notes on chillin' at a starbucks, or, the benefits of being a cow sipping a venti mocha frappuccino

today is sunday, october 30, and i write this while sitting at a starbucks and pondering on the vague discomfort that comes just by being at a starbucks. you see, i'm here because officemate steph, in a commendable act of charity, handed me a coupon for a free "tall" sized drink (a "Mocha Frappuccino", in this case), which i upsized to a "venti" (which is supposed to be the largest drink size in the starbucks scheme of things, which is funny because for the uninitiated, like yours truly, "tall", supposedly the smallest, actually sounds taller than "venti") for a mere P30 add-on. the coupon and starbucks' claims to corporate responsibility notwithstanding, me going to a starbucks for coffee still feels like supporting this whole global (but seemingly crumbling) capitalist system, with its accompanying notions of economic imperialism and inequality, so on and so forth.

i mean, it still strikes me as silly to pay P175 for coffee. although, aside from the coffee being good, it can be argued that one is not only paying for the coffee, but the cafe itself, the whole cornucopia of sensations neatly packaged into the word "ambiance": the airconditioned refuge from the heat, the comfy sofa and the smartly designed hardwood chairs with the subtle recess to snugly hold one's butt cheeks, the nice view of the street, the fine samples of the female subspecies attracted to places like this (example: the korean chicks on the 2 nearby tables silently reading), the invigorating smell of coffee wafting around and transporting you to a higher level of consciousness like you'd just inhaled a drag of marijuana smoke, bob dylan's jingly-jangly guitar and offbeat harmonica alternating with soft unintrusive jazz both echoing from the overhead speakers, the interesting semi-cubist semi-impressionist coffee themed illustration (not sure if you can call it a painting) on the wall of people reading in a library and a painter (i presume) contemplating his just finished painting interspersed with coffee cups and coffee pots (suggesting coffee's contributions to the advancement of literature and the arts, and by extension, civilization as a whole), and most of all, the strange (but not totally pleasant) way one's image seems to be upgraded by the simple fact of being in a starbucks (in the same way being in a jollibee supports one's assumption of middle class status, being in a starbucks is an indicator of belonging to a social strata that finds it acceptable, ordinary even, to spend P175 on coffee). [note that i say "in/at a starbucks" and "in/at a jollibee", as these sort of places have a photocopied feel to them, i.e., make a copy and plunk one down here, make another copy and plunk down another one over there, so on and so forth.]

the "ambiance" theory doesn't totally fly, though. a counter-example: that mysterious (for me, at least) phenomenon of people, usually younger folk, strolling around the various malls in the city while nursing a P175 cup of coffee. the fact that they're not in the cafe invalidates most of the supporting arguments of the "ambiance" theory, except i guess for the last part.

from my current perch, i have noticed a couple of times already the passengers of passing jeepneys outside curiously looking at this local incarnation of starbucks, and the people inside. us, i mean. and it doesn't look like plain curiosity. they have an i-wish-i-was-there-sipping-that-P175-cup-of-coffee kind of tinge on their faces, but not so much a desire for the place (or the coffee), but what the place (or coffee) represents. or am i only projecting?

either way, the fact that i get the benefits of the image upgrade just because i got a free coupon feels, well, kind of unfair: like i just swindled a shitload of cash from someone on the street (thanks steph!).

oh boy... all this introspection and the resulting guilt trip are just ruining this rather rare experience of chillin' at a starbucks. truly, there are benefits to being a bovine chomping unreflectively on a bit of grass... or sipping on a venti mocha frappuccino.

haiku: the quiet toilet

in homage/parody, yet again, of basho's pond haiku :)

*****

the quiet toilet
the shit drops in
the sound of water

*****

2 things...

first, it is said that basho wrote the pond/frog haiku while in a medititative state. isn't the act of sitting/shitting on the toilet also a medititative act?

second, can't shit be a valid subject for poetry? or, reframing the question, can't shit be a subject of valid poetry? not that i'm claiming that my... err... "haiku" is poetry, but you can't really shut poetry in a cage while expecting it to fly, no?

it looks like goodbye...

... but is it? does the girl standing on the edge of the water really know the guy paddling away on the banca? or is this a fiction created by the contingencies that brought them together in the frame?



but more importantly: can you really trust a photograph to tell the truth? or given the very elusiveness of "truth", does a photograph merely show its own version of the truth?

taken near the foot of the marcelo fernan bridge, on the mandaue side, june 2010

inside, looking out

my existence these past few months has largely been limited to going to work, going home, going to work, going home, going to work, so on and so forth. even weekends and holidays, much to my frustration.

i work at IT park. and IT park, as most cebuanos know, is a place unto itself. it doesn't feel like cebu at all. echoes of effortlessly american sounding chatter bounce off the walls of the various high rises sprouting all over the place like grass. a porsche or bmw parked outside some trendy new bar or cafe is no longer such an extraordinary thing to behold. and strutting about in their power suits or fashionably casual outfits, specimens of the local subspecie of yuppie go about their day tapping away at their shiny new iPhones or hammering at their macbooks, while wide eyed envelope wielding job seekers stare at these curious creatures, in the hope that they too become part of the herd.

there is an air of possibility to the place. it feels like one huge launch pad, and we are all astronauts headed for the moon (or sinners going to hell, depending on how you look at it).

meanwhile, home is as it should be: home, a shell to retreat in, my own psychological space to shut out the rest of the world, a place away from all the cursing bosses and the horde of irate clients screaming for my head and the dozen or so ticking time bombs that is my job to juggle around before they explode: the projects that i have to manage.

so goes a typical day in the life of kenneth diaz: i go to work, a project explodes in my face, i go home. i go to work, an important client does her best impression of the queen bitch from hell, i go home. i go to work, the boss roars "what f*cking holiday is monday?", i go home.

it's been stressful, to say the least. but here's the thing with stress: when you feel like everything around you is falling apart, when all you get is one disappointment after another, then it becomes too easy to reach the conclusion that the universe has singled you out (and only you) for punishment, that your pain (and no one else's) is all there is to the world.

there's nothing like a quick trip outside to prove that all wrong, though.

2 weeks ago, i took friday off from work, and jumped on the chance to jog on one of my favorite routes, from our house all the way to the 2 mactan bridges.

i'd made good progress. i was now on the last stretch of my run on the 2nd mactan bridge when i saw something odd: a woman squatting on the road. you see, the 2nd mactan bridge has separate lanes for pedestrians, and she was squatting at the edge of the main road with the cars and trucks and buses zipping past her. she was wearing a brown blouse that had seen better days, a long green skirt, a piece of cloth wrapped around her head. and layed out in front of her, were 3 big grey sacks.

this i didn't really mind, until she stood up. for a split second her butt was exposed as she quickly raised her skirt to put her underwear back on. she had just taken a pee... on the side of the road... for all the world to see. she then stood up, dutifully put one sack on her head, took the other 2 sacks, one in each hand, and walked quietly along.

"yes, i am, apparently, still in the philippines," i thought.

i finish my jog and cool off, then head to one of the sari-sari stores near the park at the foot of the 2nd mactan bridge to buy myself some water.

at the sari-sari store, while sipping on a cold bottle of water and waiting for my change, an old man comes up beside me. you could almost read his life story written on his graying hair and his wrinkled face, but it was his eyes that spoke most eloquently: he had the saddest eyes in the world.

the tindera came back with my change, then she asked the old man, "unsa imo noy?" (can i help you sir?)

as if he too had a big grey sack resting on his head, the old man very slowly shook his head. the tindera shrugged and went away. the old man, with his one hand resting on the counter, stood there and eyed the inside of the store the same way moses, after 40 years in the desert, must have looked over the promised land that he'd been forbidden to enter, from the top of the mountain where he was going to die: so near and yet so far, far way.

i fled. i was still catching my breath after a rather punishing jog, and i wanted no part of it. so i fled.

i found an empty bench at the park, with a view of the bridge and the passing ships, and cooled off there. to my left was one bench with a couple, and to my right, another bench with 2 uniformed women who i couldn't help but hear chatting about the sad trajectory of their lives (involving unfaithful boyfriends, troubled siblings, and the neverending struggle for money). another pair of women approached them.

one was an old woman with a bandana, a walking stick on her right hand, and a plastic cup on her left, and she had milky white eyes that seemed to have given up on seeing. she was led by another woman, who led the blind woman by her arm (the one with the plastic cup), and directed the cup toward the 2 women seated on the bench. i heard the tinkle of coins dropping into the cup, and they proceeded to the next bench: mine.

the guide woman then directed the blind woman's cup in front of my face. i looked blankly at the cup, which now had 3 1-peso coins in it, looked at the blind woman, then looked at the guide. i noticed that she had an imperious look on her face, the look of one wanting to know if i had something to give or not, the look of one who did not have the time to plead, the look of a question demanding an answer.

i sat still. i only had enough coins for a jeepney ride home. i just stared at the guide woman, and she stared back.

seeing that i was a lost cause, she motioned to the blind woman, and they moved on to the next bench.

not long after, i also stood up, lingered a bit on the view, and went home... home, where i can shut out the world again... but not really, not anymore, after remembering that there is a world outside of the cursing bosses and irate clients and projects about to explode, that there is a world outside of my own frustrations and pains and heartbreaks, that there is a world outside of me.

to know that you are not alone is relief enough.

**************

published on the inquirer january 13, 2011 :)
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20110113-314144/World-outside

the rules of physics in a jeepney

waiting at a jeepney stop one evening were two ladies and me. an almost full 13C jeepney going to talamban then arrives. the conductor announces to us:

"o duha nalang kulang, duha kulang..."

i let the two ladies get on the jeepney first. the conductor then notices me, and says:

"o naa pay isa! naa pay isa!"

right. apparently, the pauli exclusion principle (which states that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time) does not apply on that jeepney.

the eyes that haunt, the eyes that bind

"The best way to deal with them of course is to not look them in the eye. At the very least that’s so because eye-contact is the equivalent of the first question you ask the salesperson who knocks on your door. As everyone warns, never do that. Just say, “Sorry,” if you’re in the mood to be polite or slam the door on his face if you’re not. You ask a question and that’s his one foot in the door, which can sometimes be scarily literal.

But more than that, don’t look the ragged children in the eye because if you do, you impale their fleeting forms into reality. You transform a vague and abstract presence into living tissue, into flesh and bone, into solid matter, as solid as the loud rap on your window. You look them in the eye, and suddenly, terrifyingly, movingly, you’re no longer looking at a formless mass, you are looking at a four-year-old—if he’s at all so, it’s not easy to reckon age in age-worn faces—trudging along with not much older company, a torn and worn-out T-shirt hanging over his body like a tent.

But this best way of dealing with the problem is the same best way to make the problem stay. Which is the bind. I’ve always thought the only reason we’ve kept out equanimity in the face of the teeming poverty around us, some of its aspects too mind-boggling to contemplate, is that it is invisible to us. It is invisible to us because we do not see it. We do not see it because we do not look it in the eye. And because we do not look it in the eye, the poor, like beggars, or carolers on the street, cease to exist. They are just a blur, a ghost, an apparition that flits by but is swallowed in the dust and smoke when the light flashes green.

By all means let us not give to carolers on the streets, or out-and-out beggars who badger us with their pain and their humiliation. Though heaven knows that isn’t always easy during Christmas, a season dedicated to discovering the existence of others. But whether we give or not, the point is to not be blind to their being there, to not make them disappear in the mind, if not in space, because they are an inconvenient truth. They will continue to be there in space, whether we see them of not: the beggars, the throwers of soapy water on windshields, the children in the streets, who while waiting for the cars to stop stand in awe before the tailoring shop near where I live, admiring the basketball uniforms that proclaim various teams. They will continue to be there, like an indictment, like an accusing finger, like a question hanging in the air demanding an answer.

Like eyes that haunt. Like eyes that bind."

from an article written by conrado de quiros published on the philippine daily inquirer: http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view/20091222-243461/Eyes

this is a piece i wish i had written, or at least something like it. it captures what i feel perfectly. i've long since maintained my stance not to give to beggars, especially street children. i thought (and still think) that giving would only encourage them to stay on the streets and beg. and i stuck to that logic, no matter how queasy it felt.



but then this boy came, dragging with him an old woman who might (or might not) be his grandmother. it was raining that afternoon, and i was comfortably seated in a taxi on my way to the mall. then he came knocking on my window. instinctively, i took out my camera to take a shot. but as i adjusted my lens to compose the picture, i made the mistake: through my camera's viewfinder, i looked him in the eye.

and in that instant, the notion i've long since held, the neat formula that i was convinced i'd completely figured out, just melted away. it may have added up correctly, but felt humongously wrong.

i felt my hand slowly reaching for my wallet, but the traffic light had just turned green. the driver didn't seem to notice what was going on, and stepped on the gas. the little boy and the old woman stepped back to the sidewalk, and then they were gone.

***********

another repost from my multiply page. photo taken near the intersection of cardinal rosales ave. and juan luna st., cebu city, november 2009.

is my cat bulimic?

help! my cat miming has a problem. she's been vomiting the past 3 days. i caught her almost do it in my room 3 days ago, so i promptly threw her out. she then went ahead and threw up right outside the door. my mother also saw her do it in the kitchen the next day. she did it again yesterday, after we fed her dinner. clean up has been such a pain.

but i look at miming, and her appetite seems quite normal. she actually keeps meowing at me every time she sees me, to probably try and wheedle some food from me. then my internal hypochondriac suddenly gave me his diagnosis: miming is bulimic.

she seems to have lost weight the past few weeks, and looks rather thin. is miming depressed? is she insecure w/ her looks? does she think she has weight problems? does she think her perceived weight problems are driving away perspective boyfriends, i mean, tomcats? are the lady cats in the neighborhood teasing her that she's fat? has she been watching too much TV when the humans of the house are away, which has somehow influenced her definition of what it is to be beautiful? does she need to see a shrink? do i need to see a shrink?

i've been meaning to ask her all that, but all she says is 'meow'.

the balut virgin and the cigarette virgin: a reflection on the roots of addiction

two people lost their virginity last tuesday: me, the balut virgin, and ms. jp, the cigarette virgin... virgins no longer.

we both lost it during the despedida drinking session held in honor of mr. tugak, who resigned to take a better paying job in manila. not wanting to miss a free drink, i dragged myself from the office looking for the watering hole where it was now ongoing. the place was, literally, a hole in the wall. the owners of the place were airsoft devotees, so they called it 'fire in the hole'.

when i got there i found that mr. tugak, ms. jp, ms. k, and ms. s had already started 2 hours earlier. apparently i had some catching up to do.

*******

after a few bottles, the balut man came. believe it or not, in all my 24 years of existence, i have not yet partaken of these eggs, eggs so magical people believe they granted the partaker certain powers, ranging from stronger knees to increased sexual abilities.

the thing is, i am not very adventurous when it comes to food, and my sensibilities found the idea of eating 'duck abortions' a bit too exotic. as a child, i was also afraid eating balut would give me nightmares: imagine my horror when breaking the shell open, the unborn chick inside would suddenly wake up and beg for its life, telling me in a shrill voice: "please boy! don't eat me!"

"want some?", they ask me. with the unborn chick in mind, i kindly declined. but then, it occurred to me that if i did that, i would look like a sissy in front of everybody else. so the nightmares be damned. i took it back and said, what the heck, sure, i'll have one. tugak was paying for it anyway.

to give myself more courage, i recited mr. tugak's mantra: "sa sugod ra nang luod."

they ordered the 13 day old balut. after a brief discussion on the correct procedure for cracking the egg open (you crack the end marked with a pen), i proceed with my initiation into the mysterious world of balut eating.

first the 'sabaw'. i've heard a lot of stories of pregnant women pestering their husbands in the middle of the night to look for balut just so they could taste its 'sabaw'. but fortunately for the husbands of the world, balut sellers tend to work in the night shift.

so how to describe it... it was... ok, i guess. more or less, it was like an oily version of the tinolang manok's broth. so far so good.

and then came the hard part, the rest of the balut. i broke the shell apart slowly, apprehensive of the possibility of seeing the chick's face. but heaven be praised, the egg had not yet developed enough to a discernable form of a chick. no nightmares this time, thank goodness.

in a nutshell, the balut was like a hard boiled chicken egg that got exposed to gamma rays, with an uneven consistency. there was the tough chewy part, another part that tasted like the ordinary yolk of a hard boiled chicken egg, and another part that had the consistency of phlegm. the last one my mouth had difficulty swallowing. i had to wash it down with a glass of beer to prevent from any further embarassment.

now that i've successfully hurdled my first encounter with balut, i have come to the following conclusion: balut is overrated.

*******

the night wore on, and tugak and ms. k eventually ran out of cigarettes, so they buy themselves another pack. suddenly, ms. jp asks if she could try one. she also says that this would be her first time to smoke. ms. k gives her a stick, and guides her in the technicalities of smoking her first cigarette (i.e. how to breathe in the smoke, the correct way of holding the cigarette between your fingers, etc.). it was weird, after 20 something years, there we were laying witness as ms. jp's pink lung's got devirginized by her first (and hopefully, for her health's sake, her last) cigarette.

ms. k also offered me a stick. i considered it for a moment, then thought: balut and cigarettes are 2 very different things, and i no longer care if i look like a sissy. the farthest i could go was 3 puffs, and i didn't even breathe.

after some clumsy puffing, ms. jp soon finished her stick. it is curious, but not until i sat there staring at the dying embers of ms. jp's first stick in the ashtray did the significance of the event hit me: i just witnessed first hand one of the origins of addiction. people take up their first cigarette, their first bottle of beer, or their first joint of marijuana, for the same reason that i ate my first balut: we just don't want to look like sissies in front of everybody else.

which is not to say, of course, that ms. jp is now getting addicted to cigarettes. ms. jp, you're not getting addicted now, are you?

measures of maturity

these are the questions my barkada asks each other...

4 years ago:
unsa na ka nga stage sa max payne?

now:
kumusta na mo sa imong girlfriend?

20 years from now:
kumusta na imong blood pressure?

a divine win

another thought.

after the san miguel beermen's miraculous win over coca-cola last sunday, eric reyes interviewed coach siot tanquincen about the win. he asked coach siot, "what were you thinking during the game?" to which coach siot replied to the effect, "you just don't give up on situations like this, and you leave everything else to God. fortunately God blessed us with this win."

it occured to me, does God meddle with sports? does He decide who should win, or does He just leave it up to the players to win it? do we REALLY have free will?

hoy lover boy!

if you're reading this, you know who you are. honestly, after everything you've said, i *STILL* don't get what your problem is. you're scared she'd be bored with you? you never know, she's also scared you'd be bored with her. that i believe is a very invalid consideration. [syntax error. please delete from thought process.]

as for her weird mood swings, we all know how girls can be, with their monthly transformations from sweet little thing to fire breathing dragon. they can't help it, it's in their body chemistry. but that means you'll have to live with it though. it's a burden all men must face, unless you've chosen to be celibate.

you're not sure that what you feel for her is "LOVE"? you want to make sure that it's actually "LOVE" before you formalize things with her? ahh, "LOVE", the word that has brought so many great men to their knees and so many brave warriors to lose courage. well, i think you're right. what you feel for her right now is *NOT* yet "LOVE", but mere infatuation. but it *ALWAYS* starts that way. right now, when you're with her, you still have that feeling that your stomach is in knots and your heart is doing somersaults. but one day, that feeling will dull, die, and be gone. our brains, according to this article from national geographic, can't maintain the intense neural activity of infatuation. that's when "LOVE" is supposed to take over. "LOVE" is not some sensation you wait for to happen, it's something you decide to do and work on along the way. "Does love not sprout from need/ but choice?", the poet angelo suarez wrote. i used to think otherwise, but now i'm starting to agree with him.

so what the hell are you waiting for? GET A MOVE ON BOY!

unless, of course, you're set on buying me that pizza... dapat yellow cab ha... dugay na sad raba ko wa katilaw ug yellow cab :P

P.S. nya pakapini sad diay ug coke, matuk-an nya ko...

the frustrated fan

my heart breaks. and no, not because the girl of my dreams turned me down. my heart breaks because the san miguel beermen just lost the 2007 pba philippine cup championship to baranggay ginebra in 6 games.

and with that, coach chot reyes gains the ignominy of being the only coach in pba history to have gained a 2-0 advantage in a best of seven championship series and have his team lose the next 4 games and the championship. and worse, he will be the only coach in pba history to have that happen to him twice.

i know, coaches tend to be the easiest scapegoats when a team loses. not to take anything away from coach chot, he's done a fine job. this is his first conference with san miguel. and with all the new guys around (which, along with the new coach, essentially makes smb a new team), it's impressive how he was able to make them work together and reach as far as the finals. all that while handling duties as coach of the national team.

but they shouldn't have lost game 4 the way they did. wasn't the 131-101 beating they got in game 3 enough to convince them to make adjustments? well apparently not. their record setting 146-111 game 4 loss was even worse, probably the worst finals loss in pba history.

but really, in that series, baranggay ginebra was simply the better team. coach jong uichico did a great job at the helm. "the fast and the furious" tandem of jayjay helterbrand and mark caguioa ran circles around the san miguel defense. the return of eric menk from injury was an inspiration to the team. there's rudy hatfield running the break and snatching all those improbable rebounds... what planet did this guy come from? ronald tubid proved to be a major nuisance for danny seigle, successfully getting to danny's head every now and then. and we saw flashes of the old johnny a. they deserved the title.

and let's not forget baranggay ginebra's 6th man. the ginebra fans were simply being ginebra fans: loud, exuberant, and numerous. they cheered every shot, every rebound, every steal. they stayed on even when ginebra was down 2-0 in the series and all seemed lost. that is what gives ginebra a distinct advantage over other teams in the pba: wherever they play, they always seem to have what the nba calls "homecourt advantage". it's like whatever court ginebra plays in IS their homecourt.

*******************

it's a strange thing this, being a fan. you consider as yours the fate of a bunch of people who you don't even know personally and haven't even met. you rejoice at their victories. you despair over their defeats. every high and every low the team goes through is yours.

i became a san miguel fan around the mid 90s, which was quite unfortunate. i had read about the glory of the old san miguel team of the late 80s and early 90s, the one with hall of famers like ramon fernandez, samboy lim, hector calma, and then later, allan caidic and ato agustin. but san miguel at that time was an aging shell of its old self. the new teams were dominating, like the vergel meneses led sunkist, and then the grand slam winning alaska, and occasional intrusions by alvin patrimonio's purefoods and the ever popular baranggay ginebra.

but i hung on. somehow, through those times when they almost won (like the 1995 governor's cup or the 1998 all filipino cup, both against alaska and both going to a game 7) or when they simply sucked (like the horrible 1996 commissioner's cup, when they didn't even get through the eliminations), in the back of my head, i believed they were going to start winning again. i kept the faith, even if reality was mocking it.

it's like religion, being a fan. you place your hopes (and your bets) on something which isn't a sure thing. sometimes, your team loses one game after another, and your faith waivers. sometimes you want to switch to what looks like a better religion, i mean team, because their promise of salvation, i mean victory, seems surer.

but then the new guys came. olsen racela, then danny ildefonso, then danny seigle, then nic belasco. and they actually started winning. first, the 1999 commissioner's, then the 1999 governor's. then in 2000 they successfully defended both titles. then in 2001, the most prestigious of the pba crowns, the all filipino, which they won against ginebra also in 6 games (i guess we can call ginebra's recent victory as mark caguioa's revenge). sports commentators were calling it a dynasty. finally, after all those years waiting, there before my very eyes, my team was kicking ass!

it was weird. after all those years waiting, after having invested so much passion and emotion, to actually see it right there on my tv screen... it was just weird. it was like finishing a 13k marathon in first place, but i didn't even do the running. i simply believed, and thus i basked in the reflected glory of their victory. if i may take the religion analogy a bit further at risk of sounding sacrilegious, it was like dying and seeing heaven. my faith had been proven right.

*******************

a friend suggested that if the beermen lost in the finals, coach chot should exclude all ginebra players from the national team. seemed like a farfetched idea at first glance, but now i think about it, if my passion for smb trumped my concern for the country's pride in international basketball, then that would have made some sense.

pushing that further, if i were a really passionate smb fan, i'd have waited outside the gates of araneta coliseum and when, say, mark caguioa or jay-jay helterbrand came out, i (or, if you're not the hands on kind of guy, hired goons) would have them kidnapped for a while, only releasing them once the series was over. wait... didn't i see this in a movie?

this reminds me of a recent piece of world news: the football game riots in italy that led to the death of 1 policeman and the indefinite cancellation of all football matches in all of italy. we can't deny it: they were passionate fans. they lived and breathed their football clubs. they were so passionate, it even drove them to the point of violence against fans of the rival team.

let me be clear about this: i do not advocate the use of violence. my point is, if we can invest so much energy and passion in just watching our sports heroes play (which in itself is of little use to society), imagine what we can do if we divert that energy elsewhere.

with that kind of passion, we can defeat poverty and hunger. we can stop corruption. we can bring true progress to our country. we can slow down and maybe even halt the destruction of our planet. we can change the world!

now, if we could only see living as a sport, then we could make ourselves fans of the world. and like true fans, we'd consider as ours the fate of the world, and then maybe we can make things better for everybody. empathy is the essence of compassion. i can almost hear michael jackson in the background singing "heal the world"...

pardon me, i'm preachifying.

but the next time san miguel and ginebra face off, i will pray to all the basketball gods and basketball saints i can call on (is there a patron saint of basketball? like maybe a saint michael jordan?) so smb can have its revenge. watch out ginebra, your time will come.

translate this

here's something from an officemate that i've been puzzling over for hours. translate from tagalog to english:

ika-ilang presidente ng pilipinas si gloria macapagal arroyo?

and this is the closest thing i have for an answer:

if gloria macapagal arroyo is the Nth president of the philippines, what is the value of N?

capuccino for free!

back on the subject of unique and unusual names. at work, i have an officemate named freedom (her parents must be activists of some sort) and someone in another department named life. disclaimer: i have no intention of poking fun at both of you guys, nor do i consider you lower beings simply on the account of your given names, for given names maketh not a man. but think about the implications: what if they ordered coffee at starbucks or pizza at yellow cab? in ms. freedom's case, people call her "free", so when the the counter at starbucks announces the arrival of her order they'd be shouting: "capuccino for free!". in mr. life's case, if he makes an order at yellow cab, they'd be announcing: "pizza for life!". imagine how that sounds: free coffee and a life time supply of pizza! a stampede would ensue upon announcement, for sure. everybody would be rushing to the counter...

...but on second thought, at least their parents hadn't named them death and slavery...

poor loser(s)

ralf souquet just happened to suck at his game at a very bad time. and ronnie alcano's peaking performance made things even worse for souquet, making alcano the 3rd filipino to win the world pool championship.

i'm not taking anything away from alcano, of course. except for that moment when the score stood at 15-9 where he missed the 9-ball (of all balls on the table...), he played great pool against souquet. his break was efficient: soft yet accurate, which is just the opposite of the djanggo bustamante break with the accompanying flying kick from his right leg. his combination shots with the 9-ball were gutsy game winners which the crowd loved. and his safety game was just beautiful it boggled the mind, much to souquet's discomfort. to reach the final he even beat other big name players in the tournament like efren "bata" reyes and the defending champion wu chia ching of taiwan.

but nevertheless, ralf souquet simply sucked... and he knew it. he struggled with a lot of errors and which alcano took advantage of to dominate the match. even his break didn't help him, not giving him a clear shot to the next object ball. in fact, he sucked so much that during the post game interview, he couldn't help but shed tears in front of God, espn, and everybody. poor loser. seeing a grown man like him cry was so unsettling for anthony suntay (who did the post game interview) that, in a weak attempt to make souquet feel better, suntay encouraged the crowd to applaud souquet, telling him to "feel the love" of the filipino fans. hahahahahaha. schadenfreude, more like.

naturally, the newspaper headlines the following day were all about alcano's win. and president arroyo, the political animal that she is, does the same thing she did with manny pacquiao and takes advantage of the situation, awarding alcano the "champion for life" award (corny name for an award, no?) and a cool 1 million pesos (kaaachiiing). i wouldn't be surprised if members of the house of representatives and the senate, plus his home town's mayor, vice mayor, ... [fill in the blanks] ... up to the baranggay tanod, will all be lining up to give him heaps and heaps and heaps of awards. anything to bask in the reflected glory of alcano's victory, i guess.

but wait a minute... don't you notice something here? try mentioning a list of sports filipinos have excelled at internationally. and when i say internationally, i mean the philippines vs. the world kind of international. so in that definition, our win at the last sea games won't count (we had homecourt advantage there anyway). let's see, we have billiards, boxing, bowling... see it now? aside from the obvious and strange fact that they all start with the letter B, the other thing common with them is that they are all individual sports.

tell me, have filipinos ever excelled in a team sport internationally? let's see... basketball? nope... we can't even win gold at the asian games. football? even worse, i think myanmar just gave the philippine team a good thumping at a southeast asian event recently... uhhh, rugby? does the philippines even have a rugby team? rugby boys, maybe... how about baseball? yeah, we did win once in an international little league competition some years ago, but we did it by sending overage players. holy crap. we can't even seem to win in team sports without cheating!

what the hell does that mean? that pinoys can only excel when they are working for their own glory? that pinoys cannot grasp the concept of a TEAM, much more the concept of a NATION? another result of the notorious crab mentality that we all complain about but never seem to conquer?

doesn't speak so well for us as a people, no?

the glory of defeat

what on earth were WE thinking? what on earth was I thinking? we were humiliated, annihilated, crushed, beaten, awed, humbled, blown away, ______, ______, ______, ...you can fill in the blanks. the table tennis tournament that me and some of my officemates joined can be succinctly described by one word: DISASTER. our team of 4 players did not win a single match, not even a single set. the field was simply too good for us. ironically, two of my teammates went out drinking the night before. drunk guy number one went home around 12 midnight, while drunk guy number two (who was supposed to be a top 10 table tennis player from japan) went home around 4 am. he even came in late on the morning of the tournament, still smelling of alcohol and wearing slacks and shoes that were so scruffy i wondered if he had to crawl his way home last night. player number 3 didn't even join the practice session last night because he went out on a date. so there we were, 4 guys who barely had any practice (actually... none...), 2 of us still nursing a hangover, ranged against the elite, the best of the best, of cebu's table tennis scene. no wonder. and what the hell went in to our heads that we joined the tournament thinking that we could actually win? overconfident or just plain delusional? maybe both. i'll just charge it to experience then. drunk guy number one actually had some words of wisdom distilled from the experience. he said that you can look at it 2 ways, either you become so discouraged that you stop playing table tennis altogether, or you use it as a reason to actually improve yourself in the game so in the next tournament you can at least give a decent showing, or maybe even win. so even though my ego was bruised, at least i came home with a lesson... and a free t-shirt.

an ignoramus talks about art

after paying the electric bill in SM, i went straight to the neighboring art exhibit. it showcased some "abstract" paintings that i just did not get at all. you know, those types of pauntings that you look at while wondering to yourself what on earth the painter was trying to say. if the painter IS trying to say something, well... sorry mate, it just ain't going through. ironically, the group of artists doing the exhibit posted their mission statement together with their paintings, stating that visual art should not necesarily resemble the visible world, but it should be used as a record for one's thought's and feelings and transmit those thoughts and feelings to others via their "work of art". if that is their definition of art, then why do they have to make it so hard for ordinary folks like me to understand what they're saying? if i may speculate on their creative process, it's as if they just take an empty canvass, splash some paint here and there, then choose a deep word from the dictionary, say... solitude, call the painting that, and present it for exhibition. then we ordinary folks look at the painting, read its title, and then scratch our heads asking, what's the connection?

or is it just me?

what did you expect?

pacquiao wins over larios. not exactly surprising. you know what would be shocking news? if larios knocks pacquiao out on the first round. now THAT would be real news. everybody had already expected a pacquiao victory. pacquiao handlers were predicting a knockout in 6 rounds. eric morales also predicted pacquiao winning. even gamblers had a hard time trying to find someone who would put his bet on larios, so instead they did their betting on if pacquiao would be able to finish larios off before the 6th round or not.

yes, there were some nervous moments in the beginning of the 3rd round, but it was more a matter of overconfidence on pacquiao's part, i think. he just let his guard down, larios saw the opening and took advantage. this stunned manny for a few seconds and pushed him to the ropes, allowing larios to give pacquiao his own flurry of punches. but manny was still able to fight his way out of that fix, and the remaining rounds saw manny's domination till the end, plus two knock outs.

at the end of the match i had a feeling larios went into to this fight expecting to lose. he didn't fight to win, he just fought for the exposure and, of course, the money. but he did finish the match with his two feet on the canvass, so we should at least give him credit for that.

on other pacquiao related matters, he sure has a very unfortunate choice for nickname. other boxers have chosen names like el terible (morales), the golden boy (de la hoya), the flash (elorde), the bomb (jimrex jaca), the czar (amonsot), but pacman? like, that little moving yellow circle with a mouth you find in video games? remotely scary. i suggest a name change.

shitty

the world sure has a weird way of opening our eyes. i spent much of the past 2 weeks thinking about how shitty my life was when the world gives me a nice kick in the ass and whispers to my ear, "you want to know what shitty is boy? let me show show you what shitty is..."

the realization came to me on my jeepney ride to work this morning. the jeepney was almost full, so i took the first available seat i saw, which was beside a woman carrying a child. i wondered why the kid was unusually fidgety, until i turned my head and saw that he was victim of down syndrome (more commonly known as mongoloid). the sight first overcame me with surprise, and then pity.

as the jeepney sped on its route, i imagined how it would be in the shoes of either the kid or his mother.

imagine you being the kid himself. the forces of fate seems to be arrayed against you. you wonder why people keep looking at you in a weird way, a look of pity, or fear, or just a plain grossed out look on their faces. they look at you as if you were some alien, a creature of from another world.

imagine you being the mother of the kid. imagine carrying the child for 9 months and discovering your child's affliction just moments after a very painful and exhausting delivery. imagine knowing the hard road your child will soon have to tread. imagine sharing the sad load of your child's difficulties and sorrows.

while pity filled me, i also felt guilty about the sense of contentment i was bound to get from knowing their fate. how cruel fate seemed to them, as if they were given those sorrowful set of circumstances so they could be used to teach us ordinary people to be content, as if they were being used as examples for us common people, like criminals doomed to die by a cruel judge called fate.

but inspite of the sorrow, i also saw reasons for joy. the jeepney halted at a crossing, and the child stood still, looked up at his mother's eyes and smiled. the mother smiled back. remembering that sight simply made my day.

sometimes, it takes the shadows to make us see the sunshine.

paranoia 2006

weird experience. i was riding a jeepney on the way home last night when a guy got on carrying a cardboard box sealed in packaging tape. guy looked quite normal, but suddenly, alarm bells started going off in my head crying, "suicide bomber! suicide bomber!". i think it can be proven that the terrorists are actually the most harmless and ordinary looking people, until they blow themselves and the city block they're in to pieces. this got me watching him nervously, detecting any signs of strange behavior. a few minutes later, he reaches into his pocket and grabs a cellphone. the same alarms bells go off again. this time, i was thinking, "holy crap! he's gonna detonate the bomb through his cellphone!" i spent the rest of the ride home confessing my sins before God. fortunately for me, and for you also my 2 loyal readers, the guy got off before I did without incident, which leaves me to blog about it.

note to self, must stop watching the evening news.

damn terrorists, their making me all paranoid. blast yourselves to bits you freaks.