Vol. 01 Sendong on One Side

On a personal level, Christmas this year has been pretty much the same. UCCP Cantata on the 24th, swift dinner of little talk defying the conventions of Noche Buena, early morning of the 25th spent without gifts or fake kisses or heartless hugs. A family as laid back but sincere as ever.

The main difference this year is that a huge portion of my city looks like a flattened biko, and people are milling about under bridges and city streets looking for all the world like scarred survivors of a civil war. There is no water running through our pipes, and I think in other parts of CDO there's no electricity as well. Grocery shopping has become a matter short of life or death, and volunteering might as well have been declared a trending topic for helpless, helping youth. Sendong has transformed this year's Christmas into an affair of hushed-up panic.

Because I live on top of a hill, my family was mercifully spared by the storm. Some of my friends were not as lucky, however, and I can only be guiltily thankful I don't know anyone who's passed away or gone missing because of Sendong. For a technical account of the damage, kindly check this memo released just minutes ago: NDRRMC Update on "Sendong" (Washi).

I wrote this because I wanted to share the more eccentric side of this year's Christmas. My friend and her family are staying at our place while they're waiting for the water to come back so they can scrape the mud off their floors, so it's really been an interesting holiday. To start:

1. I have seen more fire trucks in the past two weeks than ever before. Only one of them, it must be noted, bore the sign for the CDO Fire Department. I saw one sent over by Bukidnon, another by Balingoan, and the others, I forget. The one from CDO stopped right in front of my house to distribute water to the people in my street. [There really are perks when you live right in front of a fireman.] Watching my neighbors, even ones I didn't recognize, carry pails back and forth from their homes with smiles on their faces, I thought I saw the perpetually-touted Filipino trait of bayanihan. That scene was definitely postcard-worthy.

2. I've developed dandruff. It would be an exaggeration to say we've got absolutely no water, but it wouldn't be right to say we have enough to provide luxurious, bubble-enhanced showers for everyone. So. I've only been showering as soon as I start to smell. [Gross, but well.] For the past three days, too, I've been wearing nothing but dresses, when in the past I lived on jeans. Dresses are flimsy, you understand, so washing them doesn't require much rinsing. Thus...

3. My Arashi converting skills need practice. Because I have three girls living with me for an indefinite period of time, I thought up a plan to entertain them by possibly getting them hooked to my hobbies, the most prominent one at present being Arashi. Their first day here, I fed them about 20G worth of Ninomiya Kazunari and Ohno Satoshi. They've seen 5x10 and Letters from Iwo Jima. But they are not hooked. They do not seem to be hook-able. As revenge, I refuse to sit down for more than ten minutes to watch any of their Korean distractions. Must concentrate. JPop. JPop. JPop.

More next week.

Overwhelmed

My German professor asks this one day: “In the Philippines, do your parents have a say about when you’re supposed to get married? Or how you’re supposed to get married? Say, if you parents tell you that you have to marry this person, would you have to?”

The class answers in the negative. A lot of head shaking occurs.

Professor: “But if your parents tell you that you can’t marry a person, you wouldn’t marry that person?”

The class nods. And everyone looks at each other, realizes a strange collective predicament, and laughs nervously.

__

The funny thing about the Filipino culture is that there aren’t a lot of unbreakable standards. There are a lot of traditions and superstitions, but most, if not all, are subject to the preference of a fickle general public. At least, from how my Gen X brain sees it.

I was born in 1991, a decade or two after the OFW phenomenon brought back – in figurative balikbayan boxes – ‘alien’ ideas from overseas. Growing up, I read only English novels and spoke English 80% of the time. (Because I was in school 80% of the time, hanging out with friends who fancied the Cartoon Network, Goosebumps, The Babysitters Club, etc.) I swear I could hear Japanese songs playing out in the radio of my childhood. I can still sing Pizzicato Five’s Sweet Soul Revue and Globe’s Feel Like Dance – in garbled Japanese, of course. Although I studied Philippine History as an educational prerequisite for graduation, I can’t express in detail – more so with passion – the lives of del Pilar, Mabini, etc. In fact, I’m probably better at tracing the genealogy of Potterdom’s Malfoy Family – a true shame, since that clan’s but fiction.

When I matured – I daresay – it became common for people my age to get pregnant, to get someone pregnant, to get married early, or to work in a call center even when they didn’t want to. It became so common, in fact, that such stories – which started out as whispered news bits shared in the most innocuous of places – became fodder for dinner conversations with mere acquaintances. Something like, “Oh, by the way, Y is seven months pregnant. Saw it on Facebook. Seems she’s getting married this weekend.” And the reply goes, “Oh, good for her then. I hope she’s happy. Can you pass the soy sauce, please?”

This is not a condescending rant. At least it is not meant to be. Just because I have a degree, am not pregnant, and am not fearful for my financial future doesn’t mean I am putting my own lifestyle on a shop display window. This is simply an observation. The petty rambling of an overwhelmed 20-something in Manila, during an era of change so constant you don’t even notice it. I can name more talents from Johnny’s Entertainment than I can enumerate senators of the Philippines. I don’t know the latest updates about GMA’s health, but I have heard that Robin from How I Met Your Mother apparently can’t have kids. I don’t really know why my country doles out days off work, but I don’t complain because that only gives me more time to waste on Tumblr with other fangirls scattered all over the world.

Is it my fault I’m clueless, overwhelmed, and passive? Perhaps. It may be the fault of my parents’ generation, but its own ignorance can’t possibly be what it wanted for itself, right? In any case, I’ve always thought my situation ordinary. I wonder how many people out there realize the same about their own lives. Or existence, whichever.

on my half-assed work ethic

better late than half-assed

... is what I like to tell myself when I procrastinate. See, I believe creativity comes from sudden inspiration, that you can't just sit and write a good article, that you can't just wait for the right image to appear on your head and flow out of your brush. It's a sick, skewed, abhorrently twisted line of thinking, I know, but for the longest time, it has been a way of life for me.

I had always known I was lazy and selfish. When Ondoy ravaged Manila and kids my age where active in relief operations everywhere? I was in my dorm room, engaged in activities so inconsequential I can barely remember what they are. Now that Haiti's a disaster zone - and that's putting it mildly - I'm writing a blog entry about me, me, me. Woe to me.

I guess the point of this rant is, right now, I make myself sick. Although I had always been numbly aware of my piss-poor, halfhearted performance in everything, always getting things done, but rarely getting things done as well as I would had I poured in TOTAL effort, that fact never bothered me. Reactive all the way. Sean Covey's eyebrows would rise way up till the high heavens upon seeing me on a typical day.

So yes, I make myself sick. I wish I could feel things. I wish I could get angry at politicians who steal people's money, I wish I could cry over the loss of several thousand lives due to successive earthquakes worldwide, I wish I could worry enough about my future to study more than ten minutes a day outside class. Damn it. What is wrong with me?

unpacking issues

I used to think I liked to pack and unpack things. When I was a freshman in college, I had so much fun moving out of my first dorm, and living somewhere new. Three years, three dorms and a handful of unforeseen trips later though, I've realized I really don't enjoy task of uprooting myself and all my belongings at a predictable interval of five months. And it's not just because I have enough stuff to fill more than ten bags and containers. It's because I've realized - how could I not, given my complete antitheses populate my tiny social sphere - that I'm a couch potato. Really.

I've also realized though, that this is the lifestyle I'll have to learn to love if I truly am to become my ideal FSO [Foreign Service Officer]. If my mother's job is any indication of how my future will look like, then it probably means living in a different house - in a different country - every few years, adjusting to all sorts of weather and terrain, etc. Oh yeah, and being game enough to eat absolutely all kinds of food. [And this is where my mother fails, because she's a picky eater, and the fish she likes best are in our hometown.] Not to mention, I'll probably never get married. Ha. Ha.

But whatever. This is my life, and this is what I want to do. So everything else can just suck it.

PULSES

PULSES by UP Dulaang Laboratoryo
A Play Inspired by People Living with HIV
By Icarus and Iscariot
Direction Pat Valera | Choreography Katte Sabate, Al Bernard Garcia | Music and Sound Design Teresa Barrozo | Lights Design Meliton Roxas, Jr | Set Design Sigmund Pecho | Costume Styling Lhenvil Paneda | Original Song Fitz Bitana | Stage Management John Mark Yap | Cast Celine Fernando, Camille Hernandez, Gry Gimena, Paul Jake Paule, Jules Dela Paz, Nicolo Magno, Elora Españo, Al Bernard Garcia

It’s difficult to sum up the Pulses experience in just one theme. I was talking to B during the intermission, trying to weave the pieces of the story into one of the linear plots I’m accustomed to, when I realized the show wasn’t meant to be taken as a package. Like Pulses, as in those beats in people’s wrists which indicate life, the stories featured in the play are short, quick, but all important. They all mean something.

The stories I liked best – or, in reflection paper format, the stories which struck me most – were those of Christine and Bo. Both are around my age, probably watch the same shows I do, go to the same places I do, and if these characters existed in real life, we might even have mutual friends. That’s why their stories got to me. I love how Christine maintained her positive, strawberry-tinted outlook despite knowing she was dying a little every day. There were so many black and purple bruises on her body that even though I knew the actress was only smudged with makeup I could tell how much each must hurt. And with Bo, I could relate to his opening lines, as he introduced his character to us. I was so sure only OFWs and sex workers could get HIV. But I’m not either, and I’m from a good school, a good family. It can’t happen to me.

The story featuring the mother – which, if I understood the post-production forum correctly, was based on real life events – who had passed the virus on to her child after acquiring it from her sea-based husband was the one that seemed most real. As in, it could happen anywhere, to any normal household in the Philippines. And I really hated it, when I found out that in Region 3 a community had wanted to burn two orphans whose parents had died of AIDS. I don’t hate the neighbors because I know how much something alien and different can frighten you. What I hate is how much we, as a supposedly nurturing country – hospitality, bayanihan and all that – do very little to educate our people about AIDS. I, for one, didn’t know HIV couldn’t be transmitted by kissing. [But I suppose I know a bit more now.]

The story for which I almost cried was that of Tita D. It’s strange, because the actress who took on that heavy role was a former classmate of mine, and in PI100 she had always given me the impression of being forever perky. But when she transformed into Tita D, an AIDS counselor, I was amazed. More than impressed, I was moved. I don’t presume to know anything vital about AIDS, or the lives of the people who live with it, because I don’t know if any of my friends have AIDS, and I’ve never met people who are aware that they have it. The most enlightening thing I’ve seen about life with AIDS is RENT, and even that might have been a watered down version of reality. But with Tita D’s story, I found I could still relate to part of her suffering. How you see people around you being helpless, and how you can’t do anything at all to help them. How you start losing the people who matter to you, one by one. It must suck. More than that, it must hurt. How you can only watch people you’ve become attached to succumb, one by one.

After the show, there was a short discussion on HIV/AIDS. Some nice people from Take the Test talked about AIDS awareness, and I realized I wanted to write about the experience for my blog. I had stopped writing here because I felt nothing was going on in my life anyway. Just a loop of school, work, Arashi – nothing had broken the monotony for months. But watching Pulses, somehow, I felt it was an injustice that I was seeing my life as something boring. Watching stories about people struggling to live, despite knowing they don’t have as much time as most people, it kind of gives you a feeling of responsibility. Like, you have to live, you can’t begrudge yourself the opportunity to be alive, not when thousands out there are dying to live a life like yours. So yes. This is me, writing again. Because I want stories like this to be written down, for people who care to see. If I can’t write about my life, I suppose I can write about the lives of the people around me.

24 September 2011

Onii-chan no Koto Nanka Zenzen Suki Janain Dakara ne

The Onii-chan referred to here is Takanashi Shuusuke, who we assume to be a junior in high school. Being your average male teenager – and considering his double-edged personality – Shuusuke often finds himself carnally attracted by his younger sister Nao. To complicate matters, Nao also has hidden desires for Shuusuke, and while he thinks she’s innocent and pure, in truth she’s forever hatching plots to push her brother to commit incestuous acts with her. The ebb and flow of their not-so-filial-relationship develops a tsunami-like impact when Shuusuke eventually finds out that Nao is adopted. Despite this, he vows to treat her as he would his nonexistent biological sister – no menial task given the lengths Nao scales just to get him to see her as more than just that.

I got into watching this highly entertaining – albeit unabashedly perverse – anime because of GotWoot Subs. They did the best subbing work on Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin, which I actually followed just for the heck of watching something that deals with the paranormal, and I’ve been downloading some of their releases since. [They’re really good, although they take on shows ‘no one else does’.] Because I never planned to watch OnK – it was never in my ‘to watch’ list on MAL, and I never scoured DVD encampments for it – it doesn’t fit my type. Strangely though, I followed it until the end, and honestly, it’s good. Brainlessly, wantonly comical, but that doesn’t make it any less of a laughtrip.

There honestly isn’t much of the character aspect here though. In fact, we hardly ever know what these kids busy themselves with aside from collecting porno mags and looking up girls’ miniskirts. Not to mention, two of Nao’s friends and some other girls who show up in the latter episodes are given very little airtime – in truth, their on-off presence does nothing to push the plot forward, whatsoever. But I do appreciate Shuusuke, and I really like his friends, the AGE Explorers. I love how their relationship’s so warm even though they’re bonded by something as crazy as a love for all things pornographic. They remind me that friendship is found under the most absurd circumstances, that friends are bound by the weirdest reasons. I guess that’s why I love those boys.

The art’s good – or maybe that’s because I torrented everything, and I’m just shocked by the transition from pirated DVD grain to massively multi-pixeled clarity. The colors are rich, and well-blended, and just right for an anime of this kind – not too shounen, but not too adult either. Still, it’s the music I love best about OnK, really. I love both the OP and the ED, and even the BGM is super kulit, like something you’d expect out of a Doraemon episode. I particularly love these lines from the chorus of the OP:

I want to cross that line | I just have to know how paradise tastes |

Maybe it’s sweet, or maybe it’s not | Either way, it’s a fabulous world |

That should give you an idea of what to expect from this show. I guarantee you’ll ask yourself multiple times why you’re watching this show, but I also assure you that once you reach the last episode – which is completely off the anime timeline and just plain inconsistent with the rest of the series, but never mind – you’ll realize all the censored panty flashes and major WTH moments were worth it.

Recommended for: open-minded people looking for a lung-deep laughtrip

Recommended Subbing Team: GotWoot Fansubs [gotwoot-subs.net]

Episodes: 12 (2011)

Photo Credits

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Emory.edu