Ed, Edd, and Eddie

Pag tinanong ka ngayon ng “Ano ka?”, ang ibig sabihin ay ano ang cellular network company ng cellphone mo, kung globe o smart, isama na rin ang sun.

The cellular telephone communication in the Philippines today hampers communication than falicitates it.  Di kita ma text Globe ka kasi.  Sun lang puwede kong tawagan.  Naka Unli ako kaya di ako makapag text sa iyo.

In an effort to keep consumerism via sms alive and at the same time killing the competition, the Unli text and exclusive free text and call have been the marketing strategies of telecommunication networks in the Philippines.

YM na lang tayo.  Puwede ring MSN.

It is extraordinary that in today’s culture that worships success, it is not the rich that we admire.  We might envy their bank accounts, but we do not admire them.

We admire those people whose passion, time, and energy is spent on things that will make this world for the future generation better than what we have.

Mae Paner is a very successful advertising director, a very good stage actress, and a very good friend.  I acted with her in a play, and she directed me in a play as well.

Recently, she is focusing herself to what little and big things she can contribute to this confused nation called Philippines.

Check her works on youtube named Lupang Hinirang. Fixer, and Juana Change.

Here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCQlfa0nPfY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wHUv7eAPdQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Hy-V0MUmo

People like Mae Paner make us proud to be human.  It feels good to be alive at a time when someone like Mae is around.

Jet Lee was on CNN and it was one of te funniest interviews I watched.  Jet Lee was not being funny.  He sounded  funny.

“Todeyyyy, I would Like to shair to you, well, ahhhhhhhhhhh, when I speak to the costumah…”

i was told once by i professor I had in ADMU that I have a “hard” tounge (matigas ang dila) when speaking English.  My American friend Scott Miller told me that I have a funny accent. Callum Macdonald, my Irish friend I blogged recently, compared my “very good” English to Indians. My British friend Patricia Bowles called my accent “authentically unwestern”.

Is that racism?

One thing is sure: no matter how I try to be articulate in speaking this acknowledged international language, I will always sound Asian and will not be able to feign Western breeding (which is neither pride  nor shame, just a matter of fact).

As an actor, my directors capitalize on this accent to add nuance to the comedic characters I am playing, and often times it ellicits crowd laughters and applauses.

Oh to top it all, here is what the waitress in Prince Edwards Bar in Hong Kong  told me when I ordered a bottle of beer.

“You look Kolea (Korean) but you talk same Ilaq (Iraqi).

I walked out shaking my head and laughing.

Callum MacDonald is my Irish friend.

I am more than ten years older than him but I have never seen even a tiny percentage of what he has seen in life, places that is.  He travels, therefore he exists.

He is everywhere.  Now he is in Canada.  Yesterday he was in Mexico.  He lived in Bangkok  and Hong Kong.  He stayed in Johannesburg.  he almost got mugged in South Africa.  He worked in Australia.  He hitchhiked in New York.  He rented an apartment in Montreal.  He  explored Fuji.  I will go on and on if I will mention all the places he embraced as residence.  He lives to travel and not vice versa. 

How can he afford this life?  He is computer genius, and he works in the cyberspace, that is why he can be geographically anywhere.

What Callum and I have in common is that we love knowing people and learning culture. That accounts for the love for travel.   What we do not have in common is the fact that I cannot have the kind of life which he lives, the post modern wandering jew, which is the life i dreamly want.

Give me travelling , or give me death!

 My Canada based friend Marian bought me the dvd Into The Wild, a movie directed by Sean Penn, about a man who decided to make life a journey in the literal sense of the word.

Arghhh.  I want to travel.

I cannot afford though, in the many sense of the word.

Let me just be happy with Angeles City for the meantime, and carry my backpack to the gym regularly.

And Callum, try the Philippines next time and forget about the Abu Sayyaf, Joe de Venecia, and Dengue.

There is only one courage and that is the courage to go on dying to the past, not to collect it, not to accumulate it, not to cling to it.

We sometimes cling to the past, and because we cling to the past, we become unavailable to the present.

The past is dead, while the future is imaginary.  Happiness can only be in the eternal now, in the eternal moment.

Those were the days.  Today is THE day.

Carpe Diem.  Seize the day.

Let it flow and let everyone moves on.

Simon Cowell never liked her.  She was mangled for her clothes, told that her voice is everywhere, and was told that she was out of her league compared to the other finalists in American Idol Season 3.

Black, fat, and talented, she placed seventh in the roster of 10.

Today. Jennifer Hudson is the most successful American idol.

She appeared in Dreamgirls, Sex and The City the Movie, and The Secret Life of Bees, all grossing above 100 million dollars.  In Hollywood, that is the criteria for phenomenal box office success.

She won every award there is for her portrayal of Effie White in Dreamgirls, notably the Academy Award.  Hey, Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet, Leonardo diCaprio,  to name some, never won an Oscar yet.  Hudson won it on her actine debut.

Her self titled music album is the highest grossing album made by any American Idol alumnus, produced no less by Clive Davis, the demigod of American music industry. 

Her next movie, Winged Creatures, has all the Oscar Buzz written all over it.

American Idol is a poplarity contest, and Jennifer Hudson is pure talent, and never the twain shall meet.

Hail, Cobain

I had a nightmare so I tried waking up.  That was 3 am.

I opened my notebook and went online while in my bed.  I stumbled upon Kurt Cobain, the lead vocalist of Nirvana, an extremely popular alternative band in the beginning of the 90’s.

He created works full of mystery and this intangibility is what made him a star.

Kurt was born 5 months ahead of me and died 3 days before I got committed.  He did not just die, he killed himself at the age of 27, taking away his life with a gun.

Was it because of drugs?  Troubled childhood that lingered?  Courtney Love? Depression? Mental Illness?  The Malady of Regrettable Impulse?

Only Kurt knows.  It was his life and his suicide.

As I have said, he was born just few months before I was born, and died at the time I got married. This may be the reason I feel the loss and sadness that is Kurt Cobain right now, while the roosters do their cock-a-doodle-do at 5;50 am.   

We lived in the same history, and breathed the same air, and I am still alive.

Until when I have no idea, and what I know is I want it longer, not for myself but for some reason that you just have to leave it to me.

Rest in Peace, Kurt.  You were very much wanted but you chose the silence of….Nirvana?

     October 16 will mark my first year anniversary of being assigned in Pulung Cacutud.

     Life is not a problem free lifestyle so there are some humps and bumps but not enough to make my blood pressure shoot up or make me feel miserable.

     My previous work was a tour de force, both in terms of challenges and problems.  It was a gargantuan task that was handled with faith and so mixed the results maybe, it was generally ok comes the final inventory of what was and not accomplished.

     In the bible, Lot’s wife looked back and she turned into a pillar of salt.  Good for her, others turned into bitter herbs and spices when they get obsessed with what has been and got entnagled with the what ifs.

     I look forward.  Regrets will bring you nowhere.  Life happens.

     Cheers to Pulung Cacutud.  I do not know how long 5 years will be and what tomorrow will bring.

     Two things, though.

     I am anchored by the hope that what matters most at the end of the day are the people who  come and stay.

     I have dived into one absurd thing into  another and I am still me.  I am still happy to be me.

   Almost a year?

    I wake up to wonder every day. 

I cannot be surrounded by people all the time.  That suffocates me.

I love being with people.  There are times, though, when I just want to be alone. 

Some people may not understand it, but I needed being left alone every now and then so I will keep understanding people and myself. 

That is why cellphone is not always nirvana.  It makes you available 24 hours a day.

I am seriously considering turning off my phone for a week.

     Iam reading again!

     I used to read a lot, until I became an Internet junkie.

     Recently, I rediscovered the thrilling world of reading.

     I just finished two fictions, Sue Mon Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees and Willy Lamb’s He has Come Undone.  I liked them both. 

     I am now reading Arundhati Roy’s The Good of Small Things, a book I bought ages ago but it is only now that I am opening its pages.

     I hope to read more and more.  Francis Bacon is right.  Reading maketh a full man.