not pleasure) and the project was shelved indefinitely. The question whether to continue WB was left hanging until now. Taking the time to address this question, likewise.

Vonnegut's Rules for Short Stories

2007-04-27T16:55:00.000+08:00

Words of wisdom from Kurt Vonnegut, or some dude patient enough to go through all of his works and come up with these:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.

5. Start as close to the end as possible.

6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them — in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.

8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

via chronicpaint via sfandf_writers.

Paranoia, redux

2007-04-27T16:52:00.000+08:00

Somewhere between these posts and the last I had this paranoia that if I write for this blog I definitely can't write anymore. I'll lose my duende.

Bollocks. It's countdown time and I'm still not complete with my submission to Palanca. Epiphany number two: A piece looked like sf poetry according to christie, so I might have a new item to advocate. Obviously an offshoot of writing for the PSFVx anthologies.

TCLS in SP1 2007

2007-04-27T15:54:00.000+08:00

I was waiting for this to happen before I say anything more:

Right there, on the fourth line. I've seen the website and the issue's still not there. Interesting spams on the forums, btw.

***

It's red.

I know it's blatant vanity, but I went straight to see my picture on the first page, and then jumped to my story. I'm sure it was me there in black and white. I thought the author pics would still be rendered in color but the effect is still great. I was singing "Remedy" in my head.

Still the same great art direction. When they said Fiction that Swims in Your Head before, I still agree until now. Vertiginous.

While reading my story I had this cheesy epiphany that I felt that I didn't write this piece. I don't know if it's a normal reaction, but because I knew what the draft was like and how the editing turned out, the difference juts out every now and then. But I'd definitely say that it didn't do any damage to the story and it made it look better.

Gratitude goes to Dean Alfar for doing something magical.

Regression

2007-02-22T13:54:00.000+08:00

It's not a bad thing to bring back my interest in photography. There's a bit of regret on the downside on choosing LCD over CRT for post-processing though. It's still a hit-and-miss thing if I produced the colors right.

And so, the first shoots (er, like bamboo) of 2007. Images are mine. Don't you dare.

Stupas from the Temple of the Reclining Buddha in Bangkok. Tiles from Toto Mariwasa?

A Hindu woman inside a Buddhist temple. Who says religions should clash?

Sunday afternoon lazing in the backyard.

Just in time for balentaym

2007-02-13T09:15:00.000+08:00

It maybe apocalyptic in nature, but learn from it.
Cozyreads' initial offering, Heartbreak is now available at Booktopia Libis.

Here's the TOC:
Sometimes the Ears Don't Fit - Carljoe Javier
Waxing Poetic - Chinggay Labrador
Leave-taking - Jonathan Jimena Siason
Letters to Joaquin - E.C. De Los Reyes
No Girlfriend Since Birth - Sharleen Banzon
Highly Confidential: The Electronic Journal of Ana Banana - Sally Magdiwang
Adios Con Leche! - I.P. Goze
Buried Treasure on Casiana Street - Ana Maria S. Villanueva
Resurfacing - Ryan Ben Gabby Taborada
In Bits and Pieces - Faye Ilogon

*image snagged from christie.

***

The first thing I've noticed when Sally Magdiwang gave me an autographed copy was how "international" the book design was. Not the typical local publication that's sized about half a legal with starch-white leaves and unreadable typography (Haven't you noticed in Solidaridad that most Filipiniana books have the same height? To be fair though, traditional French books are covered in generic white and have the same height too. Perfect for idealists.)

Sized like a typical paperback and on newsprint. It's a far cry from Harlequin and Mills & Boon though. I'd love to see stacks of this in supermarkets and 7-11's.

Stories--I tuned out most of the time because I cannot relate. Heheh. Wife likes it though. The journal of Ana Banana stood out, Helen Fieldingesque in style. Funny twist to the pathos that's supposed to cover broken cardioids.

***

Why do I devote two paragraphs on the merits of the cover and a short one on the stories inside? To be honest, I sometimes buy a book because I like the cover.

***

I've tried writing chick lit and still can't separate fantasy from reality. Stranger than fiction, eh?

***

I changed the template. Again.

***

I wish I can find the drive to blog. I have this paranoia inside me that I'd be exhausted from writing if I blog.

Anyway. I've built up quite an inventory of stories. I appreciate the critical eyes of friends too.

***

After a year, I am rediscovering photography. Too bad my photoblog was given away because I haven't updated it for years.

2007-01-20T10:08:00.000+08:00

Scrubs - Overkill

Ghosts appear and fade away.
Come back another day!

Caracoa 2006: The Silver Issue

2006-12-21T10:21:00.000+08:00

Booklaunch on Friday, December 22 7PM at mag:net Katipunan. Sadly I can't attend because I have a prior booking with my barkadas from the Company with the Copyrighted Big Blue Brand office.

Poets included in this book are:
1. Alexander Agena
2. Jim Pascual Agustin
3. Ivy Alvarez
4. Oscar Alvarez
5. Glenn Atanacio
6. Amado Bajarias
7. Luis Cabalquinto
8. Mark Cayanan
9. Frank Cimatu
10. Mikael De Lara Co
11. Vincent Coscolluela
12. Adam David
13. Raymond de Borja
14. Rodrigo dela Peña
15. Israfel Fagela
16. Eduardo Geronia, Jr.
17. Luisa Igloria
18. Ken Ishikawa
19. Arkaye Kierulf
20. Sarge Lacuesta
21. Paolo Manalo
22. Wilfredo Pascual
23. Jose Ocampo Reyes
24. Naya Valdellon
25. Joel H. Vega

Image and info via Joel Toledo.

PSFV2 Booklaunch

2006-12-11T10:20:00.000+08:00

@ Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, Greenhills yesterday.

Hanapin nyo ako. More pitchers at Notes from the Peanut Gallery.

Buy the anthology! It will be available at Fully Booked, Comic Quest, Booktopia, mag:net magazine stores, Ayala MuseumShop, and the Filipinas Heritage Library, by next week, with more stores carrying it soon.

Superelectromagneticonductingdemon

2006-11-27T14:45:00.000+08:00

Used to have this science fair project back in high school entitled "Utilization of Polarity Differences to Transport Bodies Inside an Electromagnetic Tunnel" or something to that effect. Which is basically placing magnets with like poles facing each other in a ring and praying fervently that the object of interest will at least float inside this metal tunnel we hacked from a junkshop.

There were words of encouragement from our research teacher who was entirely clueless to what we were doing. It involved expensive materials of the Y sub x Ba sub y CuO sub z derivatives and no homemade magnet can act as our superconducting material. Then me and the rest of the group had a shouting match a la reality show because the thing in question, a metal block, won't lift an inch. Worst of all, the most saintly of teammates aptly named Jesus (miracle worker too, who swore that he saw the block lift when he turned the power on), growled at me because I demanded too much materials from their typewriter repair shop.

Proof that at that age, I am a devil in school uniform.

via Frank Cimatu

Important researches:

«Acute Management of the Zipper-Entrapped Penis» (1990) Presented by J. F. Nolan, T. J. Stillwell, and J. P. Sands.A quick, simple and non-traumatic approach to the zipper manipulation --the paper says-- is presented in which prepuce is instantly released by lateral compression of the zip fastener, using a pliers.

«Fragmentation of Rods by Cascading Cracks: Why Spaghetti Does Not Break in Half» (2006)Presented by B. Audoly and S. Neukirch (Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris). It explains why, when you bend dry spaghetti, it often breaks into more than two pieces.

«Impact of Wet Underwear on Thermoregulatory Responses and Thermal Comfort in the Cold» (1994)Presented by M. K. Bakkevig (Sintef Unimed in Trondheim, Norway) and R. Nielson (Technical University of Denmark). Investigates the significance of wet underwear and compares any influence of fibre-type material and textile construction of underwear on thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort of humans during rest in the cold. The tests showed that the thickness of the underwear has more of an influence on the thermoregulatory responses and thermal comfort, than the types of fibers tested.

«On Human Odour, Malaria Mosquitoes, and Limburger Cheese» (1996)Presented by B. Knols. It shows that the female malaria mosquito Anopheles gambiae is attracted equally to the smell of limburger cheese and to the smell of human feet.

»Rectal Foreign Bodies: Case Reports and a Comprehensive Review of the World's Literature» (1986) Presented by D. B. Busch and J. R. Starling (Wisconsin). Includes reports of, among other items: seven light bulbs; a knife sharpener; two flashlights; a wire spring; a snuff box; an oil can with potato stopper; eleven different forms of fruits, vegetables and other foodstuffs; a jeweler's saw; a frozen pig's tail; a tin cup; a beer glass; and one patient's remarkable ensemble collection consisting of spectacles, a suitcase key, a tobacco pouch and a magazine.

«The Pitch Drop Experiment,» (1984) Presented by J. Mainstone and the late T. Parnell (University of Queensland, Australia)An experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years.

«The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length, and Foot Size» (1993) Presented by J. Bain (Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto) and K. Siminoski (University of Alberta). While comparing height, foot size and penile length, Bain said the relationship was minimal. "We found a weak correlation," he said and added this ratio should not be used by anyone to assess the size of a man's penis.

«Elucidation of Chemical Compounds Responsible for Foot Malodour» (1990) Presented by F. Kanda and others five scientist (Shisedo Research Center, Yokohama). It concluded that people who think they have foot odor do, and those who don't, don't.

«Navigation-Related Structural Change In the Hippocampi of Taxi Drivers» (2000) E. Maguire, and others (University College London)Presented evidence that the brains of London taxi drivers are more highly developed than those of their fellow citizens.

«Secret Life: Firsthand, Documented Accounts of UFO Abductions» (1992) Presented by J. Mack (Harvard Medical School) and D. Jacobs (Temple University).Concluded that people who believe they were kidnapped by aliens from outer space, probably were, and that "the focus of the abduction is the production of children."

«Interim Report: Results of the National Demonstration Project To Reduce Violent Crime and Improve Governmental Effectiveness In Washington, D.C., June 7 to July 30, 1993» (1993)Presented by J. Hagelin (Maharishi University and The Institute of Science, Technology and Public Policy).Concluded that 4,000 trained meditators caused an 18 percent decrease in violent crime in Washington, D.C.

«Survey of Frog Odorous Secretions, Their Possible Functions and Phylogenetic Significance» (2004) Presented by Benjamin Smith (University of Adelaide, Australia) and others.It catalogs the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed.

«Blink-Free Photos, Guaranteed» (2006) Presented by N. Svenson and P. Barnes (Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization) It calculated the number of photographs you must take to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed.

«Transmission of Gonorrhea Through an Inflatable Doll» (1993) Presented by E. Kleist (Nuuk, Greenland) and H. Moi (Oslo, Norway).

«A Man Who Pricked His Finger and Smelled Putrid for 5 Years» (1996) Presented by C. Mills, M. Llewelyn, D. Kelly, and P/ Holt (Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport).

«Chicken Plucking as Measure of Tornado Wind Speed» (1975) Presented by B. Vonnegut (State University of New York at Albany). «Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature» (2006)Presented by A. Mulet, J. Benedito and J. Bon (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Spain) and C. Rosselló (Universitat de les Illes Balears).

«The Effect of Country Music on Suicide» (1992) Presented by S. Stack (Wayne State University) and J. Gundlach (Auburn University).

«Chickens Prefer Beautiful Humans» (2002) S. Ghirlanda, L. Jansson, and M. Enquist (Stockholm University)

«Demonstration of the Exponential Decay Law Using Beer Froth» (2002)Presented by A. Leike (University of Munich) Demonstrated that beer froth obeys the mathematical Law of Exponential Decay.

Get this!

2006-11-20T10:12:00.000+08:00

If you got the time, take a break from your shopping and meet me and the rest of the guys here. My story, V.A., is in it!

From Dean Alfar:

Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 2 Book Launch
Sunday, December 10, 2006 - 3PM
The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf
Ground Floor, The Promenade
Greenhills, San Juan, Metro Manila

Copies of the book will be available then.

Afterwards, the anthology will be available at Fully Booked, Comic Quest and other venues.

Chasing Xangsane, Baptizing Suvarnabhumi

2006-10-13T10:44:00.000+08:00

I didn't know that on my first night of my stay here in Bangkok, the sky was drizzling and I have followed Xangsane (the weaker version of what used to be Milenyo back in the Philippines). The billboards of the freeway didn't budge an inch to her passing.

Bangkok has a new airport which just opened last month, the design reminded me of Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, and what NAIA Terminal 3 should have been. Glass and metal and white travellers. We built T3 way ahead of Suvarnabhumi but we haven't used it yet.

And I am extending my stay until Monday afternoon. I just hope the money won't run dry when I go haggling in Chatuchak this weekend.

MNL-SIN-BKK-MNL

2006-10-12T10:07:00.000+08:00

"When you travel, your first discovery is that you do not exist"

--Elizabeth Hardwick

Blogging about travel and thinking how cool (and therefore, pretentious) I am that I am on my 12th plane this year and it's already October and yet I feel so homesick because I miss my boys and I want to try the new Philips LCD screen I bought for a song in Sim Lim Square and I want to assemble the Ikea Knappa Lamp but now I am an hour behind all my friends because I am in Bangkok and there's a possibility that I will stay a day longer and I only have a few cash left in my person and I don't know how will I live by the day because I don't want to use my personal credit card and my hotel is so bad the towels are rough and I smell sperm on the carpet and everything I touch and I blend so easily in the crowd even if my Dutch-English accent is a giveaway.

Whew.

I write sins not tragedies

2006-10-02T18:17:00.000+08:00

I should have said I am pregnant with stories, simple as that. But J demanded that I should show and don't tell. Pretty much a challenge to illustrate a pregnant man using ASCII characters so this was how I made my workaround:

I've been having morning sickness lately and it is then that I concluded, after having one night stands with Chuck Palahniuk, Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo, and T.C. Boyle that I, Oscar Lopez Alvarez, am pregnant. The words house, amulet and samadhi have been floating in my man-uterus for months, longer than honeymooning elephants or our nearest cousins, the gallivanting gorillas.

Accepted for publication:

V.A., or The One True Agency For The Search of Disappeared Gods and Mythical Heroes in Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 2

A Change of Guards in A Time For Dragons

Economy Class in Caracoa, A Philippine Literary Arts Council Publication

and

Comparative Study of the Effect of Bond Pad Diameter on Wafer Level Solder Bump Reliability in Proceedings of the IPC/JEDEC International Conference on Lead Free Electronic Components and Assemblies "RoHS Compliance and Beyond"

The latter in which, I will be off to Singapore next week to present.

Katayan na to!

The C of Justice

2006-08-30T11:21:00.000+08:00

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.

Two-in-one

2006-08-29T13:34:00.000+08:00

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.

Eyes on my back

2006-08-29T13:19:00.000+08:00

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

IthinkI'mparanoid.

12 ladybugs came at the ladybugs' picnic

2006-08-28T17:37:00.000+08:00

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.

Pure shores

2006-08-15T17:09:00.000+08:00

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?

Nothing but static on Channel Z

2006-08-15T16:58:00.000+08:00

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.

Tense and sensibility

2006-08-15T15:45:00.000+08:00

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.

Perception is reality

2006-08-09T18:37:00.000+08:00

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?

Holding back the years

2006-08-02T14:30:00.000+08:00

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

The corporate ladder goes straight to Hell

2006-07-20T10:58:00.000+08:00

Anthony J. Crowley's Resolution #4:

I must encourage greedy people to use the term, "Low-hanging fruit," because that's just like old times.

I won't be surprised if my name ends up on the wrong side of the Book of Life.

Just press restart and it's clean

2006-07-18T14:51:00.000+08:00

While waiting for the carpool this morning, I was able to capture on digital the tarp that's been on my radar for days. The taglines however, didn't do justice to the whimsy so I suggest the following:

Security patches available.
Dirty clothes? We'll undo it.
Where do you want to wash today?

And my personal favorite:

We also hang.

Going gone

2006-07-18T10:45:00.000+08:00

Just finished Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. Sans the suburban dryness I usually get from reading T.C. Boyle's After The Plague, it felt good. Although I'm not the type who can dissect for a book report the dry Brit humor Pratchett (and to some extent, Douglas Adams) espouses, I am one with the masses who love a happy ending and I'll leave it at that.

And so I chanced upon another wiki entry for Going Postal, which is

used as a verb meaning to become extremely angry, possibly to the point of violence. The term derives from a series of incidents from 1986 onward in which United States Postal Service (USPS) workers shot and killed managers, fellow workers, and members of the police or general public. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people were killed in at least 20 incidents of workplace rage. Following this series of events, the idiom entered common parlance and has been applied to murders committed by employees in acts of workplace rage, irrespective of the employer; and generally to describe fits of rage in or outside the workplace.

Come to think of it, aside from getting the insides of our forearms sexually sensitive from hogging the keyboard all day, there really are instances when we could have also gone postal, jumped the couch, or snapped our wirings. The closed workplace (cubicle) within an enclosed environment (the manufacturing campus) within an enclave (science park) plus the fact that 99% of us are men with pent-up reptilian urges, the recipe is quite perfect.

I don't know how we manage the rage. Entertainment perhaps, like juicy office rumors. Or maybe we bottle it up until good old Death collects them, lovingly labeled Stress, Hypertension, Heart Attack, and another one reserved for the reaper himself.

Good Omens is next.

This post is brought to you by the letter W

2006-07-14T10:12:00.000+08:00

While looking for factoids on the film Totoo Ba Ang Tsismis? on the net, I found this great blog.

If my aimless wanderings on the web are right, the movie Karnal was based on a short story written by Teresita Anover-Rodriguez published in Mr. & Ms. Magazine in the early 80's. Ms. Rodriguez is known as Tita Dulce, the advice columnist at The Inquirer.

Karnal was shown when I was six, or maybe seven. These days, like John Mayer, I wish I was six again. The only downside being I can't enter For Adults Only movies at that time, it wasn't as bad as sitting through a hyped-up film at an overpriced cinema. Or waking up to work just to pay the bills, in general.

It took me more than a decade to see Karnal and Scorpio Nights, uncensored and uncut, with stampedes at the entrance. I've yet to watch the camp classic Temptation Island. There's a slipstream element in Ibalik Ang Swerti which reminds me of Murakami's The Second Bakery Attack (not that exact, though). I believe Belle Epoque and Like Water For Chocolate are the bastard children of Lino Brocka's Oro, Plata, Mata.

My manager looks like Tony Ferrer. A suite of electric guitar riffs, Pia Moran wearing a 'fro and blaxploitation films come to mind, as well as Eddie Romero who has directed Black Mama, White Mama (1972--haven't watched it, obviously). Said film had a great influence on Quentin Tarantino.

On another note, I don't know why we scorn the song-and-dance numbers such as those seen in Bote, Dyaryo, Garapa (an early Joey Marquez starrer, said object of scorn shot entirely in Quezon Circle) when today it's a staple in cartoon movies like Madagascar and Robots. And in Christmas parties too. I have a hunch that the Pinoys employed by Disney and Pixar are behind this.

W rings a bell. I'm sure I've watched a Mad Max-style Pinoy action before and it may be this. The baddest leather daddies and the raddest souped-up Toyotas that moonlighted as yellow taxis in Recto. Unfortunately the person who carried me through this ride is already dead and there are no witnesses available who can tell me what I've seen in Fame Cinema back in '83.

At that time I didn't feel the waning years of the so-called Second Golden Age of Philippine Cinema. Or its death knell sounded off by mass-produced massacre films. The vintage black-and-white LVN pictures on Channel 9 every afternoon didn't feel nostalgic either on our similarly black-and-white TV set.

Yet with the movies on offer today both local and Hollywood (with a few exceptions, of course, plus the so-called arthouse), the past generation chants in my ears that they've had better.

*Images from Dumb Distraction.

My stupid mouth

2006-07-06T08:27:00.000+08:00

WAAAAH! Ayoko nang maging Mr. Congeniality!

Is good to be back

2006-07-05T18:28:00.000+08:00

New title, same old penchant for drama.

I didn't find my old title cloying, and the new one, still about the same authoritative thingy, is more ancient, like what I will be next month.

Let me have the liberty of assumptions. I assume that everybody's asking what happened to me during the last few months of silence. I had issues. I had, well, drama. I've been published, was to be published and didn't get published. The Palanca rush I never felt as on the deadline I was 30,000 feet up in the air. I've travelled and untravelled. I've been better than most of you and I've been through the worst too.

I spent a night in Paris and made the airport my hotel. I smoke half a pack a day now. I got curious. I closed deals. I will be in Caracoa 2006 and A Time for Dragons. I've been rejected by Ideomancer and Silverfish. I made poetry out of a Taiwanese bathouse (the, you know, decent kind) and clouds that look like pools of semen or mammary glands.

I finally received my Silver Elite NWA mileage card. I was supposed to fly to Berlin the week after Paris but my boss beat me to that. I found talking about travels abroad pretentious, but proceed talking about them anyway.

I bought a domain that is sitting idly for 6 months now. I had bouts and doubts on the sincerity of blogging.

I admitted I am a pathological liar and made more lies. Made more secrets. Made even more money, though not necessarily in that sequence.

I've been searching for the perfect car.

I signified my stand against self-righteous organized religion and I glorified paganism.

I have this illusion that I am the virtual lovechild of Jing Pantoja-Hidalgo (voice momma) and Martin Amis (grammar daddy) with Dean as my plot godfather.

Or that I will be.

If you thought that the number in the title is the name of the movie, you are right. I so wanted to see the word sutras every now and then plus a descriptor which defies any criterion.

If you ask why, or if I assumed you asked, it's nothing.

Sitting here in limbo

2006-06-22T09:45:00.000+08:00

but I know it won't be long.

(Tuck and Patti)

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

2006-03-15T12:42:00.000+08:00

With great travel comes great deadlines and missed blogging.

I've antedated pictures from my Europe trip, starting with Hamburg today. I'm brimming with pretension up to here (places hand above throat) and I'm short of chronicling how my flight was, how clean were the strasses and the straats compared to our kalyes or how I felt my skin color change from brown to pink or how I learned to drink Pinot Grigio during a hunky meal of salmon pasta when I can do away with Coke back home.

I felt so First World, and forgot where I came from and it's sickening and I miss the thawing snow and the goth girls and skinheads who say "Langsam, no English" to a brown monkey in a knitted beanie and fake pashmina muffler.

Get them here. Dresden and Nijmegen later.

Quote by Douglas Adams.

Talkin' about a...

2006-03-02T11:17:00.000+08:00

The governing question is, if the current situation is a reprise of the first People Power, the media is stifled and the Philippine blogosphere will become the new Radyo Bandido, who will be our June Keithley?

Filipinos just love sequels, and in the process, we romanticize them too. We have the speeches, the communists, and of course, the jokes. We've got nostalgia for the Diliman Commune. I am not playing the efforts down, but I guess I'm not ready for another. 1986 was yellow versus red with nothing in between. I was nine years old. If you're not for Cory then you're automatically for Marcos. That was how divided we were then, you can see a solid line running across Philippine society. Previously it's a matter of timing and I'd go where my parents stood, but now I stay away by choice.

It's a different case when colors mingle with each other and we are left with an undesirable shade of muck. Cory in bed with Jinggoy and Imee? Blech. The so-called middle class just won't buy it. I have qualms calling myself part of the middle class. Maybe I am because I take a day job and I am taxed. And I, well, have plans of working abroad too. But that's for another discussion. It's just that the middle class maybe facing extinction, and we don't sell that well and we have no plans of marketing ourselves to the left or the right in the current situation. They can exploit the poor and the rich would take sides where profit is higher. And the middle class, we just let ourselves be. The advantage of being in the middle is that the view is better. We can see who is doing who with what. We've tasted totalitarianism in the offices we work for--forbidden internet sites, unpaid overtime hours, cutesy-wootsy newsletter writing and crackdowns on plans to set up a union. Proclamation 1017, bring it on.

Yet we are ambivalent and would not want to miss another opportunity without being opportunistic. The sad part is that we're waiting for somebody with credibility, or at the minimum the charisma to lead us or at least be our anchor, like frizzy-haired Cory back in 1986. Seeing Guingona and Alcuaz waving a United Middle Class banner makes me cringe. Our criteria is not as high as Che Guevarra but I think that would be a bonus.

I just hope it won't take another twenty years, as my application for immigrant visas are much shorter.

Experience is one thing you can't get for nothing.

2006-02-24T17:18:00.000+08:00

Dresden. Windows to Europe.

Meet Poppa Justify, some say he's my conscience, or the remnant of a friendless childhood.

me: I shouldn't have done this sidetrip to Holland. It's on short notice and people are not available to get me around.
Poppa Justify: At least you can get things in order after you did Hamburg.
me: Ja, but their headcount resources are limited too.
PJ: Well, at least you have a timeline to start with.
me: It's not yet firm and I'm being rushed by my principals.
PJ: Not rushed rushed like in your former job though.
me: I'm sitting on my desk all day and waiting for somebody to show up.
PJ: You went on a sidetrip on your second week and there are no people to show you around the factory and you're being rushed by your principals. Why not leave the office early? They're not strict with the time right?
me: Yes, that will be my plan for today. I'll leave after lunch.
PJ: At least you got to explore a great part of Europe.
me: Yes. My glass is half full.

Hacked the concept off a Dilbert cartoon. Quote from Oscar Wilde.

***

Just because I'm out of the country doesn't mean I'm insulated with what's going on. First a disaster and then a pseudo-issue. Something which my principals treat as a conversation piece and with headlines in CNN, two blows to the national self-esteem. Not really, I think. We were always on the sidelines unlike Incredible India or Cyprus: The Island for All Seasons, so there were no high expectations to live up to in the first place. (Coos) It's alright, it's alright.

Tomorrow and I'm flying back and all I can say is...back to reality.

Pi according to a Pilipino

2006-02-21T17:14:00.000+08:00

Luis Lorenzana, a Manila-based artist was shortlisted for a competition to find an illustrator for a new edition of Life of Pi, Yann Martel's Booker Prize-winning novel, out of 600 entries. His work along with 14 others will be required to submit three more illustrations before determining an overall winner this April.

He went out of his way to read the book inside a bookstore (just like what I did for some good readings as Einstein's Dreams) because he didn't have money to spend for it (just like most Filipinos do) but everything turned out fine.

"I never bought the book. When the competition came to my knowledge, I didn’t have any cents in my pocket but I wanted to enter so I went to the bookstore four days in a row to read it. I’m happy to be shortlisted. I put a lot of work in: it’s a long walk to the bookstore! My illustration is entitled The Greatest Show on Earth — it shows the scene where Pi is taming Richard Parker. It is full of emotion, conflict and excitement. Pi could die at that moment. I wanted to emphasise the space between them; to capture the intensity of the tiger and the mix of coolness and terror in Pi.
I use all sorts of media, but this was done by layering acrylic paint on paper. I wanted to make it look old and blurred, to fit the magical, mysterious effect of Pi’s story. I plan a completely different style to illustrate the alternative story that Pi tells at the end." [Times Online]

I'm in a dilemma here, because I'm rooting for Sophia Hanover's illustration as well as Victor Tkachenko's because of their not-so-children's-bookish approach. Luis' reminds me of an ancient fresco, or an antique turn-of-the-century print. Enough of the pseudo-artistic language, out of national pride, go Luis!

via bibliobibuli

***

Tschüss Hamburg! I'm now in nippy Nijmegen.

Journal von Hamburg in den Abbildungen

2006-02-17T10:20:00.000+08:00

The central station of Hamburg, aka Hamburg Hauptbahnhof or simply Hamburg Hbf. How I wished that was the view from my hotel window.

Impressive facade, this Hotel Reichshof.

Inside it I have this instead:

which opened to a view of the room on the other side. May naghuhubad pag gabi...lalake nga lang.

I don't know why they broadcast sex adverts at 5:30am (to tease the morning wood perhaps) but I learned my Deutsche numerals from them, in the sultriest voice possible.

My camera, used to the tropics and Third World heat, wasn't cooperative in subzero Hamburg, and so are my hands. The Hamburg Rathaus (buti pa ang mga daga, may palasyo).

Just realized that most of my shots were of the hotel, the hotel elevator and the theater beside the hotel. I had some shots at downtown Monckebergstrasse that said "I was here!" but pretentiousness got the better of me, even if it's forgivable in blogs. Oh well, later. Anyway I was here to work in the first place. My mind is set on Dresden, so I bought a 2-way ticket on the 18th for only 72 euros. Topic of next post.

U miss me? I miss u 2.

2006-02-11T08:28:00.000+08:00

And so I'm off to Hamburg this morning by way of Amsterdam.

Hambrrrrrg! I can feel the chill here in NAIA.

I'm blogging through my Eleanor. Forgive me this time but wi-fi and LifeDrive rok (yup, without a c.)!

The physics of stampedes

2006-02-06T13:46:00.000+08:00

With all the statements regarding the culture of mendicancy and how the establishment (read: government, media moguls, corporations) exploits the masses, perhaps the empathy for the stampede victims will increase if I echo the statement that buildings such as the ULTRA are designed with the assumption that the crowds flowing through its exits do like fluid through a pipe, and that according to David J. Low, a civil engineer in Scotland:

"This traditional approach assumes that the crowd is made up of identical, unthinking elements...A fluid particle cannot experience fear or pain, cannot have a preferred motion, cannot make decisions and cannot stumble and fall. [boston.com]"

The lack (or the absence) of a security plan and the choice of venue aside, emotions played a huge part in the tragedy that transpired last Saturday. Partly panic-driven, as a bomb scare was reported, but it was motivated more by the chance to get the prize (it was said that the host handpicks ten contenders for the million-peso pot, but gives at least a hundred pesos for a joke). Even harmless tricks such as throwing caps (e.g. April Boy Regino concerts) or posters (e.g. mall tours for movie promotions) can incite a mob and it is even suggested that performers should be aware of this responsibility.

The geek in me tried to understand the physics of stampedes in as little time as possible. While the rest of the blogosphere elicited the whole spectrum of emotions on the Saturday accident, I wanted to view it in another perspective, that which assumes less of the they're-ordinary-people-who-wanted-to-get-out-of-the-vicious-cycle-of-poverty and the-system-is-to-blame-for-what's-happening-now.

In a way, yes, the crowds behaved under the laws of fluid dynamics, like the flow of water meeting a vertical obstacle at one end. In a commentary about the stampedes that usually happen during the Haj, neo-neocon posited:

The situation, as far as I can determine, is a bit analogous to the elements that go into a tsunami, strangely enough. That is, a huge and extremely powerful force (in the case of crowds, the moving people; in the case of tsunamis, the moving water) is initially spread out horizontally. Then, some sort of blockage impedes that horizontal movement and converts it, at least partially, into a vertical one.

It's a situation you can almost see everyday if you ride the MRT during rush hour: the crowd mills around the entrance to the car--not your usual falling-in-line routine back in grade school, in the shape of an arch. Years ago I commuted daily from Cubao to Makati and found that by positioning myself directly in front of the train door, I have the same chance of, and even lesser than, entering the train door if I sneak myself from the left or right of it. And in desperate times when I know that I will be late, these latter positions work to my advantage. I guess most people think likewise.

Increase the panic level of that MRT scenario a thousand times or ten and you have a Wowowee situation. People wanted to enter the stadium at once, but the entrance is narrow. All the left, right and central positions are occupied and the last people to join are pushing the ones near the entrance. And that may be where the verticality of the movement came in. The weak ones near the entrance may have given in--the old, the women, the children--forming the human base of the stampede from where the latter ones step on to get inside, dying with a force of almost half a ton from compressive asphyxia as more bodies pile up. This is of course, assuming that the casualties are concentrated at the entrance (I can't find any details on this from the news).

The guard rail giving in was also expected. Due to leaning and pushing, it became a set of toothpicks or a stack of cards against a crowd of fifty or sixty (?) thousand. From an Australian study, under a simulated panic, a "crowd" of five is capable of developing a force of 3430 newtons, a force a third of a ton against a guardrail. Multiply it ten thousand times and the force is unimaginable, short of releasing a TNT in the center of the city.

I could go on and on, but what is the point of this entry?

There is science in crowd management, and it doesn't hurt if we understand it, however complex it may be, it only boils down to two things: crowds behave like fluid flow (from placidity to turbulence) and emotions play a decisive role in how people behave in crowds.

I almost wanted to agree with the benevolence of a radio announcer I heard last Saturday afternoon, except for the air he had put upon himself so high--these people only knew that they wanted to get in and won't know about crowd management. Somebody had to be responsible for them and that somebody was not there.

Knowing what a mess the tragedy made out of us (we're in the New York Times!), stampedes are a global phenomenon, and it is not confined to the Third World or "only in the Philippines." I'm not schadenfreuding about it (the closest term I can think of), but let's look beyond the national self-esteem and let's get back to work. My only fear is that after all the pinpointing has subsided and this tragedy has lost its top spot to another tragedy or scandal, we haven't learned our lesson well and are bound to repeat it in the future.

*Stampede model lifted here.

**I've been planning to revive my Skythologies series. What a way to start.

Do paranoids dream of electric beeps? Maybe not.

2006-02-03T17:32:00.000+08:00

To continue with the piercing statement, I still have my reservations about this, inasmuch as I cringed and ran away when I saw the gun they use for ear piercing somewhere in Glorietta. Paranoiac that I am, if a security breach has happened on my chip implant and I need to get it out, even if it is just beneath the webby skin between my thumb and forefinger, I might faint at the sight of blood and raw tissue (the reason why I rejected the idea of becoming a doctor even if there is a willing benefactor).

Engineering experience also taught me that most chips start to get wonky on their third year. You should notice that you want to change your phone by the second year or so, and that new models also come out every once in a while. Market-driven, perhaps, or Moore's Law or some chicken-or-the-egg arguments. I don't want to be implanted every now and then, but a general anesthesia would be nice, thank you.

And just to ground myself and to remind you that even if I drift from stamen to stamen I still go back to the hive.

Yes, my story will be published in Edge according to Dean and Ern. Heh, old news, but thanks for the congratulatory messages.

Last Sunday, while thinking what to read next after Memories of my Melancholy Whores, a package arrived from Canada. Thanks, Gelay for Persepolis! Devoured it on the same day.

On an earlier episode, Changing Planes was my first read of the year, and my introduction to Ursula Le Guin. Now I can boldly go to Earthsea.

And even on an earlier, earlier episode, I closed the year with The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, and I'm worshipping at the Murakami altar again with Kafka on the Shore.

Some Etgar Keret too. Check out Halibut.

Opinions (ok, reviews--too high schoolish) later.

My jacket smells like money.

2006-01-30T16:36:00.000+08:00

Old money, like the five-peso bill that was released en masse after the February Revolution. I think it's more of the incompatibility of Downy with anything Made in China. Or that the jacket is more suitable to winter, ergo, a lesser trip to the laundry.

Ok ba sa segue, winter? I'll be going somewhere below zero degrees, alone. I laughed at David Sedaris' self-deprecation but it's nipped quite early knowing you're the one who introduced me to him. Your and my absence glorified, and we'll have to wait till March.

I feel so Neruda lately, and Residence on Earth is on my wishlist. Some Rilke and Lorca too. If I find something from Heights by some Ateneo folks, then everything's complete, at least for the moment. If last year I hunched that someday I will get Published, this year I boldly declare that I can dwell in Poetry once again.

I made some, too. Poets sing about the grief, like I did for Loneliness and Leaving, lately.

I think I should take Spanish, the deeper one, to understand what goes on inside Senor Pablo's head and why he's popular with today's youth. And Gabriel Garcia Marquez too. Who knows what will I reveal if I read Memoria de mis putas tristes from cover to cover than the (slightly overpriced) Grossman-translated Memories of My Melancholy Whores which I devoured in one sitting?

People who've read say it's like Lolita, but I've never read Nabokov and this is also the first time that I take interest in young-women relationships (stories, that is; in true life, I'm always the young initiate). If you're horse-hung and single and this eve you will turn ninety, what gift do you give yourself? Add to that, you only knew love as paid love and not what it ought to be (but I digress, since I don't believe in luuurve at this moment). I don't have anything against aged, oldschool thinking and the tried and tested answer was always, get a whore. But this time there was novelty: a fourteen year old virgin. What happened next is a series of profundity which one can't avoid: at last you got what you always wanted when you were a horny teener, what would you do with it? Prudence dictates staring at it is the best thing, the touch kept at a minimum, because at that age, you should have learned so much, and your EQ is already short of shooting through the roof. Something inside me stirred that if I should reach that age given the conditions I am in, hmmm well-hung and single and old--I don't know, I really don't know.

Which led me into a moment of introspection: this year I will be turning into my third decade, what present should I give myself? Getting something which I pined during childhood doesn't excite me anymore. Too little too late. At this age I still fear getting old, and the intellectual wealth that I will be accumulating does not diminish it, but the sensation of shrinking inside my body, sense by sense and bone by bone intensifies it. Therefore, it should be something that reminds me that I still have a body.

A piercing somewhere, perhaps.

(I don't know now what this has to do with the jacket, like Chekhov's shotgun, but this is not a short story anyway. I'm trying to write in a nonlinear fashion, and all I managed were dots and dashes in somebody else's telegram.)

WB4 deadline extended!

2006-01-20T16:21:00.001+08:00

To February 4.

So you'll have more time to go to the movies, ogle at Starstruck finalists and hunt for arthouse films in Quiapo.

Changing planes

2006-01-19T16:25:00.000+08:00

Ay, January na pala?

Ay?

Horoscopes seem to be self-fulfilling. It's like saying you want this or that for Christmas and you actually get that as your holiday gift. I wished for a Tefal pan and I got one. Talk about will power.

This January the boss should have recognized my skills and reward me for it, and that I should be serious in my work. Therefore the absence in the blogosphere. Therefore the limited internet time during office hours. And soon, more overtime work (therefore more money for a Europe sidetrip). I don't know, it just wore on me. This year I should get a transfer, a promotion or even a new job.

And what I unconsciously do is remind myself to finish my resume intended for a career change which is at some points, geographic and dramatic.

Then there was this tabloid warning that those of us born in the year of the Dragon should avoid anonymous sex because we are prone to STD this year.

But wait, it's the Chinese zodiac isn't it? And Chinese New Year's Eve falls on the 29th of January.

Dragons, you have 10 days to go before the bug catches you!

No horoscope told me that I'll be a cartoon this year. Wait, this is not a cartoon. This is a portrait.

Pinoy Book Reviews Issue 7

2005-12-29T12:01:00.000+08:00

To be honest, I’ve never been through a book launch before; authors were arcane professors who spoke an ancient language that need unabashed attention (some still do). Crowds suffocate me too, which fortified my aversion to such events. Much more one tied up with a graphic novel and a comic book launch, in which I expected a mass convergence of Magic enthusiasts, Comic Quest habitués and computer assemblers from Virra Mall. The pack was heterogeneous; I was mistaken.

Read more.

The principal's office

2005-12-27T17:22:00.000+08:00

Melanie Chartoff, Parker Lewis Can't Lose's Ms. Musso, is an inventor din pala. According to her bio,

Along with a partner, she's developed and patented a simple graywater recycling device which enables homeowners to reuse their shower water for irrigation.

Galing. Naalala nyo pa ba kung sinu-sino sila?

*pic lifted here.

PS. I've enabled comment moderation recently to fend off spammers. So if you didn't see the comment you posted, please wait for my approval.

Warm Bodies Goes to the Movies!

2005-12-23T01:18:00.000+08:00

Is Love, Actually always on your playlist? Do you still have a betamax copy of An American Tail, or a rented Carlo Caparas massacre opus that you forgot to return? What is your view on piracy, local filmfests, porn? Are you related to an artista, had a close brush with Tom Cruise or Tom Babauta, or was paid to appear as an extra in Mangarap Ka? Did you know the name of the bridge where Snooky jumped in Bata Pa Si Sabel? Do you like watching movies alone?

The theme for Warm Bodies 4, Warm Bodies Goes to the Movies, will focus on the artistas and movie fans within us bloggers. Posts related to movies, and showbusiness in general, are welcome to enter the fourth edition of Warm Bodies, and not just the standard movie review fare of the latest Harry Potter flick. The rules are still the same, you have been advised somewhere else, but there will be no wordcount limits this time. We won’t accept poems but if you did a good job in making poetry out of Rene Requiestas’ life (well, for everything else too) then we will consider it seriously.

Send your entries to Sky at oscaralvarezjrATNOSPAMgmailDOTcom with the subject WB4: (post title). We will not be accepting attachments of any kind; you can e-mail your post directly if it is short and sweet, plus the URL of the post for us to validate, or to make it easy on you, just the URL alone and it’s all done.

The last day for submission of entries will be on a Monday midnight, 23 January 2006. Please spread the word; we’re giving you the liberty to post these wonderful teasers courtesy of Johnbert/Happy Sushi.

When an elephant comes at your window, swim for it

2005-12-22T13:43:00.000+08:00

I've finished an article to be submitted to Pinoy Book Reviews and asked mananalaysay (of Peyups editorship fame) for a buyoff. Falling short of giving him nausea, he said his pov in one word and nicely at it: grammer. It's a grain of sand with the mass of a planet.

If there is one other thing, aside from disjoint storylines and pretentious voicing that I am guilty of, atrocious grammar is a crime I silently commit. Reading through my past entries I still don't have an inkling if my tenses had been correct. Even right now I feel that somewhere in these paragraphs a verb is having an identity crisis if it is past perfect or past perfect continuous, of which the latter's concept I only knew yesterday. His advice (err, advise?) is read, read, read. Which I of course do, except that I don't pay much attention to the structure of the sentences. His prescriptions: English Page and Common Errors in English.

Anyhow, I'm not alone. I am still appalled, but quite unsure of myself now more than ever, why choirs never learn:

Joy to the world, the Lord is come.

And the moral police hasn't lifted a finger for years!

***

Ever seen a real thumb drive*? The top 10 weirdest USB drives ever.

How much is true love worth come Christmas time? $29,322.80, via Ambeth Ocampo.

Church of the Holy Sacrifice will be declared a national historic landmark next year. Dean Juinio and a young David Consunji executed its dome structure fifty years ago (insert school pride here). In other things UP, I've heard that a group of women also marched in the buff in this year's Oblation Run. Can somebody verify?

The top 100 sci-fi stories of all time, at least, on their side of the world. Arr, where is Kage Baker's Studio Dick Drowns Near Malibu? I've only read one: Arthur C. Clarke's The Sentinel. I have Isaac Asimov's Nightfall, Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder and Clarke's The Nine Billion Names of God waiting to be read in my hard drive and I'm dying to get a copy of Daniel Keyes' Flowers For Algernon.

Stumble! If you have a Firefox browser and too much time in your hands, install this wonderful extension. Great for those days when you run out of blogs to read or when your aggregator is down. Just look for eyes at your back first. The outcomes of my stumbles are serendipitous even though the database is probably small, and most links are safe for work (did I hear somebody say darn?).

And what is this? Guidelines to follow. Shoutout to johnbert for the fab design.

*pic taken from the same site.

This thing called Library Thing

2005-12-12T11:22:00.000+08:00

Great way to show off my books (no Harry Potters, sorry!). The potential is so enormous for book borrowers (I don't put them on the shelf for display--coffee table books take care of that, but salaula borrowers beware). OC me had to go through the whole list on a single book to find out which one exactly matches what I have, and I found out that most of them, the imported titles at least, came by way of Australia. Local titles meanwhile, are hard to find except for FSJ's Viajero.

Time to exchange Library Thing catalog links. Here's mine. What's yours?

There's a widget for my book catalog (not yet full; I have a houseful of books to get this into, fyi) which went to my sidebar.

via bibliobibuli.

PS. I'm still gathering steam to write about the booklaunch last Saturday. Later.

UPDATE: Arrrrgh! I forgot that I've sold my PC last Saturday and the new one will arrive *probably* this week. My camera can't communicate with Eleanor anyhow, so I'll make a late post of the pictures. To see some pics in the book launch, go here. Yep, that's me in the vertical stripes.

TC

Thinking twice

2005-11-30T13:26:00.000+08:00

My computer will be passed on this week to another user less demanding, and hopefully, very careful of this 3-year old, 30GB HDD Pentium III 933 MHz artifact. It has served me well, especially its monitor which enabled me to create the colors I wanted for my pictures. At the same time, while I took care of other specifics for the new PC, I seem to be feasting on dichotomies these days:

black or white?
I went for the all-black casing, as the white ones yellow over time, or drab grey if you're living in the city. I don't think heat absorption would be an issue.

LCD or CRT?
My hp700 CRT was great, but real estate is precious in the house. LCD is a very good candidate with its small footprint plus its energy efficiency, but it comes at a price. My bad, I asked the phphoto yahoogroup for advice, and looks like the LCD vs CRT is a classic battle that sprouts every now and then, just like monitor and printer calibration. Most photogs lean towards the CRT as its technology is already mature and is cheap. What made me decide on CRT just at this point was this:

So maybe not all lcd's are created equal, some are better than others. If you got the money to spend, buy the best you can and then calibrate if necessary, if money is an issue maybe you can scale back to crt first so that you won't have to worry as much for the meantime about the colors.

DVD-RW or DVD-ROM?
Burning a DVD given my budget and processor preferences might take forever. My EQ can manage. DVD-ROM, period.

DSL or stay on dial-up?
TBD. I want to give the finger to dial-up, but the origin of the word budget was the French term for a little bag. Yep, the Christmas bonus filled the bag a bit, but a significant amount went to the nest egg. Think think think.

Then there was the barrage of domain names I thought of a hundred times before buying (which I will announce in a future date) plus the webhost and hosting package. Hands-down to ploghost, probably out of herd mentality, since Angela and Sassy and MLQ3 were on Yuga's territory.

Wordpress or Movable Type?
I'm always fearful of the unknown, and I'm poking Wordpress with a stick right now. I had the same feeling years ago with Movable Type, but due to security issues and spam comments I received in my photoblog (takes a deep breath and buys an HTML book with lots of CSS), I'd go for Wordpress.

More than a year ago I was on a similar situation: where to go for an MBA degree given that Ateneo and DLSU were the only choices due to the planetary distance of my office.

It's like choosing between boxers and briefs and there's the tempting option of wearing nothing.

Hello means Oh, Hell to me

2005-11-30T12:30:00.000+08:00

I was used to a telephone-to-employee ratio of 1:1, and if an adjacent phone was ringing, I wouldn't care less to pick it up. It was the unwritten rule, and with more than a year out of having everything within reach I still have the withdrawal symptoms from being pampered (oh what an oxymoron) inside cubicle L23.

Now my patience is wearing thin as I grapple for the communal telephone. The good news was that the ratio was down to 2:1 from a previous 4:1, when we had this rotating phone table contraption in the center that's an eyesore to boot.

Telemarketers I can kick out in five seconds flat, saying they're a major tick to my corporate existence but people looking for somebody else, especially cubicle-mates who are away, you must sound brutally nice.

"Hello, good morning. Can I speak to Dom?"
Speak to? Speak with? Speak on? I'm all lost.
Good thing that engineeringlish is around to pepper my speech just in case.
"He's not on his table."
"When will he come back?"
"I'm sorry I don't know."
"Can I leave a message? Please tell him that the supplier is already downstairs."
And I haven't even said yes. Mumble mumble mumble.
Yawns audibly, so that the caller can hear.
"Ok. Try to call again because I'm DOING SOMETHING ELSE."

Now don't tell me that the thing called manners is dead. He's now a techie guy married to a celebrity (Manners Sandejas, gets?).

Phone rings.
"Technology Development, good morning." Me in a not-so-sunny, gruffy receptionist tone, and I am not a receptionist in the first place.
"Hello, who is this?"
"HELLO, who IS this?"
I like the Dutch. They state their name once they get on the line. Goes back to the old days when every minute even for local calls counted. Obviously this is not a fellow from that side.
"I'm looking for Hans. Is he around?"
The number he is calling, is of course, not Hans'.
"Sorry, wrong number."
"Can I get his number?"
"Call the operator."
Then I hang up.

In the middle of an important meeting when the telephone rings (a terrible, terrible disturbance when everybody is picking up steam), it being a speakerphone for telecon purposes, these are my choices for opening lines:

"Southern Police District, good morning."
"Funeraria Paz, can I help you?"
"Bantay Bata."

It just works, but if the caller persists, I'd play the part.

"Ma'am, if you would be interested we have a buy-one-take-one promo on fiberglass caskets."

Engineeringlish

2005-11-25T16:07:00.000+08:00

I won't wish for the day when my son will calendarize a meeting on Outlook just to present his budget proposal for an allowance increase in the family conference room, but I know that corporate BS is creeping into me whether I like it or not. Lately my wife asked me if I am free for the rest of the week to take a leave and I said, check on my calendar if it's doable.

Down went the wifely tolerance level.

Funny how meeting attendees, if they are not the wallflower type, enact a spitting contest on who can spew out the most number of corporate lingo in an hour. They're not entirely different from guests who'd get hold of the videoke mike like it's made of gold. And there's an e-mail going around with a bingo card in which you can cross out the phrases you will hear in a typical meeting (core competency, bottomed out, pulled in, great job!). There are not so many times that I want to shout bingo but I think everybody will be winners anyway.

If there is anything to blame for the lack of english proficiency among engineers, which therefore makes engineering symposiums a pain in the ears to attend, it is engineeringlish. Pictures can speak a thousand words, but data can speak for itself. Unfortunately, engineers wanted data to construct sentences on their own too. Patch a trend graph, a few capability indices and Brown-Forsythes here and there, buy a new dress shirt (should be checkered or plaid) and khaki pants, top with engineeringlish and you have a world-class presentation? No.

We've been using the left brain for most of our lives that it's got muscles of its own, and we want everything automated. But isn't subject-verb agreement and the proper placement of apostrophes as simple as input equals output plus accumulation? Use of corporate lingo cannot hide lack of proficiency. It's like putting roses on stale fish instead of spraying air freshener. We can get away with it with the logic that since these first-world counterparts succeeded without mastering the queen's language but with corporate cliches, so can we.

We have our own worlds, thanks to inaccessible industrial zones and company confidentiality. 7,000 people are using engineeringlish at the local campus, on top of several thousands more worldwide, streaming in cyberspace and bridge meetings, so can we be wrong?

They make it to well-respected dictionaries in due time, though. I have to keep myself sane by reading a good book. I am not infallible myself and lately I was thinking, wow I sound professional spewing out "calendarize", "gain leverage" and "heads-up" but as a personal choice, a well-packaged english sits well with me without adding up to my mental clutter.

How about some low-hanging fruits?

***

Some examples:

Bottomed out: adjective. Reached the lowest of low points. Example: Our stocks have bottomed out due to 9/11, its lowest ever since the dotcom bubble burst of 2000. And you're not counting employee morale yet.

Push-out: verb. To delay. Example: You want me to push-out the QA gate again so that you'll meet delivery? Come on, Haydee, I'll assure you a bunch of test failures before this month ends.

Pull-in: verb. To accomplish tasks ahead of schedule. Example: Although the schedule was pulled-in by a week, Arnold wasn't able to escape Dado's axe as the process was still not certified for high-volume production.

Hand-to-mouth: adjective. Lack of surplus or inventory. Example: Pull-in the resolution of this process issue, Dexter. We're already hand-to-mouth; we have excess capacity in the downstreams because there are no more raw materials to process.

Productize: verb. Turn a concept into profitable reality. Example: What's the point of your traveling without forecast when the date to productize the firmware is not yet final?

Low-hanging fruits: noun. Items which are well-within reach, goals that can easily be achieved. Example: Getting that design win is one of our low-hanging fruits; we should be ready with the customer contract a workweek from now.

The f word

2005-11-21T15:40:00.000+08:00

In the engineering scene, the one word that always gets my juice is feasibility.

It sounds so fake, like an instant diploma from Recto, and amateurish like a thesis for sale alongside rush passport ID's and notary public.

The way it is pronounced is never poetry but a gnash one makes out of swallowing green putty found in your armpit (thanks, Douglas Adams).

Now some don't get it and say pee see bee lee tee. Piss off.

I prefer "make versus buy" which adds a tone of justification in it. I like the challenge of arguments in the boardroom, and branding "old school/resistant to change" to deputies and herd them like cattle on gaslift chairs back to their cubicles.

Ok, not everybody could get make versus buy, and one can escape with "business case" or "biz case" but please put SWOT analysis in the right context. It doesn't place an iota of business acumen on your head anyway.

I checked out the thesaurus for some fee see bee lee tee alternatives and found:

viability--musical and hints of life, dams and highways

possibility--too common, and is homophonic with the f word too, but I can have this anytime

probability--too statistical, it should be OK but not during presentations involving chunks of (pseudo) data as it could be the source of confusion. Talking, I mean, technical heads have the attention span of an antimatter (it was thought to exist but not yet proven).

likelihood--very country, but could serve the purpose. No bling to it though.

practicability--a mouthful, but wait till you hear...

achievability--just one of the terms we engineers, ugh, generated, alongside calendarize, doable, and productize.

Other choices include potential and acceptability, especially if I am talking about market segment share and product life cycles. Engineers are, after the profit after all.

Fee see bee lee tee. Look at it, it's up there with see fee lees. Or should I say down.

The white flag is up

2005-11-18T16:31:00.000+08:00

It's the month of water, and somehow my creative spirits have dampened, fire spirit that I am. I'm waving the white flag to Nanowrimo, halting at 1,300 words. I think it was doomed at the start anyway, as I commenced writing in another comfort zone. I took it as an opportunity, to gather as much elements as possible from the place of my birth, the roads that lead to it and the people who walk away from it. Then there was the tsunami of ideas that I want to put into, the techniques that I wanted to use, the oomph, the Chekhov shotgun. But the kids can't fend for themselves, and the dent on my side of the bed became palpable to the wife. Somebody had to fill that space. And perfectly.

There was also talk of overseas employment, only to be botched at the eleventh hour because she can still up her wifely tolerance and the conjugal take-home pay. Good thing that she wasn't jealous of Eleanor yet, bargaining her for a few rounds of solitaire while I am seeking the last ace to make way for the king. How unproductive for both of us, yet found that we can have a second shot at romance long blurred by childbirth, travel and in-laws. Everything could have been added to make the story true, and fabricated at the same time. Everything was laid down I just need to arrange the cards, busy my hands in more meaningful tasks but eventually, those hands will raise in surrender, saying "next year."

I have a bright idea, except that it is three weeks too late. I should have employed a writing buddy, much like a gym buddy who works out with you, gives you the spots and showers with you if the two of you can. There should have been likely candidates, like banzai cat or jsc, who had shaky starts but endeavoring themselves. I envision two laptops side by side, me and my writing buddy starting at the same time; taking a break, swearing, chilling, shouting profanities and praises at the same time. The silence would be punctuated by pep talks, numbers indicating word count as of the moment, and "what's another word for 'said'?"

I have qualms of producing a novel in a month. A year of smoking, a regular work-home route in suburbia and wallowing in bed like a first-class swine didn't afford me the stamina to produce a 50,000-word tome. Typical writer, except for the starvation and alcoholism part. I'm a follower of Murakami Haruki, and perhaps I'd take regular swims to boost me up. Angst and Hemingway, like social realism, is so yesterday.

The white flag is up.

Excerpt from the unexpurgated Amplified, my supposed to be Nanowrimo novel (Copyright thingy here. Don't mess with me.):

I always believed that the clouds which looked like plates stacked on top of one another crowning the peak of Mount Arayat meant that an alien spaceship is stopping over for celestial fuel, like a galactic gasoline filling station as the lifeforms hopped from one planet to the next, benevolent in sharing their advanced technologies to primitive species like the homo sapiens.

I once recalled a certain professor from the university assert this fact over national television, up to the point of proclaiming the Philippines as the new Jerusalem. With the death of my father from colon cancer at that time, there was nothing left to believe, but the stack of plates of water vapor and a natural pyramid that grew out of the central plains ambitiously scraping the northern sky.

I drove southwards along the Cagayan Valley Road, always looking to my right as the mountain spent much of my views up until the interchange hours later, like a nagging boil way past its bursting stage. It stared at me, a dormant volcano, like the portrait of Christ as The Eye. I was always within its line of sight, and I regarded it not with threat or menace, but as a beacon and a sign of permanence. Seven changes of mailing address, blank spaces on the telephone number field in filing forms, shame instead of pride of place, right after the death of my father, Agustin Castro Sr. Nothing seemed to be permanent except my mother's depression, and Mount Arayat was always there to remind me that once, the elder Castro carried me in his lap on the way to Baler on board a battered Pantranco bus. The words aircondition, video on board, and deluxe were still twenty years away as we made the trip back to hometown, my first since I became aware of distance and travel and roads and night and day. Maria, my mother seated herself in the aisle seat. Boxes bearing the names of Romana and Gaudencio Guerrero were huddled underneath, bearing plantains, charcoal, old clothes, paper, curling irons, ammonia, hair dye, blank hardbound diaries, magazines and magazine clippings of Rosemarie Sonora and Helen Gamboa, salted eggs, tuyo, daing, malagkit rice tied in plastic bags, a soldering gun, spare transistors, batteries and several types of screwdrivers.

I always complained of my mother's packrat habit, since the volume we traveled from Manila to Baler and vise versa were always the same, only the contents changed. We were never merchants who traded manufactured goods from the big city to the small coastal town whose only claim to fame was a Commonwealth president, but my mother's compulsion proved useful during those times when landslides lay siege to most vehicles in the Baler-Bongabon Road especially during November, off the typhoon season for the whole country but entirely different to Baler, a coastal town in the eastern rim of Luzon. The Sierra Madre mountain range shields the rest of the island from Pacific typhoons and takes much of the storm's iron fists heroically so that the central plain, the rice granary can continue with its work.

"There was a legend that Mount Arayat, once part of the Caraballo mountain range, drifted away overnight. Greedy people took much of its forest cover, which made the god of the mountain angry, so he moved it away to a part of Pampanga where he can have some space." I looked time and again to my right while driving and talking to Val, my lone companion for this trip long after most of the friends in my circle backed out due to the rigors of a two-hundred thirty-two drive through the intestine roads of Sierra Madre.

"Perhaps he doesn't like to have somebody pierce his personal bubble." Val interjected with his corporate core competency development jargon.

"Most likely. Would you like to pierce a once-active volcano? I'm sure it's a different level of bubble burst." I continued turning my head to the right.

"A legend is a legend. You should know. Plate tectonics. Seams on the eastern and western sides of the island of Luzon push to make the mountain ranges we have today and the anomaly that is Mount Arayat is a hotspot, a via of hot volcanic material spouting out in the middle like a navel." Val was animated as he recalled his geology days.

"Val Regente, geology board topnotcher two thousand and two. As the earth's navel Mount Arayat held a mystical charm, the geological match to the energy of Kundalini."

"You and your stacked plate UFO's again."

Just then a monitor lizard was about to cross the highway.

"Jesus Christ!" I pressed on the brake.

"Soplaaaa, soplaaaaa!" I muttered as I regained my composure and gained speed.

"That's just an effing lizard, crossing the street, Augus. Like the proverbial chicken. And I've heard it tastes like one." Val tensed, and attempted a resumption to our previous conversation.

The lizard continued with its gait, a serpent with four feet. Except for fish, I had an unexplainable fear of anything with scales, cold and moving. The superstition was phobia's bonus.

"Val, maybe you haven't known. Monitor lizards crossing the street are a sign of bad luck."

"And you muttered something. Sopla?" He was cool.

"I'm not sure what it meant. Related to suplado I guess. To uncatch attention, probably. God, I hope we can make it back to Quezon City by six tonight." I was getting worried. One of the rear tires exploded while we were cruising the north Luzon expressway and we had to buy a new tire in Plaridel. I suspect that this will give in if...

Brown and Tagged: Philippine Spec Fic Anthology

2005-11-11T15:46:00.000+08:00

(I know this is so late an entry but can't blame me for catching up with work, as in work with salaries and time-ins thingy.)

Volume 1! So this might be the Philippine's answer to The Year's Best Science Fiction. But then again, everything with a Philippine sense of wonder, not just hard sci fi, is inside.

Can't find my name here? I'm too paranoid so a pseudonym is in place. Book launch at Fully Booked Greenhills on December 10, along with two other creations, Siglo: Passion and Project: Hero.

Like what they say during Film Fest season: "Suportahan ang literaturang Pilipino!"

Nothing but water

2005-11-07T14:33:00.000+08:00

Warning: Images galore. Pump up your browser engines.

We got to spend the long weekend plus approved vacation leaves plus forced leaves plus another long weekend stranded due to bad roads here.

And you thought the sea was venerable and inviting.

Amper Beach, on the other side looked surreal, as the giant smooth stones resembled a beach on another planet. The strong waves caused by a local weather disturbance looked menacing, but was lovely as to be photographed by my brother. It could have been a surfer's paradise but slamming into sharp outcrops is out of the story.

We ended up eating katti, boiled freshwater snails in calamansi juice.

Too dainty to be sucked like kuhol, so safety pins came in handy. Like butong pakwan however, the joy of eating katti is in bringing out the snail's meat and piling several in a heap before spooning them like escargot.

Crabs too, in thick coconut milk and fiddlehead ferns. If possible, marry one.

Blurred. Damn hands, can't wait to take a snip of those crabbies.

Aurora is euphorbia country.

My dad has several rows of these succulents, locally known as koronang tinik. I had three plants in my garden in Laguna which he gave earlier but never knew that such would demand high prices, and that euphorbia robbery has become rampant in Baler that a special permit was now required if one is to ship large amounts of it outside the province.

And finally, aside from me, the other famous person to be baptized in this historic church was MLQ3's grandfather. Teehee.

Nanowrimo? What Nanowrimo? 700 words as of today.

Hi, Atus. Me Sky

2005-10-27T17:55:00.000+08:00

From one weekend to the next. If I find a suitable connection in the gorges I'll update The White Papers. And to get the NaNoWriMo thing started. I will be *very* back on the second week of November.

Will the real Argee Guevarra please stand up?

2005-10-25T19:28:00.000+08:00

I've seen some women swoon, throwing virtual panties at his page. I felt like reading straight from an FHM Philippines Mag, and now his blog, Mr. Pogi Points can't be found.

For those of you too young to know, Argee was the former Collegian writer who coined the term "pogi points".

Takes a deep breath

2005-10-25T16:33:00.000+08:00

I'm in. Good thing that Eleanor is around.

What is your planet?

2005-10-25T16:25:00.000+08:00

I hope it's the same as mine.

Seems that everybody is complaining of the heat except us here in Laguna, and yet we don't have an ammonia atmosphere. Am I sure I'm on the same planet as you are?

Diziziiit! Warm Bodies 3: Nostalgia Galore

2005-10-21T14:44:00.000+08:00

Memory is a funny thing. By its very nature, it is only something that you can appreciate when all is said and done. During the time that the memory is being created, when the very event itself is unfolding, you are in the moment – the ever-real present, the actual, the “now”. You are in the midst of life, your life, and more important than storing something as a future recollection is actually enjoying that instant of unfolding time.

--from an introduction by Dean Alfar

Click on the image to download or click here. A million thanks to Dean, and Oliver Pulumbarit for the cover artwork. And of course to the participants. See you in WB4!

Am I prophetic or what?

2005-10-19T17:18:00.000+08:00

hugms. Some bluetooth-enabled hugging machine.

December 10.

Soon you'll know.

(not WB3, fyi).

I think I've written "soon" too much. It's written on my forehead. I'm marrying it. Soon.

Coming soon to a URL near you

2005-10-18T12:57:00.000+08:00

Star Trek, isdachu?

2005-10-17T13:24:00.000+08:00

Just when we were discussing about LCD technology, electronic graffiti and moving postcards, check this out: paper-thin TV screens.

And coming out soon to a keypad near you: TV on Mobile. Speaking of, something which would dress my Eleanor up to the nines.

***

You thought we had lots of time in our hands.

me: may naisip lang ako
some engineer who wants himself called MTP: anu?
me: going back to filipinos being special...
me: parang masyado tayong busy na i-assure ang sarili natin na ok maging filipino
me: pero ang mga kapitbahay natin global na ang view nila.
me: mag-ka-college sa new york, magre-research sa italy about the renaissance.
MTP: childhood interrupted kasi tayo e
me: kasi inisip ko, masyado tayong busy maglinis ng bahay yung iba lumilipat na
MTP: nakikita ko ang tuldok mo
me: kitams
MTP: pero in a way the article says a lot of things about how pinoys are already global...
me: tingin ko marketing lang ang problema talaga. sad to say, di nag-a-apply ang bad publicity is still publicity sa atin.
me: Panspermia is the theory that seeds of life exist throughout the universe and that life on Earth arose when those seeds landed on our planet eons ago.
MTP: marketing nga lang. tingnan mo ang thailand at malaysia. ang galing magmarket ng tourism industry nila
me: true
MTP: saka dun sa book na 1000 places to see before you die, 3 lang daw ang galing sa pinas. mas marami pa ang thailand at vietnam
me: anong book yan?
MTP: 1000 places to see before you die nga
me: 1000 lang?
me: In evolutionary biology, the Red Queen Hypothesis states that a species must constantly be moving (adapting and evolving) in order to stay in the same place (remain in existence).
me: pwede na akong promil kid
MTP: pwede
MTP: nabasa mo na ba ang childhood's end?
me: hindi. parang ayoko.
MTP: why?
me: parang harsh eh
MTP: anyway. may view ako na parang ganun nangyari sa pinoy kaya ang worldview niya hindi global in the western sense
me: please expound
MTP: the title of the book implies that the human race is a child. and the overtakers came here to nurture that child
MTP: tapos nung ready na yung child, they welcomed that child into the wider galactic community of beings. kaya childhood's end
me: may mga concept din syang ganyan sa rama
MTP: oo nga. paulit ulit lang naman siya e. ganyan din sa 2001.
me: oo nga paulit-ulit. kainis.
MTP: anyway, back to pinoys, ang tingin ko naman hindi childhood's end. childhood interrupted nga
me: in-interrupt ni bonifacio
MTP: pwede, pero sa view ko in-interrupt ng mga colonizers
me: yung isang tingin ko naman, benevolent ang mga colonizers. benevolent assimilation remember?
MTP: kasi watak-watak noon, tapos pinag-sama-sama under one banner ang mga islands. hindi hinayaang either magdevelop into an archipelago of nations or an archipelago of one nation on its own
me: isang libo't isang tuwa
MTP: mula appari hanggang jolo
MTP: ayun. so walang integrated worldview ang pinoy ngayon. hilaw
MTP: di tulad ng japan, na archipelago rin, pero may sense of one-ness
me: there was a time na naisip ko what can possibly change the philippines is a civil war, or any event at the cataclysmic level.
MTP: sino ang maglalaban? tagalogs vs others?
MTP: hehe
me: pwede.
me: tapos sasamantalahin ng mindanao ang kaguluhan para magkaroon na ng bangsamoro
me: para madali nang mangibang-bansa di ba? sakay ka lang ng bus, nasa ibang lupalop ka na.
MTP: maganda yan. tapos in the end may leader na mag-yu-unite ng united states of the philippines
MTP: united islands
me: hmmm...mas gusto ko ata greater east asia co-prosperity sphere. he he he.
MTP: tapos magiging philippine dollar na ang pera
me: baguhin na rin ang pangalang philippines. kasi the civil war will be a time of high patriotic emotions.
MTP: Hinirang!
MTP: revolutionary president si dean. yihee

Thank you, India

2005-10-14T17:13:00.000+08:00

At last, the preparations for the third installment is drawing to a close. I was getting inquiries from every other blogger when will WB3 come out. Hold on to your horses, kids, it will be this October. Quite a tedious preparation pala, this anthology activity. I learned the ropes from Dean Alfar, by actually participating in his call for spec fic.

The editing process in itself is exhausting, since some of the participants are within six degrees of separation from the editors, so assigning them to a neutral person was the way to go, except for one participant that all three of us knew personally. We ended up getting her entry more for the je ne sais quoi. I mean, how it elicits nostalgia. Nostalgia galore, remember?

Letters of acceptance, for the first time, were also sent, and reading how happy the participants felt, I placed my hand on my chest and breathed a sigh. We made someone's day. We weren't able to send letters of rejection because we've been busied with editing already. Er, honestly, we're in denial. We don't want to reject but it has to be done, except that we don't want them to know, or maybe we will send them as soon as WB3 gets published. We really don't know. We even have qualms if we really have the right to reject, given that we are just a bunch of believers in the literary potential of the Philippine blogosphere.

Now if WB3 comes out, don't be intimidated with some of the names. They're not there for the purpose of validation. Tangentially, yes because that is the way of the world but all we wanted was to cast the net wider. Think of it as alignment--no need to feel small even though you're standing side by side with giants doing the do-si-do. Smell the bromide?

To all the participants, readers and lurkers, thank you. Because we're a living organism there will be changes again. Soon you'll know, but first let us give birth to this third issue.

*Push*

After the storm

2005-10-13T10:02:00.000+08:00

But I hear only your voice, your voice
soars with the zing and precision of an arrow,
it drops with the gravity of rain

Pablo Neruda
You sing, and your voice peels...

The ones that never knock

2005-10-07T12:28:00.000+08:00

While sighting those uniformed crew with Lancel luggages at a Kaohsiung airport lounge two years ago, I blurted these words to myself:

In an alternate universe where I am still single, I am a male flight stewardess.

Now who's got an issue with lady dentists?

On being Henry II

2005-10-06T17:44:00.000+08:00

Eleanor of Aquitaine has brought a profound change in my life. She is my new Undo.

I am adjusting now to the smell of new electronic gadget. She hasn't replaced my olfactory affinity towards ink on bookpaper and freshly-dispensed tape, but she comes close very much like the scent of a lemon on the verge of ripening. A newly-opened box of Nokia smells just the same.

Then there is the adjustment between pulp and electrons--and voices. On a clear day, I'm friends with the TPB's: Karen Haber's Science Fiction: The Best of 2003 and Asimov's Foundation. Or James Patrick Kelly's The Best Christmas Ever and The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy audiobooks.

For those times when I have to seclude everything from my prude born-again Christian creationist homophobic New-Orleans-deserved-it-because-it's-gay carpool driver, particularly Anne Rice' The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty and a solitaire game (anything with cards would probably mean gambling to him), Eleanor is ready to lend her veil of discretion.

I think I am suffering from sequel fatigue after Rice. The novel is one big BDSM play--I am left with nothing on but a hard desire and not getting any in the end, ergo wanting for more which will come in the second installment, which will go on till the third. I hate her now more than ever when Interview with the Vampire and The Mummy or Ramses the Damned left me with sensual flatness. Every point in the curve is a climax that rising to a climactic climax is like pissing into the ocean. Not a bit up in the saltiness level. (But why am I coming back to Rice?)

Not reading The Garden of Rama in Clarke's The Rama Chronicles did not make a dent either when I topped it off with Rama Revealed. Monmouth may be right anyway. Like Gibson's Idoru, each sequel can very well stand on its own. But it doesn't make me grab the nearest 2/3 of Rice' Sleeping Beauty.

So I'm off to reading electronic shorts and anthologies starting with Philip K. Dick's The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford and Other Classic Stories. Or standalones like Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, which I've put on and off from the time I acquired Eleanor.

Interactive. A soon-to-be published spec fic was edited inside her, while a dragon fic and a slipstream are next in line. And so are selections for Warm Bodies 3, finishing touches on the way. Did I mention that she gives me space?

4GB oh boy I could marry her.

Life in a northern town

2005-10-03T10:52:00.000+08:00

There's something very spec fic about this crag, but then again something along the fantasy line happened here in reel life.

Make a guess, please. The town is Narvacan, Ilocos Sur. Name the movie.

Stweeps!

2005-09-29T13:30:00.000+08:00

Lookie!

My first and only action fig was a GI Joe character named Beach Head. After losing his tubes I lost interest in these muscled dolls and pondered on their purpose. Barbies on steroids? Digital camera came too late, and my sense of humor has yet to mature twelve years later.

In other news, I've setup Fire Water Husband: Leave. Shoot. Eat. I've finally found a way to marry photography, food and design (is marriage allowed for more than two parties?). I was inspired by Good Housekeeping's centurygothicked cookbook series. Time, or the lack of it, is but another matter so lower your expectations, thank you. Takes too long to load in dial-up, but the photo dimensions are made that way.

Vigan-bound tomorrow evening.

Can I?

2005-09-28T16:30:00.000+08:00

Would I? Should I?

You got me wrapped around your finger

2005-09-26T16:37:00.000+08:00

Can I have my cake and eat it too?

2005-09-23T08:39:00.000+08:00

Strange, I find Heny Sison sexy. She's up there in my pantheon alongside Nigella Lawson, Monica Belluci, Kylie Minogue, Pearlsha Abubakar and Cindy Kurleto.

Dreaming of gravlax

2005-09-22T11:23:00.000+08:00

One recent addition to my comfort food list is a combo plate of ebi tempura and salmon sashimi. This was my last meal before I boarded my Singapore plane back to Manila. When an itch for travel or a yearning for the Lion City crawls under my skin, I run to Tokyo Tokyo for a cheap form, and make do with its malnourished version of the raw fish. Then the scene is transformed into a hole-in-the-wall in the Raffles basement, and the waitress, a Japanese woman who aged gracefully in the tropical weather, hands me my bill in silence.

Just yesterday I discovered gravlax. It's not the drug for constipation, but if you didn't do the recipe right it might be. It's not smoked salmon we see in hotel buffets, but one cured in dill (or in this case, lemon verbena or lemongrass) and salt for two or three days. Just a slice and I smell Scandinavia what it ought to be in my imagination, snow snow snow everywhere, much like how coriander turns my kitchen into a busy Chung Li night market where the pungency of barbecues mingles with the breath of a Taiwanese girl.

Brushing aside the family propensity for colon cancer, I subscribe to the maxim "Life is too short to drink bad wine and to eat bad food." from Mireille Guiliano, author of "French Women Don't Get Fat". I won't finish canteen food if the dinuguan is just pork fat swimming in sacrilegious coagulation, a bangus relleno when the meat is boardy as leather, or the notorious Backburner from Kitchen which is more rice coffee than chicken soup. I won't say no to clear fish soup like pesa or grilled tuyo paired with tomatoes. But pork swimming in thick sauce gives me the vertigo, unless it is pressure-cooked pork humba with its caramel-coated flesh melting in my mouth like infinity. I'd trade my soul for a wedge of gravlax, or even a thick strip of sashimi.

That would be indulgence.

*Image courtesy of Cooking for Engineers.

Editing galore

2005-09-21T14:12:00.000+08:00

We received about 25 entries for the upcoming Warm Bodies 3 and are now into the editing portion. Portion being the operative word here, well-loved by our noontime hosts like Chiqui Hollmann-Yulo and Jam Morales, not to mention Pilita Corrales' spiel every Sunday night, to affix and integrate She's Got The Look's question and answer portion, Ang Bagong Kampeon's Pwede Pa Kami portion or an ethnic rendition of a Madonna medley in a Little Miss Philippines talent portion into the whole program.

Much of the entries, at least those assigned to me, dealt with how music and performers shaped their growing-up years. Some of them reminded me of music articles I have read on the pages of Jingle Extra Hot, the only thing lacking is the solid square of ink that's supposed to show the artist's image. Some are enumerative and should have sent me timeline diagrams instead. In fairness, 20 years ago is history and the estates of Teodoro Agoncillo and Gregorio Zaide should take note to revise their books with Vincent Daffalong and APO Hiking Society.

At least one of them mentioned a specific boyband that I can't relate to but somehow rekindled my irritation against them.

Now that is what I call nostalgia.

Until then, we will notify the lucky homepartner, I mean, the blogger who makes it to Warm Bodies 3. I won't mention them in the grand finals portion since most are searchable within the Internet and the fun will be spoiled.

We'll just keep you posted. Saranghameda, Bo.

O Homem Que Virou Pizza

2005-09-21T10:47:00.000+08:00

So I played pizza boy over the weekend which started Friday at our village's bazaar. My bones still ache from bending in front of the oven, running from one customer to the other and carrying boxes of frozen stuff from the house. After the first day, it's become second nature to execute the histrionics with gusto, even in my sleep.

And I will be starting my social realism at this point. Where is the justification for a 300-peso minimum wage when at the end of the day, your body aches with all the movements you've performed an hour before opening and another after closing? Carry styro boxes. Thaw pizza. Pre-heat oven. Arrange storefront. Put on uniform. Wash hands. Look good. Greet prospective customers. Convince customer to buy pizza. Get order. Load pizza into oven. Turn every three minutes. Pack into box. Recite the thank you spiel. Check inventory. Prepare sales report. Pack things, go home and take a shower.

At peak hours you get to do these all at the same time, not to mention deal with low-EQ customers, an unreliable oven and a full bladder. Sometimes I feel like I want to subscribe to Thads Bentulan's Hyperwage Theory. 300 won't get you anywhere, and it can't buy you a good painkiller or a massage on top of your daily necessities after the backbreaking free facial in front of a 250-degree oven. I'd say give 20,000 pesos to the vendor too. Good thing that I have my day job and this is just an experiment in franchising, in running a business and promoting the product to the village folks.

Realizing how much we gained from the three-day exercise, I said to the wife that if it were not for the experience, I would have reported to the office the whole day Sunday and got more than the profit we calculated.

But as the cliche goes, I've learned a lot and collected some epiphanies.

People prefer Hawaiian. Harsh. No, I will valiantly defend my thesis that a pizza with pineapples or any other fruit is not called a pizza. Minimum required colors are red, white and green for the Italian flag and they should be represented by the tomato sauce, cheese and capsicum, respectively. The green thingy should be enough to provide the sweetness.

They want it cheap. I feel the reality of the economic crunch and the shrinking power of the peso. One customer asked if he can buy in slices, and I said there are miniature versions that we sell. There's a boy who thought he could buy one with his five pesos. Well yes, if you can go back to 1986 when a slice of 3M is worth 2.50. Price is proportional to quality. The tarpauline pictures are liars, and a fully-loaded dough with toppings screaming for space with a below-100 pesos tag price is just a myth.

If it's pizza for the masses, it's called "pee-cha pie." One with bread-like dough, none of the pliant, tasteless mozzarella but the generic "pizza cheese". Must be sweet. And customers should use hot sauce like it was iced tea--bottomless.

No other immersion program or retreat can beat selling pizza to show you the harshness of living. Berating a vendor is tantamount to fascism, like beating a fallen rallyist with a truncheon.

If I see another box of pizza in my lifetime, I might get a plastic twine, tie it, insert a piece of table napkin and a sachet of hot sauce, and say "Thank you ma'am/sir. Balik po kayo." I won't perform the proverbial faint.

Enjoy the silence

2005-09-15T10:12:00.000+08:00

There was a time when I know classes will be cancelled. That is, when the rain makes an endless metallic patter on the zinc roof like it does on an anahaw leaf, an open umbrella or a stretched tarpauline, when I wake an hour too early until the time I get out of bed.

It is when a freshly-ironed school uniform feels like a gossamer embrace, useless but warm on a sudden holiday. Mama is mending a tattered shirt. The radio is crooning "How much is that doggy in the window?" followed by Dobol B's station ID followed by Nilo Rosas' flowery announcement.

I'd never take off these clothes and sleep in them again. By the time I get up three hours later my soul tries to linger more in its reclaimed freedom.

I hear a father-in-law's Jupiterian banter, a wife's tap on the keyboard, a son's wake-up cry.

Silence has never been home again.

Do you remember, 15 September?

2005-09-14T12:34:00.000+08:00

One more day to go and we have seven people as of last count who sent their entries, plus several pledges, to Warm Bodies 3: Nostalgia Galore.

Must. Cast. The. Net. Wider. One. Last. Time.

UPDATE: Make that nine.

We're everywhere, in case you want to know.

Blogs
Phil's Notebook
Touchkey's Other Side
The Sassy Lawyer
Notes from the Peanut Gallery
Homunculus
Digital Filipino
About A Pinoy
iblog - The 1st Philippine Blogging Summit

e-Newspapers:
SunStar Cebu
YOU Blog Addicts

and many others.

EWF image courtesy of this site.

Hang on and I will wait for you. Our love will always stay as good as new.

2005-09-12T11:17:00.000+08:00

From Oliver from Chris. Just because I'm writing something else and blogging seems to get in the way.

20 years ago

My mother asked if I can be put in the star section the next year. She convinced my teacher that being consistent in the top spot merits a slot, which I got the year after until I graduated. She also bought me a Musical Multiplication cassette tape which I pined for months.

I never knew anything about Ninoy, but spelling the word "assassination" predicted a three-year hold on the Spelling Bee Champion throne which would be reprised in my last year in high school.

Had my first taste of pornography as my uncles watched from a film projector inside a nearby warehouse. There really is a purpose in corncobs, I concluded.

15 years ago

Turnover to a new decade without Papa around. Discovered masturbation, its relic a dark spot on my pillow which survived to this day, hidden somewhere in our ancestral home when Mama retired officially.

Argued with classmate on masturbation-associated guilt. Consulted a very nice priest who said beating the bishop is ok as long as it does not become a habit. Court girls, he said.

Start of the dark ages. I left the 80's Chucky Dreyfus look and faced the backprinted shirts and Vans loafers with reluctance. Good thing there were no pictures to remind.

The year after, Wilson Philips and Kylie Minogue came. And so did I with long midnight sessions in the bathroom.

10 years ago

Batch president, UP 49ers. I'm more of the lion accepting commands from the ringmaster.

Had my first taste of failure in my whole academic life in Engineering Science 11 and got used to its sequels. Late-night study sessions at the Burger Machine in Quezon Avenue and Wendy's Tandang Sora. Smuggled beer and I woke up to a half-naked roommate before an exam.

Very dull and tense year.

5 years ago

Y2K is one big effing marketing ploy! My Nokia 5110 still worked. But Erap didn't. Jobs are few and far between because I'm picky, temping for a government metrology program that never took off.

Later landed in one where I stayed for four years. Kvetch is a great breakfast I'd take every working day except payday.

3 years ago

Discovered blogging. And because I aged, much better than masturbation, though the two aren't exactly poles apart. I can do them at the same time. Discovered multi-tasking too.

Staying in Shanghai for a month can be lonely too. Thus the paragraph above.

Last year

Tagged myself as a resignation letter expert. Damn, I wish I've given one person the butt-smacking he deserves. But looking at the present arrangement, I can say that karma is cooked a la Provence. Too many herbs, too long to prepare, but tastes good in the end anyway.

This year

Moved to Laguna and renounced all the white noise of the big city. There are weekly pilgrimages to the altar of sophistication which can't seem to get out of my system though.

Sometimes transferring to a new job is a better pimple treatment than full-strength PanOxyl.

Yesterday

Got down to business. Serious business with all financial accounting, inventory management and pre- and post-closing procedures. The works.

Last night

Finished Rama Revealed, the last installment in Arthur C. Clarke's Rama chronicles. Then wrote my first 600 words for a dragon fic entry.

Today

Work. Not really. Countdown to payday.

Tomorrow

Still work. But I spring back to life at 5:30.

Next year

Still holding on to a day job. I wouldn't say here or anywhere else, but I'd probably be fine.

I know I'm getting published.

5-10 years from now

The boys will start with grade school.

We'll be having a contest of This Was What Sex Was Like In The 90's What Is It Now?

Nest egg grows and I'll be living off retirement and some royalties. The engineering life becomes a blur, except when the boys want some help with their homeworks or the wife complains about the poso negro.

Go tag yourself!

I tell ya what I want, what I really really want

2005-09-09T12:12:00.000+08:00

Finally. People of the world, meet my lifedrive, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Will be busy over the weekend poking her with my stylus.

Image courtesy of Amazon.

You heartbreaker

2005-09-02T13:38:00.000+08:00

We're after the same rainbow's end--
waiting 'round the bend.

Incunabulum

2005-08-30T17:15:00.000+08:00

I had a dream last night (one of those generic opening lines that is a writer's challenge to catch the reader's attention about dreaming).

The NHI marker describing the ambush of Doña Aurora Quezon and company 56 years ago sat in the middle of a Zen garden, raked pebbles, the works. Then the ground started to swallow it, I looked in horror and with my camera I started taking pictures, fighting back my tears to capture what was left of the marker. I woke up on a pillow drenched in tears and sweat, catching my first breath before it strayed into the morning window.

I was trying to remember the past, or what was left of it in vain, as my co-editor jsc interpreted. But why? What was my connection with Doña Aurora except that my hometown is named after her? This NHI marker is planted on a dirt road a few kilometers from the Aurora-Nueva Ecija border, and quite a number of times I have genuflected on this spot when we were stranded somewhere in the Sierra Madre several Novembers back as the mighty mountain range shields the rest of Luzon from Pacific-borne tempests. Although the virginity of the place cannot be denied, it is one picnic from hell as the storm's fists pound on the muddy mountain pass, its crackling sound a death knell for a foolish traveler standing in its way.

I tried to do some research and never found the Ephialtes to this Thermopylae, but realized that the battle between the Huks and the government had been going on since after the war, down to this generation that would make Leonidas' batch shy in comparison. The former were demonized by Magsaysay and Quirino. The latter collected its wage of death via the Quezons.

Was there an Alvarez, a Lopez, a Peñamora or a Guerrero within those bandit ranks? How about the driver, Adiong? I hope there isn't a score that I should settle with MLQ3. I'll never know, and it is an exercise in futility.

There are several histories in our families that need to be reconciled and perhaps this was the message of my dreams. What happened to the Lopez residence in Pasay when Tatay Pedring and Tita Cing walked all the way to Baler via guerilla lines during the outbreak of war, my aunt dressed in man's clothing to fend off attention? Who were Hanring and Natnael, blue-eyed sons of my grandmother who died during the war and were buried in unmarked graves? And why were they blue-eyed in the first place and all the while I am denying any Spanish lineage because our only proof is my brother's aquiline nose and the unusual shade of brown of my mother's eyes which I also have?

What is the story behind my father's mother, who we visited dying at the provincial hospital only to come out walking again the next day, because she has not spat her anting-anting, a spherical matter found in the patella of human skeletons? Is it a form of validation when my grandfather coughed up his at the threshold of death and proceeded anyway?

I have been listening to all these stories but never bothered to ask. Old people know when they will die, and that is when they start to be generous. I was bequeathed with an antique dining set that must have seen the glorious days of copra farming and an unrestorable photograph of the first Peñamora settlers in Baler via Infanta from Mama, a sister of my mother. Tita Cing is giving her properties away even if she can dance the spaghetti song all this time and it leaves me depressed.

I can fathom the relationship between gold and aluminum at the nanoscopic scale but not how my ancestors treated the earth. The proof of their existence have been erased by the war. When they die all their stories jump by batches to their graves rather than rot in this humid tropical weather.

And I am left with mediocre copies.

Bookmark this: Warmbodies.fil.ph

2005-08-29T13:48:00.000+08:00

WWWarm Bodies goes live today! Go here.
Maraming salamat kay Angela sa paggawa ng website natin.

Becoz imma proud daddy

2005-08-29T10:54:00.000+08:00

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

2005-08-26T16:33:00.000+08:00

The Achilles Heel of Extra Challenge right now is its pitting of celebrities to take on "challenges." The objective is cloudy, probably to humanize our concept of celebrities. Look at Belinda Bright. I thought she was a pair of boobs with legs. Look at Sunshine Dizon, and tell me that cosmetics is a serious science.

I thought my clamor would die down when they invited ordinary people to become challengers. Unf, that concept died. Better play it safe and sure, even if it means one celebrity will appear time and again on another EP. Flashbacks will do the trick.

the filipino audience deserves a real reality tv show. not a glorified parlor games show like extra challenge.
--the natureboy

I rest my case.

Call for submissions: Nostalgia Galore!

2005-08-25T14:10:00.000+08:00

Call me a publicity pimp. This is definitely shameless, but you can't blame me for the increased traffic that the previous brouhaha has ensued. And if two entries after almost a month after announcing makes me worried about the survival of Warm Bodies, I therefore plug the call for submissions to Warm Bodies 3: Nostalgia Galore.

Dali na, submit na. Now na! Deadline is on September 15. Send it to warmDOTbodies3ATgmailDOTcom. Everything is gratis, but your contribution will be returned to you a thousandfold in spirit and good karma credits on your next step to nirvana.

Get your guidelines here.

A prayer on the side: Lord, give me a rich benefactor who can sponsor a real Warm Bodies book next year. Selling my body isn't enough as there are no takers. Amen.

Let it out, ladies. Let it all out.

2005-08-24T08:12:00.000+08:00

Whoa whoa. I was about to make an entry orienting my three-year old son on Philippine cosmology and something came up. Clicking on a link elsewhere on this page is like opening Pandora's box. The term was passe, I know, but there's a lot that can be made sense out of it. You never know it, but you're sitting on top of a volcano right now.

I was one of those people who submitted to Dean's call for spec fic pieces and got the ax. I let myself bleed upon receipt of the slip and made sure Dean knew about it. The good thing that came out was, I am now officially a writer (which I megaphoned to every soul who critiqued my work prior to Dean) and got an honorable mention on top of that.

I had full knowledge that I will be compensated with two copies of the anthology once accepted, and had planned who I will give them to. I even had a quid pro quo with a writer-friend to give one a copy if one of us turned up. Unfortunately he met the ax too. Money or any freebie was the last thing on our minds, and I am speaking for the two of us. I'm sure every soul who submitted thought of that too. We didn't consider it insulting. If we treat every opportunity such as this as Halley's Comet, we would rather take our shot at immortality than waste a very short life. We wanted to add value to our work and to the Philippine literary scene in general.

If it weren't for my fixed salary right now I'll be a poor and hungry writer. It would be hypocritical to say that I have my safety nets and money has no bearing. It has. Money is money. Call me noble, and all the bromide that you can spray rather than be the proverbial sound of the tree that fell in the forest that nobody heard. I couldn't say anything for the other writers, but this is my anthropocentricity at its finest.

In fairness to Siege he has a valid point, which seems to be the unifying kvetch of the workforce in the Philippines--just compensation. Even highly-paid managers outperform each others' whining scenes day by day. Not that several injustices that it seems to be the norm makes it right, but that's the way it is here. It doesn't take rocket science or even an MBA degree to understand it.

How just is just compensation? My European principals were quiet for three weeks because of their mandatory vacations. In a previous company my Shanghai counterpart receives thrice my salary and Americans have their two-month sabbaticals and my annual gross pay is just their monthly. Yet I still continue my day job, strive for a patent and be a good employee (when I feel like it). If I wait for the Philippine compensation system to reach first world levels I would have been in pajamas and adult diapers and not in shirts and an office cube anymore.

As far as I know Dean is also a businessman, and he will take calculated risks. Producing a spec fic antho would limit it to those who want to read spec fic, which is not a significant chunk of the Philippine population. With a budget of PhP70,000 and an assumption of PhP100 per bookprint, that would produce 700 books. Thirty would be given to the accepted participants gratis, assuming Dean and Nikki would hold off their copies. A markup of PhP30 per book (assuming Siglo: Freedom current price, hardbound at Powerbooks) would produce a paltry PhP17,100 profit, if all 670 books get sold. The assumptions are very arbitrary given the country's inflation performance.

He could have invested his capital in retail treasury bonds and receive 10.75% interest per annum which is a lot less riskier than shelling out on something which assures no guarantee. If the shelves get empty a few weeks after launch, call him lucky. If he promised to share his profits and the antho didn't sell, I'll bet my balls he'll be on the first boat to Surabaya via the Sulu backdoor.

The contribution to this country's social capital, however, is immense, whether we like it or not. I haven't seen anybody uncovering a sector of the literary scene so alive and full of potential that it sits side by side the nationalist paragon unconsciously imposed on us by Rizal's Noli and most Martial Law novels.

And if I follow Siege's argument with the quarterly Warm Bodies which do not offer any compensation at all, and Dean is pond scum to put it in a Julia Roberts line, we editors are the bacteria lower than pond scum.

Did Rizal consider just compensation for his bulky Noli that could have saved him from execution instead had he padded his back with it? And would he write tomes considered a Spanish grammarian's nightmare that will snuff his life in the first place? What about prison stuff like Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Marquis de Sade's Justine? Surely no one would buy and recompense these convicts during those times.

Time. That's the keyword there. Dean's, Danton Remoto's and other literati's endeavors, no matter the compensation are Philippine literature's watershed today and we're keeping up. We're undergoing what the authors of Kama Sutra and Alice in Wonderland experienced in the past, and I'd rather sacrifice, nay, volunteer my current work today than never be heard at all. Why wait for perceived justice? It's as frustrating as receiving fire from Prometheus for the first time when the rest of the world is already in Renaissance. Compensation or no compensation, we are too blinded by commercialism that adding value to the social capital is not in our dictionary anymore. We're too afraid to circumnavigate the earth unless we are assured that we won't fall off its edge, and a palliative that it is indeed round.

One can consider it prostituting or theoretical rape, but the argument there is its consensual nature. I chose to submit my piece and was not turned off by what Dean had to offer the instant he announced the call. In my opinion, the value-add far outweighs the compensation. Who said having a day job is like whoring when you willingly applied for it in the first place?

Dressing up

2005-08-18T10:39:00.000+08:00

I decided not to submit the story of e, my parody on the presidential campaigns last year, to Dean's spec fic anthology. Changing the characters' names a bit would lose its mood, retaining them would invite libel cases for me and everybody else involved. No matter how I dress it in beads and sequins my heart is not sold to the idea of suiting it up and stepping into the political circus ring.

Its first appearance was more than a year ago in an inactive blog, so technically it can't be included. When I got hold of Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicles, I got the consolation that the elements of my story are legal. Only engineers can have their licenses revoked.

This is the unfinished dressed-up version:

To be a victim of the Cassandra Complex is to see misfortune coming and yet be unable to stop it. Because no one would believe me even if my arguments were real. Yes, there were lapses, but these are far outweighed by what could have been missteps in our young republic. I could have been a disgruntled engineer until now, braving half-meant jokes from foreigners in a Pu Dong hotel sauna. Perspiration would cover my tears like a transparent umbrella braving the rain.

A year later and my impression was confirmed. She will find every means to win, even in the strangest ways possible. My dream talked to me like a phone call from outer space, very much away, but eerily vivid as yesterday's photograph.

1.

Error detected: please enter a body.

Body identified.

I fell asleep while browsing through Food Magazine's Step-by-Step cookbook. Bummer, the last time I fell asleep was on a vintage 1976 copy of Penthouse after three rounds of masturbation. I just don't know why it occurs on such an interesting read. A fatigue that's fundamental perhaps, that shuts my brain like a pawnshop vault at 7 pm.

The tiles hummed as my mobile on the floor in silent mode, vibrated to the incoming call. No other name registered, except "e."

"Who's this?" I asked.

"It doesn't matter, Castro. I need to ask you a favor. Walk to the sari-sari store in front of your house right now and get the envelope. Make sure that nobody sees you." said the female voice, with a thick southern accent akin to that of the famous seer to the stars Madam Soraya reading my fortune for the day.

"Mmph mm, mm mph mm." I buried my face into the pillow. "Can't it wait until daylight?" She hung up.

Bitch, I mumbled as I piled myself out of bed. I'm risking life and limb from drag racers and drug users at this unholy hour. I dressed to my boxers not knowing why I had to and what is in store for me.

The neighborhood videoke bar is still open as I made my way across the street, and some drunk is having his pharynx ripped wide open to the tune of Kastilyong Buhangin. Surprisingly, the street is empty except for the streetlamp highlighting the sari-sari store like a neon-yellow marker.

In the distance I saw the drunk's score flash on the video screen. 98. Damn videoke brains. I'll make a perfect score just by shouting and gobbling the mike like an oral sex performance. I reached for the envelope with a blue lining. A metallic sound sliced the night like a sword on a captor about to be beheaded.

Like it came not from my hand reaching the envelope, but from a hindsight, where my eyes turn blind and my ears tune to the exact frequency.

I went back to the house and opened the envelope. Numbers and an address. 7112252. 7268543. Joe Kerr Entertainment, Espana. In front of a Catholic university. Like I was some fool to believe that there really exists a Joe Kerr stand-up comedy bar in that address. A phony phone number with an equally phony address.

Ha ha. This is just a dream. Maybe I can permutate the numbers to bet on this morning's lotto.

"Whatever happens, don't give that envelope to anybody." It was Daddy. He was awake the whole time and has been observing me as I got back home. Mom was beside Daddy in her robe, still groggy. It was 3 am.

Swoosh. Somebody knocked on the door. "Quick! Out of the house!" Daddy hushed me as I jumped from the kitchen upwards into the empty sky. My heart instantly switched to a techno throb. In a snap I saw who was coming.

It was her. The Candidate.

What the f...she was wearing a Men-in-Black costume, slick as a devil in Prada. Funny thing was, it's just past 3 am and she's wearing signature Dior sunglasses.

I couldn't contain my laughter as I flew upwards. And it was then that I realized I was flying. No, I jumped fantastically, reminding me of Eternity: A Chinese Ghost Story. Dry leaves, a cigarette stump and a dead cat collected at my feet.

So I was skimming the stratosphere with nothing on but my boxers and the envelope. This is not a matrix dream, I suppose. I'll drop by Ninno and wake him up.

The first version of the story of e is available upon request.

Navel-gazing

2005-08-17T14:59:00.000+08:00

When thou art alone in thy cell shut thy door, and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and chin on thy breast; turn thine eyes and thy thought towards the middle of thy belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if thou persevere day and night, thou wilt feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light.

Time was when I would check on Sitemeter on how my blog is going, hitswise. Since then I've graduated to Technorati and exploring what Yuga has recommended. Seems that linking knows no boundaries and no nationalities, as one of my skythologies on artificial intelligence was cited in another foreign site. Sometime ago the death of Tet Antiquera sparked visits to my blog and I was forced to look into news items concerning the actress. Enough of the segue:

Somehow somebody from a local air force community would like to see some Carlo Maceda skin. Hmmm. What you see, what you hear, when you go, leave it here in my site tracker. I wonder what they use the cockpit for.

Gym, starbs, Harry Potter--none of those as of the moment.

True to the spirit of navel-gazing, however, I've found that I have a treasure trail too, thin-haired ones that you can connect-the-dots all the way down there. Looks good with the retro-print undies I bought one size smaller.

I still feel Bruce Bethke's rebuke as the red-colored voice on my left side.

*This (dubious, according to some wiki contributors) quote is the source of the recent slang, navel-gazing, which is used to indicate a supposed pointless form of activity.

The future (issue) is Electric!

2005-08-15T11:11:00.000+08:00

Spread the word. Here are the guidelines for Warm Bodies 3.

We have exactly one month to go for submissions. Nostalgia galore!

To burst upon the city like fireworks

2005-08-12T14:40:00.000+08:00

A mystical fog envelops the city, mixed with continual rumors and an air of superiority, a hangover from the time of the shili yangchang, the foreign concessions. This hint of smugness affects me: I both love it and hate it.

Wei Hui, Shanghai Baby

Shanghai Radio Tower, viewed from Jin Mao's 88th Floor. November 2002.

Ouch ouch ouch

2005-08-10T14:47:00.000+08:00

Bruce Bethke:

"I had great hopes that the Internet would lead to a wonderful efflorescence of human creativity, but ten years on, in terms of information content, the non-commercial parts of the Internet are rapidly decaying into white noise.

"I never realized there were so very many people out there with so very little to say, and a burning, unquenchable desire to say it."

Belle de Jour

"It seemed like other bloggers were happy to have anyone in their club, so long as your hit stats don't outnumber theirs. But once they do, me-ow."

And I'd say thank you for the pressure.

A book meme

2005-08-10T12:38:00.000+08:00

Tagged by her sassiness.

Total books owned:

Must do some inventory here. Since we've moved south last year we haven't officially settled yet as more books need to be unloaded from boxes. And have them stamped too, just in case I want to donate some to the college library. No specific number here.

Last book I bought:

Carl Sagan's Contact the first print, not the one stamped with "Now a Major Motion Picture." Characteristic of Sagan's integration of human dynamics, extraterrestrial intelligence, and how religion plays (undoes) its part.

Last book I read:

Should I say, heard--The Best Christmas Ever by James Patrick Kelly. About the last man on earth and how his robots try to please him by celebrating holidays one after another.

For the real book with all the paper smell, the works--Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. Kept me turning pages back and forth. Either Clarke is lousy when it comes to Rama's interior details or my spatial intelligence stopped growing by the age of ten.

Five Types of Books I Read:

1. Sci-fi. What would you expect an engineering graduate would read? You have your romance novels, I have mine.
2. Slipstream and Cyberpunk. Technically I'm not a virgin to these genres if you count Alice in Wonderland in it. But I still have to pay homage to Gibson's Neuromancer.
3. "World Lit" (quotation marks in a Ptolemaic sense, America being the center of the universe), the Allendes, Nerudas and Marquezes. As well as Arundhati Roy, Ben Okri and Wei Hui.
4. Interior design, architecture and art books. I like pictures, I like colors, I like photography, especially the nudes. Legal porn ha ha ha.
5. Comic books. Had to give up after graduation due to their exorbitant cost. Love lost and found.

Plus a decent collection of cookbooks. I didn't include engineering or management books by the way.

(Five) books that mean a lot to me:

I wish I wrote myself, or dared to explore more of what I have so far:
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami Haruki

Something to remind me that I am a cellular organism and not a floating ectoplasm:
- Cosmos by Carl Sagan
- The Ultimate Hitchhikers' Guide by Douglas Adams
- Siglo: Freedom by various authors
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

For beauty
- White Hot by Tricia Guild
- The Kama Sutra, author unknown
- Dana's Manual of Mineralogy by Klein and Hurlbut
- Digital Photographer's Handbook by Tom Ang

My former greatness
- High Output Management by Andy Grove

Brainfarts
- Dragons in Distress: Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis by Walden Bello and Stephanie Rosenfeld
- No Free Lunch: Food and Revolution in Cuba Today by Medea Benjamin, Joseph Collins, Michael Scott
- Asian Drama by Seth King
- The Beginner's Guide to Ecology, author unknown
- Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

I can be electric too
- Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
- The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran

(Five) favorite Filipiniana books:

1. Warm Bodies 1 and 2 by various bloggers, for obvious reasons.
2. Rizal Without the Overcoat by Ambeth Ocampo. Somehow history became interesting.
3. Twisted (the first one) by Jessica Zafra. Angst is so 90's and this is its encapsulation. I challenge everyone to look back and not see Zafra in the present tense.
4. Viajero by F. Sionil Jose. Old school Filipiniana, like a dog-eared sepia photograph underneath a glass table.
5. Lexy, Nance and Argus by Oliver Pulumbarit. As if the author was a secretary beside me jotting down everything I've been and everything I've seen.

and
6. Recipes of the Philippines by Enriqueta David-Perez. Adds pirurutung and tajure to your vocab.

Something I've added,

Five books I'd rather sleep on but not as plump as a pillow:
1. Interview with a Vampire by Anne Rice
2. All Anne Rice novels
3. The Famished Road by Ben Okri, tied with Metamorphosis and other stories by Franz Kafka
4. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling
5. And anything Harry Potter, until the hype dies down.

And books I'd like to have (a wishlist limited to five)
1. Damiana Eugenio's folklore series
2. An English translation of Urbana at Felisa and Si Nena at Si Neneng, if such works exist
3. The Complete Tales of Winnie-the-Pooh (not the version polluted by Disney, but the one similar to what I bought at the M/V Doulos and lost)
4. The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason
5. Hinirang (does a hardcopy exist? the site is down)

I'll pass the baton to anybody who loves a meme.

How dare you die, Mr. Roco

2005-08-08T12:58:00.000+08:00

Don't believe the Ides of March. Bad things happen more in August (aside from my birth, that is).

I just found out that Roco Jr. is my cousin's officemate at a BPO somewhere in Katipunan, transcripting dialogues for films converted to DVD formats. And if my source is to be believed, Roco Sr. left behind a mountain of debt after backers of his campaign sorties ehrm, backed out sometime in April when he left for the US to have his cancer treated.

He was booted out of DepEd, an institution being run like the mafiosi.

His legacy was not a namesake in public office. I was searching for another Roco in the public (dis)service roster and I came up with Goco.

He squeezed my arm. How dare you die, Mr. Roco.

CATCH THE SENATOR IF YOU CAN
posted Tue, 07-01-03

we requested a 15-minute interview with former education secretary roco when he visited our factory yesterday. our company's coordinator introduced me and k.g. to roco's personal assistant amid the din of the senator's speech. we were talking under the speakers and i was not even able to get her name. what the heck. abagnale strategy #1: get her name--unsuccessful. it was approaching 12 noon and she said we will just ambush-interview the senator.

spare us some dignity, girl. we are not papparazzi nor the pesky media that we used to watch on la law. we are the editors of a company newsletter whose goal is to know the man, politics aside.

no choice. we chatted with him as we walked past the rec hall. it did not appear like an interview, but it sure looked like an ambush as we caught him unguarded. the man was waving left and right. shaking hands as any politician could. signing autographs on philippines free press magazines with him on the cover. blatant politicking really, but it was roco doing it so there was subtlety in his blatancy, to paraphrase k.g.

"what were you doing when you were in your late 20's?" k.g.

he was already a lawyer at 24, a member of the constitutional convention at 28. at 19 he already aspired to be the philippine president.

it was all so awkward. k.g. was beaming and roco was answering in installments while waving, shaking and signing. he was also squeezing k.g.'s arm in a fatherly manner.

my turn. "when you were about to enter college, did you consider taking the engineering profession? what kind of engineer would you have been?"

by this time he was inviting us to join the lunch prepared by the staff. of course we were not allowed to join by default!

he said he was amazed by engineers who build dams and bridges. ah, civil engineer i said.

and airplanes too. megalomaniac. now he is a valid presidentiable.

and he was also squeezing my arm. it was uncomfortable yet fatherly. i have never been squeezed by a man before, and a senator at that.

i was about to ask if his life was to be made into a movie, i would like to know which actor would he prefer to play his role and who would be the leading lady. and if he wanted carlo j caparas to direct it. snips of awkwardly dead air flashed through and the supposedly light moment just went up the stratosphere.

all in all it was a mixture of:

(1) awkwardness because we have interviewed a prominent person in a trashy manner only a papparazzo can (un)do;

(2) anticipation of looking stupid because we walk and talk at the same time while roco is doing the campaign melange; and

(3) being star-struck with a larger-than-life potbellied guy in a hibiscus-print shirt who could be, a year from now, the philippine president which the educated elite look upon as the healer who can ably cure the sick man of asia. that's a mouthful.

item #3 kept us at bay as we watched him enter the luncheon room. we weren't even able to say goodbye and thank you sir. k.g.'s legs are shaking from roco's aura radiating.

after that, every engineer i knew was awed at how k.g. and i were able to rub elbows (pardon, he was squeezing ours) with the senator. my boss saw me did it, oblivious of the apparent humiliation that k.g. and i felt during the process.

bitin. k.g. and i weren't able to pick roco's brains enough to please our journalistic wants, politics aside.

When all's well, my love is like cathedral bells

2005-08-03T10:45:00.000+08:00

I think I am deaf. I nod absently at a speaker two meters away and force a calculated smile as if I knew what he said. I keep on snorting like a seal in the shower. And I have this bad habit of forcing snot out instead of probing my nose with a cotton bud. I hear music all the time but not enough to make me a human iPod Shuffle. It's not because I am aging but because I have bad habits. Good thing I stopped picking my ears with ballpen caps. Because there's rarely a ballpen around and poking it with a mouse would be an incredible feat.

What sense would you give up if forced to?

For the love of Jove, I'll fight for the sense of sight till death. I like seeing colors and greys, and letters that file upon marching orders from an equally sweet-smelling, ink-infused, moldy-and-crackling or white, paper. I frame compositions in my mind, and wished that cameras have already been perfect to capture what I truly see and not what I want to look at. I see window greens peppered with chrome, and associate my nausea from long provincial trips. I see tan with a blustery June day and neon blue with adolescence.

The sense of hearing would be optional as I like music and choreography, at least a mind dance. But not door bangs nor a malicious whisper coupled with a once-over.

The sense of taste and smell, if they'd be gone they should go together. And so both of them should be kept. The tang of vinegar on fish is not complete without the requisite jiggle on my columella nasi. And umami is still a universal mystery that can't be ignored.

I therefore conclude that I'd forego the sense of touch as I would not want an attempt on my personal bubble anyway. Maybe it came with childhood, an instinct for self-preservation. Poke me with a stick. Lay out the radio telescopes first. A bite on my side is a death sentence that would elicit giggles, and a range of emotions from letdown to cuteness, depending on who is biting.

People say it's my birthday today.