Days Five and Six

On with the 30-Day Challenge to Connect with People!

Day Five: Coordinate a Group Event

Did this through another friend, Trisha–who invited our friends to watch films at the Brazilian Film Festival, which is ongoing at the UP Film Institute ’til next week. (I still had part in the planning, okay?) I actually just got home from watching O Homem da Capa Preta (The Man in the Black Cape) with Trisha and Anne. It’s a true-to-life movie about Tenorio Cavalcanti, a Brazilian congressman who showed his patriotism by wearing a cape in public and beating the hush-hush violence of elitist politicians with his own breed of one-man mafia-style violence. The movie’s gone grainy and reminds one of ’90s Robin Padilla and Rudy Fernandez movies on the lives of men who rubbed elbows with the Philippines’ most notorious gangs, warlords, etc.–all in the name of justice. Or sweet revenge. Nardong Putik, anyone?

Day Six: Get Coffee with a Co-Worker (Or in my case, a classmate)

I’m hoping to invoke a retroactive effect for this one–since I spent September 6 with my mother, my readings, the current issue of Time Magazine and then my bed. The last time I was out for coffee with anyone was at my insistence, anyway–my classmate Pip and I spent hours til the closing of the Starbucks at SM North poring through the pages of this month’s Cosmo, which has the Cosmo Top Bachelors List or something as a supplement. Ran out of post-its while grading each of the guys for Face, Body and Brains, so in the end we had to draw on the pages themselves–sometimes, Perez Hilton-style. Sorry, guys! Anyway, the issue wasn’t as impressive as the previous ones. I remember enjoying a past Bachelors List with Akihiro Sato on the cover the most sometime in 2007/08! It’s sad that we couldn’t go to the Bachelor Bash with our girlfriends next week. Why of all days does it have to be on a Thursday, and all the way at the World Trade Center!

Oh well.

Talkie-talkie

In the past few weeks I missed out on so many internet memes that my friends, to my extreme envy, still have the time to do/comply with/fill out/write and enjoy. Not that I’m a fan of memes–the truth is, every time I answer one of those questionnaires that get passed around by tagging, I almost always immediately delete whatever number of paragraphs I have for fear of being judged–not by people who’d get to read it without my intention of sharing it to them specifically, but mostly, to be judged by myself. Being on Facebook is performance enough. (And it’s getting more sickening because the News Feed is automatically customized so that one sees only the updates of the people she interacts with most often.) Who would I be answering the 20 questions for, really?

Here’s one meme I’d like to take part in though, for once–GOOD magazine’s 30-Day Challenge for September to Connect with People. Like I said about all the memes I’d missed out on recently, I’ve felt really alienated from literally all the people I knew before law school since I entered law school. I’d like to reconnect. It’s a bit scary ‘coz the challenge might prod me to try to talk to people I have no intention of ever talking with again, but oh well, I’ll see when I get there. Maybe it might even be therapeutic. It helps to be tres serene in case I have to bid the world goodbye a little earlier than scheduled. In Manila it’s already the 5th of September, but since it’s only Sunday noon in the U.S., I’ve only got four days to make up for. The other challenges though, I’ve managed to comply with already, quite fortuitously on the days on which they were posted.

So yeah, let’s see how this goes!

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DAY ONE: Send someone a postcard.

How timely has Challenge No. 1 come! I just got a few free postcards of the Cityscapes project which I’ve been blogging for for Goethe Institut-Manila, and since I am one who collects but does not wish to part with any of her postcards, I might as well send these new ones to my friends abroad. I regret that I’m not in touch with them more often but hopefully this tilts the scales back to equilibrium.

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DAY TWO: Have a conversation with a service employee.

Day 2 was a Friday. After a short trip to Makati where I did not participate in any conversation whatsoever, and refused to eat my first meal of the day until it was time to go back to Quezon City, I found myself in Trinoma, where service employees abound. The problem with a challenge like this, if applied to Philippine society, is that the boundaries between customer and employees are so vivid, it’s almost impossible for a friendly conversation to arise from a sales transaction. In the States, it obviously could work–store workers do not address customers as Ma’am or Sir; they certainly don’t greet them with “Good Morning Mam/Ser!” and follow them around the store. They say, “Hi! How may I help you today?” and are not hesitant to offer their take on… for example, how attractive those boots look on you. Save for the perfunctory Starbucks barista-friendliness that’s notorious worldwide, it’s one thing I admire about consumerism & capitalism in the US: employees are also people, their jobs don’t define them and the way they could interact with people who come in through the front door. (But yes, of course, like all things in the world, we are all  just prisoners of our social classes and economic systems…)

Anyway, I did talk a bit with the saleslady at Payless Shoe Store on Day Two. It was a bit disappointing though that after I’d offered really personal information, like how my feet are too small for Size 8s but too big for 7 1/2s, she would just reply in a rehearsed fashion about how it all depends on style without really coming to my assistance and picking out her own suggestions from off the shelf. She would turn, however, to her companion, a gay guy, whom she was assuring that they both have a chance of receiving incentives this month because they scored high on the customer evaluations last August. Maybe it just wasn’t my day, that day.

I also had a long-ish conversation with a Greenpeace volunteer who coaxed me into signing a membership form. It was too soon to give financial information for contributions, though, and having that fact in mind (that they really only need my donation) certainly made the conversation less enjoyable–even though in theory it was actually quite pleasant. These organizations need to think of new fundraising strategies! I wonder how much they actually make with such ambush salestalking.

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DAY THREE: Share an Old Photo with  a Friend

~Will update this later, once I’ve dug through my hard drive for really old photos.~ There’s a reason, though, why I don’t do this more often when I could–like post old photos on Facebook because they’re already in my hard drive, or because it’s really easy to scan: I don’t want to. Most of my old photos are with old friends. Emphasis on OLD.

I know, I know, that’s the point of the challenge. Will try harder.

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DAY FOUR: Ask a Relative What They Did Today

I’ll also do this later. It’ll take a lot of guts. Or I could cheat by asking the aunt who raised me and who lives with us at home. Hah.

If I have friends/readers who are also up for the 30-Day Challenge, please share your adventures with me too.

window therapy ep. 1: elegy for the new seaside highway

11:42 PM Back to my four year routine, standing on a Siberian bus, warmed by a stranger’s breathing. The television recounts the nation’s stories for the day, a special treat, I suppose, for the latecomers–though leftovers, really–nothing new since the 6′o’clock news, except for me, the chance to stand here, see the sea, the bay at nighttime, which is nothing really, nothing without the moon, only black with specks of incandescence–repetitive, singular. I take notice of the new turns the bus would have to take, the delay, the restraint not to tread the way past the old limit, and after that the same old route. There are no extensions, only additions, new pauses, I take notice of the next stranger, and the next, their interrupted sleep, with every swerve, every turn that ends with a swing, my head tilting to recognize an old story onscreen.

Paint It!

Manila needs a major, major paint job.

I do not exaggerate when I say the city needs that much renovation, nor do I simply take off from what in the last year has become a very popular catchphrase in the country (“major, major”, because of this). I say it because the last ten years has seen parts of the city enshrouded in the most unlikely, and dare I say it, the most awful of color schemes—thanks to political and tourism campaigns that fail and change as quickly as people in position do.

Read the rest of this piece here.

Detox Mode is ON

This is my first Holy Week with Facebook. Not that I’m on Facebook all the time–I am surprisingly not, the social network is no more than a grapevine for tuning in to other people’s (not necessarily friends’) activities now. I rarely post anything except for pictures. Last year, my first full year with Facebook, I was still in the US during Holy Week, and life definitely didn’t stop there for some religious observation.

So many things have changed, I can say for sure. My mother commented on local TV stations airing their regular fanfare, “Dati talaga Lunes Santo pa lang mga makabagbag-damdaming tugtog na at palabas ang laman ng TV!” I do remember spending Holy Week as a kid watching classic Filipino movies–my first taste of Bernal, Brocka, Nora Aunor and Christopher de Leon were had then, and only then, because my mother never gave in to my vehement pleas to please equip our humble television with cable subscription. (Bababa daw ang grades ko.) My father, on the other hand, has been asking if I had any movies on my computer that were “appropriate for Holy Week.” Fun. Apparently the season really does have an effect on some people.

For me, on the other hand, this week is more significantly known as My First Real Week Out of College. Although I’m still swamped with part-time, freelance work, I can say that my detox program for five years worth of caffeine and all-nighters has started. I am infusing my days with more movement (haha, guess what I’ve been doing?), and I wanna embark on a journey away from sugar, inspired by this!

I better get back to work now and finish every last sentence up, so that I could fully enjoy next week’s trip to Cebu with my best friend. It’s also my first real grown-up trip! I’ve taken many trips before but they were either official academic trips or visits to destinations where my parents knew someone who would watch after me (and report to them!) Haha. This is gonna be legen-darrrry!

Manila: City of Vulgar Prudes

In certain contexts, just like how “Filipina” is defined elsewhere, Manila has become synonymous to sex.

But for the longest time, people in this city have turned a blind eye to any evidence of it—despite the rampancy of sexually-charged billboards of showbiz icons on national roads, streamers of motels promising the best value for so little, girls in bikinis dancing on noontime television daily. Even a sign on a Philippine jeepney that reads: “I am not responsible for anything lost in this vehicle. Including virginity,” does not stir much civil alarm and complaint. It’s as much a shocker as it is an everyday thrill for the fun-loving Filipino.

Continue reading here.

Screening Macbeth

I have a general aversion to watching Shakespearian tragedies onstage. I find the reading a meatier experience (for all its length), and almost always when in the theater, I catch myself only waiting for the best quotes and soliloquies to happen—wondering how they will be said, hoping for beautiful nuances from how I would’ve delivered them in private, imbued with more knowledge, emotion and more depth. To the UP Department of English and Comparative Literature’s adaptation of Screen: Macbeth I carried that aversion, but was more hopeful—after all, the renowned Anton Juan, Jr. was directing it, after his successful and controversial run of Information for Foreigners last September at the UP.

Fragments and Memory

Recently I had a chance to see an old city plan for Manila, drafted in the 1900s by the same architect who shaped the cities of Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. into the postcard beauties we now know.

Continue reading here.

Wanted: Literary Agent

So you’ve heard tell of their existence—individuals whose official job description includes reviewing one’s manuscripts and selling them to potential publishers. It doesn’t sound like a very lucrative employment prospect but the Philippine literary landscape is continuously evolving and making more room for careers that cater to a literary audience. Here are some basics that could come in handy when deciding whether to employ the services of a literary agent, or if contemplating starting a career as one.

One Train to Rule them All

This year, like the many years before it, there is talk of building new train lines in my city.

Here, we learn to take the matter with emotional ambiguity— sometimes hopeful for the dream of a completely modern, connected and ordered city; sometimes resentful of the decades-long static continuing to envelope the country and its people.

Continue reading here.