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Notes from the Outside World: I have become the "aleng pinagtatanungan sa pila."

Notes from the Outside World: I have become the “aleng pinagtatanungan sa pila.”

So, yesterday and today I went out (a rather rare thing, on a weekday) to get government stuff: a barangay certificate of residence, an NBI clearance and a police clearance. I’ve been prepping to get a passport, and since my appointment is sometime next next week, I decided to move my lazy ass to finally get things in order. Here are a few notes: Barangay Old Balara is extremely efficient.…

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Lego Yoda Torch and Night Light - For the Star Wars and Lego Fan

Last Christmas, there was a Lego Christmas sale. If you like little interlocking bricks like I do, then you probably know how that went down. Anyway, while queued for the cashier, the stockmen reloaded the shelves with this: the Lego Yoda Torch and Night…

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Play Watch List: Rak of Aegis and Cock

My taste in theater is neither eclectic nor tasteful – or at least, I wouldn’t describe it as such.…

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Volkswagen Club of the Philippines (VWCP) Car Show 2013

So last December 8, the VWCP (Volkswagen Club of the Philippines) hosted the 28th All VW Classic and Custom Car Show. We went to the Quezon City Hall on a cloudy Sunday morning to celebrate our collective love for the iconic Volkswagen. Like last year,…

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Beetle Restoration: Photos

I usually post Beetle stuff on my other blog, Reklamadora.com, but because Blogger doesn’t really have a gallery feature, I’ve decided to post this here.

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You know, whenever I watch zombie flicks and the survivors start bickering with each other (ie. whether or not it's morally okay to use the annoying character as zombie bait or whatever), I find myself thinking, 'Are you blinking serious? There's a massive brain-eating undead horde right over yonder and you're talking about this? Really?'

It's human nature to do that (ie. want to use an annoying person as zombie bait). I know it's totally normal - and that's the sad part, I think.

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How you can help Typhoon Haiyan (Yolanda) victims

It’s bad guys, it’s really bad. The super typhoon hit and practically demolished a third of the…

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The Freelancer Toolbox: (Free) Transcription Tools

Every so often, my clients would ask me to transcribe interviews. The first time I tried…

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The Freelancer Toolbox – Basic Tools of the Trade

I’m in the business of being largely left to my own devices. As a freelancer, I’m basically the…

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Aswang (1992) - Manilyn Reynes. Alma Moreno, Aiza Seguerra, Berting Labra

Watch Aswang (1992) movie below:

Aswang (1992) from bavit on Vimeo.

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The great thing about Candy Crush is that it tells you right in your face that yes, you do need a life.

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Beautiful advice.

Anonymous asked: He’s gone now. I gave him a second chance and he still chose to ignore me in the long run. He promised he wasn’t “that guy”. I know it makes room for someone better, but I don’t think he’s out there. My faith is gone. Please, big sister from the Internet, tell me something to make it better.

I want to tell you real quick about my bike. I get on that bike when I’m sick and dizzy and lost in my head, I get on that bike and the world changes.  It’s all ascents and descents, dusty turns and tailwinds, howling into the ether like the only thing that matters is not falling off because it is the only thing that matters. And I feel like I’m going to explode into a million shredded pieces of metal and carbon and bones and blood, but I sit back, crouch down and breathe deep into the calm and ride the wind like diving into the sea. In those hours, I am invincible. I am untouchable. I am cut and lean and hard and fast. I’m not heartbroken or fearful of being lonely.  I am not alone at all.  When I am on that bike, I am everything I wanted to be when I was little, choosing tackle over touch, choosing battle over tattle. And with my hair pinned back, dressed in kitten heels and a soft pink dress, you can still see the bike grease on my hands and the scars all over my legs from sloppy dismounts and nasty falls. I wear my scars like a topographic map of my life. This is not a highway, this is a story of lush valleys and ice-picked mountain passes. The highs and lows of hospital beds and sail bags, and I don’t want to look tidy and pretty and clean. I don’t want to look like someone would be lucky to have me, I want to look like someone would be lucky to survive me. I don’t ride the wind; I am the wind and I am carving my topography with brushstrokes both delicate and bold.

So when I think about falling in love, I also think about all the things that happened because I wasn’t in love, because there was no one to ask me to stay. I think about blasting down a mountain pass on a bike the same weight as my cat. I think about how I moved to the Virgin Islands and raised $100,000 for kids before becoming a stowaway. I picked ‘shrooms and danced at a rave ‘til my shoes disappeared over the edge of the speedboat we took home. I made out with German journalists, Irish kiteboarders, ship captains and pool boys. I ran the southern perimeter of Manhattan at midnight. I rode on the back of a motorcycle through the streets of Florence as the sun came up, singing loud enough to hear it over the muffler, both hands in the air.  I got a cat, got an apartment, got a dye job, got a nose ring, got a tattoo, got a tattoo addiction, got a promotion, got a plane ticket, got a tan, got a blog, got a life. And it’s not that I couldn’t have done these things if I was in love, but it would have been different. It would have been safer. And regardless of whomever I’m with for whatever amount of time, I’ll be with myself the whole time and I want to be good to her.  I want her to have a heart like an ocean: endlessly vast, full of wonder, and navigable only by the brave.  I want her to wake up in the biggest, empty bed and stretch like a cat, taking all the space just because she can. I want her to have control of her happiness. I want her happiness to be her own… to be my own.

So let me tell you a little something about that “someone better”, because that’s within your control. That someone better can be you. The squalor of heartbreak will rip through you, tearing down all the old walls and ideas and misconceptions about how love looks and feels, but when you clear the debris, you see all the best parts of you that weathered the storm.  You see all the parts that you built before him, survived him, and do not belong to him.  You will see yourself.  And you will make her better. 

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So today, I went to the salon.

I’m sure that isn’t an alien a concept for you as it is for me and that is entirely acceptable. You see, I grew up in a house with a no-nonsense mother, a manly father, and an even manlier brother. Anyway, I grew up thinking that all I really needed from the salon are the periodical haircuts I needed whenever my mother was too busy to cut my hair herself.

Back in the salon, my right foot was propped up on the attendant’s lap as she aggressively but gently scrubbed my foot. I could hear my callouses screaming in absolute horror as they fell, one by one, on the attendant’s towel and apron. The attendant seemed to have a personal vendetta against the gunk on my feet, like they – the gunk – had gone to her house the night before and gunned down her family.

I paused from watching her lather a cream on my feet and calves and studied my surroundings. I sat on a plush chair with a print design that suggested royalty. Each chair had a matching footstool in the same upholstery and was separated from the other chairs by thin, lacy curtains.

Mabie would love this place.

Meanwhile, the attendant gave my feet another massage, popping my toes as she went. ‘It feels quite nice actually,’ I thought as my reputation screamed in sheer agony at the back of my head. It’s actually too late to worry about my rep, as the attendant had started using small, sharp implements on my toes. I can’t bring myself to watch. There are a lot of things that I am deathly afraid of, and I discovered, while sitting in that cozy chair, that pedicures are one of them.

While I typed on my phone, another attendant came along and took one look at me and said, “Pati kamay, ma’am?” (The hands too?) I shook my head vigorously.

I have to draw the line somewhere right?

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My new favorite shirt!

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Twenty Years Later: Aswang (1992)

After a convo with a friend that went from the upcoming Erik Matti movie about Tiktik to the 2011 movie Aswang, and ended up on the original 1992 Aswang, I busted out the Google-fu to find the said movie (because video rental shops have long since died around these parts) and thankfully found a copy. Personally, I found the original movie terrifying, as all children of the 90's probably were – and it wasn't just because I was in grade school when it was first released.

Aswang stars Manilyn Reynes as the faithful yaya/nanny Veron, mini-Aiza Seguerra as the mischievous surot Catlyn, Aljon Jimenez as the token tall-dark-and-handsome-good-guy Edgar, Berting Labra as awesome driver and aswang deterrent Mang Dudoy, and Alma Moreno as the titular Aswang. Alma Moreno is gorgeous in this movie, and aptly has an "I can seriously bite your face off to get to that tasty liver of yours." ominousness to her. Lilia Cuntapay, the queen of Philippine horror flicks, also makes an appearance.

Ikaw, pag nakain ka ng aswang, kukutusan kita.

Re-watching the movie 20 years later is an enjoyable, if surreal, experience. With that in mind, here are some notes:

In local folklore, aswangs are creatures that are similar to vampires. Except they a. will eat you and not just drink your blood, b. can shapeshift into a whole zoo of animals, c. will roost on your roof and use its very long tongue to eat the baby in your womb, d. have a weakness for fresh liver (i.e. YOUR fresh liver), e. have an unhealthy and probably fattening fondness for children, and f. don't sparkle.

READ MORE: http://www.yuppieuniverse.com/blog/tv-movies-and-music/twenty-years-later-aswang-1992/

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So today I'm fixing my phone contacts

... and I have to admit, I have this urge to just delete everybody and maybe start fresh. The people in my phone contacts can be classified in perfectly definable groups. First is the Ohayou! Group. This is the group I feel should be greeted with a good morning at least twice a week. They're basically people I like to keep close - wait, let me rephrase. They're people I like to keep close who subscribe to the same telco as I do (I don't have an unlimited budget for load, you know). Then there are the Casual Contacts, people I have business with and people who remember to contact me every once in a while. Next are the People-Who-I-Have-Not-Seen-Or-Heard-From-In-YEARS; needless to say, and I have to say this in tagalog for impact, mas madalang pa sila sa multo magparamdam. Hmm. Maybe I should clean up my phone book every couple of years, I feel I have way too many outdated (and therefore wrong) numbers on me.

But where to start? 

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Madaming istorya sa commute, dahil minsan hindi simple ang "from Point A to Point B".

MNL 143 (Official Full Trailer) (by voyagestudios)