off to the land of cyber athletes

for those i haven't seen in the past few weeks, i gots good news: i'm going to korea on a 6-month writers residency exchange program. it's more of a cultural exchange and immersion thingy. i have to attend korean language and literature classes mondays to fridays from 9am to 1pm at the korea university. then we have trips to cool korean places and we get to meet young korean writers (very important question: are there any cute guys in korea?). they pay for everything; we get a stipend of close to 6 million krw. hope that's enough for the many gadgets i hope to buy.

i have to be there by 28 march so it means i only have four weeks left to get my act together. i have yet to prepare my wardrobe (for spring, summer and autumn), books (pinoy lit and other good stuff i've been saving for prison or retirement) and luggage. eek. the only thing i've done so far is to buy a new digicam with a nice orange case. my friend E says i have to buy rechargable batteries and a charger and a big memory card so i can take videos of my dog to take to korea.

the semester is just about to wind down so this means i'll have to submit my grades a little early. i was also told that i'll have to resign from my teaching job at UP effective april 1st because my contract end may and i won't be here by then. i was also told i can't be renewed for the next academic year because this korea thing messed up my thesis defense schedule. i'll be back in september and will have to earn my degree when i get back so i can get re-appointed as assistant professor.

there'll be 6 of us participating in the program, 2 writers each from indonesia, thailand and the philippines. the other pinoy is young novelist S, aka JCM, who i'm told is a little weird. there are 4 novelists in the group, a poet and me (not sure how to classify myself--nonfiction writer-slash-teacher-slash-hottie? heh.) it'll be really cool meeting lots of new people and exploring a new city but i'm terrified of a lot of things.

i have a wonderful support system here, lots of friends and family who love me, and i'm about to travel and live abroad for the first time. aside from my family, i'm going to miss my dog, kitty, who my dad is going to foster while i'm gone. i'm going to insanely miss R and E and my sister B. but most of all, i'll miss my good friend P, who i'm used to seeing every so often, and having week-long conversations with. it'll be like losing my cousin A all over again.

anyway. this is a good thing that everyone tells me is a blessing i should enjoy. and i'm sure i will, once i get past the fear and the crazy crying jags P says i will most likely have the first 2 months. i remember something a student wrote for a stalking assignment i gave some years ago: we don't know what the hell we're doing and still, we soldier on.

the fattest sairo in the world

this was taken by my cousin R last christmas. you're welcome to download and print it, and use it to scare small children. this is what you get when you cross a dozen cookies and lack of exercise with genetic material that's 20% lard.

kitty's porn shots

finally, here they are. as in a photo story, you have to look at them in sequence.











speaking of porn, i met up with some old friends last night. one of them turned 30 right before our eyes. J and E expected E to turn gay. he didn't. but he kept going on and on and on about brokeback mountain, which J hasn't seen and probably won't ever. L's ex-boyfriend I was there too in a spiffy biker outfit, with a black jacket and gloves and helmet and stuff. he told us about having a brokeback moment with E: one time he slept over at I's house, they were were in bed together, just sleeping. I leans over in his sleep and starts rubbing E's tummy, who wakes up screaming, thinking I was going to brokeback him. (yes, it's now being used as both verb and adjective.)

there was this other time almost 10 years ago when we made E and E kiss each other. i can't remember if it was more than a smack or if there was tongue involved. i just remember it was so damn funny. J told me E is still very bothered by what happened. which could explain all the recent buff macho posturing. or that could just be because he's a daddy now. i dunno.

where does the porn come in? I teaches at some deliquent-rich-kids-growing-up-to-be-taipans school at RCBC plaza, teaches the kids cool techie hardware stuff, how to pirate and how to download porn from the internet. he told us about the most disturbing porn he had ever seen: a 30-minute video clip of a girl on a swing. she's fully clothed and she's just swinging back and forth, back and forth for 30 minutes in some playground. i asked him what makes it porn. he says, "just how sick would you have to be to get off on something like that?"

good point.

censorship sucks

much as i want to upload kitty's porn pics, blogger keeps timing out. been trying to post the pics here for three weeks now. what am i doing wrong?

doggie porn

i recently took pictures of my dog with my sister's new-ish digital camera and i must say, i just might have a career in producing images that appeal to the baser instincts of the canine population. lots of weird angles and sexy close-ups of long-lashed doggie eyes, pink lolling tongues and yellowish doggie teeth.

and because she's in heat right now, i decided to make her wear panties--white cotton knickers with yellow and pink trim and a picture of some cute animal (a bear?) over the place where she sports a nice little surgical scar from last year's botched whelping. i got the knickers from the infant section of sm department store. they were the smallest available and i had to cut out a hole for her tail to pass through.

the panties were NOT my idea. the vet said that if i can't keep wiley from sexually assaulting his mother every few months and i don't want her spayed, i'd better get her something like a chastity belt. i am NOT making this up. and please stop laughing.

will post said porno pictures of kitty here soon. for now, we'll have to make do with a photo of a dog beside a pair of strappy sandals. awww...

glaze on my toes, honey on my nose

i'm trying out a new look for the first month of 2006 i like to call "polished but relaxed adult". this translates to the following:

1) shimmery pinkish painted toenails
2) a pair of made-in-brazil thong sandals na bakya in pinkish-lavender leather and swarovski crystals (i'm not kidding)
3) a pair of murano glass and pearl dangling earrings
4) super-sheer oil-free liquid foundation in a color they call 'honey'
5) white wedge-heel sandals that make me 4 inches taller
6) pink blazer with faint black pinstripes
7) a rope of lavender pearls (not quite real) knotted around my neck

i don't wear them all at the same time, of course.

which is just to say that i did some shopping recently and so i now have to subsist on oatmeal and tea for the rest of the month. no, not really. i have been known to inhale a salted egg, chopped tomatoes, daing na bangus and two huge mounds of garlic fried frice in 20 minutes or less. which i did last tuesday with my good friend coco at chocolate kiss. at some point we started daydreaming about egg yolks and mashed potatoes and foie gras. mmmmm...

newsflash: i have a life!

kept wondering why there are always huge gaps between blog entries. took me a while to realize that i'm often too busy working, reading, meeting people, cooking, [insert random activity here], etc. to actually chronicle every single thing i do or think or smell here in this here blog.

that's both good (i actually get to do real stuff with real people) and bad (my analytical skills are shot). anyway, some fabulous things that happened in 2005:

- got lots of new hardware
- gatula all together again last writers night (one person was there via phone)
- went to palawan with friends, sister and one cute boy
- dated a couple of younger guys; met a new person i could crush on
- saw cousin again after 7 months
- went dancing with various friends and relatives semi-regularly
- quit smoking!!! quit a harmful codependent friendship!!!
- realized i have so many amazingly fabulous friends i would kill for
- decided on a possible path for my PhD
- saw beautiful fireworks with people i really love

there's more but i can't really list them all. i could also list the stuff that bummed me out but i'll allow myself only three:

- i gained mega-weight (had to have my clothes altered!)
-
-

whoa. i've been staring at those blank spaces for 5 minutes and still can't think of bad things. it's 10 minutes now. okay, i got another one:

- two friends had a big fight and they still aren't talking and it's a bit difficult to go out with friends now. they can't be in the same room so it's been like a juggling act lately deciding who to hang out with and when.

not bad at all for 2005. praying that 2006 with be just as good or better!

some things i remember

[from a letter to my cousin who lives an hour away in hostile territory]

about growing up in the 1970s and 80s... that was the kingdom of our childhood and so it will remain a sort of unreal/magical realm, no matter that we now know how much grief there actually was all around us. memory has a way of distorting and blurring events/perceptions that it is certainly impossible to capture all of that with any accuracy. though we can try, the result will of course be colored by who we are and who we have chosen to be today. there is the danger of nostalgia, even that perverted kind that makes the past to be worse than it may have actually been.

i tend to begin my nonfiction using fragments of memories. that is always the starting point. our respective childhoods had a lot of strange contradictions and i don't know if i should curse or thank the adults around us for shielding us and/or not telling us the whole story. somehow my writing, especially about papa's experiences, is my way of filling the huge gaps in those stories our titos and titas did tell us. still, no matter how much i invent, the blank spaces remain, stretch out even further, because there are still too many things they aren't willing to talk about.

it's impossible to think of my childhood in a detached manner. it will always have little hints or threads in it of my parent's separation, papa's disappearances, the many kinds and instances of abandonment, the political activities, and the many attempts (which i'll always be grateful for) of our family to fill in the holes left by my parents' absence. even when i consciously try to write generally about issues and events of that time (martial law, marcos, EDSA, my jasms years), the personal wounds and echoes of papa's politics always intrude, changing the picture just a little bit.

i assume your POV is quite different. but yes, even my citadel church memories are colored by how different my family situation was from everyone else's. do you remember for instance how we used to ride in the back of lolo's old station wagon, and how we always fought over who got to sit on those two bumps where the wheels are? i remember that you were the bossiest, and you always got one of them. there was a lot of yelling and pushing back there in those days. at least that's how i remember it. i could be making this all up.

anyway, my memory of that changed drastically when i found out that a few years before you and i were born, that same smallish space in the back of lolo's car had carried the broken bodies of three murdered boys who didn't live to be twenty. they were papa's aktibista/guerilla friends and because papa was in jail at the time, it was lolo and one of my titos (either your papa or tito R) who had to drive and pick up their bodies from the mountains of isabela.

today, those boys share a grave in the same cemetery where we buried lola (here i have a flash of R playing brahms' lullaby on his violin as she was lowered into the ground; you have no memory of that because you were in singapore that day). their tombstone was cracked and dirty and their names almost faded the first and last time i saw it. papa brought me there some years ago. i have a feeling those three never have any visitors because that day we visited, it took even papa a long time to remember where they were. they were children of peasants, he said. their parents are probably dead too. i have a feeling only three people today know they are there: papa, your papa/tito R, and me. i would like to think i am wrong in thinking this.

lolo probably doesn't remember those three boys because he doesn't really remember much anymore. he actually thought he turned 73 today instead of 83 (he did his math calculations wrong). we all had dinner at superbowl gateway this evening and i asked papa what gift we could give lolo. he said: lolo needs a memory stick, a flash drive. i asked: pwede na ba yung 512 kb? papa said: kulang yun, kelangan niya 4 gig at least! haaay... if only it were that easy.

so there, basically that's how i write my stuff. one memory leading to so many ideas. we're actually telling the same story but from different angles. but i think your message will be heard more clearly if rendered through a more specific and personal voice, kind of like how you sound in your prayer letters, whose quietness make them all the more compelling to read.

so you ask: what was it like for me to live in the 70s and 80s? again, my simplified answers are very particular: the world was getting ugly and those who loved us tried to keep the ugliness at bay as best they could. this is what i remember:

we mostly stayed in the house instead of playing in the streets (too dangerous), we spoke in English, were taught to love books and music (we could and *did* have piano lessons during those hard times!) and learning (as a way to light up those dark days). we were taught to pray and to trust in a God who will make things right, were also made to give macopa and coins to children from the nearby squatter's areas whenever they tried (and often failed) to sing christmas carols come december. i remember they always had colds during those chilly nights and had crusts of dried snot between their mouths and noses. many of them ran around barefoot and because they were still very young, they actually looked happy doing so.

one of my first memories of marcos: he looked like a weak wizened little monkey on TV, all wrinkles and gravity pulling the rest of his face down. his high voice quivering with effort, like a yelp in some parts of his speech, like someone was poking him. he was always seated on what looked like a wooden throne (or maybe it was a wheelchair) and i remember wondering how he was able to make every man woman and child in all the 7,000+ islands in this country under his control. we were told to eat up and think of the children in africa and biafra and negros and chernobyl, even if we were too full sometimes. we or at least i liked to listen to the grownups' conversations and they would always talk in ilocano when they knew we were listening.

i remember a lot of things but i'm not at all sure what they mean. maybe we can put our stories together, make a clearer picture. our version of what happened back then and what it could mean now that we're all a little bit older.

it's my party and i'll fry if i want to

the sandra update: don't worry, this'll be quick.

1) turned 29 last saturday. slept all afternoon waiting for my dad who said sorry by giving me flowers (now in a vase on my dining table). gorged on strawberry ice cream the next day. had a party at my house wednesday evening. served loads of carbs (lemony creamy pasta, muffins+scones, cheese+baguettes, tuna parsley sauce, potato salad, pita+hummus, chocnut fudge pie) to unsuspecting guests. said guests went home reeling from cholesterol overload. thursday the 24th, around noon, 2 colleagues stopped me in the corridors of FC to say i was getting fat. am i missing something?

2) finally got a phone! my tita ninang got sick of my pathetic phoneless state and gave/lent me her old nokia clunker, which despite my disparaging horrible ungrateful tone here i really actually do appreciate. really, i do.

3) realized my spiritual birthday was sometime in october last year. me trusty little tungsten e2 has the exact date but am too lazy to fetch it und czech. if only i can train my pda to come running when i need it. alas, it has no legs. conclusion: my dog is waaaay smarter than any old handheld computer.

4) bought a toilet. yep, you read it right. it's a set: water closet (yknow, ze thingy you sit on), tank (more efficient, uses less water), lavatory (the sink thing), stand for lavatory, toilet paper dispenser (you hack a big enough hole in your bathroom wall and stuff this into the aperture), soap dish (ditto). ceramic parts all in what manufacturers like to call "Soft Ivory". got it all cheap at trusty sm north hardware annex for less than eight grand. yep, you read it right. cheaper than a phone! that includes all the metal things they call "fittings". everything's under my bed for now. gotta raise clams to buy nice tiles and a snazzy hot shower contraption that won't KAZZAP-kill me in the end.

5) got myself into what looks like a really challenging (read: difficult as heck) american lit class where we write short papers on a regular basis. must point out that the inability to write such got me into this mess in the first place. but know that i'm not that big an idiot, i'd like to think i'll do okay.

6) had to go have 3 of my skirts altered. they were so tight around the waist i was afraid of getting gangrene from lack of circulation. so yes, it's official: i'm a 29-year-old fatty. ack.

an hour (?) with the goddess

it's official: i can die now.

spent what felt like an hour ahem mucking around with cynthia alexander (!!!) and her musician friends last monday evening preparing for tomorrow night's event with brit peformance poet francesca beard. my good friend and guru V invited me to this british council-sponsored workshop. the point of the whole exercise was to prepare a set of performance poetry with music by cynthia and her band. francesca liked my poem so she asked cynthia to help me create atmosphere. there was a mention of noseflutes and a gong somewhere. all a could do was stand there and goggle at her and read my poem over and over again so they could figure out how best to build on the existing tension of the piece. or something like that.

towards the end, malu, the chick who does the percs and bells, suddenly comments on the whole sad mood of my poem & kinda relates it to cynthia's recent album. and of course, idiot me had to butt in and say that i did like rippingyarns better. more listener friendly, blah blah blah. and the whole time i was mentally kicking myself because *of course* she knows what her album sounds like because she *wrote* the darned thing. but i just couldn't shut up.

thankfully, cynthia very kindly said that she did mean the third album to sound that way because her *life* during the writing of the album felt that way. the sad stories in rippingyarns were *nothing* daw compared to what she had to go through in recent years. and she said that it's my choice what i like best. and of course i know that but i'm still glad she said it. because by this time i had my foot in my mouth, bakya and all, and it's best to forget just how stupid i was.

we perform tomorrow night at conspiracy cafe, visayas ave., 7pm.

i'm terrified as it is but i expect the panic to set in around noon tomorrow. i pity the students who get in my way tomorrow morning.