(FROM THE EDITOR'S NOTE IN STYLE WEEKEND, A WEEKEND MAGAZINE THAT COMES WITH THE FRDIAY ISSUE OF MANILA BULLETIN, AUG. 31 2007)
If I had the time and the means, I would gather the top 10 Filipinos on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest to dinner at the Presidential Suite of the Manila Hotel, which has the best view of Rizal Park. With hope, I could get the best Filipino chefs to whip up a menu tantalizing and hypnotizing enough to have each of my dinner guests sign a check for the benefit of Luneta and, better yet, to pledge a hefty annual contribution to the goal of making the park worthy of its history and its future. With hope, if at all I trusted the National Parks Development Committee, whose leadership has complained of a lack of funds term after term, I could turn over enough money to get Luneta on a path that will soon make it up to par with, say, New York’s Central Park or even just Paris’ Jardin de Tuileries.
To sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure is the most perfect refreshment. —Jane Austen
Now a showcase of neglect and a study in deterioration, Luneta, as most of us know it, is home to vagrants, although, occasionally, on my way to work in Intramuros, I spot foreign dignitaries laying a wreath on the Rizal Monument or tourists striking a pose with the bronze-and-granite statue created by Zurich sculptor Richard Kissling in the backdrop. The Rizal Monument, more than a tribute to—and a mausoleum for the remains of—the National Hero Jose Rizal, is where it all starts. Unknown to most of us, the monument is Kilometer Zero, a point of origin from which all distances in the Philippines are measured.
I suppose that generations born after the ’80s no longer have good memories of Luneta, where, luckily, I have fond remembrances of Sunday picnics, the refreshing sensation of salt spray on my face at the breakwater, and a view of the world from the mouth of a giant hippopotamus. Although I am thankful that malls are sprouting to give us places to go to, I find it so sad that parks no longer provide us with escape options when we want to be away from it all. How very sad, indeed, that the lungs of our beloved city need desperately to be checked in at the intensive care unit of the Philippine Lung Center!
But maybe, after decades of neglect, Luneta, all 53 hectares of it, is beyond redemption, if all I could think of to save it is some donations from the 10 richest of our people. Maybe, more than money, what it needs is for all of us to start thinking of it as our own, an extension of our backyards and gardens, a place in which to have our little children learn a few more things about trees and flowers, the swirls of cotton candy in the sky, the occasional dragonfly or beetle or bird, and the Philippine archipelago through the replica of it made in the middle of Luneta’s man-made lake.
Of course, the park police, if we can even trust them, first have to do their part. But so do we. Our first, most important step, as I see it, is to claim it back, to make Luneta ours again. Once we do, the business sector may just begin to see the value of the park and begin to invest in it. With hope, all that attention will translate to cleaner restrooms, more dining options, better Concerts at the Park, lusher trees, greener grass, and more park benches in which to sit back and watch the day go by, without anyone bothering you for alms or running away with your purse or offering you cheap sex.
It’s not that easy, but it’s not impossible. It’s becoming quite urgent, too, now that, to the city-weary, the two-hour drive to the countryside to enjoy a few minutes of walking barefoot on green grass is beginning to sound like a walk in the park. After all, one hour is all we need to get out of this country, period.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Saturday, August 18, 2007
SECOND LIFE
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, TO BE PUBLISHED ON AUGUST 24, 2007. STYLE WEEKEND IS PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY AS A SPECIAL MAGAZINE INSERT IN THE MANILA BULLETIN)
I had a recent invitation to Second Life, a 3-D virtual world, where you can start all over again.
As of press time, there are about 8,953,230 residents in this digital continent. I am one of them. Although I believe I am not even in the infant stage yet, I have chosen a new name and a new look, as represented by my avatar whose image, rather than dictated by genes, is one of my choosing. In the Create Your Avatar phase of the application for residency, it says I can change the way I look as I go along.
BLURB
There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do. —Anais Nin
I heard through the style grapevine that global fashion giants are flocking to the site, but on my very, very brief digital tour of this virtual world, I hardly came across any real brands (But I did see H&M in the other just-as-popular online community, Sims 2). My first impulse was to browse through the Second Style magazine, but so far all the brands are as virtual as the avatars behind them. I must check the other magazines. Just like in Manila, there are so many of them cropping up in Second Life, with interesting titles like PixelPlus, Pixel Chic, Voodoo, and .Fur. Maybe, I should start a magazine of my own once I get the hang of this alternative universe, but then it’s going to be the same life as I lead now.
I was thrilled to hear Suzanne Vega was the first major recording artist to perform live in Second Life in August last year. In my meanderings, however, I only came across a sampling of her guitars with Robbie Dingo, as commissioned by Infinite Visions CEO (and Second Life entity) Oliver Oddfellow, building it to match the animation for the Vega avatar. I am a technodinosaur, so I have yet to navigate my way to the concert. After all, I have good memories of Suzanne Vega back when I was young and her “Tom’s Diner” was a hit. I did find her avatar performance of “The Queen and the Soldier” on YouTube and I wonder if it means Linden dollars down the drain for the virtual organizer that there was more space than avatars on the bleachers.
But that’s Second Life. It’s not like The Simpsons or The Grudge or The Titanic, where you can only momentarily escape the realities of life. It’s a whole new life, where you can buy property, own virtual land, and establish a business using Linden dollars, which, according to the Second Life primer, “can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.” I wonder if I could use a second life or if I need it at all when I barely have enough time for one.
The way I understand it, Second Life is real life, except that it exists in a parallel universe and except that it’s in 3-D animation rather than in solid, liquid, or gas and people are avatars rather than flesh and blood.
But then, is it going to be easier to make it in Second Life? With only a little over eight million residents to compete with, maybe, but that also means there is a chance to fail, to have your heart broken, to have your properties stolen, to have your Linden dollar account wiped out due to a failed business venture or extravagance or a swindler of a virtual wife or a compulsion for gambling.
Or maybe it’s a good idea to start over in Second Life and see what it’s like to just do it, to follow our instincts, to eliminate fear and go for broke and make it big, perchance in real-time we discover what it takes to make real life work by undoing what we have done and doing what we have yet to do.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
I had a recent invitation to Second Life, a 3-D virtual world, where you can start all over again.
As of press time, there are about 8,953,230 residents in this digital continent. I am one of them. Although I believe I am not even in the infant stage yet, I have chosen a new name and a new look, as represented by my avatar whose image, rather than dictated by genes, is one of my choosing. In the Create Your Avatar phase of the application for residency, it says I can change the way I look as I go along.
BLURB
There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do. —Anais Nin
I heard through the style grapevine that global fashion giants are flocking to the site, but on my very, very brief digital tour of this virtual world, I hardly came across any real brands (But I did see H&M in the other just-as-popular online community, Sims 2). My first impulse was to browse through the Second Style magazine, but so far all the brands are as virtual as the avatars behind them. I must check the other magazines. Just like in Manila, there are so many of them cropping up in Second Life, with interesting titles like PixelPlus, Pixel Chic, Voodoo, and .Fur. Maybe, I should start a magazine of my own once I get the hang of this alternative universe, but then it’s going to be the same life as I lead now.
I was thrilled to hear Suzanne Vega was the first major recording artist to perform live in Second Life in August last year. In my meanderings, however, I only came across a sampling of her guitars with Robbie Dingo, as commissioned by Infinite Visions CEO (and Second Life entity) Oliver Oddfellow, building it to match the animation for the Vega avatar. I am a technodinosaur, so I have yet to navigate my way to the concert. After all, I have good memories of Suzanne Vega back when I was young and her “Tom’s Diner” was a hit. I did find her avatar performance of “The Queen and the Soldier” on YouTube and I wonder if it means Linden dollars down the drain for the virtual organizer that there was more space than avatars on the bleachers.
But that’s Second Life. It’s not like The Simpsons or The Grudge or The Titanic, where you can only momentarily escape the realities of life. It’s a whole new life, where you can buy property, own virtual land, and establish a business using Linden dollars, which, according to the Second Life primer, “can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.” I wonder if I could use a second life or if I need it at all when I barely have enough time for one.
The way I understand it, Second Life is real life, except that it exists in a parallel universe and except that it’s in 3-D animation rather than in solid, liquid, or gas and people are avatars rather than flesh and blood.
But then, is it going to be easier to make it in Second Life? With only a little over eight million residents to compete with, maybe, but that also means there is a chance to fail, to have your heart broken, to have your properties stolen, to have your Linden dollar account wiped out due to a failed business venture or extravagance or a swindler of a virtual wife or a compulsion for gambling.
Or maybe it’s a good idea to start over in Second Life and see what it’s like to just do it, to follow our instincts, to eliminate fear and go for broke and make it big, perchance in real-time we discover what it takes to make real life work by undoing what we have done and doing what we have yet to do.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
IN FILIPINO FASHION
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, AUGUST 17, 2007. STYLE WEEKEND IS PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY AS A SPECIAL MAGAZINE INSERT IN THE MANILA BULLETIN)
I heard some good news from Lancôme chief makeup artist and proprietor of the recently launched House of Laurel Makeup Studio Gela Laurel. A bride-to-be traveling all the way from Singapore booked her for trial. The Singaporean had apparently been told that when in search of a good dress, whether for bridal or other reasons, it was best to look in the direction of Filipino designers, “the best in the region.” And since she had agreed to come to Manila to look for a designer, she might as well check out the city’s makeup artists who “are just as creative.”
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit —Aristotle
Like all other things of our own, Philippine fashion design has been through the wringer in the critical eye of the Filipino. I guess it is in our nature, having had too many foreign influences, to look for excellence elsewhere, which is why we make a big deal of those who, like Josie Natori or Monique Lhuillier, make it in other places, often at the expense of their equally exceptional comrades who stick it out here, despite the pull of the bigger world out there. No offense to Josie or Monique, especially to Josie who has never given up on the local market, although I would assume it is only a drop in her New York bucket.
In recent years, a whole new batch of new designers have emerged and more than a handful of them has become so popular that their names now roll off the popular tongue quite as smoothly and as readily as Inno Sotto’s or Auggie Cordero’s or even Joe Salazar’s. In our press room, for instance, our directory of fashion designers has enough entries to fill up the Yellow Pages. What’s more, should we need to travel to places like Cebu for a shoot, there’s no need to worry about overweight charges as there’s no more need to fly in a whole atelier of clothes from Manila. An NDD call to Cebu’s growing A-list of designers like Cary Santiago or Philip Rodriguez prior to the shoot is all it takes.
The fashion industry is growing. It’s a problem for some, especially for the purists who believe that like fame and fortune the very idea of being a designer has become so accessible it has lost some of its “high life” nuances. That may be true in this age of reality TV, where all it takes to make your dream come true is Pinoy Big Brother, but the more, the merrier, if only because I still believe that sooner or later the mediocre (or the undecided) will fall by the wayside and excellence will prevail. In the meantime, we are happy we have a growing number of choices in matters of dress. As always, we have the choice to let mediocrity die a natural death, unless we are willing to embrace it and make it the norm.
With all the clothes on our shoot racks still eliciting oohs and ahhs, if not in terms of execution, at least in terms of promise, I am confident that, in general, the Filipino people have yet to mistake mediocrity for excellence. If this appears to happen, maybe we are just giving our fellows a chance.
And maybe to be given a chance is all we need. After all, the Philippines has been in existence only since 1521, as per the world records. France, on the other hand, has had at least since 843 BC, through the Verdun Treaty, to master civilization, as we define it now.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
I heard some good news from Lancôme chief makeup artist and proprietor of the recently launched House of Laurel Makeup Studio Gela Laurel. A bride-to-be traveling all the way from Singapore booked her for trial. The Singaporean had apparently been told that when in search of a good dress, whether for bridal or other reasons, it was best to look in the direction of Filipino designers, “the best in the region.” And since she had agreed to come to Manila to look for a designer, she might as well check out the city’s makeup artists who “are just as creative.”
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit —Aristotle
Like all other things of our own, Philippine fashion design has been through the wringer in the critical eye of the Filipino. I guess it is in our nature, having had too many foreign influences, to look for excellence elsewhere, which is why we make a big deal of those who, like Josie Natori or Monique Lhuillier, make it in other places, often at the expense of their equally exceptional comrades who stick it out here, despite the pull of the bigger world out there. No offense to Josie or Monique, especially to Josie who has never given up on the local market, although I would assume it is only a drop in her New York bucket.
In recent years, a whole new batch of new designers have emerged and more than a handful of them has become so popular that their names now roll off the popular tongue quite as smoothly and as readily as Inno Sotto’s or Auggie Cordero’s or even Joe Salazar’s. In our press room, for instance, our directory of fashion designers has enough entries to fill up the Yellow Pages. What’s more, should we need to travel to places like Cebu for a shoot, there’s no need to worry about overweight charges as there’s no more need to fly in a whole atelier of clothes from Manila. An NDD call to Cebu’s growing A-list of designers like Cary Santiago or Philip Rodriguez prior to the shoot is all it takes.
The fashion industry is growing. It’s a problem for some, especially for the purists who believe that like fame and fortune the very idea of being a designer has become so accessible it has lost some of its “high life” nuances. That may be true in this age of reality TV, where all it takes to make your dream come true is Pinoy Big Brother, but the more, the merrier, if only because I still believe that sooner or later the mediocre (or the undecided) will fall by the wayside and excellence will prevail. In the meantime, we are happy we have a growing number of choices in matters of dress. As always, we have the choice to let mediocrity die a natural death, unless we are willing to embrace it and make it the norm.
With all the clothes on our shoot racks still eliciting oohs and ahhs, if not in terms of execution, at least in terms of promise, I am confident that, in general, the Filipino people have yet to mistake mediocrity for excellence. If this appears to happen, maybe we are just giving our fellows a chance.
And maybe to be given a chance is all we need. After all, the Philippines has been in existence only since 1521, as per the world records. France, on the other hand, has had at least since 843 BC, through the Verdun Treaty, to master civilization, as we define it now.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
FROM ZERO TO ETERNITY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, AUGUST 10, 2007. STYLE WEEKEND IS PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY AS A MAGAZINE INSERT IN MANILA BULLETIN)
What if God were all this space, including the space we occupy? It makes sense because then it’s not quite hard to imagine God to be omnipresent, omniscient, and therefore omnipotent. If He is all there is, then He is, knows, and has power over everything. Growing up as a Catholic, I couldn’t quite make up my mind how God could be everywhere, if, like me, He had a body, with only a pair of eyes to see everything that was taking place in an infinite universe.
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven —Alphonse de Lamartine
I have always taken it for granted that space is infinite, but then, now that I am thinking about it, how do I know that? Did I get that from science books or from my religion classes? Who has ever gone to the edge of the universe to determine that there is no such thing and that this vastness just goes on and on and on, ad infinitum?
But then over the past decade, in my search for more out of life, I’ve had many opportunities to explore what the enlightened call the infinity within. From Days with the Lord to PSI, from year-long weekly sessions with renowned counselor Dr. Lourdes Lapuz to feng shui consultations with the late Paul Lau and now Hong Kong geomancer Joseph Chau, from reading (and watching) stuff like Star Wars, Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God, and James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy to meditation classes under Nouel Resella, I’ve come to believe there is more power in this space than I can imagine.
Sometimes, I try to simplify the whole concept of infinity, a concept I often interchange with God, by imagining the universe or God as a blackboard, minus the borders, of course. In its emptiness, it’s just a blackboard but in it can emerge other concepts, from letters to figures, and all you need is a piece of chalk. Draw a cat figure on the board and the board disappears into the background. All you see is a cat, a concept that can exist purely on its own or at least pretend to. The material on which it exists is, after all, often perceived as irrelevant, so that if I were to ask you what it was, you would probably just say, “It’s a cat!” rather than a cat on a board. But without the board, will this cat exist? Better yet, isn’t the cat just a part of the board, a part of the board that has now found a new meaning, perhaps a new purpose, as a cat? Which is not to say that the blackboard had no meaning before somebody drew a cat on it. On the contrary, the blackboard always has the power to be anything and everything. It is, to put it simply, a universe of infinite possibilities.
Sometimes, when I meditate, I try to focus on the vastness within me. It can be an empowering tool to imagine yourself plunging deep into the core of the earth or soaring to heights in the infinite space. For most schools of meditation the practice is reconnecting to or establishing oneness with all there was, all there is, all there will ever be. In most cases, it entails emptying yourself out or focusing on the immensity of space, devoid of any extraneous elements, including your own thoughts, or the emptiness of silence, devoid of even your own voice, which, in a chanting meditation, you tend to lose, exactly the point of endless repetition.
Now that I’m no longer sure if the universe is truly infinite, then I believe that all that space the wise ones keep leading us to can only be God. After all, what else is there, from here to eternity, that can be all there was, all there is, all there ever will be but God alone? The question is, when our religious leaders said we were created out of the image of God, did they mean this physical body, meaning eyes, ears, nose, ears, arms, legs, and all? Or is the image after which we were patterned the infinity within, what many call the True Self, that quiet vastness that is boundless, borderless, and edgeless, inside all of us? No wonder, meditation, like prayers, often requires us to close our eyes.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
What if God were all this space, including the space we occupy? It makes sense because then it’s not quite hard to imagine God to be omnipresent, omniscient, and therefore omnipotent. If He is all there is, then He is, knows, and has power over everything. Growing up as a Catholic, I couldn’t quite make up my mind how God could be everywhere, if, like me, He had a body, with only a pair of eyes to see everything that was taking place in an infinite universe.
Limited in his nature, infinite in his desire, man is a fallen god who remembers heaven —Alphonse de Lamartine
I have always taken it for granted that space is infinite, but then, now that I am thinking about it, how do I know that? Did I get that from science books or from my religion classes? Who has ever gone to the edge of the universe to determine that there is no such thing and that this vastness just goes on and on and on, ad infinitum?
But then over the past decade, in my search for more out of life, I’ve had many opportunities to explore what the enlightened call the infinity within. From Days with the Lord to PSI, from year-long weekly sessions with renowned counselor Dr. Lourdes Lapuz to feng shui consultations with the late Paul Lau and now Hong Kong geomancer Joseph Chau, from reading (and watching) stuff like Star Wars, Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God, and James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy to meditation classes under Nouel Resella, I’ve come to believe there is more power in this space than I can imagine.
Sometimes, I try to simplify the whole concept of infinity, a concept I often interchange with God, by imagining the universe or God as a blackboard, minus the borders, of course. In its emptiness, it’s just a blackboard but in it can emerge other concepts, from letters to figures, and all you need is a piece of chalk. Draw a cat figure on the board and the board disappears into the background. All you see is a cat, a concept that can exist purely on its own or at least pretend to. The material on which it exists is, after all, often perceived as irrelevant, so that if I were to ask you what it was, you would probably just say, “It’s a cat!” rather than a cat on a board. But without the board, will this cat exist? Better yet, isn’t the cat just a part of the board, a part of the board that has now found a new meaning, perhaps a new purpose, as a cat? Which is not to say that the blackboard had no meaning before somebody drew a cat on it. On the contrary, the blackboard always has the power to be anything and everything. It is, to put it simply, a universe of infinite possibilities.
Sometimes, when I meditate, I try to focus on the vastness within me. It can be an empowering tool to imagine yourself plunging deep into the core of the earth or soaring to heights in the infinite space. For most schools of meditation the practice is reconnecting to or establishing oneness with all there was, all there is, all there will ever be. In most cases, it entails emptying yourself out or focusing on the immensity of space, devoid of any extraneous elements, including your own thoughts, or the emptiness of silence, devoid of even your own voice, which, in a chanting meditation, you tend to lose, exactly the point of endless repetition.
Now that I’m no longer sure if the universe is truly infinite, then I believe that all that space the wise ones keep leading us to can only be God. After all, what else is there, from here to eternity, that can be all there was, all there is, all there ever will be but God alone? The question is, when our religious leaders said we were created out of the image of God, did they mean this physical body, meaning eyes, ears, nose, ears, arms, legs, and all? Or is the image after which we were patterned the infinity within, what many call the True Self, that quiet vastness that is boundless, borderless, and edgeless, inside all of us? No wonder, meditation, like prayers, often requires us to close our eyes.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
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