Tagged by maragtas.

1. What worries you?
      Lately, everything. But mostly the phone ringing.

2. Are you confused as to what lies ahead?
      You mean, there's more? Fuck.

3.  Is there anything that made you unhappy recently?
      The better question is, what has not made me unhappy recently.

4. What did you last cry over?
    The crapiness of the latest Bleach episodes.

5. Have you ever dated someone?
    That's all I've seemed to do lately.

6. Which is more blessed: loving someone or being loved by someone?
    Neither. Loving the fact that you're alone is best.

7. If the person you like doesn't accept you, would you continue to wait for them to change their feelings?
    No. Ano sya sineswerte?

8. If the person you like is secretly attached, what would you do?
    "Wishing and hoping and praying..." Or however that song goes.

9.  What do you want most in life?
      Right now, a bakery in Batanes.

10. What's the most important thing you look for in a significant other?
       Funny.

11. Have you ever had your heart broken?
       Did the Grand Hitad ever exist?

12.  Would you rather be single and rich or married and poor?
       Single and rich. Anyone who chooses the latter is an idiot.

13.  Do you like someone right now?
       Trying very hard not to.

14. Do they like you too?
       I'd pay good money to know the answer to that... No wait! I'm trying not to like anyone... so I don't care!

15. If you fall in love with two persons simultaneously, who would you pick?
       The taller one.

16. What type of friends do you like?
       The ones I have now, thank you very much.

17. If you played a prank on someone, and she/he fell for the trick, what would you do?
       Document it and gloat for life.

18.  If you were betrayed by someone, what would you say to that person?
        Humanda ka sa akin.

19. If the person tagging you likes/loves you, what will you do/say?
      Awww. Lagot ka kay Marby!

20. What do you think of the person who tagged you?
      One of the funniest, funnest people in the world. One of the weirdest, too. Peace, pao!

Tagging: jhybeturtle , binsoup , fairlycloudy on LJ. Tagging: Tin, Leng, Dang, Patrick on Multiply.

Tags: demented doses, life in manila, pointless posts, pop culture
coordinates: dining table, my place
state of mind: anxious
background noise: lucia's conversations

One of the things I am very sure that I learned from Velma was how to matte lipstick. I was about 9 years old, and matte lipsticks were not so readily available then -- especially because the 1980's was all about glossy lips.

It's simple, she said. First, you apply lip balm, then you put on a thick layer of regular lipstick (in that instance, she was using some fire engine red lipstick). Then you take a sheet of tissue paper and blot your lips on it by putting the tissue in between your lips. Then you dust some powder on your lips. Then apply the lipstick again and blot your lips one more time.
This trick was designed to not only create a matte lip but to make sure that your lipstick stays on, she said.

And then she made me do as she instructed. I had no idea why she was teaching me all this, and I really would have preferred to mix lipstick and powder on a petri-dish in my makeshift "Lab" to put the concoction under my microscope than to see how a matte lip would look on me. And I think she saw that look on my face that told her that I thought nothing more of her than some ex-debutante / beauty queen / cheerleader type. So she put me in my place by telling me that I needed to learn how to matte my lips because my lips were too big to go glossy, and that I would be grateful for the knowledge she was giving me when I grew up.

Who could argue with that, right? So I ignored the jibe about the size of my lips and applied my first matte lip.

I have often wondered in the decades following that incident what made her get up from her bed and lead (read: command) me to her dresser for an impromptu make-up session. It's not like I was some girly-girl who would have bugged her for such Beauty Wisdom. Or maybe it was because I wasn't a girly-girl so she probably reckoned that she should volunteer the wisdom because I was too busy dreaming of white lab coats and robots to ask her -- or to even know the value of such questions.

Or perhaps it was simply unacceptable to her that one of her daughters would go on existing without knowing how to properly create a matte lip. That's a very Velma thing to think.

Velma may have forced her make-up and beauty tips on me at a young age. But she was the one who also bought me a toy Gatling Gun, a Spider-man arm and Swiss Army knives. She may have tried to raise me as the perfect corporate wife but she also never stopped me from taking Judo lessons. She may have stopped talking to me for a week after I came home with my first tattoo, but she was also the one who proudly brandished my daggered arm to her friends at work.

And I do think that all my contradictions, the inconsistencies that make me unique, I got that from her. Because I do know how to create a matte lip but I also know how to tell a Gatling Gun apart from a Hauser. Because she allowed me to learn both. To be both.

It's Mother's Day today. One of the few days in a year where I allow myself to miss her. So today, I will wallow in my memories of Velma. That's my way of celebrating today with her.

Tags: number 42 theories, pop culture, velma-ism

I've finally decided which Szymborska lines to commit to. There were too many to choose from. But her Travel Elegy just spoke to me last week, for some reason. So here goes:



And for those of you not fluent in Tattoo, it says:
Everything is mine but just on loan,
Nothing for the memory to hold,
Though mine for as long as I look.

It's there to remind of everywhere I've been,  everyone I've known and every time I felt like the world was mine.

Tags: life in manila, number 42 theories, pointless posts
coordinates: my bedroom
background noise: KN typing over at skype

So a late night conversation with the Monkey Master. I was waxing (almost) lyrical about peanut butter and why it's one of the best things in the world. So the following (paraphrased) conversation ensues:

Monkey Master: We didn't have peanut butter when I was growing up.
c5: How tragic!
Monkey Master: The Communists deprived us of peanut butter. All peanut butter was horded in capitalist societies and we had none.
c5: I reckon you didn't grow peanuts locally.
Monkey Master: Yes. But we had walnuts and peas.
c5: Please don't tell me you had Pea Butter.
Monkey Master: No, we ate burned plastic imported from the West, spread on bread.
c5: That must have stuck to your teeth like a bitch.
Monkey King: We particularly liked those that came from the Philippines, they sometimes had a few atoms of peanut butter left in them.

It was at that point that I almost fell off my chair laughing. Hahahaha.

This may be the funniest conversation I will have this week. It would not be easy to top.

Tags: good days, pointless posts
coordinates: home. the dining table, specifically
state of mind: stuffed with peanut butter
background noise: Annie Lennox -- Dark Road

Tagged by maragtas.

My current desktop:



A couch in Singapore.

Tagging: jhybeturtle, fairlycloudy eclair and binsoup :-)

Tags: geekery, pointless posts, pop culture
coordinates: on a couch in Singapore
state of mind: awake
background noise: tv sounds

<sigh> I miss Slackerville already.

Last week was spent slacking in Malaysia with the Polish Tourist, jhybeturtle and EM, where nothing was accomplished except:

• finishing more than a carton of cigarettes
• drinking flavoured, authentic Polish vodka
• eating awesome meals
• hanging out in random coffee shops
• a trip to Melaka for Japanese tourist photo ops, pineapple tarts and Nyonya food
• conversations that were good for my soul
• familiarising myself with Kate Bush (and loving her Wuthering Heights)
• hanging out with Kaffir and Kamus (the super cats)
• laughing my ass off in huge amounts
• sleeping at odd hours in the morning, and waking up late
• losing hours to the Time Blackhole
  

Slackerville.

I think the appropriate word here is tambay. Something I have not done in long periods of time since the Weirdoks kinda grew up and became busy adults. Something I have not done in large amounts since Big Boy left for Perth. Something I have not done since my head caved in and sucked the life out of me.

A week in Slackerville.

I miss it already. But the thing is, knowing that Slackerville is a Limited Edition place and time makes it more special. Imagine living in Slackerville forever. Man, I would die! What about my To Do Lists? What about my goals? What about my need to account for every waking hour? What about the tension I maintain to hold everything together?

Spending the rest of my life in Slackerville will kill me.

But missing Slackerville is not about wanting to spend the rest of my life there. It's about remembering what happened there and cherishing the people you shared it with. And most importantly, it's making sure that you take the time out to visit Slackerville again -- and to not wait too long to do it again.

Pictures of Slackerville are on my Flickr page.

Tags: number 42 theories, tripping away
coordinates: somewhere in singapore
state of mind: okay
background noise: Tracy Bonham -- Mother, Mother

I nicked myself the other day,
A unique injury, barely
Exposing soft flesh without blood.
The knife was sharp,
But not enough to scar.

I secured the area,
Cleaned up the flesh,
Cut off the ragged edges,
Found the perfect bandage,
Contained the damage.

So now I wait,
It will take a while,
But the nail will grow,
Over exposed flesh,
'til it looks brand new,
The injury healed, hidden.
A secret between me and my finger.

Tags: demented doses, pointless posts
coordinates: the weirdok apprentice's house (singapore)
state of mind: awake
background noise: bonnie raitt -- I Can't Make You Love Me

Yes. A few times. The most memorable one was in the Black Sea in Varna, Bulgaria. Mostly because we had to hide from overly-eager security guards. Didn't stop us from doing it for a few nights though...

I reckon everyone should swim naked all the time. Because it's one of the best feelings in the world.

Tags: pointless posts, tripping away
coordinates: somewhere in malaysia
background noise: Never is a Promise -- Fiona Apple

I'm procrastinating again. I have a few documents that need some work before I head out to hang out with friends in Malaysia next week. But I'm kinda stuck. So I checked the blog, which I haven't seen in over three weeks. And then I see this from angelicsmile:

Thank you for your opinion. If you read the stories provided by the Filipinas around the world, you will see the Filipina activist, the Filipina mail order bride, the Filipina working against domestic violence, the Filipina daughter, the foreigner hurt by his Filipina girlfriend, the Filipina mom, the Filipina daughter and so much more. We show hundreds of stories both positive and negative.

FilipinaImages.com is a collaborative effort of all the bloggers who believe that the The Filipina of the Future deserves a more empowered, diverse image online. Multiple, complex, and whole. " We are not out to change the Filipina perception but to balance the search engine results of Filipina websites. It's that simple.

I hope you take the time to read their stories.

Which is pretty cool. I generally blog for myself, and I don't really expect anyone other than my friends to comment. So receiving a stranger's comment, and a dissenting one at that, is good.

And the comment is fair enough.

I have to admit, when I wrote the The Filipina Paragon (Part 1), I was knee-jerk-reacting to a site that seemed to be trying so hard to improve the Filipina image -- with images that make me cringe. So I went back to the Filipina Images site to give it another go.

One of the things that are currently featured on the site were the WikiPilipinas Filipina Stories, a contest of one-shot blog entries on the modern Filipina. So I went to the winners of this contest as a starting point. Let it not be said that I am not willing to have my mind changed (ADHD kind of dictates that I do that at least once every thirty minutes, anyway). So here we go:

The winning entry was titled, The Filipina Doctor: Coming Full Circle, which expounds on the evolution of the Filipina healer from the pre-colonial babaylan to the Western doctor that she is now. It nods to ground-breaking Filipinas in the medical field. And it was a nice trip down the history of women in the medical field.

The entry the placed second was called, The Evolving Beauty of the Modern Filipina. The metaphor the blogger used was that of beauty products -- how beauty products have evolved from sabila to an entire fruit cocktail of products, and how that evolution was very much like that of  The Filipina (the modern Filipina is as well-developed as the current beauty products out in the market)... And the blogger also compared his effort to define the Filipina to a reader analysing a book., failing to realise that a woman is not the freakin' book, she's the freakin' author. Not objects or subjects, but creators of that so-called evolution... And don't get me started on how the history of the modern woman is compared to the history of beauty products... How the heck did that entry get second place?

The third place entry, the  Cyber Feminisation of Poverty: Mail Order Brides and the Image of the Filipina, should have won. The title was not a faked intellectual one. It actually cohesively looks at how the Internet has exacerbated the Mail Order Bride Dilemma (it sites sources and all that). It was well-written and the fact that the blogger didn't go all "We're Filipinas, we're so awesome" was pretty cool. It was the most intelligent one out of all of them.  My only problem with it was that the blogger posted pictures of women from mail order bride sites. What about their privacy, eh?

All in all, I was pretty pleased that the comment from angelicsmile prompted me to go back and read those blog entries.

But here's the thing. The objective of the Filipina Images site is to revamp the image of  The Filipina  from an exoticised  Mail Order Bride to that of one that is empowered and  not-a-hoe.  Good for them! But I still have an issue with who the subject of all of this is: Filipina Mail-Order Brides; Filipinas who go to these dating sites so they can bag a foreigner.

To me, it reeks of self-righteousness.
Let's all change the image of the Filipina into something more like us because we have careers and families and jobs and empowerment. Let's not let those Mail Order Brides ruin our image.

The whole thing speaks to a foreign audience.

Look! Filipinas are more than Mail Order Brides, we are empowered! Please change your minds about us!

I can't help but hear that underneath the pretty words.

I can't help but think that what this is doing is further alienating those women who think the Mail Order Bride thing is the only way out of their miserable lives. Further making them into objects of pity / scorn / analysis as we middle-class, empowered few sit in front of our machines and try to tell the world that we are not them.

_____

I'm not done. When I have free time, I will go back to that site and read some more.

But for now it's back to those concept briefs.

Tags: feminist rambling, life in manila, pop culture, women and tech
coordinates: at home
state of mind: blah
background noise: aircon humming

I seem to be on a roll here.

I blame being stuck in the middle of nowhere, in a place with no pool table. I blame running out of Bleach episodes to watch. I blame the fact that the internet is the only entertainment and distraction right now. I blame the low yellow lights at night here that don't allow me to go back to Briane Green and Fydor Dostoevsky...

Anyway.

I stumbled upon this online community and campaign: Filipina Images.

I don't know. I don't know... On one hand, I'm glad such a thing exists. I'm glad that these women have banded together to combat negative images of Filipinas online. So good on them for doing that...

But then I saw how they defined 'Filipina' and nearly hurled:

Tags: feminist rambling, pop culture, women and tech
coordinates: Sonya's Garden
state of mind: sleepy
background noise: people talking and wind chimes