8 on a Friday

Sitting in the Hong Kong airport for a few hours. Am done with work for now, so going through the highlights of the last week:

1. Baguio for BenCab's Museum. It was not open yet but the people were already coming. A museum of seven permanent exhibition galleries of Ben's collections, ranging from lime jars to bulols to contemporary and modern Filipino art, and of course his own work. Curatorially, my favorite part was the bulol collection on perches spanning 2 or 3 stories of vertical wall. Architecturally, the building looked more impressive before it was finished. Personally there are too many balconies which detract from the art (is it about the art or is is about the view?). How about just one grand gesture of a view as opposed to several nibbles. Think the Getty in LA. Regardless, it is a wonderful thing that Ben and Annie are doing. Baguio should be so honored.

2. Baguio for a break from Manila. Did not happen. Stayed in a relative's house with a caretaker that reminded us of Kathy Bates in Misery. Stephen King could not have written it better. Big house, only one occupied in an isolated compound, caretaker with a glass eye. Picture glass eye caretaker staring longer than usual after conversations had ended, and smiling a little too widely at anything. Plus a stock room of petrified tea bags and pantry supplies caretaker refuses to throw out because owner (who left the PH many years ago, possibly not to return) might look for them when he 'comes to visit'. Creepy.

3. Baguio for a break from Manila. Did not happen. Ang daming tao!!! Session Road was shoulder to shoulder at 2 in the morning, plus traffic scheme of one-way signs leads everyone to the top of Session Road also known as SM Baguio. Eeks. Gone are the days. Gone. Go straight to Sagada if you want to relive that cold and quiet.

4. Ipis living in the car. We have a cockroach, a big one, that lives in our white car. It has shown itself a couple of times when we get into the car at night, and quickly scurries into a number of holes we have no way to access. It happened last night. So R got in to drive, and screamed. I jumped out. She said 'it was there' (pointing to the gear shift). 'So what are we gonna do?', asked I. 'Drive home with the lights on and your magazine ready to hit it if it comes out, but don't hit the chairs because it just might come out', was the answer. So we drove home. My thought: car is not insured for accident caused by ipis.

5. Bogie Ruiz's opening in the gallery. I've not felt that much appreciation in a long time. And it was mutual.

6. The guilty pleasure that is Nicole. I did not know that Nicole of the Pussycat Dolls is Lewis Hamilton's girlfriend. Spent a happy morning on YouTube watching. I think it set the tone for the day as I bumped into a friend who was carrying the weight of her family's issues and I was singing Baby Love and friend looked at me like I was the ipis in the car and said 'I can't believe you're singing'.

7. Thank you Andy Locsin for being our angel this morning. We had no pesos for the airport travel tax, and the miss behind the glass window wanted us to change our dollars in the bank OUTSIDE the airport, which would mean certainly missing the flight. So I turned to Andy and said, 'may I bother you for 1500 pesos'. Super sakto.

8. On duty. Stayed up 25 hours straight working through day and night then had to pack. Ended it all with a cold shower which I used to do when I was in med school, to break the days without actually sleeping. I can't believe I used to do that regularly. I ended this version of duty by judging a photo contest of Oscar winning movies interpreted by photographers and stylists shooting local celebrities and wanna-be celebs, it was hysterical. I seriously judged about 4 of the 16 entries, I thought Kai Huang's Marie Antoinette was pretty good and Raymund Isaac's Platoon was very commercially viable. The others were just camp. Favorite is the Cleopatra chick who looked nothing like Cleopatra pero feel na feel niya.



Patricia Eustaquio's Mme. Moitessier diptych, in color (bnw conversion mine), to show at Pulse. Here we go!!!

The Angels

So we placed the lucky golden vase, and the rotating frog, and the white stones in cruciform on either side of the house, plus the giant white stone in plainview.... all the feng shui elements are in place. The "activation" seemed to work--sales have picked up, I've been invited to a group show in Madrid in the company of great artists, etc...

But then faith in the supernatural kicked me hard last night. We have an angel show in the gallery opening today. I stood in the middle of Emmanuel Santos' photographs last night, the second part of his series Passing of Light, called The Book of Illumination. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply and was jolted, in my mind's eye saw a GIANT wing, that one wing was the size of the entire gallery. It was huge, only the tips of it were moving as if to say it was all going to be OK. Was so humbled and I just broke down crying.

So I must put a call out to everyone out there to come see our angel show, they are so beautiful, and we are so nothing.
www.silverlensphoto.com

Image: The Conquest of Haamiah, the angel of ethics and understanding, Copyright EMMANUEL SANTOS 2008

Fixing the House

The day came and went, T the feng shui master reorgazined our house into lucky zones. Apparently, in this year of the Ox, North is the bad guy and South is where all good things will come from. Hence, I have to move my office to right beside the front door (south), move the dining table to the living room (southeast) and move the sleeping area to the garage (southwest). In effect, we should NOT occupy about 75% of the house. R stood behind master T throughout the exercise, shaking her head at me: No Way is she sleeping in the garage, or in the room by the garage.

And he gave us all sorts of items-- a giant white stone that looks like, but is way heavier than, an ostrich egg; a music box that the helpers have to play twice a day; various coins; and the winning lucky charm: the giant vase with giant frog (that must face the dining area). Man... the last item is a winner in the bad design department (read: unattractive and as gold as gold can gold). He told us that we must activate (place) all items tomorrow, Tuesday. Tuesdays are a good day for change.

I wonder what this all means though, and if it really matters. And if it is any different from the rest of the religious anting-antings that populate the Pinoy home. I guess it has to do with whatever faith you have in the item, or whatever it represents. In our case, we just take their word for it that it'll work.

I remember when I moved into the gallery some years back, the only thing my mother gave me was a giant crucifix. Which I diligently nailed to a wall, only to find that it looked like an art installation. So I took it down and now use it as table decor in the house. Speaking of crucifixes... when my friends Myra and Cyril got married a decade or so again, their most memorable wedding gift was a life sized crucifix given by a godfather. And guess who the godfather was? Dolphy.

The Weekend and Psychic Tangible Income

Friday night was Namets at Instituto Cervantes, a Bacolodian food movie that played out like a long TV commercial for toothpaste (i.e. Close-Up) with short films interspersed of unrelated characters and their food fetishes (i.e., how to make the perfect dipping sauce of chicken inasal). It was ok but a little on the slow side, but then again just about the speed of life in Bacolod. Left the theater starving. As we were already in Malate, decided to drive through our old favorites to see which one might be our food fetish for the evening... Nakpil, Adriatico, Remedios. What a disaster! The restaurants we knew ALL disappeared save for Casa Armas and Bistro Remedios and replaced by a generic form of Korean resto-bar-videoke spilling over onto the streets that had set up monobloc tables and chairs filled with the beer drinking. It's gone down down down. We tried to park to eat at Bistro Remedios but just couldn't bring ourselves to. Headed back home and passed Ineng's BBQ, it looked sadder than sad with the flickering flourescent lights and faded plastic, so we ditched the idea too.

Ended up at Apartment 1B for porkchops and corn chowder, food and service were excellent, But sitting outside in the open air (which people really just use as the smoking section), we were sandwiched between a trio of young DOM's talking about their golf game (I want to call it a 'pata-asan ng ihi' conversation) and a trio of older colehiyalas talking about their DOM problems (2 of them were current 'kabits').

There was no tangible psychic income to the night out except for the question... what are we doing here?

Relief at getting home to the dog was the highlight.

Then Saturday evening happened... in a nutshell:
1. drinks and great conversation with Adi and Carlos and Tesa and company at the Living Room (rule #1: find like minded people that you like),
2. a stop at the CCP front lawn to watch a video and sound projection (rule #2: know the CCP schedule),
3. we found the new branch of JT's Manukan on Malugay Street in Makati, where all 9 of us ate paa, pecho, pakpak, garlic rice with chicken oil to our hearts content (with Korean food from next door care of our vegetarian), all for the bargain basement price of P200 each, with drinks na yun (rule #3: find out if the far-flung restaurants you like have nearby branches)

Ended up back at the Living Room, where we had three deserts and time with Bogart the dog, and more conversation and company while watching Carlos on his Air Stepper.

Psychic tangible income (PTI) is the over-all benefit from doing something or being somewhere. More than money, it is what drives people, it is what drives me. And Manila on its own, with the overpopulation, pollution (both visceral and visual), and anarchy has very very low PTI; but then it's about the people, the ones we do like that make the difference in raising the PTI. Which brought someone to ask, how do we secede from the PH and start our own country?

Image: Jose Tence Ruiz's studio, getting ready for Bukod Tanging Pag-Ibig at SLab. SLab and Silverlens are huge suppliers of Psychic Tangible Income.

Lush

Notes on Bukidnon:
1. Everything is Lush. Throw seeds on the ground and Bukidnon grows you a forest. Or in our case, pineapples, bromeliads, hyrdrangeas, and pine trees. The last coming as part of Americanization (think the pine trees in Baguio, and that pines are not endemic to the tropics regardless of altitude level).

2. The metric system (kilometers, milliliters) as reference is also quite popular among the locals:
Me: Jun, how far is Quezon from here?
Jun: 155 kilometers

R: Miss, how much is the bottled water?
Sari Sari store Miss #1: The 250 ml is P8 and the 500 ml is P12

Me: Miss, how far is the monastery from here?
Sari Sari Store Miss #2: 6 kilometers

3. Highlights were
a) visiting the Monastery of the Transfiguration run by the Benedictine Monks. We buy their Monks Blend coffee in the supermarket here, so R got really excited that we were going to the source. So we drove 98 kilometers to the barangay of San Jose, Malaybalay Bukidnon only to miss the sign on the side of the road because, due to lushness, a tree had covered it perfectly...


But we got there just the same and it was a good walk around


b) heading out to the border between Misamis and Bukidnon for our version of the Grand Canyon (see photo from a few posts back). Place is called Lunocan Canyon. It is breathtaking, even on a foggy day.


4. A good place to learn how to ride a motorcycle. hahahaa, hooch on the side of the fields doing just that.

Hole Number 14

I played golf for the first time in a year. I lasted nine holes. Was so stiff I knew that I was going to ache the next day. Hit some good shots, no shot was really really bad. But the cracks in my game (dipping shoulder, looking up, fast swing) were all there, lurking beneath the surface. After six holes on the glorious course, I had scored 5 bogeys and 1 triple bogey, the 5 bogeys could have been easy pars (but met with my bad putts). But hey, Not bad, decided that if I got back into the game, my goal would be to get a solid handicap in a year's time. I figured if I get the MGolf Club share and I play once a week, I can hit a strong bogey round (handicap 18) in no time.

Then something wonderful happened, I stopped trying to prove to my caddy (who really couldn't care less) that I could hit really far. Course management took over--accuracy over distance, focus over ego-- and I hit 2 pars and a birdie. And the birdie was on a rather long par 4. What a thrill.

I was so thrilled I didn't play the rest of the time I was there. Besides, I was aching.

Always good to stop on a high note.

Picture: by R as she watched me head to tee off, Del Monte Golf Club, Bukidnon