Everybody seems to be in the thick of recalling their UP life these days, wherever that is, these days being the UP Centennial, so I thought I have to share mine too. I don't feel pressured, but if it's not my fondest wish to recall mine, it's because it's one that's an embarrassing mix of gratefulness and pain, and that I might, out of necessity, name names.
I became UP student number 87-42472 after I was admitted to UP Baguio in 1987 as a BS Bio major (my second choice after my first choice, BS Bio in Diliman, I think, which was a quota course). I didn't spend a single centavo for my school fees, something which the paying students must have resented in secret. Yes, I was a product of socialized education. I even received a sizeable allowance at every semester's end. But I don't owe that to the UP System, I owe that to the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) at the time, being a DOST scholar after passing the most rigorous exam I've ever taken in life. But going to college was a major struggle for my parents, nonetheless, because of the many hidden expenses: school projects, books, food, clothes (which even the DOST book, etc. allowance couldn't cover), and the extracurriculars, which proved necessary if I was to survive with my dignity intact.
And so going to college meant constantly saving money, constantly having not enough. It was so hard, even though Baguio was a dirt-cheap city to live in. Lodging: P300-600/mo; food: cheap; transpo: almost everything (except John Hay and PMA) was walking distance, but even the occasional taxi was affordable. The walking part wasn't always welcome: it's ready to gift anyone with free sayotes on both legs, we Baguio transients always once joked.
I felt lucky, or is that blest, just the same just to have passed the UPCAT (my second choice was UST, if not SLU), but I was also shocked to discover the gulf, the impossible divide that differentiated me from my classmates in both directions. It wasn't very easy adjusting to the near-temperate Baguio weather, as it was. It was an extreme thing for me at that age. A typical class would be like this: to my right sat the daughter of a farmer (a nobody, in short, at least in the eyes of such a status-conscious society as ours), and to my left was the son of a five-star general. Like me, the non-rich kid to my right was most likely a full scholar who depended on her stipend, which unfortunately became accessible only much later when she was already deep in debt, so that her parents needed to be very creative in sourcing investment funds. Money for us always ran short in various ways that embarrassed deeply, while the other guy next to us drove to school in the latest-model car (his own, not the family's). And boy, he already had a 'laptop' (a PC notebook, it was called) back then. It was a shock for me to visit certain classmates at home and discover how much different they lived: from the imposing mansion in the exclusive village down to the luxuriously upholstered sofa, paintings that weren't reproductions, down to the pet mynah bird and the intercom in every room. And the well-to-do, the rich kids, seemed to outnumber the poor ones.
My family wasn't exactly dirt-poor, and I don't think it's in my nature to automatically feel so downtrodden. My parents used to co-own a little clothing shop in our town back then in Pangasinan. Their little business even employed some dressmakers. But the enterprise fell on hard times. Very hard, in fact, that we found ourselves down to almost zero. I'd fill out forms indicating my father to be a "farmer" and my mother a "homemaker" (because one wasn't ever allowed to leave it blank) when the truth was my father never experienced planting a single grain of rice in his life. The truth was even worse: He was unemployed and he had three kids. To cut the drama short, I was no stranger to poverty. But I wasn't exactly innocent to wealth either. I came from a high school where 80% of my classmates came from middle-class families. But when I came to UP Baguio, I got terribly acquainted with a level of wealth and achievement that I thought only existed in movies.
What I'm saying is, trauma aside, I owe to UP that kind of unexpected exposure. People will always be people, but since I was a part-time provinciano (I was actually born in Manila, and transferred only to promdi-land when I started school (in kinder grade). It's great to witness first-hand the diversity, not only in economic terms (whose effects are admittedly profound), but also in terms of personality, ethnicity (we came from all over the P.I., sometimes even from abroad), philosophy/outlook in life, religion.
Naturally, as a shameless Catholic, the stark differences in religion impressed me, or shall I say intimidated me, the most. I remember one particular class (around 10-15 students) where each person represented one distinct religion or lack thereof. It's funny how I'd discover it's better never to talk about one's religion, not in class nor even outside of it, because everyone had a very strong opinion about it. In an open-minded atmosphere, everyone seemed closed-minded at the same time, it seemed to me. I thought back then that this was what UP was all about: it's not what I grew up with. I learned how to give grudging respect even to views I regarded to be odd and downright stupid. I owe to UP my present stance on having a secular society if we are to survive the future despite my unrepentant Catholic extremism. If nothing else, UP tempered my extremism, my evangelistic zeal, which is bad for my downhome Catholicism but fair for everyone and everything else that's different. I am also grateful that my faith of choice was equally given space as the others. I am glad to give UP that: it believed in genuine democracy. I was never harassed for being a member and later secretary of the UP Student Catholic Action, although I'd discover one day how our group's corkboard was vandalized for unknown reasons.
UP Baguio was just a small school of around 600 students during my time. Technically, it was still a college under UP Diliman. That meant our departmental exams were sent all the way from Q.C., and upon graduation, we were supposed to get our actual diploma, with UP Diliman, not UP Baguio as the indicated school, from the Diliman Registrar. For reasons of laziness, I still have to retrieve that document of worldly pride up to now. (UP Baguio is now happily an autonomous branch of the UP System.) Yet, believe it or not, that little community of freaks had around 50 or even more frats/sororities/orgs. There were goths, punks, jologs, manangs, socis, fashionistas, kikays, varsity boys, rockmen, nerds, atheists, agnostics, born agains, Muslims, playgirls, grizzly-haired artists, cross-dressers, ex-seminarians, etc. They all converged in one happy place. One frat made the mistake of inviting me to an orientation; I thought it was a compliment (it could also be a brutish prank – you never knew with these people; they could be very cruel, and they were supposed to be this country’s future leaders), but I didn’t bite. Being such a wimp, I joined the UP Biology Society instead. Safe – from the Greek paddle, that is. Besides, I didn’t share the frats’ notion of brotherhood. I barfed at the bogusness of it all, to put it ever so delicately. To me, it’s all a matter of winning social connections that should prove selfishly beneficial in the future. I know I was being harsh and I was partly wrong, acknowledging now that it’s a basic human need to have a sense of belonging and peer acceptance. It’s just that the exclusivity -- and resulting exclusion -- offended me. I wasn’t aware yet that a word like marginalization existed, but I sensed something somewhere was wrong, so I was turned off. I thought I already saw everyone, regardless of ethnicity, creed, or status as brother or sister, so what’s all that? Anyway…
I once tried cross-registering in Diliman one summer, to take up Math 100 (Calculus) just for the heck of it (because my blockmates/friends were into it) but the infamous kilometric waiting lines dissuaded me eventually. But what I saw in Diliman was the same environment I saw in Baguio multiplied by 100. All sorts of weirdoes thrived, even abounded, that I couldn't even begin to detail the varying fashion senses I witnessed wide-eyed. And we're only talking about the fashion. It's definitely a place of freedom (= a natural, devil-may-care kind of non-conformity) that both exhilarated me and at times reduced me to groping for the whereabouts of my lower jaw, marveling at the crater it left on the ground. Apparently, I also viewed UP, any UP branch, as rebellious ground, a total stranger, to me, and I guess it will always stay that way, even though it was also home to me for four years – home, because it turned out I equally weirded out those who weirded me out. (I thought I was normal, square, and boring; it turned out the odd feeling was mutual.)
Another thing that drove me ambivalent and ambiguous about it all is the teaching philosophy: There was none. The policy seems to be to each his/her own style/method/approach. I came from a laboratory high school (Pangasinan State University Laboratory High School), a practice ground for student-teachers, that's why I could distinctly tell the difference. There were traditionalists and then there were the terrorists. Of course, I didn't forget the terrorists because they kept me constantly on my toes. One mistake, i.e., one flunking grade, and I would be sent straight home in the arms of out-of-school-youth-hood. It was that heartless. I've forgiven everything, sure, but they say forgiving does not mean forgetting, and I happen to have good memory.
Among the nicer ones was Ms. Gina Balweg, a comely Tinggian lady who was made even more beautiful by her kindness despite her intelligence. I also fondly remember my Humanities classes under Mr. Delfin Tolentino, who opened my eyes to the beauty of literature. Ms. Mae Pamuspusan (Communications) was also particularly good, as were Dr. de Luna (Biochem) and Ms. Jimenez (Organic Chem). I had one especially icky teacher, Mr. Darnay Demetillo, who came either drunk or seriously sick of toothache and always wearing disheveled hair and clothing you wouldn't want to touch. He taught art. I kind of liked him just the same. Then there also was Mr. "P-wi" Aragon, an unabashed leftist ("I'm a leftist, so what?") who was supposed to teach Philippine History but cracked endless jokes instead (“Pag wala nang land ang mga landlord, eh di… lord na lang sila!!”), so we learned basically nothing, which was just as well (because history is shot through with lies, depending on who's lying).
But, listen. I am not about to excuse the extremists, who made our student life so hard. I just can't erase off my mind Mr. Rimando, the extremist Math 11 and Math 14 professor who'd heckle the class this way: "Okay, class, get one-fourth sheet of paper for a surprise quiz!!!" Then he'd give problems that the book didn't seem to discuss. He assumed or expected too much. Or, "All of you to my right, you're rightists, solve this problem on the board. And everyone to my left, you're all leftists, now solve this second problem on the board." I swear I hated his shadow. What a stressful teacher. Another unforgettable name is Mr. Willie Alangui, who always presumed we knew Statistics 101 since birth, so we went to class absorbing totally nothing. There was also Mr. Gene Abedania's horrible exam questions on lessons he didn't even discuss in class in the first place and couldn't be found in the footnotes of the Ecology textbooks. Did he secretly resent us for being UP students? How come he seemed to relish all of us getting zero all the time? Then there was the amusing but equally horrendous Inorganic Chemistry teacher, Ms. 'Macky' Macaranas, who made us all feel like a bunch of fools with low IQ, with this impatient explanation: "Sigh, all you have to do is add this to that and you get this, multiply this to that and you get that!"
If there's one thing that united all of my teachers, it's this: They all made us students feel like we're total eedgets. A few students were an exception, I admit. There were a few who never ever got affected because they're too smart to attend classes to hear the insult. I'm talking about geniuses, who'd only appear during the periodic exams then vanish altogether, only for the rest of us to learn that they topped the exam! I am not making this up. Back then, there were Promil kids, which made the rest of us feel even worse off, totally inadequate, when back in our own little hometowns, we thought we were the brightest kids. Now we knew: We were just normal. At least we’re not abnormal like some people. UP is also about bursting our bubbles.
One good thing about these comically frightening profs, though, is that they thought us something very valuable without even meaning well: The importance of self-study and banding together for group study. In UP, I would learn, you enrolled so you get the chance to learn how to teach yourself. But it's amidst the terror of college life that I'd learn not to be selfish and thus for the first time, meet God in a personal way. I noticed back then that, whenever I initiated a group study and shared what I knew and corrected what I knew was incorrect out of charity, I'd invariably top exams or at least pass them without a hitch, together with my study group-mates, who could be anybody in class. Call me superstitious, but I took that as a sign of divine reward. The terrors of school unwittingly taught me not to be ambitious and selfish with my knowledge. I learned the meaning of love and service first-hand and in concrete terms. I carry that hard-earned virtue up to now, thanks to UP, and I didn't even have to utter one Hail Mary or Glory Be.
All our teachers were brilliant, especially in their own respective dogmatism -- no doubt about it. But most of them didn't know how to teach well, not having studied the Methods, or not in the way I expected teaching to be. They were all so impatient with slowness it's almost impossible to survive without the intervention of miracles. UP taught me to believe in miracles.
I noticed that there was even something even eerier about it. Every time, during the make-or-break finals, my teachers would invariably get sick or meet with some unfortunate incident that the finals they gave became less punishing than expected. I am not making this up. Neither was I aware of anyone resorting to witchcraft just to pass the tests. This end-of-semester pattern was the one that clinched it for me. There was a God, and He/She was a God of justice, even in 'godless' UP.
Since Bio was my course, a nat-sci course, I also half-expected myself to become an atheist once I figured out everything because, as it turned out, everything was explainable in a logical, scientifically verifiable fashion. But the reverse happened, even if didn't help that I had an atheist Geology student for a roommate. I'd discover, little by little, that the basic questions on the universe, on life, have no definitive answers even up to now. Education, it occurred to me, is a continuing search for the answers, by "replacing the empty mind with an open one."
What's more, being a student of nature, I was stunned to discover how beautiful and intricately intelligent nature was on all possible levels. UP Baguio's BS Biology program focused on the ecological, which brought our various ecology-allied classes to mountains, rainforests, grasslands, murky rivers, coral reefs, seas, caves, even a man-made forest of pine trees. I may sound naïve, but the relentless beauty of nature is an amazing discovery it's actually spiritual. If only I could explain in layman's term everything I've learned. Despite the godlessness of it all on the surface, my UP education only reinforced my belief in God.
In so many ways, UP was a world of wonders even though it was also a place of hell to someone with my background. But I think it's just another series of life's traumas that I just have to accept as partly or largely necessary to being who I’ve turned out to be now. UP was a mixed blessing to me. In the end, in retrospect, I can only be thankful for everything: the good, the seemingly bad, and all those caught in the middle.
Dear Manny,
Alam mo, tsong, ang gwapo-gwapo mo. Pabalato nga. Pengeng pera.
Money, salamat ha. Kasi traumatized ang buong Pilipinas ngayon dahil sa bagyong Frank na yan. Ay dilubyong Frank pala. Pero pinasaya mo kami kahit violence ka. Salamat, Manny, wagi ka na naman, so parang kami na rin.
Our Mexican-Spanish friend Alfonso came over for a brief vacation, so we treated him to an-all Filipino dinner. J.’s idea of a Filipino dinner was Bacolod Chicken, which is, as you know, just representative of Ilonggo. But never mind. It was a fun dinner we had, specially since we learned a lot of new surprising things.
Alfonso gave us estampitas and little medallions of Our Lady of Guadalupe plus a box of what he called Dulce Cacahuate de Mazapan de Whatchamacallit, which turned out to be peanut polvoron, which J. correctly said tasted like a fragrant version of ChocNut. We gladly snuffed it out. Dessert comes first, yes. But this confection only served as a launchpad for investigative questions.
I noticed the word “cacahuate” on the label, which I surmised to be related to a “native” tree called "kakawate," so I inquired.
“Alfonso,” I said, is it true that stuff (fruits and vegetables) ending in –te, which we came to believe as native, are actually Mexican? Chocolate? Sayote? Achuete? Camote?” (I omitted chico, avocado, etc., which didn't exactly rhyme.)
“Yes. We call it chayote. Achuete, I am not familiar.”
“What does ‘cacahuate’ mean?” I probed further.
“Cacahuate is peanut.”
“Peanut? But we call peanut ‘mani.’”
“Mani? Mani is Spanish for peanut.”
“You’re kidding. It’s a native Tagalog word.”
Our conversation went on like this until we discovered more Tagalog-sounding words that turned out to be Spanish in origin, or Spanish-sounding words that are actually Native Mexican. Like, words like “pitso,” as in “pitso ng manok,” came from the Spanish “pecho,” meaning breast. All the while, I thought it’s Tagalog. “Sebo,” which is Tagalog for “grease,” turns out to be Spanish too. And so on.
At which point, I was no longer interested to know more. We’re not just more Mexican than we thought, we’re more Spanish than we thought.
Then he tried to pry which parts of us are Chinese. We pointed to the soy sauce, for starters. Then we proceeded to identify which are Malay and Indonesian.
Good thing Mike or or is it Reyjun saw the calamansi (for the sisig dish), whereupon Alfonso said he hasn’t seen anything like it before. J. said that’s Philippine lemon. Now, there’s something indigenous, finally. Or is it?
"Somebody called us Filipinos “halo-halo,” I said.
He laughed. He knew what halo-halo means. He also laughed so hard when we offered him puto (the Filipino muffin), which in Mexico, he said, is the male version of "puta."
The last time he was here, I remember him complaining that we were too American.
I wish bloggers, especially, anonymous bloggers, could be put to good use by doing exposes, with concrete evidence, of the different minor and major graft and corruption activities in the Philippines that make this place such a complicated place to live in. Here are just a few of the possible subjects to cover that bring us all in deep sh*t:
1. cops and local governments collecting weekly from colorum jeeps and FX taxis (why are FX taxis not allowed to complete with jeeps?)
2. government jobs for sale
3. the well-entrenched but unofficial backer-based system of hiring government personnel
4. Land Transportation Office fixers and transactions on the road related to a traffic violation
5. Fake UP/etc. diploma along Recto; faked-for-a-fee or store-bought term paper or thesis
6. substandard roads, schools, bridges, etc.
7. substandard housing
8. small businesses (legal or illegal) giving weekly or daily allowance to cops as protection money
9. business establishments' bribes to local politicians, like the 10-15% given by construction firms for every project
10.during elections: vote-buying, vote-selling, vote-padding, the dead suddenly resurrecting to life just to vote, etc.
11.unexplained fabulous wealth (fleet of luxury cars, exclusive English education of the kids, etc.) of military generals and other government officials
12. faked licenses and licensure exam results
13. media-related bribes; cases of hao shiao
Graft and corruption is widely thought to be a dysfunctionally profound legacy of Ferdinand Marcos' regime because that regime was single-handedly responsible for corrupting the whole bureaucracy - from the judiciary to the military down to local goernment. Corruption has become such a deeply enctrenched lifestyle that even government's enemies resort to it: The NPAs extorting businesses and the Abu Sayaaf turning kidnapping into lucrative business in cahoots with local politicos or even the area's military people (if Fr. Nacorda's accusation is to be believed, which is entirely plausible because, come on, how can the military NOT control an area assigned to them?).
(Fwd'd email; How to deal with reality on the ground, allegedly according to Bill Gates)
Gates' Rules
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a
generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in
the real world.
Rule 1 : Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.
Books you all should read but no one is writing them:
1. Complete His/Herstory of the Philippines in Five Versions and Five Genders, from Pigafetta to John Sweet Lapuz.
2. UP 100: Underlining the Qualifications of the Already Privileged.
3. Ateneo vs. La Salle: Refining the Art of the College Degree as a Status Symbol.
4. What Now, Baby Boomers, Now that You’re the Establishment: Still Hippie and Agnostic After All These Years, if not a Total Sellout.
5. So What If You're a Lawyer, If You're a Liar Naman?
(Thanks, Aline!)
You Think English is Easy??? Can you read these right the first time?
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) Upon seeing the tear in the painting, I shed a tear.
19) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
20) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Let's face it - English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France . Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat. We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write, but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce, and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
You lovers of the English language might enjoy this:
There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and it is UP.
It's easy to understand UP , meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ? At a meeting, why does a topic come UP ? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report ?
We call UP our friends. And we brighten UP a room and polish UP the silver. We warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP old cars. At other times, the little word has a real special meaning. People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses. To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special .
And this UP is confusing: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP. We open UP a store in the morning, but we close it UP at night.
We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP! To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions. If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP can be used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more. When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out, we say it is clearing UP.
When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.
When it doesn't rain for a while, things dry UP.
One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP.
For now, my time is .....UP.
Time to shut UP
I was able to relate much to this stolen poem (one by Mr. Pete). Hope you too would appreciate it.
BELATED ELEGY
By Jose F. Lacaba
My father's bones will stay in place,
at peace with the worms and growth of grass.
Unkempt is the grass that surrounds his grave,
sharp question marks for us who have
forgotten-but the very sound of father
was hollow long ago. Before
the cancer in the liver turned him yellow
my father was to his son unknown.
At work by day, in school at night,
on weekends he would check my height
against the lines on the kitchen wall:
the only way he knew to find out how far
work of his flesh had traveled from his flesh.
Were he yet upright, he'd be amazed,
my eyes would be level with his brow.
But more than cubits is the distance now.
What happens to the hope parents cherish?
Last from the box, first to perish.
I was eldest in a brood of six
whose future strained my father's wrists.
He worked to the bone, and bone remains;
and strain is the eldest's inheritance
-impossible to keep out the pain
that startles the heart now and again.
Haven’t watched the news lately, so I almost missed the account of the tragedy. I wish to condole with the families of those who’ve met unspeakable tragedy in the sea because of man’s heedlessness in the face of Mother Nature’s wrath. I am not sure what to say at this point. We should have learned our lessons years ago.
Has modern life killed the semicolon? -Seriously, I am a vigorous apologist for the use of semicolons. Why? Because they are necessary in separating two closely related clauses that can't be written as comma splices and when separating items in a list that contains a list within.
I've been watching the development on the Mars exploration story with keen interest. But I never thought there ever was a word to describe such a group of living things. The word only befits these times, which is an age of extremists and extremism, which are, I concede now, monsters of our own creation, in a way. Coupled with the impending warming of the globe, and its supposedly cataclysmic consequences, we're all extremophiles now.
**
Can the Martian arctic support extreme life? 06/23/2008 | 09:34 AM
LOS ANGELES - Bizarre microbes flourish in the most punishing environments
on Earth from the bone-dry Atacama Desert in Chile to the boiling hot
springs of Yellowstone National Park to the sunless sea bottom vents in the
Pacific.
Could such exotic life emerge in the frigid arctic plains of Mars?
NASA's Phoenix spacecraft could soon find out. Since plopping down near the
Martian north pole a month ago, the three-legged lander has been busy poking
its long arm into the sticky soil and collecting scoopfuls to bake in a test
oven and peer at under a microscope.
There hasn't been a eureka moment yet. But Phoenix turned up a promising
lead last week when it uncovered what scientists believe are ice flecks in
one trench and an icy layer in another.
Scientists hope experiments by the lander will reveal whether the ice has
ever melted and whether there are any organic, or carbon-containing,
compounds.
"We're looking for the basic ingredients that would allow life to prosper in
this environment," chief scientist Peter Smith of the University of Arizona
in Tucson has said in describing the mission's goal.
The discovery of extreme life forms, known as extremophiles, in unexpected
nooks and crannies of the Earth in recent years has helped inform scientists
in their search for extraterrestrial life.
"It's very suggestive that there are lots of worlds that may support life
that at first glance may look like fourth-rate real estate," said Seth
Shostak, an astronomer at the SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the
search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
While the possibility for ET seems to grow with new extremophile discoveries
on Earth, the truth is there's no evidence that life ever evolved on Mars or
if it even exists today.
But if there were past or present life on the red planet — a big if —
scientists speculate it would likely be similar to some extreme life on
Earth — microscopic and hardy, capable of withstanding
colder-than-Antarctica temperatures and low pressures.
"It's going to be microbes. It's not going to be a little green man," said
Kenneth Stedman, a biologist with the Center for Life in Extreme
Environments at Portland State University.
Under a microscope, extremophiles vary in size and shape. Some resemble
miniature corkscrews while others are rods or irregular shapes. Scientists
use a dye to distinguish the living ones from the dead.
The Phoenix mission has its limitations beside a shoestring budget of $420
million. It doesn't carry instruments capable of identifying fossils or
living things. Rather, the lander has a set of ovens and a gas analyzer that
will heat soil and ice and sniff the resulting vapors for life-friendly
elements. Its wet chemistry lab will test the pH, or acidity, of the soil
much like a gardener would. And its microscope will examine soil granules
for minerals that may indicate past presence of water.
Most living things on Earth thrive not only in the presence of water, but
also need sunlight, oxygen and organic carbon. But the range of conditions
in which life can survive has been expanded with recent discoveries of
micro-organisms trapped in glaciers and rocks or living in volcanic vents
and battery acid-like lakes.
These extreme conditions on Earth mirror the harsh environments found on
Mars and other parts of the solar system. Present day Mars is like a desert
with no hint of water on its weathered surface, although studies of rocks
suggest the planet was wetter once upon a time.
Most researchers agree life likely cannot develop on the Martian surface,
which is bombarded by lethal doses of radiation. But satellite images have
revealed a softer side, spying hints of a vast underground store of ice near
the red planet's polar regions. Phoenix last week hit what's thought to be
an ice layer 2 inches below the surface.
Even if Phoenix uncovers microbe-habitable conditions, a more sophisticated
spacecraft would be needed to determine if life was ever there or is present
now.
The last time NASA looked for organics was during the 1976 twin Viking
missions, which sampled soil near the Martian equator but turned up empty.
Scientists chose to dig in Mars' far north this time because they think it's
an analog to Earth's polar regions, which preserve life's building blocks
and sometimes even life itself in ice.
Researchers have shown microbes on Earth can be inactive in a deep freeze
for thousands of years and resuscitated under the right conditions.
In 2005, NASA researchers announced they revived bacteria that were
apparently dormant for 32,000 years in a frozen pond in central Alaska.
Earlier this month, Penn State University scientists said they were able to
grow in the lab an ultra-small species of bacteria trapped in a Greenland
glacier under high pressure and low oxygen for at least 120,000 years.
"There's a lot of amazing things that survive in the cold environments,"
said Jennifer Loveland-Curtze, a senior research associate at Penn State.
What that means for Mars and other hostile environments is debatable. But
scientists are plumbing the depths of Earth for clues to possible life that
may exist elsewhere in the universe.
"We need to continue to try to understand what's going on with the
extremophiles here on Earth," said Stedman of Portland State University.
"The more we learn how extremophiles here are functioning, the more that
will inform any kind of future mission." *-AP*
(In defense of me. Or, An examination of conscience. Or, On writing.)
I’ve realized that one has to be a psychiatric case to be able to appreciate what I write, or most of it anyway. Even my close friends don't get my humor. Is it me? All along I thought everything is just normal about what or how I write. I was mistaken. It is most people who are normal. I am not. But is that so bad? I guess not. So long as I don’t go around wearing nothing but a mismatched pair of shoes and I am not even aware of it, I guess I’m ok. It’s just that it’s frustrating not to be understood. Especially when you're making a joke, and people who know me personally don't even get it. That could mean I wasn’t able to put my message across in writing.
It’s doubly frustrating when what I write is accused to have hidden motives, which always mean impure motives, or when it is not read in the right spirit: with a good dose of craziness. It could be that the reader is too malicious or too naïve, or that I have failed to establish the right tone or pitch and context or been unable to use the right sequence of words. Whatever.
Let me ask myself then: What are my motives in writing (i.e., blogging, since my 'writing' has been confined to this blog)? Is it to become famous? Is it the lust for fame? Maybe. But what is fame if it doesn’t bring in fabulous wealth behind the horde of devoted fans? I don't want fame I couldn't afford. I may be insecure at times, but not so insecure as to want others' constant attention and validation. Besides, fame is overrated. It can be used or abused to one's favor, but it also has its inherent dangers, like you wouldn’t be able to walk down the street the same way again. Besides, it's such a cheap motive. I wish I could say I don't like stooping down that low.
Is it to impress then? Maybe. But that’s too tiring to do and too boring to keep me going and occupied like this for years. Not to mention too shallow that it will most probably shame even myself if I have deluded myself into it. How equally cheap could that be.
Is it to win people’s love? Could be. But that’s what I have clearly failed to achieve so far. All I ever seem to attract whenever I write is opposition from all directions. And yet, look at me, I'm still at it.
Maybe it's entirely possible I have pure motives? But so what if my motives are not 101% pure? Who is pure while remaining human at the same time? Show me one, and I will worship at his feet.
Could it therefore be that I derive fulfilment and meaning out of creating something out of seemingly nothing? Could it be that it’s my way of affirming life, not the least my own? Now that sounds possible, and I hope true in my case.
Someone said I am sulky when crossed, that I’d brook no opposition. I am not suggesting I'm perfect. Who is? Nor am I saying I have no major weaknesses. I have lots. But I’ve been constantly disbelieved at, even insulted and called names ever since I started inflicting my opinions on the world. It hurts, but I manage to endure somehow. Is that sulky enough for you?
Could it then be that there’s a higher perspective in all this? Wow. But, yeah, is it possible that one person’s action need not be selfish, need not be driven by hidden agenda? Who knows? What I know is writing is something I just have to do to keep my own sanity, if only to make sense of this world. That surely is selfish, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's driven by other agendas worthy of further psychoanalysis. Being selfish is not always bad.
When I was just starting, no one ever believed me. Almost everyone gave me discouraging words. And the precious few who believed secretly envied me, which is, uh, a very encouraging response. Writing, I found, is enjoyable and at the same time a very frustrating and lonely thing.
You've got to trust me on this: I didn’t set out to please everybody. I've had enough, in fact too much, of being praised since kindergarten. At the outset, my policy was to please me, hoping that pleasing me might please others too. But it would be good if people enjoyed what I gave as much as I had, never mind if I received no reward for it. If I have affirmed someone in some way because of what I wrote or said, that is reward enough for me. If I made another voice heard in the free market of ideas, that is fulfilling enough for me. If I have survived another day because I wrote what I thought out loud, that’s enough for me. I just wish I am read in the right spirit by some who don’t get me right, especially people who mean to me personally. I eat opposition for breakfast, but I would be happy to find no or little naysayers sometimes, for a change.
But along the way, others will insist that something else is going on, which drives me second-guessing me. Could writing be all about insecurity? Am I only fulfilling an unmet need? Hungry for the approval of men? Ah, but we're running in circles here. If that were so, then how come I’ve come to specialize on the most offensive and socially repulsive topics, things I’d never ever discuss with my mother or my friends, not to mention total strangers, face to face? Supposing nobody actually cared to read, would I still go on? Now that certainly sounds totally pathetic and unfortunate, but the answer is: I could, I swear I could. Clearly, I don't write because it would win me lots of friends, both true and false.
But since I know, too, that only the sort of crazy types appreciate what I do, I am willing to settle with that if I am to be happy and at peace for the most part. I therefore wish for more of their kind in the world.
To those who get my jokes, congratulations! You have a great sense of humor, and you are a psychiatric case.
But to further accomodate the sadsack and the soursop... Couldn’t all this be a form of public service given for free? A form of loving and living? Of living to the full? A seizing of an opportunity to express and be good and do good, like being kind even to animals?
I know (insert melodramatic music here) I am just a jot or tittle in the printed world, especially in the age of the Internet, I'm just a breath in time. But I also know that, just like the next guy, no one is like me. And no one is capable of what I can say or give. And what I do right now is a job I’d do even if no one is payng or even when no one is paying attention. (Would you honestly say my articles are publishable? What foolish media outfit would ever dare print it?) In other words, this doesn't look like it's a job for me at all. As long as some presence out there looks on approvingly at me, the conspiratorial universe that I blame for giving me this...this dysfunctional compulsion, I guess I will be okay.
It’s amazing to me when someone who should have low self-esteem is not even insecure. At first, I’d hate to get to know a person like that up close, but if closeness is inevitable as time goes by and I get to discover the ins and outs of his/her personality, boy, I sure would end up amazed. For how can someone like such a person do what he does with such panache? Trust me, I couldn’t, if I were in his place. Maybe it’s more of a reflection of how low I regard myself. Maybe I am incapable of believing that people who don’t pass my (or society's) standards do not necessarily subscribe to the same set of criteria. This is a mean thought perhaps, but I've often wondered where a certain person like that gets the nerve to be all that, even when fully knowing he is hated openly by others. Could it be that he never had issues with his parents when he was a kid? Could it be just a matter of psyching himself up, thinking positive, focusing on those who love him instead, especially the love affair between him and his self, which, as Oscar Wilde put it, the beginning of a lifetime relationship? Ah, people. They're the most fascinating things to study. Maybe that's why show biz sells. But that's not the point. I'm talking about people must deep inside know they're not lovable (and I'm not necessarily talking about looks) and yet act like they are. Maybe it's all for show.
Repetitive ads are a violation of human rights. Why? Because they're a form of torture, torturing those who have done nothing wrong. In other words, the captive audience are victims, and if they are kids, they might be damaged for life.
There ought to be a law banning ads like this:
TV ad starring actress Ruffa Mae Quinto:
"Sa Canesten cream, tanggal lahat ng fungi!" ("Using Canesten cream, all fungal species are decimated.")
"Sa Canesten cream, tanggal lahat ng fungi!"
"Sa Canesten cream, tanggal lahat ng fungi!"
Does it have to be three times in a row? It feels like being a rat trapped in a little room pierced with supersonic soundwaves and ultraviolet radiation.
Suggested punishment: Jail the admen and corporate perpetators in one such room for one day.
Here's the worst so far: the ChowKing ads inside the MRT. Here's one example:
Breakfast malcontent (a male voice): "Haay, kulang, kulang-kulang."
Another man from somewhere: "Sinong kulang-kulang?!"
Breakfast malcontent: "Huh?!"
The other man: "Kulang ba ang breakfast mo? Mag ChowKing na!..."
This ad is not particularly brilliant. There's nothing wrong with that. We don't expect ads to be Pulitzer Prize-caliber. But does it have to be played 10,000 times in a row? See, I was even able to memorize it by heart, even if it's against my will.
I am suing for damages. I am sexually violated.
Wait, there ought to be a law first.
Sabi na nga ba big business 'yang Abu Sayyaf kidnapping na yan eh. Confirmed na, finally. At mukhang hindi militar ang involved na di tulad ng sinabi ni Fr. Nacorda dati, but a local politico. Mga walanghiya! Hayup! Oops, ang puso ko.
**
Evidence of scholarly misconduct among scientists - survey - Scientific sins are the worst kind of betrayal, because we rely on scientists and academics as the authority figures on facts. One little lie or misdemeanour has tremendous consequences for the rest of us.
Priest in sex scandal sacked - Apparently, being ramrod straight is no guarantee either that a priest won't have a psychosexual complex in the future. How do you prevent such people from entering the seminary at all? Maybe give them a psychological test? Or tell them to go through an inner child retreat?
I feel a loosening ‘round my waist. I feel like I left something essential at home. No, not my head; it’s still intact, thank you. How long will I ever hold out with this feeling? It’s uncomfortable, to say the least. It makes me feel so… vulnerable as I walk on my way to work. I feel guilty and ashamed, but I feel funny at the same time, helpless in a funny way, as though something in my loins is riding for a literal fall. But at least now we’re back to regular programming, back to poking pun at everything.
**
Weird news alert
We’ve heard about cars that are solar-powered, fuel cell-powered, even water-powered (?!), but here’s another amazingly neat innovation: a car that allegedly runs on air!
(Retreat notes)
I think Jesus Christ is a psychologist. Why? Because the Bible says somewhere that He is a "Wonderful Counselor." Someone who loves to do counselling must be a psychologist of some sort. Some people, or a lot of people, look on psychologists with some doubt, calling their field a new age mumbo-juambo -- or a pseudoscience, if they are feeling kind enough, dismissing the fact that thoughts and feelings are also facts. These may not be measurable using the scientific method, but ideas and emotions are as equally real as, say mass and weight or their many scientific complications. Do ideas and emotions occupy space and have some weight? I bet they do, the same way I'd hazard that cyberspace occupies a measurable space and has some weight albeit in miniscule amounts. Have you ever experienced feeling heavy or alternately feeling light? I'd guess you'll weigh differently each time. Will that not be proof enough that psychology deals with facts? Like medicine, it may be an inexact science, but it's science nonetheless. The field may be prone to error, but only when it is viewed as pure science, instead of regarding it in an interdisciplinary context.
God, who created man, must have designed his nervous system, or the human mind, a certain way that whosoever tampers with it will find in the poor victim a derailed programming or an infected software. But whether you believe in God or not, whether you think God created man and his mind or not, you can never deny how fascinating man and his mind, together with all its mind-boggling complications, are. And you can never accuse as far-fetched that the God-man, or man-God, may be seen as a master-psychologist of some sort.
I encountered this lesser-known, or possible, facet of Jesus Christ in a retreat I went to in Maryhill, Antipolo, together with about 40 people from all walks and various levels of woundedness. It was conducted by Fr. Armand Robleza, SDB, a priest who's fond of processing people's spiritual problems through the prism of psychology, by uncovering the psychospiritual dynamics involved, peeling away layer upon layer of pain, fear, compulsion, and so on, to reveal the root of the problem. Since priests are expected to be seen as little Christ-figures, I couldn't help but see Fr. A. as Jesus Christ who came down to us to deliver a scientific lecture.
In the retreat, I learned a lot of things. I encountered an avalanche of info and insights that I don't know where to begin, or proceed next. I'm still shell-shocked at this point. To think that I am fairly more exposed to this field than the next guy.
For starters, I learned that 5% of the population are dysfunction-free, psychologically speaking, while 25% are afflicted with a serious dysfunction.
The retreat was titled, "Healing the Inner Child." It's all about healing childhood memories, bad memories, which may range from physical violence, to sexual trauma, to verbal abuse, down to the seemingly innocuous remarks that nonetheless left indelible marks in a child, like not being bought one's favorite toy by mom and dad for a grossly invalid reason. Fr. A. explained that "we can be enslaved by our inner woundedness, and worse, what we don't know controls us." Worst, "the earlier something went wrong, the more it is capable of controlling us."
I learned that, at the core of each one of us is the "wonder child," the original "image of God." (Contrast this view with the tabula rasa school of thought.) This child is "our real self: wonderful, optimistic, naive, dependent, emotive, resilient, playful, unique, and loved (and loving). In St. Paul's words, the wonder child has the 'fruit of the spirit.'"
“Once that wonder child is stifled, not nurtured, and co-dependent, we get a wounded child instead. A wounded child, instead of being alive, energetic, creative, and fulfilled, creates a 'false self.' Our wounded inner child is co-dependent, offensive, narcissistic, has trust issues, is acting out/in, imposed upon with magical beliefs, intimacy-dysfunctional, addictive/compulsive, thought-distorted, and empty.”
Fr. A. listed down the following personalities to give concrete cases: Princess Diana, Imelda Marcos, St. John Bosco, Moses, Jesus. What's common about them?, he asked. Answer: They all had a past; they were all a child before.
I learned that "the child we once were, we still are." "Our life-view as a young child is non-erasable/indelible/programmed. We act out the inner child in us in different ways as an adult."
This is what is called "The Law of Creative Consistency: People remember only those events from early childhood that are consistent with their present view of themselves and the world around them."
Fr. A. continued, "The funny thing is we often feel like this false self is our natural state that 'should be.'"
But woundedness, he says, is "not an alibi, no excuse to beg pity, nor is a fixed furniture in life."
It's good to "desire healing."
“One major roadblock to healing is we can’t be quiet because we are too attached to our stress. Stress will always be a part of life. The problem is too little time to recover.” I guess, because of our busy lifestyle, we don’t give ourselves enough chance.
"Note that we're not here to blame our parents," Fr. A. cautions. Indeed, it's very easy to fall into this trap of straying from the focus, which is not to gossip about or blame our parents or other people. As another counselor puts it, "our focus is on the reality of our own feelings, not on the other persons concerned, or whether they are good or bad." Nor are were here to be self-indulgent, I might add. In the road to healing ourselves, there's the other temptation to boost our self-esteem by ending up being boastful (instead of being humbled and at the same time emboldened by the recognition that we're all nothing if we're not 'God's children')."
"If we find ourselves blaming, it's only because blaming is part of the healing process. To heal, we must name the problem, recognize what is painful (by getting hold of our feelings/emotions, if I might add), claim that it ever happened to us, tame it, and aim for something higher out of it. These are all necessary parts of the psychological archaeology."
Due to the limited time, our retreat master had to squeeze into one and a half days what he usually gives in eight months. Fr. A. walked us participants through a quick series of workshops. First, he tried to plumb the depths of unconscious memory by asking us our top secrets in life, things we never had talked about with anyone. Then he gave us an artwork to color, a 'test' that is supposed to reveal something about our "child world." He also made us take an inventory of our unmet needs using a checklist, 'A Hierarchy of Human Needs,' (which is an eclectic list adopted from Maslow, Weil, et al. More on this in a later post.)
He next discussed in detail the mechanism of childhood traumatization. One thing about childhood trauma, he says, is that the child cannot blame the adults or caregivers for what happened to him; otherwise, he'd think no one would feed him. The traumatized child is helpless, totally dependent. "What happens is he/she blames himself/herself and develops coping mechanisms. A traumatized child goes through a shocked state, followed by an inability to resolve trauma, which results in the core defenses of denial, memory repression, and dissociation in an effort to protect the parents (perpetrators?), which then results in ‘survival living.’"
“The overwhelmed child experiences shame, the collapse of borrowed self-image; anger, the quiet rebellion of helplessness; and fear, the insecurity of bugging questions.”
“The child then believes her/his delusional self, mystifies and starts her cycle of dark secrets (addictions, compulsions, disorders).”
I learned that "facing the ghost of the past" can only be healthy, as it is a necessary step to healing. As Henri Nouwen says, fellow participant Malou adds, "Spirituality starts with knowing who I am."
“If I don’t understand myself, I won’t know what to address, and I will just keep on repeating my patterns of ill behaviour."
Roughly around this point, Fr. A. tried to lead us into some sort of mass hypnotherapy or regressive therapy, where we leave the real world and enter the world of imagination, to further probe our unconscious memory. Fr. A. wasn’t able to lead each one to reach ‘catharsis,’ but he allowed us to break into small groups, where we were able to share our thoughts and experiences and help each other analyze or process.
Fr. A. continued his discussion of grieving: "We can only learn to let go if we have been able to grieve properly. Grieving means saying, 'This painful experience happened to me. I don't deserve it. It hurts. I'm not happy about it at all.'"
Grieving means "I will exert an effort to remember my pain and how it hurt me. I will never forget. Forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. Grieving is remembering. Grieving is accepting I hide behind the masks of my false self till now. I will not deny the damage. I will not pretend to be not in pain. I will not contaminate the others."
(For cross-reference, you may read up on the different stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.)
Fr. A. also discussed the warning signs of unresolved grief: projected caretaking, extreme anger, extreme guilt, depression, emotional numbness, self-mutilation (smoking, etc.) Do you see yourself or certain personalities in this list? Congratulations! You/they are deeply wounded.
"To avoid unresolved grief, we must embrace our pain, feel our pain. We must admit our weakness." This reminder should remind us of the Biblical line: "If we are to boast at all, we must boast about our weaknesses."
"How do porcupines embrace each other? Have you ever wondered? Answer: Through their unprotected part, their weakness: their belly area. It takes weakness to fall, it takes weakness to fall in love. I'd rather be weak than be strong hiding something else."
“Celebrating our woundedness is claiming our baptismal character, ... our collective human psyche... It's the way to integration," to wholeness.
“After grieving properly, the journey to healing the inner child, the journey to transformation, involves deciding, ‘I set myself free from the shackles of survival living.’ Blessings then come out of woundedness."
“To balance things, I will count my blessings and remember my consolations. I will not play helpless, nor resort to punishing the injurer. I will not take revenge."
“But in balancing the scales, I will not resort to denial either. I will not say, ‘Move on. Just take it.’ I will not rationalize just to protect my injurers from blame. Nor will I resort to mock-punishing, which is equally unhealthy."
“Instead, I will load up resources. (‘See, I am not helpless.’)"
“I will find my consolations, but I can’t count my blessings if I didn’t face my sorrow or pain. The road to the wonder child is through the wounded child. No shortcuts. And it’s a one-way road."
"In setting ourselves free, we say, 'I will set myself free from the debilitating power of the injurer over me. I will not expect anything. I will not keep the injury in my books. But I will not allow myself to be hurt again."
"After making this decision, we go through reframing. Even undeserved pain has a reason to happen. I choose to be happy even when I do not fully understand why things have happened."
"Happiness is not a set of conditions. It is a personal decision."
"I will adjust my beliefs in life. I will subscribe adamantly to the 'Forgiveness Principle: 'There is nothing I cannot forgive.'"
“I will not stifle the new life and precious learnings emerging from the pain and chaos. Harm comes to everyone; moral contracts cannot prevent it. But a larger purpose has a reason, however mysterious, for injuries that befall people. The test of a person's character is how well he functions even when he cannot understand God's plan for him. That is faith."
"Why forgive? Because that's how God deals with me. And most likely, the injurer was also a victim."
"To move on, I will continue to believe the beauty of life and the goodwill of people. I will not close my heart to my injurer. I will not be selfish with my prayers for him nor will I be a miser in wishing him well."
"That's why you suffered: to learn your lesson and to teach others. If you can't share your experience, it will lose its value. Again, there are no shortcuts."
"Total and complete healing never happens,” Fr. A clarifies. “There are two kinds of virtues: acquired virtues, which we work on, and infused virtues, which are the work of God's grace. We need both. To grow in virtue is both the work of the person and the work of the grace of God."
"Our goal is not total healing but adequate healing. Aches and pains are the healing moments of life. Life has a way of healing us. From stones, we become diamonds.” But since we are a work in progress, diamonds in the rough, there's so much work left for us to do."
"To heal, we don't have to tell all our secrets. The recipient may not be able to bear them. Be prudent. That's the rule of life. Open up to those who can bear secrets: priests in the confessional or to a good psychologist or counselor. It helps us to talk about our secrets, but who wants to hear them? It's also good to keep secrets. We need it for psychological space."
As part of the workshop, Fr. A. told us to write a letter to our inner child, a way of making peace with the wounded child. He said, "Wounded people bury the hurt, but also the good. We want to heal the inner child and bring the wonder child back to life." In this method, we were asked to address the inner child using our right hand, representing the conscious self, and let the inner child speak through our left hand, representing the unconscious self.
Meanwhile, he continued, "it's my life. I will take charge of my healing journey, from slavery to woundedness, to the freedom of genuine humility."
"We have built a protective cage, so now we decide to shatter it."
"No to timidity, or the false security of shame and fear. Timidity is not humility, just a phase of protective pride."
"No to (over)sensitivity, which is a tyranny of unresolved trauma. Feelings are natural, but have no mind. In moodiness, there is no peace, no equanimity."
"No to complacency, the ego of mystified secrets and masks, another form of protective pride."
"No to (unjustified) authoritativeness, the unjustified projections of inner anger, one that wants to meet expectations right away, dictatorial, boxed in."
"No to sensuality, or the inordinate longing for pleasure, the irresponsible acting out of unmet needs."
"Remember that the devil is like a military commander, a false lover, or even a woman: it attacks us through our weakness. The devil makes us relent slowly, inch by little inch (then he asks for a mile). It maliciously whispers to us, for instance, to keep our secrets (to ourselves)."
"Diana, Imelda, Hitler, Don Bosco, Moses, Jesus -- what's common about them? They all had a past. But what’s the difference? The choices they made."
"In healing the inner child, we identify with our woundedness, we recognize that we repeat our past in the compulsions of the present, but we decide that ‘only I can heal myself.’ ‘I start today here and now.’"
Near the culmination of the retreat, Fr. A. exhorted us to "celebrate our woundedness. There are no lessons from joyful stories.”
Jesus' example is instructive at this point. "The God who became man has a fascinating humanity. He too was wounded: the wound of not having a biological father.” (Hmm, I see shades of Henri Nouwen here in The Prodigal Son.) “But that wound made Him seek for His real Father. He took responsibility for his life. It was a personal struggle with his life, coinciding with his grasping of His mission.”
Finally, courtesy of Fr. A, is "My Covenant": "I will take care of myself. I will accept myself just as I am (so I will be of use to others.) (Angels have no souls, are not children of God, and so are not saved by God -- I am not an angel.) I will appreciate myself, taking delight in being a special person. Unity is not uniformity. (Jesus has a particular pain just for me.) I will approve of myself. I will celebrate my successes and efforts towards positive undertakings. I will affirm myself, valuing my uniqueness and my gifts. (I don't have to compete.) I will show affection to myself. I deserve to be loved and cherished. I will embrace myself everyday."
Fr. A. discussed some other things that I'd rather not detail here: warning signs of unresolved trauma, mechanism of sexual traumatization, personal bill of rights, etc.
Our group was 'lucky' because the priest no longer, or seldom, gives this kind of retreat, being busy now with new assignments. His thoughts are a result of over 50 years of dealing with the hard knocks of life and decades of self-study. I highly recommend taking up this retreat or something similar to anyone who's ever been wounded as a child and wants to bring back the wonder child in him/her, or to anyone who suspects himself to be in denial, or to anyone who ever had a child under his or her care. This retreat is practically for everyone.
**
If I might add two points that I learned elsewhere that I think Fr. Armand forgot to mention...
Forgiveness, as part of the healing process, doesn't just refer to forgiveness of other people. Sometimes, one essential step is forgiving ourselves. Sometimes it's ourselves whom we ought to forgive for our frustrations over perceived failures and inadequacies.
Sometimes, too, it's God whom we blame and resent or are angry at.
Often, we don't realize these things because we repress or deny the very thought (until it gets buried in the unconscious). The result is we end up unaware of either and 'misdiagnosing' our problem.
Other comments, objections, criticisms, points I missed, realizations, related sharing are most welcome.
It’s so depressing. There’s nothing to write about because of this big-time dampener. I never expected this will affect my enthusiasm for blogging, which is a good measure of my enthusiasm for life. I really hope and pray, together with all people of goodwill, for this disaster (yet another) to end, with the enemy finally in the hands of justice and the victims in the loving arms of their respective families. I have no words left for the cruelty and depth of wickedness that lies in the hearts of an unspeakably evil and barbarous band of bandits the world has ever known. God, help me forgive, help us forgive, help us forgive the unforgivable because we're only weak and puny men. Let us not be tempted into retaliating. Let our non-retaliation be our strength and defense.
Spamming myself
How did it happen? Please explain. Why do I sometimes spam myself against my will? Has my PC been infected or something? Weird.
Problem with Blogger search
Is something the matter with Blogger that I can't find, using Blogger's search engine, articles or posts I swear I wrote years ago? Sometimes, an article won't appear among the search results unless I type out the whole title. Weird.
Job-related weird.
One day, someone, a Filipina mother visiting from the States, asked me what my job was. I said I teach English and essay writing online. Oh, you mean Koreans, she said. No, Americans, I said. She couldn't believe what she heard. Apparently, she didn't trust my face. I assumed she now thought the teaching job was all about ESL students, but I didn't try to be defensive. Then she gave me a face that most probably said, Ah outsourcing. You mean you just took away a job my son (back in the States) could have had. But you're Filipino (or more accurately Filipino-American), I thought. Shouldn't you be happy for me instead? Besides, globalization is not my fault. Weird.
That's also the reason why I'd rather not interact with my online colleagues, unless they're Indian. The Americans would always view me as someone who took away their job. Sigh. If they only knew how cheap I was being paid for the same job. Weird.
**
One day, I got a pleasant surprise. Sometimes, my job afforded me such moments. The student who submitted a draft was named Ligaya. For a while, I was dumbsruck, unsure how to proceed next. Then I smiled through my dilemma. Should my greeting be, Mabuhay, I'm XXX from Manila? Oops, we're not allowed to say that. Maybe I should ask, Are you a Filipina? Don't deny. Your name is a giveaway. Or should I say, Hello, Ligaya. I'm sure you're at least half-Filipina. As for me, well, I'm... centrally located. Weird. Weird outsourced life.
Eight of the World’s Most Unusual Plants - You want these in your front lawn - if you're perhaps someone sporting an extra-long pair of incisors!
Marry or be fired - Yet another ridiculous Iranian dictatorship!!! Please boycott Ahmadinejad and everything about his ultra-weird government!!!
**
Meanwhile, Bayi of Malaysia is right. We Filipinos should refrain from eating rice to help solve the rice crisis. I'm thinking of the horrible alternatives: poi, taro, cassava, mashed potato, fries, camote/sweet potato, tapioca, wheat, corn flour, corn flakes, corn chips, pita bread, purple yam, etc etc.
Since the Abu Sayyaf have made abduction into a lucrative industry (allegedly in cahoots with the local military), all news that mention them would mean free advertising to them. Let's ban all Abu Sayyaf coverages to deflate their ego and their chances for more business. Since they would no longer exist in media, reality just might imitate their media fate.
Watched Chris Martinez’s Caregiver at Trinoma (which didn’t honor our passes; paging Star Cinema) with Malou. Save for a few embarrassing overly melodramatic scenes and the extra-annoying music that now and then screams “These are the places where you shed profuse tears,” Caregiver is good because of its psychological complexity. It explores several cases: rebel children with unexplained aggression, people with emotional dependency, lack of self-affirmation, lack of self-esteem, projected anger or self-hate, trauma, humiliation, emasculation, toxic shame, depression, addiction/alcoholism, and culture shock. The writer refrained from caricaturization and simplistic good-bad dichotomization, although I found corny the inclusion of lack of father-son affirmation, which the movie even tries to resolve in the end. I wasn’t disappointed with Martinez’s story, whose prodigious work I’ve been following since Welcome to Intellstar, Last Order sa Penguin Café, etc. I found director Chito Roño's pandering to telenovelization cheap and offensive, though. I’ve watched hundreds of classics and indie movies from around the world, and I notice how ours tend to have an embarrassing melodrama overload in comparison. I wish someone edited out all that excess.
One thing unexpectedly enjoyable about the movie is the guessing game it invites as you encounter one vaguely familiar face from the past after another. And, Sharon certainly deserves a citation for her sensitive (almost hysterics-free) portrayal here. Maybe John Estrada too because I wanted to punch his face all along, but that's just me.
In the run-up to Araw ng Kalayaan, we should’ve invented the following festivities:
Jun 1 – Libreng Extra Rice (c/o Jollibee at McDo)
Jun 2 – Libreng Rent, Tubig at Kuryente
Jun 3 – Libreng Lunch sa Food Court (c/o all malls)
Jun 4 – Libreng Kiss (yiiii!)
Jun 5 – Libreng Trip to Macau for Two (c/o ChowKing)
Jun 6 – Libreng Instant Noodles (c/o Sen. Chiz)
Jun 7 – Libreng Glutathione (c/o Sen. Loren)
Jun 8 – Libreng Facial (c/o Sen. Lacson)
Jun 9 – Libreng Pabahay (c/o GK and VP Noli)
Jun 10 – Libreng Visa (c/o Corps of Ambassadors)
Jun 11 – Libreng Trabaho
Jun 12 – Libreng MRT/LRT
Jun 13 – Libreng Sampal
My new boss, who took up Technology Management in UP Diliman, took note of what he learned in class as the three technologies of the future:
1. Brainwave technology - e.g. ability to turn on a lightbulb using the brain
2. Gene mapping - for a host of reasons
3. Data mining - for artificial intelligence
**
Meanwhile, will someone give me a copy of this book?
Stuart Kaufman’s Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion (Basic Books).
ABS-CBN OFFICIAL STATEMENT ON CES DRILON:
Three ABS-CBN journalists Ces Drilon, Jimmy Encarnacion, and Angelo Valderama are missing in Sulu.
All efforts are underway to find them and bring them home.
Until we learn more details, ABS-CBN News requests other media to report on this matter with utmost consideration for the safety of our news team. ABS-CBN News is in touch with the families and asks that their privacy be respected.
**
NATIONAL UNION OF JOURNALISTS OF THE PHILIPPINES
Statement
June 10, 2008
Appeal for release of ABS-CBN journalists and companion
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines is deeply concerned at the
reported abduction of respected broadcast journalist Ces Drilon, her crew, Jimmy
Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama, and their host, peace advocate Octavio Dimampo, in Sulu by what authorities say are members of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).
Whatever the abductors stand for, whatever their goals are, there is absolutely
no justification for seizing journalists whose sole concern is to seek out the
truth and present this as accurately as possible.
To them, we say, release Ces, Jimmy, Angelo and Mr. Dinampo. Seizing them cannot
in any way serve your ends and can only bring down condemnation on your heads.
We call on authorities to exert all efforts to ensure the safe return of the
journalists and their host. We are also urging for sobriety among our colleagues in the media in reporting about the incident so as not to aggravate the situation and endanger Drilon and her companions.
We are only too aware of the risks journalists go through in our work. Too many
journalists are sent into dangerous coverage situations without adequate
preparations and safety measures. Many silently bear the scars and traumas of
their coverage, with hardly any support from those who profit from their toil.
It is time Philippine media owners soberly assess the situation and take steps
to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our colleagues oftentimes caught in the
line of fire just to get the news out.
To the families of Ces, Jimmy, Angelo, and Mr. Dimampo, we are one with you in
praying for their safe return. #
Reference:
Jose Torres Jr., Chairperson
Rowena Paraan, Secretary General
**
This blogger's statement:
Dear God,
Please deliver Ces Drilon and company from evil.
(Rounding up all the arresting ironies of a crime scene)
It was the weirdest sentence ever constructed, and it said: "You, you, you, you, and you, come with me!"
It was the order from a tall, muscular man in black, pointing at, and then commandeering, five tambays (hangers-on) parked beside me one afternoon, as I stood just outside the MRT turnstiles waiting for a friend. The man in black was on his own. The tambays had unkempt wear and unruly hair.
Me? I was of course alarmed. "What do you mean "you," you idiotic old piranha?" I thought. "If you so much as round me up among the usual suspects, I'll be sure to embarrass your whole family including your pet iguana."
Through the mercy of God, the bouncer-built policeman excluded me. I sighed, relieved after being nearly traumatized. I walked away fast from the arrested ones, which included one woman who looked like she could use some nose pore strips. Exoneration by dissociation.
Then a little commotion ensued. This certainly called for some serious investigative journ. So I just had to be there. People from all walks, converging all of a sudden from the four corners of the wind, followed the arresting officer as he hauled off five people who were too shocked to respond. Traumatized. He didn't restrain them with handcuffs and ball chains. Not yet. There's no need. The ugly morons were caught pointblack. Human nature, I guess. It's the way hostage-takers are hostaged themselves into surrendering.
Soon a respectably sized crowd fenced in the arrest scene, which shortly led into the cramped police station inside the Pasay Taft MRT concourse area. Another similarly built police officer came in as reinforcement. But the woman was smart. She managed to break away free. I don't know how she did it, but she vanished into thin air just like that. Superpowers maybe. And no one bothered to catch her, maybe because everyone thought she's a woman who probably had a baby waiting to milk her malnourished self to death.
But the mob and the police were unforgiving to the men. I heard all sorts of premature judgments while accusations and denials were hurled in opposite directions.
"Own up to your crime now!"
"These people should just be killed!"
"Just dump them down the Pasig River!"
I thought, "Shut up you evil, judgmental fools! These men bear no more guilt than you. Look how unkempt-looking you are as they. Look at your unruly hair! Don't you cheat on your wives too, steal kisses from some other chick, or worse, steal a one-nighter with a Php100 slut? Shut up you pimps or you're next to be creamed."
Then a hapless but furious-looking fellow in fitting black burst into the scene. In contrast to the suspects and the gathering crowd, every single strand of his hair was in place. "Have they been caught yet?!" he asked aloud excitedly, addressing no one in particular.
Soon he was inside the cramped room too, disputing all the blatant lies of the herded men. A few irate men from the clearly thrilled onlookers lining the room stroke a mean blow to the bare-faced liars now and then. No one minded. The questioning continued. The man in fitting shirt furiously claimed that the backpack, the cell phone, and the wallet were all his, his, his. He provided incontrovertible proofs, like calling the number of his wife and the like.
"Aalis na lang ako eh, nanakawan nyo pa ko, ha!" ("I was just leaving, and here you are snatching my things!") He then slapped one of the guys' face, which brooked no resistance.
All the accused now were as a flock of lambs. Yet they were nonetheless adamant. "Wala po akong kinalaman diyan," ("I am innocent until proven otherwise,") they all said.
"What?!" What asinine liars!" I thought. "I swear to God I'm gonna kill you myself with my own bare hands by crushing all your balls! Why don't you just admit it and rationalize by tugging at the telenovela heartsrings and say you needed the money because your mother is in the hospital nursing amoebiasis?"
The two policemen now kept on urging the four to admit their crime. "I believe in human rights and adamant about my position on capital punishment (anti, not pro), but you can torture these jerks later off the record," I communicated to the officers telepathically. "You can just deny the violation later and falsely claim that everything was self-inflicted, nothing extra-judicial. Demand and extract honesty by whichever means then be dishonest about it later." Right.
I was clearly enjoying all this. This happened for a mysterious reason or purpose: to entertain the hell out of me and the captive audience.
The hooligans remained in denial up to the last minute. What did we expect? That's how it is on the nightly news. "How about reverse psychology then?" I thought. "It might probably work if you presumed they're innocent despite the hard evidence and pronounced they were actually the victims here."
No dice. Nothing was happenning. I know. Silly idea. Even the poor victim was getting impatient. "My flight is at 7," he kept on saying. The road to the Ninoy Aquino Airport was certainly cramped at this hour. But the police wouldn't hear a word. They insisted on having everything put in black in white, in the police blotter.
There was no media person in sight to document the whole thing. I guess that's me. Citizen journalist, yes. No choice. But too bad I had no digicam. And I lost the only cell phone with camera I could afford...to scheming snatchers like these ugly manimals! Argh!
Then I noticed the greenish luminous plastic rosary one of guys was wearing around his neck. A talisman for his holy adventures, no doubt. I didn’t know whether to snicker or cry “Profane!” Obviously, his talisman didn't work so far. Stupeed!!
There were nasty punches and verbal blows from the audience now and then. They were cheered on by the rest of the kibitzers in a restrained way, clearly a concretization of all the imagined revenge by anyone who ever figured helplessly in a snatching, mugging, or petty crime scene with this nasty band of perpetrators like this. We were not the aggrieved party in this case, but who cares? We were all victims once.
And who cares if we are equally guilty of committing petty crimes ourselves from time to time, so long as we are not caught? That's what matters.
Everybody else was getting impatient. Even the crowd was thinning.
But one man thought of something inspired before disengaging himself. He offered the guy within his reach a powerful one-two punch on his back for the last time. Haha. Dramatic exit, you could say. What a vengeful bastard! Even the poor suspect, the recipient of the final blow, didn't expect that.
But neither did he signal the slightest desire to fight back. Strangely, he suddenly looked like a pitiful fellow to me now.
I smelled stirrings of Stockholm syndrome somewhere. For a minute there, I had to remind myself who the real victim was: It was the OFW (overseas contract worker) missing his flight, the Filipino who was about to leave everything behind only to be rudely pulled back to his country of origin at the last minute with one final assault, no less from five of his countrymen. All the more reason to leave, he must have thought.
"EVERYONE BACK OFF!," the first arresting officer suddenly apprehended all the shameless kibitzers. That included me.
I couldn't honestly reply with "We're all citizen journalists here," so we did disperse like swatted flies.
Question everything. But first lay down the facts. Let the facts speak for themselves. Sift through the facts for truth. Then, based on the facts, let the table be open for anyone to question the truth, or his or her own version of it.
Of course you or anyone else must question the facts if something smells fishy. If you smell a dead rat, or rotten fish, verify. Verify with supposed authorities. That's how scientific studies are peer-reviewed and thus validated.
After verifying, explore all possible sides, your side, their side, and whoever else's side. Now try to give a hint of which side you are on, and carefully consider the merits of the other camp, but only to prove in the end that whatever merit there is remains inadequate in the face of your opposition. Or you may defend your side convincingly right away, using the facts. Slowly or fast, demolish the other side with logical reasons. That's the way to argue.
But since you are not God, be constantly aware that you've only glimpsed this and that side. No matter how exhaustive your work, be aware that a side can commit an error or may consciously try to obfuscate or blatantly lie. Especially your own side. So it's good to constantly question your motivation and constantly put your feet in others' shoes. That's just being humble. "Humility is the mother of all virtues."
But truth will eventually out itself. The harder nut to crack is the unintended mistakes, the subtle errors. Acknowledge that there seems to be, or there might be, a grain of truth to some sides or each side or all sides. That there are partial truths or incomplete truths, or parts of the whole truth. That's how you exercise prudence. "Prudence is the governor of all virtues."
Reason with conviction, with a persuasive tone, if you can. But avoid rhetorics, which can lead to all sorts of fallacy. You can also try to get rid of the manipulative tone completely and let the reasons fly on their own weight. Then you say, with caution, that you are just stating your own personal opinion, based on the things you considered.
Now you are asking for trouble if you insist you're the only one who's correct if it turns out there's a finer point you missed. The bigger trouble to watch out for, though, is when you acknowledge errors for the sake of peace, out of human respect or misplaced kindness. That's a major error in itself as well. That's the error that leads to relativism. There is such a thing as absolute wrong and absolute right, unless you are dealing with taste or personal preference, which is always subjective.
The biggest mistake is when both or all sides insisting on the truth are both incorrect. Who else will be left to judge everyone's foolishness?
I guess only God can do that. When in doubt, it's therefore best to suspend judgement until Judgment Day.
Honesty is the best policy, 'tis true, and that means self-doubt or skepticism out of humble prudence makes sense if we are to ferret out the truth.
Question everything. Including this one. That's how it is to arrive at a news-report objectivity. That's how to arrive at wisdom.
Sisters and brothers, open your eyes. Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Greed.
Since Money, which used to be the root of all evil is now the New God, Money-Generating Work is thus the Second Person of the New Holy Trinity -- of course with Money being the First Person.
Work-Generated Materials are the New Spiritual Blessings, completing the Holy Triumvirate. Needless to say, Materials are the Third Person of the New God.
Altogether, Being Rich = Being Spiritually Blest.
Since this New God-driven Market is heartless, merciless, you must be equally heartless. If you don’t like your Work, for instance, leave. Find another Work that will give you much more Mammon Satisfaction. Everything boils down to the Monetary Benefits. Watch how your Spiritual Rank grow all the higher for it.
Remember that Work has been made for man in the beginning. Have you forgot that Work is God? Bow down low to It like a pig. You are just a machine now. That’s how They hired you. There were looking for a machine (link to Sample Ad here). Deliver your promise.
Because you’re a machine, you can’t get sick. You can’t get tired. You can’t be absent. You can’t NOT deliver in your usual Peak Performance. That’s how you were understood to deliver. They know you need the Money, no matter how constantly meagre it is. You are therefore to sell your soul to the New God.
Learn how to yell, “Show me the Money!” That’s the new global anthem now. “Money, Money, Money!” is next on the Billboard charts. “Money Changes Everything” will be a coming hit single, followed by “Material Girl.” There’s so much variety in expressing your virtuous Greed.
Remember that, in this New World Order, your nationality also means Nothing. Nationalism or patriotism is worthless. There’s no Money in it. So you are forced to shift alliances. “Follow the Money.” That’s what the times say, and so you do. You’re a robot, remember? Your new nose knows.
It doesn’t matter what happens to the country you left behind. May it die fast for its loss. It missed how much you are worth in Dollars. You don’t have a country now. Where Money-Generating Work is (link to Democratic People's Republic of Nursing), there is your Native Land and your Loyalty.
Remember that this life in this world is The Thing. There is no other. Don’t be deceived by superstitions. You can’t afford to waste time. You can’t afford to know and to talk to your neighbours. You can’t even afford to kiss your kids goodbye as you catch your Daily Quota and Deadline at Work. It’s all a waste of time if it doesn’t involve Profit in Dollars.
Time was invented for Money, for Work, for Material Gains. They are the Very Important Persons now where they used to be Mere Things. Change your rusty mindset. Shift mentalities. Gone are the days of loving and serving as your Core Values. Those things are all so passe, all a waste.
Even Work is not meant to render labour now (Link to I Hate Work), just a means to the Ultimate God: Money. So, yes, kids, everything is a Transaction now. Your Work is a Transaction. You are dispensable, expendable. You’re not unique because there’s overpopulation. When you get slightly old, you might as well die because you no longer worth anything. Youth is nurtured and prized because that’s where the promise of Profit Structure and Year-on-Year Targets and Fiscal Year Results lies.
Your dealings are supposed to be all Transactions, your pets, your best friend, your family, even your husband or wife. (Link to It’s a Deal here.) Remember that there’s long been a new game in town, and you just missed it: Marry for the Money. You always forget that. Don’t forget that a pre-nup used to be a necessity as proof that one is interested in the love, not the Money. But these days it’s no longer needed because that’s a wedding is supposed to be like: A Corporate Merger, An Acquisition, or a Joint Venture, with a Capital Expenditure involving your lust for Sex and greed for Money. You spend your life looking for your Trophy Wife or Trophy Husband.
Wait, I forget, Sex is another new God. But we can this dissect this separately. Right now, your focus should be on the EBITDA (Earnings before Income Tax, Depreciation, and Amortization).
And what about Government?, you ask. What kind of question is that? There are no more governments, only megamalls and multinational corporations. Together, they are the One-World Government ruling all of us now.
Envy is another dormant virtue you are to cultivate well. Outwit, outsmart, outsize. (Link critique of Survivor.) That’s the only way to survive: by becoming a Survivor. Like I said, shift alliances and political parties if you must. Never mind what’s wrong and right. Everything in the world is relative.
It’s a deal, remember that. Everything is a deal. For the Love of Money, yes, repeat after me: For the love of Money. Know your true priorities. With Covey as your guide, distinguish between what’s Merely Urgent (a fond kiss or two) and what’s Really Important: The Annual Bottomline. These are the secrets to lasting Joy, Peace, Meaning, Fulfillment.
At this point, you ought to have gotten the message louder and clearer. You are nothing if not a Whore for Money, and the world is nothing but your Pimp Daddy.
Now, everything should be a lot clearer. Take heed of all these advice. Sell your soul now to your New God, for on your forehead is His Tag Price.
Lastly, remember to always use upper case when writing Money, Work, and Material Things. You tend to forget. These are the only upper cases recognized by the Bar Code Machine. Remember that you’re just a number now (The link here.) and All Things the New Persons.
I had dinner the other week at Tokyo Tokyo with my friend Ian to help him sort out his problem with rice addiction, when it occurred to me that we chose the wrong venue. What would greet us upon entering the store, but a poster with a very bad pun: “Eat all you kanin.” It’s ungrammatical, therefore unnatural, therefore offensive. But that’s not the story.
The point is: Tell me, has Tokyo Tokyo really gone mad or just out of its mind? For how can this store offer such a come-hither, come-dine-here gimmick as bottomless extra rice when there’s supposed to be a global biofuel-driven rice crisis? Beats me.
But Ian couldn’t resist. He gave in to his compulsive craving. He ordered one rice cooker-full of rice after another and scarfed it all down with one kani sushi each. Sigh. All our plans of setting up the Rice Addicts Anonymous have gone up in smoke. Just like that. All because of one bad pun.
If Ian is like most of Tokyo Tokyo’s rice patrons, which is most likely, isn’t it any wonder there’s no food riots here?
Tokyo Tokyo is not a particularly good Japanese fastfood (Yoshinoya is better in all counts), but with its bottomless extra rice, the fastfood speaks to our dysfunctional Filipino tummy well.
Interesting stuff via P.P: "Copyright, copywrong": "Copyright law has gone from promoting creativity to hindering artistic expression, thanks in part to the efforts of a few giant corporations that are sitting on billions of dollars worth of intellectual property."
The Catholic Church’s emerging view of masturbation is surprisingly complex, but compassionate and psychologically sound, especially when it comes to the type considered as “disordered compulsive habit.”
It’s hard for me to imagine someone gently patting a gorilla, but apparently some women do. They find gorillas, gnus, and orangutans cute and, worst, cuddly.
I give up. I am resigned to the notion that all art is relative. That one bloke’s beautiful and brilliant may be another’s bastard bonobo monkey.
I therefore can only have a blast skimming through all the inanitions hurled against a favourite musician (one of the very few today), John Mayer.
Can total disagreement get any more exciting than this? You’ve got to see it for yourself by plodding through this comment thread.
Just goes to show how people's tastes vary so much and how a lot of people don't have taste and don’t even know it. Ha-ha. I'm mean, I know but they're a lot meaner. Worse, they wouldn't know real talent even if it strikes them in the face.
But the worst part of it really is NOT that they stick to their opinion even if you stick a gun in their face, it’s that they honestly imagine their taste to be superior when taste is clearly something subjective -- a point they will never realize, that’s why they will never consider how fans of a certain talent regard their idol this way and not that.
(Email forwarded by Sherwin)
Subject: Prison vs Work
Just in case you ever get these two environments mixed up, this should make things a little bit clearer.
@ PRISON,
You spend the majority of your time in a 10X10 cell
@ WORK you spend the majority of your time
In an 6X6 cubicle /office
@ PRISON
You get three meals a day fully paid for
@ WORK
You get a break for one meal and you have to pay for it
@ PRISON
You get time off for good behavior
@ WORK
You get more work for good behavior
@ PRISON
The guard locks and unlocks all the doors for you
@ WORK
You must often carry a security card and open all the doors for yourself
@ PRISON
You can watch TV and play games
@ WORK
You could get fired for watching TV and playing games
@ PRISON
You get your own toilet
@ WORK
You have to share the toilet with some people who pee on the seat
@ PRISON
They allow your family and friends to visit
@ WORK
You aren't even supposed to speak to your family
@ PRISON
All expenses are paid by the taxpayers with no work required
@ WORK
You get to pay all your expenses to go to work, and they deduct taxes from your salary to pay for prisoners
@ PRISON
You spend most of your life inside bars wanting to get out
@ WORK
You spend most of your time wanting to get out and go inside bars
@ PRISON
You must deal with sadistic wardens
@ WORK
They are called managers
**
Me: Clearly, you'd rather go to PRISON than go to WORK!
The Betrayal of Judas: Did a 'dream team' of biblical scholars mislead millions? An allegedly treacherous National Geographic article.
Vatican denounces group's claim of seeing the Virgin Mary more than 40,000 times as 'work of the devil' Medjugorje, allegedly evil!
(That’s what a newsman friend told me lately: To avoid libel, just insert “alleged.”)
**
Meanwhile, you might want to read the two contentious views on homosexual priests in the comment section of “Topics I don’t enjoy very much.”
Bunches of people from all walks are lining up just to munch like famished rabbits on these new noodles that are reportedly in Hong Kong style, with the stores coming in streetsmart booths. So what I do next is do the inevitable: have some investigative journalism done and try them noodles for myself.
One day, I queued up to have a bowl of Hong Kong-style noodles slathered with lemon soy and another thick soy-based sauce (not the sweetish teriyaki, which I don’t like) and topped the wiggly thing with lots of oily deep-fried garlic and chilli sauce plus two delicious siomais.
My findings? Wow. It’s… different. It’s not pancit Malabon, bihon, miki, canton, sotanghon, molo, lomi, hab-hab (the sayote-based one they snort in Quezon like shabu) or bam-i (the Boholano half-bihon, half-canton variant which has dried squid strips). It’s not even instant noodles, which are all wheat-and-egg-based. The Hong Kong noodle is pale-white, like it’s anemic or frightened of something, and seems to be a mix of ground rice and wheat – no eggs added. All that for just Php25.
To make the consistency interesting, a few mung bean sprouts and a hint of cabbage bits were added. Result? Wow, the non-gimmicky recipe works. We have a new pancit/noodle in town to humor us away from instant noodles and all the traditional Chinese-Filipino pastas we’ve always known.
The way the noodles are heated in front of you on a preheated metal plate is another plus point. (I am reminded of the "fried" ice creams I had in Baguio.)
I immediately made an additional order of ice-cold sago't gulaman drink to quench my gathering thirst.
I was guilty about using a styropor bowl, plastic cup, and plastic-wrapped and chlorine-bleached wooden chopsticks, though. :(
**
A few days ago, some people in one MRT station were intrudingly catching commuters’ attention just to introduce yet another type of pancit in their face: Vietnamese noodles. Their pitch didn't work for me: they were too impolite. Hire another PR agent or adman, I thought. But the title made me laugh for its ironically ardent pan-Asian politeness, although I was too afraid to try it just the same: Rice Pho.
Will do try some other time and report to myself what happens.
(N.B. This is not an advertisement. But so what if it is, right? What’s important is to be honest and fair, blah blah blah.)
Does anyone out there have a copy of Eve Ensler's "Fur is back" monologue in "The Vagina Monologues"? The text is not yet Googleable at this moment, but it should be soon.
**
All along, I thought this play is a lesbian porn show, but then my friend M. showed uncharacteristic interest, which was infectious, so I gave in. Maybe I could learn a thing or two, I thought, or why should all these otherwise respectable people (Cherie Gil, Monique Wilson, Bart Guingona, even someone like Rody Vera) sort of greenlight it?, I rationalized.
So I went with M.
Well, I didn't expect to emerge out of the RCBC cave with new insights, but I did. I also came out with newfound respect for an otherwise disastrous subject if handled with the usual malice of men, especially men who have their hands full with chauvinism. Emerging from the womb of the theater was a kind of rebirth, you could say.
Even if I were perhaps an ultraconservative nun, who would naturally wince at the mere mention of the V word (and most likely be hypertensive with the brazen inclusion of lesbian hooker sex in the lineup), I can't possibly diss this kind of show, I thought. Whatever graphic portrayal there was is political, never gratuitous. The play has heart, it knows its subject intimately, it has full of truths in varied hues, it cries for well-deserved justice, and it affirms what should be affirmed in women, especially their right to live their womanhood to the full just as men do. The monologues end up speaking authoritatively with that enviable eloquence only women can give.
Mercifully, the three, um, penises present earlier, Michael Williams, Bart Guingona, and Jamie Wilson, were offstage at that point were the women were being, uhm, too eloquent about womenhood.
Personally, I'm glad Ensler was unflinching enough to include women in the Muslim world who feel they're being oppressed.
And this play was providential and auspicious as a venue to raise the issue of Japanese "comfort women," a few of whom were present during the show.
This is an inspired show, building on a rich material of female pain across ages and geographies.
**
Notably, the Sunday show was a combination of personalities you normally wouldn't see next to each other, but there they all were: show biz, Repertory, and PETA types side by side. I also saw Cynthia Alexander perform live for the first time. I wish Lynn Sherman sang too. Next to Monique's piece (the piece de resistance), Juno Henares' (the angry vagina) and Joy Virata's (the wrinkly and shy vagina) parts were especially memorable because they were very funny. Rody Vera stole the scene because of the sudden switch in language (Filipino) and overall tone (grim, activist-sounding), as did Mads Nicolas (professorial-sounding), who uproariously summed up what the play is about: this is not a play about happy-clappy women in a sunny, sunny world. I thought Lily Chu was an exquisite supermodel-type addition to the adequately varied feminine voices, a foil to Dulce Aristorenas' or Tami Monsod's a-bit-on-the-butch-side roles.
I missed having dinner at home on time for this one, but it's all worth it.
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