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Meizhou Island is a small, crescent-shaped island in Meizhou Bay, near the city of Putian. The island is only about 10 square miles, but it draws thousands of visitors each year as followers of Mazu come to pay their respects. The temple on Meizhou Island is the most important temple for Mazu worshippers because of its reputed connection with her life. The temple has been renovated and expanded somewhat in recent years. The communists are not big on religion, but they love tourism and evidently see no contradiction in promoting Mazu worship for the financial benefit of the People's Republic.

Breathtaking from the top, Meizhou Island is reflective of Chinese progress: fast, grandiose and globally-oriented. Down by the shores below, you'll see that life is much much difficult for a majority of the population who take on the weight of the country and of the world working their asses off but will never be rewarded for the toils of their labor.

More photos here:

And more photos of Xiamen, Gu Long Yu Island as well as Fujian food, marital cultures and thoughts on babysitting aging parents on my next blogs after a well-deserved rest and merrymaking, minus the parents.

I have babysitting chores until Sunday--Monday, technically speaking--for my parents who I'm going with to Xiamen. I'd rather babysit my new niece. Travelling with my father is a nightmare now. Ironically, I always looked forward to the impromptu trips he planned when we were kids. It was fun, and it seemed like he knew the world, and I always wanted to see the things he saw. Now he loses boarding passes, doesn't give a rat's ass to immigration authorities as he often walks through their chambers, cuts through lines, hits the seat of the person in front of him, and often wants to go back to the hotel not even an hour after leaving. We find it impossible to shop, take photos, or even grab a sense of place since his moods often take center stage in our traveling woes. They're excited, I'm a bit nervous considering this will be the first time without my sister, my tagteam partner with anything that has to do with parents. For me it is an agitating trist that involves wrangling my father when he runs around like a kid excited, dragging my mother who has bouts with arthritic pain, and wrestling with both their emotions considering how erratic they have been in the last few years. In between I have to carry and remember medication, watch dietary intakes, monitor blood sugar and blood pressure, while making constant checks to see that my dad isn't annoying anyone, especially my mother who can be quite a handful herself after being provoked.

More and more friends have bit into the filmmaking bug. After Vim's forays into the short film business where his first short won the Cinemalaya grand prize, two other friends, Paul Sta Ana and Francis Pasion have received grants for their feature length films. I am terribly excited for both, Paul's especially, since I have had a hand in revising his screenplay "Huling Pasada". It's an interesting material that delves into the world of metafiction--or meta'filmmaking'--and self-reflexivity. Whether the audience is mature enough for it remains to be seen and depends on how Paul handles the material while filmmaking or if he falls into the trap of converting it into another melodrama, in true ABS-CBN style no less. More later, when the film has had its first public outing. Anyway, here are the 2008 Cinemalaya finalists:

1. “100″ by Chris Martinez
2. “Antiparang Basag” by Edith Asuncion
3. “Baby Angelo” by Joel Ruiz and Abi Aquino
4. “Brutus” by Tara Illenberger
5. “Huling Pasada” by Paul Sta. Ana
6. “Jay” by Francis Xavier Pasion
7. “Konsyerto sa Kagubatan” by Paul Morales
8. “My Fake American Accent” by Onnah Valera
9. “Ranchero” by Michael Christian Cardoz
10. “The Gift of a Smile” by Emman dela Cruz

Meanwhile, if I manage to snatch the writing projects I like to work on for this year, I will develop material for an ambitious epic. Only, I won't direct it. Hehehe. Pray that I may write more, and that I write the things I truly want to write about.

Acclaimed Philippine women's fashion designer Inno Sotto surprises by coming out with three fragrances for men. I received one of the three scents called Huit for Christmas and I am liking it. Although the alcohol can be quite pungent immediately after spritzing it, it leaves a scent that reminds me of autumn breeze, of walking through a park filled with dried red leaves, the somber wait for death and its consequent rebirth. t's woody, cinnamon-y and peppery. It's also clean, simple, well-structured and extremely delicate--a charatceristic you don't find in a lot of perfumes these days that overwhelm the nose with layers and layers of complicated scents.



The packaging reveals it is made in France, and is composed of water and fragrance SD alcohol 39-C, the same base ingredient for a number of men's scents including Casswell Massey's Men's fragrances and Bulgari's Aqua, some of my other favorites. The only downside is that it comes at a price of P2,500, relatively cheaper but still a little too pricey to compete with foreign brands. Another downside is that it's distributed exclusively by Rustan's Essences, and doesn't make itself accessible to a wider market. While the establishment of exclusivity is a must to develop a local luxury brand, the price doesn't seem to suggest so since its quality will be scrutinized by the local market and who can find the perfume forgettable in an ocean of similar fragrances coming from more familiar brands. While Inno Sotto's foray into the perfume business is commendable, other slow but credible strategies for marketing and developing his brand should be considered in order to develop something globally competitive but still locally respectable.

Spent Christmas "Eve" at my sister's house, welcoming the newest addition to our family. I babysat for most part of it, as little baby Robin refused to be put down on her crib or on the bed. I obliged the babysitting chores myself since it was just a calming joy to stare at the baby. She would yawn, pout, sniffle, burp, snicker, pee, poop and cry, and through all that I would smile.



May your holidays be as blessed as mine!

I'm not devoted to any God. But I do take the opportunity to celebrate Christmas because it provides one of the few moments every year to meet with friends and family, to feel attached to the randomness of the universe, and in the slightest way feel some form of purpose.

Meeting old friends again made me realize a few things:

1. That I have been out-of-touch a lot.
2. That we are ultimately alone.
3. That I am loved.
4. That I am old.

I wish life's urgencies do not consume me. But I always feel compelled by the frustration of not having done enough in order to say that I have made the most of what I have. It's damning, how everyone else seems to have lived their lives without a lot of the things I have been blessed with and still end up with more.

These took some time. I'm thinking maybe I should have gone through the process more devoutly and at a steadier pace so I can learn how to deal with the Lomo's Fisheye. But didgital technology has made me lazy. Lazy. These photos weren't as spectacular as I thought they would be. It's hard to imagine that these were the best for the year.

I'm beginning to fall in love with LBC. Their delivery service has done a great deal of time saving for me especially in a season like this, where you are fragmented by the need to be in 27 different places in an hour and brave the metro traffic teeming with twice the amount of a populace out to get their loved ones something special for Christmas. While LBC's delivery service has proven invaluable for me in the last few years or so, they are coming up with even better ideas.

The one I like the most is their photography services courtesy of sister company Digiprint. I heard from a friend that it's possible to develop film negatives from there, convert them to digital files, without necessarily having to order prints from them. It's a welcome service since most film developing shops coerce you to have all your negatives printed out and charge you even for prints that you don't like or that aren't good. I spend about roughly 300 bucks for developing one 36-photo roll of film. With Digiprint, I spent less than 500 bucks developing the 8 rolls of film I have accummulated using my Fisheye camera and less than two hundred bucks developing the 2 dozen photos that I liked and wanted. The big bonus to the service, which I found out after visiting the Digiprint shop in Glorietta, is that they deliver the CD's and prints to you. So no need to pick them up yourself which, again, saves precious precious time.

LBC has also opened a bank, and features numerous creative remittance options for our friends and family members working overseas. They introduced a remittance ATM card, which allows one to withdraw remittances from any Megalink, Bancnet and Expressnet ATM in the country. It's different from a regular ATM in that you don't need to keep a bank account and a monthly maintaining balance, and claims not to have any encashment or withdrawal fees. All bank fees are handled at the beginning of the transaction process through the person sending the remittance who is charged a minimal fee for the remittances being made. Even if it isn't a savings account, you can enjoy the services of a bank ATM, by allowing you to withdraw a partial amount of the total remittance you have.

Anyway, you may want to try LBC yourself. If you want, you can send me gifts, including cash through LBC to see if it works ;) Hehehehe. Merry Christmas everyone.

It was 2001, and I was clearing up space at home to accommodate several boxes of books and things I was going to be taking home from work. I was going to be an exchange professor in Beijing later that year, and I was asked to clear out my cubicle since our department will be relocated to a smaller office temporarily while I am gone to give way to the renovation and expansion of our building. It was also the dawn of the MP3 age, and I was convinced that I could condense my growing CD library by ripping them into MP3 tracks to be stored in recordable CD’s that can be played in an MP3 Discman while making extra money selling my CD’s. It seemed daunting at first, but when I finally got to sift through my then 433-piece CD collection, it dawned on me that I wasn’t really fond of most of what I had. I could easily let most of them go, and only needed to copy a couple of tracks from a few CD’s I needed to sell. Before leaving for Beijing that September, I sold 357 CD’s and gave away 42 more, only keeping 34 albums I couldn’t part with.

Little did I know it then but my own taste for music started to evolve. What I had left was an embarrassing mix: all of Madonna’s major albums including those that flopped, Manila Sound classics from the Hotdogs to VST, Apo Hiking society, Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill, a couple of Eraserhead albums, The Cardigans, Regine Velasquez’s Retro covers, the Indigo Girls’ Rites of Passage, Seal’s first album, and the bests of the likes of Chet Baker, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrisson, The Monkees, Tears for Fears, Stan Getz and the Beatles. Those 34 albums and a few dozen more songs collected from the other albums I purged were condensed into 3 MP3 CD’s. It bothered me at first considering all the money I saved amounted to poor musical choices that didn’t express who I was as a listener. It was a joke, those CD’s, and the biggest blow was delivered by the fact that even I found my own music a laughable matter. Thankfully, something good came out of it eventually, as I got to clean my space of CD’s I didn’t need and my music library got smaller, my sensibility and appreciation for it grew even more; forcing me to define what it is that I wanted in music, blurring the lines between genres and those other rules people maintained, and focusing on those songs that really spoke to me.

Beijing provided the perfect setting to do just that. I had classes for only two hours each day at Peking University, worked for about an hour more to check and prepare teaching materials, and spent a couple more sharing a meal or two with a few Chinese colleagues or students. I was left on my own most of the time, reading away the afternoons and the nights, biking around the city, making the most out of the then antiquated scenery that was about to be gobbled up by an aggressive modernization campaign. Through all that I had my MP3 Discman slung around my shoulders and earphones plugged to my ears, digesting the music I brought from back home, providing the much needed reprieve from the ragged and jarring sounds of conversations I could barely understand. My selections became more precise as I began whittling down the songs I listened to. First gone were the local OPM songs written in Filipino which depressed me a lot. Even if they were speaking mostly about love and healing broken hearts for most part, the thought of hearing Filipino only in songs made me homesick. Not even a week after dispensing my Filipino OPM’s I also had to let go of my English OPM’s since they made me want to listen to the former. A great majority of love songs were eliminated next. Bulk of the casualties in this category of mine were those ludicrous pop songs since majority of them did talk about love, leaving only Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and “Beautiful Stranger” in the mix. Next to go were electronica and techno music since they struck me more as re-engineered elevator music. They became my sleep inducers back in Manila, after a friend told me that those were the best remedies for insomnia. The reduction process went on for several months. I tried to listen to the same playlist over and over again in the course of a day, for several days, even weeks at a time, modifying them every so often when I feel a certain mood or disposition in me needs a theme song. The dispositions were not purely a personal matter, they were also constructed through the aid of Beijing as I noticed many of what I listen to would express the very anxiety or excitement I had for the city I wanted to explore.

The exploration of a song became my metaphor for exploring an unfamiliar place. When I am confronted by the strangeness of waking up day after day in this city and I cannot articulate even for myself why in some days I feel betrayed by the calmness of autumn or why I am threatened by the first time I held a snowflake on the palm of my hand, I turned to songs to express that which I cannot express to myself. It isn’t just a matter of images conveyed by its lyrics since a song easily encompasses that. It is more a matter of finding the right song to lend you a voice in a context where you speak the unfamiliar, allowing the artistic decisions songwriters have made to become the very impulse by which you come to terms with the idiosyncracies of a place you otherwise won’t be able to deal with. Even if I take the same route to work everyday on my bicycle, I am overcome by the familiar and confronted by that inconsolable process of realizing that I truly don’t know what I think I know. Everyday, I pass through the University’s renowned Boya Tower en route to work, and not once did I fail to look at the intricate stone inlay of shingles in its multi-tiered ceiling that played with the rising sunlight. I would stop to take a picture whenever I felt compelled by it. I didn’t own a digital camera back then so I took photos liberally only to horrified by the discovery of having taken 22 photos of the tower in one 36-photo roll of film alone, each one a testament to a different unraveling. In all these is the rousing voice of the Indigo Girls singing Galileo, polishing paradoxes on truth and reincarnation, wondering, “if any human being ever reached that kind of light”. It’s the second track on my then 20 or so playlist, and the one that usually plays when I reach that part of my bike ride going to work that even without the song playing, its probing, questioning tone plays at the back of my head at the mere sighting of the Tower.


The Boya Tower reminds me of the different incarnations of light. Once a water storage for houses surrounding the old Yanjing University that once occupied this location before Peking University, it has become an important icon for the school together with the Wei Ming Lake (literally Nameless Lake) in front of it. It has come to symbolize a pen with the lake as its inkwell, epitomizing the spirit of the patriotic scholar immersed in hard work, responsibility and a perpetual quest for truth and knowledge. My students take pride in this metaphor. It was one of the first things they told me when we met for the first time and offered to take me to tour around the campus, and whose anecdote they repeat over and over again when we go near the lake for walks or shared meals. I find it comparable to the notion of the learned and the enlightened, the championing of reason informed by a clear perception of things, the kind that has mystified my colonial Catholic upbringing; the enlightened that has been translated to the wonder and discovery of knowledge in the West but has been muddled by centuries of re-equating the word and its numerous meanings with the self-righteous impositions of religious doctrine. My students’ light is of a different breed: it is laden with the unspoken duties of patriotism, of having to equate knowledge and truth with a commitment to the nation. When I see the Boya Tower towering above me or above the lake, I think of those two lights and the ill-fated demise of the self—my own especially—trying to conquer our feeble attempts to become like our imagined God or of our imagined nation. Add to the thought the taunting question of the Indigo Girls repeating over and over in the refrain: “Can anyone ever reach that kind of light?” The answer points to a million enthralling discoveries. There are mornings, for instance, when a student pauses in the same stance at the sight of the tower, and I can convince myself I am not at all foreign to marvel at the sight of such familiar wonders. There are mornings too, when I look at the shadow cast by the tower on the lake beside it, and I look to find no one around me to see what I see, and I am thrilled by the simple wonders which I can claim to, in more ways than one, enlighten myself.

My favorite cover of the song:

Again, no video, just the song with the Cybernaut album cover appearing the entire time. Watch out for the guitars near the end.

A fan plays piano in an attempt to accompany Kurt Cobain and Nirvana's cover of the song.


This was the live performance of Nirvana:

British singer Lulu, famous in the 60's, covers The Man Who Sold the World:

Forgive me, I am archiving. (In pursuit of higher learning)

This is the original song. There's no video, but it does display the album's original cover with Bowie in a dress:


This is a performance by David Bowie of the same song in 2000:

San Miguel to be paid for Sumilao - Arroyo counsel
From GMA News

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's top legal adviser on Tuesday assured that San Miguel Foods Inc. (SMFI) will be compensated when the government enforces the newly signed order placing the contested 144-hectare property in Sumilao in Bukidnon for distribution to agrarian reform beneficiaries.

Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol on Tuesday assured that SMFI, owner of the contested Sumilao Estate, will be paid through computations under Republic Act 6657 or the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law (CARL).

"Yes, definitely, oo ... Hindi naman libre ito e (yes ... This things isn't free)," Apostol told dzBB radio when asked if the SMC will be paid the value of the land.

He added that, "Since the land has been reverted back to agricultural classification, it can be placed under CARP (Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program), if it is under CARP then the land can be distributed to tenant-beneficiaries."

Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye said Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, after consulting with the President, signed the order revoking the conversion of the Sumilao property at 12:10 p.m. Tuesday.

"Based on the President's consultation with the farmers, religious and also based on the investigation of the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR), the recommendation of the DAR states that there was a violation of the conditions of the conversion order. That was the basis for the order," Bunye said.

He said the Quisumbing family, the first owner who filed for conversion, initially announced that it will turn the area into an agro-industrial estate, with the Development Academy of Mindanao covering 24 hectares; the Bukidnon Agro-Industrial Park consisting of 67 hectares; forest development estimates to cover 33 hectares; and support facilities covering 20 hectares.

"Instead of the projects, they implemented a hog farm in the area which, according to the DAR, is a violation because it changes or it amends the conversion order," Bunye said.

San Miguel Foods, which purchased the land from the Quisumbings, wants to turn the area into a hog farm.

Bunye said he personally relayed the news to the Sumilao farmers at the nearby College of Holy Spirit. The farmers had "mixed feelings" about the President's decision, Bunye said.

Asked if Mrs Arroyo already spoke with San Miguel about her decision, Bunye said that, "I'm not privy to the discussions but on my own personal knowledge, I know that as of this morning, Secretary Ermita was contacting the head of San Miguel."

In a phone interview with GMANews.TV, Apostol said that, "The compensation that will be received by San Miguel will be based on 'CARL formula.'"

However, the landowner San Miguel "will be given 15 more days to contest the decision of the president through a motion for reconsideration filed at the Office of the Executive Secretary."

He said the Higaonon farmers who sought ownership of the estate will become CARP "beneficiaries."

Apostol also denied that the decision to finally give the land back to the farmers was made to save the plunging popularity of the President.

"The President is already helping the poor yet people are putting abad connotation to her actions. Why is this so? Her motives are pure," Apostol said.

The Sumilao farmers, who marched more than 1,700 km from Bukidnon to Manila since October, have opposed the conversion order which was issued for the 144-hectare land.

The conversion order, approved by then Executive Secretary Ruben Torres, effectively canceled a collective certificate of land ownership award (CLOA) by the Department of Agrarian Reform (DAR).

A subsequent Supreme Court ruling upholding the conversion order allowed the sale of the property by the Quisumbing family to SMFI in February 2002.

Last November 16, the farmers filed their motion for reconsideration before the Office of the President seeking a reversal of the Supreme Court ruling that paved the way for the sale of the property to SMFI.

They argued that the conversion order must already be revoked since development in the area took place after the five-year period indicated in the conversion order.

Upon receipt of the motion, Ermita remanded the case to DAR for appropriate resolution.

The farmers had asked the DAR to issue a cease and desist order against SMFI.

Instead, DAR issued a status quo order, halting SMFI from further developing the property without preventing the firm from continuing with the construction of structures it had already started building. - GMANews.TV

The only bright spot to an otherwise drab week is seeing photos of my newborn niece and godchild, my sister's first. Here's one to share with everyone:

She's pretty, especially since she takes after me a lot. Made me jumpy and springy and fudgy inside.

She's six days old today. Merry Christmas everyone.

Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls wrote this song. She explains: "I was talking with my friend about reincarnation, what we believe. Does it mean that you come back as a dog or a tree or whatever, another human being, and the exchange of souls and all that stuff. And that just got me thinking about it. I wanted to write a song that was upbeat, that sort of took the whole subject sort of in a lighthearted way, even though I was thinking about it very seriously. There's this one point in the song where, as I understood reincarnation, you know it's a regeneration of souls for the betterment of all creatures and things over time. And I was thinking, you know, I'm so far from being the perfect soul that at least the world isn't going to experience nuclear holocaust while I'm alive, because I have to have my soul be regenerated at least once. So it was kind of like taking a heavy subject and sort of having fun with it.

I don't know if I believe in the exchange of souls, but I'm not a firm believer in reincarnation, and that I'm going to come back and be a dog, or another creature. I have a different belief system now, but back then, my friend really believed that we come back as something else, and it is a regeneration of souls until we reach Nirvana."

I was browsing through Songfacts' page on my world's most favorite song and had a blast reading the malevolent takes people had on this. It was hilarious:

"the song in my opinion is bowie in a dream meeting the lucifer,he then makes some sort of deal with him and heads away;maybe for eternal youth?the song is timeless because of this hidden message,i think bowies fear of madness brought him frighting dreams which interpeted into lyrics which are deep in the subconsious,maybe thats why we all identify with them

- lloyd, cork, Ireland

I believe this is about one person and appears to be about a suicide. One line reads, "Oh no, not me, I never lost control." At the end, it reads, "Oh no, not me, WE never lost control. You're face to face With the Man who Sold the World." In other words, the man who sold the world is himself. I'll guess that "we passed along the stair" is about the stairway to heaven or hell. This appears to be about a man remembering himself in the past (the man he passes is himself) and believing that he did not kill himself, was heading up to heaven. He is so convinced that he did not die from suicide, he splits himself into two people and is "surprised" that the man on the stair was his "friend." However, he does know that the man on the stair, a man that he is surprised to find out was his friend, DIED a long, long time ago. How would he know that if he doesn't know the man? In other words, "Hey, I thought you died but hey, I'm not you; I'm not that man." He laughs at the phrase, "You're face to face with the Man who sold the world," and continues on to heaven. Notice how it reads, "I searched for form and land." There is nothing around him except air and he's walking in nothingness. Ultimately, after many years he finds all the people who have committed suicide (in hell, I guess) and realizes that there are millions who died alone, just like him. But even to the end, when he realizes that the man on the stair was himself, he tries to convince himself that WE never lost control, even though he gave up everything.

- Thom, Boston, MA

look u guys are all wrong. its not about jesues its about moses. he was a prince who was about to be a king but instead he freed his poeple. HE is the man who sold the world.also after he got the ten commandments god told him to die alone.

- nick, sacramento, CA

The Man who sold the world could actually be Judas Iscariot , Cane , the Devil or a wandering lost soul. We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when - Judas & Jesus meet sometime in the future and discussed about the past and what happened. (They were friends once. remember?) Although I wasn't there, he said I was his friend - although Judas was not up there in heaven(upstairs) he was surprised that Jesus still considers him as His friend. Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes:"I thought you died alone, a long long time ago" - Judas thought Jesus died alone in the past. Oh no, not me I never lost control You're face to face With the man who sold the world - not sure who spoke this. I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home - Judas goes back home to sheol/hell/limbo?. (not exactly sure why he laughed. maybe sarcastic or just let out a devilish laugh.) I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed - Judas was probably cursed to wander aimlessly in another dimension or in limbo looking for form and land (similar to cane's curse if u read the Bible). I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here We must have died along, a long long time ago - Judas looks at millions of tormented souls in hell or limbo and told them they are already dead along with him ( they must have thought theyre alive all along ) Who knows? not me We never lost control You're face to face With the man who sold the world - Judas talking to the multitude and admitted he's the man who sold the world. Listen closely at bowie's version at the end of the song theres a kind of eerie back vocals. spooky. but it rocks. you can download it using winmx. but its hard to find. goodluck.

- Kurdt, Q.C., Other

Could the last guy be from The Q.C.?!!! What other Q.C.'s do you know? And I thought I had bad students who absurdly found a way to moralize everything! Everything! Anyway, here are the lyrics:

We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when
Although I wasnt there, he said I was his friend
Which came as some surprise I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone, a long long time ago

Oh no, not me
I never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

I laughed and shook his hand, and made my way back home
I searched for form and land, for years and years I roamed
I gazed a gazely stare at all the millions here
We must have died along, a long long time ago

Who knows? not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

Who knows? not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world

I turn to it when I feel I've sold my own world to be in the comforts of the ordinary. Merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream!

This girl has been groomed to be a pop sensation and she knows it. She has the looks to play with exoticized images of what the West imagines an Asian to be, a perfect smile and beautiful eyes. Vocally, she's solid, but not quite there yet. A little more training perhaps.

This was my favorite. A little more pop embellishments, like knowing where the cameras are and playing a little more to the audience would have helped improve these performances a lot.

At the expense of being unpatriotic, I didn't like these at all. Mau has had better days, had sung Better Days, and has had her brilliant moments. The brilliance of course having been imbibed by good song choices. What were they thinking? Making her sing, of all songs, Reach?

I don't think anyone was more surprised than the winner himself since the judges made it clear that it was to be a competition between Mau Marcelo, Indonesian Mike Mohede and Malaysian Jaclyn Victor.

Anyhoo, here are the performances of Hady Mirza:





A bit affected with the rockstar vibe despite the inability to keep the seams together with the higher notes. Then again it wasn't about the winning.

Six country winners compete for the title of Asian Idol in a pre-recorded TV program in Indonesia. It was aired last night, and right now, we are awaiting the verdict as to who Asia will vote for.

The six contestants are as follows:

Indian Idol Abhijeet Sawant who sang Bryan Adams' (Everything I Do) I Do It For You and Indian song Junoon.

Indonesian Idol Mike Mohede sang R. Kelly's I Believe I Can Fly and Indonesian song Mengejar Matahari, also the title of a local movie I remembered watching while there a few years back.

Malaysian Idol Jaclyn Victor. She sang the classic For Once in My Life and local song Gemilang.

Our very own Philippine Idol Mau Marcelo who sang Gloria Estefan's Reach and the classic Ako ang Nasawi, Ako ang Nagwagi.

Singapore Idol Hady Mirza sang U2's Beautiful Day and the Malay song Berserah.

And Vietnam Idol Phương Vy who sang River Deep - Mountain High and Just Falling in Love.

The contestants were obviously nervous, possibly aware that they are playing to a larger audience. But most were able to conquer their nerves and sing well, even bringing their own local vocal stylings to the fore even if half the competition was to be determined through a Western song. And I guess that would make this particular singing competition difficult to judge. What constitutes an Idol anyway, but a Western-inspired mold of a marketable singer who can duplicate the sheen of Western/American fluff that can be consumed by the masses? While the idea of an Asian Idol is commendable, perhaps it would be best to market this particular competition not as a contest but as an event celebrating the musical acheivements of different countries around Asia. In the end, who wins should not be relegated to a single country alone, but through the achievement of the region in general, producing their own kind of music and singers and setting it on stage for their neighbors to appreciate.

Hollaback Girl lyrics below. If you have time, do play the mindnumbing game of B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Sing the song, and find a subsitute for the word bananas and spell it out the hollaback way. Some of my favorites include:

Bayabas, B-A-Y-A-B-A-S
Mansanas, M-A-N-S-A-N-as
Patatas, P-A-T-A-T-A-S
Lakatan, L-A-K-A-T-A-N
Bobitas, B-O-B-I-T-A-S
Fajitas, F-A-J-I-T-A-S

This amounts to nothing much, but then again it's mind-numbing. I did say it's mind-numbing right? Uh, this is my shit.

* * *

Uh huh, this my shit
All the girls stomp your feet like this

A few times I've been around that track
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl

Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit

I heard that you were talking shit
And you didn't think that I would hear it
People hear you talking like that, getting everybody fired up
So I'm ready to attack, gonna lead the pack
Gonna get a touchdown, gonna take you out
That's right, put your pom-poms down, getting everybody fired up

A few times I've been around that track
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl

Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit

So that's right dude, meet me at the bleachers
No principals, no student-teachers
Both of us want to be the winner, but there can only be one
So I'm gonna fight, gonna give it my all
Gonna make you fall, gonna sock it to you
That's right, I'm the last one standing, another one bites the dust

A few times I've been around that track
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl

Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit

Let me hear you say, this shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
this shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
Again, this shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S
This shit is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S

A few times I've been around that track
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Cause I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl
I ain't no hollaback girl

Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit
Oooh, this my Shit, this my Shit

"My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chief strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. And therefore I am come amongst you all, as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all; to lay down for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a week and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England too. And think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any Prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm!"

This was Queen Elizabeth’s most celebrated speech, signaling her finest hour in power. She didn’t sit inside a guarded Palace while her people fought, but went to battle to "live or die" with them as they warded off invading Spaniards sent by King Philip to liberate England from their Protestant queen. She made her way to Tilbury, and like a true warrior queen, Elizabeth, upon a White Horse, inspected her soldiers, and showed nerves of steel guiding them to victory against Spain, the greatest empire in their time.

These were the events that were the centerpiece of Shekhar Kapur’s follow-up to his 1998 installment Elizabeth which launched the career of Cate Blanchett who played the title role. Blanchett, undeniably, essayed one of the best acting pieces of all time and got robbed off an acting Oscar to then It-girl Gywnneth Paltrow who delivered a paltry and forgettable performance in the speculative period piece Shakespeare in Love.

While the first installment from Kapur delivers a film with pangs that seethe with a perverse energy and rawness that complemented Blanchett’s acting prowess, this second installment pales in comparison. Blanchett is still great though, but that hasn’t been enough to save this film from over-written lines, clichéd images and a plotline that reeks of melodrama. Nestling its plot on a rumored romance between Elizabeth and her favorite courtier Walter Raleigh to balance the Queen’s divinity and her humanity, the film overdevelops the love angle with cheezy lines that belittle the poetic imagination of the same period that produced Shakespeare. It culminates in Raleigh’s saving of England, even if its highly doubtful if it was Sir Walter himself who single-handedly sunk the Spanish Armada, as many historical sources point to Charles Howard as the mastermind of the offensive.

The film, masquerading as a highbrow lesson in history, did get too campy. Its visual signals are overplayed and can be too literal. The pivotal execution of Queen Mary suffered as they juxtaposed images of the Catholic Queen being executed in red, and Elizabeth hyperventilating all over the palace after signing the former’s death papers in green. Rather than letting Cate Blanchett sit in her throne and give her good lighting so she can narrate the same kind of emotion sitting down—she is, after all, one of those rare breed of actresses who can do it—they had to transform the two actresses playing queens into Christmas mascots. The climax also suffered. As English ships stage a dramatic turn around against the gigantic Spanish fleet, the actor playing King Philip approaches a candle and mutters: “Elizabeth is darkness. I am light.” The candle imagery is overplayed in the next shots, culminating in the blowing of King Philip’s candle (pun intended) by the wind and Elizabeth looking out at sea to find the entire Spanish armada burning in defeat.

Jodie Foster, reportedly came out at the Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment breakfast held at Los Angeles' Beverly Hills Hotel last week. In her speech she thanked her rumored partner Cydney Bernard a production manager whom she met in the set of the forgettable Sommersby, which co-starred Richard Gere saying: "I would like to thank my beautiful Cydney who sticks with me through all the rotten and the bliss."

This is reportedly the first time Foster has made reference to her relationship with film producer Cydney Bernard, her reported partner of 14 years. It comes as no surprise considering she appeared alongside CNN anchor Anderson Cooper on the cover of this year's May issue of Out magazine with the headline, "The glass closet: Why the stars won't come out and play".



She was also named number 43 on the American gay lifestyle magazine's list of "The 50 Most Powerful Gay Men and Lesbians in America."

It's the annual Microwarehouse sale!



It's the season for a really great depression.

There is no reality franchise hungrier to make it than The Amazing Race Asia. While its American father featured a cast of almost non-celebrities in their show, the Asian version features an overeager mix of who's whos in the Region.

Hong Kong's Monica Lo represented Canada and won the 1997 Miss Chinese International Pageant.

Marc Nelson of the Philippines is one of the hosts of the Philippine sports-oriented show Sports Unlimited on ABS-CBN network while teammate Rovilson Fernandez is one of the hosts of another sports-oriented show, Gameplan and an executive editor of Maxim magazine's Philippine edition. Together, they have an extensive repertoire of physical challenges and travel experience that can help them to win.

Thailand's Paula Taylor is a VJ of Channel V.

Malaysia's Pamela & Vanessa Chong are the sisters of famous Malaysian singer Vince Chong.

Indonesia's Kinaryosih is a celebrity who has a string of TV commercials and box-office movies, and has competed in the shows Seleb Dance and its Indian counterpart Nach Baliye. She also appeared in Fear Factor Indonesia.

They all follow in the footsteps of last season's Aubrey Miles, an actress in the Philippines and Prashant Raj Sachdev, an Indian model.

Coupled with the warring spouses Terri and Henry from the Philippines, and the dumb and dumber girls Sophie and Aurelia, this show is poised to be an interesting display of toothpaste-perfect smiles, flawless skin and well-chiseled bodies more reminiscent of white notions of beauty. Plus, the show hardly has ever need for subtitles as everyone speaks English near flawlessly.

This is truly a celebration of Asia indeed. The show reminds me of how little we have achieved to overcome racial and social stratification and how we like to be colonized so much.

If I were to have one book for Christmas, it would have to be Jeff Morgan's The Dean and Deluca Food and Wine Cookbook. Dean and Deluca is to New York what Cabalen is to Kapampangan Cuisine. Or maybe not. Even if this particular cookbook celebrates Napa Valley accomplishment more, its identity is undeniably New York. It represents a collection of streamlined dishes and cooking processes so that they can be made available outside New York. While the global directive underpinning the shift in production processes may seem scary, Dean and Deluca, like New York, promises to be a melting pot of the world's flavors. Whether its their Lobster, Cabernet and Shiitake soup or their Moroccan Rabbit Couscous, Dean and Deluca promises to stage the world on a dinner table. The downside of it of course are finding the ingredients. Where in Manila can I possibly find edible rabbit meat? Anyway, Dean and Deluca, for lovers of food everywhere who'd like to see familiar ingredients pan out to the rest of the world.

If you're into games like Prime Suspects, you may want to try or give the special kids in your life a book like Claire d'Harcourt's Art Up Close. I saw this book in a bargain bookstore. I would have bought it but I didn't have money on me. When I went back for it, it was gone. Skimming through it and reading some parts, I liked the book a lot. It's a nice way to teach kids and kids at heart the intricacies of detail through a simple puzzle game. It grabs small details in an artwork, magnifies them and the reader's tasked to find them, exploring lines and textures, the interplay of light and shadow, exploring depth, and a whole lot of other concepts found in the artwork. That's a nice touch since the experience of all these things become experiential--rather than reading it through some ivory-tower critique of the work--and unconsciously provides the reader good tools not just for understanding art but paying attention to detail. The other nice thing about the book is that it includes large photos of historically significant artwork, even explaining briefly their merits in the end of the book, giving the reader a repertoire of important artworks and the concepts that have developed in time that have contributed to their stature.

At the risk of sounding premature, I am looking forward to having a new baby in the family. It scares and excites me at the same time.

I feel like breaking my back in two.

Throw myself out the window and fall three stories down on the grass, and break my back in two. My blood drenching the green green December grass.

Or sit on a wedge, let it slide up and slice me in two. The blood dripping off the blade. Maybe lumps of my insides muddling the sheen of finely-crafted steel.

Or pulling my guts out. Or stab myself right through the heart. And not feel that twinge in my back whenever I have to sit upright and study the word before me.

Then maybe I wouldn't have to break myself in two.

"Beginning January 1, 2008, there will be an approximate 4% adjustment in the monthly dues for all members who have completed their minimum contract period. The adjustment will be less than P4 a day (P95/month) and is below inflation for last year.

"The prices of food and beverage have risen by 6.0%, transport andcommunication services by 10.7% and utilities by 16.1%.

"Several of our clubs are scheduled for major renovation with new equipment, so that you are assured of a complete and safe workout experience every time you visit a Fitness First Club. Thank you for your continued patronage and we hope that you'll come to appreciate the changes we will implement in the coming months.

"Warm regards,
"Fitness First Philippines

"Mark Ellis
"Managing Director"

How do you reason out to corporate slobs whose best means to comrehend is through numbers? The morons. Since when does inflation and rising service and utility costs determine rise in prices especially for non-basic commodities like health club memberships? Salaries in this part of the universe do not increase along the curves of inflation. It doesn't even happen in first world countries. Why do they punish customers who have stuck it out with them rather than rewarding them? And what fucking changes? There's no cold water, a lot of the equipment needs servicing in my gym, the showers are dingy, and the service still sucks.

If you have a small honest-to-goodness gym in your area that needs to succeed, by all means, support it and help it grow. Fitness First is not worth it.

It’s that season again when everyone’s scrambling to get paper work done to legitimize positions in an already position-laden universe. I am dealt with some delicate responsibility to balance what has been done with what needs to be embellished. Of course they never talk about it in meetings, but that’s what report writing has impressed upon me: to negotiate between illusion and reality.

I wonder where I am in all these. If I can continue to believe that I am my own person and that I should not be swayed into assimilating the rhetoric of the institution that employs me. When I get down with the real business that is my vocation, I can’t help but feel that I have assimilated the institution. That it speaks me. That I am nothing more than its voice.

I wonder, too, if there is enough in me to stand in the space I think I have left for myself so I can dream things differently. If I am allowed to dream out loud and seek wisdom in the unchangeable.

As a child, I was convinced: I can change the world. It’s a half-truth, a way to patronize the ego seeking to gratify itself. The other side of it is a bitter lie. We could never be our own selves unless we allow ourselves to perform the miniscule task of the world’s machinery.

The absurdity of Christmas is exclamated by the separate renditions of Mariah Carey and Josh Groban of O Holy Night. I cringe whenever I hear their songs being played. In the mall, in the jeep, in the taxi cab, in my brother's car, as the background music in TV shows, in the cafeteria, in restaurants, even this morning when my father decided to look for Christmas songs playing on AM radio.

I especially hate the part when Mariah screeches screams "divine" (Divaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhn) towards the end of her song like a squeaking barn door in need of desperate oiling. Granted she can reach that high note (which she has made the world know when she first broke out with the forgettable "Vision of Love") , but can she reach the ones between her normal singing voice and that one high note? I got used to her bad and over-metaphorized lyrics anyway, she might as well bring it, that song of hers with a voice on the verge of squeaking.

Josh Groban goes the opposite extreme. While Mariah pushes her vocal chords to the extreme, Josh relaxes his way too much to give us another supreme example of what elevator music should sound like if you were going a million stories down the earth and straight to hell. I know many people characterize his voice as powerful and heavenly. I find it too affected, contrived even. And I guess the only reason he gets away with it is because he's a man. Make a girl do the same vocal stylings and it will sound absurd, and they'll get a beating for it. If this is what heavenly sounds like, I think I'd rather go to hell.

Big Brother is the successful Reality TV franchise named after the omnescient all-seeing leader of the dystopic Oceania in the 1949 George Orwell novel of 1984. While I am not a fan, tonight's incarnation of the program in the Philippine's own second season of its Celebrity Edition shows the program reverting to its roots as the show seems to entering, at least for me, an eerie dystopia all its own.

Fallen Eat Bulaga angel Gladys Guevarra, who, predictably, channel-switched after leaving the popular noontime variety show, provides the trigger to the eerie 1984-ication of the show. Depressed for seemingly irrational reasons, she first abandons the Olym'pig' Challenge--itself an eerie reference to another popular Orwell novel The Animal Farm--for fear of contracting disease from the pig before finally deciding to abandon the show entirely. This in the midst of Big Brother's temporary abandonment of the show. In his place is a 'Big Sister' played by Mariel Rodriguez, the ultimate personification of twiddledee herself, who has been identified successfully by the housemates.

And just where is Big Brother? For me, there's the rub. As the house is shook, the all-seeing yet unseeable character playing God under the directive of network executives is in a baffling reprieve from brandishing power.

Mariel confirms if he's in a spa. Big Brother detests and says he's in a resort and shouldn't be stressed out. Now everything we suspect about Big Brother is true, Big Brother is really a Big Fabulous Sister!!!

This movie was a slow wringing ordeal. I don't know if I just found the material for the movie appalling or if it was helmed by a ludicrous director who was trying to figure out what the material was all about when the filming was over.

Given that it has an amazing cast, the film leaves a lot to be desired. While I haven't read the original books from which this has been adapted, the film fumbles with a lot of the self-reflexive parody most fantasies would have about the Church and organized religion in general. Consider calling your soul your daemon, or characterizing witches as fierce foot soldiers with a kind heart, or a bear-king rendered soulless by the loss of his armor. There are a lot of opportunities to transform the film into more than just a CGI-enhanced blockbuster given its strong ensemble and backing from big studios. What does it do instead? It turns it into a poorly done CGI blockbuster with a wasted ensemble with nothing much to offer but an ill-derived plot with contrived characters and a film that doesn't say anything at all except that Nicole Kidman is gorgeous even as a bitch.

I don't have kids of my own. But I teach, and somehow, in the insanity of having to babysit three to four hundred college students every year, I find myself equating the pangs of giving birth to having to guide them through things they have to deal with.

(That or I may be growing old)

I'd love it if my job involved only lecturing or if I didn't have to check papers. But it doesn't and even if I only teach a few hours or so each day, a great deal of that few hours is wasted on mustering up energy to cough up patience and the sensitivity to articulate for them the things they dare not say. You also have to deal with a lot of silly excuses for not doing homework or for not coming to class regularly, their attention deficiency, their Freudian tendencies from biting nails to using the same bitten nails to scratch their crotches, even pretending to understand what they said even if most of the time they just rephrased what I asked in the form of a statement.

Today a bunch of my colleagues and I dragged piles of papers to check with us as we went through lunch. Lunch is usually a simple affair at work. We all convene in the pantry and sit around this massive dining table to eat and exchange pleasantries. Though it would be common for a colleague pressed for time to drag papers to check to the pantry, the mood was made more urgent today since everyone brought a pile of papers to check. Everyone noticed it, and the spirit of lunch took over. We stopped checking and attuned ourselves to conversations poking fun at the somewhat serious and yet downright funny ways by which our students have written on paper at how they look at the world.

I discovered my kids were more dramatic than usual. I made them do a writing exercise on description. And while a lot of them started out with acute physical descriptions of photographs they have chosen themselves, a significant amount of them hurl out crap over emotional baggage that had nothing to do with the rhetorical device discussed.

One student likes to make paper cranes to throw out of the window as a symbol of letting go of worries. He then narrates how he fought with his parents the same night he made a ton of paper cranes over increasing his allowance in embarrassingly abundant detail. There's another student who laments over kids recruited in military operations to fight the world's wars. As to what it has to do with description, I don't know. Another one describes her hair, how long and shiny it is, and the processes she follows every night to keep it that way for fear of becoming ugly and unacceptable, and even unloved. And here's an excerpt of my favorite from a child who tries to describe his room, only he is using his room as a metaphor to describe his admiration for a girl in school:

"Ang silid na ito'y malawak na puso na punong-puno ng pagmamahal para sa iyo. Dito kita nais ikulong nang maramdaman mo ang pag-ibig ko na nag-uumapaw gaya ng balahibo na bumubulwak sa katre ng kama kung bibiyakin ito. Bubuksan ko ang aircon at ipararamdam ko sa iyo ang lamig ng aking pagmamahal. (This room is a big heart that's filled with love for you. I want to lock you here so you can feel my love that overflows like the feathers that will spurt out of the bed if it's snapped in two. I will turn the air conditioner on so you can feel the coldness of my love.)"

We couldn't stop laughing. Even if this is the worst paper I have read my entire life, it provided the material for one of the best lunches I've had at work in years.

My first visit to Ilocos was made memorable by two visits to sister restaurants Uno Grille and Café Uno. Taking the cue from Maricris, caretaker of the famed Villa Angela Heritage House in Vigan, we headed straight to Uno Grille on the corner intersecting Bonifacio Street and Quirino Boulevard for a late serving of lunch. We stayed up late the night before, watching the developments on TV of Trillanes’s taking over of the Manila Peninsula. Uno Grille was closed at around two in the afternoon, and immediately set off for Plaza Burgos, blaming Vigan’s notorious siesta time. We failed to see Café Uno in front, darted immediately towards the direction of Plaza Salcedo, and ended up ordering more food than usual in Chowking.
The next day, Uno Grille was still closed. Afraid of the possibility of falling prey to another fastfood restaurant you can find in Manila, we took a chance with Café Uno. To our surprise, we were handed out three sets of menus from there and from Uno Grille plus that of Kusina Felicitas, and we were able to find a long list of Iloko food apart from the often suggested and very redundant fixtures in the quaint colonial city’s culinary fare of Pinakbet, Vigan Longganisa and Bagnet from the last two menus.

While the mix seems confusing at first, we realized later on that the operations of these three restaurants provide a vital node for invigorating the city’s struggling restaurant industry. Upon close inspection of what they had to offer, it is possible to see how each of the three complement each other and solidify each other’s presence in Vigan’s fledgling restaurant scene. Uno Grille serves popular and local delicacies, Café Uno serves Western food and does double duty as a coffeehouse, and Kusina Felicitas transforms locally available ingredients into the rich palette of flavors of other (and othered) Asian cuisines.

A walk around the small city cannot hide the fact that Vigan’s food is too fastfood or too traditional. The popular alternatives are a handful of fastfood joints around Plaza Salcedo. Found all over and beyond the country, they reek of mass-produced meals that are impersonal and unimaginative. Fortunately, the prices of many of these fastfood joints are still quite expensive for the living standards of Vigan, making it possible for smaller enterprises not to be bullied like their counterparts in big cities like Manila.

Vigan can still enjoy some semblance of confinement from the outside world, allowing small entrepreneurs like those found in the Talakis Food Corner beside the Cathedral to move in and develop food for a population on the verge of being shadowed by the extended ‘golden arches’ of burgers and pizzas. Whether it’s the Vigan Plaza Hotel or Gaizel’s Carinderia, the food is comforting almost anywhere you go, and reawaken nostalgia over familiar home-cooked meals from our childhood. But they are also dated and obsolete, and need to be invigorated either by new cooking techniques or through the revival of old and forgotten culinary processes.

Both print and online travel guides would point to Café Leona as the progressive Vigan restaurant and so we spent our first dinner there. It turned out to be a little disappointing. All Café Leona had working for itself was its strategic location in the better end of Crisologo Street, the heart of the city’s heritage preservation efforts. We found its local food too expensive considering we ate better renditions of a lot of them for a lower price and heftier portions at a smaller restaurant for lunch. A salad promised mozarella cheese for toppings and we got it with quick-melt cheddar cheese instead. It expanded itself with Italian food next door and ventured into combining Ilocano flavors with Italian traditions but took the idea of fusion cuisine quite literally. Imagine the ridiculous taste of Pinakbet Pizza with heaps of kalabasa, okra and ampalaya on top of a flaky thin crust!

While Vigan has a veritable list of must-eats like the Empanadas in Plaza Burgos, the pastries by Arcelli’s Bakery along Florentino Street and local kakanin, Uno Grille, Café Uno and Kusina Felicitas provide an exciting alternative by reinvigorating tradition with contemporary but still unmechanized cooking techniques which Café Leona has failed to do. The result is a rediscovery of Ilocos’s other culinary achievements aside from the Pakbet, the Longganisa and the Bagnet, and the reinstatement of a collection of soon-to-be forgotten food into the imagination that always knew Filipino cuisine is better and richer than what we give it credit for.

We skimmed excitedly through the menu, amusing ourselves with names of food such as Poqui-Poqui Balls, Balot Pataranta and Sapsapuriket. Although the waitress did offer us suggestions on what to eat, we were overcome by the unfamiliar names resulting to having to order a seaweed salad with two chicken dishes. We never felt sorry for our haphazard decision-making. The food was able to draw attention away from the fact that they were both chicken demanding that their taste take center stage.

After sampling the Pokpoklo Ensalada, traditional Ilonggo salad with tomatoes, onions and seaweed laced with sukang Iloko, the Pipian Manok arrived next and we were excited with the color provided for by an atsuete-colored sauce. A traditional merienda favorite in Ilocos, Pipian struck me as a tangier version of Arrozcaldo. There were whiffs of ginger in its aroma. We dug in immediately only to unravel a number of surprises. First, the sauce isn’t really a sauce but a thick congee of ground rice flavored by atsuete water and other pungent flavors. The waitress must have sneered at the sight of us eating rice with rice. Rather than feeling silly for pouring the rice congee on top of our steamed rice when we should have eaten it as a soup, we prodded on, inspecting the numerous layers of ingredients that hid in its pungent flavors. The strong taste could not come from ginger alone and after reviewing its description on the menu, the next surprise came in the discovery that kamias was used to give zest to the savory mixture.

Finally, the Chicken Karimbuaya was served and we were stupefied by the amount of chicken on the serving platter. It was basically grilled chicken using the liquid for basting Iloko-style roast chicken as its marinade, served with vegetables and kropek or fish crackers on the side. While it seemed impossible to top the Pipian that came before it, the Karimbuaya held its own ground. The skin was grilled to a crisp brown, and the meat was just succulent and juicy. Flavor-wise, it was something to die for: it was a well-balanced mix of mild tanginess with the sweet woody flavors of roasted and caramelized assortment of herbs. It was so good we even ordered an extra cup of rice just to finish the drippings left on the Karimbuaya’s serving dish.

Although our food choices were poorly coordinated, it was a hefty lunch all the same, and so we all agreed to come back for dinner the next day before we leave for Manila. We finally listened to our server’s suggestions for that particular dinner and ordered a Bulbulong Salad with sayote leaves, Sapsapuriket Chicken Soup, Chili Garlic Capis and Poqui Poqui Balls. The Bulbulong Salad was your typical Iloko salad served with sliced salted eggs and Bagoong Balayan dabbed with just the right amount of calamansi. The Sapsapuriket was served next. Described to be the Iloko version of Tinolang Manok, it was a heavenly broth mixed with a little chicken blood, Iloko vinegar and a generous amount of siling labuyo, sili and dahon ng sili that lent a really spicy flavor. Those who abhor spicy food may be put off at first. I broke a sweat eating this soup and blew my nose more than once, but it was all worth it. I loved this soup a lot since it reminded me what one should eat in those rainy nights and what our mothers should have serves us to flush out the flu. I was so immersed in the Sapsapuriket that I ignored the Chili Garlic Capis and the Poqui-Poqui Balls when they were served on our table.

When I finally got to the last two viands on our table, they were almost halfway done. The Chili Garlic Capis is a fancier name for shelled scallops in a thick and spicy sweet-sour sauce. While the sauce seems robust and strong, the scallops’ distinct, sweet flavor and freshness burst right through the garlic since it wasn’t overcooked. The Poqui-Poqui Balls are a modification of the popular Iloko Poqui-Poqui made with eggs, mashed eggplant, tomatoes and onions. This particular version had pork and was dipped in breadcrumbs before frying. They looked like giant meatballs sitting on a bed of curry and tomato sauces. The waitress told us that this particular recipe won top honors in the 2006 Chefs on Parade competition. It was well deserved considering that the Poqui-Poqui was a well-plated and well thought of dish. The contrast between the red and yellow sauces that covered the plate provided an attractive base for the Poqui-Poquis that sat on top. It played with different textures too. It was crisp on the outside and very moist and soft inside. Adding the sauce in the cut pieces provided an interesting interplay of the savory bite of a light curry sauce and a pleasantly surprising pungent tomato sauce. And throughout that, the delicate flavor of the char-grilled eggplant comes through.

When all the plates were cleared, we stared at each other in disbelief. We ate all that? That was a hefty feat even for three big men considering the portions were big enough for a family of six. The waitress comes to clear our table. Before she could lift the first plate on her tray, she asks us if we would like to try some local dessert. We all laughed, shook our heads and promised to grab it the next time, pointing to our bloated tummies.

This weekend's hahaha is brought to us by Daguldol Tarakatac III whose blog, ironically, is called LIFE IS SHORT:

The start of November was marked by a 4-day long weekend.
I slept
And then … I slept even more.
Note the lack of blog posts

But – I am back
Ready to write again
Okay
Let’s see …

On my last trip to the United States, I was innocently browsing through the intellectual material in the condom section of the friendly Walgreens Drug Store down the street from my hotel.
Wala lang – just browsing

I was reading labels
Educating myself with the differences between “ribbed” and “ultra-thin”
Enlightening myself with the concept of “pleasure dots”
Researching the antibacterial properties of “non-oxynol”
Contemplating the joys of “vibration rings”
Toying with the art of “neon colors”
And asking for a taste test of “fruity flavors” … (a request that the attendant promptly refused to agree to)

Then something struck me
There were sizes !
S, M, L, XL (I guessed that was small, medium, large and “Xcessively long” ?)

In Asia – condoms are pretty much one size fits all.
No confusion
No choices
No need to return to the drug store to change sizes coz’ it didn’t fit
One size – simple

So this concept of choosing sizes was new to me – a cultural shock
I stood there stumped
Looking down at my crotch and painting a visual picture
The labels carried no clue as to what dimensions constituted S, M , L and XL
I had hit an intellectual blank wall
If I chose the wrong size – I was concerned about “slippage”
On the other hand I was equally afraid of “gangrene”

So I took a leap of faith
I recalled all the sweet whisperings in my ear by the sweet little things with whom I had had a sexual encounter in my lifetime ( yup … all two of them)
Then I assessed the norms of dimension that I had presumed after going cross-eyed while inadvertently glancing at my neighbors in men’s room urinals
I multiplied that against the square root of the median of male to female population ratios
Inputted the racial genetic index of Asia
And subtracted the possibility of error as defined in Einstein’s theory of relativity

And finally –I made a choice
Whewwww
Americans make life so complicated
Choices, choices, choices …
I was homesick for my simple Asian life

But then … all is well that ends well
Despite the necessary mental calisthenics – I had chosen the right size
The fit was perfect
I had confronted my doubts
I had faced my fears
I had reviewed the "hard" facts

Travel is full of education and experience
On this trip- I had learned a valuable lesson
Size matters .....


:-)

Have a great laugh everyone, it just makes everything else smaller.

I am changing templates not by choice but because I accidentally deleted it. Waaah!

I liked the old one, but since I need to recreate it anyway, I might as well make something new.

I am looking at it as an opportunity for change, which I don't get to do a lot these days.

Other things I really want to change: my boss, the President, the world and the way we dream.

I also want to change KFC's gravy to the old recipe I enjoyed when I was a kid. I also want to change my camera. And if I could change my shoes every hour I would.

Now I am craving for KFC, Shakey's Mojo Potatoes and McDonald's Twister Fries. I also want wine and cheese and olives and smoked salmon everyday for the rest of my life. I want to live in Tuscany, in Vigan and in Polynesia. I also want Zac Efron's hair, a body built like that of a middleweight UFC fighter, Sendhil Ramamurthy's chin, Martha Stewart's celadon plates and the weather in Holland. I also want a bigger salary. I want my tooth back. I want to be reincarnated as a Brangelina kid, or Madonna's back-up dancer, or that rat in Ratatouille.

Anyway...

This, obviously, needs a lot more tweaking. I'll do that when I have more time. For now, loyal readers--if I have loyal readers (since loyalty is too exacerbating a virtue to demand from anyone these days)--you will have to do with the uncoordinated colors and the large fonts.

After more than eighty years, the Rollei first developed in Germany in the 1920's is back with a smaller digital version. Well, it isn't anything new considering they came out with this a couple of years ago. It's cute, the idea of a mini-Rollei you can hold with your fingers, but somehow one feature was lost on me. Even if the design is undeniably reminiscent of the classic Rollei silhouette and shoots using its square format making use of two lenses, I am stupefied by the inclusion of the crank lever which you have to use to get the camera ready for the next shot. Why crank it? The crank lever is cute, but can't they update its function as well? It also doesn't make sense cranking that tiny lever considering this camera is even smaller than it should be.

It's still cute though, and while I am enteratining thoughts of buying an old working Rollei (saw one in a market in Hong Kong), I am not exactly sure if getting this updated version will bring anything good besides a nostalgic romp.

As a testament to its cuteness, the Rollei also comes in limited edition red!

One thing that has made me hopeful in all this chaos about Trillanes and Gloria, although not completely, is the Church's support for farmers from Sumilao, Bukidnon. They were housed in the Ateneo the night before marching to Congress to reclaim a 144-hectare parcel of land in Barangay San Vicente, Sumilao. Not surprisingly, the land was hogged by San Miguel. They have marched from Mindanao to Malacañang to press for ownership of lands given and then taken away from them. Their plight is captured on this video on Youtube:

I've touched this camera last night while I dilly-dallied en route to home.

Too bad the person selling it didn't know much about the product he was trying to sell me. (Otherwise I would have latched on to the bait). The Canon Digital Rebel XTi (in North America) or the Canon EOS 400D here in the humble abodes of Southeast Asia is a descendant of the Digital Rebel XT. As to how they are specifically different, I don't know but this packs a larger resolution with a 10.1-megapixel sensor and a larger LCD. It's priced at US$600-700 online but in the shop last night it was pegged at almost 50,000 pesos, more than 50% the amount online. Sheezus!

My b/witch of a sister from across the globe got this one from her husband a few months back:



Sports the same resolution as the Canon XTi, but as to how the camera performs I wouldn't know. I can't get enough from my sister who seems to think photography is all about sunsets. And sunrises.

That and I know a handful of other folks with SLR cameras who take atrocious photographs.

I am bitter.

Saw this on the Lifestyle Network a few days back as they try to promote the Janice Dickinson modelling agency. This made my holidays:

How can you not love this woman? Merry Christmas everyone, and may you find your versions of large breasts and fledgling modelling agencies blessing enough to be counted in everything you hold dear.

There is probably no better time to visit Vigan than in the –ber months when the weather is cool, and walking around the city provides a delightful and calming activity for the urban dweller looking for an escape from the pollution and chaos of city life. One can literally walk around the city leisurely in less than a day—barring protracted stops—and still have a feel and sense of the place. There are also tricycles to take you around, and there are the traditional calesas which, for a hundred fifty pesos per hour, can take up to four people from one attraction to the next in a nostalgic fashion, the calesa driver doing double duties as tour guide and navigator.

Calle Crisologo remains the city’s centerpiece. Cars and heavy vehicles are barred from entry here to protect not just the cobblestones covering the road, but also to make it pedestrian friendly and lend a more calming atmosphere. The street is lined with old two-story ancestral houses the lower floors of which have been converted into shops selling everything from antique santos to kankanen, or rice desserts. Even if you have nothing to buy, the experience proves worth the while as you can take photographs and marvel over the Spanish influenced architecture.

North-West of Calle Crisologo is Plaza Burgos. Plaza Burgos houses a memorial for Father Jose P. Burgos and a playground where little kids often play. At one end of the Plaza Burgos is a row of street-style carinderia eateries. Beside the Plaza Burgos is the St. Paul Metropolitan Cathedral. Built in 1574 by Juan de Salcedo, it’s a fine example of how Baroque architecture has been appropriated in the country. Behind the Cathedral is the Museo San Pablo that houses a number of religious antiquities and relics.

In front of the St. Paul Cathedral is the Plaza Salcedo, where a monument for Juan de Salcedo is located at the very center. Around it are reinvigorated landmarks of the Spanish pueblo. Across the Cathedral and in the other end of the Plaza is the Provincial Capitol and City Hall. Along Nueva Segovia Street, on the right of the Cathedral, are the Archbishop’s Palace and a mini-mart filled with small shops both old and new. Along Burgos Street, on the left of the Cathedral and parallel Nueva Segovia are a number of newer structures housing more shops fronted by familiar fastfood restaurants.

Straight down Burgos Street to the West past the City Hall and the Provincial Capitol are the Vigan Fire Station, the Burgos Memorial School and the famed Burgos Museum, which was originally the house of the martyred hero. For ten pesos a person, one can see not just the house of Fr. Burgos, but also see documentations of Ilocos’s churches and religious relics, as well as a number of antiquities concerning the province’s history as well. The house is well preserved and an eager bunch of student tour guides are on-call to help you and explain the significance of different museum pieces.

Bulk of the attractions Vigan has to offer can be seen within the vicinity of the Crisologo and Burgos Streets. Outside this area, one can visit a number of attractions including Pagburnayan factories West of Crisologo, the Kankanen Village in the East, and loom weaving factories in the Southeast. Along Liberation Boulevard intersecting Crisologo Street, one can also find the Crisologo Museum and the Simbaan a Bassit or Cemetery Chapel. Built in 1852, the Bassit is known locally as “Apo Lakay”, believed to have saved Vigan from an epidemic in 1882.

Food lovers can go to sister-restaurants of the Uno Grille, Café Uno and the Kusina Felicitas along Quirino Boulevard a stone’s throw away from Crisologo, which serves the best renditions of traditional Ilocano food as well as the best Western interpretations in Vigan (More next time). Arceli’s Breadhouse along Florentino Street South of Burgos Street and Plaza Salcedo serves a number of interesting local pastries. The best find in Vigan remains to be the Empanadaan in one of the food stalls in the Burgos Plaza. It serves Okoy and the best Empanada in Ilocos.

Vigan is the country’s quintessential colonial city, with restoration efforts taking big leaps after the UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site, and the local government and its more prominent families taking the initiative to develop their ancestral properties for public use. All these have resulted to a newly invigorated Vigan, where the colonial past becomes a source of nostalgia for both locals and travelers alike, and looking forward to the future provides new livelihood alternatives for the populace.

Check out one set of photos here:

And another set here:

Blogging from an internet kiosk a hundred million miles away from home. I've lost my sense of direction since coming here, the where and how to's of places I know I should visit, the food needed to taste, the photographs I planned to take. I have also lost a sense of reality, the things I need to work on at work and the goals I have set for myself to accomplish. I guess this is what it feels like to really take a break.

Back home, there are news of military uprisings and other shit that be. Fuck them all. From the stupid president with a wanker of a husband down to that newbie senator from the military who can't reign his emotions and think straight, down to those self-righteous media whores. Thank god, I'm nowhere near that.

Here, the atmosphere is laid back and people enjoy a well-deserved siesta after lunch. That used to be my idea of a life. Now it's just a matter of making ends meet and making sure I manage to offer a consoling smile to anyone who asks for it.

Photos when I get back.