Let me introduce my new friend, Varicella—Varicella Zoster Virus. Varicella is usually fond of little kids but for some pathological reason, has decided to crash in my place a few days ago. I guess my unhealthy lifestyle of social toxins has been conducive to Varicella and found it habitable to incubate some of her babies on my skin for a good 10-21 days. Being the perpetual host that I am, I found the moving-in hard to resist. Now Varicella and her babies are happily feasting the outer region of my dermis from scalp to toes. Of course I wouldn’t be such a rude host by sleeping while my viral-guests are still on a party mode so I decided to get myself preoccupied lest I want to join their ecstatic party of scratch and prick. Here’s what I thought of in keeping me from touching myself, clinically:
1.Create a blog to document this once in a lifetime pathological phenomenon.You only get chickenpox once in your life so savor it to its very blisters.
2.Review your sent email folder in your yahoomail. It stores the ones you sent from when you first created the account. You’ll find yourself laughing with whom and why you sent that message to.
3.Log in to facebook. Sure, you do this everyday with or without chickenpox but if you really want to get preoccupied from the itch, visit all your 300 plus friends. You’ll see that not all of them have met you personally.
4.Stare at your crush’s page for a good half hour. Then go back to the homepage for eye rest. Then stare at the page back again. Do those for a couple of hours then change your status message saying: “Nirvana!” for all the world to wonder.
5.If you don’t want to use Nirvana, just reply to his status message with cryptic smileys and uberly-pacool-slash- pakyut-phrases. ^_^ If ever he asks what’s with all that, say it must be some artistic itch, with another cryptic smiley, of course. =)
6.Flood yourself with DVD’s good for 2 weeks worth of watching. Dare not to borrow from your jologs kapitbahay. You’ll end up watching Steven Siegal and Transporter 1,2,3. You’re better off scratching and pricking your boils than watching those.
7.Make yourself productive. Answer quizzes from facebook. Why else do you think they make those quizzes for?
8.Organize your file case. Even if it is 2am.
9.Clean up your closet. Even if it’s 2am
10.Drink coffee. It is already 2am.
11.Count your blisters.
And finally, 12.Romanticize your scabs. After all, it was once part of you. Awww…
That’s what you get when you can’t touch yourself for 2 weeks. Boils, blisters, puss. 05/28/09
It’s been two days of thunderstorms in Manila and yet the season is still supposed to be the start of the flowering month (May). The earth is dying or should I say in turmoil of drastic change which then will surely affect the flora and fauna of this world, moreover the ones who will be mostly affected by this will be us, humans. There is a warning that has been sounded on for almost more than a century now about these drastic changes but it seems that the effort we do are just whispered answers against the sound of that alarm. I have just bought a dvd of this BBC documentary titled Planet Earth and saw the beauty and magnificence of this planet is incomprehensible just to be devastated by a meager species, one that is so insignificant in numbers among the five kingdoms of life, one that has just inherited the earth recently from the dinosaurs about 200,000 years ago (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human), a microscopic peck in the universe, one that is called homo sapiens. As one bishop said, we are but just God’s guest on this planet and as guests we should try not to destroy our Host’s home. And if you don’t believe in God, just care for the earth for the sake of the generations to come.
What I have been doing the first quarter of 2k9
It’s been a very-very busy and productive quarter so far for me. The year of the Ox as soon as it started brought me a lot of wonderful opportunities to explore both my country and myself. 2009 is a year of firsts for me, as I have been divirginized on the adventures I longed dreamed of.
As January began, I have received an offer to be a part of a full length film as a script supervisor and although the production turned out to be not that professional, I have realized my potentials on the other aspects of filmmaking and turned that not-so-good experience to be a beneficial one. I learned doing the logistics, monitoring the continuity, arranging the costumes, directing the blockings, and feeding the whole production simultaneously. At first I thought I shouldn’t be doing that for a meager amount of talent fee and for the type of administration the production has but in return, I looked on the bright side as always, and charged them all to experience. And what an experience it has been, indeed.
After almost two weeks of isolation in Cavite for that shoot, I came back to Manila and received another call from production friends giving me an assistant position for a music video. It has been my dream since high school to be a part of a music video since the generation I have came from has been greatly influenced by the good old Channel V and of course, MTV. The experience gave me a chance to know other people and how to deal with them hence; I made new connections and found new friends along the way.
Having friends on my side, we also made a commercial for the Department of Agriculture and I was tasked to do some oculars alone in San Ildefonso, Bulacan. It was my first time to do that alone and when I got to the location and took a handful of pictures, our location manager invited me on a birthday party and to my surprise, I just found myself on the same table with the Mayor, Vice Mayor, Secretary, and other political figures of Bulacan with a beer on my hand. Beaurecracy has never been that hospitable before.
After all those busy, busy months, I was in my room for a good week and thinking if there won’t be anymore projects to come. Then I received a call with an offer of a commercial project. I was briefed then that it will be on CebuCity and of course, I immediately said yes and agreed to join a meeting right in the afternoon of that same day. When I got to the meeting, I was surprised to know that it is not only in Cebu we are going to shoot at but to five other provinces in the southern Visayas. Apparently, it is a nationwide coverage tv commercial and our team has been designated six locations namely: Davao del Sur, Davao del Norte, Cebu, Iloilo, Cagayan de oro, and one in the north, Baguio city. It is so taxing that there are times we get off only in the airport to go back in our respective homes to replenish our clothes and then immediately the next day we are on the plane again on to the next province. It was also a chance for me to see and meet a lot of people and get to know different cultures of our wonderful archipelago. The tawas tapol ( a guy who sells charms along the streets of Davao) were really awesome though I can’t understand what they’re saying except their “Tugsh! Kapiyaw! Booom!” self-made sound effects.
For now, what I am up to is a full length film with this 45 year-old production company and an artsy-shoot for a friend in Ilocos Norte where we will be hanging cunt and dildos in the sand dunes of the far north.
Life has never been this exciting!
On growing old
There is this stage in a human life you call age of discernmentwherein a person reaches a certain age (usually that cusp between puberty and adolescence) where he is able to discern what is morally good from what is morally bad. An age of realization, I would say. As a human being grows old, there are experiences he accumulates from all sorts, be it new or different ideas he picks up in that cycle of life. All of those upon reaching a certain age, a man has to decide what from those are beneficial, what are not, what are good, what are bad. And as he introspects further and further down the skin of his humanity, he sees his strengths and weaknesses. And if you are 23 years old and already thinking about these shits, you could join me in my premature quarter life crisis club. The vice-president position is still open.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
My room.
A small 10 to 15 square meters space just beside our main house. Separated from the house it was originally intended to be a rented space with its own bathroom and own sink, studio type I would say and has stood for as long as 18 years which housed almost 10 occupants since 1990.
Now that all of us has grown up and the room in the main house can no longer accommodate our grown up needs (privacy, individuality, mood swings, you name it) my parents decided to stop renting the rooms and gave it to us. Now my room overflows in meters and meters of wires from extension cords, laptop charger, speaker cables, lamp wires, etc. It also reeks of nicotine smell and crowded with hanged clothes and bags and socks and rubber shoes and slippers and books, papers, scripts, call sheets, scratch papers, pictures, cd's, and empty lighters, strayed ashes from cigs, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The bottom line here is that my room screams of hygiene. It has been three months since the last time I swept the floor with a decent broom (not just kick off some dust out the door) and in fact, the glass of water I was drinking earlier already have Mr. Croachy inside just 30 seconds after I put it aside. I still don't find cockroaches under my exotic-delicacies-to-eat-before-I-die-list.
I definitely have to clean up. Lest I procrastinate again.
There is this thing in photography they call "The Magic Hour" wherein according to wikipedia, the golden hour (also known as magic hour) is the first and last hour of sunlight during the day when a specific photographic effect is achieved with the quality of the light. In essence, the magic hour is the time of the day when no artificial lighting is needed to attain your most beautiful shot and that the sun and your lens is in harmony to conceive a masterpiece. 2:44 am is definitely not the magic hour defined on the aforementioned statements. But throughout the years, since college, 2 am has been my personal magic hour.
2 am, when everyone is fast asleep and only few teen drunkards are alive and are soon bound to go home, when everything even the entropy of the cosmos, is like a magical mix of your favorite coffee ready to be served for another planet, when the stillness and serenity are in harmony to achieve your own masterpiece, your own inner peace, that is my magic hour.
It is magic to me to hear the ticking of my wall clock one by one as its second arm revolves tirelessly throughout the night. The silence of the whole neighborhood brings forth calm and the occasional barking of the dogs reminds me that in the stillness of the night there is still life. The quiet dry air of the incoming summer during the night wraps me in an embrace of yet another nostalgia of the summer of the 90's.And I feel more alive during this time of the night since I can grasp the whole moment as my own and that no TV show, or phone call, or unexpected visits can take away my 2 am.
Yes, nothing can take away my 2 am but time itself. For just a fleeting 60 minutes of the night, the 3600th second of the clock hits 12 and announces its time for 3:00 to do its magic. And as the magic of 2 am gradually fades along the remaining hours of the night, I retire to my bed with my own masterpiece, my inner peace.
a freelance film, tvc, and events production staff who lives in Camarin, from the far northern side of Caloocan-- where everything is fresh, green and distant. Still undecided about life, he consumes 18 hours per day in the net, if not running for 40 minutes on the treadmill, or just plain shuffling his mp3. Always on a backpack, he travels from city to city just to attend meetings, run errands, shoot for films, or to see his crush. Suffering from premature quarter-life crisis, he plans to finally register himself as a voter for the 2010 election.
