Thursday, March 18, 2010

husband's religion

my husband has two religions: the roman catholic church and the manny pacquiao church.

my late great dad, ramon p. blanco, was a boxing fanatic. one of my fondest memories would be of him and my tito bong, watching heavy weight boxing on the latter's black and white tv, the kind of tv encased in a large, coffin-like wooden cabinet. the one with real push buttons that you push to go to another channel and real dials that you really have to dial to adjust the volume. with your thumb and forefinger. at that time, people only needed six channels to live a fulfilling life and buttons 8 and 9 were really just superflous.

daddy and tito bong would watch the fight, sitting on their haunches on the arm chairs, head and shoulders jutting forward, their entire body weaving from side to side, ducking, careening, mouthing fighting sounds, their every movement shadowing the actions of their boxer of choice. fighting vicariously, if you will. us kids, we derived our fun from watching our fathers watching the fight. we thought it hilarious that our normally sober dads could turn into these comical creatures.

i have no love for boxing. it's a stupid game, if you ask me. husband knows this so he NEVER asks me. but it's not just boxing husband loves, it's manny pacquiao in particular. he says things like "i am so lucky i live at the same time that manny lives." i roll my eyes 'til my pupils make contact with the back part of my eye socket but he basically ignores the feat and goes on to say "i live at the same time he lives. ang swerte ko."

how pathetic is that?


i find no equivalent feeling in me for anyone or anything. i try to say "i am so lucky i live at the same time as miuccia prada lives" and "i am so lucky i live at the same time as sting lives" and "i am so lucky i live at the same time as jk rowling lives" and all three just ring false.


then this morning, my sister anna emails me an article on GQ about pacquiao. great article, articulate and insightful and all.

but, really?

Friday, March 12, 2010

ode to george and bruno

because bringing up four children isn't enough, we went and got ourselves two more crazy babies.


this is george. he turned 1 year old last month. he looks like a white wolf that is why neighbors prefer calling him "lobo" rather than george.

he used to scare 3/4th of the neighborhood kids. but not anymore. he has never hurt anyone on purpose. and i can only remember one instance of him hurting someone accidentally -- in january he scratched diego on the cheeks. but that was while giving diego the routine "you are coming back into the house after biking for several hours under the midday sun, you stink but because you are my master's brother, i welcome you with a lick" and his nails hadn't been cut when they should have already been cut.

so now we have a big wolf-like dog who scares no one. not even the cat that poops thrice a week on our postage-sized yard.

his master is rashdi. george is the reason rashdi wakes up more or less without complaint at 6:30 in the morning. george has to be brought out at that time for his morning ablutions.

my brother monching named george after george bush. his brother barack is named after the american president. i heard they have a sister in manila named gloria. i bet that girl will have issues on account of her name.

george is going with us to liloy this holy week. he likes bathing in sea water.


and this here is bruno, the myna bird. bruno is loco. he knows how to wolf whistle - loudly. our neighbors probably think we have a sex maniac in our household. someone who wolf whistles at all hours, even at 6am.

you never know what he is going to say next. he graciously asks you if you have eaten, or if you are already leaving the house. he will suddenly break out into hysterical laughter. all of these will be unprovoked by anything discernible to us. as i said, bruno is crazy, just like george.

which sort of makes them fit right in with the family they adopted.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

zamboanga gives big love to noy!




zamboanga city gave noynoy an unbelievably warm welcome yesterday. i say unbelievably because zamboangueƱos in general aren’t really big on......street parliamentarism.


my mom, her trusty sidekick nang ligaya, and i got to the grandstand at almost four. the streets were teeming with people with vehicles parked on both sides of the street. but the scene inside was even more shocking.



the grandstand was full to the gills, end to end, row upon row, a sea of people, people, people and even more people. we managed to find seats, people accommodating us by squeezing even more into the others seated beside them.


and it wazzzzzzzzz hotttttttttt! a kind of hot that makes you instinctively stay very still so that you do not make the environment around you any hotter with the energy expended by moving. i could feel the sweat gathering at my back and stomach and mommy had a fan but i refused to give in to the urge to fan myself and intoned a keep calm mantra. i put on my dark glasses to shut out a bit of the bright day light.


when we got in, organizers were still fixing the stage, a giant v-shaped yellow platform in the oval. but the program started soon after we arrived. what luck. many had been there since 1pm. i left my mom and ligaya (did i tell you already i have mild adhd?) to investigate the phenomena at hand. i wanted to see what kind of people came out and braved the sweltering heat to see noy and party.


there were all sorts of people.


there were lolas with their grandkids...


and a lolo with his grandkid...


there were little boys...


and little girls...


there were barkadas...


and there were bffs...


there were associations...


and nuclear families with sleeping babies...


and there was me. haha. i couldn't resist a souvenir photo. you will see that i wore orange. i am stupid that way. i did wear a yellow rubber band on my wrist. but then again, that band was neutralized by the humongous orange justice league ring i wore.


but here is a picture of my mom. or at least my mom's back (and a bad photo at that). she is wearing purple, for heaven's sake. so if you judge people by their covers, and i hope you don't, i am for villar and she is for loren, a little. because we all know loren is....pink.


at this point, i would like to add that i was by the way using a very yellow tote bag. and my mom wore a necklace with a very nice laquered metal yellow ribbon pendant. i say nice because i made that for her. haha. email me if you want one. but i have run out of the rubber wrist bands. will let you know if i get hold of some more of those.


anyways, i asked another photographer - a stranger - to take my photo. he was kind enough to oblige and even asked me if i just wanted that one shot. i actually wanted a security shot but medyo nahiya na ako. or deluded into thinking the seven million people in the bleachers were looking at me. my pants are embarrassing, no? the wash is so dated.


couldn't resist taking a picture of this. this shirt, well, vest, is an exception to the norm.


almost everyone (except me and my mom, but you know that already) wore yellow. but the yellow they were wearing were things they already had in their cabinets. someone was wearing a yellow shirt that said 35th Founding Anniversary of a school in Basilan. There were a lot among the younger ones sporting noynoy shirts but the pricey kind that you have to BUY. what i am saying is there was a conspicuous absence of people wearing mass produced noynoy shirts. no one was giving out shirts like that for rallyists to wear. actually, now that i think about it, no one was giving ANY rally paraphernalia AT ALL. no one handing out yellow ribbons but there were yellow ribbons. no one handing out placards, but there were placards. no one handing out noy fans, noy calendars, noy anything. people brought their own signals, mainly by coming in yellow shirts.


and i think that is indicative of the kind of people who were there at the rally. they were people who went of their own initiative. i am sure there were a number of people who went there to take a chance on seeing a celebrity, and they weren't disappointed. in order of appearance: dennis padilla, josh sta. ana (a young teenager with a soothing voice who said his mom is from zamboanga and who elicited screams from the crowds each of the three times he came on stage. i don't know him but you can blame that on my age), ryan cayabyab and his singers (the audience enthusiastically greeted the maestro. i could not help but laugh at the sight of him on the keyboards with a messenger bag slung around his torso), james yap (audience had fun with his repeated exclamation of "grabe!" but i like to think that like the rest of noy's entourage, the turnout really did overwhelm them), and of course, there was kris aquino. i normally have no patience for her and even take the side of ruffa in the recent tussle, but man, she sure knows how to play the crowds. you have to give her that. when she came out, there was mass pandemonium. people in the bleachers rising to their feet shouting, people on the ground running to get closer to the stage.


how was kris like? she was dressed in black jeans and polo shirt with her hair tied into a half pony tail. you could tell she was very fair. and her voice need not be described. its ubiquitous on tv.


kris introduced noy. by the time that she did that, it was already approaching 8pm.


when noy came on, people were shouting and flashing the laban sign. he was taller than I thought. how to describe him? karay lungkoy. that chavacano term is the best i can think of. said very affectionately. the way i would use it on my brothers ryan "kuray" blanco and ramon "labs" blanco.


and i noticed too that when noy started speaking, many young ones started leaving. i guess those were the people who came to see kris and perhaps dingdong dantes. sad. but the ones in yellow stayed. and cheered noynoy on.



noy presented himself, his "senatoriables", the mnemonic they devised for themselves is SLAMAT LORRRD which i find hilarious but which i am sure will work to their advantage. It stands for (SLAMAT) Sonia roco, Lao yasmin busran, Alex lacson, Martin bautista, Acosta neric, Tg guingona, (LORRRD) danny Lim, serge OsmeƱa, Ruffy biazon, Ralph recto, Risa hontiveros-baraquel, franklin Drilon.


then he also ardently promoted his vice president mar roxas.


you could tell that unlike his sister, noy was not comfortable talking about himself.


the evening ended with fireworks which delighted people. i set aside my hunger for a while to watch it til the end. then as people filed out, the emcee announced that the band calla lily was performing and that had the young ones screaming and rushing back in. but as for my party of three, we were ready to hike home.


we managed to get a tricy tho. a tricy driver and his wife going home from the rally just like us.


Wednesday, March 3, 2010

salivating over tawasils

i visited the gallery yesterday to view the Tawasil Retrospective. I am going there again today because i wasn't able to see things very well yesterday.

i can't afford tawasil anymore. there was a time, maybe around five years ago, when i still could. but not anymore. sigh.

as it was mainly a retrospective, he did not have a lot of new works for sale. on display were privately owned works like a portrait of the lola of a friend from high school, some of his architectural drafts, some early pen and inks, his first watercolor, his first oil. going around the gallery, you get a better idea of how he evolved his distinct technique, the wave-like thingies. and you could see that he really likes using muslim motifs in his paintings and even in the houses he designs. actually, he likes drawing muslims, period.

mae and trish of the gallery sent me yesterday pictures, dimensions, and prices of the five paintings being sold.

the first three is the Mora series.

this here is Mora 1.

and this is Mora 2

and this is Mora 3.

Mora 1, 2, and 3 are all so achingly beautiful. if i have to choose, i will stand firm and not. haha. purple-orange hair? orange-pink hair? brown-torquiose hair? and you probably do get tints like that when you are a mora who has to constantly stay under the sun, such as when you live on a boat. but aren't the paintings simply beautiful. i so think so.

they are all 18.5" by 23". framed. circa 2009. 35k each.

and this one here is of a mora too but the focus is on the fishes in the basket on her head. same size as the mora series. same price too. but is that green sphere on her basket a grenade? or a pouch for her money? and are the fishes actually bulad? it would seem so because you can see the bones.

and here is the classic holy family theme:

this last one is the most covetable of them all, in my opinion. it's huge, compared to the others (31" x 41.5") and pricier (70k). looking at this, one of the first thing i realize that the fishes in the vendor's basket in the earlier painting are fresh fishes in fact, and not bulad. because in this painting, you see a similar looking fish above the father. the fish is swimming in the water, ergo, it is fresh, even alive. unless the tribe of the family pictured here are into tying their dried salted fishes into the outriggers of their boats. to soften it perhaps?