Friday in July 2006

This week, there were some opportunities in the law firm. A lot of personnel movement occurred over the last two weeks such that opportunities abounded. I had to take advantage so I had to dust off my old time resume. Being content in my current position, it was difficult to get myself to fire up the resume builder. However, though I am indebted to my current boss for saving me from the hell that was the photofinishing store, I still have to take care of the family. So, after lounging around watching youtube.com for Korean dramas and variety shows, I hit the resume builder.

There were good and bad news. The resume got through the first level screen. However, it was "late" because by the time I had submitted, the internal period had passed by. Teached me a lesson. If you really want that spot, get your gear on. Ironically enough, buying the DVD for Goong served as my motivation for finishing the resume. At least now, my resume is in 80% tip-top shape.

I am addicted to Korean dramas. They are high value productions with excellent storylines. The translations are iffy, but I get to understand it in a round-about way.

The current one I am watching is Goong. A drama about a nineteen year old woman who becomes a crown princess in Korea. Perhaps I like it because I am a romantic at heart. I love seeing mushy love stories. Perhaps I wish that I was a charmer during high school. More debonair. More assured of myself. But then, what would be my price if I were like that? Would I have been married at the age of 19?

Ahh, the choices in life.

Phalluses Waving in the Air

Howie Severino helps Ramon Obusan document little known pre-Spanish and Hindu-Malay tradition.

I laughed when I read that the waving of phalluses was considered masturbation. Hehehe.

I have Goong!!!!

Yes! I have obtained the DVD 10 disc set of Goong as a prize for cleaning the refrigerator on Monday evening. It also serves as a part prize because I updated the dear old resume. Gotta keep looking you know.

Paper Airplanes

During 6th Grade in LSQC, we made paper airplanes. The goal was to get it across the street, approximately 300 feet away.

Best Paper Airplanes

Goong a Korean Drama

Over the weekend, I was entertained by youtube.com, a service that shows films/movies over the internet.

While looking for silly Japanese game shows, I stumbled across a Korean game show populated by Korean actors and singers. I was fascinated by the fact that the actors and singers allow themselves to be the subject of ridicule and fun. This is vastly different from American royalty. More than that, it required said actors and singers to be WITTY. This is something that Americans do not necessarily have.

One game requires a person to ask a question, and the other person must say "Of course." This often led to confessions of true love to the other person. Showing one's genunine feelings for another person is quite touching. In one episode, a female singer mentioned how she wanted to get to know another singer. In ten minutes, she explained her obsession/crush and it was complete with tears.

Absolutely attentive television!

One of the results is a television drama called Goong. Go check it out.

My Harem

I used to have a harem.

However, if you leave the rats to four a cage, they will inevitably get nasty. Rats are carnivorous and if one of the rats get sick, the others will begin cannibalizing. So imagine hundreds of rats in one cage container. Some of those rats will have to be put down.

Life

Continues even though some lives end. Three weeks ago, my uncle passed away. And as I sat and looked at the way Pin@ys grieve, I am struck that the only times we see people now are during weddings and funerals. Life goes on and passes on by.

Had a training at work in which I saw the good, the bad and the ugly of the law firm. Some lawyers were just so ignorant that they screwed up the system. Some lawyers wanted to do well in the training. Other lawyers just sat around and did not try.

I realize of course now why some people become partners, while others don't. First, you got to have some sort of brain. Second, it's all in the attitude. One lawyer in particular in the office does not have either one. She does not understand how the system works, and at the same time, he does not have the proper attitude of going with the flow. She made the mistake of stopping the work twice. In the first instance, he was just ignorant. In the second instance, he did not listen.

As for me, I need to learn how to encourage people and not sound judgemental. Damn, that is hard.

Pin@y in Hell's Kitchen

One of the sous chef in Hell's Kitchen is Pin@y.

She's probably wondering... What the F*CK?! All these candidates suck like the proverbial slime. I should be getting that free resort in las Vegas.

Colon Cleansing

I am thinking abouttrying Colonix Cleansing

PROPRIETARY BLEND
Psyllium Husks
Flax Seed
Fennel Seed
Licorice Root
Aloe Vera
Grapefruit Pectin
Papaya Fruit
Slippery Elm Bark
Marshmallow Root
Rhubarb Root
Alfalfa
Guar Gum
Peppermint Leaf
Uva Ursi Leaf

Check out a satisfied customer.

What did strike me is could the mucoid plaque be a product of the material being consumed?

I continued the search and found this quack buster.

bowling high; life lows

The beauty of life are the highs and the lows.

I managed to bowl a 154 during the first game of a league night. Three spares and two strikes got me there. In the tenth frame, all I needed were three pins. While setting up for the tenth frame, I was praying for no gutter ball. Because I managed to break 150, I get to buy a bowling ball… But not just any bowling ball. I get to buy The ONE from Ebonite.

Then I hear from my brother that my uncle at Daly City passed away. May his soul rest in peace. My uncle was one of the professionals who immigrated to the US during the 1960's. A dentist by training, he became a bus driver for Muni for nearly thirty years. Sometimes, I wondered why he never practiced dentistry.

A classic Ilokano, my uncle lived life through good food. The man can cook extraordinary Filipino food. Onions and garlic were his favorite ingredients.

Uncle Sid lived to a ripe old age of 76. We celebrated his birthday in April. Here's to you Uncle. Go find my father and have yourselves a drink.

The Game of Bowling

Bowling

We started off the bowling league last week. Unfortunately, it turns out that the bowling lanes have an application of oil before the games start. This results in unpredictability with respect to trajectory with a bowler like me who does not have the hook. The ball ends up every which way except down the lane.

Last week's scores were 113, 80 and an abysmal 50. That's right, 50! The teammates blamed it on my changing my style every which way. I blamed it on the fact that the ball would not go down the lane any way.

We partnered up with two other elder gentlemen who had an interesting way of bowling. They skipped, hopped, hugged the wall and went into the other lane to convince the pins to fall down. It was hilarious.

Gary surprised them though because by the last frame, they were bowling their best. They did not want to be beaten by a handicapped person.

This week's scores for me were 77, 99 and 146. Yup, that is my top score to date. I actually had five or so spares and one or two strikes. Not bad.

Gary the coach suggested I lean forward. So I did. It seemed to give me some momentum. I also released my little pinky from being folded. I made my feet separate from each other. The right foot about a half of a foot in front. And, I did the targeting. I started with the 1-3 pin pocket. Went to the middle triangle. And drew a line to the first circle and my shoulder. That actually worked.

After the game, I had to bowl again just to get out my desire to experiment. I ended up bowling a 123 when I used the 3/4 turn with the third circle as my target. I had some hook to the ball. When I used the helicopter style, it was bad. The first frame was a strike, but nothing else after that. It was difficult to control where the ball was released.

Here's to bowling. Here's to the middle class! Hooray!!!

Food and Food and More Food

Potluck with lawyers. What can I say? I LOVE it! They have deep pockets so everything was catered. Samosa was so good that no one used the chutney sauce. BBQ from a restaurant. Can you say a whole piggy? Okay, not a whole piggy, but it was RIBS!

I used a BBQ recipe.

Money Blog

Got a new blog. Here, I tell everyone the secrets to life.

INFJ am I

Your Type is
INFJ
Introverted Intuitive Feeling Judging
Strength of the preferences %
33 25 38 33

Best Vitamin?

Was watching TV when I saw this. I checked it out and realized that this is just another scam. World's best? I doubt it. You should check out USANA if you want the best vitamin.

April 2006

The month has passed quickly. Each weekend has been busy. A baseball game on the weekend of the 22nd. A party on the 29th.

Have recently picked up bowling and that is why I have been not writing here. Bowled a 135 game just this past Thursday. Although rock bowling is not fun as I could not see the lane markers.

Mutya & Maguindanao Masters

Mutya. The Allelulia Panis Dance Theater performed Mutya yesterday at Yerba Buena Gardens of the Art. Mutya means the pulse of life in all being. Mutya can refer to the the pearl-like object that is born from the heart of a banana plant during the holiest day of the year. Mutya also refers to the female energy. I am familiar with the term through "Mutya ng Pilipinas" a beauty pageant in the homeland.

mutya
ng babae,
ilalim ng saging

mutya
ng buhay,
pulso ng katauhan

mutya.
kababaihang kaluluwa
nangangailangan sa lahat.

Alleluia Panis' vision is to create dance / theater works that define the artistic identity of thee Pilipino-American people. From what I saw in "Mutya," Alleluia succeeded where others have come up short.

To define culture is to define jell-o. You can try to capture, to hold, to limit it, but in the end, you need a larger Tupperware to hold everything that it encompasses. To represent a people's experience in a dance, well, it is almost impossible. The Western tradition of >ballet and modern dance take little pieces of history. But you know, Pilipinos just don't think small. Thus, we have the Mutya Project, which is due in January 2007.

Whereas Philippine folk dancing is way to look at the past of Pilipino ancestors, Pilipino post-modern dance must incorporate the present day reality of the Pin@y experience. A Pin@y in San Francisco would more often than not be the child of an immigrant. The Pin@y would have come from the middle class or lower from the Philippines. Money will be an issue of survival. For most, education will be the only vine to save them from the quagmire of poverty. For some, gangs and drugs will be knife that harvests their lives.

The goal is to encapsulate that world, reconcile it with the ancestral past, and create a work of art that will inspire.

It is not an easy task.

Beginning. The dance began in the dark like most of us began life in the womb. Three dancers wrap their bodies in a T'nalak, abaca fibers woven into silk like texture. Elements of pangalay accompany the music through the movement of the hands. Three t'nalaks were attached at their ends such that a triad spoke is formed. [Imagine a wheel with three radial spokes instead of the forty or so. ] The cloth limits the body movements of the three dancers. The dancers can not leap, they can barely jump. A slow clockwise rotation. A counter-clockwise movement to change pace. Was this dance the representation of Pilipino-Americans and their multi-faceted identities of Probinsiyano, Spanish, and American? The abaca t'nalak tie the identities into one. The t'nalak ties represent the history of the colonization and the subsumed probinsiyano or regional identity so prevalent in Philippine society.

Meanwhile, the rondalla music played in the background. "In the key of off ," remarked someone. The rondalla group played the traditional folk music. Before the performance, the band played extremely well. There was no hiccup at all. But during the whole Mutya performance, there were problems. The musical notes had a dissonance. At first I thought that it was simply an error. After all, musicians playing in the dark can pluck the wrong string. But, the error kept repeating itself. Finally, I glanced over at the band and noticed that a new player had joined. I don't know if he was out of tune or if he was making the mistakes. But the sound was definitely wrong. Because of the off-key playing, the performance of the dances was affected. Also, there did not seem to be any coordination between the music and the dance.

As an aside, this seems to be so true of Pin@ys. In life, in music, in dance, we are so bound by rules. The music must stop here, because the creator of the music only created 64 bars of music to be played. Rules do not allow our younger musicians, students or children to improvise and learn and expand into making the music their own. If an art of an image does not follow the rule, it is not Pilipino. The adherence to the rules make us disciplined adults. But it also keeps us from enjoying life.

The first dance concludes with a dancer entwining her feet in the triad of t'nalak. As she slowly spins, the t'nalak wraps her feet until she can only spin as slowly as the triad of dancers spun. The dancer spun slowly away from the stage into the far left corner, away from the light, away from our eyes.

More next time…

Transfilipina

Jing lives in Germany; A Pin@y in a foreign land about to be remade into the image of the Philippines. I pity those Germans. They don't know what they are in for.

Exhibitionaist. Sagittarius. Sporty. Lover of men. coke addict. Prude and proud of it. A connoiseur or snot and boogers. Transfilipina is the Pin@y Blogger of the Day on the 3rd of April in the year of the Pin@y 2006.

Living from Death

Death. So final. So absolute. You exist one minute. You don't exist in another. Death is the liquor of life. Death stops you, makes you rethink of where you are going and where you have been. Death simplifies things for you. What you thought were so important now are trivial. Tears shed because of something said are tears wasted for self.

I spoke to Marianne Villanueva. last night at the Bayanihan Center in San Francisco. In the spread of the conversation, she asked, "Where is your mother?" As a reflex, I said "She's dead." I detected discomfort in Marianne's face. I added hastily, "She's been dead a while so I have gotten over it."

To recover, Marianne asked, "And your father?" Strike two. I replied, "He's dead also. It's been twenty years." Marianne replied "Oh."

In the Philippines, death is celebrated. Celebrated not like the New Orleans celebration. Celebration with food and with massive amounts of flowers. The flowers hid the smell of the dead. As embalming technology got better, the flowers stayed as a measure of the dearly departed's value on this earth.

Cancer. Tumors. Of all the diseases, the degenerative diseases emphasize much more than other diseases the regression of an adult into infancy. Before technology managed to balance patients on the slim line of life and death, parents left the world suddenly and unexpectedly. But with better nutrition and vitamin pills, more and more we see our parents become infants before our very eyes.

I was frightened when I saw my father's body be reduced to skeletal proportions. I knew as a teen-ager what was happening. It was the cancer. Or the treatment for the cancer. I wondered whether I would end up the same way. More importantly, I wondered whether or not patients are conscious when they are dying. Are their minds still as sharp? Are they trapped in a veil of fog? I hope it is the latter. Let them have the minds of infants if they are to have the bodies of infants.

In the end, I had to build a philosophical framework to accept my parent's death. One day, I realized that I could slide into the oblivion of despair. I could continuously dream of the things I missed about my parents. I could continue to pine away and wish for their return. Instead, I decided to live. I decided to take what they taught me and use it in my life. I chose to keep them in my heart. Then, they are not dead, or dying or in pain. They are alive, teaching me, counseling me. Making me realize that I have many things to live for.

But death marks your time on this earth. As a child, you hardly ever know anyone who dies. As an adult, it becomes a constant reminder to you. Time is passing. You are on the road to death. What has your life accomplished? What have you done? What is there to accomplish?

So here's to death and dying! May we all accept it when our time comes. May we accept the passing of those close to us. May we give solace to those who are about to leave the mortal coil.

Birth …death. A cycle that repeats incessantly. In a thousand worlds, in countless galaxies. Birth …death. The two sides of a knife. The same side of life.

In our reaction to death, to dying, we see that which is true in the universe.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
APRIL IN LOS ANGELES
by Eileen Tabios

[4/2/06, A.M.]


1)
Everything is a relationship.

My family relied on the doctor to cure my father.

The doctor caught my mother in a weak moment and got her to concede, "Yes, he's dying."

I arrived in Los Angeles to hear my mother report on how a doctor discussed the best ways for a man to die, rather than how to heal.

"Doctor," I said in a conversation I plan to have. "Your role is not to advice how a person best dies. Your role is to treat illness, hopefully cure it."

I heard his thought, He's dying.

I replied with my eyes, We're all dying. We're also all living.

The words I said: "What do you recommend for someone who wants to live, with a family who wants him to live?"


2)
Since I last saw her, Mama has sprouted snow on her head.

Mama, ever by Daddy's bedside.


3)
F. beats himself inside his mind for having chided Dad for not eating. Later, we would learn his throat was blocked by so much phlegm he could not swallow.

Tears firmly jailed by the mind.

I beat myself up because I don't want to be here -- where Dad has shrunk to "Daddy" cradled among plastic tubes delivering antibiotics, antibiotics, antibiotics ... and oxygen.


4)
I am glad to be here. He saw me enter his hospital room and his face was suddenly the sun. His arms entwined with plastic tubes reached forth to hug me. I am glad he felt my arms, suddenly trees surrounding him. He hugged me back but I only felt more air.


5)
Kaiser Permanente -- ever stupid with cost-cutting cruelty. One hospital forced my father to leave -- "he's fine; he just needs to go home."

On the way home, Daddy started to have trouble breathing and they turned the car to take him to another Kaiser hospital's Emergency Room.

He is still in the Emergency Room.

Once, the ER nurse asked my mother in sincere confusion, "Why did the other hospital discharge him?"

A new question added to the list of questions which will never have adequate answers: How could the other hospital have discharged him?


6)
My father is better treated at the second hospital.

People matter.

At this second hospital, there is an experienced nurse with the ability to dislodge the phlegm that had been blocking my father's throat for five weeks in the other hospital.

They kept the jar with the sucked out phlegm. Ugly. Yellow. And the last piece sucked out was solid. Ugly. Brown.

"Like a piece of paper," my cousin observed about its solidity.

I would not be able to breathe, too, or swallow with paper stuffed down my throat.

As if my poems remained trapped there as I gasp unsuccessfully to sing.

I would not be able to breathe if my body jailed my poems.

My father is ill and I think of poetry and and and all of that saddens me.


==============
[4/2/06, P.M.]


7)
The conversation unfolded as I imagined it.

I asked, "Doctor, I'd like an update."

The doctor -- this one with a better "bedside manner" than any other Kaiser doctor I've met -- replied, "He's dying. I don't know what update I can give."


8)
My father's youngest son -- my brother -- died unexpectedly less than six months ago. At one point this evening, not knowing where next to turn my mind, I turned to a cousin H. to say, "If my father is to die soon, it's too bad he couldn't have died before my brother. It must be difficult for a parent to witness the death of a child."

In response, H. said nothing.

Belatedly, I remember that H., with whom I'd lost touch over the years, has two children, one age 2 and the other age 5.


9)
Except.

Except that since I arrived by his bedside, his condition markedly improved. Within hours after my arrival, he improved enough to be taken out of the emergency room. The technician unplugging his various tubes in preparation for moving him said, "It's always good news to be transferred out of ER."

Always?


10)
Later, I joked to Dad about how his improved condition must be due to my arrival. Grandiosely, I emphasized, "It must be my presence!"

He turned his head slightly, pretending otherwise. But his lips smiled.

He had called me a few weeks ago in the midst of delirium caused by his medicines. Not knowing what else to do, Mom had put him on the phone. That's when he scared me shitless by announcing, "I've got a tumor coming out of my nose."

Later, Mom would explain that the "tumor" was the feeding tube inserted through his nose. But, first, he pleaded with me to talk to Dr. G -- the very useless Dr. G -- to take away the tumor. To ease his mind, I lied and said I would. That's when he broke my heart by saying so plaintively, like a child just melting in relief, "Thank you."

As if I had the power to make things better.

The painful, conflict-ridden relationship we had all my life and, despite the criticisms he'd levied, he still believes me to be a bigger person than I know myself to be.

As if I had the power to make things better for him.


11)
I left him nearly 30 years ago. I have finally returned.

Finally.


12)
Everything is a relationship.


13)
As if I could make things better.

No. Thank you, Dad.


14)
The adult ages into child. The parent becomes a baby. The only difference, I thought as the tossed-aside blanket revealed how thin and ravaged his body has become, is that all babies are beautiful.

It took three seconds for my mind to skid, turn a corner and conclude, His ravaged body is beautiful. The purple bruises and purple lines of collapsed veins caused from too many intravenous tubes. The folds of skin loosened as his inability to eat pares down muscles and fat. The brown age spots. The skeletal legs undermined by lack of exercise. A body that I suddenly realized his daughter can probably carry.

Would carry.

O, Fallen Angel.