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.
zamboanga city gave noynoy an unbelievably warm welcome yesterday. i say unbelievably because zamboangueños 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 Osmeña, 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.
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?
my sister maita scolded her daughter juliana for playing with the cell phone. when the sermon stopped, here is what the three-year old said in her own defense herself:
"hing text man gud akong bana..."
this doesn't translate well into english so i won't.
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another slap in the face to another lecturer. this one took place just last night between my fourteen year old who knows it ALL, and his younger sister Jana who is convinced his kuya knows it ALL.
jana: why do the chinese and japanese have chinky eyes?
rashdi: asians evolved those eyes over time to adapt to the environment.
jana: what?! asians evolve?! like pokemons?!
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on our way to sunday lunch at mommy's, i interrogated my fat three-year-old.
The above gothic looking picture above is of the Trinity Library in Dublin. This one below is of the Biblioteca Real in Madrid.
and this very grand looking one is of the Strahovska Knihovna in Praha (i am guessing from all the skas and has that this is in prague, Czechoslovakia).
if you look at the above three pictures with your eyes squinted a little and if you are, like me, a little delusional, then you can sort of imagine having them as intimate rooms in your own imaginary -- and palatial -- house. but the one below? well, it sort of looks too much like a public space, too....institutional. so i don't really drool over it as much as i do the three above.
these are all photos from a book titled "library lust". yes you heard right.
i also drool over -- slightly -- more realistic ones. this membership only library in italy for example:
"My perfect library would be a wing of a country house, with very high ceilings and a gallery; below it French windows opening on to a meadow with trees in the distance. Shelves would cover all the walls, with an oak staircase on wheels to get at the higher reaches, and a spiral staircase to the gallery, also full of books. A door would lead to an inner room, my study, with French windows leading on to an orchard. A spiral staircase within this room would ascend to a small bedroom above, with a tiny bathroom and rudimentary kitchen. So I could, at need, live a self-contained existence within my library-stronghold. In the main room would be a large mahogany table with racks containing portfol-ios of drawings and watercolours by its sides. No pictures on the walls — just books — and no nonsense of terrestrial and celestial globes." Paul Johnson at The Spectator.
My ideal library on the other hand would be something that will take up the entire half of the house. every other room will have to share the other half. i can do without a living room. if i have guests, i can bring them to the library, show them to a seat and we can each burrow our heads in our own books. i will make ice tea for the two of us even.
but lately, i have been downgrading because instead of libraries, i find myself trawling the web for pictures such as these:
these are photos of the studios or work rooms of crafts people. i am drooling over their storage "systems" in particular. yes. these days, drawers aren't content being simply called drawers. they now snootily refer to themselves as "storage systems".
this room below is very nice, except for the blue bubble valance over the shuttered window. i hate the valance and the fact that the window is shut. the black thing on the right wall looks like a storage "system" for ribbons, can you imagine that. i want five of those.
if you notice that the pictures all contain a particular kind of "storage system", its because all these are all photos from a competition for best work studio sponsored by the makers of that "system", the www.bestscrapbookshelf.com.
these ones here below are used to store beads. oh how this will make my life easier. maybe i can have a local carpenter make one like it?
its telling too that lately, i have been crafting more than reading.
i was lucky to have eavesdropped on a most interesting conversation earlier this week.
it took place on facebook. it was between a co-teacher and his friends. it made me think about the process of creating something from absolutely nothing but the participants' imaginations. brilliant! brilliant! brilliant!
Kiko Miranda, the aforementioned co-teacher, starts the convo off with this gem of a status update:
The rampant spread of homosexuality among the youth in Nature's natural way of controlling the rise of the world's population.
the radical but plausible theory immediately captured the attention of many of his facebook friends who were online at that time. i asked kiko for permission to post the conversation here but not his friends as i don't many of them. his friends will go by by their initials here.
Kiko Miranda: The rampant spread of homosexuality among the youth in Nature's natural way of controlling the rise of the world's population.
WZP: haha. plausible argument. main contention ba se de neoliberated sexonomics?
JBS: hahaha
Kiko Miranda: @ windel - nosebleed! but i like the jargon ha! NEOLIBERATED SEXONOMICS hehehehe!
TG: hurray to genetic deadend
DEA: Oo, in the future may sex pa rin pero hindi na for reproduction. Asexual na ang reproduction in the future -- pwedeng by budding, marcotting, or grafting. O pwede ring basta splitting into two.
TG: or pwede ding aksidenteng matapopn ang semilya kung saan. parang ulan.
Kiko Miranda: true ka dyan ezra! sa future, sex will not be mainly for procreating. the world cannot handle an additional baby per second! may season nalang na pwedeng mag procreate tapos draw lots lang ang sinong pwedeng mabuntis! OMG so sci fi! ganda gawing pelikula! move over avatar! WE ARE THE NEXT AVATAR! hahahaha!
DEA: Oo, tapos may tutubo doon sa lugar kung saan ito natapon. Para lamang itong mushroom sa simula, pero magmumukang tao din pagkalipas ng isang linggo.
DEA: Hahaha. Tama! Gawin natin itong pelikula. Hahaha
DEA: At hindi na masyadong problema ang population growth kung sakaling tumubo ang mga taong kabute, a little fungicide will do. Trosyd, anyone?
WZP: sa other end naman ng spectrum, biblical/ conservative sexonomics. lol
TG: It should be as grungy as children of men, as scifi as Avatar, but hilarious as Family Guy
Kiko Miranda: @ ezra - gusto ko yung kabute angle! beautiful! pero etong mga kabuteng tao sila ung mga nasa pinakababa ng social caste system ng mga panahong iyon. mga illegitimate human beings. Mga nasa ittas ng caste system ay yung pinayagan/sinuwerte na magtalik para magkaanak.
@ travis - magandang evolution of man yan! I SO LAVET!
@ everyone - ang creative natin nuh? LAVET!
DEA: I feel this will become a big hit! Let's ask Disney to do our movie!
Kiko Miranda: actually i feel the same too. especialy those human fungicides i think that's a genius! tutal uso naman ngayon ang mga futuristic sci fi movies. i bet eto na ang road to fame natin ezra! and we will entitle our movie, "CATALAN". LAVET!
TG: Aylabyu all hahaha
TG: Catalan amputa, bohahaha!
DEA: Yey! Kinikilig na ako just thinking about it! Naririnig ko na ang: And the Oscar goes to... CATALAN.
Kiko Miranda: Nakadubi ata tayong mga tol! lavet! sarap lang gn tama! hahha!
Kiko Miranda: omg! ganda ezra! The Oscars is the shit!
DA: wow kiko, this thread was so entertaining. i like!! (:
MRA: LOL! I love this logic! It actually makes sense. :-)
YBD: kiko, such a very interesting, very funny, very creative conversation. i feel like such a peeping tom "listening" to you all. a peeping tom listening. parang mali yata yun. :)
TG: teka, bago ang lahat, dapat r-18 to ha. hindi ako makakapayag kapag hindi to rater R. haha. na medyo silent movie. artsy. haha
TQL: Maybe it's not "spreading." It could also be that young gays today feel that they are accepted, so they feel more at ease to be themselves. :)
DEA: I agree. R-18. may frontal nudity dito e.
TG: sige. 60 minutes frontal, 25 minutes decent.
Kiko Miranda: @ ezra and travis - no! ayokong R18 ito! pg 13 lang! tipong parang CORALINE ang pag gawa! or ALICE!
or
pwede ngang may frontal nudity sa mga UNTOUCHABLES. mga taong kabute. once they grow and mature, wla silang clothes. lavet parang schindler's list nung tinipon lahat ng mga Jews! ganun!
if this movie ever gets made (when disney decides its okay for them to make full frontal nudity movies), let it be said that the first (publicity) shot was fired from this blog.
kiko, thanks for letting me share this. i even included here my favorite picture of you. :)
last weekend, my sister maita and her husband were supposed to take their three kids to the theme park in Dapitan. she decided instead to come to zamboanga to retrieve her new dentures from her new dentist.
we saw each other at mommy's house in san roque late saturday afternoon. she was showing off her new dentures while eating her ma-chang. whenever she visits zamboanga, she finds a way to buy ma-chang from that chinese store on nuñez street, the one fronting the lobregat house.
she, a cousin, and i chatted in my mom's lanai, whiling away time before she had to take th
e bus home to liloy. i don't remember anymore why but we talked about death. specifically, we talked about being ready to die or not. i said i was (in one of my frequent moments of delusions), and so did ate othel, my cousin. maita sheepishly but quite firmly said she wasn't, that the kids are too little.
She chose to board the aircon Rural Transit bus #921 instead of the non-aircon one. The bus left the terminal at around 7pm. My sister said that she could already see the rotunda welcoming people to the province of Zamboanga Sibugay when she heard what she thought was firecrackers. then she and the others in the bus realized it was gun fire. then when she felt the bus slowing down, she shouted to the driver to keep on driving, to bring the bus away from the gunfire. but the driver slowed down, and soon my sister and the other passengers found themselves on the floor, and my sister shouting for the lights to be turned off, which someone eventually did.
my sister recounted this to me hours later, while she was strapped to the gurney in the ambulance. for a seriously wounded patient, she was very talkative.
while they were on the floor, and there was no more gun fire, someone at the back of the bus noticed round six flash lights moving down the hillside to their left. apparently the ambush party coming down. my sister said she thought to herself that she'd rather be shot at the back while running rather than be a sitting duck inside the bus. so they ran out the bus towards a lighted house a few meters downhill. i think that it was only at around this time that she realized she was hit.
hit and bleeding, flashlight-wielding men coming down the hill towards them, my sister disembarked the bus along with the 35 other passengers, lugging her tote bag AND laptop bag, and ran away from the bus on the worst pair of shoes EVER. a made in korea pair with plastic straps, plastic soles, and plastic beads. it was my mom's and cobbled together for the sake of pretty, not for running away to save your life. i've worn this pair, in certainly less dire situations, and i wanted to chop it to pieces and walk barefoot.
but my sister, she ran, ran, ran downhill on it. and while wearing it, she managed to grab the rails of a passing truck, with it she somehow found a way to step on the truck's stepping board, to hammer on the truck's door, begging for help. TABANG. but the truck driver, he wouldn't listen. he sped on. my sister, stupid shoes, laptop, tote bag, wounds, fear and all, fell to the highway and almost got herself ran over for her efforts.
the running passengers slowed down the highway's late night traffic of big buses and big delivery trucks. she said at least three trucks passed, and some Rural Transit buses. Only one stopped to pick up two of her companions on #921. the others sped on, ignoring them.
my sister is thankful to the couple who sheltered them, as my sister anna said in her facebook, at great personal risk. the couple was a tausug husband and a bisaya wife. my sister and a number of others stayed there until the police/military/ambulance took them away.
oh the people we roused from sleep that night. the strafing took place at around 9.20pm. a few minutes after that, while i was just turning on the washing machine (and thinking what a horrible saturday night it was turning out to be, washing two heavy bed quilts. hah! little did i know how even more horrible it will become), my phone rang. i missed the first because of the noise of the washing machine and the noise of cartoon network characters. but i did not miss the second. the missed call was my manila-based sister anna and the second was my manila-based brother monching calling to tell me that something VERY BAD is happening to maita. then anna called to explain further.
after that it was just one phone call after another. when you know your sister is very badly hurt and is still in the situation that caused the hurt, you sort of go on auto pilot. and the cellphone becomes your remote control, a tool to help manage the situation taking place 90 kilometers away.
i called up sheila covarrubias, mayor lobregat's media officer, because (1) she thinks straight, (2) she has direct line to people who can help my sister.
she informed col baluyot of task force zamboanga and the mayor. task force zamboanga wasn't aware of the shooting incident until sheila called. they have an outpost there, apparently, but they did not get any reports about it yet. col baluyot asked for my sister's number thru sheila and my sister said later that she did get a call from him.
husband and i, cousin edoy and his othel wife were getting ready to go as close as we could to licomo, wherever, to try to retrieve maita. i get a frantic call from my brother that maita was already in pain, that she was crying, that she gave instructions that she should be brought to a zamboanga hospital and not to ipil.
so i called silvie, rep beng climaco's staff and my co-teacher, trying to find a way to get to the barangay captain licomo, to mobilize the barangay health workers there to attend to my sister's wounds. silvie explained later that she didn't answer because she was at that time putting her child to sleep. i did get to derick evangelista.
i got a phone call from rep beng and she patiently listened to my whining. God how i must have been very passive aggressive, whiny and demanding.
then i got a phone call from mayor lobregat from sheila's phone, telling me that he was going to licomo himself.
then my sister called to say that general jalandoni already mobilized the military to that area.
all this time, i have not talked directly to maita. fortunately, mike saavedra, who was most helpful that night, had given me the number of the mayor of tungawan, the first sibugay town after licomo. (actually, i think mike gave me the number of the entire elected government of zam sibugay, hehe. thanks so much mike. one of these days, makiki text mate ako kay gov ann hofer). i called the mayor, randy climaco, and lo and behold, he was at the time of my call, sitting beside maita! yoohoo! so i got to talk to maita, who was quite lucid. i did not waste time giving climaco's number to maita's husband either. so that entire night, we had a mayor as call center agent.
the day after the incident, i got a text from him asking how maita is. i don't know him but i was touched by that.
maita said that when the police/military/civilian authorities/media arrived in the area, they invariably looked for her by name "who is maita blanco here", "is there a dr ladeza here". my sister the celebrity.
we waited in curuan, right in front of the check point. there was a crazy policeman there who would suddenly sing at the top of his voice (de-sintunado pa). he said it was his way of keeping sleep at bay.
we decided to wait at curuan when a task force zamboanga vehicle zoomed past us. the night was dark, there are no streetlights there, and we four were by our lonesome in a solitary pick up capable of inflicting tetanus but not deflecting bullets. soon after the TF zambo passed us, the convoy of mayor lobregat passed, and then a few minutes more, an ambulance.
half an hour later, the ambulance came back, slowed down. one man alighted and said "sister ni dr. maita blanco?". that was my cue to get off the pick up and into the ambulance. my cousin othel followed.
and there was sister dear, strapped to the gurney. her first complaint? there goes my favorite pair of jeans....
she did an instant tailoring on left leg, cutting it off right above the knee. her knees by then were bandaged, but the blood was still seeping through, pooling under her legs. her nice gray blouse had holes on the left sleeve, and i could see bandages under that sleeve.
she was pale, but as i said, talkative.
she recounted everything. my cousin and i could barely talk. we were so cold and shocked to see her like that.
we stopped by the paragas hospital where dr agbulos got in to check on maita. they talked a few minutes and then we were on our way to doctor's hospital.
at doctor's hospital, we were joined again by mayor lobregat, who checked on maita. waiting for us there were maita's med school classmates. eventually, they decided to bring her to the OR for wound exploration. it was already past two at that time. who worked on her at the OR? an ortho, a surgeon, a general practicioner, and a pediatrician. they were joking around. they bugged the ortho, asking him why he came when he knew he was going to be useless, seeing as both hands were thickly bandaged, recovering from a carpal tunnel surgery. he said something about not wanting an opportunity to install urinary catheter on a classmate.
just today, my sister said that the surgeon said bullets and shrapnel were imbedded on maita's knee, thigh, and shoulder. only a few inches away from bones and nerves.
