Insignificant

"Today this could be the greatest day of our lives...
Let's make a new start...
Before we run out of time...
And the world comes alive..."
- "Greatest Day," Take That

Prelude to February 20

The minute I woke up at 8 a.m. today, I had every reason to end my day tired, worn-out and up-to-my-hair-roots harassed. The night before, I had fallen asleep while studying for my MedJur exam. The last thing I remember was lying on my bed. After about a while, I found myself flat on my pillow. I turned to check the clock and I realized it was 3 in the morning. I had spent the last two hours lying on the reviewer my friend Cha made. So much for the fables surrounding paper-to-brain osmosis! I panicked and resumed studying until 5 a.m. when I realized I couldn't keep my eyes open. As I switched the light off, I swore to myself I would never do that again.

Preliminaries

For the past week-and-a-half, the first thing I do when I walk out of my room is to make a phone call to someone in a hospital room. "Hi Lolo," I greet him. "How are you feeling today?"

There are good days and the not-so-good days. The past couple of days would fall under the latter category. My morning surprise came in the form of his cheery voice when he said "Good morning!" So today was apparently a good day. I asked him how he was doing and he excitedly related to me how he was able to get a pass from his doctor to go home even if it was just for half the day. I asked him why and his answer made me laugh: "I miss Sam." Sam, ladies and gentlemen, is my grandfather's dog. "They wouldn't let me bring him to the hospita." Now with a dog like Sam who doesn't bite except when you're within a two-meter radius of my grandfather, that was a bad idea.

I grabbed my phone off the dresser as I raced to the bathroom. I was meeting up with my classmates in the university post office by 10 a.m. for a class assignment. As I looked at the screen, I noticed a small warning which came up. The warning said "Memory full." Arrrrgh! My phone, like most Nokia N-series units, has this memory problem which strikes at any given time. And today was another one of those days. Drat! The worst part was that although I could usually fix it, this time it didn't seem to be the case. I couldn't even delete anything without it saying "Not enough memory to do the operation." ARRRRGGGHH! I was gonna be late for my 10 a.m. appointment! So I called my classmates and asked them to move the meeting time an hour later. I tried to work around the phone and later I got desperate so I plugged it into my computer. As I played around with the folders, I realized that two music files found their way to a folder in the phone memory. The files were barely 5MB in total but I had a feeling they acted like a memory plug, sort of like a cork stuck to an inverted wine bottle. So I erased the two files and lo and behold! My alleged 9kb of free memory leapt to 35MB! The genie has been released from the lamp!

Maybe that genie was the happy genie.

Post Office

I got to school by 11 o'clock. I parked near the university grocery and walked towards the post office. This class exercise was out to get us how to use the registered mail system for sending ("filing" to the Court and "serving" to the opposite party) pleadings. Inside the post office were my classmates and the rest of the people in the class.

To be honest about it, it was only my second time to send anything through the post office. When I was younger, I used to send letters through my mother's office messenger. In this day and age of email, the opportunities to sing that Karen Carpenter classic were almost verging on extinction. But still, when the lady behind the counter swirled the envelope around some sort of machine for the stamp, we all went "Nice!" It was hilarious but we were actually being wowed by the technology of yesterday! We happily filled out the pink registry cards and paid the postage. The lady behind the counter was getting cranky and was half-screaming at us, telling us to hurry up because it was break time. I didn't hear her but I did note the wall clock said "11:30." Maybe it was the old-timer feel or the sound of papers being shuffled or the sight of glue being swatched on envelopes. Although there was nothing significant or difference about the goings-on inside the post office, I found myself smiling.

Food

Before heading back to the college, Cha and Anton had a hankering for fruit shake in a stall near the post office. I walked with them and waited as they made their selection. When they went inside to pay, I stood outside with my half my face exposed to the sweltering heat of the sun. I watched as more people lined up to buy shakes - mango-banana, strawberry-mango, watermelon...all kinds of permutations of fruits. Someone beside me was crushing ice. The blenders started to make more whirring sounds. I stared at the strawberries. Maybe it was the coolness of the crushed ice beside me or the sight of the strawberries or the whirring. Although there was nothing significant about the goings-on in that stall, I found myself smiling.

More Food

Cha and I went upstairs to our Genders classroom to start studying. After about half an hour, my tummy started to rumble and I began to regret not buying myself that shake. I took some money and walked out of the college building towards the library, heading for one of my favorite food joints in school which served pasta, pizza and chicken. There were a lot of students crowding around the stall. I ordered pasta in mushroom sauce and chicken and sat down on a concrete bench and started to read. More people started coming and the empty spaces on my left and right side were soon occupied. The heat of the noonday sun was turning my back into a waterfall. The smell of pancit canton filled the air. I continued to read about stuff like "True Victorian Love" and writers' other name games until I got my order. I walked back to my college building and took the stairs to my classroom. Cha was still reading when I sat on my chair and started eating. Maybe it was the coolness of the room after a relatively long walk in the noonday sun or the smell of chicken with mushrooms. Although there was nothing significant about the goings-on in that classrom (or in the way my pasta and chicken tasted), I found myself smiling.

The rest of my day went by as planned - review with Cha and Dahlia by 4 p.m., class at 6 p.m., a sit-down exam by 8:30 p.m. Perhaps everybody's tongues were all a little too tired from all the memorizing and it was easy to start mispronouncing words and names - like "ibidence," "fillure" and "Pascuashio," for instance. For three hours in class, we talked about fistullas, cholycystecomies, cyanosis, curretage and all other words which we don't meet in a legal dictionary. My classmate Chris even sounded like a medical student as he rattled on about typhoid fever and antibiotics...and our teacher noticed. Maybe it was the occasional laughter or the slight nervousness as we flipped from page to page of our notes. Although there was nothing significant about the goings on in that class - except perhaps for Chris yakking about Chloromycetin and antipyretics in one breath without getting his tongue twisted - I found myself smiling.

Calling it a Day

Today was my regular run-of-the-mill day. Nothing significant or nothing momentous happened...except perhaps when I availed of cheaper gas along Commonwealth Avenue (a seven peso difference from the gas station near the place where I live) which gave me a full tank at a much lesser cost. I'm still hungry as I type this and I downed my last Oreo last night and I'm too lazy to walk across the street to go to the convenience store.

Maybe the universe just conspired to give me a shot of endorphines for today.

Maybe the band of killjoys are out on vacation.

Or maybe, just maybe, I am getting good at letting go - and that's why I'm smiling.

Bowled Over by Down Under

"Marley and Me."

I frowned at my sister. We were standing in front of the ticket booth in Glorietta, trying to decide what flick to see when we chose to drop by the cinema on impulse. After all, we had both been itching to watch a decent movie for the past three weeks in order to block out the recurring images of Tanging Ina in our heads but our weekends were always full.

"Noooo!" I protested. The last three weeks have been really artery-stretching in terms of stress and this particular Saturday was no exception, especially when you get called on to recite with absolutely nothing in your hands except the warm, smooth feel of the surface of a wooden desk in contrast to your cold, clammy palms.

"I wanna see Australia," I declared. After all, even if the Marley puppy is really cute, the goo goo eyes do not even have a sliver of a chance against one of my biggest crushes in the world in terms of stress relief. After much cajoling, she did give up on her puppy love and needless to say, when the end credits to "Australia" started rolling up the screen, she got much more than she bargained for in terms of the animal kingdom.

Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman both headline Baz Luhrmann's Australia. The title is practically a give away if the actors don't do the job. Nicole Kidman is Lady Sarah Ashley, an English aristocrat as formal as her thoroughbreds. Her husband owns and manages a cattle ranch calle Faraway Downs in the Land Down Under. She flies to Australia to be with Lord Ashley and is met by Drover (Jackman), a man who works for her husband in the ranch on a commission basis and vaguely reminds me of a buffer, way better looking version of Aragorn. After enduring a long, dusty ride through Australia's unforgiving terrain (where she has her first brush with a kangaroo both in action and in death), she finds her lifeless husband lying on the kitchen table in Faraway Downs, allegedly skewered with a spear by an aborigine nicknamed "King George." Sarah is introduced to the hired help in Faraway Downs - among them an alcoholic accountant, an Asian cook, an aborigine woman and her daughter and Faraway Downs' cattle manager named Fletcher (David Wenham of The Lord of the Rings, 300). Fletcher has apparently fathered a child with the aborigine woman's daughter, an intelligent little boy named Nullah who is actually the grandson of "King George." Nullah is labelled by the Caucasians as one of the "creams," a derogatory term used to refer to the "stolen generations," a growing population of children of aborigine women sired by white men. Such children are usually taken away from their mothers and brought to "mission centers" where they supposedly are educated and cared for.

Through Nullah's stories, Sarah discovers that Fletcher also works for Carney (Bryan Brown of The Thornbirds), her husband's rival in the cattle business and Australia's biggest supplier of beef. Fletcher had been secretly transporting some of the cattle to Carney's ranch and had also tricked Lord Ashley to believe that Faraway Downs was operating at a loss. She fires Fletcher but is left with no one to help her with the cattle. To bring in money for Faraway Downs, she has to deliver the cattle to Darwin for loading to a ship. She turns to Drover who, at first, turns her down as he supposedly hates being tied down to anything or anyone. But then a man can change his mind when the price is right...which, in this case, came in the form of Sarah's prized capricorn.

After journeying through the desert with a lot of setbacks in the form of bushfires, stampedes and poisoned water courtesy of Fletcher's sinister mind, Sarah manages to make her delivery. Throughout her ordeal, she forms an extraordinarily strong bond with Nullah and falls in love with Drover (come on, who wouldn't?). She seems to have settled in Faraway Downs in an almost idyllic, slow mo-perfect fairytale ending with the flowers and the white-washed house but Fletcher persistenyly snaps at their heels as he schemes to acquire the cattle ranch. As if that were enough and with the second world war brewing above their heads like the dust in the Australian outback, Sarah realizes she could be losing more than just Faraway Downs as Nullah yearns to be with his grandfather to learn his heritage through a coming-of-age ceremony called a walkabout and Drover still battles with commitment and settling down. And, as they say, commitment used to be the good guy.

Clocking in at almost 3 hours, Australia is not a pain to watch. The storyline was, for starters, pretty simple and straightforward. With the brain functions set aside, it was relatively easy to be swept away with the film, thanks to its epic-like appeal and old Hollywood glamour. As usual, Baz Luhrmann did not disappoint. Australia stands out like a white dress in a rack of red when compared to his earlier works as it actually attempts to be normal in the sense that there is a near-absence of Luhrmann's theatrics and exaggeration. But Luhrmann still manages to be grand and ostentatious despite the seeming normalcy with his breathtaking cinematography which he perfectly couples with his signature slow-mos and close-ups. The action, drama and romance are all so real, I almost felt like I were part of the movie. I loved his shots of the horses whipping up dust in the outback as they ran around Faraway Downs, the shots of of Sarah, Drover and company as they steered the cattle through the outback, the aerial shots of the cattle stampede during the bushfire in the cliff and the last shot toward the end of the film where Drover's small boat with the white sails carrying the half-aborigine, half-Caucasian children cuts through thick smoke and a mass of charred ships. To really hit the nail on the head, the cinematic experience of watching Austrlia is further enhanced by a rich musical score punctuated by occasional aborigine chanting, giving the film that swell that comes with the approach of the tide.

Nicole Kidman is engaging as Sarah. One notes her character's subtle development as she starts off as a distant, well-bred aristocrat thrust into the wild, untamed world of the Australian outback and later evolves into a woman who finds her own strength but never loses her heart. The first half or so of the movie is bursting with her seeming endless supply of faux pas as she glares and gloats at Jackman, sings a jumbled, operetta version of "Over the Rainbow" in terms of both lyrics and notes and attempts to do telekinesis on cows. What I love about her character is that she is not melodramatic. She is deeply hurt when Drover walks out of her life and is heartbroken when Nullah is taken away from her and yet she remains in complete control of herself and her pain. I was so thankful she didn't hurl herself at pillows or pound at the wall like a human hammer.

Hugh Jackman was not new to the scruffy-looking, sweaty, tanned character that was the Drover. He always fits such roles to a T and the predictability was not necessarily a liability as far as he was concerned...but then again, I profess I am biased. The screen could almost spontaneously combust everytime he came up, whether he appears with or without facial hair. In one particular scene which featured a missions ball in Darwin which Sarah attended, it became pretty easy to identify all the girls in the theater. In almost all movies where a scene involves a prom, a party or a ball of sorts, the girl always makes the grand entrance ala Cinderella. In this movie, the roles are switched as the limelight falls on a clean-shaved, slick Hugh Jackman in a white suit. My sister started wriggling like a glow worm and pinching me like crazy. I myself almost yanked the armrest off from being swoony when I realized that a buzz had started in the theater and all the other females were also doing their own versions of pinching, punching, silent screaming and, yes, armrest-wrenching. Jackman's scenes with Kidman were always tender and heartfelt and they never seemed over-extended or mushy.

The runaway scene stealer though was Nullah (Brandon Walters). He had beautiful, soulful eyes which lent Nullah sensitivity, intelligence and a dash of mischievousness every now and then. To me, Nullah's character was a pillar in the movie as a spine is to a book. His mixed heritage pretty much indicated how he both belonged to the country of his ancestors and the new world which the Caucasian settlers brought with them. He loved his aboriginal predecessors but also shared a strong bond with Sarah and Drover. Among all the characters in the movie, he had the best lines, the most memorable being "I'll sing you to me" which always left me feeling like I was shot in the heart or something.

Addendum: The song which plays as the credits roll in the end is really nice. It's called "By the Boab Tree" by Angela Little.

Happy Thoughts

Ever since I started law school, I made a resolve not to dwell on anything negative which comes my way - the insults, the difficulties, the setbacks, the bouts of depression and the occasional perception of being the lowest protozoan in the face of the planet. That mindset has since extended to matters of sadness beyond law school and no matter how much my fingers are itching right now, I am not going to write about things which make are a little too heavy to carry for the pounding little muscle that is called my heart. After all, a bit of offloading was done when I succumbed to my urge to cry over my lunch plate of chicken inasal and garlic rice (I decided to skip an extra helping since I've been guilty of overeating lately) which, ironically, is probably one of the best reminders of a place called home.

Instead, I will write about the good things which make me smile and give me reasons to look at tomorrow as a new day and not a new burden. After all, one of my favorite songs to sing as a child was Favorite Things and a line from that classic goes "I simply remember my favorite things and then I don't feel so bad." No, I won't be writing about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. But,yes, I'll spare our drapes from an instant execution because aside from the fact that they're dusty and heavy, my mother is going to launder me if I do anything to them.

Last Thursday (February 5), my grandmother and namesake celebrated her 80th birthday. It was not practical to make preparations for a huge party because of my grandfather's delicate state with us not knowing when his next landing in the hospital will be. Actually the nurses have been wonderfully humorous about it, calling him a "balikbayan" whenever he gets wheeled in. Aside from my grandfather's unpredictable hospital visits, the birthday girl herself actually hates huge parties. She would rather have small, intimate gatherings with family and close friends instead of something that involves a lot of lace and tulle.

So that was exactly what my Lola got on the day she turned 80 - a surprise birthday party which started with a thanksgiving service in our garage followed by dinner and capped with my grandparents huddled inside my room with my cousins, nephews and nieces as their ever-bibo great-grandchildren rendered an impromptu concert on the videoke microphone (and my TV's screen is, well, the cutest in our house).

The fact that I missed out on all the fun stuck out like a sore thumb and I really felt wretched as I walked from my first class to the next. I consoled myself with the thought that I wasn't the only one absent - my sister was here, Manang Apple and Manang Maya were both working abroad whereas Aiyee was on hospital duty. I dialled the house number immediately when I got home at 7:30 p.m. After about thirty minutes of talking to a very excited Aidagere (who began and ended every sentence with a "Manang!"), the phone was finally passed to my grandmother. She was laughing and sounded extremely excited on the phone, telling me how she was having so much fun...that it was great to have her daughter and three sons together...that almost all of her children and grandchildren were there...how my nephew Dane bit my cousin Lance in the middle of their dance number...that my room was now a complete mess...and she continued to laugh some more. I asked her what made her 80th birthday really special and she answered "Nothing really. It's just that everybody's here. I'm really having so much. Ka-sadya sadya guid tana!"

The day after (February 6), my cousin Aida Raissa turned 20. She had a Hawaiian-themed party Saturday night in our cousin Carol's house which everybody also attended, except for the abovementioned perennial absentees. Aiyee was pretty in her flower-print dress and I still can't believe she's grown up (and graduating so soon at that).

Birthday girl Aiyee (right) with Carol

Maybe my grandmother was still in party mood or something because, to the surprise of my mother, she joined all the "young ones" in dressing up like a Hawaiian island girl, complete with a garland of yellow blossoms around her neck and another flower stuck behind her ear, all freshly plucked from her garden.

And she didn't end there! She also went as far as dressing up my grandfather like Lito Atienza in a Hawaiian-themed shirt. And how did my grandfather like it? Well his face pretty much sums up how silly he felt but he seemed to have forgotten all about his getup when he got the chance to have a quick dance with the birthday celebrator.