Monday, August 29, 2005
my new tan and dye job!
Ati-atihan! Me imitating a Sinulog mask. Make-up by Erica Paredes. Photo by Jake Verzosa.
Don't feel sorry for me. I'm used to being experimented on by my family members. When my dad was starting out in photography he would make me wear weird costumes and use me as his model as he experimented with different techniques. My sister regularly experiments on me with make-up.
Now that she is back from the UK and is a certified make-up artist, who gets to be the guinea pig for black-light photography? (Guess who!) What's next??? Prosthetics? Fake noses? Stubble?
In return, I get neat photographs of myself. ;-)by the way...
I forgot to thank everyone who gave their condolences on the death of my grandpa :-) All your words and stories helped and meant alot to me. I just didn't have time to reply. Many thanks!
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Thursday, August 25, 2005
heto na!
It felt strange to arrive at the entrance of Saguijo all alone. I'm usually there to catch one of Nino's gigs, and I don't think I've ever entered the place not trailing behind him and his bass guitar.
Awkwardly, nervously, I stepped up to the reception table by the door, manned by a lady, a security guard, and the club's bouncer. They had a bored expression.
"Hi", I said, uncertainly. "I'm with Hiraya."
"Name please," said the lady.
"Paredes", I answered.
She pored over a notebook for a few seconds. "First name, please".
"Ala", I said, a bit confused, and wondering what all the fuss was about. Why wouldn't they let me in?
She looked the list over one more time, eyebrows knitted, and when she still couldn't find my name, she gave me a look that I took to mean "I'm sorry, maam, you are not on the guest list." Oh God, I thought, she thinks I'm a guest of the band Hiraya.
"What I mean", I explained, "is that I am with Hiraya". Man, this was awkward. It was my first gig with the band, my first time to perform, and I was nervous enough.
A confused expression crossed her face for a second before she realized what I was trying to say."You mean... ikaw yung bagong bokalista ng Hiraya (you are the new vocalist of Hiraya)?"
"Um..yeah", I answered, suddenly not so sure if I was.
The receptionist, the bouncer, and the guard looked at me strangely for a few seconds which made me self-conscious. Finally she waved her hand as if to signal I could enter. "Mag-pastamp ka muna (get stamped first), and have your bag inspected", she said unceremoniously.
And after the bouncer stamped me on the wrist, I made my very first breathless entrance into Saguijo as a performer, and not as an audience member.
Standing alone, I looked all around to see if any of my bandmates were already there. I desperately needed to cling on to the first person I knew. Yes, I was that nervous. I had hardly had any dinner and my stomach had been doing flips all day. Any performing artist has their share of first-gig jitters, but more than a first gig, it was a personal rite of passage I was about to go through. This night was an important night for me. I had some personal demons to take out.
God knows I have wanted to do this for so long but for some reason I could never take myself seriously, never own up to it and say I was a "real" singer. Singing itself wasn't really knew to me. People who really know me know I sing, only I've kept it mostly secret, letting loose only on special occasions (weddings, debuts, ect.), and karaoke bars where I can sing behind the guise of being silly and making a fool of myself. It's not that I have stage fright, everyone knows that I'm pretty kapal-mukha and have no problem with being in front of a crowd. What's scary is putting yourself out there: painters can hide behind their canvases, writers behind their pen and paper, actors behind the character their play; but singing is putting yourself out there, naked and vulnerable.
What was I so afraid of? Failure? Taking risks? Breaking out of the mold and doing something that people didn't expect of me? My own inner saboteur telling me I didn't deserve to get what I wanted? Maybe it was all of the above. But God knows I've been wanting to do something about it so badly that it hurt. And no matter how many times my friends, family, and boyfriend pushed me, encouraged me, and sincerely believed in me, I just couldn't.
But passion, when left stagnant and unspent, ferments into bitterness and misery; and all that bitterness eventually turns into a kind of unexplainable jealousy. That's probably why I've spent the last few years of my life watching singers, bands, and frontwomen - people doing what I want to do- perform and feeling both admiration and an illogical resentment towards them. I'd watch them doing their thing and start thinking evil thoughts like:
"I know I can do that! How come they're doing it and I'm not?" or "P*tcha, I know I can totally kick this person's a** at singing. Why the heck is he/she up there on stage and I'm not?"
And so I continued living my life as a critical, bitter, old hag, stewing in my hellhole of envy, until the day I realized that if not singing was making me so bitchy and hateful, then continuing on that way just couldn't be good for me. So I decided I was ready to take a real risk. Even though I was shaking in my shoes, I knew that trying and failing was a hundred times better than never trying at all. And as soon as I made that resolution, the universe heard me and presented me with mentors, teachers, supporters, opportunities... and a band who thought I was fit to replace their old singer. ;-)
I think it was Bono who said that you have to own your ambition, meaning, no matter how good you are at something (let's say writing), you're not a writer until you actually put your cards out there and let people see what you can do. It doesn't matter if you're a great artist if people never see your paintings. Singing is nothing if people never hear you.
I've been in this band for a month but kept it somewhat secret, and invited only very a very few, select handful of people to the first gig. I wanted to overcome that first hurdle by myself first. The first gig was going to be for me. I had a great, big artist's block to smash to bits that night. I knew it was now or never, and I was ready.
Whether the gig went well or not is not the point of this whole thing at all. Whether or not our performance was perfect doesn't matter, at least not for that night. What matters is that when I actually had the mic in my hand, heard the music playing, and faced the audience, I realized that I wasn't afraid, I knew exactly what to do- AND I was having a great time. What matters is that finally I was doing what I loved, loved, loved. And I haven't felt so damn good in ages. Rawr.
And because I know you want to know how the gig went anyway: False humility aside, we did pretty well. We weren't perfect, made some mistakes, some sharps here and flats there, and of course, there's always room for improvement. But we were alive, tight (except for the mistakes), well-received, and a got a very genuine thumbs up from the one musician and critic I was hoping to please: Nino Avenido- even if he's my boyfriend, he would never lie if he thought my band sucked.
And since I've experienced The First Gig, I am officially baptized as the vocalist of Hiraya and can start telling the world about it. Here's our uber outdated website.
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Monday, August 22, 2005
death and life
Last Friday, I lost the only lolo I had ever known.
The next day, my best friend of 13 years, Jenn Simons, gave birth to a baby boy.
Speaking to her on the phone today at my lolo's wake, I was overwhelmed when she shared the details of her birth, and found myself in tears by the time I hung up. I was such a muddle of emotions at that point.
I had lost my lolo one day, and gained a new inaanak the next. I could distinctly feel the passage of time. If life could be summed up in 24 hours, I felt like the giant clock of time chimed right at that moment, to signal that it was a new hour, a new era; it was morning only yesterday, and now it's noontime.
Then there's that sense of overwhelming joy that there is a new life in this world, another victory over death; and it was my best friend, the very first one among my contemporaries to cross that magical threshold into motherhood. That, to me, is just mindblowing! I still remember when we were both 9 years old, playing with Barbie dolls, roller blading around the neighbourhood, and riding on the back of her dad's pick-up truck! It's just... crazy, crazy, crazy, and amazing!
Millions of people die everyday and new people come in to take their place; and yet, death and life remain to be two of the biggest miracles, and the biggest mysteries of our existence.
The wheel of life is always moving but we don't always see it. We only feel it moving when we experience births, deaths, and all the other signposts in between like birthdays, marriage, anniversaries...
At this point in my life, as death and birth coincide, I can almost hear the great, big clock of time ticking away.
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Friday, August 19, 2005
an ending
There were many things I wanted to write about but they're all on hold at the moment.
My lolo, Roman Mabanta, passed away today after a long, bitter struggle with cancer. I arrived by his bedside 30 minutes too late. I'm at a loss over what angle to write from about the experience.
On one hand, it's the end of an era. The family patriarch has fallen, the cornerstone is no more, and I can't help but feel that we will now slowly become a scattered lot. My uncle remarked earlier this morning that with the death of my lolo, he and his siblings are now orphans. Even at age 40, being orphaned seems like a shaking experience: for the first time, you truly are alone and responsible for your own life. There's no parent figure to give you advice or help you out. You're on your own. It your time now.
With the death of my last grandparent, I feel that we've all been officially "promoted" to higher titles. I am no longer a grandchild, I am now an aunt. I'm not one of the children anymore and feel as if I have to step aside and make room for the new generation that's fast coming our way. It's my time as well.
An old order has passed away. Even my lolo's house, where we gather as a family every Sunday seems to be grieving. As they carried his sheet-wrapped body out of the house on a gurney, the house seemed to exhale, to sigh. It's a home that has lost it's center.
On the other hand, I lost the grandfather that I was only beginning to get to know and love before he succumbed to his illness. He was always a bit distant when I was growing up and I never found reason to talk to him. He was lawyer, an intelligent and hardworking man of principle and integrity. He was a Harvard graduate and spent most of his life running the law firm that he founded and co-owned, Romulo Mabanta Buenaventura Sayoc & de los Angeles, one of the biggest lawfirms (if not the biggest) in the Philippines. He was also a staunch follower of the Opus Dei.
He never came off as an approachable man, and stayed out of the affairs of his children and grandchildren, that is, until my grandmother passed away two years ago. It was then that he had a sort of awakening and realized that he had a family he barely knew. He began to be more present, to be more talkative, and began to reach out to each and every one of us, although a bit awkwardly at first. He also began to be more adventurous, and it was (surpisingly) he who suggested that we all go on an African safari.
I was one of the lucky grandchildren who was able to spend some time with him during the last few months of his healthy life. We spent two weeks together chasing rhinos and lions through the African wilderness, and drifting down hippo-inhabited streams. I had breakfast beside him every morning because I wanted to hear stories on how he met my lola, hear about him talk about his favorite books, and his favorite movies. I had never seen him so happy and carefree, and it was on that trip that I discovered that my lolo was a caring, warm, loveable, and witty person; and he was funny, as in genuinely funny!
I will always remember my lolo smiling his goofy smile, his eyes almost disappearing behind his yellow-tinted glasses, as we watched the orange African sunset; or getting excited and talking too loudly every time we'd be on the trail of a leopard even though our guide would remind us repeatedly to keep quiet in the wilderness. Oh, lolo, maybe your heaven will be Africa.
We found out he had cancer about 2 weeks after we got back, and before despair wrapped its tentacles around him and dragged him down to an iretrievable depth, my brother, my cousin, and I would spend nights with him reading to him from his prayer book, or asking him to interpret old poems written in indecipherable English. I loved hearing him impart his wisdom on us, always with a touch of humor and that loveable sarcasm he had. We would laugh, he, my brother, my cousin, and I. We had never laughed with my lolo before.
Despair killed him way before the cancer did, and he slowly shrunk to skin and bones during his last months. I no longer knew what to say to him and stayed away mostly. I guess I just didn't know how to reach out to him.
We cremated him this afternoon but there's still the wake, the mourning, the family members arriving from all over. I'm happy that he is free from his prison. This is probably the first of many entries about him to come.
My lolo in a landrover, Botswanna 2004
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Friday, August 12, 2005
older and wiser
In college, I used to not be able to stand anyone slightly younger than me. I only genuinely liked a select few of them. I was 19, on the brink of legal adulthood, and I couldn't stand teenagers. I thought that most of them were silly, fickle, annoying, and petty; big, walking personifications of misdirected and superficial angst, always wanting to commit suicide or run away over being grounded, over a bad report card, or over some girlfriend/ boyfriend that they'll probably be over in a few months. I hated how so many of them tried to act older-and-wiser-than-thou in an attempt to come of as precocious and *ahem* sure of themselves.
I know this was a very nasty and unfair generalization, but it was just how I felt then. I guess it's the same thing when seniors don't like juniors, and juniors hate sophomores, and sophomores hate freshmen... there's no real, specific reason. One hates the other simply because they're younger.
But I realized later on that it was because I was also dealing with my own residual teenage angst and thought that my problems were bigger than everyone else's. I was angsty over ex-boyfriends, and my hair, and my life, and my entry into so-called celebrity... anything I could be unhappy and discontent with. I felt that nobody else had the right to be more miserable than I was, especially not a younger person who surely had less life experiences than I had. Aaaah, adolescence.
But now that I'm 22 and not so angsty anymore, I find that I quite enjoy the company of younger people, especially younger girls. Something about their company is refreshing. Maybe it takes me back to a time when I wasn't so jaded and cynical yet, when I was still beautifully naive about the world and also endearingly confused, when I believed I could be anything I had ever dreamed of, and when I still eagerly awaited the magic of my first kiss (which I later found out wasn't quite so magical :-p).
Where I used to be impatient and skeptical with their ranting, and their silly ideas, and their little dramas, I find that I have a new-found sympathy for younger people. There's something stirring about seeing them go through the same struggle that so many other girls go through at such a defining age, and at odd moments I find myself imparting wisdom on them with genuine concern. I mean, nobody ever has an easy time growing up.
Maybe it's because I never had a little sister or maybe it's because I sometimes just see so much of me in them. Or it could that my reasons are purely narcissistic and I enjoy the ego-trip of feeling older and wiser than someone else. Whatever. I'm not that old and I'm not that wise, but I hope I haven't been dispensing quack advice. Hahaha!
There's probably some 30 year old reading this right now and saying "Aaaw, she's so young and innocent. Isn't that cute?" :-p
Anyway...... pictures from the last two (busy) days!
Me and Dawn in fab make-up by Lala Flores!
Cogie tulog! Wahaha!/ Nikki G. and moi. What a nice girl she is!
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Monday, August 08, 2005
"meeerrrriiiin????!!!!"
My brother is back, and I'm not an only child anymore.
He got me aviator shades :-)
His philosophy teacher in Oxford was Stephen Blatti, grandson of William Peter Blatti... does the name ring a bell? William Peter Blatti wrote "The Exorcist".
I am now connected by less than 6 degrees to the creator of the absolute most terrifiying story in the known universe, the movie version of which was the prime source of all my darkest childhood nightmares. Oh, joy.davao dreaming
I haven't been a very lucky traveler lately. Once again, I almost missed my flight home from Davao this morning because I had not-so-accidentally left my plane ticket in my hotel room's garbage can. I didn't know that the ticket I had used to get there was the same ticket I'd be using to go home. Silly me! Luckily, Penshoppe was able to book me another ticket and we boarded the plane to Manila just in time. I was even able to grab a few bags of durian candy which Ananda now can't stop eating.
I had the usual round of radio tours and meals with the press in Davao, hanging out with the Penshoppe women Gigi, Gette, Mae, and Sharon, and our special guest writer from 2BU, Mark Sablan. Ah, yes. The itinerary wasn't as jampacked as Cebu and this time I had more time to rest, shop (Aldevingko!), and spend time with relatives. Mmm, I love Davao.
As always, hosting the Penshoppe Dance Slam was interesting even though I was very tired to begin with. My face actually hurt by the end of the contest because of all the *fake* smiling I was doing on stage. I really wasn't in a smiley mood, but heck, you just can't host a show without smiling. My face needed a massage after.
Maybe I wouldn't have been so tired if I hadn't insisted on catching the Redhorse Muziklaban Eliminations in Damosa the night before. But who can resist a battle of the bands, most especially the biggest battle of the bands in the country? Mark and I got to watch from the judge's table.
Davao's rock scene is, erm... interesting. I'll be honest by saying that alot of the bands wasted good talent by trying way too hard to sound like, well, other bands. I know it can't be helped. Influences will always be influences.
Last year's Baguio eliminations were filled with Incubus-sounding bands, complete with frontmen who had grown their hair like Brandon Boyd's. This year in Davao, it seemed Bamboo was all the rage. There were Bamboo-sounding bands,with Bamboo-acting frontmen (complete with Bamboo Manalac's signature jumps and awkward leg thrusts). There was also a Sugarfee, a Hale, and a Karl Roy.
Is it a Muziklaban rule that all songs should be in only English or Tagalog? It would have been nice to hear songs written in the local dialect instead of hearing alot of them struggle with badly written English lyrics. There's nothing wrong with not singing in English.
On my last night I was treated by my cousin Gina to a dinner of fresh slipper lobster in lemon butter sauce (I ate three!!!) and scallops from a nearby sutokil. I swear, the secret to winning me over is a good seafood meal. Buy me a lobster, or a plate of oysters, or a tureen of garlic prawns, or a basket of fresh crab, or a bushel of freshly, caught, freshly shelled sea urchin ("uni" in Japanese), and I'm yours forever!
But the best part of the meal was dessert: a hot, mug of thick, creamy tsokolate from Camiguin! I swear, you have never had a decent mug of hot chocolate till you've tried tsokolate from Camiguin, most especially when it is brewed in the Ayala household! I just live for it! Everytime I visit my Ayala relatives, I make sure I'm kapalmuks enough to ask for some ;-)
Withdrawal symptoms usually last 3-4 weeks.
And speaking of chocolate, it's divine when taken with Johnny Depp. Anyone one of my friends up for Willy Wonka this week?
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005
sex and religion
Inquirer's 2BU section's featured topic today was Sex and the Filipino Youth. The section dealt with concerns on the growing rate of premarital sex, as well as lot of other statistics dealing with teen pregnancy, STDs, and contraception.
I wasn't disturbed to read that 23% of the youth (meaning people aged 15-24) have engaged in premarital sex. It's actually a surprisingly small number. I know the politically correct reaction would be, "Gasp! No! Children having sex before marriage? Right here in our Catholic country? Unheard of!". There's nothing new or shocking about 15- 24 year olds having sex. It's been happening since time immemorial in every corner of the world. The only difference is that some cultures are more vocal about it.
But there were two particular stats that disturbed me:
* 264,415 Metro Manila respondents of a national survey were not aware of any kind of birth control method
* 62% of reported cases of sexually transmitted disease belong to the adolescent group.
Well, will you look at that.
What's worrisome is that to me, these numbers aren't merely an abstract concept. They reflect a reality I am aware of. I do know people my age who know next to nothing about contraception, and I do know of some people who have irresponsibly caught STDs.
Why aren't people armed with this basic knowledge? Many high schools do carry sex education as part of their curriculum. Even Ateneo takes it up again in Theology of Marriage.
Then again, there is something to say about the quality of sex education in alot of our Catholic high schools. I remember mine well. We spent about a week at most tackling the parts of the male and female reproductive system, the term "coitus", and "foreplay" and all the other anatomical/ technical aspects of sex. They kept it as textbook as possible. We spent another week learning about the different types of contraception, but they didn't tell us where we could actually get a hold of these things called condoms, and diaphragms, and whatever else. Then we spent the rest of the semester learning why sex should only be done in the context of marriage and Catholic love. I don't know if our 14 year old minds could fully grasp it.
What they never told us about was what you should do if you boyfriend is pressuring you to have sex, how to actually put on a condom, what sexual attraction really was, and other practical things. Sex remained an abstract concept afterwards, something that didn't really happen in real life, something we'd never have to deal with until we were, well, married... which isn't the case for a lot of people (just look at those stats).
Some of us, wanting to know the whole truth, did our own research. There are very good websites for teens that dispense credible sex education straight to the point, no undertone of Catholic shame or sense of taboo. This is what we knew we needed: facts, information, and real-life situations.
Soon, college rolled around. In college, you realize alot of people talk and act like they know alot about sex and later you discover that they really are rather naive on the subject.
I know some very Catholic people are going to read this and balk. But really, what students need are teachers who can talk about sex witout feeling embarrassed, and while being able to look his/her students in the eye; someone who can connect with the youth, someone who can teach without preaching. There needs to be dialogue. I know we are a Catholic country and so long as we let that define us, our sex education will always involve certain moral texts. But obviously, we aren't raising a generation of sexually responsible people as those stats show. Whatever it is were doing, it's not working. Fact is, you can fill people's heads with all sorts of moralistic slogans but once the actual moment is there, it'll be the last thing on their minds.
Teaching your kids about sex won't turn them into nymphomaniacs. If knowledge and actually having sex really came hand in hand, then why do we have all these ignorant people having sex? Don't be worried that your little girl is learning about sex. Be worried if she's 18 and she still doesn't know a thing about it.feel good?
As part of the Nestle Feelgood campaign I'm part of (you've all seen the ad), I'm part of this new website they put up. Check it out! It's so cute! www. feelgood.com.ph
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Monday, August 01, 2005
cebu cebu!
It’s a dangerous thing to get your flight itinerary all mixed up. The letters “a” and "p" make all the difference. Like last Saturday for instance, I thought my flight to Cebu was at 7:30 pm, and not am. I even got angry when my maid woke me up at 5:45 in the morning saying my ride to the airport was waiting for me outside. It didn’t take me long to figure out who had made the mistake.
I wasn’t packed, and I had gotten 3 hours sleep because I had gone out drinking with Trina the night before.
I managed to get ready for a two-day stay in Cebu in a record 30 minutes. I didn’t even have time to brush my teeth. I didn’t even know what I was being sent to Cebu for. A Penshoppe shoot? The Penshoppe Dance Slam? What? Nobody had told me. But after managing to toss a few clothes in my backpack, off I went in a daze. And thanks to my wonderful timing, we got to the plane exactly one minute before they were set to close the airplane gates.
It got worse. Upon arriving in Cebu, I found that I was set to guest in a TV show in an hour to promote the Penshoppe Denim Lab Dance Slam (ah, so that's what the reason was). My hair was a mess. I had gone out in that hair last night, had slept in it, had gone in a mad packing rush in it. I had eye bags and a massive zit on my cheek. My stomach was empty and I hadn’t even had any water. Great. Just great.
When we checked in at the Mariott, I had a choice between breakfast or makeup in the short 45 minutes I had before the show. I chose makeup. Aaah, vanity. I painted over my tired skin, a sad coating in an attempt to hide the wear and tear of the previous evening. But the pimple still showed through and there was nothing I could do about sagging cheeks and puffy eyes. The hair was already at the semi-dreadlocks stage.
Said show turned out to be a Cebuano noon time entertainment show called Sabado Na Gyud, exactly the kind of show I didn’t want to participate in, not on a morning like that. Haaaaaaay.
I slept the whole afternoon and managed to drag my zombie-like carcass to a dinner with the press at Chai Tea House. They didn’t even ask me any questions. Perhaps my night-of-the-living-dead demeanour discouraged them.
Yeah... it was a hell of a day.
Anyway, here are my favorite things about this Cebu trip!
I went on a radio tour to promote the Penshoppe Dance Slam! I’ve only guested on radio once before. Today I hit three radio stations, all before lunch! I've always wanted to be a radio anouncer. I have the perfect voice for saying “Warning: cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health” or “Breastmilk is still best for babies” at the end of advertisements.
Dinner was at Mactan Shrine at No Problem Restaurant! Who can resist a name like that? The mother of all turo-turo places, it's located in the wet market, and bigger than a basketball court. It's probably capable of accomodating a thousand people. We had yummy, yummy seafood amidst the stray cats that lunged for our leftovers! I could live on seafood forever, which is actually what I'm already doing.
At long last, after two years of failed attempts to meet for lunch/coffee, I finally saw my good friend Sherwin!!! It was almost as if the universe was conspiring to have us not see each other. Either he would cancel at the last minute or I suddenly wouldn’t be able to make it due to illness. I didn’t get to go to his wedding because his invitation text mysteriously never made it to my phone!(And all along, he thought I just didn't want to go). All along, we’ve been living in the same small city, and where do we end up finally seeing each other? Cebu! He had moved there for his new job just a day before I arrived. I have never been so glad to see him!
Sherwin and I were a VJ-writer tandem back when we were still in MYX. He’d write the material, and I’d grudgingly deliver his lines over and over again till I got it perfect. He'd make me shoot in all these godforsaken places. Oooh, we couldn’t stand each other at first but we worked together so much that eventually, we found ourselves having nice talks in my dressing room before the cameras started rolling. Last time we really sat down and talked, I was still veejaying, still studying in Ateneo, still single, depressed, and cynical about everything. It's been a long time!
You know you’re friends with someone when you can not see each other for two years, but talk like you just saw each other yesterday. Touching base with him somehow made me touch base with myself. We talked about the old days in MYX, the stuff we wanted to do, and the things we were searching for in our lives. It felt like a nice, hot bath in clean, fresh water for me. It’s not everyday people ask you about these things. The phrase “How are you?” is usually meaningless nowadays, either that or people are too distracted to hear a real answer. I am touched during the rare moments when it is used genuinely.
Seems I've been hanging out with old friends lately. I should do this more often. It reminds me of how blessed I am.
Really wish I could stay in Cebu for longer than two days at a time. Maybe next trip :-)
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