H A P P Y * N E W * Y E A R

Simon Birch: A Movie and a Memory Revisited

A few days ago I watched Simon Birch. A warm and funny movie that will surely let a hard-hearted viewer let out a good laugh and maybe spill some tears from those dried-up tearducts. This movie was said to be loosely based from a novel by John Irving. The last time I saw this film, it was with the orchestra people during our summercamp. Every day, after lunch, there was always a film-shown and everyone would be huddled inside the Mozart room, lights out, eyes glued to the screen laughing over slapsticks or be at awe with every Karl von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic performances or warm with every heart-rending scenes, like this movie. I remember crying over the last part. And I still do.  No-one inside the room at that time was dry-eyed and I dont see any difference this time when I watched it with a friend. That was as more than 10 years ago, probably the summer of 1998.

 ( I saw this disc while I was in Phnom Penh, Cambodia for a Christmas Holiday)

A Year-end List

Here is a list of books I've read (fully-read, half-read or merely skimmed through) in the year 2010.

Hanif Kureishi

 *The Buddha of Suburbia

 *Intimacy

Muriel Barbery

 *The Elegance of the Hedgehog
 *Gourmet Rhapsody
Haruki Murakami
 *Kafka on Shore
Junot Diaz
 * The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Lorrie Moore

 *A Gate at the Staircase

Andrew Clements
 *Things Hoped For
Miguel Syjuco
 *Illustrado
Paolo Giordano
 *The Solitude of Prime Numbers
Adam Haslett

 *You Are Not a Stranger Here

Aravind Adiga

 *White Tiger

Edith Hamilton

 *Greek Mythology

Charles Dickens

 *A Christmas Carol

Malcolm Gladwell

 *What The Dog Saw

I will soon have a wall full of books. :-)

Love is a Bitch

A lot of people have been egging me to watch Amores Perros ( which translates "Love is a Bitch", I guess) although I procured a copy of a pirated DVD a few years ago, it wasn't until today that I finally had the temptation to watch it. The movie will run for 2 hours and 33 minutes. But it took me a longer time to watch it. It was a difficult movie to watch. It's gripping, haunting, disturbing, morbid,  leaving the viewer in baited breath with every brutal and violent portrayal of life in the streets of Mexico City. I started watching it around 4pm and up till now, 10:42 PM, I am struggling towards the next half of the story as I had to excuse myself once in a while and regurgitate each scene of the movie and of course check on my FB stats (ha-ha). It is a shattering drama with no fuss, sans the candy-coated lines nor a promise of a Happily Ever After. It's all hard-feed bits about real life, no bullshit ... no consideration for faint-hearted viewers (like me?). Amores Perros, profane and profound, stars Gael Garcia Bernal (Octavio) a street punk determined to elope with his sister-in law. He got hooked with dog-fighting to earn the bucks to establish a life with Susanna who later ran away with her husband instead of him. Secret lovers Valeria and Daniel, decided to live together (despite the fact that Daniel is married & Valeria is a model at the height of her career). Things went bad whenValeria got into a car accident (the chasing scene with Bernal) which left her paralyzed and despondent which eventually contributed to a sour relationship with her partner, Daniel. A dog, Richie, played a vital role between the two as Valeria (with strong attachment to the dog) totally went berserk when Richie descended into a hole on the floorboard and never came back for days. Then their relationship began to crumble. Funny how a single predicament, in this case, a dog stuck under a floorboard, can lead to such pressing matters as questions of affection on both side. The 3rd part of this neo-noir trilogy covers the life of El Chivo, a bedraggled dog lover who was once a school teacher who got into activist movements and was imprisoned for 20 years making him an estranged husband and father to his 2 year-old daughter. El Chivo was hired to kill someone who turned out to be the client's half-brother. In the end El Chivo kidnapped both, tied them up and left them to decide their fate by leaving a gun behind as he slowly disappear from their lives. Well I will save myself the exhaustion of writing down what this movie is all about. I never had the knack for writing a synopsis but this movie totally blew me off that i'll have to make an exception, so pardon me if I am not making any sense.  Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu concocts one unforgettable movie that will leave each viewer scarred beyond repair. Love, truly is a bitch. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to lick my wounded heart till I recover from the emotional weight from watching this.

Just Shoes

I am starting to count the days till I fly back to the Philippines and enjoy a 9-days holiday from work. I am excited to see my family (my neices, most of all), friends and relatives to spend a day or two off to some beach or maybe catch a movie, eat on restaurants or maybe have a cup of coffee while catching up on each other (although it's only been 6months since my last visit, but i'm sure with so much to talk about there won't ever be enough time to cover up each episode in life). What I am most excited about is this: 

 I saw these on Facebook a few days ago. I am aching to have at least a pair or two. I am willing to starve myself just so I can buy any of these shoes. They're not that costy but I don't intend to spend my holiday locked up in my room while I save up for these. :-) Choco Shoes costs: 500+ Pesos while the Du'Que costs 750+. My mom would certainly flair up as soon as she knows how much these costs, till then i'm keeping my hopes up. :-)

XXVII

I ’M nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there ’s a pair of us—don’t tell!

They ’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody! 

How public, like a frog

To tell your name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

--- Emily Dickinson, American Poet (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886)

On Earth as It is in Heaven

"The Gloaming. That moment when the sun retires to its lengthy slumber"

A Beautiful Sunset on a Beautuful Sunday, September 19, 2010

Pizza et Symphonie

There were 2 reasons why I rushed home from work today.

Reason No. 1: This was waiting for me.

Thats pizza with bacon strips, cheese, basil and some beef. Don't ask me how I came up with this, I did not make it.

Reason No. 2: Was to practice the 1st Movement of Eduard Lalo's "Symphonie Espagnole".

A Thursday Entry

(I woke up early today to sort out my schedule for the whole week)

Blogging, like so very few things in life, makes my boots lighter. One can think of many ways to spend a rare, fleeting moment of tranquility in ones day. Of course for someone loaded with tons and tons of work everyday (like me) sleep is the best option. Before, I used to have a time to read books or watch a movie. There were even instances when I have ample time to watch the clouds float by or stare blankly into space until my eyes hurt. There was enough "space" for words to kick in and I would be wrting and writing. There used to be enough SILENCE to LISTEN to. There was enough of everything that I can't really complain. Nowadays I spend these 30 minutes (1 hour tops) of work-free period doing the laundry, tidying up my room, updating my weekly schedule and planning out replacement classes from previous months (advance classes are just impossible) before I caught up with quotidian flux of things and tire myself again. It sounds pretty boring, you can take it from me, IT IS BORING! But then who am I to complain? EVERYONE IS BUSY! One thing though, it can get pretty boring but I LOVE WHAT I'M DOING. Which is very important, I guess. I know a lot of people who ended up doing something they don't like.

****

8:43 A.M.
Right now I am in the kitchen enjoying the hypnotic, monotonous drone of the refrigerator while in my room the 4th movement of Lalo's Symphony Espagnole carries a playful passage. There are little audible sounds that I hear but I am in the realm of silence, waiting for something to happen. I am just waiting for the right time, when I give in to the tide, the circus. I will submit myself to this moment of tranquility which is a valuable contribution to life's ongoing symphony. I will let silence talk to me. I will let silence bully me because I know, a few hours from now, life will consist of action and words and all other things that will exhaust me.

Post Script: You will not hear from me for the next 9 hours or for an even extensive time. Yet i'll know if you were here. Thanks for going this far with me today despite the inanities.

Exeunt

Tim Ovens plays John Cage · Sonata X for Prepared Piano

I stumbled upon this video through this website http://musicmotionblog.com/ This video features Avant-garde composer John Cage's Sonata X for a "Prepared Piano". Now what is a prepared piano? Shame that a Music Major like me should not know about it. Thanks to Wikipedia, I don't have to go through a chockful of music related textbooks in order to find out about it. It is basically a piano whose sound is changed by affixing or sticking objects like nuts, bolts, rubber plates etc. making it sound more percussive. Sentimental and ear-flaying, here is Sonata X from John Cage's "Sonatas and Interludes" as performed by German pianist Tim Ovens.

Ceremonial March

Taken a couple of months ago at Expression Music School in Brunei. Me on the First Violin, Regie on the 2nd Violin and Benjamin on the Piano. Benjamin arranged the piano part, handwritten sans the aid of modern technologies like notation softwares and such. He also did the parts without the piano. How he did it is beyond my understanding. He did a very awesome job!

A Cyber Interlude

Scarecrow: “Don’t you just hate laundry?”

I know he meant ‘doing’ the laundry but still I replied with absolute tolerance to his erring phrases much more to his exerted effort of feigned ‘mystery and immovable calm’ for the past incalculable seconds only for fear that at a certain flash of correcting him I would get the cold treatment for knowing too much. One moment his eagerness passes clearly as a promise of a ‘budding’ Greek love between people with mutual affection and the next he shuts you off like someone with a communicable disease. His knack for making people fall in love with him and shut them off the next possible moment is up to now a mystery, he is a self-imposed science as he is hard and obscure. Although I have a saint’s leniency to his unusual character of the ‘odd sort’ he struggles himself to be, I admit there is a threshold for putting up with this façade of misanthrope. But nonetheless I cherished his peculiarities as I would to his indifference and the ache it incurs. Don’t we all ache for being neglected? Although I was a bit annoyed of him playing it like someone in control of the entire conversation, like he is in control of my entire thought and being, I delight in the idea that he has to pretend all the time or the fact that he at least ‘tries to be’ every time he talks to me.

Fungus: “I left mine in the machine long enough for life-forms to establish its niche on them”

. . . was all my spontaneity could afford. I hate to wisecrack. When one is wisecracking I believe he isn’t really communicating, he is only playing it clever and playing it clever isn’t really as close to an honest-to-goodness talk. But who does that sort of talk through Internet Relay Chat? Talk was all I wanted especially from him whom I haven’t had the slightest forecast of weather for what felt like a thousand years, even if I knew he had to pretend. But I wisecracked anyway, it seemed a likely bait for someone with varying interest to talk. I hung on to this whole pretense with sanctity, almost a distracting eagerness of someone willing to resurrect the dead.

Fungus: Franz?

Fungus: Nice talking to myself.


But what followed the witticism, the well-feigned sound bite was silence, a silence palpable and real. It was cold as dead. He delights in doing his laundry while I on the other side facing a screen was left hanging, timing every blind blink of the cursor, worrying whether it was the Y2K bug’s delayed leash that took effect right at this fractured second or just me having too much chutzpah like a bad spell enough to scare a whole flock of Godknowswhat. He left me facing a machine long enough until life-forms establish its niche on me feeding on me. . . I will only have to scan, scroll up the electronic page and read in verbatim our previous chat and figure out what went wrong perhaps a misplaced punctuation or a grammatical error.

I will have to rewrite everything fit for consumption. He could have just said he wasn’t fit for conversation.

May 15, 2008

FB Stats

This was my Friend, fellow violinist/violist, Architect Nigell Abarquez's F.B. status message today. Can't help but agree with it.

Stasis

Because I cannot write

Neither hold a pen

or a thought,

pictures, I give you.

A flash of brief, fleeting moments

behind a postcard view

fill the area of what used to be

a schmaltzy brew of prose

Pictures

sun painted images

where I wear a face

amidst an ashen cloud

wearing a face but

never a smile.

Looking away,

no words,

or prose,

Not a line,

not while I am here.

September 2007

(I was rummaging through my old blog when I came upon this entry written exactly 3 years ago. I was probably in Brunei for 2 months when I wrote this and as I was new in this foreign country I was in a state of indescribable depression. Of course it was homesickness)

A Mediterranean Treat

Benjamin cooked Greek Seafood Pasta for lunch today. Earlier, for breakfast, he kicked himself out of bed around 8 AM to prepare Parmesan Chicken Breast with Crispy Posh Ham (sounds delish right?) a recipe he learned from Jamie Oliver via Youtube. I left him on his own to do his thing since i'm of no use in the kitchen anyway (actually if i'm ever good at anything, that is EATING and doing the dishes). Well here is a glimpse of the mediterranean dish we had for lunch.

Fat fighters and weight watchers EAT YOUR HEARTS OUT!

An Implement to Conquer the World

I am saying goodbye to my once-reliable black suede shoes and saying hello to these Brown faux-leathered pair with a "Dior" logo thinly printed inside. A friend of mine actually bought these for me (But I will still pay him anyway) after he saw me oggling at them with complete admiration despite its kooky look and fake brand (well wearing an original DIOR or of any pricey brand will make me more of a FRAUD don't you think?). These shoes will dance to life starting tomorrow. I am ecstatic.

Aside from this I also have a Moccasin looking pair which I usually wear for work (causing countless brows to raise) and which I actually bought 70% off its original price. Although it's common knowledge that black shoes are easily paired with anything I'd still go for Brown as something I can wear on any occassion (just to break the tradition too). Ha-Ha. But I'm no fashion consultant much more a fashion fiend so no need to quote me for it. Honestly, any shoes of any color or style just as long as it doesn't pinch or will cause an outrage is just OK for me.

They say that one can tell so much about a person just by merely looking at the shoes they wear. Yes, people can be so judgemental. Like one can tell a yuppie from a hobo or a vixen from a victim by looking at the kind of footwear they are sporting on. This is a confounded notion but I will not bother to debate on that. I am curious though, in case you chance upon me and the impression i'm going to make with my Moccasin or my Faux-Dior. I am never pernickety about the shoes I wear. I can go on bare feet ... but then again I don't think they respect people who looked like a museum "article" on the loose.

Kota Kinabalu Music Festival

We flew for Kota Kinabalu last Sept. 04 to take part in the 2010 Music Festival. I have 6 students who competed for violin in categories: Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern categories.


It was Kayla's (7) first time to join but then she went home with 2 GOLD Prize and a Bronze. Great job Kayla! :-)



























It was also Jasveena's (10) first time but then she went home with a Silver and a Bronze.
























Onn Jia Yi (7) did well too. She had a Silver Prize for her rendition of "Circus March".

















First-timer May Cho (12) didn't go home empty-handed as she herself bagged a Bronze for all her entries. Congrats May!


























Bestfriends Yolanda Shim and Shian Li Chiam competed against each other under Baroque, Classical and Romantic Category. Yolanda did a soaring performance of Arcangelo Corelli's "La Folia" and Bukowski's "Adoration" while Shian Li did Mozart's Sonata in G 2nd Movt. It was Shian Li who got the Gold PRize for this Category and Yolanda got the Silver Prize. I'm very proud of these two. :-) The competitions ran from 9 am till 4 pm and was adjudicated by Therese Wirakesuma a Suzuki teacher from Indonesia. You will see her on the photo with Shian Li (in Pink) and Yolanda (with specs).

*******

The day after the competition me and my colleagues (Regie, Sheila, Jasper, Michele, Carem and Jack) went to 2 of KK's tourist destination Islands to wrap up our 3 days stay in KK. Mamutik and Palau were just a few minutes boat ride away. We set off around 6:30 A.M. and spent the rest of the morning swimming skinny-dipping (NOT) and feeding the fishes of these verdant Islands. Fresh from the beach and still with sand on out toes, we set off to the airport to catch out 3.45 PM flight (which will be an hour delayed). I hope to visit this place again.

Dramatis Personae

Once upon a time,
Books began this
Way - the O of once let
The reader beware up
Front that a story as
Ornate and colorful as
We are would follow --
And not for any of us
To be shocked to find
We must return and
Stand for what we are.


--Aaron Fagan

The Grudge by Chilly Gonzales

Canadian singer, pianist, songwriter and producer Jason Charles Beck a.k.a "Chilly Gonzales" in his song The Grudge.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd2tDJPA7zo

a taste of the familiar

There was "Biko" when I woke up from an afternoon nap last Monday (August 23, 2010) with a caramel coating that made it fetching to my sight. And with every bite comes these lines:


"I was drawn back to a distant time, many a moon has gone by, when I can have this at anytime I have a craving for. But now that I am in a foreign country I thought it an extra-terrestrial treat or perhaps providence from the divinities who saw a kind deed from me this week. I relished this sweetfamiliarheaven dancing its sweet consumption in my mouth, whose very taste conjures up an image of a house with a green roof where in a sombre corner could be a woman, sitting on a chair, kneading dough, oblivious to the miniscule beads of sweat that trickled down her arm, her nape, and her cheeks. She can do this all day. That woman is my mom, a kitchen warrior, whose fine cooking I remember as I experience this ineffable bliss over a slice of Biko."

Paolo Giordano: The Solitude of Prime Numbers

August 16, 2010

This was specially delivered to my room last Sunday, August 15, 2010. My boss bought this book upon my request during her sojourn to Singapore. Thank you Teacher Lily despite the hectic schedule and the crazy got-to-go-to meetings. I would also like to thank Sir Ian Rosales Casocot for recommending me to read it. :-)