Filipino Thoughts

Let me just say this straightaway: I love my country, and I love my countrymen. I believe that we're a people of endurance and of wit, and though we sometimes tend to misplace our faith, I believe we are a nation that is good, intelligent, and full of potential. 


But there are moments that shake my trust in the Filipino people, that make me--unfortunately--feel ashamed of the way we can sometimes act. One such moment occurred at the San Francisco International Airport on the day I was to leave the US for home sweet home. 

A Little Follow-Through

For almost a year now, I've been contributing articles to local teen magazines. I never really thought I'd be doing it, but I find myself enjoying coming up with possible problems that young girls might face in their daily lives and giving out helpful tips to solve them: What do I do when I find myself face-to-face with my crush? How do I ask a guy out without seeming too forward? Why won't my parents cut me some slack? How do I balance my time between school and friends? 


It's surprisingly fun to think up these things and to point the way. It's fulfilling to know that in my own little way I'm helping kids and teenagers deal with the things that stress them out. 


But here's my problem: how do I take my own advice? 

And What A Week It's Been

You know how sometimes you have weeks that go by where you feel like you didn't do anything new or exciting or productive?


Well for me, this wasn't one of them.

One Year Later

I never thought it would come to this. I never even really thought about it. I just sort of assumed--a little pridefully, I admit, but without really giving it all that much thought--that when I finished school I'd go off and begin my life as a successful Woman of the World.


In the back of my head (you know that part of the mind where imagination and reality become difficult to separate? It's that place you don't show other people, that idealistic little spot where you truly believe all your dreams can and will come true against all odds, given time and opportunity), I saw myself with my own place, my own car, and an awesome, well-paying job. I was toned, Solenn Heussaff-style. I had a walk-in closet. I was going on a book tour for my internationally-acclaimed novel. I read Kant, Nietzsche, Marx, and other intellectual stuff. I could quote from the best literary works. I was traveling the world.


Call me a dreamer, but come on. Didn't you have those illusions, too?


Hell, don't you still?


And yet here I am, a full year after graduation, and I find that not much has changed at all. 

From A Fan

Dear Margaret Atwood,

     I'll admit it: I've only read a few of your works. They probably weren't even your best, just your most commercial ones. Die-hard fans of yours would call me a poser. But even from what little I've read from you and the utterly insufficient experience I have in literature, I can tell that you are a master. Actually, I suppose you'd prefer the term mistress, but you get what I'm saying.

     You wield words like a sharp weapon, striking against submission, convention, and prejudice, and defending the woman and the human person from those who seek to bring them down. Your work is art in all its practicality. You are absolutely brilliant, and you inspire me as I'm sure you inspire thousands all over the world. If the impact I make on literature someday is a tiny fraction of what you've made today, then I can say I've succeeded as a writer ten times over.

     You do Canada proud, Ma'am. 

From, A Fan

---

A Little Bit Of Pixie Dust

Saw the tail-end of the movie Hook yesterday--I think they've been running it on HBO for the last few days. I'm ashamed to admit I've never seen the film in full, but I like to think the main point of the story can be found in those critical final scenes: Hook killing Rufio, a grown-up Peter Pan (played, of course, by the ever-lovable Robin Williams) facing Hook for the last time and utterly humiliating him, and of course Peter and his kids making their way back home. 

It's a timeless tale of the triumph of courage over fear and good over evil, and an affirmation of the old adage, "Home is where the heart is."

Just a link

Call it shameless plugging if you want--it kind of is, anyway--but check this out.  

Notes from the dugout: Boys on the side

Very close to my heart, and all. :)

(Possibly) The End Of An Era

September 30, 2010. I know that whatever the results of today's events are, this is going to be a day I will remember for a very long time, if not for the rest of my life. My mind is a swirling mess of color and feeling: blue and white and the faux wood color of the court floor, along with whirling masses of green and yellow, orange and black, fear and excitement, and tension that ripples through a crowd, tension as alive as the people bringing it forth. 

There are sounds, too: bellows of anger mingling with roars of joy, shrill whistling that rips through pressure like a knife slashing through flesh, a chatter of voices in my ear and all around me and in my own head.

Happy Holiday(s)

And the holidays are back. Ironic that I'm saying it on a holiday, but it's true. September has rolled right on in, and people--well, my friends and family at least, I don't know about yours--are gearing up for a whole 'nother season of joy and merrymaking. 

If you were trying to lose weight in time for all the food and drink of this time of year, then your deadline is coming up and it's time to double the effort. More importantly, if you've allowed yourself to grow weak in the drinking game and find yourself ready to give up after a couple of shots (like meee! I've become an old lady in the past few months), it's time to get back on that horse and train that tummy of yours to take it--how else do you intend to survive the high (and strong) spirits of the season?

It's time to focus, people! Whether it's because you wanna celebrate the crap out of life or because you just want this damn year to end, I'm getting the feeling we're all gonna be blowing 2009 right out of the water when it comes to ending 2010 with a bang. I mean Jay Sean's been singing about it for a month now: We're gonna party like it's the end of the world. Do we prove him right or what? :))

The Bad Side of the Peter Pan Syndrome

Some people just don't know when they're crossing a line. And when you try to tell them that they are, they miraculously turn deaf--even though normally, they can practically hear a whisper from across the street. I'm probably not the most mature person in the world, but I think after all these years I've earned the right to say to these people: Grow the F up.

Fate and Photographs

The world operates as a series of circles that are invisible, for they extend to the upper air. Fate is where these circles cut into the earth. Since we cannot see them, do not know their content, and have no sense of their width, it is impossible to predict when these cuts will slice into our reality. When this happens, we call it fate.

Fate is not a chance event but one that is inevitable; we are simply blind to its nature and time. We are also blind as to how fate connects one occurrence to another.

- Batuk, from James A. Levine's The Blue Notebook

No Matter How Much I Rack My Brains

Before I get started, a disclaimer for anyone asking why I don't write about Real Issues or The Important Things or The Current State of Affairs: I like keeping my opinions to those things to myself. I don't wanna start an argument, or a "healthy debate," or any kind of controversy--not here, anyway. I've seen people whose blogs were attacked just because they decided to write about something else at a time when Important Things were happening. I say, I do care. I just don't wanna talk about it.

Now, let's move on to today's shallow gripe...

The Ting Tings Had It Right

Everyone's a hypocrite--true or false? 

I've had the opportunity to think about this statement the past few days. The more I mull over it, the more I believe that everyone does things they say they hate in other people. Sometimes it's a harmless trait, but other times it can truly hurt.

Mindless Entertainment Consumption

Lately I've been wondering what it is I look for in a television show. I've loyally followed so many over the years--from Power Rangers to Alias to The OC to Grey's Anatomy to Glee--and I figured I should take a step back and think a little about why I commit myself to hours of mindless entertainment consumption. I came up with three things:

Fear

Fear. Is anything more utterly pervasive in human life than fear?

I myself am afraid of so many things: cockroaches, snakes, rats, loneliness, darkness, failure, old age, pain, broken promises, insignificance, death. I'm afraid of drowning, of fire, of flash floods, of clowns, of being laughed at. I'm afraid of poverty and sickness, of graveyards and ghosts. I'm afraid of sorrow and torture and crime and loss. 

Why Worry?

Worry is a creature that worms its way into the gut; it creeps up the chest, making it difficult to breathe; and then it gnaws at the nerves, fraying them, wearing them out. I had the unfortunate opportunity of reacquainting myself with worry early last Friday morning, when I roused myself slowly from heavy sleep to find 5 missed calls from an unknown number on my phone. A text from the same number revealed that its owner was the mother of a very good friend, and that this friend had just been in a violent car accident.

A precarious balance

Everyone has dreams, don't they? And in one way or another, everyone is trying to make his or her own dreams come true. That kid practicing his three-pointer in a street court, for instance: he's probably dreaming of growing up to make a game-winning shot in the NBA. Or that college student slaving away at a lit critique paper, she's probably hoping to see her name next to her debut novel in a bestseller list someday. Whatever it is, everyone has a dream. And everyone somehow works to make it come to life. 

And yet... how to make that happen? Where do people go to make their dreams come true?

Elections!

And thus Election Day in the Philippines came and went. An increasingly frenzied media marathon of the events of May 10th, 2010 included a discussion of a berth of related issues, both positive and negative, as well as real-time reports of the process from precincts all over the country. Ultimately, the media revealed what is a genuine step forward in the Philippine electoral process.

On facial fitness and missing controls

This is a tribute to the insanity of old age and the absent-mindedness of youth.

Who IS that masked man?

Superheroes. A concept that has been tackled in so many ways over so many years that I figured no original work can ever come of it again. Until tonight.