a note for my bestgirls

Browsing through photos taken at Pam's recent christening and saw this:


which brought me back to this:

(taken at Mine's birthday party, circa 2006)

Makes one wonder where time goes because it does fly, what it takes with it when it disappears (wisps of hair swept from under forgotten beauty parlors' chairs? disappearing numbers from our erratic weight dips and binge-eating?) and what it brings with each new twenty-four hour series (new habits, overhauled routines, a realignment of priorities, a baby!). Ten years na nga ba tayong friends? Ahmishu girls, labas naman tayo soon.

***

Heres to the old times and the best of new ones/Heres to a song of glee/Finding our way from illusions to realities/Hoping to wake up from this madness/Hoping to see you smile/Pushing our way to the limit of yours and mine

Im growing up, getting down/Putting my both feet on the ground/With all my friends behind me/How can I go wrong this time?/Im growing up, getting down/Think of reality came around/Not just waiting for the daybreak/Expecting the sun to shine/It doesnt shine all the time

Falling in love, falling apart/You think its the end of the line/Holding hand while crying, then youll feel just fine/If youre thinking that youre the only one/Well, take a look around and youll find/Ill be there where you are/Then and now, I say

We're growing up, getting down/Putting our both feet on the ground (...)

*"Growing Up," Bagets, Gary V.

tomorrow, 03.07.2009

i'm bursting with excitement.

with all that's been happening, i just reallyreallyreally need a good dose of nostalgia (in the form of a happenin' set!).

what is lutang?

lutang is booking tacloban instead of tagbilaran.

(therefore almost sending an aunt, a foreign visitor and 2 other companions to leyte instead of bohol.)

gah.

oras, panahon

"don't worry, we'll make up for all the time we lost."

but all that's been happening is us losing more time.

my slanting eyes

Earlier, while having breakfast with the boyfriend, we were talking about how much of a person's destiny depends on how he or she ends up looking like.

Take Obama for example. What if he ended up resembling his mom, Dr. Ann Durham, more than his dad, Mr. Barack Obama Sr.? Would the hoopla surrounding his candidacy and then eventual presidency been as big if the color evidenced by his skin were nonexistent?

Being born to a Chinese dad and a Filipina mum, I've often mused how differently my personal circumstances would have turned had I ended up looking more Filipino than Chinese. One of the things I discovered as an adult was that I was actually a "secret" baby. When my mum was pregnant with me, she and my dad were "in hiding" in Lucena City -- my dad (who was already 40 at that time) from his proud Chinese family, my mum from her first (then abusive) husband and older daughters.

No one from the Oyeks found out about me or saw me until my baptism. They rushed to Lucena upon hearing from a trusted distant relative/housekeeper that my parents sired a girl who was an absolute xerox copy of her dad.

My mum, in more than one occassion, herself have often told me how "buti na lang" I ended up looking like Papa. Otherwise, paternity doubts would have most likely been raised (or they wouldn't have found me as adorable :p).

And then there's the issue of "fitting in" with the family. Since I was practically raised by the Oyeks (Papa and then later the aunts) during the 80s when our grandmother's every birthday was celebrated with everyone imperatively wearing red, I can only imagine in retrospect how difficult it would've been if I had darker skin or bigger eyes (maybe I'm being a bigot to myself; this is my space so if you're uncomfy, discontinue reading). It's not that the Oyeks were a bad bunch, in fact they were, and are, up to this day, well-esteemed in their hometown province in another part of Quezon (especially our immigrant lola who the neighbors all remember fondly). It's just that sometimes it's different when you're family and that was the 80s.

In retrospect too, I think about how cool it was of my dad to risk raising ire like that. He did try to fight for my mum, but in the end other circumstances proved bigger than the two of them (or three of us). Pogi points to Papa who celebrated his 15th death anniversary last Feb. 12.

Hi, I'm alive and ...

selling my books!

I used to think, "What kind of people sells dirtcheap/gives away books they've owned for years -- read, unread, loved or forgotten?" But here I am doing it. And I can only justify it with the thought that I'm clearing the space for newer books.

Art

Gauguin: Letters from Brittany and the South Seas (hardbound), P100
Antoni Gaudi: Visionary Architect of the Sacred and the Profane by Judith Carmel Arthur (Periplus edition), P100

Feminist writings

Spare Rib Reader: 100 Issues of Women’s Liberation, P40
*Spare Rib, a magazine from the early 70s that put women’s liberation on the news stands. This book is an anthology of articles chosen to “illustrate both the development of ideas in the women’s movement and the development of Spare Rib.”

The Third Woman: Minority Women Writers of the United States (a collection of literary texts) edited by Dexter Fisher, P40

Essays/ Theory

Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag, P50
Convergences: Essays on Art and Literature by Octavio Paz, P50
The Film Sense by Sergei Eisenstein, P50

Classics

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (Dover Thrift Editions), P20
The Aenid of Virgil, a verse translation by Rolfe Humphries, P20
Strange Tales from the Arabian Nights, P20
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll, P20

Fiction

How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto (Hardbound), P50
The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett, P50
Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui, P50
G by John Berger, P 100
Oranges are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson, P50
Second Hand (“A novel about knick-knacks, garage sales, and the bonds we form with people and things”) by Michael Zadoorian, P50
Vita Brevis by Jostein Gaarder, P50
South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami, P50
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, P50
Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, P50
Jacob’s Room and the Waves by Virginia Wolf, P50
The Bell Jar by Silvia Plath, P50
Truck Stop Rainbows(“The Unbearable Lightness of Being meets Fear of Flying in this exuberant novel of sex, hitchhiking, and social sabotage written by a young Czech writer of unfettered inventiveness and scalding honesty.”) by Iva Pekarkova, P50
The Godfather by Mario Puzo, P50
Betrayed by Rita Hayworth by Manuel Puig, P50
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, P40
A Suitable Boy (part 3) by Vikram Seth, P50
That Hideous Strength by CS Lewis, P50
Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov, P40

Non-Fiction

The Trouble with Nick and other Profiles by Marra PL. Lanot, P50
Man Meets Dog by Konrad Lorentz, P20

Young Adult

Fudge-a-Mania by Judy Blume, P20
The Slave Dancer by Paula Fox, P20
(Sweet Dreams) California Girl, P15

Travel

Toujours Provence by Peter Mayle, P70

Children’s books

The Missing Piece meets the Big O by Shel Silverstein (Hardbound), P150
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein (Hardbound), P150

*if interested, drop a line and then let's arrange a meetup or shipping (to be shouldered by the buyer).

"Repeat While Fading" Cafe SaGuijo launch details

"Repeat While Fading" Cafe SaGuijo launch details

the million-dollar question, isip o puso?

Fun-ta tayo!

petty facebooking censorship

I got up really early this morning to prepare for class and just when I was about to head out, boss calls to tell me my morning classes are canceled due to the heavy snow and the fact that he's too lazy to just shovel it off our school's driveway so classes could go on. Not that I'm unhappy about the sudden free time, but along with my canceled classes is the planned tamago-maki (japanese square egg) cooking session with Yoshiko, one of my students. And I was already fully made up!

I turn on the TV, tuned into CNN, expecting to hear more about the shelling of the UN headquarters in Gaza. Guess what, for a full 2 hours CNN reports on nothing but the US domestic plane which made an unexpected landing down the Hudson River. No mention whatsoever on the Gaza shelling. Sure, that near disaster is important news, but hey, humanitarian law just about went kapoot in Gaza and a supposed reputable news station go for a full 2 hours without devoting a proper story on it? Even if it was a devoted American program (Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room), I don't think that's enough of an excuse.

So really, what can someone stuck in the sticks do but post a Facebook status in protest? And I write, "Nyel is annoyed CNN chooses to devote a full 2-hours on the US plane near-disaster when there are other matters that need attention, like the UN Gaza shelling."

Because there's not enough space, I added on a 2nd status, "Nyel no wonder Americans are such spoiled brats and think the world revolves around them."

Guess what, facebook deletes it within 5 minutes of posting. So much for freedom of status and right to criticism.