Sunday, September 30, 2007

I Will Stop Procrastinating...Later.

I know. So sue me.

Seriously though, it's been really hard to organize my thoughts lately. Because of the whirlwind of events from May to August--and the unbelievable kind of evil I was exposed to--I'm enjoying the sedentary life right now a hell lot more than I expected.

But as soon as I get my act together, I promise that you'll be the first to know.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Beheading the Heads

Just so the subject won't be too passe once I finally have the time to write properly about it when I update my blog again: Read up on this Calvino story (off Numbers in the Dark) and tell me: Do you think, if the story premise was applied to this country, there would be all the senseless elections-related bloodshed and carnage? For that matter, would anyone even gun for a seat in the government?

I think I know the answer, but I was kind of hoping someone will prove to me that Mencius was right and there's no need to defect to the dreadful--but slowly becoming believable--Hsun Tzu school.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Why I Don't Want that Mic

Going “freelance” this month past has afforded me a lot of time on my hands. Too much time that I, one weekday morning that should have been otherwise spent in my office if boss from hell didn’t enter the picture, find myself entering a videoke lounge in a mall with my sisters. This reluctance, which did not go unnoticed by my sisters, made them wonder if I was really part of the kin, as this recreation didn’t exactly end up in my list of 10 Things To Do if I Were To Die Happily. But it was during this little excursion that I found out it was more than lack of genetic interest—it was more of a maniacal fear. Now I know about my hopeless stage fright, and that one of the reasons I’m inclined to writing is to make up for the fact that I could never be a public speaker. But I could not exactly fault my sisters for finding it absurd when I finally told them I wouldn’t sing because I was “shy.” Yes, I was deathly scared to sing in front of people I’ve been with all my life—and that’s literal—my own flesh and blood. It’s one thing to know you’re scared, but to know how absurd the fear is? A different matter altogether. Kind of like waking up from a full-color nightmare after insisting on a marathon session of horror flicks. I somehow find comfort in the fact that this fear, no matter how senseless, is not unlike my travel channel hero’s, who has a lifelong phobia of karaoke. So the same night I took out my DVD copy of No Reservations' Korea episode, feeling less freakish because someone out there—and no less than my hero himself—understands my irrational dread.

But if you’re absolutely hell-bent on passing that mic to me, it just might help if you have enough alcohol handy.



***

A bit late, but I just have to. Right on target; he is forever immortalized by his works:

"It is a very mixed blessing to be brought back from the dead."
-Kurt Vonnegut

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Uy! Bagong Entry!

When things spiral way out of control I can only thank God because He gave me sense of humor. Happy new year, everyone.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

I. Miss.




With my pretty niece Hanna. Now if only I had a picture of my equally adorable nephew in file:-(


***

Non è stato facile, sapete. Ho abbastanza decency per rimanere via da una persona I realmente, realmente come solo perchè li ha. Non avete dovuto spiare su me -- ora sono in un dichiarare di mess. Spero che siate felici.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Lourdes

People often mistake me to have been born on February 11, and since I was not, there is more curiosity as to why I was named Lourdes. What’s even more peculiar, if you look it up on liturgical year, the “event” that is commemorated on this date is actually the beheading of St. John the Baptist. This has developed in me a need to explain—as if to justify—the reason for my name. Now I normally have a standard reply for this: the truth. But this year I checked out other events to see if I could use a version far more interesting. So far it has its share of brilliant inventions and noble foundations, but for some obscure reason wars seemed most abundant. This:


• 708 - Copper coins are minted in Japan for the first time (Traditional Japanese date: August 10, 708).
• 1189 - Ban Kulin wrote "The Charter of Kulin", which become a symbolic "birth certificate" of Bosnian statehood
• 1261 - Urban IV becomes Pope, the last man to do so without being a Cardinal first.
• 1350 - Battle of Winchelsea (or Les Espagnols sur Mer). The English naval fleet under King Edward III defeats a Castilian fleet of 40 ships.
• 1475 - The Treaty of Picquigny ends a brief war between France and England.
• 1484 - Cardinal Giovanni Battista Cibo is elected Pope Innocent VIII.
• 1521 - The Ottoman Turks capture Nándorfehérvár, now known as Belgrade.
• 1526 - Battle of Mohács: The Ottoman Turks led by Suleiman the Magnificent defeat and kill the last Jagiellonian king of Hungary and Bohemia.
• 1533 - Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Inca emperor Atahualpa is executed in Cajamarca by the garrote by Spanish invaders known as Conquistadores.
• 1541 - The Ottoman Turks capture Buda, the capital of the Hungarian Kingdom.
• 1756 - Frederick the Great attacks Saxony, beginning the Seven Years' War.
• 1786 - Shays' Rebellion, an armed uprising of Massachusetts farmers, begins in response to high debt and tax burdens.
• 1831 - Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction.
• 1833 - The United Kingdom legislates the abolition of slavery in its empire.
• 1842 - Treaty of Nanking signing ends the First Opium War
• 1869 - The Mount Washington Cog Railway opens, making it the world's first rack railway.
• 1871 - Emperor Meiji orders the Abolition of the han system and the establishment of prefectures as local centers of administration. (Traditional Japanese date: July 14, 1871).
• 1885 - Gottlieb Daimler patents the world's first motorcycle.
• 1895 - The formation of the Northern Rugby Union at the George Hotel, Huddersfield, England.
1896 - Chop suey is invented in New York City.
• 1898 - The Goodyear tire company is founded.
• 1907 - The Quebec Bridge collapses during construction, killing 75 workers.
• 1910 - Japan changes Korea's name to Chōsen and appoints a governor-general to rule its new colony.
• 1911 - Ishi, considered the last Native American to make contact with European Americans, emerges from the wilderness of northeastern California.
• 1922 - Turkish forces set fire to Smyrna, in Asia Minor.
• 1930 - The last 36 remaining inhabitants of St Kilda are voluntarily evacuated to other parts of Scotland.
• 1943 - German-occupied Denmark scuttles most of its navy; Germany dissolves Danish government.
• 1944 - Slovak National Uprising takes place as 60,000 Slovak troops turn against the Nazis.
• 1949 - Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan.
• 1952 - Premiere of John Cage's 4′33″ in Woodstock, New York.
• 1958 - United States Air Force Academy opens in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
1966 - Last Beatles concert, in San Francisco, California.
• 1970 - First flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 jetliner, a competitor to the Boeing 747.
• 1982 - The synthetic chemical element Meitnerium, atomic number 109, is first synthesized at the Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung in Darmstadt, Germany.
• 1991 - Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party.
• 1995 - NATO launches Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb forces.
• 1996 - Vnukovo Airlines Flight 2801, a Vnukovo Airlines Tupolev Tu-154 crashes into a mountain on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, killing all 141 aboard.
• 1997 - At least 98 villagers are killed by the GIA in the Rais massacre, Algeria.
• 2003 - Ayatollah Sayed Mohammed Baqir al-Hakim, the Shia Muslim leader in Iraq, is assassinated in a terrorist bombing, along with nearly 100 worshippers as they leave a mosque in Najaf.
• 2005 - Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana (especially the Mississippi Gulf Coast) to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and costing over 115 billion dollars in damage.


Then I found out, to my sheer delight, that I had the same birthday as the brilliant Empiricist John Locke (who made me want to attend Oxford), Nobel laureate
Maurice Maeterlinck, American film director Joel Schumacher, and famous Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman (who also died on the same day years after). Then there's Lanny Barbie too. Check on the link to see who she is, hehe ;-)


But back to reality, blame it on my grandmother and parents. For my parents’ “strategic” inspiration and my grandmother’s piety. Yes, so I was named after Our Lady of Lourdes. And perhaps, there will be that one birthday when I get to fulfill the dream of actually going there--as some kind of going home.



***


As my favorite character in a Chbosky novel said, “ I always get like this on my birthdays.” For the nth time I have become more pensive a few days before my actual birthday, which I think is true for most people too. Perhaps because celebrating birthdays is like coming to a full circle. New year is overrated and too generic; birthday is well, extremely personal. You may share it with a million of other people in the world, but it is something you can't help but make your own.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Oo

Di mo lang alam, naiisip kita
Baka sakali lang maisip mo ako
Di mo lang alam, hanggang sa gabi
Inaasam makita kang muli
Nagtapos ang lahat sa di inaasahang
Panahon at ngayon ako’y iyong iniwang
Luhaang sugatan di- mapakinabangan
Sana nagtanong ka lang kung di mo lang alam
Sana’y nagtanong ka lang kung di mo lang alam
Ako’y iyong nasaktan
Baka sakali lang maisip mo namang
Hindi mo lang alam kay tagal nang panahon
Ako’y nandirito pa rin hanggang ngayon, para sayo
Lumipas mga araw na ubod ng saya
Di pa rin nagbabago ang aking pagsinta
Kung ako’y nagkasala, patawad na sana
Ang puso kong pagal ngayon lang nagmahal
Di mo lang alam ako’y iyong nasaktan
Baka sakali lang maisip mo namang
Puro siya na lang sana’y ako naman
Di mo lang alam ika’y minamasdan
Sana’y iyong mamalayang hindi mo lang pala alam
Di mo lang alam, kahit tayo’y magkaibigan lang
Bumabalik lahat sa tuwing nagkukulitan
Baka sakali lang, maisip mo namang
Ako’y nandito lang, hindi mo lang alam
Matalino ka naman
Kung ikaw, at ako ay tunay na bigo
Sa laro na ito, ay dapat bang sumuko
Sana’y di ka na lang pala aking nakilala
Kung alam ko lang ako’y yong masasaktan ng ganito
Sana’y nakinig na lang ako sa nanay ko
Di mo lang alam ako’y iyong nasaktan
Baka sakali lang maisip mo namang
Puro siya na lang, sana’y ako naman
Di mo lang alam ika’y minamasdan
Sana’y iyong mamalayang hindi mo lang pala alam
Malas mo…ikaw ang natipuhan ko
Di mo lang alam, ako’y yong nasaktan.

(Up dharma Down)

***

In Fleetwood Mac fashion the rain has failed to wash all avenues clean so there’s no epiphany, and instead there is nothing but a struggle against the flood. No tide to speak of—everything is just stagnant, but devoid of calm. And you have no idea. No idea at all.