Chateileen, Real Estate, and Jollibee

At first glance, I thought that the fallen angel's blog was titled Chateileen. I took pause for a few minutes wondering at the thought of the fallen angel going through all manner of dictionaries, encyclopedias and god knows what else just to find a word that contains her name. I mumbled "Boy the angel's wings have really undergone a growth spurt." Or else, Jose Garcia Villa, the anchored angel, has begun visiting and lecturing the fallen angel on building a cult based on one's personality. Amazingly enough, I found "chatelaine" in a book I was reading. Leave it to the fallen angel to be avant and yet hip. I don't know how she does it.

***
I took the real estate class final for the class today. I was studying for the whole week. I am planning on taking the test to obtain a real estate license. As the test was beginning, one of the students tried to close the door. The door opens to the outside and it was about 60 degrees inside the classroom. The classroom was a little chilly. The teacher told her not to touch the door and that it was his responsibility.

Throughout the semester, Mr. Scott the teacher has been trying to teach everyone how to give respect. After all, if you are going to serve clients as a real estate agent, are you not supposed to give respect to them? Unfortunately, people are too stubborn to get it. Or, their pride is too high. I don't get it.

Maybe Mr. Scott's reprimand was a little too sharp. I did not think so. However, she gave Mr. Scott attitude. Not just disrespect. It was outright hostility. (Personally, I don't think she will make it as a real estate agent. Can't handle pressure) He calmly told her that she could take the final on Tuesday if she was not feeling well. Well, if you are having a bad day, wouldn't you do the same?

She missed out on the exam which had about 30 repeat questions!!! What that means is that you basically have about 40 to 60 points. At the end of the class, Professor Scott pretty much decided that he will rewrite the exam to make it harder. So, little Ms. Attitude gets the short end of the stick.

***
Which brings me to a ride to San Francisco to visit a jewelry store, Arkipelago books and Jollibee. Shreve Jewelers because it's that time of the relationship when you gotta back up your intentions with some hardware. To the credit of the so, she has excellent taste. Is it coincidence or is it providence when the SO has the same exact taste in jewelry as my mother? Frankly, I'm amazed.

The Mikimoto collection of necklaces and jewelry was a great favorite of my mother. Pearls. White. Black. There is something magical about the internal secretions of an oyster that encases a grain of sand in a cage of beauty. The grain of sand is transformed to an object of desire. A bain for the oyster but a delight for man.

***

Speaking of delights, have you visited Arkipelago bookstore in the Mission lately? They have books that will satisfy everyone's desires. From anthologies of literature and poetry to historical studies about the Philippines, it's all there.

I happened to meet at Arkipelago the painter Rico Galvez. Hopefully, he'll have a website soon so that you can see his works. We ended up discussing art and its various manifestations and subjects. I specifically mentioned about being colonized in this day and age. I cited as an example this book which shows in photographs the devotion of Pilipinos to the religious statues. the photos were taken during the various processions during the town's fiestas. I pointed out that the majority of the statues resembled and were modeled after Caucasians.

Rico mentioned this "experiment" he wanted to do where he asks Filipino-American actors to select the image of god among the following pictures: an Asian, a black man, a Caucasian and a Filipino. It will be interesting to see who they choose.

***
At the end of that conversation, I had to eat. Since I was in the Mission next to the Moscone Center, I figured I should drop by Jollibee. Ah, Jollibee, home away from home of Pinoys. The one place where a Pinoy can visit and instantly, he is back in the crowded streets of the Philippines. I ordered the number 11. Three pieces of chicken joy with rice and sauce. NO vegetables at all. The vegetables are in the burgers made from Angus beef. I have not seen a Pinoy go to Jollibee and order burgers. They always seem to get the chicken joy. I suppose you can always get a burger at McDo. But joy from chicken? Only from Jollibee.

Which 20th Century Philosopher Are You?


You are Michel Foucault! You wrote groundbreaking
histories of prisons, hospitals, asylums, and
sex. Interestingly, you thought basically the
same thing about all of them. Your historical
accuracy is a bit dodgy, but that was never
really the point. You were very obsessed with
power roles - so obsessed that you frequented
gay S&M clubs, and died of AIDS in 1984.


What 20th Century Theorist are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Corpse is Buried, Long Live The Chatelain

A shyatellain? Siyatelayn? Siya, sino siya? Ano nga ba? Ang kulit naman.

Chatelain. Nope, not a chattel. She's not a piece of personal property nor is she a real estate property. She's something more than that.

The wine connossieur (I acutally spelled it correctly) evolved into a corpse with delusions of fallen angels. Now the corpse has been resurrected into a chatelain with two cats and a dog.

Hmm, adobo anyone?

Go visit her. She spent way too much time in a place with fallen angles, err angels. She needs our help so weigh her down with all of your worries. Watch out for the wings! I think it's gotten bigger.

God, I missed her. It was so SILENT!!! I had to walk in my own head. But it is over! I have been delivered ala Federal Express!!! And to a castle none the less!

Katuluyan ni Rio Alma

If you thought that my mention of Virgilio Almario was over, you guessed wrong. While dyipniing, I saw this essay by Gellacio Guillermo. I hope that your Tagalog is in great shape. Otherwise, bring out that dictionary.

Tungkol sa may-akda: Dumaan din si G. Guillermo sa International
Writers Program sa Iowa University, 1970-71. Kinatawan niya ang
Pilipinas sa 27th Poetry International Festival sa Rotterdam,
Holland, 1996.

I am fascinated by the state of poetry in the Philippines. I am wondering how the mechanics of poetry in the Philippines occurs. If anyone would like to tell me how Tagalog poetry is divided into certain movement, please write me on e-mail.

Salamat

Culture and its importance

From the corner of the karinderia, I took a google dyipney looking for NVM Gonzalez. I ended up in some very interesting places. The first place has been mentioned here before. It is the Council for Research in Values and Philosophy. In the foreword to the discussion written by Leonardo Mercado, George McLean has this to say about Mercado's writings.

As has come to be seen only in the last ten years in other parts of the world, culture is not a curiosity but the stuff of a people's freedom. It bears the truly humane and humanizing achievements of their history and provides the context in which future generations can truly be educated.

That definition is very mind opening in my search for the value of culture. In the United States, various neoconservatives have declared a cultural war in America. I personally view it as a finding of culture specially when the ones trying to find it are children of immigrants.

As a minority in the United States, one can not but help notice that one's image is never to be seen in the mass media. The men and women in the major television shows are Caucasian with a smattering of African-
Americans in the Warner Brothers network. Sometimes, we see some Asians, but get to the details and I certainly don't see too many Filipinos in shows that occur in New York.

Faced with this discontinuity in the media, minorities are forced to either acculturate/assimilate or to find their own culture in which the images reflected will be ones that look the same as minorities. This is why I have photographed Filipinos and not HAPAS in the Philippine folk dancing series. I want to show the image of the Filipino in the United States.

Culture is the pot which leads to the various states of freedom.

Beam me up!

From Barbara's site comes the question of which Trek character you are. I'm quite surprised. But then again, I am debonaire and dashing.

	Captain James T. Kirk "Scotty, beam me up."

I don't have a predisposition to being a serial-killer

Riding the dyipney, I stopped and mused at bloodberry's site about growing up and being in college. She puts forward a psychological test.

I am glad to say that it took me a while to answer this one. And I got the wrong answer.

University of the Philippines and Philippine Science High School

It's been raining in the city of Oakland in Northern California. Probably two more days of rain is in store. I suppose I am lucky compared to the poor devils who have to play in the snowstorms. They get frozen ice thrown at them. Sure it's fun to make a fallen angel and a snowman. But, you also happen to freeze your butt, your hands, and your feet! Maybe it's fun to have snow for one day of play. But snow for three months is hell.

I have been amusing myself by taking the a google jeepney in the internet. I like looking for amusing blogs of highly intelligent people who have something to say besides discuss their love life in the internet. Let's face it, reading about people pining away for evil men is not my cup of ginebra. Oops, it's early in the morning. Not ginebra. Vodka!

Reading some of the Pinoy blogs, I realize that the admissions process in the Philippines is one of the hardest. It has to be. One takes the UPCAT in which one is graded on math, verbal etc, etc (probably like the SAT). Then, in the application to UP, you pick a campus like Diliman or Los Banos. Then, you select which major you want. However, you better make sure that your UPCAT scores are high enough. Because if it is not, off you go to some other major.

I always wanted to go to UP Diliman. It had that aura of being the best in the Philippines. When I was five or six years old, we would go to the campus and I would be struck by those triangular bus stops on either side of the road. I call them bus stops because I don't know what they are. More than anything, those triangles hanging in the air represented for me the goal of UP.

Of course, since we are discussing past lives, I would have probably gone to Philippine Science High School. Sigh. I wonder if I could have fulfilled my dream of being a scientist if I had gone there. Or would I have ended up on stage or theatre? Maybe then I could have met and married Pops. (Focus! Focus! I need to stop thinking about the princess in distress!)

The one difference that I saw between American teaching and Filipino teaching is that explanations are always available in the classroom in the United States. Mind you, this is from the public school of the Los Angeles Unified School District. For example, even though I was learning algebra in English, I managed to understand the distributive property of numbers as compared to the associative property of numbers. In fact, I enjoyed math during high school. But in the Philippines, I remember that algebra was something that I could not understand for the life of me. For some reason, the lessons in the American school made sense to me. I don't remember that being the case in the classrooms in the Philippines.

Of course, this could be because I just studied harder when I came to the US. I do remember saying to myself that it was a new life and I could remold my life. In the Philippines, I was not a distinguished student. I was constantly the student who kept going back and forth between the A class and the B class. Each year, I would hope that I was in the A class, and then wham! I get to show up in the B class. That’s was extremely disappointing because I could see the patterns. I was just not that gifted naturally in mathematics or in verbal. But I could see patterns, and maybe that is why I was pretty good once I was in the US.

With respect to Phil Science High School, I was supposed to go there for high school". I managed to squeak by as an alternate. I remember when one of the employees of PSHS went to our house. He lived just across the street so he wanted to deliver the package personally. I almost wreaked the house when I celebrated my admission. I had visions of greatness I tell you!

My parents and I visited the high school and I tell you, it looked like an American high school in terms of architecture. It was the single most beautiful school I had ever seen. The corridor was dimly lit, but we could peek at the science rooms. I could see those mini-sinks with the glittering faucets. The spit-shiny new classrooms. And the smell. It was the smell of America. In my dreams PSHS still ranks as number one.

Unfortunately or fortunately for me and my family, we knew that we were going to go to the United States. If I had attended PSHS and then left before graduation, I would have had to pay for the tuition and the costs. So, my parents made the hard call and decided that I should not enroll there. I was heartbroken. I saw PSHS as my only way of getting into UP Diliman.

Several years later, I end up graduating from the school that was the model for the University of the Philippines. Berkeley. At one time, the SO was giving a tour to some Philippine artist/professor/intellectual. He asked to go to Barrows Hall the economics and business administration building. Said personage stood in front of the bust of Barrows and introduced himself. Talked to the bust for a few minutes about the system in the Philippines and then left.

In the diasporic land which is America, we come to these moments of irony. I would trade away some of it if I could just set foot on the UP campus and the PSHS campus . Hmm, maybe they need a lecturer for molecular and cell biology over there?

Pops Fernandez

In another life, twenty years ago, I was supposed to go to the Philippines, meet Pops Fernandez, and we get married and live happily ever after. Instead, I finished college and went on to graduate school. A demon from America swept towards Pops and threw a spell over her. She ended up marrying the demon.

Now, that demon was just seen in the television and the demon still can not speak Tagalog without a damned accent! He's been living in Pinas for 20 years. When he is judged by St. Peter, San Pedro will ask him to recite the Lord's Prayer in Tagalog. If he misses, he goes straight to impiyerno.

Military Order Bride

Hmm, I was riding the internet jeep and found the following story about a Pinay who is trying to get out of the cage. I hope she is able to finally get free. Otherwise, divorce and separation are always a good thing.

Drugs over the internet

In Good Morning America, there was a feature on drug buying over the internet. The main protagonist is a teen who died from an overdose of prescription drugs like morphine, etc. The owner of the internet prescription drugstore is going to jail.

Everyone knows that is is quite easy to get drugs over the internet. Take a questionarre and answer it over a webform. A physician will "review" it. And, voila the drugs are shipped to you. Businesses are doing over $3 million dollars per year. A reviewer physician can make over a million dollars.

Regulations are needed for businesses like these. You are essentially self-prescribing your own medication for viagra, uppers and downers.

I have to wonder about the teen-ager who was able to order drugs online though. Do kids now have their own credit cards that they are able to use it online? If the kid is living at your home, should you not talk to them to see if they have problems. I get confused by all these parents who don't know that their kids are doing drugs. Maybe talking to them once a day or once every day or so should be mandatory.

I'm rambling, rambling

It's that season again when the weather gets bone cold. And the advance of my age is going forward since I notice now the phenomena of actually feeling weather. What that means dear youngsters is that my big toe, which apparently is being affected by gout the disease of kings, begins to hurt as soon as it gets around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I suppose my fluids are being frozen? Or is it my joints that are crystallizing at such low temperatures? At any rate, I can also tell when it's going to rain by the way my toe hurts. I remember something about the pressure of the atmosphere having an effect on the physiology of joints. For the life of me however, I don't remember nor do I know how that phenomena can be translated physically.

While taking a neuroanatomy class I learned that the receptors for cold sensation and the receptors for hot sensation are basically derived from the same type of receptors. That's why when you put your hand on something very cold, the pain that you feel is the same pain as when you put your finger on top of a candle flame. Unfortunately, I hated neuroanatomy because it was pure pain of memorization. The case studies that were presented were so trite and the professor was so perfunctory that it was absolute hell. Added to the pain of that semester was the fact that I was also taking physics. Can someone say a nosedive in my grades? How about my one and only C in college. It still hurts somewhat that I got a C. But hey, I never did like physics.

Which all brings me to love and the pain associated with that. Funny how I associate love and pain together during my undergraduate years. For that matter, love and pain go with the graduate years too in case you are wondering.

I don't know how you deal with the pain in your heart when faced with unrequited love. It is not quite physiological, but not completely psychological either. I do remember that pain was present in my heart. I also remember that pain or the presence of pain was in my psyche. It hurt to breathe. It also hurt to think. I suppose that the pain that is present while you are in the midst of dealing with a rejection is something that only time can heal.

As a biologist, the only explanation I can say is that the dendritic tree which was formed at the moment of rejection has lost some of its connection. The hormonal lows associated with the rejection have also passed and that is why you eventually recover. In general, if you get over the hurt and don't become psychotic and bitter like most people do, then you come out well adjusted and able to deal with a wide range of strange and foolish people.

Vatican, Oh Vatican

Err, just when I come to a respite with my criticism of the Catholic Church, I read about condoms not preventing HIV/AIDS. Will someone in the Catholic church please read some science journals? Please? Please? That way, we can prevent embarassing events like hiding child molesters and contributing to the spread of AIDS.

Somewhere out there in hell, there has got to be a special place for the Vatican See. For if they do this with knowledge of the truth, they shall burn in eternal damnation.

Got Adobo?

Do you have pieces of adobo in your computer? The Wily Pin@y is asking for submissions for adobo recipes, poems, short stories, novels, epics, and what ever you might have that is related to that glorious incantation called adobo. Check my contribution to the adobo craze in Hay(na)ku, Tatang!.

Readings for Going Home to a Landscape

Images of the readers for the Bindlestiff reading are now up in the gallery. You are invited to check them out.

Images of the readers for the City Lights reading are now up in the gallery. You are invited to check them out.

Bow Ye All Before Me

(With flashy lights and a burning bush in the background) The Smurf Name Generator has called me YAHWEH SMURF.

Where are my deserved offerings of fruit, coconuts and mangoes? Where are my mighty servants leagues strong? Where are the sacrificial lechon on a spit? I command thee all. Serve me! Make sacrifices for me!

Umm, anyone here have some kutsinta with niyog?

City Lights Bookstore

Even I know where and what City Lights bookstore means to the world of poetry. And tonight, the SO was part of a set of Pilipinas who read at City Lights. The night brings to a close a monthlong celebration of the release of the anthology "Going Home to a Landscape." The quality of the voices presented in the anthology is staggering. It seems like each and every single one of the women have a book out or a book coming out in the next year or so.

Marianne Villanueva went first as the lead off reader for the evening. Marianne served as hostess for the evening and read sparingly. Her two excerpts came from "Mountains" and "Sutil." The Pin@y community owe a debt of gratitude to Marianne and Virginia Cerenio the co-editor of Going Home to a Landscape.

Barbara Reyes read "Anthropological" tonight. Amazing that something like this could have been written five years ago. It is as fitting and as important now as then.

Maiana Minahal just came back from the Philippines where her book of poetry "Sitting Inside Wonder" was launched. Maiana read her poem "Tired" which is exceptional in capturing the fleeting feeling of immigrant life in America.


Michelle Bautista read the poem "Upon Reading an Opera" which is a work written after she read the whole poetry book "Opera" by Barry Schwabsky's Opera.


And lastly, Angela Torres read "Tango". Angela is definitely one of the best narrative poets out there.

I hope to get some of the photos published in a website soon. I'll definitely write up the address here so watch out for it.

In closing, I was sitting at City Lights' poetry room and staring at the wall of books of poetry. The books were written by authors from all over the world. In the center of the room were six books of poetry written by Pin@ys.

There must have been 500 to a thousand books of poetry in that room. In an instant, I knew one truth. Pin@y writers need to write so that we can tell our narrative, our song. If we do not, some time in the future our children will search for signs of our existence and finding nothing and will have to start from square one. Some will be lost and will never find what it means to be Pin@y. Some will be lucky and will know how to google. And some will hopefully write and continue the narrative.

To kill a God

For some reason, I found Jose Garcia Villa's republished book "Anchored Angels" in a bookshelf last night. I knew that the corpse had edited said book. I believe I even went to a public launch of the book at Arkipelago many moons ago. But I just never read it. In retrospect, I don't believe I was ready.

At midnight, I began to dive into the anchored angel's world of commas, icon bashing, and basic war against God. Such absolute egotism, basic drive, and epic disappointment! It was so thrilling to watch from the sidelines as Doveglion took on God in a pugilistic exhibition. A matador dueling with a bull. The old lechon cook dueling with dusk.

Doveglion needs to be read by every single Pilipino who is searching for the self. Villa provides enough helping for you and you and you and me. It is not classic diasporic reading which explains why you are here and tells you what to do with yourself. Rather, it maps the way for the future when you are at peace with your diasporic self and ask "Is this all there is to it?"

Villa skipped the diasporic and went straight to kill his God. And kill the God he did. In beautiful ways. In unimagined ways. In poetic ways. Not just blood and gore. Not without honor. Not without grace. He killed God, took the ashes and fashioned God after himself, with commas to make sure the pacing never got away.

(I remember high school and my fascination with em dashes. I would put them at the end of sentences. My English teacher Mr. Hickman refused to allow such indignities to God. He punished the transgressor by one grade for each occurrence. I refused to let go of em dashes because they paused; I needed that pause damn it! It was to breathe. To recollect. To reexamine thyself.

And now to think, maybe the spirit that drove doveglion to wondrous heights was simply visiting me in high school! The spirit must not have liked the snow in New York. Ha-ha-ha! Take that, Archangel Mr. Hickman!)

So go and watch Villa kill his God. You might not be ready for it, but you will have to sooner or later.

To be the poet

While at City Lights, the SO showed me the book To be the poet by Maxine Hong Kingston. Since her book Woman Warrior is just plain required reading for Asian American studies, I perused through some of the pages. The book suggested that poetry is something that is easy to do and more preferable than writing novels, plots and storylines.

I would have to agree that poems can be easily made. However, good poems that make you stop an hour after reading it, great poems that shake your soul, and poems that change your life demand as much from the poet as great novels demand from writers.

I wish writing poetry can be easy. But each poem demands a level of sacrifice from me. It's almost as if they are sucking some part of my life in them. I don't necessarily mind since it is fun to see Aquino and Marcos verbally jousting with each other. Or seeing Kennedy and Nixon become more Pinoy as each day passes. And who can resist Bonifacio and Rizal chasing a turkey?

We did not end up buying the book by Maxine Hong Kingston. A passage about poets not caring for money kinda turned me off on the whole idea of the book. As the SO says, poets care about money. They just don't get paid much.

The Price of Democracy

Once more an actor has decided to run for the presidency of the Philippines. And once more, the middle class and the educated classes complain about how events mar their vision of politics in the Philippines. I suppose that somehow, this is not how they thought of democracy.

Instead of losing hope and cursing, I celebrate the fact that an actor can become president of the Philippines. It means that democracy is working. The most popular candidate is winning. No one can contest that when Joseph Ejercito Estrada or Erap ran for president he did get the most votes from the people. The poor people that is. Erap para sa mahihirap. And the poor voted for him and sent him to Malacanang.

And let's not forget that before the presidency, Ramos picked Erap as his running-mate for the elections. Erap paid his dues just like any political candidate. He played second fiddle and let the spotlight shine on Ramos. He served willingly and ably as a vice-president.

I gave Erap the benefit of the doubt. After all, he became a politician under the wing of Marcos. I figured, of course he will be good. He learned all the mistakes one can do with Marcos. Instead, Erap just proceeded to once more take advantage of the Philippines. He took what Marcos did in 21 years and proceeded to do it in two years. Corruption and pare politics were back in style.

Thank God for Edsa 2. The people elected him. The people took him out. What was the reason for Edsa 2 again? Oh yeah, Chavit Singson charged him with being the Lord of the Jueteng Lords. Geez, almost makes him mystical. Lord of the Jueteng. Can we make a movie out of that?

Yes, most likely, Fernando Poe Jr will be manipulated and will be corrupt. Yes, he will most likely ally himself with the same allies that Erap had. Yes, he will probably rape and pillage again.

But candidates like FPJ are the price of democracy. We bitch and moan about how bad he will be. But at least we have a choice. Aquino is savoring this moment. People can choose the candidate. Marcos is shaking his head. People can choose the candidate.

So let's get ready for the next election. It will be bumpy and sketchy. But hey, we got a choice.