Weekend: Bukidnon

On January First, we made independent lists where we would like to travel to this year. I listed 4 local places -- Bukidnon, Bangui (Ilocos Norte), Donsol (to the whale sharks), and Siargao. R listed 3 foreign places -- Germany, Sweden and Japan. We'll be happy to make it to half these places. This weekend, we go to the first place on my list. Picture: Lunokan Canyon in Bukidnon. Yippee...

Had conversation with Neal the photographer yesterday and he agreed that Bukidnon was by far one of the most beautiful places he's been to here in the PH.

Best part is I'm going to play golf, at least try to... Stay tuned.

Happy Weekend!

Divisoria and the BB Gun

We saw more people we knew in Divisoria than in Makati on the day we went. There was Honey crossing the street clutching her bag with driver in tow; Patty walking through the plaza at noon; Marga haggling with leather bracelet suki. As times are getting harder, could Divi be the new Greenbelt? Purchases included 100 meters of white craft paper (P255), glass beads that looked like pewter (P45), laboratory glassware in Bambang (P320). Spent less than a thousand pesos and came home with a carload of items. Most expensive item was parking!

Best part was the metal baton I had been looking for over Christmas that cost about P1,600.00 in Park Square but was out of stock was all over 168, but called a "pamukpok" and costing P120! Please see picture with tindera displaying "pamukpok". And a BB gun was available in the same stall for P350 with pellets! My God! An even better idea to hit the buses with. But the gun looked awfully real, and the movie in my head went of with a scene of R shooting bus driver window, then bus driver shooting R with real gun... so that was the end of the BB Gun idea.

Lessons learned in Divi: when shopping in 168, demand the "wholesale price" and when making tawad on the street, bring it to at least half of the price the tindera gives you. It really helped that Dodong was walking with us, R insists he has a homing device attached to me. He can find me within a one kilometer radius, and this is in the heart of Divisoria.

Lucky Forever

Welcome the feng shui, pronounced as 'fung suy', for Chinese New Year. The Year of the Ox is upon us. Depending on which horoscope you read, and your outlook on life (if you are a half full or half empty kinda person), the year might be good, better, bad, or worse than the last one.

I am not a religious believer in geomancy but hey it doesn't hurt. And a lot of it actually make sense from a logical point of view. It DOES make sense for energy to flow smoothly and circulate equally around a house. And it DOES make sense to get rid of things that are broken or do not work. That's why I really dislike storage spaces, they keep things, seen and unseen.

So this year, as a wood tiger, I am advised to concentrate on familiar territory, avoid taking risks in business, pay close attention to the advise of colleagues as it is a year of teamwork. Which is fairly sound advice that everyone should heed. Some articles say this is going to be a very bad year for finances, but a good year for relationships; some say it will be a bad year but not the worst for tigers, and it will be the worst for sheep... poor sheep.

Last year, BV sent us T the fung suy to look at the house and our place of work. I was told I was unlucky for the next 8 years but it will be offset by R who is lucky forever. Lucky forever because she's got me!!!

So on this first day of the Chinese New Year, I wish you all luck forever.

Hearse Catcher

I attended yet another memorial service yesterday, for a golfing friend of my father's, WE, who had his memorial in the veranda of his beloved MGolf Club. His love for golf was hard core, and as Carlos said am sure it gave an idea to all the other hard cores in the club that they could have their wakes set up between the 18th and the 1st greens.

I've started looking for a golf share to rent at this club, been wanting to start playing again, but the search for one has been elusive. My options:
1. brother has a share that he is not using but I cannot rent it from him because he has not been a member for 30 years, it's simply not allowed as it is an individual share
2. buy brother's share, or "buy" his share on paper, but still need to pay a couple of million bucks for the taxes
3. be appointed as a director of a company with a share, and that share be assigned to me
4. look for a member who has been active for 30 years to rent me his share
5. look for a golf widow who no longer wants to use the share, but only within 6 years from the death

To which friends last night called me a hearse catcher.

Watching Obama

Anderson Cooper said it was the most watched event in the history of TV, surpassing the 100M or so people who watched Allan Alda bid goodbye in the last episode of MASH. MASH incidentally stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and it's theme song was the instrumental version of 'Suicide is Painless' which was written by Mike Altman, son of director Robert Altman.

Listening to Obama's speech, which had no illusions about the work that is cut out for his country, the point that moved me most was about humility and restraint. I didn't realize that tears were falling, mine, till my pillow damped. The man is real and incredibly inspiring. Goodbye Bush.

Image: Hello Sugi, Paris, 2007

Wala Nang Tatay Gang

I belong to a loose association of daughters I've called the "Wala Nang Tatay Gang" (No More Fathers Gang). I found that when I lost my father, it was the turning point for me into real adulthood, into real responsibility. Something that I verbalized some years ago to a new friend on a warm summer night in the East Village while I was living in New York. Turns out that Megan had lost her father too, about the same time I did, and that we felt exactly the same. As it has been with other friends who have lost their fathers. It does not matter what you age you are when he passes away, if you're 15 or 50 or in my case, when I was 23. It just changes you completely. A few weeks ago, Leah, Marga and I were sitting around the gallery, and I realized that we were all part of the Wala Nang Tatay Gang. Leah had a good point: she goes to a lot of funerals because she remembers all the people who went to her father's and how meaningful it was to her. As I added that I really enjoyed Marga's dad's funeral as it was so well done-- from the music to the flowers to the eulogies.

I make it a point of going to wakes and funerals. I can't say I enjoy them but I really appreciate them. Pulling off a great wake and funeral is difficult but is not impossible. Tita Pam's father's wake was very nice, and her eulogy was incredibly honest but strong.

Today, with a heavy heart, I welcome Julia and Akiko Thomson to our sturdy group. I did not know J Marsh Thomson well in life but he was a handsome man with a wonderful family. This evening, he looked very handsome in a pina barong in a dark wood casket. With his uniforms and his military medals on one side, and photos of family and animals on the other. He will be missed.

Piolo's Biceps, Abs, and Moles

Those were starring in "Love Me Again". The man is easy on the eye and fit, and the director and cinematographer does not make you forget with the constant tight face shots (left side only where mole is), close ups of arms (both upper and fore), and the 'love scene' starring his abs. They turned him into a poster of different body parts which don't coalesce into a cohesive human being with emotions which filmmaking is supposed to be. The story details were not too convincing either. And it didn't help that there was no chemistry between the two leads. She's a better actress though, than him at least. I'd seen him in "Dekada Setenta" with Vilma Santos and I thought he wasn't a bad actor (but the mullet hair was a little distracting, as was the super soft lighting only whenever Ate Vi came into the frame), but in this movie, he's flat and lifeless. Only coming alive when riding horses, or jumping on top of his male co-stars... hmmmm.

Having grown up in Bukidnon, my interest in seeing the movie was to see what they would make of my favorite part of the PH. They did a fair job,the pineapple plantations, the rivers and canyons, the cowboys and the rodeos, but no red soil, no Mt. Kitanglad. It really is beautiful there, and being on a plateau at the base of a mountain range, the weather is cool all year round and the red volcanic soil makes for incredibly lush greenery.

I can't say that I enjoyed the movie but neither did I walk out. I think the best actors there were the horses and the landscape.

Regrets

We no longer exist, and apparently, on paper never did.
I wonder if the mastermind of this ever got her due.

The Abyss of Stupidity:Today at SM

We went to ShoeMart Makati to buy plastic drawers. Reached the top of the escalator and saw this. The plastic drawers we needed ON SALE, 20% and 50% off. Happily, R and I took one, a green one whose color was the least offensive of the bunch, to the counter to pay. When the cashier rung up the item, it was NOT ON SALE. To which we said it was, as it was on display as ON SALE 20%. The cashier then disappears for ten minutes, to see the sign that designated it as a sale item and then to talk to her manager. She returns, "hindi po yun sale, nakasulat lang po na sale, dahil po may mga sale sa buong department store, pero hindi po sale yun" (it's not on sale, it just says it's on sale because there are sales in the department store, but that item is not on sale).

I was dumbfounded. Does she think I am stupid? A whole sale section with signage stating that the sale items (which are all of the same kind) NOT ON SALE???? And trying to pass of the signage nearby which declared 50% sales in the store as what the 20% and 50% signs on the plastic drawers (which are apparently not on sale) mean? Talk about FALSE ADVERTISING.

So I asked for the manager, to which the cashier says. "si Ma'am Len po". Now if there is something that annoys me, it is this culture of familiarity that pervades (eg, total strangers referring to their mothers or fathers in conversations as "Si Mommy" or "Si Daddy", as if they are everybody's mother or father). So I asked cashier, "kilala ko ba si Ma'am Len?" (do I know Ma'am Len?), to which she replies the incredible, "check ko lang po" (let me check). My God. The abyss of stupidity.

Anyway, Ma'am Len arrives. Lailanie V. Lapuz, not that I know her but that was the name on the ID.



And she tells us that the item is not on sale, and it was a mistake that the 'stockman' made. And we got the "Pasensya na po" (Please have patience). Which is the absolute most irritating thing to hear when you are at the end of your tolerance for stupidity and inefficiency.

We didn't buy it.

Killer Bus, Jan 9

Photo taken by Raffy Lerma and published in the Metro section of the Inquirer today. Caption reads: "Where's the driver? That's what a traffic aide seems to be asking as pedestrians check out an elderly man who got ran over by this Sampaguita bus along Edsa in Cubao, Quezon City, yesterday after the victim alighted from another bus. The driver and bus conductor fled after the incident, witnesses said."

Wasn't I just talking about people getting killed by speeding buses on EDSA? Happens all the time.

Termites

Bhutanese prayer flags on our bridge. A gift from friends who spent the new year over there. On trips, they usually fight on the 4th or 5th day of being together non-stop, but in the ten or so days, they didn't fight. Bhutan's magical like that. Plus all basic needs are met, people are happy, as friend said, "they are simple but not simpletons". So no seeds of discord sewn by the materiality of the everyday don't exist.

Seed of discord just by being in the PH, up on the list with the killer buses and the traffic: Termites. Or 'anay' as they are called in the vernacular. Our house is infested with very fast-moving anay in three major parts of the house plus the whole perimeter. Which brings me back to a movie line said by the Chevy Chase character, 'that's not a bridge, those are termites holding hands'. Well, our exterminator, the very able Gal, showed us walls that used to be plywood, but are almost paper thin. He said that the only thing holding it up were anay houses. And it was a pretty big wall. We left trusted D at home to oversee the operation and it's been five hours and no word from him.

If we were living in Bhutan, we'd probably just move out of the house and turn it over to the termites, as they are incredibly Buddhist that way (can't kill anything). But we live in the PH, and here where anay thrives like bean sprouts in soaked cotton, we kill them.

Thirty Five kph

That is the speed we've figured to drive best at down the street where we work without having to brake every twenty meters for jaywalking pedestrians, stopping jeeps, cars making singit, slow-moving tricycles,and other annoyances. On EDSA, we have figured that the speed is 50 kph, as the annoyances (aka buses) are less in number but larger in size and more frequent in 'sarap saksakin' factor.

Bus companies are privately owned here, and the bus drivers are paid only after they pay for the 'rent' of the bus. Two factors that make for some of the worst and most dangerous driving on the road. Buses tend to stop anywhere their passengers want to stop, whether it be in the middle of national highways or when stoplights have turned green. Drivers also fight for passengers using their buses as obstacles at intersections hence the perpetual pile-up of buses and honking at the corner of Ayala and EDSA. I am sure that the syndicates that operate within the systems are not nice people either. Take Bus Company X, a true story this one, the family that owns it has been trying to sell it, and on some surface scratching it's revealed that the three members of different generations that have run the operation have all been killed or died of unnatural causes. Who would want to buy into that headache? And how many bus depots have been bombed and burned down all over the Philippines? It seems the norm here.

Not to mention how many people have been killed by speeding buses, either in them or hit by them? And those that have been mowed down by racing buses? It is ridiculous.

As for this driver on EDSA, we used to throw coins at the lawless buses, then we wanted to switch to rocks, now I am thinking of a Telescoping Metal Baton which I wanted to get R for Christmas (it was out of stock) to stealth use on the bus driver's side.

Gift to Self, 2009

My Happy New Year GTS has arrived. Some years ago, two of my most professional shopper friends, B and B, asked me what my Gift to Self was as my birthday was approaching. I looked at them bewildered to which they answered 'for every occasion, you should treat yourself to a gift'. I am sure it is not a novel idea for a lot of people, but for me it opened a whole new way of being kind to self. I have since become a firm believer in 'kindness begins internally', and with the GTS at least on birthdays and new years. So in the years since, I have given myself a range of gifts from an apartment to a personal trainer to a dog. I must say though that I am not self-indulgent and I rarely buy anything, so the GTS is usually something quite special.

So I commissioned an oil painting of my father's portrait. I asked HP to do it. And am thrilled thrilled thrilled.

Sick Lately

I've been feeling pretty sick lately. Sick enough to stare at the empty cemetery niche beside my father's remains and think "if I died soon enough to be the one to occupy that spot, mental note to tell people that I don't want to be stuck there, i want to be cremated but after a wake with proper viewing". Sick enough to have R take me to the emergency room for CBC with Platelet count (results all normal). Dragged my sick self to mother's family reunion. Broke out into a face rash before and during, face rash disappeared soon as I left. Talk about psychosomatic.

Started on the my 2009 Moleskin Planner. Decided to get a big one this year. More space to play. The photograph appears the anticipation of a dreaded year. Because I've been feeling sick lately.

Local Visas

The rural idyll painted by Amorsolo, not too different in lighting and composition from the urban reality I photographed recently.


It is the same scene really, just about fifty years apart. The former largely existing in the painter's imagination, the latter exists at Pier 18 in Manila's North Harbor.The cycle of poverty and overpopulation breeds robustly in the PH. The Reproductive Health Bill that is trying to get passed in Congress is very much needed (a baseline thought of the everyday while navigating through the jeeps, tricycles, bicycles, vendors, pedestrians that make up the trauma of driving here).

The last few days have been heaven- barely any cars on the road, ten minutes to Sucat from Makati, ten minutes to anywhere from Makati. Plus, JOY to find that the squatters homes along the riles on the Bicutan stretch of hi-way were gone.


I don't even want to ask where they went, but I wish them well wherever they are so they never come back. If I were president, I would make visas mandatory for people from the provinces to travel to Metro Manila; and I would only allow tax payers to vote. Which is why I would never get elected into office. Did you know that the top 3 reasons people come to Manila from the provinces (in this order):
1. to go to a mall
2. to see artistas
3. to find a job

Anybody else interested in the Visa idea?

Speaking to the Dead Relatives

I go and visit them every New Year. As I visit on birthdays and death anniversaries. A report of sorts I give to the ones that matter the most: about the year that passed (it was financially a mess for the world), and the year that is coming (we hope it gets better); about siblings (brother still stuck abroad) and other relatives (cousin's daughter now showing work at my gallery); and the mundane (it was really cold this morning). I also give a status report on how far I have come vis a vis from when they were alive.

Today I spent some time 'speaking' with an aunt who died quite unexpectedly of sepsis at the age of eighty something. Unexpectedly because she was to fly south to file her candidacy for Mayor, the document she actually signed the day she died. Today was her fifth death anniversary and there was a Mass going on for her when I got there. Anyway, she had a non-healing wound on her foot for a couple of years which didn't seem to bother her but it did everybody else. I saw her on Christmas Day 2003 with her foot up on a stool as she was handing out money to well wishers who visited her at home. She said she wasn't feeling too well but still was flying out the next day. She ended up checking into the hospital and passed away less than a week later.

So, 'speaking' with Tita...Asked how she was doing (no answer), asked if she was watching over her kids (strong wind), asked if things were better up there (very strong wind), asked if she could go after a son of a friend of hers who owes me money (very very strong wind). Thanks Tita. Will visit you again soon and let you know if we got paid.

Slowing Down. Happy New Year!

My lymph nodes are fighting their way through the New Year.

As midnight clocked in, my sisters and our families made announcements of what we were looking forward to in 2009. Amidst the get healthy, lose weight, grow taller, a 13 year old nephew announced, "that Katrina and I continue to have a happy life together". That's not her name but that is his girlfriend, or perceived girlfriend. Precocious little man that one. To which another nephew, slightly younger, said "does Katrina even know that you are together?" Why are they in such a hurry?

Happy New Year everyone.

Photo: Bhutanese Buddhist Monks, Trongsa Dzong, December 2008