Children's Hour

"I will never forget your favorite song," Manang Maya said to me as she held her fidgety younger daughter Aimee. "Your song was I'm a Little Teapot and when the whooshing part came, you really whooshed."
Good thing there was nothing tangible available to her to prove that point on one hand and embarrass me on the other. However, when my nieces Aidagere, Bea, Pau-pau and nephew Jepoy all grow up to be in their 20s someday, I will have tons of moving and noisy stuff to make their faces all scarlet like Christmas ribbons.
Last week was the culmination of the summer workshop classes they had been attending in one of the best new schools in the city. Aidagere was enrolled in a science discovery class whereas Bea took up a module on reading. Pau and Jepoy, who are of the same age, were in a kindergarten class which had them singing in Chinese.
Pau-pau and Jepoy took the stage in the culminating activity of the workshop held in the activity center of perhaps our biggest mall here. Pau-pau and Jepoy were singing with their own respective classmates and as early as three weeks before the program, the two of them would regale us with one Chinese song after another, singing as loud as their vocal chords would permit.
Pau-pau took the stage first with her classmates. She wore gloves and a paper crown over her head. The minute the music began she began to sing as loud as she could but as the song went on, her mouth began to move less and she began to find the stage floor more interesting than the faces of the people in the audience. A little while later, she just stopped singing all together. All of us simultaneously started cheering her on by mouthing "Pau" and "sing" in all sorts of combinations and expressions but she continued to fixate her eyes on the floor. Uh-oh. My niece just had her first dose of stage fright.
Jepoy's class took centerstage after Pau-pau had walked off the stage. Jepoy was one of the smallest boys in the group so he stood on the rightmost end. He was the first to enter and immediately stuck his tongue out at all of us. He sure is one brave boy...well, either he's very brave or simply "walang hiya (roughly translated to gutsy)." They went on to sing two nursery rhymes and one Chinese song and he jumped around and wiggled his little hips like a pro! He was just the cutest four-year old boy on that stage. And he did all this with a fever raging about him!
I got both of their antics on video so when Jepoy becomes a big boy and Pau-pau a big girl someday, I'll sure do a good demo for them to jolt their memory cells a bit and say "You know when you were four years old, you used to sing just like this..." I mean, that's what it's all about anyway: revenge.
Okay, I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

(L-R) Aimee, Jepoy, me, Aidagere, my sister, Bea. Pau-pau was off playing with a classmate.

Seriously Freaked

It feels a bit different to be involved in something mundane for a change...especially since my summer break still has me running around restless. But now, I can at least allocate some time to allow my freaky nature to rear its naughty head once in a while. So here goes...just me on being seriously freaked!

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She's muh gurl and she'll always be THE gurl!
I am just seriously freaked that Melinda, MELINDA of all people(!), gets the cut in this week's American Idol. No, seriously freaked is not the right thing to say. I think it would be more appropriate to say that I am seriously bereaved I almost feel like reaching for the lacy black veil/shawl nestled within the confines of my mother's closet. What was America possibly thinking - and hearing - last night?! Muh gurl Melinda is the bomb and she deserves that place in the finals - every inch of that stage and every watt of that spotlight! I have liked her and Jordin the most since their respective first auditions but I have to say I have always liked Melinda a bit more than Jordin. Jordin is bubbly, young, pretty and has great pipes but Melinda can sing any song into smithereens. I mean, she blows familiar songs apart and recreates them into something she can claim as her own. And she does all this without a bubble of air in her head and that sincere smile on her face and that makes her totally endearing. My mom and I had it in our guts that she was going to be the next American Idol but all it took was one wrong click in the Yahoo homepage and my cutesy hope gets slashed to bits.
I had been hoping for a Jordin-Melinda slugfest come Wednesday next week. Blake was pretty good last night but he just paled in comparison to the two. Blake is a magician and a circus all rolled into one but he often sings flat (in terms of tremolo and pitch) and his beat boxing becomes his only saving grace.
Melinda, in my opinion, is the overall entertainer without the unnecessary frills and the magic wand. She is nothing but pure unadulterated talent who narrowly missed the standing ovation she justly deserves.

Melinda Doolittle will always be THE gurl to beat!
P.S. If Blake gets the American Idol next week, I think I'll be crawling on the floor with a broken heart. My mother has just threatened to boycott 'Idol' following the Melinda cast-off.
P.P.S. At around this time last year, Elliott Yamin made me cry like a baby. Tonight, he did it again.
P.P.S. Paula looked awfully funny dancing to Maroon 5. Maybe it was because of her dress but from the back, she seemed to looked like Whistler's mother.

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He's back and the wait is killing me (pun intended)!
After two years of contenting myself with my MISA DVD replays (please don't ask how many times because I have lost count) and staring at his picture, my favorite Korean actor and one-half ultimate dream squeeze So Ji Sub has just finished his mandatory military service at the district office of Mapo in Seoul. When I was in Seoul two years ago with my dad, I remember wandering across the street from the Mapo District Office by mistake. I still clung to some remnant of sanity, dignity and embarrassment so I quickly ditched the idea of walking into the office, kidnapping So Ji Sub and stuffing him into my luggage with his arms and legs sure to rip the zippers apart. The minute I got home, I almost got clobbered by Sue who did nothing but growl at my face for about five minutes.
Ji-Sub has is about to begin work on a new series with Ji Jin-Hee (of Jewel in the Palace and Spring Days) called Cain and Abel wherein both actors play brothers separated when they were children. Jin-Hee is the older brother who grows up to become a detective hunting down an assassin which actually turns out to be his long-lost younger brother played by Ji-Sub. Well, like I was telling a friend of mine from Singapore who also loves Ji-Sub, I've always thought he'd make one fine, convincing psychopath, killer eyes and all.
Now I'll have something to look forward to on the tube!
For the meantime, MISA will more than suffice. *hugs box of tissues and thinks of taking heart reinforcement pills*

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He's so fine and soon the world will see why!
The other half of my ultimate dream squeeze a.k.a Mando-pop star Wang Lee Hom has just embarked on his first international big screen venture - with no less than the acclaimed Ang Lee at the helm of the movie project.

The cast of Lust, Caution with director Ang Lee: (from left to right) Wang Lee Hom, Tang Wei and Tony Leung

A couple of months ago, I heard that Ang Lee was going to direct the movie adaptation of the popular Chinese short story by Eileen Chang called Lust, Caution (�F.‰ú) and that Tony Leung (of In the Mood for Love fame) had been cast as the lead actor. Leung plays government official Yee who works for the puppet government of Japan-controlled Shanghai during the 40s.

Weeks later, in the middle of a rather crazy week, I came across an online article that Wang Lee Hom had been chosen to play the second lead actor and the news got my brain functional again. Wang was to play Kuang Yu-Min, a student, revolutionary and boyfriend to Wang Jia-Zhi (played by newcomer Tang Wei), a spy sent to lure Yee into an assassination trap. I don't know how Lee Hom will do since he's more of a singer than an actor and on top of that, he'll be working side by side with one heck of a pillar Tony Leung!
Today, while acting as travel agent for my entire family, I decided to check if there were pictures from the set of the movie and lo and behold! There were pictures and a link to the first trailer too! I need to get used to Lee Hom's shorter, tidier "Jose Rizal" 'do (which I'm sure his mother would love) but he still looks mighty fine, I didn't even mind that he did not release a new album in December of last year, unlike what he had done for the past two years.


Hmmm...now my sister's birth month has become a bit more interesting this year.

I could get used to Lee Hom looking like this. ^_^

Spidey Porridge, Anyone?

The minute the credits began to roll and the lights switched on in our neighborhood friendly movie theater, the first question I asked my sister was "What was that?"
Spiderman 3 just didn't leave my legs in a twist...even if I have six less than what the neighborhood friendly spider has.

I am not a huge fan of any of the film's predecessors nor the comic books and I admit, I found the second installment of the arachnid movie rather revolting in terms of...er...cheesiness. So I went into the movie theater with absolutely no expectations, a heaping of objectivity and well-polished glasses to immediately spot Topher Grace the minute his wit scurried onscreen.
After almost 3 hours of being enclosed in a place as dark as Venom's slick pseudopodia, I left feeling more confused than ever. Seriously, what was all that about? They say too much of something is not a good thing and I guess the third installment of the film is a good example of that. I just thought there was too much going on in the entire course of the story that it all pretty much bound the movie in a cocoon too tight to render it unrecognizable. In the first place, there were too many villains for this movie to handle: the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church), Venom/Eddie Brock (Topher Grace) and of course, the only better looking person in the movie after Topher Grace, Harry aka Goblin Jr. (James Franco). Some films are able to pull off this kind of stunt of having one too many antagonists to really test the mettle of the superhero in question but Spiderman 3 had trouble juggling all three. Maybe I was just having memory problems but whenever one villain appeared on screen, I would instantly forget that there was another villain in existence. It was only when the other villain would rear his bleached head again would I then realize "Oh, right, you're still alive."
Spiderman 3's web of a plot eventually spun out of control thanks to its unamusing attempts to be funny. Case in point were "bad" Peter Parker's attempts to channel Fred Astaire, Eminem and David Beckham all in one go. For some reason, no one in the movie theater was chuckling, not even the kids. I thought those scenes would be funny in some other movie at some other time...just not in this one. My sister's expression was even funnier in the dimly lit theater. She was rolling her eyes and groaned "This is like the movie that would never end." But as if that were not enough, the "bad" Peter Parker had to strut around as if he were in a shampoo commercial, flipping his hair all over the place. He looked like half the boys in my 5th grade class when Casper was everybody's favorite movie and every girl was mooning over Devon Sawa. The entire act was just not funny anymore. Add that to Harry and Mary Jane's "Twist" interlude when the two were making scrambled eggs and Peter's rather awkward tango ensemble with Gwen Stacy (Bryce Dallas Howard) in a jazz bar, I then found myself wondering if I were watching a movie or That's Entertainment.
The movie's attempt to tackle several conflicts and resolve them all in almost three hours left it in tricky knot a bit too difficult to unravel. Naturally, Spiderman has to deal with the villains Sandman, Venom, Goblin Jr. and of course, the usual band of city crooks and criminals who are no match for the web-slinging hero. Aside from that, he also has to wrestle with impending narcissim and his tendency to be too self-absorbed, negative qualities which eventually get magnified when he plays momentary host to Venom. As if that were not enough, he has to watch out for his best friend Harry who is still on the Spiderman warpath but whose vengeance is momentarily interrupted by short-term memory loss. A new twist is also added to the events surrounding the death of Peter's Uncle Ben which makes the hunt for the Sandman more of a personal vendetta for Spiderman. The plot gets more tortuous when you factor in Parker's relationship issues with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst), the love of his life, who begins to nurse insecurities because of her own career issues and the fact that her superhero boyfriend is becoming the darling of New York along with every girl who resides in it. It is also not to be forgotten that Harry the best friend is also still inlove with Mary Jane and even attempts to steal her from Peter again in the latter course of the movie. Top this off with the movie's only gem in my opinion, a rather poignant lesson on forgiveness, which disappointingly does not really make that much of an impact and ends up bobbing helplessly in the quagmire thanks to the movie's convoluted mesh of a plot.
Many movies have attempted to carry numerous conflicts in one setting and have succeeded in tying everything up neatly in a slick bundle. It just so happens that where other movies succeeded, Spiderman 3 sloshed and failed. It tried too much to be everything in one movie - action, fantasy, romance, comedy and even a mini musicale - but the formula just did not work that the film just seemed so disjointed. In the movie's last leg, when Harry eventually joins Spiderman as he battles Venom and the Sandman, I found myself wickedly waiting for Superman to show up. That was how hodgepodge-y it was in my opinion.
Sorry to Spidey fans but Spiderman 3 just got washed down my neighborhood friendly waterspout.

Pyroclastic Wonderland

I was cleaning out my "memories shelf" earlier today. It's actually this space above the dresser in my room which used to hold all the ceramic characters which topped my birthday cakes all ordered from Cakestop, the only decent bakeshop in my side of the country when I was a little girl. It later on housed all my prized Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley books and when I got a bigger bookshelf, I used it as a space for all the trinkets I had collected through the years such as my E.T. charm bracelet from Universal Studios, a bottle of colored sand which Sue and I bought back in high school, a Blue Jays baseball, the candle I carried around during my high school prom and a boomerang my dad bought for me from Australia.
In one corner of the shelf is a piece of rock, reddish in color with a lot of little holes punctured all over it. My mom once asked me why I had a rock inside my room and attempted to toss it in the garden. She stopped when I screamed "No!" loud enough to make the tectonic plates where our house stood on shudder. That piece of worthless rock, I explained, was a piece of lava which I had gotten from my first trip to Taal in the summer of 1998. I was then fourteen years old.
Last week, my family and I spent my dad's 54th birthday in Tagaytay. From our lunchtable in Dencio's, I got a great view of what I regard to be perhaps my ultimate wonderland.
I was an incoming junior in high school then and our school required us to spend our summer months working as interns in an agency, company or business which was focused on science, technology or research. I had begged my parents to allow me to spend the summer in Manila as an intern for the PNP Crime Laboratory in Camp Crame. When it was time to follow up my application, I was told that all the slots had been filled. I then turned to my second option: a short stint at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. I was admitted to the summer internship program along with my friend Dang and a number of other girls (I think around six or seven of us). I was just so excited in a seismically crazy sort of way. I had always wanted to be a paleontologist/geologist since I was a child but I had shelved such career options ever since I realized I I couldn't munch on rocks at the dinner table. But that summer was the opportune time to live out that dream.
For a month I lived in a dorm with my co-interns across the hall from another group of girls from my high school who were a year older than us. I remember standing under a dimly lit phone booth while one of my co-interns made phone calls to Vince Hizon. Day in and day out, I had cup noodles for dinner. I did not mind the eye strain from dissecting seismogram after seismogram. And I loved the sound of my time card getting punched in the PHIVOLCS bundy clock.
One of the highlights of that summer internship was getting to visit Taal and staying there for about three days. We had packed tents with us since PHIVOLCS did not have a place for us to stay there. Upon getting on the island, we realized we couldn't sleep inside the tents unless you wanted to know what hell felt like so we slept outside with our sleeping bags stretched out under the stars. I just had to swathe myself with insect repellant in amounts enough to equal a bath. Once, a slight drizzle interrupted our slumber so we scrambled under the trees for shelter. Despite all that, it was the best sleep I had ever experienced. We went swimming in the lake although occasionally, Sir Aries, one of the personnel-in-charge, would tell us we could even take a bath in the lake itself since the PHIVOLCS bathroom would usually run out of fresh water. I personally did not know how the fish in the lake would feel but after climbing craters for three days, I just had to wash my hair some way.
We hiked up the main crater of Taal whereas the tourists swarming around us rode up by horseback. As we walked up, steam erupted from tubes PHIVOLCS personnel had placed near the trail. A viewing station greeted us near the caldera of the main crater along with vendors selling water. That sent all of us scrambling up the sandy ledge just to have something to drink.
I got my piece of lava near Binintiang Malaki, the most visible of Taal's craters and the one usually mistaken in photographs to be Taal Volcano. We got their via a motorized banca which Sir Aries thought would give us the thrill. The rest of us stared at him and said we had a lot of motorized bancas back home. When we got off the boat, I saw a huge stretch of lava which had cooled and hardened through time. It jutted out in odd, sharp formations enough to scrape your skin if you weren't careful. I managed to whack out a heavy piece of lava from that stretch. On our way back to the boat, I picked up a small worn piece of lava on the lake, thinking I might never see this sight again either because I might never get the chance to visit again or another eruption might change the scenery.
That was the thing about volcanoes and their dangerous beauty - they will never remain as they are. With every eruption, they blow up a part of themseves and yet rebuild in some way. Their bubbling, simmering cauldron draws out the hidden adventurer in every person, a nature fiery enough to fight and die for its release.

In Tagaytay overlooking Taal Lake and Taal Volcano (Binintiang
Malaki prominently visible as always) last April 26. A year after my
summer internship, I was informed that Sir Aries, our PHIVOLCS
mentor, died in Taal Lake during a PHIVOLCS assignment
due to a boating accident.