She's the ornament of her sex.

says DickensURL.com.

How fitting.

An antidote to sadness (or remembering vj in a stream of consciousness ala kenneth)

Hindi ako makapagsulat. Saan ako magsisimula? Paano ko sasabihin na si vj ang unang kaibigan ko sa kule? Minsan hindi natuloy ang genmit kasi konti lang ang dumating. Umupo siya sa tabi ko, at nagsimulang magkwento. At hindi na kami tumigil sa kwentuhan, ako, ang baguhan na walang alam, siya, na mahusay editor at makatang magsulat

Inamin siya sa kin minsan na kaya lang daw nila ako tinaggap kasi may potential ako magsulat. ganyan si vj, nakikita niya ang potential sa bawat tao. Kaibigan niya ang lahat, at pakiramdam namin, close kaming lahat sa kanya kasi wala siyang tinatago. Hindi siya namumuna. Sa mata niya, kahit na oily ang mukha mo at punung-puno ng pimples, lagi kang maganda.

Siya ang una kong nakwentuhan tugkol sa crush ko. Bawat lingo, may bago siyang sasabihin sa akin tungkol kay M. Pagkalipas ng ilang taon, ibang M naman ang pinagusapan namin, ang taong nagudyok sa kanyang humugot ng tala at gamitin itong pangkiskis sa kanyang puso.

Si vj na grand mameshka ng kultura, na sumasamba sa altar ng kulturang popular, na nagcacarstuffing kay Vanessa kahit na hindi pa siya marunong magdrive. Na kasama naming sumayaw sa saliw ng light my fire pagkatapos lumaklak ng alak, Na itinuring kong kuya, na laging hinahawakan ang aking siko tuwing tumatawid kami.

Kung may five stages sa grief cycle nasa pagitan na ako ng anger at sadness. Sabi ng kapatid ko, hindi ka ba nagbargain? Hindi, dahil kahit ano ang ipangako ko, hindi na siya babalik.

Wala nang kumakalong sa aking siko tuwing tumatawid ako.

Sa papgpatay kay Rebelyn

Naalala ko ang minsan sinabi ng isang heneral sa akin, habang kumakain
Everyone has a a weakness. Kailangan lang itong hanapin.

May isang kalaban daw silaang hindi matugis
Wala siyang asawa o iba pang pamilya

Hangga't may nakaalala
Na mahal na mahal ng rebelde ang kanyang ama
Na tatlong taon na ring nasa ilalim ng lupa

Pumunta ang mga sundalo sa sementeryo.
Winasak nila ang nitso
At nagtago sila sa paligid
Pagkaraan ng ilang araw

Dumating ang rebelde.

Ngumiti ang heneral pagkatapos niya magsalita
Pinilit kong maging bato ang aking mukha

Ngunit kung kutsilyo lang ang hawak ko
at hindi tinidor
Hindi ko alam kung mapipigil
ko pa ang aking sarili

Mula sa pagsaksak nito sa kanyang puso.

Hindi ba't labas sa paglaban ang mga sibilyan?
Pero mga pasista, mga mamatay-tao -
Hindi niyo ito nirerespeto.

May araw din kayo.
Sa oras ng tagumpay, dadanak ang dugo.

Totoo

Type - A nga ako. Sabi ni Ate, hindi ba lahat ng Lorenzo? Parang oo, pati mga pinsan ko. Ano kayang meron sa dugo namin? 

You Are Hyper and Spirited

You tend to be pretty tightly wound. It's easy to get you excited... which can be a good or bad thing. You have a lot of enthusiasm, but it fades rather quickly. You don't stick with any one thing for very long. You have the drive to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Your biggest problem is making sure you finish the projects you start. You are the total package - suave, sexy, smart, and strong. You have the whole world under your spell, and you can influence almost everyone you know. You don't always resist your urges to crush the weak. Just remember, they don't have as much going for them as you do. You are usually the best at everything ... you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic "Type A" personality.

What's Your Name's Hidden Meaning?

For a chance of winning a new moleskine notebook

In which to write and keep track of these goals and aspirations for the next 12 months:

1. write a novel
2. travel to somewhere I've never been
3. figure out what Master's degree I can't live without and start applying to schools
4. fall in love :D
5. learn basic html for blogging, and photo and video editing
6. shoot more photos and video
7. save up for and undergo laser eye surgery
8. take a regular yoga class
9. go diving at least three times a year
10. get a job that will be flexible yet allow me to travel
11. exercise at least three tines a week

Margaret Atwood writes that to name is to invoke. Hope that these invocations are fulfilled.

The Moleskine Notebook is courtesy of Avalon.PH
http://www.viloria.com/go/go.php/avalonph

For the Viloria.net contest rules, please see
Viloria.net

Stuck in Stasis

You've got to get yourself together
You've got stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it
Don't say that later will be better now
You're stuck in a moment and you can't get out of it

And if the night runs over
And if the day won't last
And if your way should falter
Along the stony pass
It's just a moment
This time will pass

I've been stuck in stasis for quite some time now, but it's time to get out and face the world again.

Leaping off the edge

Sinabi nyo sa akin dati, wala kong problema sa lenguwahe, pero takot akong tumayo sa bingit.

SInabi naman ng prop ko sa creative writng, natural daw ako magsulat sa Ingles, na ganito raw talaga ako mag-isip. Pero ang kwento ng burgis na namulat sa gitna ng isang hacienda? She's heard it so many times before.

Nabasa ko ang sinulat ni Piya tungkol sa sinulat ni Milan Kundera, na kaya tayo natatakot kapag umakyat tayo sa mataas na lugar ay di dahil takot tayong mahulog, kundi takot tayo sa nais nating tumalon.

Ganito ako. Hayskul pa lang, mahilig na kong umupo sa taas ng mga ledge sa second floor at tumingin pababa. Hanggang sa rooftop ng Vinzons, iniisip ko pa rin ung anong pakiramdam kung tumalon ako.

Wala na kong trabaho, pero sa wakas, maisusulat ko na ang gusto kong isulat.

Handa na kong tumalon.

Why it's not always good for birds of together to flock the feather

Naalala ko ang sinabi ni Eleyn minsan na mas mahirap ilaban ang gender sensitivity kapag nasa labas na ng Kule, kung saan pare-pareho naman kami mag-isip.

Eto, galing sa blog ni Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder ng Global Voices:



At mula sa Wahington Post, Why Everyone You Know Thinks the Same as You

Ano tingin niyo?

(side note: sa wakas, naka-update din ng blog. :D)

She is EVIL

Raise your hand if you agree.



Comic Strip by Concerned Artists of the Philippines from Arkibong Bayan

Agh

kelan ba ko makakapost ng matinong update?

They say there's time enough for everything, but if there is, I haven't been able to figure out how to fit everything into the seconds that just seem to slip away.

Meanwhile, another chummy quiz (from Kat's multiply).



Parang hindi ako ah (except for the contemplative cat part. baka yun, pwede pa).

For lack of time

but from a pressing need to update this blog, here's a couple of quizzes i answered while pretending to be working.

My Lakbayan grade is C+!

How much of the Philippines have you visited? Find out at Lakbayan!

Created by Eugene Villar.




"The lesson today is how to die..."

Which Strange Little Girl would you be?



i need to do something about the layout and start transferring some of my scribblings. soon, i promise.

With a heavy heart

It's hard for me to write about human rights.

Maybe it's because I've seen dead people - just shot 20 minutes ago, blood pooling beneath the body like paint, no smell; just drowned, foaming at the nostrils, father performing a futile attempt at mouth to mouth resuscitation; found after an undetermined period of time, rolled in a carpet, body like an empty corn husk, nothing left but hair, teeth and bones; murdered family, following a trail of bloodstains that ends with their cold bodies dumped unceremoniously into stainless-steel tubs in a morgue.

It's hard for me, because while the current number of victims stands above 800, each tally is a name, a person, someone who lived and laughed and loved and died when they shouldn't have.

Kenneth quotes John Berger on his blog: "Truly we writers are the secretaries of death."

Death, death, death.

But I am still alive, and the work must continue.

Ian, Papa and I

Ian is the car that I use most of the time, that I am supposed to fill up with P1,000 worth of gas every month.

This morning, Mama noticed that Ian's right rear tire was extremely flat. (I think I may have bumped in and out of a few holes on the way home from St. Paul's yesterday, but I didn't tell them that.)

I know how how to weave in and out of traffic, avoid obnoxious jeepneys, and attempt to parallel park. But I had never changed a flat tire.

The first time I ever had a flat tire, I was on my way to a date. The man driving a white van in the lane next to mine pointed to my right front tire. As I felt the tire flatten and begin to skid, a gas station materialized. I drove into it, smiled sweetly at an attendant, and gave him P20 for changing my tire.

Now it was time to do it on my own.

"Can you really do it?" Papa asked.

Mama said that the lug nuts were really hard to loosen. They were. I could only manage a few twists with the wrench, before Papa had to take over. He also helped me unscrew the spare tire from the truck, and put the jack in place under a fin, near the wheel.

But I did everything else. I lugged the spare tire from the trunk and turned the jack clockwise to lift the car.

It took a lot of turns. There I was, sitting on my butt on a wet patch of slime in the driveway, turning the jack. In between my outstretched legs, an ant slowly scurried on the cracked concrete, next to a wilted golden leaf.

(Is this why some guys love to work on cars? Because the rest of the world falls away as they fiddle under the hood?)

After the car was lifted a few inches off the ground, I took off the flat tire and heaved a new one into its place. Then I screwed on the lug nuts and tightened them as best as I could. Papa only had to grunt a few times as he gave them a final twist.

My butt was wet, my hands were greasy, and I had grime up to my elbow. I felt good.

There are times when we don't get along too well, Papa and I. We are too much alike -- impatient, quick-tempered, volatile. We have a tendency to to dictate, and to speak authoritatively even when we don't know much about a subject. And we always have to have the last say in an argument.

Yet in between the tense moments, the strained silences, the harsh exchanges of words, there are also afternoons like this.

Just me, Papa and Ian.

Education is a right, not a privilege

Just a quick post before I get to work: I was incensed by this article in Malaya (and headlined by most of the other dailies) saying that 2 out of 3 highschool grads aren't ready for college.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the NCAE results showed that the government is on the right track in pursuing technical-vocational program as one of the solutions to the growing mismatch between the skills of graduates and the needs of the job market.

Amazing that the government still manages to trumpet its supposed success whuile blithely ignoring the fact that the education system in the country has long been deteriorating.

I've been schooled by state-run institutions my whole life. During highschool none of the bathrooms had running water. The floor of classroom for honor science students sloped downward, which skewed the results of our physics experiments. The classroom was declared unsafe a few years later. Even then, we were under constant threat of being closed down due to a lack of state subsidy.

But we had it good, compared to others.

To get to school, PUP students have to cross a railroad.

My aunt is a teacher at a large public elementary in school in Manila, where classes are held in two sessions - from 6-12 and 1-7, because there are too many students and no enough schools.

Sections run from A to J, according to aptitude. She says they've pretty much given up on the ones below B. One mother even told her, "My son just isn't smart, like me."

My mom is also teacher, one of those who used to close down fly-by-night nursing schools because their proprietors charged staggering sums in return for a substandard education that wouldn't enable its graduates to pass the nursing exams. As a result, she's made a lot of enemies, and has a pending libel case.

Education was a hot topic when I was still a staffer at the Collegian. Every year, the news staffers would track the decreasing budget given to UP, break it down, and call for an increase in state subsidy.

UP increased its tuition fee by 300% last year. Intial analyses say that it is the lower middle class who will be most affected by this.

Not to simplify the issue - there are a lot of other factors why hs students aren't ready for college. But one of the main reasons is the continued lack of state subsidy.

Again and again, the old rallying cry holds true. Education is a right, not a privilege.

On Late-Night TV

Or to be exact, the Late Show with David Letterman. i told myself i wouldn't watch such trash, but i did. From start to finish. Strange how the things you know are bad for you can be so addicting.

i feel sorry for Lisa Marie Novak, the butt of tonight's jokes. The woman now labeled as the crazy astronaut, who drove 900 miles wearing adult diapers to threaten her rival in a love triangle. This is how it is every night. Whatever seems new, bizarre, out of the ordinary, made into a spectacle.

Some might say, this is comedy. I remember reading an article about Borat, how many (Kazakhs, frat boys, basically anyone featured in the film) found it offensive. Others found it funny -- even radically so, because in an era where so many are concerned with being politically correct, no one else would dare tell a black man that he had a chocolate face.

But then again, there's that scene in Borat where he asks young black men how to say "how do you do?" and they say "what's up, vanilla face?" which he repeats to a surprised hotel clerk.

If comedy is a way of breaking taboo, then so be it. but i maintain that there's still a difference between laughing with someone and laughing at them.

Blogging while working

Well, i actually do blog for a living.

But working on a personal blog during office hours seems deliciously subversive. It's the first time i've done it.

To be fair to me, I've practically spent the whole day slogging through COA reports. Thus, i am able to rationalize that i deserve this secret, stolen moment of blogging before i get back to slogging.

i haven't been fulfilling my promise to update this once a week -- i will try to be a better blogger, promise. i'm also thinking of doing a redesign when i move to the new blogger (i'm probabaly the only one who hasn't yet) now that i have a rudimentary grasp of html. If not, there's always Kate. :D

On my ever-pressing problem of security issues, i was shocked to discover that when i google my name + blog this blog appears on the top 5. i'll have to do something about this.

Maybe this weekend, when I will actually manage to do something besides sleep.

So this is Christmas

Congratulation! Ma'm/Sir Ur #.had Won 3Million psos Frm. GMA CHARITY FOUNDATION OFF.During X-MAS RAFFLE DRAW CLAIM UR PRIZE ATTY. BOB M. Lopez #09202780627!

***
message reprinted as sent to my phone earlier this morning.

have some decency.

Tempting fate

Strictly speaking, i'm not supposed to be engaging in tarot. i swore off it after someone offered to read my palm a few years ago...and said that i would become promiscuous. :(

Not to mention that it's against my belief system.

But what the hey. Just for kicks. And what do you know, this time the card(s)may just be right.

Like Madeleine L'engle wrote, life is like a sonnet. you're given a very strict form, but how your poem reads is entirely up to you.

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

The irony of it all

A so-called multimedia journalist who doesn't update her blog. But when i've been staring at a computer day in day out, trawling for news, trying to make sense of it, trying to come up with some form of analysis, or something new to add to the growing discourse, there really isn't much writing left for this blog.

plus, i have security issues. obviously, i can't talk about what i'm working on, but i'm having a hard time drawing the line, because work is also personal (says a friend who claims to be married to hers) and i believe that the personal is political.

so there you have it. a consciously edited attempt at a stream of consciousness.

i'll try, i repeat, try to update this once a week, but um, no photos for now.

as i write this, it's raining slightly and it's cold -- finally, a proper December chill.

there's something about the rain that always makes me feel like writing.

i wish it would snow.

Talked to Tanya

right after i watched her undergraduate thesis on Shorts. i'm bursting with pride.

A few years ago, when we were still sometimes mistaken for SM salesladies because of our uniforms, we sat on top of granite tables during lazy afternoons, gazed into the distance, and dreamed.

She's living hers.

Am i living mine?

Not exactly. But i'm working towards it.

and i'm happy where i am now.