Cha-Cha

“this country deserves people like me…”

Watch this brilliant video on Charter Change  Juana Change: Cha Cha by Rody Vera and team  if you haven’t yet.

Pride and Shame

Even as Manny Pacquiao has mightily conquered the boxing world for the country’s pride, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Philippines under 8 years of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo rule  has the following record tally to be ashamed about.

The state of Human rights in the Philippines in numbers

Government security forces commit violations with impunity even as we speak, murderer military men like Jovito Palparan got commended and promoted, activists disappear in broad daylight and leaders of people’s organizations are arrested and slapped with fabricated charges.

The honor  Pacquiao’s victory has given the country is matched only by the utter pits the Macapagal-Arroyo rule has dragged this country into.

If only Pacman’s personal fame could knock out our collective shame into oblivion, then the celebration would be more meaningful and lasting.

So Where’s the Turkey?

It was a sumptuous dinner I had the other night over at a friend’s house — manila clam with talbos ng sili, pork barbeque, fried shrimp, pancit, empanada, adobo, menudo, grilled-to-tenderness squid, grilled tilapia, and more competed for prime table space (we had to extend it to accommodate the rest.)

The grill and the firebowl provided enough warmth (and smoke) in the patio in an otherwise chilly autumn night making an early beer pong possible were it not for the matriarch’s demand of another table space for the plates and for those who would prefer a sitdown dinner.

“Hey, that’s too early! We need  that table for eating!”, she yelled but was apparently not heard from the kitchen. She then switched her attention to the crackling logs at the fire bowl.

“Won’t the plants get burned by that firebowl?” she asked me casually.

In between shots of vodka or gulps of beer ( my  host friend, our surfer friend and I stuck with our wine, as usual), the younger crowd alternated in singing their own version of favorite karaoke tunes.   The older crowd would later take over belting usual pinoy favorites from Iisa pa Lamang to Green Green Grass of Home, one of them completely off-key you would think he’s singing a different song while being intense, eliciting laughter from and disrupting the endless chat of the women in the back .

“Ok ba?” he would ask me quietly after a performance.  I nodded rather hesitantly in approval.  I was just chilling to really care.

I arrived before dinner  time, with my appetite and a napa valley cab sauv, after  a couple of hours in an unusually very low tide beach ( I was able to jog the coastline past the rocks without getting my shoes wet this time) with a common friend who,  after discovering surfing some two or three years ago and making it an inescapable lifestyle, wanted to catch a few waves before sundown.

And the dinner started, with everybody partaking of a meal made festive not much by the numerous viand but by the unquestionable appeal to the palate.  The atmosphere was as usual, also festive and the noise sometimes unbearable but fun. Halfway through my meal, I then asked half jokingly.

“So, where’s the turkey?”

My host friend’s mom heartily laughed, though perhaps unaware of the political undertones of my otherwise apolitical question, and told my friend I was looking for the turkey.  He then came in with a grilled whole chicken, unmistakable in size and effluvia that filled the whole room.

“I don’t like turkey” she said disapprovingly. Neither do I.  And nobody was missing it that night.

It was Thanksgiving day.

But the occasion was not so much about remembering the early pilgrims and slicing the stuffed turkey.  It was rather a chance  for a typical Filipino family and community to get together once again.

I remember a Filipina immigrant who, while waiting for her citizenship papers, insisted that we have thanksgiving in the  Philippines (I remember Marcos made the declaration of Martial Law as thanksgiving day, which we had nothing to thank for and celebrate but more to curse and protest against — but even then, it’s not the kind hallucinated about)  and further bragged about how she had thanksgiving dinners in the East coast.

“In New York.” she would point out with pride.

And like a phony  social graces sophisticate, she would lecture before a crowd of kababayans who she perhaps assumed were a bunch of lowly uncultured migrants used only to boodle fights, on how seating was arranged in the formal dinner table of the white people.

The manners maven wannabe was obviously ignorant of the more telling barbaric side of these pilgrims.  She was both disgusting and pathetic I had to leave  and  could have hit her with a frozen turkey to bring her back to her senses — and give her a sample of the real story of overstaying pilgrims called Americans taking over the land of Indians who are now in reservations like some endangered animals — had I not.

I don’t celebrate thanksgiving.  So what?  I like the long weekend it affords us.  But there are more significant events in history more worthy of a real celebration.  Besides, why would I stand in long queues for hours just to get a slice of turkey because it’s thanksgiving day when  I can get a foot-long turkey sandwich from Subway anytime I want?

Get Real for a Change

BUILDING A FIRST WORLD PHILIPPINES Top Filipino Corporations: Building a Slum-free, Squatter-Free Philippines is their Business. Really?!

I have previously written about this lengthily and felt the need for another one after having seen more posters added to the Seafood lobby harping on the same subject, further exposing their advertising folly and cheap gimmickry.

I did not want to think it’s typically Filipino to engage in cheap ridiculous claims like what Seafood city does.  But I have not seen a ridiculous an advert as this one, blandished in various communities of the most progressive country in the world where homelessness is not apparent but real and  made more so by the recent bursting of the real-estate bubble.

Reno, Nevada

As  tent cities rise with alarming speed across the entire breadth of the land of milk and honey, Seafood city unstoppably builds dream homes in the sick man of Asia, single-handedly solving a social bane by retailing canned-sardines, lucky me noodles, tilapia and tocino.

Is there something about development that the industrialized nations do not know?

Obama is then best advised to hire Seafood city management to head his economic team.

The way this ad promotes Seafood city’s cause, the establishment appears  to be the envy of the grocery business, the retail industry and every government trying to deliver basic social services to its people.

But a short trip to Seafood city will reveal how its pompous ad of lofty goals is a sorry cover for its own poor standard of retailing.  Its brand is a far cry from the grocery leaders like Vons or Albertsons who make no pretensions or claims of solving homelessness in a country where bums have sleeping bags and backpacks.

Seafood city is like a lilliput in a land of the giants (in both literal and figurative senses), a kubo in a community of mansions, a talipapa in a sprawling shopping complex.

And they claim to save the motherland by providing roof over every kababayan’s heads, and delivering every component of a blissful life in every community.

Is Seafood city simply exaggerating or hopelessly hallucinating?  Is it typical Filipino or a rare exception? I don’t know.  But I know enough of our culture to say that it is not exactly uncommon.

They should get real, for a change.

 

See related article Have Seafood City, Will Prosper

Tumawa Naman Tayo

These are not exactly new and neither are they original.  Culled from different sources the origins of which are no longer known ( yes, you get them from text jokes, e-mail, parties, the internet, magazines, etc.), I am sharing them too.  They cannot be translated to English without losing its humor.  Enjoy.

Bisaya 1: ” Gara ng kutsi, siguro kay Miyur iyan.”!
Bisaya 2: ” Dili bay!”
Bisaya 1: ” Kay Hipi?”
Bisaya 2: ” Tuntu ka man. Kay FATHER iyan. Gisulat niya sa likud o,
“‘SAFARI’.”

-o-

Misis: ” Sir, mananawagan po sana ako sa mister ko kasi dinala niya
ang limang anak namin.”
Radio Host: ” Ok, g o ahead!”
Misis: ” Honey, ibalik mo na ang mga bata, isa lang naman ang sa iyo diyan!”

-o-

Nakasakay ka sa FX, nang ikaw ay mautot. Buti na lang malakas ang
tugtog. Bawat pag-utot, sabay sa tugtog. Nang ikaw ay bumaba, ang
sasama ng tingin nila sa iyo, bigla mong naalala…naka Walkman ka
pala!

-o-

1st night lola wore see thru dress, lolo didn’t react…
2nd night lola wore t-back, lolo still deadma…
3rd night lola all naked, lolo said “anu yan suot mo, gusot-gusot!!

-o-

AMO: sagutin mo ang telepon inday!
INDAY: (baligtad ang hawak) hilo? hilo?
AMO: baligtarin mo!
INDAY: lohi? lohi?
AMO: telepon ang baligtarin mo!
INDAY: Puntili, puntili

Juan: birthday ng asawa ko
Pedro: ano’ng regalo mo?
Juan: tinanong ko kung ano’ng gusto niya.
P: ano naman ang sinabi?
J: Kahit ano basta may DIAMOND.
P: ano’ng ibinigay mo?
J: Baraha.

-o-

Pedro: Galing ako sa doktor, nakabili na ko ng hearing aid. Grabe! ang
linaw na ng pandinig ko!
Juan: Talaga?! Magkano bili mo?
Pedro: Kahapon lang

-o-

Teacher: We are descendants of Adam and Eve!
Student: That’s not true! My dad sez we are descendants of an Ape!
Teacher: We are not talking about your FAMILY!

-o-

Wife: Lab, may taning na ang buhay ko. Huling gabi ko na to, let’s make love.
Husband: Heh! Tumigil ka nga.!Maaga pa akong gigising bukas, buti ikaw hindi na!

It Ain’t Over Till It’s All Over

Just as when the proponents of same-sex marriage ban thought that the passage of Proposition 8 in the recent ballot initiative in California was the final hate nail in the gay-lesbian coffin,  it instead saw the LGBT community and its sympathizers rising up like a reserve army called upon to fight an epic battle.

Visibly stunned and angered with disbelief, supporters of same-sex marriage reacted with impressive speed, galvanizing forces across the continent within hours of its passage for protest actions in cities big and small that would continue for days and cap with huge mobilizations  in important cities.

I’m not at all surprised by this reaction.  Prop (H)8 as it is called now by its opponents, struck at the very heart of equality like a wooden stake into vampire’s chest — at least that is how it’s proponents probably fantasize it to be. It made outcasts of a significant portion of the population who have not kept silent since Stonewall.

Proposition 8  has no rightful place  in a truly free and democratic society like the US — well, at least that’s how the founders envisioned it to be –  so the constitution guaranteed equal protection of the law  (and even if it did not, the people would have definitely fought for it nonetheless.)

It is only proper to question Prop (H)8 in the state supreme court, all the way to the US supreme court if necessary.  In issues like this, it does not matter what a person’s religious belief is and it is utterly repugnant that a certain religious definition or concept of civil status would be imposed upon the state or the public.  Any person with a clear understanding of this constitutional principle, along with other hallmarks like free speech and expression and others, would not have difficulty comprehending the unconstitutionality of the Prop (h)8.

But ours is a society of hatred and bigotry. And Prop (h)8 makes one wonder if the Americans really mean it every time they sing (or if there is truth to) that part of the anthem where it says America is “the land of the free.”  Slavery and segregation were not abolished or women were not allowed to vote ages ago only to prohibit same sex marriage in modern times. Prop (h)8 is a throwback to a dark past, not a bold push to a bright future.

It is ironic  that California would decriminalize prostitution in a certain city and then ban same-sex marriage in the State by revising its constitution.  Equality in this male-dominated society takes the form of women  as sex objects and gays as abomination.

The battle, as it is, however, is not over. And rightly so.

Pending before the California supreme court are various lawsuits challenging the Propostion’s legality.  But no matter which way the court rules, the people should continue the fight for equality. And  this long arduous fight should extend to all forms of discrimination  including  women’s emancipation and an end to immigrant bashing in order for its essence to be genuinely met and for freedom to be a social reality.  It should encompass the entire human race, global in scale and across all borders.

Yes, Obama’s election has brought change to America.  But it certainly is not an epilogue to a history of discrimination, but a prologue to a continuing saga of the world’s peoples’ struggle for a better world.

Resurrection

Order of Ecclesia

I don’t know why.

Call it an obsession but I never get tired of Castlevania.  Really.

From the family computer platform to the latest Nintendo DS format, I have played them all.  And like the storyline, I come back like a Belmont or any of  the vampire-killer alternates after a long hiatus, having defeated Dracula for the millionth time,  to face the resurrected prince of evil once again.

It’s a battle waiting to happen every one or two years, which in the game time line is hundreds of years, each installment either a fast forward to distant future or a time travel to remote past.

This time it’s the Order of Ecclesia, and a new character — Shanoa — who’s a member of the organization (hell)bent on ending the entire Dracula kingdom once and for all, is the role I’m playing in this never ending battle between good and evil.

Yes, it never ends. Notwithstanding the fact that the storyline is basically the same — search and destroy Dracula in a vast castle, killing innumerable evil minions and their minor bosses along the way –  and it’s still 2d graphics in this era of HD, it’s a role-playing game that still excites gamers every time it is resurrected.