(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE LIFESTYLE WEEKLY PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 8 AUGUST 2008)
Strung on a stick and dipped in hard sugar candy coating, the crab apples are a treat even before you have a taste of them, arranged like flowers on a basket at the back of a bicycle. Along Wangfujing, the shopping street in the middle of Beijing, these vendors on bikes look as ancient as the Great Wall of China, where it reveals itself at the Juyon Pass some 50 kilometers from the capital, and the skewers of miniature apples, also known as tang hu lu, that they peddle around town seem as Chinese as Tiananmen Square, except that, at least according to Wikipedia, the candied apple, otherwise known in America as caramel or toffee apple, owes its existence to New Jersey candy-maker William W. Kolb, who has been given historical credit for inventing it in 1908.
BLURB
Is it not delightful to have friends coming from distant quarters? —Confucius (551-479 BC)
But in northern China, the pleasures of the tang hu lu are not limited to apples, which are just as famous as strawberries, blueberries, grapes, pineapples, and kiwifruit as street delicacies wrapped in a delightful sugar glaze, and not even quite as traditional as the Chinese hawthorne. Still, when I eat candied apples on a bamboo skewer, I always imagine myself walking down the banks of Houhai Lake, a leafy lakeside neighborhood that traces its origins to the Yuan Dynasty, sometime in the 14th century, when Houhai, along with two other lakes connected to it, was dug out to allow “barges to bring in goods from all around China and beyond to the emperor in his nearby Forbidden City.”
I heard that Houhai, which was a quiet park district abuzz only with the occasional tourist and some residents walking their dogs the last time I was in Beijing, has acquired some kind of a split-personality: a laidback lakeside promenade by day and a party-hearty zone by night, lined with bars and clubs and throbbing with teenagers no longer chained to Chinese traditions, as though influenced by the controversial novelist Wei Hu, whose Shanghai Baby was, at least in the ’90s and at least in the realm of the sexes, the literary equivalent of the War of Liberation. It is just as well now that Beijing has embraced the virtues as well as the vices of the modern world. Even within the ancient walls of the Forbidden City, once off-limits to the common folk, unless you were a concubine, a eunuch, or a servant, there is now room for such practicalities as hot pants and tubes, especially in the summer when throngs of tourists invade this portal to more rigid times.
Today, 08/08/08, an auspicious date in the Chinese calendar, temperatures in Beijing range between 30 and 35 degrees Celsius. It’s a terrible time to squeeze yourself into the crowded bleachers and, with adrenaline rushing and sweat pouring, cheer your country on, one voice in a world of nations all screaming for “One World, One Dream.” We have some 15 athletes going for gold there and, with hope, aside from the politicians and aside from Manny Pacquiao and his entourage of many, there will be more of us to raise the Philippine flag as well as the spirit of our representatives on the field, in the court, in the arena, in the ring, and elsewhere, where Olympic glory is at stake. I am no sports fan, but I envy those who now have the opportunity to be one with the world and to see Beijing as it has never been seen before.
In the meantime, when tourist arrivals drop a bit after all this Olympic frenzy and cold, bitter winter sets in toward the end of the year, I dream of visiting Beijing another time. With an apple skewer in hand and preferably snowflakes on my lashes, I dream to experience the Forbidden City yet again, crossing from the south through the Meridian Gate all the way to the north through the Gate of Divine Might. Without the crowds, at the top of the Yellow Crane Tower, I might catch a glimpse of a crane flying over the Yangtze. In the chill of winter, in the inner courts of the Forbidden City, and elsewhere in the old city of Beijing, visitors do not fill every gap in space and time with a Babel of awe. Instead of rushing headlong into a future where everything is the same here, there, everywhere, time stands still, caught in the arches and ridges and turrets of the towers and in the cracks on the weatherworn pavements.
And look! There ’s the Empress Dowager Cixi emerging from the Hall of Happiness and Longevity at the Summer Palace, undisturbed by the flash of cameras, where no tourist crowds around her for a shot at immortality. Now that’s Beijing before the future turned around to fetch her.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Monday, August 4, 2008
WHAT'S ON YOUR LIST?
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE LIFESTYLE WEEKLY PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 1 AUGUST 2008)
If you were to die tomorrow, what would you do today? Would it be a hectic day, crazy with a million things to tick off your life’s list, or would it be a day of leisure, a day to watch the sunrise and the sunset, the cloud formations in the sky, and the many other beautiful things you hardly even notice if you feel you have the rest of your life ahead of you? Better yet, why not spend it watching as many movies as you can, if only so you could live, if vicariously, so many lives in 24 hours, granting that your own is about go blank?
BLURB
Eh, anong gagawin ko, aatungal (What will I do, shriek)? —Mylene Dizon as Joyce, 100, Chris Martinez, 2008
If art, as defined by my online dictionary, is a piece of work, whose main purpose, apart from capturing beauty, is to provoke thoughts, Chris Martinez’s film, 100, recently shown at the 2008 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, is truly an art form.
Over lunch late last week, before a private viewing of his directorial debut at the CCP Dream Theater, Chris shared with us what inspired him to do 100. There are a million other inspirations, of course, including the common fascination with lists, but the plotline showed itself to him during a vigil held over the corpse of a beloved UP Theater Arts professor, where special performances, including a drag show, were made in honor of the departed’s deep commitment to the arts.
Listening to Chris was in no way different from looking at pictures, although we had barely enough time to warm up over lunch to enable us to talk more openly with each other. Working on such a visual medium, filmmakers like him do have to communicate in images rather than in words. It is through words, however, that Chris made his way to filmmaking, first as a copywriter for advertising; as a playwright with such Palanca Award-winning works as Last Order sa Penguin and Welcome to IntelStar; and then, as though to get him closer and closer to his new title now as filmmaker, as a screenwriter whose achievements, at such a young age, include Sukob starring Kris Aquino and Claudine Barretto and Caregiver starring Sharon Cuneta, to name a few.
100, to be more precise, is not exactly Chris’ first film. Before it, he had done a short, Bakas, which won him the CCP Award for Alternative Filmmaking. On the theater stage, he is no stranger, having directed the stage adaptation of the '70s cult classic Temptation Island. As for his bread-and-butter, Chris directs commercials.
Given Chris’ achievements, 100 seems inevitable an outcome at this point. Even the very execution of the film’s storyline, that of a terminally ill woman making a list of things to do before dying, is a surprise to me, who, predisposed to artistic exaggerations and creative licenses, expected something more dramatic, more fantastical on that list than cleaning out the closet. But there’s the thought: If you were to die 100 days from now, you cannot simply fly off to Paris and bungee-jump from the top of the Eiffel Tower. There are so many mundane tasks to do in preparation for that end-all, be-all moment and, yes, that includes, as the film made me realize, bank transactions, transfer of ownership, and finding a new human for your pet, if any.
Indeed, the beauty of this work is in its restraint. Originally, as Chris confessed to me, the intention was just to create a list, random and unconnected, but in the interest of the audience, a story was woven in to tie everything together. But the story, too, is a study in restraint, just as the spaces in every scene is devoid of anything unnecessary and extraneous, just as the delivery of the lines as well as the facial expressions, even among otherwise flamboyant actors like Eugene Domingo and Tessie Tomas, save for a very few highlights, in which they seemed to be on the verge, but only on the verge of letting go an outburst of emotions, is perfectly under control, as in life, where not everything is in cinematic proportions.
Kudos to Mylene Dizon for keeping us drawn to the screen for one hour and 56 minutes, without having to scream or shed buckets of tears or cry out to God, “Why me? Why me?” Indeed, as Chris himself would admit, 100 was made for her to play the lead. The writer/director, without a doubt, made the right choice and Mylene’s Cinemalaya Best Actress 2008 Award is not necessary to prove it.
Kudos, too, to the rest of the cast and the crew! All they wanted, according to Chris, is to make a good film and here it is, with such distinctions as Chris’ Best Director and Best Screenplay trophies, Mylene’s Best Actress, Eugene’s Best Supporting Actress, and the Audience Choice Award to make it worth all the sacrifices.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
If you were to die tomorrow, what would you do today? Would it be a hectic day, crazy with a million things to tick off your life’s list, or would it be a day of leisure, a day to watch the sunrise and the sunset, the cloud formations in the sky, and the many other beautiful things you hardly even notice if you feel you have the rest of your life ahead of you? Better yet, why not spend it watching as many movies as you can, if only so you could live, if vicariously, so many lives in 24 hours, granting that your own is about go blank?
BLURB
Eh, anong gagawin ko, aatungal (What will I do, shriek)? —Mylene Dizon as Joyce, 100, Chris Martinez, 2008
If art, as defined by my online dictionary, is a piece of work, whose main purpose, apart from capturing beauty, is to provoke thoughts, Chris Martinez’s film, 100, recently shown at the 2008 Cinemalaya Independent Film Festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines, is truly an art form.
Over lunch late last week, before a private viewing of his directorial debut at the CCP Dream Theater, Chris shared with us what inspired him to do 100. There are a million other inspirations, of course, including the common fascination with lists, but the plotline showed itself to him during a vigil held over the corpse of a beloved UP Theater Arts professor, where special performances, including a drag show, were made in honor of the departed’s deep commitment to the arts.
Listening to Chris was in no way different from looking at pictures, although we had barely enough time to warm up over lunch to enable us to talk more openly with each other. Working on such a visual medium, filmmakers like him do have to communicate in images rather than in words. It is through words, however, that Chris made his way to filmmaking, first as a copywriter for advertising; as a playwright with such Palanca Award-winning works as Last Order sa Penguin and Welcome to IntelStar; and then, as though to get him closer and closer to his new title now as filmmaker, as a screenwriter whose achievements, at such a young age, include Sukob starring Kris Aquino and Claudine Barretto and Caregiver starring Sharon Cuneta, to name a few.
100, to be more precise, is not exactly Chris’ first film. Before it, he had done a short, Bakas, which won him the CCP Award for Alternative Filmmaking. On the theater stage, he is no stranger, having directed the stage adaptation of the '70s cult classic Temptation Island. As for his bread-and-butter, Chris directs commercials.
Given Chris’ achievements, 100 seems inevitable an outcome at this point. Even the very execution of the film’s storyline, that of a terminally ill woman making a list of things to do before dying, is a surprise to me, who, predisposed to artistic exaggerations and creative licenses, expected something more dramatic, more fantastical on that list than cleaning out the closet. But there’s the thought: If you were to die 100 days from now, you cannot simply fly off to Paris and bungee-jump from the top of the Eiffel Tower. There are so many mundane tasks to do in preparation for that end-all, be-all moment and, yes, that includes, as the film made me realize, bank transactions, transfer of ownership, and finding a new human for your pet, if any.
Indeed, the beauty of this work is in its restraint. Originally, as Chris confessed to me, the intention was just to create a list, random and unconnected, but in the interest of the audience, a story was woven in to tie everything together. But the story, too, is a study in restraint, just as the spaces in every scene is devoid of anything unnecessary and extraneous, just as the delivery of the lines as well as the facial expressions, even among otherwise flamboyant actors like Eugene Domingo and Tessie Tomas, save for a very few highlights, in which they seemed to be on the verge, but only on the verge of letting go an outburst of emotions, is perfectly under control, as in life, where not everything is in cinematic proportions.
Kudos to Mylene Dizon for keeping us drawn to the screen for one hour and 56 minutes, without having to scream or shed buckets of tears or cry out to God, “Why me? Why me?” Indeed, as Chris himself would admit, 100 was made for her to play the lead. The writer/director, without a doubt, made the right choice and Mylene’s Cinemalaya Best Actress 2008 Award is not necessary to prove it.
Kudos, too, to the rest of the cast and the crew! All they wanted, according to Chris, is to make a good film and here it is, with such distinctions as Chris’ Best Director and Best Screenplay trophies, Mylene’s Best Actress, Eugene’s Best Supporting Actress, and the Audience Choice Award to make it worth all the sacrifices.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Friday, July 25, 2008
BASIC NEED
(FROM THE EDITOR, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN SENSE&STYLE, WOMAN, MAKE A DIFFERENCE, AUG2008)
Among the Chinese around the world, the seventh month of the lunar calendar (lunar July in our calendar this year is between the seventh of August to the sixth of September) is regarded as the ghost month, dedicated mostly to ancestral worship. During this period, “when deceased ancestors emerge from the lower realms to visit the living,” important events like weddings, inaugurations, and construction are avoided at all costs.
BLURB
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex—Oscar Wilde
For us in the media, August, like the latter part of July, is a time to take a breather from our media circus, which will promptly resume in September and, I expect based on experience, will not slow down until around July next year. But this month, at least, we need not run around like headless chickens with brunches and lunches, high-teas and cocktails, dinners and nightouts to tick off our daily schedule. Because thankfully the economy never comes to a standstill, there is, of course, always the occasional invitation or two that you cannot turn down even in this slow month.
I’d like to think that ancient Chinese wisdom has been validated that in August, even among us pragmatists, hardly any brand launches a new product and many designers are away on holiday. Whatever the reason, August’s gift to us is the luxury of time, which this magazine in your hands encourages you to spend wisely, taking stock of what is truly essential in your life.
Under the theme, “Back to Basics,” this special, collectible edition trains the spotlight on the key ingredients of a life well and wisely lived. Of course, there’s no denying that there is pleasure in our excesses, but without the fundamentals, we find ourselves empty when all the things we don’t need are no longer there to close up the hole. So this month, we focus on what is vital to our existence.
Health, for instance, demands constant, unfailing attention, as exemplified by nurse Jenny Yoro (“Order of the White Caps,”), whose profession is a vocation rather than a practical career choice.
Although it remains a luxury for too many of our brethren, education is also non-negotiable in the pursuit of a meaningful life. Here we salute young teachers like Mia Villavicencio (“To Ma’am, With Love,”), who make it as much fun to teach as it is to learn from generations-in-training.
No longer confined to the laboratory, science or the awareness of it among us laymen is now integral to day-to-day living. Scientist Rochie Cuevas (“The Cereal Scientist,”) is dedicating many of her young years to the study of rice, the most basic of Asia’s basic diet. Who knows her cereal chemistry project might yield the solution to the rice shortage that threatens to exacerbate the problem of starvation around the world?
Incidentally, one of our fashion editorials (“Rice is Gold,”), emphasizes the value of rice and the need for a consolidated effort to keep it a staple, therefore affordable and available, on every table in the Philippines, in the region, and other parts of the world, where billions depend on it for daily sustenance.
But back to basics, inspiration and self-realization are crucial, too. Wrapped in the arresting package of beauty and glamour, not to mention height, our cover girl, New York-based Ford supermodel Charo Ronquillo (“Model Behavior,”), calls attention to these basic ingredients of the life worth living. Within her recipe for success is yet another recipe that combines in equal measure hard work, humility, a sense of gratitude, and the desire and energy to keep dreaming.
Love of others, especially in this day and age of economic turbulence and environmental disaster, is doubtless a fundamental virtue. In preparation for this issue, my staff and I, upon the prodding of associate editor Hector Reyes, threw an afternoon party for the children of the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) in Quezon City (“Happy Days,”). Partnering with Diether Ocampo’s K.I.D.S. Foundation and seeking the support of our own friends, such as the brothers Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato and Lynn Sunico of the Skyline Group, as well as the lovely mascots Sergeant March and Lionel at SM Storyland, we endeavored to give joy to over sixty children, along with their families, if only to give them momentary relief from the pain of broken bones and the boredom of being tied to their beds for months on end. We know there’s so much more to giving than a whole afternoon of entertainment, but I take consolation in the fact that people like Diether and his group, whose key members include the lovely lawyer Karina Tañega and the musician Mondo Castro, are constantly at the service of these children in need.
Ours was barely half a baby step to civic consciousness. I believe we derived more benefits from this excursion into sharing than the children at POC, who are sadly in need of many other basic necessities, such as new beds to serve as their entire world for extended periods of time.
Indeed, we were privileged to have spent a few hours with these children in need, if only because now we know caring for others is a basic need. Without others to care for, to worry about, to dream for, each of us will be such a small world inhabited by nobody but ourselves. I do love me but if it were just “I, me, and myself” in the universe, what’s the point of infinity?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Among the Chinese around the world, the seventh month of the lunar calendar (lunar July in our calendar this year is between the seventh of August to the sixth of September) is regarded as the ghost month, dedicated mostly to ancestral worship. During this period, “when deceased ancestors emerge from the lower realms to visit the living,” important events like weddings, inaugurations, and construction are avoided at all costs.
BLURB
I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex—Oscar Wilde
For us in the media, August, like the latter part of July, is a time to take a breather from our media circus, which will promptly resume in September and, I expect based on experience, will not slow down until around July next year. But this month, at least, we need not run around like headless chickens with brunches and lunches, high-teas and cocktails, dinners and nightouts to tick off our daily schedule. Because thankfully the economy never comes to a standstill, there is, of course, always the occasional invitation or two that you cannot turn down even in this slow month.
I’d like to think that ancient Chinese wisdom has been validated that in August, even among us pragmatists, hardly any brand launches a new product and many designers are away on holiday. Whatever the reason, August’s gift to us is the luxury of time, which this magazine in your hands encourages you to spend wisely, taking stock of what is truly essential in your life.
Under the theme, “Back to Basics,” this special, collectible edition trains the spotlight on the key ingredients of a life well and wisely lived. Of course, there’s no denying that there is pleasure in our excesses, but without the fundamentals, we find ourselves empty when all the things we don’t need are no longer there to close up the hole. So this month, we focus on what is vital to our existence.
Health, for instance, demands constant, unfailing attention, as exemplified by nurse Jenny Yoro (“Order of the White Caps,”), whose profession is a vocation rather than a practical career choice.
Although it remains a luxury for too many of our brethren, education is also non-negotiable in the pursuit of a meaningful life. Here we salute young teachers like Mia Villavicencio (“To Ma’am, With Love,”), who make it as much fun to teach as it is to learn from generations-in-training.
No longer confined to the laboratory, science or the awareness of it among us laymen is now integral to day-to-day living. Scientist Rochie Cuevas (“The Cereal Scientist,”) is dedicating many of her young years to the study of rice, the most basic of Asia’s basic diet. Who knows her cereal chemistry project might yield the solution to the rice shortage that threatens to exacerbate the problem of starvation around the world?
Incidentally, one of our fashion editorials (“Rice is Gold,”), emphasizes the value of rice and the need for a consolidated effort to keep it a staple, therefore affordable and available, on every table in the Philippines, in the region, and other parts of the world, where billions depend on it for daily sustenance.
But back to basics, inspiration and self-realization are crucial, too. Wrapped in the arresting package of beauty and glamour, not to mention height, our cover girl, New York-based Ford supermodel Charo Ronquillo (“Model Behavior,”), calls attention to these basic ingredients of the life worth living. Within her recipe for success is yet another recipe that combines in equal measure hard work, humility, a sense of gratitude, and the desire and energy to keep dreaming.
Love of others, especially in this day and age of economic turbulence and environmental disaster, is doubtless a fundamental virtue. In preparation for this issue, my staff and I, upon the prodding of associate editor Hector Reyes, threw an afternoon party for the children of the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC) in Quezon City (“Happy Days,”). Partnering with Diether Ocampo’s K.I.D.S. Foundation and seeking the support of our own friends, such as the brothers Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato and Lynn Sunico of the Skyline Group, as well as the lovely mascots Sergeant March and Lionel at SM Storyland, we endeavored to give joy to over sixty children, along with their families, if only to give them momentary relief from the pain of broken bones and the boredom of being tied to their beds for months on end. We know there’s so much more to giving than a whole afternoon of entertainment, but I take consolation in the fact that people like Diether and his group, whose key members include the lovely lawyer Karina Tañega and the musician Mondo Castro, are constantly at the service of these children in need.
Ours was barely half a baby step to civic consciousness. I believe we derived more benefits from this excursion into sharing than the children at POC, who are sadly in need of many other basic necessities, such as new beds to serve as their entire world for extended periods of time.
Indeed, we were privileged to have spent a few hours with these children in need, if only because now we know caring for others is a basic need. Without others to care for, to worry about, to dream for, each of us will be such a small world inhabited by nobody but ourselves. I do love me but if it were just “I, me, and myself” in the universe, what’s the point of infinity?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AND OTHER ALTERED STATES
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 25 JULY 2008)
I have since last Saturday seemingly developed a hypersensitivity to alcohol. It isn’t exactly an allergy, except on Sunday morning, when in the shower at 7 a.m., 30 minutes after I got home from a long night of drinking, I thought I could smell alcohol from my body wash and thereafter from my face cream. As a result the shower didn’t seem to sober me up. Instead, it sent me to bed feeling as though I had one more shooter to force down my throat. And I did, but let’s talk about that later.
BLURB
It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it a perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van. —Malcolm McDowell as Alex, A Clockwork Orange, 1971
Last Saturday would have been a long night, except that we were having fun. First order of the evening, following a few hours at the office, was dinner at Grappa’s on N. Garcia. The place was nothing special, but, like a preview to what the rest of the night had in store for us, the dinner was. I’m not at all new to this restaurant, but for the first time I was literally licking the plate clean of every last bit of my puttanesca and my Quattro Formaggi.
Next door, at the Purple Feet Wine Depot, Diether Ocampo was hosting a degustacion for his birthday. It was a quiet, intimate dinner, contrary to our expectations, which was the reason we had dinner elsewhere. This party was not for the celebrity, but for the person or, to be more precise, for the charitable soul behind K.I.D.S Foundation. How refreshing it was that over glasses upon glasses of red and white—not to mention course after course of continental dishes, which we skipped—the conversation revolved around public schools that need help in Benguet or the children’s wards at the Philippine General Hospital and the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC). Incidentally, only a few days before this party, Style Weekend and our monthly magazine Sense&Style collaborated with K.I.D.S Foundation, along with our friends, Lynn Sunico of Makati Skyline, Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato, and SM Storyland, in throwing a kiddie party at the POC children’s ward, replete with balloons, an ice cream station, hot dogs, spaghetti, chicken lollipops, the mascots Sergeant March and Lionel, face painters, and gift bags full of books and toys.
From Diether’s dinner at Purple Feet, where we were happy to have drunk to better, more charitable days with Diether and Karina Tañega of K.I.D.S Foundation and many of their avid supporters like Nike’s Mia Trinidad, Mondo Castro of the Pin-Up Girls, The Good Earth’s JP Castrillo, and Kate Torralba, we moved to fashion photographer Charles Lu’s farewell party nearby.
Over the years, we have collaborated on countless fashion and beauty editorials, and not a few of our cover pictorials for Sense&Style, with Charles and now that he is ready to turn a new leaf, transporting his whole life hook, line, and sinker to New York, it would have been a crime if we failed to say goodbye.
What a send-off it was! Held at a bachelor’s pad owned by Charles’ cineaste friend, Jardine Gerodias, it was a throwback to those college club parties, where strangers stood next to each other, bound by drink after drink after drink. In one room, some people were playing the Nintendo Wii game Rock Band. In another room, some were shooting the bull and horsing around. In yet another, the smokers converged, packed like a can of sardines in a steam room. But the center of it all was the bar, set up by the Sober Club and lined with an endless number of shot glasses full of alcohol in all manner of form and flavor, not to mention all the colors of an Akira Kurosawa movie or at least a chapter from his Dreams, especially once alcohol began flowing through your bloodstream.
“Choose your poison,” said Soda Club owner Jenny Peregrina, gesturing with a sweep of her long arm toward her multicolored collection: Ibiza Grapes, Peaches, Citrus Attack, Orange Crush, Mojito, Apple Concoction, Silver Spider, Quicksand, Shark Attack, Pink Slush, Jell-O Shots, and so many others. Our favorite was the Boracay Mocha Blends, but most exciting was what the bartenders called “The Flamers,” a drink that’s lit up directly in the drinker’s mouth.
Needless to say, we were, to borrow from Morrissey, “happy in the haze of a drunken hour” that stretched from way past midnight to way past sunrise on Sunday morning, particularly when Jardine the bachelor of the pad, a film graduate from Berkeley, took us through his extensive collection of all-original movies and music videos, both artful and commercial. The best part of it was I left the party, squinting in the punishing sunshine, with some loot, a copy of Michel Gondry’s latest release, Be Kind Rewind, and the ’70s cult classic from Stanley Kubrick. Of course, I swore to return them and I will, though I made the promise—and Jardine received it—in an altered state.
So I came home on Sunday morning just before seven and, feeling as though there was alcohol even in the air I was breathing, I didn’t sleep until much later, allowing myself to get lost in the future-shock scenes of Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ controversial novel.
Soon, at last, the party was over, as the curtain that was my eyes fell on the end credits of the DVD. I drifted into the REM stage, most probably humming either Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” or Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” from the soundtrack of this deeply engaging, entrancing, powerful, and downright stylish film, A Clockwork Orange.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
I have since last Saturday seemingly developed a hypersensitivity to alcohol. It isn’t exactly an allergy, except on Sunday morning, when in the shower at 7 a.m., 30 minutes after I got home from a long night of drinking, I thought I could smell alcohol from my body wash and thereafter from my face cream. As a result the shower didn’t seem to sober me up. Instead, it sent me to bed feeling as though I had one more shooter to force down my throat. And I did, but let’s talk about that later.
BLURB
It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it a perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van. —Malcolm McDowell as Alex, A Clockwork Orange, 1971
Last Saturday would have been a long night, except that we were having fun. First order of the evening, following a few hours at the office, was dinner at Grappa’s on N. Garcia. The place was nothing special, but, like a preview to what the rest of the night had in store for us, the dinner was. I’m not at all new to this restaurant, but for the first time I was literally licking the plate clean of every last bit of my puttanesca and my Quattro Formaggi.
Next door, at the Purple Feet Wine Depot, Diether Ocampo was hosting a degustacion for his birthday. It was a quiet, intimate dinner, contrary to our expectations, which was the reason we had dinner elsewhere. This party was not for the celebrity, but for the person or, to be more precise, for the charitable soul behind K.I.D.S Foundation. How refreshing it was that over glasses upon glasses of red and white—not to mention course after course of continental dishes, which we skipped—the conversation revolved around public schools that need help in Benguet or the children’s wards at the Philippine General Hospital and the Philippine Orthopedic Center (POC). Incidentally, only a few days before this party, Style Weekend and our monthly magazine Sense&Style collaborated with K.I.D.S Foundation, along with our friends, Lynn Sunico of Makati Skyline, Rachy and Ricky Cuna of Fiorgelato, and SM Storyland, in throwing a kiddie party at the POC children’s ward, replete with balloons, an ice cream station, hot dogs, spaghetti, chicken lollipops, the mascots Sergeant March and Lionel, face painters, and gift bags full of books and toys.
From Diether’s dinner at Purple Feet, where we were happy to have drunk to better, more charitable days with Diether and Karina Tañega of K.I.D.S Foundation and many of their avid supporters like Nike’s Mia Trinidad, Mondo Castro of the Pin-Up Girls, The Good Earth’s JP Castrillo, and Kate Torralba, we moved to fashion photographer Charles Lu’s farewell party nearby.
Over the years, we have collaborated on countless fashion and beauty editorials, and not a few of our cover pictorials for Sense&Style, with Charles and now that he is ready to turn a new leaf, transporting his whole life hook, line, and sinker to New York, it would have been a crime if we failed to say goodbye.
What a send-off it was! Held at a bachelor’s pad owned by Charles’ cineaste friend, Jardine Gerodias, it was a throwback to those college club parties, where strangers stood next to each other, bound by drink after drink after drink. In one room, some people were playing the Nintendo Wii game Rock Band. In another room, some were shooting the bull and horsing around. In yet another, the smokers converged, packed like a can of sardines in a steam room. But the center of it all was the bar, set up by the Sober Club and lined with an endless number of shot glasses full of alcohol in all manner of form and flavor, not to mention all the colors of an Akira Kurosawa movie or at least a chapter from his Dreams, especially once alcohol began flowing through your bloodstream.
“Choose your poison,” said Soda Club owner Jenny Peregrina, gesturing with a sweep of her long arm toward her multicolored collection: Ibiza Grapes, Peaches, Citrus Attack, Orange Crush, Mojito, Apple Concoction, Silver Spider, Quicksand, Shark Attack, Pink Slush, Jell-O Shots, and so many others. Our favorite was the Boracay Mocha Blends, but most exciting was what the bartenders called “The Flamers,” a drink that’s lit up directly in the drinker’s mouth.
Needless to say, we were, to borrow from Morrissey, “happy in the haze of a drunken hour” that stretched from way past midnight to way past sunrise on Sunday morning, particularly when Jardine the bachelor of the pad, a film graduate from Berkeley, took us through his extensive collection of all-original movies and music videos, both artful and commercial. The best part of it was I left the party, squinting in the punishing sunshine, with some loot, a copy of Michel Gondry’s latest release, Be Kind Rewind, and the ’70s cult classic from Stanley Kubrick. Of course, I swore to return them and I will, though I made the promise—and Jardine received it—in an altered state.
So I came home on Sunday morning just before seven and, feeling as though there was alcohol even in the air I was breathing, I didn’t sleep until much later, allowing myself to get lost in the future-shock scenes of Kubrick’s 1971 adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ controversial novel.
Soon, at last, the party was over, as the curtain that was my eyes fell on the end credits of the DVD. I drifted into the REM stage, most probably humming either Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” or Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” from the soundtrack of this deeply engaging, entrancing, powerful, and downright stylish film, A Clockwork Orange.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Monday, July 14, 2008
THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 18 JULY 2008)
I can’t get over it. It’s been over a month since my DVD weekend, the most memorable, dreamiest two hours of which unraveled like visions during R.E.M., as scene after scene I followed Versailles-born filmmaker Michel Gondry on his journey into the imaginative mind, The Science of Sleep (Warner Independent Pictures, 2006), originally entitled La Science des rêves, which literally means The Science of Dreams.
BLURB
First, we put in some random thoughts. And then we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day… mixed with some memories from the past. —Gael García Bernal as Stephane, The Science of Sleep
On the subject of dreams, I simply cannot resist musing about this dream of a movie again and again. But then, The Science of Sleep is one of the few movies you can watch over and over again.
Starring Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg and set as much in Paris as in the mind of its lead character, Stephane, Michel Gondry’s quirky, quixotic film is a love story as awkward as first love and almost as pathetic as obsession. To Bernal, who plays Stephane, a transplant from Mexico, a “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night,” who dreams in pictures as well as in English, French, and Spanish, it is a film about rejection. For Gainsbourg, who plays Stephane’s object of affection, Stephanie, “the characters are meant for each other and would find a way to be together,” but rather than a logical declaration, her statement, as she herself is quick to clarify, is in fact only a hopeful sentiment.
Indeed, even the lead actors can only guess. This clever film has none of the clichés, so that from start to finish, as the viewer confuses fact with fantasy, reality with reverie, he finds that a huge part of the film, particularly the ending, is subject to interpretation.
Like any work of art, The Science of Sleep is full of inspirations from its maker’s past. Gondry’s recurring childhood nightmare about giant hands has, for instance, woven itself into the fantastical visual of the film. So has what I assume to be his fond memory of S.E. Hinton’s iconic The Outsiders, if only because in his film, Golden the Pony Boy directly alludes to the lead character in the 1967 novel.
Indeed, even in Gondry’s references, real, unreal, and surreal intermingle. But really what separates fact from fiction? What separates imagination from actuality? Think about it: A sequence of delightful images makes up most of this 106-minute masterpiece by Michel Gondry, all unfolding in a city of dreams that is so much like Paris, albeit with paper boats afloat cellophane waves under cotton clouds and with skyscrapers and skyways crowded with cardboard cars and cardboard trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls. So why can’t an expanded sequence lasting anywhere between two and eight hours per night over the course of a lifetime, not counting the hours spent more consciously in daydreams, make up a life? After all, even the universe might have started merely as a figment of God’s imagination—or still is, unless God, too, is only the sum of all our dreams, the most depraved and the most divine, the lowliest and the loftiest, the best and the worst.
Or maybe I’m putting too much thought into what is designed ultimately as a dream, a chain of images, as defined in the Encarta World English Dictionary, “that appear involuntarily to the mind of a sleeping person, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events.” What am I doing trying to unearth reality from this phantasmagoria? Like those images in the subconscious, The Science of Sleep is in parts cryptic at best, meaningless at worst. If there were any linear progression of events, it is only because, as Stephanie puts it in one of the scenes, “randomness is hard to achieve [and] organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention.”
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
I can’t get over it. It’s been over a month since my DVD weekend, the most memorable, dreamiest two hours of which unraveled like visions during R.E.M., as scene after scene I followed Versailles-born filmmaker Michel Gondry on his journey into the imaginative mind, The Science of Sleep (Warner Independent Pictures, 2006), originally entitled La Science des rêves, which literally means The Science of Dreams.
BLURB
First, we put in some random thoughts. And then we add a little bit of reminiscences of the day… mixed with some memories from the past. —Gael García Bernal as Stephane, The Science of Sleep
On the subject of dreams, I simply cannot resist musing about this dream of a movie again and again. But then, The Science of Sleep is one of the few movies you can watch over and over again.
Starring Gael García Bernal and Charlotte Gainsbourg and set as much in Paris as in the mind of its lead character, Stephane, Michel Gondry’s quirky, quixotic film is a love story as awkward as first love and almost as pathetic as obsession. To Bernal, who plays Stephane, a transplant from Mexico, a “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night,” who dreams in pictures as well as in English, French, and Spanish, it is a film about rejection. For Gainsbourg, who plays Stephane’s object of affection, Stephanie, “the characters are meant for each other and would find a way to be together,” but rather than a logical declaration, her statement, as she herself is quick to clarify, is in fact only a hopeful sentiment.
Indeed, even the lead actors can only guess. This clever film has none of the clichés, so that from start to finish, as the viewer confuses fact with fantasy, reality with reverie, he finds that a huge part of the film, particularly the ending, is subject to interpretation.
Like any work of art, The Science of Sleep is full of inspirations from its maker’s past. Gondry’s recurring childhood nightmare about giant hands has, for instance, woven itself into the fantastical visual of the film. So has what I assume to be his fond memory of S.E. Hinton’s iconic The Outsiders, if only because in his film, Golden the Pony Boy directly alludes to the lead character in the 1967 novel.
Indeed, even in Gondry’s references, real, unreal, and surreal intermingle. But really what separates fact from fiction? What separates imagination from actuality? Think about it: A sequence of delightful images makes up most of this 106-minute masterpiece by Michel Gondry, all unfolding in a city of dreams that is so much like Paris, albeit with paper boats afloat cellophane waves under cotton clouds and with skyscrapers and skyways crowded with cardboard cars and cardboard trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls. So why can’t an expanded sequence lasting anywhere between two and eight hours per night over the course of a lifetime, not counting the hours spent more consciously in daydreams, make up a life? After all, even the universe might have started merely as a figment of God’s imagination—or still is, unless God, too, is only the sum of all our dreams, the most depraved and the most divine, the lowliest and the loftiest, the best and the worst.
Or maybe I’m putting too much thought into what is designed ultimately as a dream, a chain of images, as defined in the Encarta World English Dictionary, “that appear involuntarily to the mind of a sleeping person, often a mixture of real and imaginary characters, places, and events.” What am I doing trying to unearth reality from this phantasmagoria? Like those images in the subconscious, The Science of Sleep is in parts cryptic at best, meaningless at worst. If there were any linear progression of events, it is only because, as Stephanie puts it in one of the scenes, “randomness is hard to achieve [and] organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention.”
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
THE FETUSES
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 11 JULY 2008)
Fresh from college, young people converge at an advertising agency, all equipped with what they learned from top universities in Manila and with a vision of a future in which they each will play a role no less than the lead.
BLURB
I live in that solitude that is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. —Albert Einsten
The oldies, or so they called themselves self-deprecatingly, are happy to take young blood under their wing, if only to inject something new into the stream of day-to-day routine. Some, for sure, have only the best interest of the kids in mind, at least according to their own personal notion of what’s good and what’s bad, and look forward to sharing what they know to the so called emerging generation, the next in line. Others take it simply as a matter of course: The workload is getting heavier and there is a need for help and, taking into consideration the company budget, they settle for greenhorns, hoping against hope that eagerness and enthusiasm will more than make up for lack of experience and potential will eventually translate to performance.
To the young ones, ranging in age from 19 to 21, the workplace is a brave new world all compressed into two floors of a building in the central business district. Instinctively, they look around, hoping for a glimpse of their own future in the way the bosses carry themselves and the way they carry out their tasks, as well as in their things, their cars, their clothes, the words and gestures they use to communicate, what they prefer for lunch, where they go in the evenings, and whom they go with.
Some may have found an inkling of what’s ahead: This is the life I’m going to have when I reach the top, but most, based at least on the turn of events later on, decide this is hardly even step one of the ladder and the top is yet beyond view.
In the meantime, the cravings of youth cannot be sidestepped on the road to the more adult goals of success and security. Inevitably, with so much in common, the young ones band together, first maybe over coffee at Greenbelt, then regularly over lunch, merienda, dinner, after-dinner drinks, midnight snacks following late-nights at the clubs, breakfast in the wake of all-nighters, and weeklong adventures out of town and even out of the country.
At this particular advertising agency, the friendship that forms among the entry-level employees is more than a case of the culture of fraternities and sororities extending beyond the college campus. It becomes a clique that soon grows into a collective force the executive office, from the creative directors all the way to the president and CEO, soon begin to acknowledge. Affectionately and almost officially, they name this young group The Fetuses, but, at least according to one senior vice president during a drunken moment at a beach company outing, these fetuses not only have teeth, but fangs, too. True enough, not only does this clique exclude some unfortunate others during lunch breaks and after-work fun, it also, to some extent, decides how happy these “barbarians,” especially if they belong to the same age group, will be and, often consequently, how long they will stay in the company.
On a stormy evening, taking advantage of the “rare privilege” of having one of the fetuses in his car for a free ride home, one of these unfortunate outsiders confesses, “Maybe you think I don’t care, but I feel so sorry for myself that when you guys are at the audio-visual room and I cannot seem to bring myself to join you or that when you guys go out for lunch, I always have to be left behind.”
Suddenly moved by their conscience, The Fetuses slowly integrate this outsider into their inner circle, although many of them who went to university with this “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” admit they could never have imagined having a beer bong with him in college. “Well,” argue the more reasonable members of the gang, “this is not college anymore. We are ‘professionals’ now.” Reason among the majority, who also have fangs to show when they find the need to snarl, prevails and soon this outsider is in the club. But, sadly, not for long: One wrong move and he is back in the same predicament, feeling sorry that he has to stay behind when The Fetuses break for lunch.
Fast forward and this is the future that does not look anything like what practically all of the Fetuses glimpsed back then because they now belong to industries outside of advertising, where every single one of them is on top of their game. The members of the clique remain friends, now godfathers and godmothers to each other’s children. At the workplace, where some of them reign over as top executives, many now have their own Fetuses. During get-togethers, they wonder if like they used to do, today’s fetuses also make fun of the “old fogeys” behind their backs. As for “the boisterous, obnoxious fat guy,” who almost but never did belong to their group, no one knows much about, although there is every reason to believe he also made it in one piece in this “future.” Looking back, The Fetuses have no regrets but wish they were kinder. The people who make up your life are not always your choices, except perhaps at higher, metaphysical levels, but your friends you at least reserve the right to choose.
Still, The Fetuses can only heave a collective sigh of relief that karma did not choose to activate itself. After all, they were young, invincible, therefore reckless. But now that they are older, supposedly wiser, they know it’s a small world. Easily, along the way, the “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” could have been the devil boss or the evil client and who knows how it could have changed the future?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Fresh from college, young people converge at an advertising agency, all equipped with what they learned from top universities in Manila and with a vision of a future in which they each will play a role no less than the lead.
BLURB
I live in that solitude that is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. —Albert Einsten
The oldies, or so they called themselves self-deprecatingly, are happy to take young blood under their wing, if only to inject something new into the stream of day-to-day routine. Some, for sure, have only the best interest of the kids in mind, at least according to their own personal notion of what’s good and what’s bad, and look forward to sharing what they know to the so called emerging generation, the next in line. Others take it simply as a matter of course: The workload is getting heavier and there is a need for help and, taking into consideration the company budget, they settle for greenhorns, hoping against hope that eagerness and enthusiasm will more than make up for lack of experience and potential will eventually translate to performance.
To the young ones, ranging in age from 19 to 21, the workplace is a brave new world all compressed into two floors of a building in the central business district. Instinctively, they look around, hoping for a glimpse of their own future in the way the bosses carry themselves and the way they carry out their tasks, as well as in their things, their cars, their clothes, the words and gestures they use to communicate, what they prefer for lunch, where they go in the evenings, and whom they go with.
Some may have found an inkling of what’s ahead: This is the life I’m going to have when I reach the top, but most, based at least on the turn of events later on, decide this is hardly even step one of the ladder and the top is yet beyond view.
In the meantime, the cravings of youth cannot be sidestepped on the road to the more adult goals of success and security. Inevitably, with so much in common, the young ones band together, first maybe over coffee at Greenbelt, then regularly over lunch, merienda, dinner, after-dinner drinks, midnight snacks following late-nights at the clubs, breakfast in the wake of all-nighters, and weeklong adventures out of town and even out of the country.
At this particular advertising agency, the friendship that forms among the entry-level employees is more than a case of the culture of fraternities and sororities extending beyond the college campus. It becomes a clique that soon grows into a collective force the executive office, from the creative directors all the way to the president and CEO, soon begin to acknowledge. Affectionately and almost officially, they name this young group The Fetuses, but, at least according to one senior vice president during a drunken moment at a beach company outing, these fetuses not only have teeth, but fangs, too. True enough, not only does this clique exclude some unfortunate others during lunch breaks and after-work fun, it also, to some extent, decides how happy these “barbarians,” especially if they belong to the same age group, will be and, often consequently, how long they will stay in the company.
On a stormy evening, taking advantage of the “rare privilege” of having one of the fetuses in his car for a free ride home, one of these unfortunate outsiders confesses, “Maybe you think I don’t care, but I feel so sorry for myself that when you guys are at the audio-visual room and I cannot seem to bring myself to join you or that when you guys go out for lunch, I always have to be left behind.”
Suddenly moved by their conscience, The Fetuses slowly integrate this outsider into their inner circle, although many of them who went to university with this “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” admit they could never have imagined having a beer bong with him in college. “Well,” argue the more reasonable members of the gang, “this is not college anymore. We are ‘professionals’ now.” Reason among the majority, who also have fangs to show when they find the need to snarl, prevails and soon this outsider is in the club. But, sadly, not for long: One wrong move and he is back in the same predicament, feeling sorry that he has to stay behind when The Fetuses break for lunch.
Fast forward and this is the future that does not look anything like what practically all of the Fetuses glimpsed back then because they now belong to industries outside of advertising, where every single one of them is on top of their game. The members of the clique remain friends, now godfathers and godmothers to each other’s children. At the workplace, where some of them reign over as top executives, many now have their own Fetuses. During get-togethers, they wonder if like they used to do, today’s fetuses also make fun of the “old fogeys” behind their backs. As for “the boisterous, obnoxious fat guy,” who almost but never did belong to their group, no one knows much about, although there is every reason to believe he also made it in one piece in this “future.” Looking back, The Fetuses have no regrets but wish they were kinder. The people who make up your life are not always your choices, except perhaps at higher, metaphysical levels, but your friends you at least reserve the right to choose.
Still, The Fetuses can only heave a collective sigh of relief that karma did not choose to activate itself. After all, they were young, invincible, therefore reckless. But now that they are older, supposedly wiser, they know it’s a small world. Easily, along the way, the “boisterous, obnoxious fat guy” could have been the devil boss or the evil client and who knows how it could have changed the future?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
LIKE THE WEATHER
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 4 JULY 2008)
Nowadays, the weather is often bad news.
BLURB
What a cold and rainy day! Where on earth is the sun hid away? —“Like the Weather,” 10,000 Maniacs, 1988
On a particular day in the aftermath of the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars off Sibuyan Island in Romblon, if I remember right, it was 28 degrees in Paris, a lovely summer day, but it was all that was lovely on the CNN Weather Report. In California, a lightning storm triggered forest fires, but there was zero wind in most places, so thank God for that, as we cannot bear a repeat of the Malibu wildfire that set California in flames barely a year ago. Elsewhere in the United States, the weather was exacerbating the worst US Midwest flooding in North America in 15 years, with the Mississippi River submerging up to two million hectares of farmlands and sweeping away entire towns across the north-central states. Among the neighbors of France, the weather wasn’t as friendly. In Vienna, it rained on the Euro 2008 parade, dampening spirits particularly at the Germany-versus-Turkey semi-finals, whose viewers across Europe were denied television coverage, as the storm, unleashing lightning, high winds, and heavy rains, caused massive blackouts. In Asia, the typhoon that caught the Philippines unawares two weekends ago, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless, was now wreaking havoc over parts of China, having just left a trail of wet misery in Hong Kong.
How strange that, as of this writing, we are supposed to be well into the rainy season, but the sun heated up the day as though it were the height of summer, interrupted only by the briefest of rainshowers. Thank God for that, too, as at this point, so many days after typhoon Frank caused yet another tragedy at sea, rescue squads are still hoping against hope some survivors would still emerge somehow, while Sulpicio Lines, on the other hand, is digging its own grave, forgetting that sympathy, rather than appropriation of blame and more than monetary compensation over lives and limbs lost, is indispensable at a time like this, particularly to their survival as a corporate entity.
But as of late last week, even as Sulpicio announced the release of P200,000 per victim to the bereaved, whether or not there had been a confirmation of death, government officials in areas where bodies were being found, such as in Masbate and Camarines Sur, were still irately and desperately calling the attention of Sulpicio officials toward what should have been their key role in the search and retrieval operations. To think that during the crucial first days of the rescue operations, spokespersons, mostly rude, unemotional lawyers, at Sulpicio kept saying the focus was on the search, leaving the victims’ families, already burdened with worry and grief, to their own devices. During a maritime disaster involving one of their ships, WG&A, some years ago, made it a point to care for the victims’ families, flying them to the vicinity of the tragedy to help identify—and claim—their dead and taking charge of their hotel accommodations and meals through their darkest hours.
I used to love the rain and, yes, even the howling winds, when I’m tucked in bed, warm beneath the sheets, safe in a perilous world. After a shower, there used to be romance on wet, slippery roads, with the grey skies reflecting off silvery puddles and raindrops sliding off leaves or otherwise launching themselves like teardrops off the eaves.
Now it’s all guilty pleasure. If only we could return to kinder times, when the girl group The Toys was a major hit, we could still, without guilt, hum along as Barbara Harris with Barbara Parritt and June Montiero rhapsodizes, “How gentle is the rain/That falls softly on the meadow/Birds high up in the trees/Serenade the clouds with their melodies (“A Lover’s Concerto,” 1965).”
But life is more complicated now. When Madonna muses, “Wash away my sorrow/take away my pain (‘Rain,’ 1993)” or when Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks laments, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining (‘Dreams,’ 1977),” there is a chance a boat is sinking somewhere or a family is being buried alive in a mudslide or the old and homeless are cold and dying on the pavement.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Nowadays, the weather is often bad news.
BLURB
What a cold and rainy day! Where on earth is the sun hid away? —“Like the Weather,” 10,000 Maniacs, 1988
On a particular day in the aftermath of the sinking of MV Princess of the Stars off Sibuyan Island in Romblon, if I remember right, it was 28 degrees in Paris, a lovely summer day, but it was all that was lovely on the CNN Weather Report. In California, a lightning storm triggered forest fires, but there was zero wind in most places, so thank God for that, as we cannot bear a repeat of the Malibu wildfire that set California in flames barely a year ago. Elsewhere in the United States, the weather was exacerbating the worst US Midwest flooding in North America in 15 years, with the Mississippi River submerging up to two million hectares of farmlands and sweeping away entire towns across the north-central states. Among the neighbors of France, the weather wasn’t as friendly. In Vienna, it rained on the Euro 2008 parade, dampening spirits particularly at the Germany-versus-Turkey semi-finals, whose viewers across Europe were denied television coverage, as the storm, unleashing lightning, high winds, and heavy rains, caused massive blackouts. In Asia, the typhoon that caught the Philippines unawares two weekends ago, leaving hundreds dead and thousands homeless, was now wreaking havoc over parts of China, having just left a trail of wet misery in Hong Kong.
How strange that, as of this writing, we are supposed to be well into the rainy season, but the sun heated up the day as though it were the height of summer, interrupted only by the briefest of rainshowers. Thank God for that, too, as at this point, so many days after typhoon Frank caused yet another tragedy at sea, rescue squads are still hoping against hope some survivors would still emerge somehow, while Sulpicio Lines, on the other hand, is digging its own grave, forgetting that sympathy, rather than appropriation of blame and more than monetary compensation over lives and limbs lost, is indispensable at a time like this, particularly to their survival as a corporate entity.
But as of late last week, even as Sulpicio announced the release of P200,000 per victim to the bereaved, whether or not there had been a confirmation of death, government officials in areas where bodies were being found, such as in Masbate and Camarines Sur, were still irately and desperately calling the attention of Sulpicio officials toward what should have been their key role in the search and retrieval operations. To think that during the crucial first days of the rescue operations, spokespersons, mostly rude, unemotional lawyers, at Sulpicio kept saying the focus was on the search, leaving the victims’ families, already burdened with worry and grief, to their own devices. During a maritime disaster involving one of their ships, WG&A, some years ago, made it a point to care for the victims’ families, flying them to the vicinity of the tragedy to help identify—and claim—their dead and taking charge of their hotel accommodations and meals through their darkest hours.
I used to love the rain and, yes, even the howling winds, when I’m tucked in bed, warm beneath the sheets, safe in a perilous world. After a shower, there used to be romance on wet, slippery roads, with the grey skies reflecting off silvery puddles and raindrops sliding off leaves or otherwise launching themselves like teardrops off the eaves.
Now it’s all guilty pleasure. If only we could return to kinder times, when the girl group The Toys was a major hit, we could still, without guilt, hum along as Barbara Harris with Barbara Parritt and June Montiero rhapsodizes, “How gentle is the rain/That falls softly on the meadow/Birds high up in the trees/Serenade the clouds with their melodies (“A Lover’s Concerto,” 1965).”
But life is more complicated now. When Madonna muses, “Wash away my sorrow/take away my pain (‘Rain,’ 1993)” or when Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks laments, “Thunder only happens when it’s raining (‘Dreams,’ 1977),” there is a chance a boat is sinking somewhere or a family is being buried alive in a mudslide or the old and homeless are cold and dying on the pavement.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
ART ATTACK
(FROM THE EDITOR'S, SENSE&STYLE'S "ART-ISH," JULY 2008, senseandstyle.net.ph)
In my editor’s letter for a travel magazine back in 2005, I wrote that life, more than simply its inspiration, was the essence of all art. This is also the bedrock of this special, collectible edition in your hands, whose aim is to help open your eyes to life as an art form, which, to borrow from that same letter, is “often overlooked because it is neither framed nor gilded nor hung on a museum wall.”
Randomness is hard to achieve. Organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention. —Charlotte Gainsbourg as Stephanie, The Science of Sleep, 2006
Putting these pages together, I find it truly inspiring that there is so much art around us, whether or not we care to distinguish a world of difference between a B-brush and a Filbert. Sure, it would have been grand if we all had the wherewithal to go for a piece of divine genius at Sotheby’s, but more often than not, all it takes is to live our lives with our eyes wide open or—in the case of Stephane, Gael Garcia Bernal’s character in Michel Gondry’s dream of a movie, The Science of Sleep—with our “eyes wide shut,” with apologies to Stanley Kubrik.
To Bernal, who played “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night” in this hip, heartfelt love story, The Science of Sleep is a film about rejection, but to me, it is as cleverly and delightfully hopeful as its wonderland version of Paris abuzz with cotton clouds, paper boats, cardboard cars, and cellophane waves, not to mention skyscrapers and trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls.
In the magazine world, where reality and fantasy necessarily collide almost every day of the workweek, movies like Gondry’s quirky, quixotic, and inventive masterpiece are a wellspring of inspiration. But so is reality. In preparation for this issue designed to acquaint us with the art that surrounds us, I sent my writing stable of twentysomethings out there in search of content. They came back with more than a generous helping of artful lives, from graphic designer Chicho Suarez (“Art & Schisms,” page129) to poet, songstress, and lyricist Aia de Leon of Imago (“The Music and the Message,” page128), from book author and sommelier Ines Cabarrus (“Vin de Siecle,” page 131) to painter Camille Ver (“When All Is Still and I Can Dream,” page 133), from thespian Cathy Azanza (“It’s Showtime!” page 132) to indie filmmaker Sigrid Bernardo (“The Suspension of Disbelief,” page130). What a blessing, indeed, to have such amazing talents inhabit our everyday world!
For Sense&Style associate editor Hector Reyes, whose main duty as fashion and beauty editor compels him to step up as a creative director as well, generating ideas for the more visual aspects of this magazine, this month’s issue is a welcome challenge. He and his team of pretty young things, many of them artists waiting to unfurl their wings, have spent the past few months in close collaboration with photographers, makeup artists, hairstylists, and fashion designers, such as Cary Santiago, Oskar Peralta, Danilo Franco, and Francis Libiran. In pursuit of Hector’s vision to give not only fashion but also hair and makeup their rightful place in the realm of art, these venerable designers created for this issue the most beautiful black gowns, most of which, paired with the makeup artistry of ArtDeco’s RB Chanco (“Behind Beauty,” page 65), I find as hauntingly shadowy as Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow or, better yet, as his design inspiration, Mario Bava’s La Maschera del Demonio. Why, like fashion, like most pieces of art, makeup and hairstyle also seek to turn mundane into magical.
Another such collaboration was with EveryWhereWeShoot, with whom we sought to bridge the gap between photography and lomography (“Digitales/Lomostories,” page 78), not that we saw any real difference between the two disciplines, except perhaps in terms of general appearance and technicalities that are beyond us. It’s quite refreshing to work with these young photographers, who wear their artistic credentials and creative potential on their sleeves or, in the case of Garovs Garrovillo, from her waist down in the form of a pair of checkered Jodhpurs that disappear into special-edition Adidas.
For this month’s cover, featuring Miss Earth 2004 Priscilla Meirelles with young actors Rafael Rosell, Brent Javier, Marco Alcaraz, and Jay-R (“Body and Broadway,” page 119), we have a double dose of art appreciation, celebrating the human body, a divine creation that has all the elements of balance and harmony, and cloaking it in little touches borrowed from our favorite larger-than-life tales on the theater stage.
Indeed, despite the protestations of the purist, art finds expression in many forms, which now include even practicalities, such as clothing, what with so many of our couture and prêt-a-porter masters drawing inspiration from or working closely with painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, and architects. Maybe art, like life, is also about moments, fleeting as they are. Maybe the Mondrian dress that the late Yves Saint Laurent—for whom we have a tribute this month (“Au Revoir, M. Saint-Laurent,” page 104)—created using wool jersey in color blocks of white, red, blue, black, and yellow was only meant for a particular season sometime in the mid-Sixties, but as we know now it has had its pride of place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Speaking of New York, our senior writer Krizette Chu, who is in Manhattan at the moment, dispatches a report (“Superman Wears Moschino,” page 58) on her coverage of “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” an exhibition ongoing until September at the Costume Institute at the Met. In this report, at the risk of displeasing the purist yet again, she might have found the core of true art, which, like the marriage of fashion and superheroes in this exhibition, allows us, to paraphrase its curators, to fantasize and escape “the bland, the ordinary, and the quotidian.”
And so, in the quest of palatable, everyday art, may I also invite the purist to a gourmet tour of Paris (“Wish Upon A Michelin Star,” page 35) because, like a Picasso or Swan Lake or a passage from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor or a 150-word Proustian sentence or The Marriage of Figaro, a good meal, whether or not fanciful, requires fine skill and produces a sense that all is beautiful in this world, too.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
In my editor’s letter for a travel magazine back in 2005, I wrote that life, more than simply its inspiration, was the essence of all art. This is also the bedrock of this special, collectible edition in your hands, whose aim is to help open your eyes to life as an art form, which, to borrow from that same letter, is “often overlooked because it is neither framed nor gilded nor hung on a museum wall.”
Randomness is hard to achieve. Organization merges back, if you don’t pay attention. —Charlotte Gainsbourg as Stephanie, The Science of Sleep, 2006
Putting these pages together, I find it truly inspiring that there is so much art around us, whether or not we care to distinguish a world of difference between a B-brush and a Filbert. Sure, it would have been grand if we all had the wherewithal to go for a piece of divine genius at Sotheby’s, but more often than not, all it takes is to live our lives with our eyes wide open or—in the case of Stephane, Gael Garcia Bernal’s character in Michel Gondry’s dream of a movie, The Science of Sleep—with our “eyes wide shut,” with apologies to Stanley Kubrik.
To Bernal, who played “white-collar drudge by day, genius by night” in this hip, heartfelt love story, The Science of Sleep is a film about rejection, but to me, it is as cleverly and delightfully hopeful as its wonderland version of Paris abuzz with cotton clouds, paper boats, cardboard cars, and cellophane waves, not to mention skyscrapers and trains made entirely of toilet paper rolls.
In the magazine world, where reality and fantasy necessarily collide almost every day of the workweek, movies like Gondry’s quirky, quixotic, and inventive masterpiece are a wellspring of inspiration. But so is reality. In preparation for this issue designed to acquaint us with the art that surrounds us, I sent my writing stable of twentysomethings out there in search of content. They came back with more than a generous helping of artful lives, from graphic designer Chicho Suarez (“Art & Schisms,” page129) to poet, songstress, and lyricist Aia de Leon of Imago (“The Music and the Message,” page128), from book author and sommelier Ines Cabarrus (“Vin de Siecle,” page 131) to painter Camille Ver (“When All Is Still and I Can Dream,” page 133), from thespian Cathy Azanza (“It’s Showtime!” page 132) to indie filmmaker Sigrid Bernardo (“The Suspension of Disbelief,” page130). What a blessing, indeed, to have such amazing talents inhabit our everyday world!
For Sense&Style associate editor Hector Reyes, whose main duty as fashion and beauty editor compels him to step up as a creative director as well, generating ideas for the more visual aspects of this magazine, this month’s issue is a welcome challenge. He and his team of pretty young things, many of them artists waiting to unfurl their wings, have spent the past few months in close collaboration with photographers, makeup artists, hairstylists, and fashion designers, such as Cary Santiago, Oskar Peralta, Danilo Franco, and Francis Libiran. In pursuit of Hector’s vision to give not only fashion but also hair and makeup their rightful place in the realm of art, these venerable designers created for this issue the most beautiful black gowns, most of which, paired with the makeup artistry of ArtDeco’s RB Chanco (“Behind Beauty,” page 65), I find as hauntingly shadowy as Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow or, better yet, as his design inspiration, Mario Bava’s La Maschera del Demonio. Why, like fashion, like most pieces of art, makeup and hairstyle also seek to turn mundane into magical.
Another such collaboration was with EveryWhereWeShoot, with whom we sought to bridge the gap between photography and lomography (“Digitales/Lomostories,” page 78), not that we saw any real difference between the two disciplines, except perhaps in terms of general appearance and technicalities that are beyond us. It’s quite refreshing to work with these young photographers, who wear their artistic credentials and creative potential on their sleeves or, in the case of Garovs Garrovillo, from her waist down in the form of a pair of checkered Jodhpurs that disappear into special-edition Adidas.
For this month’s cover, featuring Miss Earth 2004 Priscilla Meirelles with young actors Rafael Rosell, Brent Javier, Marco Alcaraz, and Jay-R (“Body and Broadway,” page 119), we have a double dose of art appreciation, celebrating the human body, a divine creation that has all the elements of balance and harmony, and cloaking it in little touches borrowed from our favorite larger-than-life tales on the theater stage.
Indeed, despite the protestations of the purist, art finds expression in many forms, which now include even practicalities, such as clothing, what with so many of our couture and prêt-a-porter masters drawing inspiration from or working closely with painters, sculptors, filmmakers, poets, and architects. Maybe art, like life, is also about moments, fleeting as they are. Maybe the Mondrian dress that the late Yves Saint Laurent—for whom we have a tribute this month (“Au Revoir, M. Saint-Laurent,” page 104)—created using wool jersey in color blocks of white, red, blue, black, and yellow was only meant for a particular season sometime in the mid-Sixties, but as we know now it has had its pride of place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Speaking of New York, our senior writer Krizette Chu, who is in Manhattan at the moment, dispatches a report (“Superman Wears Moschino,” page 58) on her coverage of “Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy,” an exhibition ongoing until September at the Costume Institute at the Met. In this report, at the risk of displeasing the purist yet again, she might have found the core of true art, which, like the marriage of fashion and superheroes in this exhibition, allows us, to paraphrase its curators, to fantasize and escape “the bland, the ordinary, and the quotidian.”
And so, in the quest of palatable, everyday art, may I also invite the purist to a gourmet tour of Paris (“Wish Upon A Michelin Star,” page 35) because, like a Picasso or Swan Lake or a passage from Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor or a 150-word Proustian sentence or The Marriage of Figaro, a good meal, whether or not fanciful, requires fine skill and produces a sense that all is beautiful in this world, too.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING MORRISSEY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 27 JUNE 2008)
There were times when I could have murdered her/But you know I would hate anything to happen to her —“Girlfriend in a Coma,” Strangeways, Here I Come, 1987
A co-worker of mine recently retrieved music from the archives of my youth. With The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” playing in the background, I have thus spent the past few days shuttling between now and my teen years, when passing through an angst-ridden phase, I thought Morrissey was as dark as the kohl we put under our eyes at Saturday night New Wave parties to separate ourselves from the “normal, wholesome” kids.
In my life/Why do I give valuable time/To people who don’t care if I live or die —“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
In my youth, I lived a double life. On certain nights, I would hang out with a group of friends in mainstream places like Rumours, Culture Club, Faces, and Mars, dancing to Madonna or George Michael. Other nights I would spend—and equally enjoy—with another group of friends in the “underground,” drinking Pale Pilsen in places like Mayric’s or Club Dredd, where, as the indie bands covered the likes of The Smiths, I sought the meaning of life.
I am the son/and the heir/of a shyness that is criminally vulgar —“How Soon is Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
That was when I was young and Morrissey was just a beautiful, sad voice articulating beautiful, sad feelings on the radio or my Walkman or the turntable at home. Now that I’m older, I realize that Morrissey, born Stephen Patrick Morrissey in Manchester, England in 1959, is, like his idol Oscar Wilde, an iconoclast who made music to make a stand in a language that is at once cryptic and familiar, erudite and plebian. Even at the height of his fame, he was beyond celebrity. Based at least on his own pronouncements, music was his only currency, the medium with which he expressed his ideals or, more pronouncedly, all that he found ill in this world.
And if the people stare/then the people stare/Oh I really don’t know and I really don’t care —“Hand in Glove,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
More than open and honest, Morrissey was forceful with his feelings and opinions. As a result, he had more than a “hatful” of enemies, including then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom, in a public statement, he said, “could be destroyed,” as “the only remedy for this country.” Among his other enemies were David Bowie, Madonna, and Elton John, whose lyrics he generally described as “pointless and more concerned with celebrity than with music,” as well as Robert Smith of The Cure, whose antagonism toward Morrissey was just as seething. Attacking Morrissey’s animal rights crusade and his vegetarianism, which he had adopted as a way of life since he was 11, Smith once said, “If Morrissey says, ‘don’t eat meat,’ then I’ll eat meat because I hate Morrissey.”
When will you accept your life?/The one that you hate —“Accept Yourself,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
But then, while he did not beat around the bush when it came to his displeasure of others, Morrissey had always been circuitous about his personal life, which, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, made him “a peculiar heartthrob,” having created a “compellingly conflicted persona.” In some of his songs, such as “Hand in Glove” or “Handsome Devil,” it might seem easy to conclude that he is gay, but as The Times critic Tom Gatti argues, “Morrissey’s music offers an infinite capacity for interpretation.” In 1984, The Smith’s vocalist and lyricist said he refused to recognize the prefixes homo, bi, or hetero in defining human sexuality. “People are just sexual,” he said. “Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs.” Prior to that, in an interview, he “claimed to be a kind of a prophet for the fourth sex” on grounds that “he was bored with men… and bored with women.” Through it all, he maintained that he was asexual, disclosing only in 2006, without offering any more detail, that he was no longer celibate, hinting at “a late-blooming sex life.”
You ask me the time/But I sense something more/And I would like to give/What I think you’re asking for —“Handsome Devil,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does it really matter whether he was gay or not? Back in high school, it didn’t. Even my “homophobic” rocker friends, who were as macho as they were big fans of The Smiths, did not seem to entertain the question. That was because Morrissey was a musician more than a celebrity, who graced magazine covers, endorsed lifestyle products, and traipsed around red carpet events with a lover in tow. But then that was then and this is now, where, to have room in the music industry, the paparazzi and a multi-million-dollar advertising contract are sometimes as important as talent—and definitely more important than having something to say.
So please don’t stand in my way/Because I’m going to meet the one I love/No, Mamma, let me go! —“Shakespeare’s Sister,” The World Won’t Listen, 1987
The Smiths broke up in 1987 due to irreconcilable musical differences between Morrissey and his longtime collaborator, The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr. As a solo act, Morrissey has since produced many songs with his signature depth and longing, including the 1994 hit “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get” from the number one UK album Vauxhall and I. There is talk that a new album is in the works, supposedly slated for release in September this year, and that there is a 40-million-pound offer for Morrissey to reunite with Marr, but Morrissey dismisses the rumor, calling it a hoax.
Haven’t had a dream in a long time/See the life I’ve had/Can make a good man bad —“Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does Morrissey still have a place in today’s musical landscape, dominated by the likes of American record producer, composer, and singer Timothy Z. Mosley, aka Timbaland? I heard over the radio a few years ago that Timbaland once threatened to retire from the music industry that he found boring and not challenging enough. Maybe, especially if one could earn riches and respect out of such celebrity-obsessed lyrics as “People know me/As the Great Timbaland (Timbaland)/Been brought in the slums but I ranned (But I ranned)/Been boning girls in the Scooby Doo van (“Naughty Eye,” Under Construction II, Timbaland & Magoo, 2003).
He’s not strange/He just wants to live his life this way —“Vicar in a Tutu,” The Queen is Dead, 1986
Maybe, like the dead queen’s, Morrissey’s time is up. But music, like life, goes on.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
There were times when I could have murdered her/But you know I would hate anything to happen to her —“Girlfriend in a Coma,” Strangeways, Here I Come, 1987
A co-worker of mine recently retrieved music from the archives of my youth. With The Smiths’ “Girlfriend in a Coma” playing in the background, I have thus spent the past few days shuttling between now and my teen years, when passing through an angst-ridden phase, I thought Morrissey was as dark as the kohl we put under our eyes at Saturday night New Wave parties to separate ourselves from the “normal, wholesome” kids.
In my life/Why do I give valuable time/To people who don’t care if I live or die —“Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
In my youth, I lived a double life. On certain nights, I would hang out with a group of friends in mainstream places like Rumours, Culture Club, Faces, and Mars, dancing to Madonna or George Michael. Other nights I would spend—and equally enjoy—with another group of friends in the “underground,” drinking Pale Pilsen in places like Mayric’s or Club Dredd, where, as the indie bands covered the likes of The Smiths, I sought the meaning of life.
I am the son/and the heir/of a shyness that is criminally vulgar —“How Soon is Now,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
That was when I was young and Morrissey was just a beautiful, sad voice articulating beautiful, sad feelings on the radio or my Walkman or the turntable at home. Now that I’m older, I realize that Morrissey, born Stephen Patrick Morrissey in Manchester, England in 1959, is, like his idol Oscar Wilde, an iconoclast who made music to make a stand in a language that is at once cryptic and familiar, erudite and plebian. Even at the height of his fame, he was beyond celebrity. Based at least on his own pronouncements, music was his only currency, the medium with which he expressed his ideals or, more pronouncedly, all that he found ill in this world.
And if the people stare/then the people stare/Oh I really don’t know and I really don’t care —“Hand in Glove,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
More than open and honest, Morrissey was forceful with his feelings and opinions. As a result, he had more than a “hatful” of enemies, including then UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, whom, in a public statement, he said, “could be destroyed,” as “the only remedy for this country.” Among his other enemies were David Bowie, Madonna, and Elton John, whose lyrics he generally described as “pointless and more concerned with celebrity than with music,” as well as Robert Smith of The Cure, whose antagonism toward Morrissey was just as seething. Attacking Morrissey’s animal rights crusade and his vegetarianism, which he had adopted as a way of life since he was 11, Smith once said, “If Morrissey says, ‘don’t eat meat,’ then I’ll eat meat because I hate Morrissey.”
When will you accept your life?/The one that you hate —“Accept Yourself,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
But then, while he did not beat around the bush when it came to his displeasure of others, Morrissey had always been circuitous about his personal life, which, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, made him “a peculiar heartthrob,” having created a “compellingly conflicted persona.” In some of his songs, such as “Hand in Glove” or “Handsome Devil,” it might seem easy to conclude that he is gay, but as The Times critic Tom Gatti argues, “Morrissey’s music offers an infinite capacity for interpretation.” In 1984, The Smith’s vocalist and lyricist said he refused to recognize the prefixes homo, bi, or hetero in defining human sexuality. “People are just sexual,” he said. “Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs.” Prior to that, in an interview, he “claimed to be a kind of a prophet for the fourth sex” on grounds that “he was bored with men… and bored with women.” Through it all, he maintained that he was asexual, disclosing only in 2006, without offering any more detail, that he was no longer celibate, hinting at “a late-blooming sex life.”
You ask me the time/But I sense something more/And I would like to give/What I think you’re asking for —“Handsome Devil,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does it really matter whether he was gay or not? Back in high school, it didn’t. Even my “homophobic” rocker friends, who were as macho as they were big fans of The Smiths, did not seem to entertain the question. That was because Morrissey was a musician more than a celebrity, who graced magazine covers, endorsed lifestyle products, and traipsed around red carpet events with a lover in tow. But then that was then and this is now, where, to have room in the music industry, the paparazzi and a multi-million-dollar advertising contract are sometimes as important as talent—and definitely more important than having something to say.
So please don’t stand in my way/Because I’m going to meet the one I love/No, Mamma, let me go! —“Shakespeare’s Sister,” The World Won’t Listen, 1987
The Smiths broke up in 1987 due to irreconcilable musical differences between Morrissey and his longtime collaborator, The Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr. As a solo act, Morrissey has since produced many songs with his signature depth and longing, including the 1994 hit “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get” from the number one UK album Vauxhall and I. There is talk that a new album is in the works, supposedly slated for release in September this year, and that there is a 40-million-pound offer for Morrissey to reunite with Marr, but Morrissey dismisses the rumor, calling it a hoax.
Haven’t had a dream in a long time/See the life I’ve had/Can make a good man bad —“Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want,” Hatful of Hollow, 1984
Does Morrissey still have a place in today’s musical landscape, dominated by the likes of American record producer, composer, and singer Timothy Z. Mosley, aka Timbaland? I heard over the radio a few years ago that Timbaland once threatened to retire from the music industry that he found boring and not challenging enough. Maybe, especially if one could earn riches and respect out of such celebrity-obsessed lyrics as “People know me/As the Great Timbaland (Timbaland)/Been brought in the slums but I ranned (But I ranned)/Been boning girls in the Scooby Doo van (“Naughty Eye,” Under Construction II, Timbaland & Magoo, 2003).
He’s not strange/He just wants to live his life this way —“Vicar in a Tutu,” The Queen is Dead, 1986
Maybe, like the dead queen’s, Morrissey’s time is up. But music, like life, goes on.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
CRY FREEDOM
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 20 JUNE 2008)
I spent the last holiday watching Peque Gallaga’s obra maestra, Oro Plata Mata, over again. I have seen this ‘80s classic from the now defunct Experimental Cinema of the Philippines more than once before, but released only late last month in DVD format by ABS-CBN’s Star Home Video, it proved worthy of yet another run.
BLURB
…in the Philippine vernacular [the] term ‘peacetime means exclusively all the years before Dec. 8, 1941. There has been no ‘peacetime’ since then. —Nick Joaquin
Back in 1982, when it was shown at the Manila Film Center, I was too young to have had the privilege to see Oro Plata Mata unfold on the big screen. But talking incessantly about the film, if only because it was a great shock to them that there was so much explicit material in it, the grownups around me had made it a part of my childhood fantasies. I waited for years to be able to see it and when I finally did, I must say I wasn’t at all disappointed, the cuts notwithstanding.
It was a coincidence that I saw it another time on Independence Day holiday this year, but it did make me think that Independence Day doesn’t really mean anything anymore now that freedom is nothing more special than the fact that we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Besides, who among us still have memories of war and liberation? A great percentage of today’s population, myself included, does not even know exactly what the Marcos regime meant to day-to-day life or what the 1986 revolution meant to those who were liberated from that.
But Oro Plata Mata, hailed as one the 10 best films of the ’80s, is not so much about war and freedom as it is about life changing under and adapting to dire circumstances. In the film, the Japanese only had a cameo role, appearing for no more than a minute in one scene in the form of a bloodied soldier, who died just as quickly. Mostly, the invading forces only made their way to the scene through the conversations of the hacienderos over a game of mahjong or through the lens of a telescope in which they appeared only as a parade of headlights tearing through the darkness toward the protagonists. But then, in brief, although it was set in World War II, the Peque Gallaga classic is not even about the Filipino at war with foreign invaders, but Filipinos at war with each other, which makes it even more poignant and terrifying.
What I find most commendable about this war epic is its realism. Like life, not all the scenes are exciting—some drag interminably like an afternoon in the woods, which is where the “Plata” section of the three-movement film unravels, with the two haciendero families of Negros taking refuge there. As in life, too, there is laughter even through the terror. Although I feel the whole cast performed excellently, including Mary Walter, Abbo de la Cruz, and Melly Mallari who all played servants, my favorite was Lorli Villanueva’s character Viring, an aristocrat who has a knack for gossip and an obsession with her diamantes. The most powerful scene, to me, is when bandits cut Doña Viring’s fingers off because she refuses to give them her precious rings. Equally powerful is the scene where, in the wake of the attack of the bandits, who leave immeasurable physical, emotional, and psychological damage, the lead character, Miguel (Joel Torre), coaxes the quorum—Nena (Liza Lorena), Inday (Fides Cuyugan Asensio), Jo (Maya Valdez), and Viring—to resume their mahjong sessions to ease them out of shock.
Oro Plata Mata, as I saw it, is made up of these little nuances that only get punctuated now and then by the big scenes. The premise of the story—the hopes and dreams, the terror and grief—is articulated not by convoluted dialogue or action-packed scenes or the idealization of characters and situations—but by, say, the grunts of Hermes (Ronnie Lazaro), a guerilla who lost his tongue to the war; or the world of meanings expressed through the eyes of Trining (Cherie Gil), whose innocence through the atrocities gradually turns into cynicism; or the sullen expression of her sister Maggie (Sandy Andolong), who awaits the return of her lover, dead or alive, from the war.
Indeed, in Oro Plata Mata, as in life, freedom is most meaningful where it is absent. What you do when you are allowed to do anything you want does not have as much impact as when you do it against the rules, the customs, the conventions, the limitations.
If I may digress into real life to make my point, Yves Saint-Laurent, who left us a few weeks ago, invented his now classic “le smoking” when women were not allowed to wear pants in certain public places, such as in New York’s fine dining establishments. As a result, we will remember him forever.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
I spent the last holiday watching Peque Gallaga’s obra maestra, Oro Plata Mata, over again. I have seen this ‘80s classic from the now defunct Experimental Cinema of the Philippines more than once before, but released only late last month in DVD format by ABS-CBN’s Star Home Video, it proved worthy of yet another run.
BLURB
…in the Philippine vernacular [the] term ‘peacetime means exclusively all the years before Dec. 8, 1941. There has been no ‘peacetime’ since then. —Nick Joaquin
Back in 1982, when it was shown at the Manila Film Center, I was too young to have had the privilege to see Oro Plata Mata unfold on the big screen. But talking incessantly about the film, if only because it was a great shock to them that there was so much explicit material in it, the grownups around me had made it a part of my childhood fantasies. I waited for years to be able to see it and when I finally did, I must say I wasn’t at all disappointed, the cuts notwithstanding.
It was a coincidence that I saw it another time on Independence Day holiday this year, but it did make me think that Independence Day doesn’t really mean anything anymore now that freedom is nothing more special than the fact that we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide. Besides, who among us still have memories of war and liberation? A great percentage of today’s population, myself included, does not even know exactly what the Marcos regime meant to day-to-day life or what the 1986 revolution meant to those who were liberated from that.
But Oro Plata Mata, hailed as one the 10 best films of the ’80s, is not so much about war and freedom as it is about life changing under and adapting to dire circumstances. In the film, the Japanese only had a cameo role, appearing for no more than a minute in one scene in the form of a bloodied soldier, who died just as quickly. Mostly, the invading forces only made their way to the scene through the conversations of the hacienderos over a game of mahjong or through the lens of a telescope in which they appeared only as a parade of headlights tearing through the darkness toward the protagonists. But then, in brief, although it was set in World War II, the Peque Gallaga classic is not even about the Filipino at war with foreign invaders, but Filipinos at war with each other, which makes it even more poignant and terrifying.
What I find most commendable about this war epic is its realism. Like life, not all the scenes are exciting—some drag interminably like an afternoon in the woods, which is where the “Plata” section of the three-movement film unravels, with the two haciendero families of Negros taking refuge there. As in life, too, there is laughter even through the terror. Although I feel the whole cast performed excellently, including Mary Walter, Abbo de la Cruz, and Melly Mallari who all played servants, my favorite was Lorli Villanueva’s character Viring, an aristocrat who has a knack for gossip and an obsession with her diamantes. The most powerful scene, to me, is when bandits cut Doña Viring’s fingers off because she refuses to give them her precious rings. Equally powerful is the scene where, in the wake of the attack of the bandits, who leave immeasurable physical, emotional, and psychological damage, the lead character, Miguel (Joel Torre), coaxes the quorum—Nena (Liza Lorena), Inday (Fides Cuyugan Asensio), Jo (Maya Valdez), and Viring—to resume their mahjong sessions to ease them out of shock.
Oro Plata Mata, as I saw it, is made up of these little nuances that only get punctuated now and then by the big scenes. The premise of the story—the hopes and dreams, the terror and grief—is articulated not by convoluted dialogue or action-packed scenes or the idealization of characters and situations—but by, say, the grunts of Hermes (Ronnie Lazaro), a guerilla who lost his tongue to the war; or the world of meanings expressed through the eyes of Trining (Cherie Gil), whose innocence through the atrocities gradually turns into cynicism; or the sullen expression of her sister Maggie (Sandy Andolong), who awaits the return of her lover, dead or alive, from the war.
Indeed, in Oro Plata Mata, as in life, freedom is most meaningful where it is absent. What you do when you are allowed to do anything you want does not have as much impact as when you do it against the rules, the customs, the conventions, the limitations.
If I may digress into real life to make my point, Yves Saint-Laurent, who left us a few weeks ago, invented his now classic “le smoking” when women were not allowed to wear pants in certain public places, such as in New York’s fine dining establishments. As a result, we will remember him forever.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
CROWNING GLORY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 13 JUNE 2008)
Good news to all the dads out there, as well as to men in general!
Personally, I thought that baldness was something life throws at you, some kind of a genetic lottery. Even worse, I had the notion that it was a natural consequence of aging. As his father before him, my father had receding hairline, but he died at 49 and didn’t live to see how far it would go as he aged.
BLURB
Only 216,000 Filipino men with Male Pattern Hair Loss out of a massive 5.4 million sought treatment options, with ultimately 21,000 receiving medical treatment. —AC Nielsen Factbook 2003
I have never really entertained the thought of going bald, but every time it crossed my mind, I would simply shrug it off, resigned to the fact—or what I thought was a fact—that there was nothing I could do about it, except resorting to a comb-over (which I swore I’d never ever do) or to hair implants (which I find obvious and ghastly on most men I know).
A dermatologist once told me that aging was a disease and therefore it had a cure. It sounds like a commercial for anti-aging medicine, but it’s proving to be quite true. Last week, at lunch with one of only two international board-certified medical experts specializing in dermatopathology in the Philippines, Dr. Adolfo Bormate, at the Mandarin Oriental Manila, I have stumbled upon the fact (a fact this time) that there is also a pill for hair loss or what Dr. Bormate and the people behind ProHair, a program being advocated by Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) Philippines to provide professional attention to hair loss, as “Male Pattern Hair Loss” (MPHL). I won’t go into the details of the program, but suffice it to say that if you are afflicted with MPHL or are worried about eventually having it, the advocacy program has recently created www.prohair.com.ph to help you through the problem. Check it out! It’s literally like Facebook, except that instead of plain networking and throwing red gummy bears at each other every now and then, on the ProHair website, you’re dealing with a problem—yours, your father’s, your brother’s, your husband’s, your boyfriend’s, or your son’s—that burdens some 5.4 million Filipinos, who are fighting “a silent battle with stress, confidence, and self-esteem.” According to a study in 2007, 50 percent of all Filipino males or two out of three will suffer from MPHL in their lifetime.
It’s not funny, although some of us might think that the worst that can happen when your forehead starts to extend toward the nape of your neck is that you will be the butt of all jokes. In a study at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia by Thomas Cash, there is “great distress associated with poor body image in men with MPHL,” who have been found to have “copious coping efforts to adjust to, compensate for, or conceal hair loss.”
Thus, the need to recognize MPHL for what it is, which was the point of our lunch and the point of ProHair. Aside from information, along with all the possible treatments, the website has a long list of specialists you can run to for professional help. Moreover, you can reach out to other MPHL “sufferers” to seek or provide support or simply exchange experiences and information. Best of all, there’s a “Doctor’s Station” where medical experts can share professional opinion and advice. Whether or not you are having anxiety attacks over real, anticipated, or imagined MPHL, prohair.com.ph is worth a visit. There’s cause to worry: MPHL is a progressive condition that, if not properly diagnosed or if left untreated, sheds at least five percent of hair each year.
But what caught my attention over lunch with Dr. Bormate, clinical associate professor at the UP-PGH Medical Center, international fellow at the American Academy of Dermatology, and non-resident associate at the American Society of Dermatopathology, is the drug Finasteride. Showing before and after photographs of many of his patients, he said it had been proven to work, although, according to some studies, some two percent of cases under this treatment suffer such side effects as decreased libido and volume of ejaculation, as well as erectile dysfunction. After all, the main culprit of MPHL is also the one responsible for the development of male organs. What a bitter pill, indeed! But Dr. Bormate was quick to say that all it takes is to stop the medication to get rid of its side effects, except that you also lose all the hair you have gained back along with them.
But are we just splitting hairs here? Finasteride is not an over-the-counter drug, which only means that you can choose to assure yourself of professional supervision while you are taking it, so all you have to do is to pray you do not belong to the poor two percent who have to sacrifice sex for vanity or that, if you do belong to this small fraction, vanity does turn out to be your favorite sin.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Good news to all the dads out there, as well as to men in general!
Personally, I thought that baldness was something life throws at you, some kind of a genetic lottery. Even worse, I had the notion that it was a natural consequence of aging. As his father before him, my father had receding hairline, but he died at 49 and didn’t live to see how far it would go as he aged.
BLURB
Only 216,000 Filipino men with Male Pattern Hair Loss out of a massive 5.4 million sought treatment options, with ultimately 21,000 receiving medical treatment. —AC Nielsen Factbook 2003
I have never really entertained the thought of going bald, but every time it crossed my mind, I would simply shrug it off, resigned to the fact—or what I thought was a fact—that there was nothing I could do about it, except resorting to a comb-over (which I swore I’d never ever do) or to hair implants (which I find obvious and ghastly on most men I know).
A dermatologist once told me that aging was a disease and therefore it had a cure. It sounds like a commercial for anti-aging medicine, but it’s proving to be quite true. Last week, at lunch with one of only two international board-certified medical experts specializing in dermatopathology in the Philippines, Dr. Adolfo Bormate, at the Mandarin Oriental Manila, I have stumbled upon the fact (a fact this time) that there is also a pill for hair loss or what Dr. Bormate and the people behind ProHair, a program being advocated by Merck Sharp & Dohme (MSD) Philippines to provide professional attention to hair loss, as “Male Pattern Hair Loss” (MPHL). I won’t go into the details of the program, but suffice it to say that if you are afflicted with MPHL or are worried about eventually having it, the advocacy program has recently created www.prohair.com.ph to help you through the problem. Check it out! It’s literally like Facebook, except that instead of plain networking and throwing red gummy bears at each other every now and then, on the ProHair website, you’re dealing with a problem—yours, your father’s, your brother’s, your husband’s, your boyfriend’s, or your son’s—that burdens some 5.4 million Filipinos, who are fighting “a silent battle with stress, confidence, and self-esteem.” According to a study in 2007, 50 percent of all Filipino males or two out of three will suffer from MPHL in their lifetime.
It’s not funny, although some of us might think that the worst that can happen when your forehead starts to extend toward the nape of your neck is that you will be the butt of all jokes. In a study at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia by Thomas Cash, there is “great distress associated with poor body image in men with MPHL,” who have been found to have “copious coping efforts to adjust to, compensate for, or conceal hair loss.”
Thus, the need to recognize MPHL for what it is, which was the point of our lunch and the point of ProHair. Aside from information, along with all the possible treatments, the website has a long list of specialists you can run to for professional help. Moreover, you can reach out to other MPHL “sufferers” to seek or provide support or simply exchange experiences and information. Best of all, there’s a “Doctor’s Station” where medical experts can share professional opinion and advice. Whether or not you are having anxiety attacks over real, anticipated, or imagined MPHL, prohair.com.ph is worth a visit. There’s cause to worry: MPHL is a progressive condition that, if not properly diagnosed or if left untreated, sheds at least five percent of hair each year.
But what caught my attention over lunch with Dr. Bormate, clinical associate professor at the UP-PGH Medical Center, international fellow at the American Academy of Dermatology, and non-resident associate at the American Society of Dermatopathology, is the drug Finasteride. Showing before and after photographs of many of his patients, he said it had been proven to work, although, according to some studies, some two percent of cases under this treatment suffer such side effects as decreased libido and volume of ejaculation, as well as erectile dysfunction. After all, the main culprit of MPHL is also the one responsible for the development of male organs. What a bitter pill, indeed! But Dr. Bormate was quick to say that all it takes is to stop the medication to get rid of its side effects, except that you also lose all the hair you have gained back along with them.
But are we just splitting hairs here? Finasteride is not an over-the-counter drug, which only means that you can choose to assure yourself of professional supervision while you are taking it, so all you have to do is to pray you do not belong to the poor two percent who have to sacrifice sex for vanity or that, if you do belong to this small fraction, vanity does turn out to be your favorite sin.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
BACK TO HISTORY (AND OTHER CLASSES)
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 6 JUNE 2008)
Throngs of young people are heading back to the campus next week. For most students, except for those at De La Salle University, this is the very last weekend of this year’s glorious summer vacation.
BLURB
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. —Aristotle
When you think about it, school is the realm of the past and the future. The present, in the mind of a student groaning under the weight of homework, school projects, and endless lectures, is when the bell rings to signal recess or, better yet, when it rings to signal class dismissal. That’s when you can do what you want when you want to do it, which is now, whether it is to watch the new Indiana Jones or to go on a beer session with friends or to play Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360 or to simply hang around your bedroom and wish it were summer all over again.
But in the classroom, from Monday to Friday or from Monday to Saturday, you have to shuttle back and forth between yesterday and tomorrow, trying to commit to memory the adventures of dead people (history, social science, literature) or the rules made eons ago (language, manners, religion) or otherwise trying to imagine what’s ahead (science and technology), even as this whole ordeal is really about preparing you for the future that has yet to come and arming you with the tools you might need to make it there (mathematics, philosophy, logic).
Oh but if I were young again, I would have a better appreciation of Wharton or Collette or Shakespeare and I would never trade in a school hour spent on the reign of the dinosaurs or the beginnings of our solar system for the pleasure of cutting a class, only to spend the hour my parents paid for dearly to learn how to smoke like James Dean. But then in my youth even James Dean was history.
Sometimes, I find it strange that nowadays people in their 20s cannot relate to stuff that happened only two decades ago, even as practically every aspect of this generation’s version of now is a recreation of then, which is why your latest rap song has tinges of Madonna’s hits before the first of her many self-reinventions, which is why Bevery Hills 90210 is up for a remake, which is why your latest American Idol chose to sing Collective Soul’s “The World I Know” on performance night before the finals. Even during Philippine Fashion Week only a few days ago, many designers presented a loot from days gone by, from tribal touches (Butz Fuentes) to butterfly sleeves (Kenneth Chua), from graphic prints of the ultimate contravida icon Bella Flores (Happy Andrada) to impressions of the long retired dandy (Odelon Simpao), his bow tie and all retrieved from the closet of time.
Indeed, there is no escaping what’s behind us as we go forward into the unknown. Sometimes, I think school’s main goal is to help us come to terms with the fact that everything we are now, everything we know now, everything that is available to us now is the fruit of the labors of our past, including, for the most part, our very freedom. It is so that as we march on into a future of our own making, we would accord those who have gone before us a modicum of respect.
Of course, like our predecessors who broke free from the shackles of tradition to make things better, we have every right to march to the beat of our own drums, but we do need to take some time to thank the one who long ago invented them.
And that’s probably why we need to spend the first 20 years of our lives chained to our desks within the four walls of a classroom, poring over books written under what we believe to be different circumstances, reliving lives long ended, learning lessons others had to suffer to learn, following rules made long ago, as we dream to be free, to make our mark, to make life a little better for us and, often without exactly meaning to, for the generations to come.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Throngs of young people are heading back to the campus next week. For most students, except for those at De La Salle University, this is the very last weekend of this year’s glorious summer vacation.
BLURB
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. —Aristotle
When you think about it, school is the realm of the past and the future. The present, in the mind of a student groaning under the weight of homework, school projects, and endless lectures, is when the bell rings to signal recess or, better yet, when it rings to signal class dismissal. That’s when you can do what you want when you want to do it, which is now, whether it is to watch the new Indiana Jones or to go on a beer session with friends or to play Grand Theft Auto IV on Xbox 360 or to simply hang around your bedroom and wish it were summer all over again.
But in the classroom, from Monday to Friday or from Monday to Saturday, you have to shuttle back and forth between yesterday and tomorrow, trying to commit to memory the adventures of dead people (history, social science, literature) or the rules made eons ago (language, manners, religion) or otherwise trying to imagine what’s ahead (science and technology), even as this whole ordeal is really about preparing you for the future that has yet to come and arming you with the tools you might need to make it there (mathematics, philosophy, logic).
Oh but if I were young again, I would have a better appreciation of Wharton or Collette or Shakespeare and I would never trade in a school hour spent on the reign of the dinosaurs or the beginnings of our solar system for the pleasure of cutting a class, only to spend the hour my parents paid for dearly to learn how to smoke like James Dean. But then in my youth even James Dean was history.
Sometimes, I find it strange that nowadays people in their 20s cannot relate to stuff that happened only two decades ago, even as practically every aspect of this generation’s version of now is a recreation of then, which is why your latest rap song has tinges of Madonna’s hits before the first of her many self-reinventions, which is why Bevery Hills 90210 is up for a remake, which is why your latest American Idol chose to sing Collective Soul’s “The World I Know” on performance night before the finals. Even during Philippine Fashion Week only a few days ago, many designers presented a loot from days gone by, from tribal touches (Butz Fuentes) to butterfly sleeves (Kenneth Chua), from graphic prints of the ultimate contravida icon Bella Flores (Happy Andrada) to impressions of the long retired dandy (Odelon Simpao), his bow tie and all retrieved from the closet of time.
Indeed, there is no escaping what’s behind us as we go forward into the unknown. Sometimes, I think school’s main goal is to help us come to terms with the fact that everything we are now, everything we know now, everything that is available to us now is the fruit of the labors of our past, including, for the most part, our very freedom. It is so that as we march on into a future of our own making, we would accord those who have gone before us a modicum of respect.
Of course, like our predecessors who broke free from the shackles of tradition to make things better, we have every right to march to the beat of our own drums, but we do need to take some time to thank the one who long ago invented them.
And that’s probably why we need to spend the first 20 years of our lives chained to our desks within the four walls of a classroom, poring over books written under what we believe to be different circumstances, reliving lives long ended, learning lessons others had to suffer to learn, following rules made long ago, as we dream to be free, to make our mark, to make life a little better for us and, often without exactly meaning to, for the generations to come.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
PAY YOURSELF FIRST
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, A LIFESTYLE MAGAZINE PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 30 MAY 2008)
One late afternoon at the office, we had an enlightening visit from Joyce Chua, VP, retail branch head at HSBC in Quezon City. It’s quite empowering to have some expert guide you through some simple steps to determine your net worth and help you increase it over the years via sound investment that is tailor-fit to your particular financial circumstances, which include your risk attitude.
BLURB
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. —Miguel de Cervantes
Well, c’est la vie! Apparently, risk plays a big part in the equation that spells your financial freedom or lack thereof. Personally, I used to find it so frustrating that you go to the bank for financial advice, but at every turn it’s up to you to go this way (returns are high, but so are the risk) or that (returns are low, but so are the risk) and you end up just putting all your eggs in one basket, most often a regular savings account that yields no more than two percent interest per annum.
Still, it’s always a good idea to save some (for a rainy day), knowing that in life it’s not summer through and through and there’s always a season for rain and even storms. But then, in the world of grownups, where money is all-important, not only for survival but for the quality of life, the “piggy bank” idea that our elders instilled in us when we were growing up just doesn’t cut it. The idea really is to get your money out there to grow, the more exposed to the risk of drastic fluctuations, such as in the stock market, the more likely it will lead you to abundance, that is if you survive the ups and downs. Ancient wisdom does give credit to falling as the opportunity to rise again, doesn’t it?
In her very charming, not-as-stiff-as-a-banker’s manner, Joyce seems to point out that the best way to go is to diversify, although the word diversify still sounds as Greek to me as portfolio, bonds, and stocks when used in the context of money. In fact, HSBC is offering this advice even to young people. In its drive to encourage saving up for the future among the youth, it has recently launched the product AutoSaver, which is supposed to put you in control of how much you save, even if—and especially when—“you can’t help spending.” I don’t really know how it works, but it appears to be a less intimidating way to start getting more aggressive with your dream of securing a bright future for yourself, since it earns three percent per annum on peso accounts. All you need is a commitment to save an amount of your choice every month, which can be as low as P1,000.
In these times of inflation, where basic necessities like rice and fuel are taking up more and more of our monthly income, P1,000 a month might seem too much to commit to for a long-term investment, but Joyce challenges us to look at it another way. “We have the tendency to look at our expenses first and whatever is left we save up,” she said. “But since you worked so hard for the money, the ideal way is to pay yourself first and then whatever is left you budget for your monthly expenses.”
Easier said than done, but the young HSBC VP shrugged it off, “If you look at your expenses carefully, you’ll realize you’re spending quite a fortune on unnecessary little things, like coffee or cigarettes or taxi fares.” True, if I were to pay myself for my hard work every month, I’d definitely set aside more than P1,000 a month.
And here’s where Joyce gets the opportunity to push her diversification agenda, saying that one’s savings should be divided among different products that offer different yields, from a regular savings account, so you have liquid cash to obtain in case of emergencies, to time deposits, all the way to bond funds and stocks. It’s not easy if you have no savings whatsoever at the moment, but then nothing is easy. Again we turn to ancient wisdom. Like any great journey of a thousand miles or so, it takes one small step—and a lot of patience—to get on the road to millions.
OK, there’s no way you can open a savings account with less than P5,000, but don’t burst your bubble just yet because there’s always the piggy bank to turn to in the meantime. Ancient wisdom does have all the answers, doesn’t it?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
One late afternoon at the office, we had an enlightening visit from Joyce Chua, VP, retail branch head at HSBC in Quezon City. It’s quite empowering to have some expert guide you through some simple steps to determine your net worth and help you increase it over the years via sound investment that is tailor-fit to your particular financial circumstances, which include your risk attitude.
BLURB
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. —Miguel de Cervantes
Well, c’est la vie! Apparently, risk plays a big part in the equation that spells your financial freedom or lack thereof. Personally, I used to find it so frustrating that you go to the bank for financial advice, but at every turn it’s up to you to go this way (returns are high, but so are the risk) or that (returns are low, but so are the risk) and you end up just putting all your eggs in one basket, most often a regular savings account that yields no more than two percent interest per annum.
Still, it’s always a good idea to save some (for a rainy day), knowing that in life it’s not summer through and through and there’s always a season for rain and even storms. But then, in the world of grownups, where money is all-important, not only for survival but for the quality of life, the “piggy bank” idea that our elders instilled in us when we were growing up just doesn’t cut it. The idea really is to get your money out there to grow, the more exposed to the risk of drastic fluctuations, such as in the stock market, the more likely it will lead you to abundance, that is if you survive the ups and downs. Ancient wisdom does give credit to falling as the opportunity to rise again, doesn’t it?
In her very charming, not-as-stiff-as-a-banker’s manner, Joyce seems to point out that the best way to go is to diversify, although the word diversify still sounds as Greek to me as portfolio, bonds, and stocks when used in the context of money. In fact, HSBC is offering this advice even to young people. In its drive to encourage saving up for the future among the youth, it has recently launched the product AutoSaver, which is supposed to put you in control of how much you save, even if—and especially when—“you can’t help spending.” I don’t really know how it works, but it appears to be a less intimidating way to start getting more aggressive with your dream of securing a bright future for yourself, since it earns three percent per annum on peso accounts. All you need is a commitment to save an amount of your choice every month, which can be as low as P1,000.
In these times of inflation, where basic necessities like rice and fuel are taking up more and more of our monthly income, P1,000 a month might seem too much to commit to for a long-term investment, but Joyce challenges us to look at it another way. “We have the tendency to look at our expenses first and whatever is left we save up,” she said. “But since you worked so hard for the money, the ideal way is to pay yourself first and then whatever is left you budget for your monthly expenses.”
Easier said than done, but the young HSBC VP shrugged it off, “If you look at your expenses carefully, you’ll realize you’re spending quite a fortune on unnecessary little things, like coffee or cigarettes or taxi fares.” True, if I were to pay myself for my hard work every month, I’d definitely set aside more than P1,000 a month.
And here’s where Joyce gets the opportunity to push her diversification agenda, saying that one’s savings should be divided among different products that offer different yields, from a regular savings account, so you have liquid cash to obtain in case of emergencies, to time deposits, all the way to bond funds and stocks. It’s not easy if you have no savings whatsoever at the moment, but then nothing is easy. Again we turn to ancient wisdom. Like any great journey of a thousand miles or so, it takes one small step—and a lot of patience—to get on the road to millions.
OK, there’s no way you can open a savings account with less than P5,000, but don’t burst your bubble just yet because there’s always the piggy bank to turn to in the meantime. Ancient wisdom does have all the answers, doesn’t it?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
THE POWER OF STYLE
(FROM THE EDITOR, SENSE&STYLE, JUNE2008 ISSUE, www.senseandstyle.net.ph)
This issue is dedicated to the yin side of the universe, although we do not exactly mean the “feminine passive principle in nature that in Chinese cosmology is exhibited in darkness, cold, or wetness,” as it is defined by Merriam-Webster.
Nevertheless, we believe in unity in duality and that unless we embrace these seemingly opposing forces there is no way we can achieve balance or harmony or, in more temporal terms, success and happiness. To quote from Merriam-Webster yet again, yin, after all, “combines with yang to produce all that comes to be.”
BLURB
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. —Roseanne Barr
But this issue does not aim to draw attention to the feminine as a force breaking into what history has come to define as a “man’s world.” In a larger context, it’s not about women’s rights or gender equality and it’s definitely not about the classic, if tiring, battle of the sexes. Rather than about woman power, it’s simply an ode to the all that is great, strong, captivating, influential, groundbreaking, life-changing in a woman, whether such powers take her to the top of male-dominated industries, win her the attention of Prince Charming, or simply turn heads as she walks by. It’s true, at least where I come from, that a woman need not imbibe the qualities of a man to make it in a man’s world, although in the previews for Spring/Summer ’08 late last year, tomboy chic made quite an appearance, particularly in the collections of Stella MaCartney, John Galliano, Ralph Lauren, and Stefano Pilati for Yves Saint-Laurent.
Still, now that we are right in the middle of the Spring/Summer fashion season, feminine rules, as evidenced by the prevalence of florals and dainty, girly dresses that have somehow stolen the thunder from the gender-benders. That is exactly the point of this issue: You can be a power woman in a flowing dress, Fendi, Louboutins, and Shu Uemura lashes all included. After all, the word power has no gender, unless you translate it in French.
Our cover girl, Nancy Jane, has metamorphosed from the sweet, shy, you-can-make-her-wait-because-she-won’t-mind Nancy Castiglione (“I.Am.A.Woman,” page 120) and needless to say it has been a struggle. Of course, with every change, something has to give and in Nancy’s case, it might have been innocence and a bit of her faith in the world. “I used to be a big dreamer,” she admits. “But I’m a lot more jaded now, a lot more aggressive, I think, and a little bit more practical.”
But change is not always a dramatic turnaround. Half-Filipino, half-American Cathy Tanco Ong (“A League of Her Own,” page 132) “grew up in Maryland, playing sports, including basketball, softball, tennis, volleyball, and even cheerleading,” so it didn’t have to take too much of a revolution for this former newscaster, mother of two, and now team manager of the Little League to end up in the “world of soiled rubber shoes, fast balls, and catching mitts,” even if baseball is still deemed a man’s game in this age of Lydia de Vega and Elma Muros.
To me, Abby Buenviaje Magpayo (“Strength in Numbers,” page 134) is the embodiment of the vision behind this issue. An investment banker, she admits she moves in a tight circle of men in power suits, crunching numbers, making major financial projections, yet she remains every inch a woman, toting a Fendi Spy bag, to boot. “We can do everything [men] can do. Even better,” she says. “And in high heels at that!”
Indeed, sometimes, it’s sad that some feminists try to push gender equality with an aversion to stiletto heels, plunging backs and necklines, and slits from here to there. Gathering all the tools ever available to women in some kind of a power kit (“Look At Me,” page 26), we let ourselves be guided by the allure of long lashes, the hypnotic charm of red lipstick, the staying power of pearls, and the killer appeal of stilettos. More elucidating is a review of the 1994 book, The Power of Style: The Women Who Defined the Art of Living Well, by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins (“Elements of Style,” page 20), whose profile of iconic, if iconoclastic, women like Jackie O, Diana Vreeland, Wallis Simpson, and Coco Chanel reminds us in the chic, charming, glitzy, or glamorous way only women can do that changing the world has never been solely a man’s job.
Looking at it this way, our mission to “inform, entertain, inspire, and empower women” is ever more rewarding, as keeping our feet on the ground, we do our best with every issue to put style and substance in one package. In this special edition, for instance, as seamlessly as yin and yang, fashion blends with the call for freedom (“Set Me Free,” page 88), just as the desire for a shapely, fit body mixes with the pursuit of enlightenment (“Divine Secrets of the Yoga Sisterhood,” page 70).
Indeed, it is a disgrace that some people associate weakness with a woman. As one contemporary superwoman, American lawyer and diplomat Faith Whittlesey, once said, “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”
A
Post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
This issue is dedicated to the yin side of the universe, although we do not exactly mean the “feminine passive principle in nature that in Chinese cosmology is exhibited in darkness, cold, or wetness,” as it is defined by Merriam-Webster.
Nevertheless, we believe in unity in duality and that unless we embrace these seemingly opposing forces there is no way we can achieve balance or harmony or, in more temporal terms, success and happiness. To quote from Merriam-Webster yet again, yin, after all, “combines with yang to produce all that comes to be.”
BLURB
The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. —Roseanne Barr
But this issue does not aim to draw attention to the feminine as a force breaking into what history has come to define as a “man’s world.” In a larger context, it’s not about women’s rights or gender equality and it’s definitely not about the classic, if tiring, battle of the sexes. Rather than about woman power, it’s simply an ode to the all that is great, strong, captivating, influential, groundbreaking, life-changing in a woman, whether such powers take her to the top of male-dominated industries, win her the attention of Prince Charming, or simply turn heads as she walks by. It’s true, at least where I come from, that a woman need not imbibe the qualities of a man to make it in a man’s world, although in the previews for Spring/Summer ’08 late last year, tomboy chic made quite an appearance, particularly in the collections of Stella MaCartney, John Galliano, Ralph Lauren, and Stefano Pilati for Yves Saint-Laurent.
Still, now that we are right in the middle of the Spring/Summer fashion season, feminine rules, as evidenced by the prevalence of florals and dainty, girly dresses that have somehow stolen the thunder from the gender-benders. That is exactly the point of this issue: You can be a power woman in a flowing dress, Fendi, Louboutins, and Shu Uemura lashes all included. After all, the word power has no gender, unless you translate it in French.
Our cover girl, Nancy Jane, has metamorphosed from the sweet, shy, you-can-make-her-wait-because-she-won’t-mind Nancy Castiglione (“I.Am.A.Woman,” page 120) and needless to say it has been a struggle. Of course, with every change, something has to give and in Nancy’s case, it might have been innocence and a bit of her faith in the world. “I used to be a big dreamer,” she admits. “But I’m a lot more jaded now, a lot more aggressive, I think, and a little bit more practical.”
But change is not always a dramatic turnaround. Half-Filipino, half-American Cathy Tanco Ong (“A League of Her Own,” page 132) “grew up in Maryland, playing sports, including basketball, softball, tennis, volleyball, and even cheerleading,” so it didn’t have to take too much of a revolution for this former newscaster, mother of two, and now team manager of the Little League to end up in the “world of soiled rubber shoes, fast balls, and catching mitts,” even if baseball is still deemed a man’s game in this age of Lydia de Vega and Elma Muros.
To me, Abby Buenviaje Magpayo (“Strength in Numbers,” page 134) is the embodiment of the vision behind this issue. An investment banker, she admits she moves in a tight circle of men in power suits, crunching numbers, making major financial projections, yet she remains every inch a woman, toting a Fendi Spy bag, to boot. “We can do everything [men] can do. Even better,” she says. “And in high heels at that!”
Indeed, sometimes, it’s sad that some feminists try to push gender equality with an aversion to stiletto heels, plunging backs and necklines, and slits from here to there. Gathering all the tools ever available to women in some kind of a power kit (“Look At Me,” page 26), we let ourselves be guided by the allure of long lashes, the hypnotic charm of red lipstick, the staying power of pearls, and the killer appeal of stilettos. More elucidating is a review of the 1994 book, The Power of Style: The Women Who Defined the Art of Living Well, by Annette Tapert and Diana Edkins (“Elements of Style,” page 20), whose profile of iconic, if iconoclastic, women like Jackie O, Diana Vreeland, Wallis Simpson, and Coco Chanel reminds us in the chic, charming, glitzy, or glamorous way only women can do that changing the world has never been solely a man’s job.
Looking at it this way, our mission to “inform, entertain, inspire, and empower women” is ever more rewarding, as keeping our feet on the ground, we do our best with every issue to put style and substance in one package. In this special edition, for instance, as seamlessly as yin and yang, fashion blends with the call for freedom (“Set Me Free,” page 88), just as the desire for a shapely, fit body mixes with the pursuit of enlightenment (“Divine Secrets of the Yoga Sisterhood,” page 70).
Indeed, it is a disgrace that some people associate weakness with a woman. As one contemporary superwoman, American lawyer and diplomat Faith Whittlesey, once said, “Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.”
A
Post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
MEN AND WOMEN
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE CARRIED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 23 MAY 2008)
According to American advertising executive and author Lois Wyse, “men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” I hate to add fuel to the fire that has kept the Battle of the Sexes a burning issue in this age of Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but in my experience managing people and working under male and female bosses, I find women somewhat stronger.
BLURB
You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman. —Jane Galvin Lewis
This is, of course, a sweeping statement, but I am talking in general terms. I have to emphasize this is based on my experience—limited, I admit—drawing good things out of young and not-so-young writers, artists, and other mostly creative people.
This is not to say, either, that men are weaker. It’s just that, I believe, women have more fortitude. Under heavy pressure, they seem to plod on more steadily, working with what’s available, rather than dreaming or complaining about what should have been available to make things easier, more manageable, less stressful. More important, men, straight or gay, tend to get hurt more easily. When things go wrong and you scold a woman, you are more or less assured she will focus on what went wrong and how she can avoid it next time. When things go wrong and you scold a man, you often have to worry if you hurt his ego, if you made him feel small, if he felt violated and humiliated by your “harsh” words.
As bosses, men and women are different, too. I have had an exceptional boss back in my early days as an advertising copywriter. He was an award-winning creative director and, working under him, I always wondered how I could get into his brains because even though he was quiet and hardly ever gave me specific orders I felt guided by his renowned brilliance in the advertising field. All the time, he would leave me to figure out on my own how to attack a creative challenge, look at whatever I came up with, and make very minimal recommendations on how to make it better. Voila, I won a Best Print Ad award under this kind of leadership and did many commercials that I feel continue to enrich and empower me now. But then that was it. Even now, I cannot say I know this man and I cannot even recall any word he had said or written to me that has any role in what I have become.
In contrast, the best boss I ever had, a female, was more involved in my development as a writer. Although she did give me a lot of freedom, allowing me to push the envelope at any given time, she conveyed to me in no uncertain terms how things should be and how I should do them. Her rules, at least to me, were not black and white; she left a universe of gray areas so I could play with my own ideas and inject my own style, but somehow I could see her imprint on my work. Somehow, the very way she carried herself, composed her sentences, drank her tea, did a 15-minute meditation break during work afternoons, smelled the flowers that arrived on her desk almost every day, gazed at the full moon, and conversed with people, whether a spa attendant or the President of the Philippines, had impact on my own growth as a person, as a writer, as an editor, whose main task now is to encourage, nurture, and manage creative talent.
Maybe it’s not fair that I make these comparisons. As an editor, I have had the privilege of handling both men’s and women’s magazines. If it’s any indication, I have spent 90 percent of the last decade working on women’s magazines. It’s just that I feel more drawn to the lifestyle of women. They have, for one thing, a million and one ways to get all dressed up, not counting the frills they put on after the basic wardrobe, whereas, except for the very few but growing number of male fashionistas who are so daring and inventive with their looks, men only mostly have the usual suit or jacket to turn to when there’s a need to put their best foot forward, especially now that even the boutonnière is no longer in fashion.
But then that’s me talking, a man who does have the tendency to dream and complain about what should have been rather than working with what is.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
According to American advertising executive and author Lois Wyse, “men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.” I hate to add fuel to the fire that has kept the Battle of the Sexes a burning issue in this age of Cory Aquino and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, but in my experience managing people and working under male and female bosses, I find women somewhat stronger.
BLURB
You don’t have to be anti-man to be pro-woman. —Jane Galvin Lewis
This is, of course, a sweeping statement, but I am talking in general terms. I have to emphasize this is based on my experience—limited, I admit—drawing good things out of young and not-so-young writers, artists, and other mostly creative people.
This is not to say, either, that men are weaker. It’s just that, I believe, women have more fortitude. Under heavy pressure, they seem to plod on more steadily, working with what’s available, rather than dreaming or complaining about what should have been available to make things easier, more manageable, less stressful. More important, men, straight or gay, tend to get hurt more easily. When things go wrong and you scold a woman, you are more or less assured she will focus on what went wrong and how she can avoid it next time. When things go wrong and you scold a man, you often have to worry if you hurt his ego, if you made him feel small, if he felt violated and humiliated by your “harsh” words.
As bosses, men and women are different, too. I have had an exceptional boss back in my early days as an advertising copywriter. He was an award-winning creative director and, working under him, I always wondered how I could get into his brains because even though he was quiet and hardly ever gave me specific orders I felt guided by his renowned brilliance in the advertising field. All the time, he would leave me to figure out on my own how to attack a creative challenge, look at whatever I came up with, and make very minimal recommendations on how to make it better. Voila, I won a Best Print Ad award under this kind of leadership and did many commercials that I feel continue to enrich and empower me now. But then that was it. Even now, I cannot say I know this man and I cannot even recall any word he had said or written to me that has any role in what I have become.
In contrast, the best boss I ever had, a female, was more involved in my development as a writer. Although she did give me a lot of freedom, allowing me to push the envelope at any given time, she conveyed to me in no uncertain terms how things should be and how I should do them. Her rules, at least to me, were not black and white; she left a universe of gray areas so I could play with my own ideas and inject my own style, but somehow I could see her imprint on my work. Somehow, the very way she carried herself, composed her sentences, drank her tea, did a 15-minute meditation break during work afternoons, smelled the flowers that arrived on her desk almost every day, gazed at the full moon, and conversed with people, whether a spa attendant or the President of the Philippines, had impact on my own growth as a person, as a writer, as an editor, whose main task now is to encourage, nurture, and manage creative talent.
Maybe it’s not fair that I make these comparisons. As an editor, I have had the privilege of handling both men’s and women’s magazines. If it’s any indication, I have spent 90 percent of the last decade working on women’s magazines. It’s just that I feel more drawn to the lifestyle of women. They have, for one thing, a million and one ways to get all dressed up, not counting the frills they put on after the basic wardrobe, whereas, except for the very few but growing number of male fashionistas who are so daring and inventive with their looks, men only mostly have the usual suit or jacket to turn to when there’s a need to put their best foot forward, especially now that even the boutonnière is no longer in fashion.
But then that’s me talking, a man who does have the tendency to dream and complain about what should have been rather than working with what is.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
LAUGHING IN FLOWERS
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, THE WEEKEND MAGAZINE CARRIED EVERY FRIDAY IN MANILA BULLETIN, 16 MAY 2008)
“Behold this flower. In this exists the entire universe.”
That was Deepak Chopra in Manila back in the late ‘90s, holding a single long-stemmed rose before a whole ballroom of us at some hotel in Makati. This Indian medical doctor and writer, a great force in the propagation of the New Thought Movement particularly in the United States, was then challenging us to look at the interconnectedness of life, the existence of all that was, all there is, and all there ever will be in everything.
Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler’s dower
—William Allingham
What better way to bring this point across but with the example of a flower, whose universal appeal makes it at once simple and magical, common and sublime, straightforward and symbolic? After all, any flower is as mute as it is eloquent, as silent as it is loud and clear in delivering messages that resonate within us with the impact of a megaphone. What exactly does a narra bloom stand for in the language of flowers? I don’t know, but when this tiny flower randomly fell on my windshield just when, faced with the dilemma of quitting a job I loved for greener pastures, I was praying to the Little Flower, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, for a sign—a yellow flower if I should stay or a white one if I should go—I knew exactly what it conveyed to me. It was the first ever time I earnestly asked for a sign from heaven and it was granted to me in no uncertain terms.
To me, a flower is as much a representation of the brevity of life as an embodiment of its infinity. Because of its short life span, we learn to come to terms with the fact that all things must end, that even beautiful things, joyful things must come to pass. But because after every wilting comes a season of blooming, we might be made to believe that life goes on, that there is a cycle with which we must come along, and that there is a time, a season for everything—joy and sorrow, youth and age, life and death.
In Manila, even in places where there is no space for gardens, flowers thrive. The pink bougainvilleas that adorn the aisles on Burgos Street from Roxas Boulevard appear to unfurl their petals and their color as if to defy the scorching sun. According to my friend, floral master Rachy Cuna, the less you water this survivor of a plant, the more beautiful it is when it comes into flower. Nature is magic in a bougainvillea, whose response to scarcity is beauty. I wish people had the same survival mechanism, especially in times of dearth such as now.
But other flower species paint Manila with all the colors of the spectrum. Yellowbells, gumamela, santan, calachuchi, four-o’-clocks, bandera Española, and other colorful blossoms peep out of fences in the villages everywhere or claim their pride of place even in tin cans on the steps leading to a shanty. If you’re lucky, you can drive through an almost deserted road in a village in Las Piñas under a shower of orange, the falling petals of a fire tree in bloom.
Edwin Josue, a Filipino florist who made it in New York, once raved to me during his brief homecoming how in awe he was that flowers grew almost wildly in the most unexpected places in Manila. At his shop in the Upper East Side of New York, flowers need to be flown in from places like Holland because, after all, when you walk down the busy streets of the Big Apple, all the flowers you can see are in the shop windows, especially now, when the biggest designers, from Valentino to Ralph Lauren, from Jean-Paul Gaultier to Viktor & Rolf, have all decided to grow a forest of flowers in their Spring/Summer 2008 collections.
If the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Earth laughs in flowers,” was right, we can safely conclude there is happiness where we are. But how come our parks cannot be gardens full of glad tidings? How come some government official decided to cut down all the fire trees along some provincial road because they caused so much litter? How come we often fail to look up at the brighter side of things like flowers turning their faces to the sun?
I suppose that with so much “laughter” around us, we are taking it for granted how lucky we are to be happy in these very lonely times.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
“Behold this flower. In this exists the entire universe.”
That was Deepak Chopra in Manila back in the late ‘90s, holding a single long-stemmed rose before a whole ballroom of us at some hotel in Makati. This Indian medical doctor and writer, a great force in the propagation of the New Thought Movement particularly in the United States, was then challenging us to look at the interconnectedness of life, the existence of all that was, all there is, and all there ever will be in everything.
Pluck not the wayside flower;
It is the traveler’s dower
—William Allingham
What better way to bring this point across but with the example of a flower, whose universal appeal makes it at once simple and magical, common and sublime, straightforward and symbolic? After all, any flower is as mute as it is eloquent, as silent as it is loud and clear in delivering messages that resonate within us with the impact of a megaphone. What exactly does a narra bloom stand for in the language of flowers? I don’t know, but when this tiny flower randomly fell on my windshield just when, faced with the dilemma of quitting a job I loved for greener pastures, I was praying to the Little Flower, St. Therese of the Child Jesus, for a sign—a yellow flower if I should stay or a white one if I should go—I knew exactly what it conveyed to me. It was the first ever time I earnestly asked for a sign from heaven and it was granted to me in no uncertain terms.
To me, a flower is as much a representation of the brevity of life as an embodiment of its infinity. Because of its short life span, we learn to come to terms with the fact that all things must end, that even beautiful things, joyful things must come to pass. But because after every wilting comes a season of blooming, we might be made to believe that life goes on, that there is a cycle with which we must come along, and that there is a time, a season for everything—joy and sorrow, youth and age, life and death.
In Manila, even in places where there is no space for gardens, flowers thrive. The pink bougainvilleas that adorn the aisles on Burgos Street from Roxas Boulevard appear to unfurl their petals and their color as if to defy the scorching sun. According to my friend, floral master Rachy Cuna, the less you water this survivor of a plant, the more beautiful it is when it comes into flower. Nature is magic in a bougainvillea, whose response to scarcity is beauty. I wish people had the same survival mechanism, especially in times of dearth such as now.
But other flower species paint Manila with all the colors of the spectrum. Yellowbells, gumamela, santan, calachuchi, four-o’-clocks, bandera Española, and other colorful blossoms peep out of fences in the villages everywhere or claim their pride of place even in tin cans on the steps leading to a shanty. If you’re lucky, you can drive through an almost deserted road in a village in Las Piñas under a shower of orange, the falling petals of a fire tree in bloom.
Edwin Josue, a Filipino florist who made it in New York, once raved to me during his brief homecoming how in awe he was that flowers grew almost wildly in the most unexpected places in Manila. At his shop in the Upper East Side of New York, flowers need to be flown in from places like Holland because, after all, when you walk down the busy streets of the Big Apple, all the flowers you can see are in the shop windows, especially now, when the biggest designers, from Valentino to Ralph Lauren, from Jean-Paul Gaultier to Viktor & Rolf, have all decided to grow a forest of flowers in their Spring/Summer 2008 collections.
If the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “Earth laughs in flowers,” was right, we can safely conclude there is happiness where we are. But how come our parks cannot be gardens full of glad tidings? How come some government official decided to cut down all the fire trees along some provincial road because they caused so much litter? How come we often fail to look up at the brighter side of things like flowers turning their faces to the sun?
I suppose that with so much “laughter” around us, we are taking it for granted how lucky we are to be happy in these very lonely times.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Thursday, May 8, 2008
LA VITA É BELLA
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 9 MAY 2008)
Everything we know about parents is suddenly in question, with the emergence of Elisabeth Fritzl from the dungeon of her own father’s cruel, subhuman, nonhuman perversions. I cannot think of any man in my immediate world who can do such a thing to any person, let alone his own daughter, but what keeps me aching for more of this incredible tragedy is where Josef Fritzl’s wife figure in all of this.
Is God up there? —Felix Fritzl, 5, upon seeing the moon for the first time ever
I’m not sure if you’re following it over on CNN or on the Internet. Just search “Dungeon Kids” to get the full story. But here’s a gist: Elisabeth was 18, when her incestuous, rapist father dragged her handcuffed to the basement of their apartment in Amstetten, Austria, where, literally in the pits of the earth, she stayed for the next two decades, what’s left of her life confined within a windowless cellar “behind a concrete door locked with an electronic code,” no sun, no air, except for the little brought in through a small vent on the wall, no contact with the outside world, except for a small television set, and no help every time her father came down to rape her, repeatedly, remorselessly, without any trace of humanity.
In the course of 24 years, in which she remained trapped in this hellhole, she gave birth to a total of seven children, whom, for my own sanity, I’d like to consider her very own, and not her father’s, whose role in their lives, except for a few million imperialistic sperm cells, does not have any shred of the necessary components of fatherhood. One of the children died shortly after birth and was reportedly burned by the evil old man on the furnace.
Is it real? Is it possible for one father to be so evil toward his own daughter? But if we must thank God for small mercies, evil personified might have been persuaded or, for no other reason but practical ones, might have thought it a good idea to bring three children—Lisa, now 16; Monika, now 14; and Alexander, now 12—upstairs one at a time to be cared for by his wife on the pretext that his “runaway daughter” returned now and then to leave one child after another at the doorstep for the grandparents to take over raising them. The eldest daughter, 19-year-old Kerstin, the second child, 18-year-old Stefan, and the youngest, five-year-old Felix, stayed below ground to grow up like animals, no medical care, no dental care, no care period, not counting the care their mother gave them despite her most helpless condition. Reports have it that due to a lack of social exposure as well as any level of education, the children speak their own language, “growling and cooing at each other” to communicate. Felix “prefers to crawl despite his five years, but can walk upright if he wants to” while Stefan walks with a permanent stoop, the ceiling in the cellar being barely five feet and five inches from the floor.
How do we teach our children to trust the world if this kind of story is real life? To me, the most dramatic potential in this yet-unraveling tale is in the mind of Rosemarie, Fritzl’s wife, who slept upstairs while the most atrocious crime was committed on her missing daughter for over 20 years by the same man who shared her bed when he was not busy abusing his daughter-turned-sex slave. Did she have any idea? Have her maternal instincts ever come to play? Does she want to throw her husband, now 73, down the cellar and leave him there to burn in hell?
But even in hell something beautiful emerges. Notwithstanding the horrors she went through and the childhood she herself was deprived of (her father first raped her when she was 11), Elisabeth Fritzl, now 42, tried to create an illusion of normalcy for the three children left in her care. “She read to them, told them fairy tale stories, and sang them lullabies to help them sleep,” said the Daily Mail.
It was reported that Elisabeth kept it from her children that they were imprisoned, helping them create a make-believe world by making models out of cardboard and glue, telling them stories of “princesses and pirates,” and watching adventure films on TV with them.
Elisabeth’s ordeal reminds me of La Vita é Bella (Life is Beautiful), except that, without any of the comedic relief in the Roberto Benigni film, hers is more harrowing, more horrific. In this context, her attempt at raising her children the best way she could is nothing short of heroic. After all, rather than a Nazi concentration camp, it was real life, her own life, her whole life that she was up against.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Everything we know about parents is suddenly in question, with the emergence of Elisabeth Fritzl from the dungeon of her own father’s cruel, subhuman, nonhuman perversions. I cannot think of any man in my immediate world who can do such a thing to any person, let alone his own daughter, but what keeps me aching for more of this incredible tragedy is where Josef Fritzl’s wife figure in all of this.
Is God up there? —Felix Fritzl, 5, upon seeing the moon for the first time ever
I’m not sure if you’re following it over on CNN or on the Internet. Just search “Dungeon Kids” to get the full story. But here’s a gist: Elisabeth was 18, when her incestuous, rapist father dragged her handcuffed to the basement of their apartment in Amstetten, Austria, where, literally in the pits of the earth, she stayed for the next two decades, what’s left of her life confined within a windowless cellar “behind a concrete door locked with an electronic code,” no sun, no air, except for the little brought in through a small vent on the wall, no contact with the outside world, except for a small television set, and no help every time her father came down to rape her, repeatedly, remorselessly, without any trace of humanity.
In the course of 24 years, in which she remained trapped in this hellhole, she gave birth to a total of seven children, whom, for my own sanity, I’d like to consider her very own, and not her father’s, whose role in their lives, except for a few million imperialistic sperm cells, does not have any shred of the necessary components of fatherhood. One of the children died shortly after birth and was reportedly burned by the evil old man on the furnace.
Is it real? Is it possible for one father to be so evil toward his own daughter? But if we must thank God for small mercies, evil personified might have been persuaded or, for no other reason but practical ones, might have thought it a good idea to bring three children—Lisa, now 16; Monika, now 14; and Alexander, now 12—upstairs one at a time to be cared for by his wife on the pretext that his “runaway daughter” returned now and then to leave one child after another at the doorstep for the grandparents to take over raising them. The eldest daughter, 19-year-old Kerstin, the second child, 18-year-old Stefan, and the youngest, five-year-old Felix, stayed below ground to grow up like animals, no medical care, no dental care, no care period, not counting the care their mother gave them despite her most helpless condition. Reports have it that due to a lack of social exposure as well as any level of education, the children speak their own language, “growling and cooing at each other” to communicate. Felix “prefers to crawl despite his five years, but can walk upright if he wants to” while Stefan walks with a permanent stoop, the ceiling in the cellar being barely five feet and five inches from the floor.
How do we teach our children to trust the world if this kind of story is real life? To me, the most dramatic potential in this yet-unraveling tale is in the mind of Rosemarie, Fritzl’s wife, who slept upstairs while the most atrocious crime was committed on her missing daughter for over 20 years by the same man who shared her bed when he was not busy abusing his daughter-turned-sex slave. Did she have any idea? Have her maternal instincts ever come to play? Does she want to throw her husband, now 73, down the cellar and leave him there to burn in hell?
But even in hell something beautiful emerges. Notwithstanding the horrors she went through and the childhood she herself was deprived of (her father first raped her when she was 11), Elisabeth Fritzl, now 42, tried to create an illusion of normalcy for the three children left in her care. “She read to them, told them fairy tale stories, and sang them lullabies to help them sleep,” said the Daily Mail.
It was reported that Elisabeth kept it from her children that they were imprisoned, helping them create a make-believe world by making models out of cardboard and glue, telling them stories of “princesses and pirates,” and watching adventure films on TV with them.
Elisabeth’s ordeal reminds me of La Vita é Bella (Life is Beautiful), except that, without any of the comedic relief in the Roberto Benigni film, hers is more harrowing, more horrific. In this context, her attempt at raising her children the best way she could is nothing short of heroic. After all, rather than a Nazi concentration camp, it was real life, her own life, her whole life that she was up against.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
WORLD BEAUTY
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 2 MAY 2008)
Start the weekend with yet another boost to our national ego!
Log on to paulsmith.co.uk. Click on “Shop,” then choose “United Kingdom/Rest of the World.” From there, move on to “Women’s Accessories,” then click “Jewelry” and—voila!—the Tweetie Gonzalez earrings. With a drop length of seven centimeters, the gold-plated “Hollywood” hoop earrings have blue Swarovski crystals and orange dyed jade. I believe the other pair I saw just a day before has already been sold.
BLURB
We have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities... to make [jewelry design] a viable business. —Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez
The better news is, if you click on the earrings, it proudly announces in the description that they are “designed by Tweetie Gonzalez and handmade in the Philippines” but because, one’s country of origin cannot just be relegated to the fine print, at the bottom of the description, it says yet again “Made in the Philippines.”
Tweetie is especially proud of this: “I think it’s also a validation for our country, that we have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities… to make this a viable business.”
What’s on the Paul Smith website is from an existing collection. None of it was designed exclusively for Paul Smith and Paul Smith had no say whatsoever on the design. “That’s why this is a great validation of me as a designer, that I’m good enough for them,” says Tweetie of the UK brand that first ordered from her collection in 2006. “LA was the first to order and it did well. About a year later, London called and sent pieces to Milan.”
This supermodel made her mark as an accessories designer with the Kamagong Collection, which she considers her trademark. Kamagong is a species of Philippine hardwood. “That did really well, for me. It’s been a year since it debuted, but it remains current,” says Tweetie. “It made the international market notice. It’s not distinctly Filipino because while I do use natural pieces, I inject a more modern touch to them. They look different from other pieces abroad. Although I use indigenous materials, my pieces are modern, young, upbeat, but nothing overwhelming…”
As a designer, Tweetie is rigorously following the disciplines of balance, ethics, and originality. “I don’t really search on what’s current,” she says. “I try my best not to look at magazines. I don’t want to be accused of imitating. My designs come from my own taste and design principles, although the structure, the look is generally classic, they’re fun to wear, but not to the point of being outlandish.”
If the buyers of the jewelry only knew more about the person behind it, I’m sure they would buy them all in a snap, if only because handmaking everything down to the very last detail Tweetie surely must have poured so much of her energy and passion into each piece.
After all, who doesn’t want a piece of Tweetie, who seems to radiate and attract all things bright and beautiful? She was—and still is—a supermodel, but she has had none of the drugs, sex, eating disorders, and diva catfights associated with the job. She was in showbusiness, which failed to bring anything ugly enough out of her to deserve the front page of a tabloid.
Tell me, indeed, how can we expect anything less than beautiful from someone like Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
Start the weekend with yet another boost to our national ego!
Log on to paulsmith.co.uk. Click on “Shop,” then choose “United Kingdom/Rest of the World.” From there, move on to “Women’s Accessories,” then click “Jewelry” and—voila!—the Tweetie Gonzalez earrings. With a drop length of seven centimeters, the gold-plated “Hollywood” hoop earrings have blue Swarovski crystals and orange dyed jade. I believe the other pair I saw just a day before has already been sold.
BLURB
We have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities... to make [jewelry design] a viable business. —Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez
The better news is, if you click on the earrings, it proudly announces in the description that they are “designed by Tweetie Gonzalez and handmade in the Philippines” but because, one’s country of origin cannot just be relegated to the fine print, at the bottom of the description, it says yet again “Made in the Philippines.”
Tweetie is especially proud of this: “I think it’s also a validation for our country, that we have the know-how, the inspirations, the facilities… to make this a viable business.”
What’s on the Paul Smith website is from an existing collection. None of it was designed exclusively for Paul Smith and Paul Smith had no say whatsoever on the design. “That’s why this is a great validation of me as a designer, that I’m good enough for them,” says Tweetie of the UK brand that first ordered from her collection in 2006. “LA was the first to order and it did well. About a year later, London called and sent pieces to Milan.”
This supermodel made her mark as an accessories designer with the Kamagong Collection, which she considers her trademark. Kamagong is a species of Philippine hardwood. “That did really well, for me. It’s been a year since it debuted, but it remains current,” says Tweetie. “It made the international market notice. It’s not distinctly Filipino because while I do use natural pieces, I inject a more modern touch to them. They look different from other pieces abroad. Although I use indigenous materials, my pieces are modern, young, upbeat, but nothing overwhelming…”
As a designer, Tweetie is rigorously following the disciplines of balance, ethics, and originality. “I don’t really search on what’s current,” she says. “I try my best not to look at magazines. I don’t want to be accused of imitating. My designs come from my own taste and design principles, although the structure, the look is generally classic, they’re fun to wear, but not to the point of being outlandish.”
If the buyers of the jewelry only knew more about the person behind it, I’m sure they would buy them all in a snap, if only because handmaking everything down to the very last detail Tweetie surely must have poured so much of her energy and passion into each piece.
After all, who doesn’t want a piece of Tweetie, who seems to radiate and attract all things bright and beautiful? She was—and still is—a supermodel, but she has had none of the drugs, sex, eating disorders, and diva catfights associated with the job. She was in showbusiness, which failed to bring anything ugly enough out of her to deserve the front page of a tabloid.
Tell me, indeed, how can we expect anything less than beautiful from someone like Tweetie de Leon Gonzalez?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
LUCK ON THE RUN
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 25 APRIL 2008)
When in Macau, you have to decide: Are you in Venice or Las Vegas?
At the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, you are in both, but you might as well throw in Guangzhou, if only because of its colonial touches. What a treat! That’s like three continents in a space that’s so much smaller than Metro Manila.
BLURB
Venetian Macau represents a massive paradigm shift for Macau and the future of tourism development in Asia —Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corp.
I have been to Macau twice before in the late ’90s, but I swear I cannot remember anything beyond the ruins of St. Paul’s. So traveling to Macau for the weekend felt so much like the very first time, especially since I was going to stay at the Venetian, which could have easily been the raison d’etre of my weekend trip.
Indeed, Venetian was on its own a destination and you have no reason to leave its premises, except that, like all the other hotels in Macau, it offers free rides to any point in the former Portuguese colony, not to mention a free ferry ride to Hong Kong.
The newer MGM Grand Macau, which opened only a few months after the grand opening of the Venetian in August last year, is one other reason to take advantage of Macau’s ride-all-you-can offer. True enough, it is grand, but not in the scale of the Venetian. Except for a gigantic replica of a flower garden in the plaza, I would say it had more subtle sensibilities. The reception area is set against a mural, actually a collection of paintings with random brushstrokes in bold colors, lit up from behind with a yellow light, so that from afar the human shadows on both sides of the counter mingle with the artwork, giving the whole arrival experience a modern, nearly Op-Art feel.
We also took a peek at Wynn Macau, if only to check out the Louis Vuitton store that I heard is selling its stuff like hotcakes. But to our surprise the show at the iconic atrium was quite a treat. I would venture to call it sculpture in motion, unraveling the mystery of the 12 animal signs of the Chinese zodiac every 15 minutes or so in a flash of gold moving to a heart-pounding tempo and reaching its climax upon the emergence of the golden tree of prosperity.
But all these megahotels pale in comparison to the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, a megacity on its own, all 980,000 square meters of it. It is the world’s largest single structure hotel building, with 3,000 all-suite guestrooms (my favorite feature), 149,000 square meters of retail space, and over 51,000 square meters of casino floor, the largest in the world, teeming with 870 table games and over 3,400 slot machines.
It’s quite overwhelming at first, walking from, say, the main lobby to your room on the 17th floor of the South Wing, but with its Venetian theme, the hotel has made sure you need not get bored covering the distance. Indoor canals snake through the property, bearing gondolas and singing gondoliers. In one corner, a shop, whether Giordano or Armani, Rich Jade or Roberto Coin, beckons. In the next, a restaurant, whether the splendid buffet at Bambu or modern Japanese at Roka, lures the palate.
In between, such as when you find yourself in the middle of St. Mark’s Square, a violinist in a Carnivale costume plays a serenade, a living statue intrigues, a soprano takes breaths away, all under a makeshift blue sky that mimics the atmosphere of twilight as day turns into night.
But all these make up probably only less than half of the Venetian, whose second phase of development will begin upon the completion of the 4,108-room Sheraton on the Cotai Strip, a seven-hotel row within view of the Venetian’s Campanile tower, which will include big international hotel brands like Four Seasons, Shangri-La, St. Regis, and Raffles.
It’s a different world in Macau, where East meets—and literally becomes—West; where old meets new and new pretends to be old. After all, this little peninsula on the western edge of the Pearl River Delta prides itself with more than a handful of Unesco World Heritage Sites, the ruins of the St. Paul Cathedral included. But from a past brimming with riches, Macau is on a superhighway to a future even richer.
I thought I shared that future when I won the jackpot on the slot machine on the first night of my Macau weekend. But then it was only my first night and it was way too early to press on the “collect” button.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
When in Macau, you have to decide: Are you in Venice or Las Vegas?
At the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, you are in both, but you might as well throw in Guangzhou, if only because of its colonial touches. What a treat! That’s like three continents in a space that’s so much smaller than Metro Manila.
BLURB
Venetian Macau represents a massive paradigm shift for Macau and the future of tourism development in Asia —Sheldon Adelson, chairman and CEO, Las Vegas Sands Corp.
I have been to Macau twice before in the late ’90s, but I swear I cannot remember anything beyond the ruins of St. Paul’s. So traveling to Macau for the weekend felt so much like the very first time, especially since I was going to stay at the Venetian, which could have easily been the raison d’etre of my weekend trip.
Indeed, Venetian was on its own a destination and you have no reason to leave its premises, except that, like all the other hotels in Macau, it offers free rides to any point in the former Portuguese colony, not to mention a free ferry ride to Hong Kong.
The newer MGM Grand Macau, which opened only a few months after the grand opening of the Venetian in August last year, is one other reason to take advantage of Macau’s ride-all-you-can offer. True enough, it is grand, but not in the scale of the Venetian. Except for a gigantic replica of a flower garden in the plaza, I would say it had more subtle sensibilities. The reception area is set against a mural, actually a collection of paintings with random brushstrokes in bold colors, lit up from behind with a yellow light, so that from afar the human shadows on both sides of the counter mingle with the artwork, giving the whole arrival experience a modern, nearly Op-Art feel.
We also took a peek at Wynn Macau, if only to check out the Louis Vuitton store that I heard is selling its stuff like hotcakes. But to our surprise the show at the iconic atrium was quite a treat. I would venture to call it sculpture in motion, unraveling the mystery of the 12 animal signs of the Chinese zodiac every 15 minutes or so in a flash of gold moving to a heart-pounding tempo and reaching its climax upon the emergence of the golden tree of prosperity.
But all these megahotels pale in comparison to the Venetian Macao Resort Hotel, a megacity on its own, all 980,000 square meters of it. It is the world’s largest single structure hotel building, with 3,000 all-suite guestrooms (my favorite feature), 149,000 square meters of retail space, and over 51,000 square meters of casino floor, the largest in the world, teeming with 870 table games and over 3,400 slot machines.
It’s quite overwhelming at first, walking from, say, the main lobby to your room on the 17th floor of the South Wing, but with its Venetian theme, the hotel has made sure you need not get bored covering the distance. Indoor canals snake through the property, bearing gondolas and singing gondoliers. In one corner, a shop, whether Giordano or Armani, Rich Jade or Roberto Coin, beckons. In the next, a restaurant, whether the splendid buffet at Bambu or modern Japanese at Roka, lures the palate.
In between, such as when you find yourself in the middle of St. Mark’s Square, a violinist in a Carnivale costume plays a serenade, a living statue intrigues, a soprano takes breaths away, all under a makeshift blue sky that mimics the atmosphere of twilight as day turns into night.
But all these make up probably only less than half of the Venetian, whose second phase of development will begin upon the completion of the 4,108-room Sheraton on the Cotai Strip, a seven-hotel row within view of the Venetian’s Campanile tower, which will include big international hotel brands like Four Seasons, Shangri-La, St. Regis, and Raffles.
It’s a different world in Macau, where East meets—and literally becomes—West; where old meets new and new pretends to be old. After all, this little peninsula on the western edge of the Pearl River Delta prides itself with more than a handful of Unesco World Heritage Sites, the ruins of the St. Paul Cathedral included. But from a past brimming with riches, Macau is on a superhighway to a future even richer.
I thought I shared that future when I won the jackpot on the slot machine on the first night of my Macau weekend. But then it was only my first night and it was way too early to press on the “collect” button.
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com
LAND BEFORE TIME
(FROM A WEEKEND NOTE, THE EDITOR'S LETTER IN STYLE WEEKEND, MANILA BULLETIN'S WEEKEND SPECIAL, EVERY FRIDAY, 18 APRIL 2008)
If Manila and other so called “key cities” in the world were anything like Batanes, global warming would have existed only in the realm of disaster movies, except that if we were all in Batanes, even in the capital Basco, the movie would have been some futuristic concept as well.
BLURB
In Sabtang, they only have lambat in their doorway, to keep out the chickens. —Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes
We spent a week in Basco in March and it was a weeklong communion with nature, which was more than enough to keep our itinerary full. The only semblance of modern life was the van we took to go around a rolling terrain, mostly hilly on one side and on the other a wide expanse of blue, where sea meets sky and surely stretches all the way to Taiwan.
At Shanedel’s Inn and Café, a B&B in Basco, there used to be a living room with a big TV and a few racks of DVDs, but we had neither the time nor the inclination to check it out this time. Why imagine faraway celluloid worlds when you are right there, a tiny speck in a universe of primordial wind and water, closer to the skies, quiet save for the howling of nature’s forces. One of our companions did not even turn on her airconditioning unit, although, shutting her windows on the picture-perfect view of the Basco harbor from her room at Shanedel’s, she also completely sought the warmth of blankets. After all, even in March, when Manila and the rest of the Philippines began to intensify their collective assault on the environment, sending up twice, thrice, four times as much CO2 into the atmosphere from an arsenal of Carriers and Conduras in response to the scorching summer heat, Batanes was still bitingly cold, especially on the hilltops, such as in Racuh a Payaman or what they call Marlboro Country.
The opposite, however, is true in the company of the people of Batanes, whose generosity and hospitality can thaw the Ice Queen. On a visit to the municipal hall, we met Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes, who could have been—and is—your friend, your father, your uncle, your friendly neighbor, rather than the highest official in this northernmost province of 10 pristine, bucolic islands, of which only three—Batan, Itbayat, and Sabtang—are so far accessible to lazy tourists like me. Reacting to our observation that his provincemates, more than hospitable, were genuinely nice and trusting people, keeping their homes unguarded, doorless even, open to the strangest of strangers, the governor said, “We are like that, all of us Filipinos, but many of you have changed and we are still the same.”
Have we, indeed, changed or have the crooks in our midst changed us? Is it only a matter of time before the Ivatans change as well, now that more and more of us city dwellers are being lured into their otherworldliness? The governor had more than reassured us, as he took us practically to a picnic at Batanes Resort with a buffet of their traditional dishes, including their yellow rice, called supas, colored with turmeric and drizzled with pork bits. “Nature is what we have to offer and so all the changes will have to revolve around that,” he said. “Why build casinos in a beautiful place like this? We can have our casinos elsewhere.”
So maybe, until the powers-that-be decide to ram casinos down the throats of Gov. Castillejos and his people in pursuit of the Taiwanese dollar, money will continue to be as unimportant as it is now in a place like Batanes, where there is hardly any reason to part with your travel money. You can’t even spend it on snacks or merienda, which is not part of the Ivatan culture, their three square meals a day being too heavy to leave any room for in-betweens. Even the stores catering to tourists with a penchant for pasalubong are few and far between and often smaller in scale than the average neighborhood sari-sari store in Metro Manila.
As the governor explained to us, in Batanes, no one gets hungry. Everything you need to survive is in a patch of land that is yours, often in the backyard, which provides your rice, your vegetables, your chickens, your pigs, and your cows. Everything else is in the waters that surround the islands, which provides the coconut crab, the occasional lobster, and the seasonal flying fish, migrating from elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean or the South China Sea.
Now if we could live that kind of life in Manila and other key cities in the world, Al Gore would have had no opportunity to earn a Nobel Peace Prize, but then who can afford a backyard, let alone a beachfront, in places like Manila or New York or Paris or Hong Kong?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
If Manila and other so called “key cities” in the world were anything like Batanes, global warming would have existed only in the realm of disaster movies, except that if we were all in Batanes, even in the capital Basco, the movie would have been some futuristic concept as well.
BLURB
In Sabtang, they only have lambat in their doorway, to keep out the chickens. —Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes
We spent a week in Basco in March and it was a weeklong communion with nature, which was more than enough to keep our itinerary full. The only semblance of modern life was the van we took to go around a rolling terrain, mostly hilly on one side and on the other a wide expanse of blue, where sea meets sky and surely stretches all the way to Taiwan.
At Shanedel’s Inn and Café, a B&B in Basco, there used to be a living room with a big TV and a few racks of DVDs, but we had neither the time nor the inclination to check it out this time. Why imagine faraway celluloid worlds when you are right there, a tiny speck in a universe of primordial wind and water, closer to the skies, quiet save for the howling of nature’s forces. One of our companions did not even turn on her airconditioning unit, although, shutting her windows on the picture-perfect view of the Basco harbor from her room at Shanedel’s, she also completely sought the warmth of blankets. After all, even in March, when Manila and the rest of the Philippines began to intensify their collective assault on the environment, sending up twice, thrice, four times as much CO2 into the atmosphere from an arsenal of Carriers and Conduras in response to the scorching summer heat, Batanes was still bitingly cold, especially on the hilltops, such as in Racuh a Payaman or what they call Marlboro Country.
The opposite, however, is true in the company of the people of Batanes, whose generosity and hospitality can thaw the Ice Queen. On a visit to the municipal hall, we met Telesforo Castillejos, governor of Batanes, who could have been—and is—your friend, your father, your uncle, your friendly neighbor, rather than the highest official in this northernmost province of 10 pristine, bucolic islands, of which only three—Batan, Itbayat, and Sabtang—are so far accessible to lazy tourists like me. Reacting to our observation that his provincemates, more than hospitable, were genuinely nice and trusting people, keeping their homes unguarded, doorless even, open to the strangest of strangers, the governor said, “We are like that, all of us Filipinos, but many of you have changed and we are still the same.”
Have we, indeed, changed or have the crooks in our midst changed us? Is it only a matter of time before the Ivatans change as well, now that more and more of us city dwellers are being lured into their otherworldliness? The governor had more than reassured us, as he took us practically to a picnic at Batanes Resort with a buffet of their traditional dishes, including their yellow rice, called supas, colored with turmeric and drizzled with pork bits. “Nature is what we have to offer and so all the changes will have to revolve around that,” he said. “Why build casinos in a beautiful place like this? We can have our casinos elsewhere.”
So maybe, until the powers-that-be decide to ram casinos down the throats of Gov. Castillejos and his people in pursuit of the Taiwanese dollar, money will continue to be as unimportant as it is now in a place like Batanes, where there is hardly any reason to part with your travel money. You can’t even spend it on snacks or merienda, which is not part of the Ivatan culture, their three square meals a day being too heavy to leave any room for in-betweens. Even the stores catering to tourists with a penchant for pasalubong are few and far between and often smaller in scale than the average neighborhood sari-sari store in Metro Manila.
As the governor explained to us, in Batanes, no one gets hungry. Everything you need to survive is in a patch of land that is yours, often in the backyard, which provides your rice, your vegetables, your chickens, your pigs, and your cows. Everything else is in the waters that surround the islands, which provides the coconut crab, the occasional lobster, and the seasonal flying fish, migrating from elsewhere in the Pacific Ocean or the South China Sea.
Now if we could live that kind of life in Manila and other key cities in the world, Al Gore would have had no opportunity to earn a Nobel Peace Prize, but then who can afford a backyard, let alone a beachfront, in places like Manila or New York or Paris or Hong Kong?
A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)