Caustic Thoughts

Panday 2 Review – Sort Of

2012-01-14T11:49:00.000+08:00

Belive in your own hype. No one else will.

I was in the dark, screaming for salvation, but when Flavio squinted into the morning sun and raised his sword in an attempt to convey the noble struggle of the reluctant hero, I knew I was doomed for another hour in purgatory. Purgatory. But I think I was closer to the brink of the pits of movie hell.

I should have paid closer attention to the promotional frame; respectable, bespectacled, looking-like-experts people heaping rave reviews at Panday 2 and the implied postscript that said it was for kids. To paraphrase: Get ready for a senseless swashbuckling spectacle devoid of depth and a rational plot.

The idea should have been simple enough. Find the resurrected bad guy and kill him, simplicity I can accept and potentially appreciate, but they take the thought, pepper it with nettles, ram it down our throats and force us to believe it’s still digestible.

The problem with the story begins when Lizardo rises from the dead. Baruha’s intervention barely affords us an explanation as to the means of his resurrection other than, “She’s just got the power, man! Got a problem with that? “

If I clipped my nails, clicked my heels or did any other random act, I’d have been able to resurrect him too. That’s just saying the writer had to find any lame excuse to bring him back to life. Otherwise the movie would have been Panday 2: The Story of Flavio’s Boring Domestic Life.

It gets worse. Flavio learns of the return of his arch nemesis and promptly begins to wander aimlessly in search of him. Good for him, Lizardo loves to always be in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason, hence affording the opportunity for some sword tickling with Flavio. When Moses wandered the wilderness, he had a destination. Flavio’s was just wherever, whenever.

What’s worse than the story are the characters and the people who play them. There’s Bong Revilla, Jr., the king of massive jaws, whose utter lack of empathy for Flavio’s inner conflict is made obvious by his perpetually pained look; not the “I’ve got a deep dark conflict boiling inside of me” look, but the “wow, these lines are so difficult to deliver convincingly” look. An elephant on tranquilizers would have done a better job.

It didn’t help that Flavio was pitted against equally uncreative and thoroughly uninspired villains. Both Baruha and Lizardo have had extra shots of laughing gas, hence explaining their unstoppable urge to incessantly laugh their lines out, an unconscious message to kids that bad guys have so much more fun than the good guys.

Twins separated at birth.

Baruha bears the burden of the stereotype more. She is a cut out from an old Halloween catalogue. Whoever dressed her is clearly unaware that Hogwarts opened 14 years ago, where hip, modern witches are no longer required to wear pointed hats and sport crooked noses. Tsk, you are so 1950s Baruha.

The special effects should have been the movie's saving grace, perhaps the best in the Philippines, until you spot the missing twin. It’s either the Clash of the Titan’s Kraken had a twin brother separated from him at birth or cut and paste is now a standard practice in the special effects department.

Okay enough already. If I go any further I’ll lose my ability to string two thoughts together.

Cagayan de Oro Disaster Trivia – Whose Fault Was It?

2011-12-30T10:38:00.000+08:00

Count yourself lucky if people think you’re lame. At least you’re not yet a loser.

Like every humor blogger, I wanted to close the year with a yearend special that would leave you rolling with laughter at the indignities of people in the socio-political spotlight, but I live in Cagayan de Oro. Even if you’ve been severely detached from reality by the Cartoon Network, you’d have heard that the year ender of year enders, Typhoon Sendong, swept over Cagayan de Oro City and Iligan, causing flash floods and killing hundreds. It would be inappropriate to write about unrelated humor.

Did I just say, “unrelated humor?” That implies that related humor is permissible. How insensitive of me, but really, all I want to do now is to hand some belated Christmas presents to certain city officials. There’s a good supply of “Lame Mirrors” at the local surplus shop that’d satisfy my sudden impulse for generosity.

The gifts even come with special instructions. Look into the mirror and slowly move it to the right. Stop when the letter “L” is right at the center of your forehead. There, perfect!

While it is true that no one can prevent a natural calamity from happening, common sense, caution and the absence of greed and political motives can at least save lives.

For example, common sense says you should not relocate communities by a river that sits by denuded forests and eroded regions perpetuated partly by your own greed. Your sense of caution should tell you not to ignore warnings from eye glass-wearing experts, with special degrees you can only pronounce with the help of a dictionary, of an impending disaster. Also, you should never, ever assume that nothing bad will ever happen just because it hasn’t happened yet in your lifetime or in your term of office.

I heard over the radio the other day that someone wants to set the record straight because we deserve the truth. Whose record? Why, his of course, written, edited and published by him. So while hundreds of displaced families sit in warm tents waiting for salvation, someone’s making rushed media rounds with ten fingers pointed outward. It’s everybody’s fault but mine.

Well, if he can spell E-L-E-C-T-I-O-N-S without cheating, I might believe him.

Red Socks, Santa and the Smell of...

2011-12-13T18:04:00.000+08:00

Christmas is for everyone, most especially for department store owners.

Warning: Severe rambling ahead.

As a little kid, Christmas to me meant breathing cool air, eating ham in pineapple juice, listening to the sound of feel good carols and showing goodwill to all. As a parent, recollections of Christmas are now peppered with memories of sardine cans the size of malls, filled with irate shoppers smelling of arm (pit) sweat in mile long lines to cashiers dressed like Santa’s haggard little elves.

This year I was officially inducted into the arm (pit)-scented society as I squeezed into congested mall aisles. My mission was to look for a Santa cap, red shirt, shorts, sneakers and knee high red and white striped socks.

The socks were the hardest to find. Every school had the “original” idea of making all their kids wear the same socks for their school programs so by the time I hit the shelves, there were only green striped socks for green elves. But my daughter is a red elf!

Good thing the man in the red suit himself seemed to be trailing my route as I ransacked every major and minor store for the seemingly mythical red socks. He was trying to cheer me on, I say!

There he was on a stand in one mall playing the saxophone. I drew close to listen to some uplifting music to inspire me in my futile search for red socks. To my surprise he didn’t seem to be playing a popular Christmas song. In fact, it sounded faintly like Careless Whisper.

In another store, I came across the man in the flesh, all 4ft. 11 inches of him, dressed in a suit so thin he looked like he was going to shiver from the cold in a tropical country. He was carrying a placard, making him look more like the bearer of bad news, “Repent! The end is nigh!”

“Will you put my photo on Facebook?” Santa asked. “Why sure Santa, so that the world may know how you've been reduced to a shadow of your former self and into a department store employee.”

Several more stores and Santas later and I started wondering where the guy whose birthday it is we’re supposed to be commemorating on the 25th was. I suppose Santa is the preferred bearer of commercial good cheer because store employees in newborn swaddling cloths will probably sell fewer red socks, green socks, toys and whatnot.

I finally found a pair of red socks in a quiet Chinese-owned store that didn’t seem to be celebrating Christmas. Great. Now I can tell my arm (pit)-scented community members where they can buy their socks so they don’t have to go through the hoops I’d been through and run the risk of losing their Christmas spirit.

Female Issues

2011-11-29T19:15:00.001+08:00

Don't wear a bad dress or a good one backwards if you're not Angelina Jolie.

If it weren't for this dress' brand tag and the two lines in front that I took to mean "This side up" I wouldn't have known front from back. I don't like dresses but I had to get one for a family affair. My fashion consultant, a.k.a. my husband, who is also my makeup and footwear adviser (I hope he's not gay), picked this one. I suspect it's because this is the one that can hide my convex curves best.

The dress was only the first hurdle. There were a hundred other things to think about--- hair, makeup, shoes, accessories, dead skin cells, constantly forgetting to sit with my legs crossed, etc. For most of these I figured I just needed some Gatsby, extreme facial exfoliation, ancient baubles from Jack Sparrow's chest and an appointment with a Halloween makeup artist. My only real great problem was the footwear. Would my dress look best with Nike or Addidas?

I kept an old pair of heels (clearly for emergency purposes) in a box along with other things I'd rather forget. Because I was certain rubber shoes would be treated like an atrocity, I had to take out the heels for a test walk. Shortly after, a trail of fine white powder started following me. Oh yeah, that's right. Like a lot of other things you bury for three years, earth friendly sandals decompose. The fine powder was parts of it joining Mother Earth.

Of course I had to get a new pair. My first order of business was to ask the sales clerk if I could swap my pick for a pair of sneakers if I came to my senses in a day or two.

Problems solved.

Not really. Despite the ingeniously designed dress, the facial diamond peeling and the new sandals, there was a great deal of pain, discomfort and feeling like fish out of water. The dress clung on sweaty skin, the makeup artist made me look like a cheap walking undead movie extra and the heels felt like weapons of mass destruction, massively destroying the muscles in my legs.

I can't believe any female can be feminine and be entirely comfortable.

Losing the Battle with the Bulge

2011-11-15T14:21:00.001+08:00

You can't hold a gym LIABLE for any losses including the loss of self-esteem due to the lack of results.

I wish I could hold someone or something liable for my infinitesimal progress at the gym and my waning interest in hammer curls and reverse crunches. I wish I could blame it on my instructor's total lack of concern over my Herculean struggle to repetitively lift 4 lb. dumbbells or on the gym's ancient electricity-free equipment (I strongly suspect they inherited these from Fred Flintstone), but I can't.

My failure to fit the clothes of yore is entirely my fault. You see, I can endure displacing my bowels with 15 straight sets of ab exercises but I can't stand having to park my brain for a few minutes to run on a treadmill.

I can't survive with my brain on screen saver mode. It constantly needs to have something to process. I try to process the images of the aero dancers in front of me into useful pieces of information, but all I can think of is me on that dance floor looking like a limp cow in a herd of gazelles.

I need to learn to mentally shut down or I will lose the battle with the bulge.

As If Taal Volcano Wasn't Good Enough

2011-10-31T15:27:00.000+08:00

IMITATION is the sincerest form of flattery, only if it’s done in good taste.

More than a week ago, news spread of Governor Vilma Santos' idea of putting a Batangas Hollywood-like sign over Taal Volcano. That was really just in time for Halloween. It scared the peanuts out of me. That’s scarier than The Exorcist on a perpetual play loop.

Seriously, more netizens found it hilarious, hence, the avalanche of ridicule. A few days after the announcement, the more graphically skilled stone throwers created their own mock ups to… well, mock the proposal. My favorite is this one by Darwin Dela Cruz.

Darwin’s idea is a lot more appropriate to allocate tax money to than Gov. V’s.

In her own defense, Gov. V says people are overreacting. The proposal is still up for discussion, but really, the fact that they even thought about it…

V’s defenders were quick to say the sign will help boost tourism. I don’t know about travelling to places just to see signs (unless it’s the Hollywood sign) but if I were to visit Taal Volcano, I would go there with the intention of seeing the volcano, not some sign!

The Link Between Men and Beef

2011-10-12T18:34:00.000+08:00

BAD ADVERTISING seeks to appeal to the inner moron.

What do men and beef have in common? Nothing, except maybe they're both bad for your health when taken in excess, which makes me wonder at the association made in a fairly new ad between the two disparate elements.

In the ad, young men, who (not so accidentally) are either half Filipino or were born in western countries, play football on a green field against a backdrop of grazing black cattle. At first you'd wonder, are they advertising the cattle's impending death by football or are they suggesting these chiseled men are bred like cattle? Then you realize, what they're really saying is that Angus beef is superior to the local variety just as these nearly foreign looking men are superior to the pure native stock.

Oh but wait, who got the Golden Boot for his excellent performance in the Long Teng Cup? Wasn't that the short, brown, homegrown Chieffy Caligdong? I'd like to see small brown cattle and Chieffy in that ad!

Pirates Know Their Synonyms

2011-09-28T15:09:00.000+08:00

Study your synonyms so you'll know how to say things in a way that won't get you into trouble.

Jan and I were in the mall when he asked me for another word for "transformers". I thought, was that even a legitimate word? I was stumped. He showed me the answer sitting on a toy shelf. Wow, these pirates get brighter by the day. Now they know enough synonyms to ride on a trademarked hit without getting themselves into trouble.

Then again, they won't ever get into trouble here even if they used the actual trademarked word and maybe just changed "T" to "Z". I've never witnessed the law against piracy enforced in this city. I don't know if there is a Philippine law against toy piracy but there is one against media piracy and merchants still sell in broad daylight, beside or across police stations. If DVD pirates have nothing to worry about, then more so their synonym-wielding pals in the toy niche.

Speak English Softly

2011-09-13T18:04:00.000+08:00

We give birth to Filipinos so we can raise them to speak a foreign language and work for other countries.

In my kid’s old school, the English speaking area is also the silence zone. They should have been more explicit and just labeled it the English mime hall. But really, I would have preferred to speak Filipino in my own country, thank you.

In other schools, English speaking campaigns are stricter. Students are not only required to ditch their native tongue for a foreign one, they’re also punished for failing to do so. The general intention of these campaigns is well meant. Educators think that forcing Filipino kids to learn English will open more employment opportunities and produce more Ms. Universe winners.

Sadly, these aggressive campaigns have proven detrimental to our mastery of our own national language and regional dialects. I’ve known straight A students who’d rather do algebra upside down than recite in Filipino. The grandson of Filipino hero, Ninoy Aquino, no less, sits across his mother in a milk commercial and babbles in wonderful English, asking his mom to translate two simple Filipino words he does not understand.

It’s true. Knowing English can put you at an advantage. I should know. I work for an Australian company that pays well, but I still think our children should be bilingual in equal degrees. Otherwise, we’d be nothing more than a factory of workers for foreign companies.

For the record, I had higher grades in Filipino than in English. To this day, I still confuse gerunds with gerbils and adverbs with a torture device.

Now On To Some Unpleasant Business

2011-08-27T08:47:00.000+08:00

EXERCISE is a lot like paying taxes. It’s an unpleasant experience.

Yes, I am trying to lose weight and attempting the near impossible task of getting my muscles toned. Although this isn’t really for aesthetic reasons, I must say that’s not entirely a bad idea. I’ve grown so big I now look like an over eagerly packed spring roll in my old pants. I now sadly share my husband’s waistline, and occasionally, his pants.

But the real reason why I have to struggle to stay fit is because my blood sugar levels are high, my cholesterol levels are high and I am highly susceptible to diseases with names that sound like they were invented for a Harry Potter prequel. I wish they’d said I was high in methane, but no, it had to be those things.

I probably won’t be buying the Ab Rocket anytime soon though. Imagine putting out a great deal of effort to exercise and it’s the waiter who slims down.

Can You Say Cease and Desist?

2011-08-13T10:59:00.003+08:00

STALKING

is an act perpetrated by fairly educated individuals who don't know the meaning of "cease and desist".

Aw shucks, lucky fan! I've only gone crazy over cartoon characters. I've sent tons of fan mails to my super favorites but Lion-O, He-Man and Batman haven't once replied to me yet.

Again, Why Blog?

2011-08-13T10:00:00.004+08:00

A PERSONAL BLOG is like an exhibit no one wants to visit.

That may or may not be true. Your mom, brothers, sisters and maybe 20 other relatives can pack your gallery. It does, however, take a great deal of work to maintain readership even among those loyal to you because they had no choice in having you for a blood relation. So why blog at all?

This was originally a personal blog. Surprisingly, I once found a small audience for it outside of my family, a handful of individuals in varying shades of jadedness, with the same level of acidic insanity. I lost a lot of my readers when life got in the way. The realization dawned that money, not words, feed babies. For many online wordsmiths, money is hard to come by.

I don’t think I’ll ever really quit though. I like it here because I don’t have to struggle and give up who I am to survive. I don’t have to pretend to be anything and there is certainly no requirement to save the world.

Call me selfish. When every other blogger wants to make a difference, I want to keep this small space for my personal mental therapy. Anyone looking for a case subject for a psychology study is welcome to dive into this spontaneous morass from a self-confessed nut case.

Incidentally, during my bouts of lucidity, I do try to save the world too in other virtual spaces not in danger of getting tainted by my cerebral drippings.

From Aseroh With Love

2011-07-27T19:16:00.001+08:00

I’m a blog addict. The invisible player in my head starts playing “Singin’ in the Rain” when I start customizing themes, widgetizing sidebars and activating plugins, but navigating blogging platforms is the farthest I can go. When techies start going on about PHP, JavaScript, Pearl, MySQL and such, my eyes glaze over. Computer was, after all, one of my subjects of doom in high school.

That’s why when my host started emailing me about backing up my own databases, I dismissed him as a relic from the Tower of Babel. Unfortunately, my inability to decipher tech speak led to me nearly getting killed by a virtual tsunami.

Over the weekend, my sites were stripped clean, hundreds of pages, thousands of visitors, thousands in income, gone with a click of a mouse. The perpetrator who took away three years worth of hard work left his calling card on one of my homepages with the obvious advice, “You must be better next time.”

A thousand thoughts raced through my numb neurons, most of them gibberish, but I had the energy to at least wonder why hackers do what they do. My friend says there are white hats who stick warning notes on poorly secured servers. The black hats are the ones with motivations that are harder to figure out.

Caesar had a reason for crossing the Rubicon. Superman had a reason for going against good judgement and wearing briefs like a highlighter over tights. Heck, even Robert Pattinson probably had a reason for agreeing to portray a one dimensional character in perpetual need of a bath. So why, why, why are there black hats who just break things?

I was a kid who lost a lollipop over the weekend. I wonder if the one who took it is happy now.

No Money In This Book's Leaves

2011-07-13T14:04:00.002+08:00

I was in the local bookstore the other day looking for Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Workweek” for some business related research I needed to do. The sales clerk proceeded to ask me if that was “4,” “Four,” or “For” and if that was “Ferriss” as in “Ferris wheel.” Finally, after much swapping of letters that would have lost both of us the national pre school spelling bee, the clerk declared, “It’s out of stock.”

I had my doubts, but I did not request for a spelling rematch. I had decided right away that I had a spare Php 300 because over at the fiction shelf was Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado.

Long before I set off to attempt to crack the secret code to earning a fortune online, my interest lay in literature, the kind that pureed your brains, gave you a nosebleed and left you depressed. Not that Syjuco’s masterpiece is anything of that sort, but I’ve only really just started reading it.

It’s been four years since I’ve picked up anything of this sort. Since I had kids, money books made better sense because, for lack of a kinder term, they simplified life in no uncertain terms. Learn what sells and learn to sell or your kids starve.

So why am I cheating on my kids, reading a book that doesn’t teach you how to make money? I’m convinced my uninterrupted running after money has left me dumb and dumber. Soon I might also lose my character.

I’m on a vacation from trying to make more money, at least for a couple of hours, prepared to drown either in my cup of overpriced tea or in Ilustrado’s pages, whichever comes first.

When Time Stops

2011-07-01T11:53:00.002+08:00

It's unavoidable. Working moms can try to balance work, family and self to maintain some semblance of sanity but there is no defying the natural limits of time so ultimately priorities have to be made. In the mad daily rush that defines a family woman's life, family comes first followed by work and then self.

That explains why I often get to comb my hair only once a day and not even properly such that only half of all my strands are in their proper place. The rapidly expanding natural life saver around my torso has also been left so seriously unattended that I'm certain I'll soon develop enough fat to naturally protect me from the cold. The previously allotted schedules for 100 brush strokes and stomach crunches are now dedicated to my hyper active screaming banshees and to extra gigs to make more money that's just never enough.

That's just how it is and I don't resent it. Besides, there are those moments when circumstances force you to stop. The other night, we had to rush my daughter to the hospital and after all the panic had subsided and she'd been given medication, we were told she still had to be admitted.

In a room with no instant internet connection and no way to chat with clients, time stopped. I didn't complain. Nobody likes to be in a hospital but staying put with my favorite girl in the world watching Bizaare Foods on cable was the best treat I'd had in weeks.

Philippine Classrooms Promote Better Education

2011-06-13T18:16:00.005+08:00

When I was a college OJT, I got the chance to accompany my boss to a public school where he taught values. As he was shedding sheets of sweat, and nearing dehydration, with the effort of exhorting his students to emulate some saintly virtue, several pairs of eyes kept peering from the hallway windows.

I learned later on that the owners of those eyes were part of the class. They were constrained to give my boss’ constipated performance a mandatory standing ovation outside because there weren’t enough seats inside to accommodate them.

Those kids had it good actually. The kids at the back of the class had to risk their limbs performing a delicate balancing act on chairs that looked like they were held together by safety pins. Some chairs had no back rests, arm rests or had gaping holes on the seats like toilet bowls.

More than a decade after witnessing that state of calamity, I wonder how modern Philippine classrooms are doing. Based on news reports, there have been changes. Here are just some of the improvements that support better learning:

Due to the lack of classrooms, existing classrooms can now be occupied by two different grade levels being taught two different subjects. This permits young pupils to learn as early as grade 1 the concept of division. As a bonus for good performance, a teacher can reward her pupils by performing magic. She can disappear from one half of the room and reappear in the other half so she can teach both classes. This is a basic trick since most teachers have yet to master the illusion of being in two places at one time.
Pre-school students who have no classrooms squat in the hallways during classes, thereby allowing them to develop their leg muscles, a good preparation for higher physical education lessons.
Older kids also have their share of classroom shortages that’s conveniently solved by night classes. That’s good training for when they join the BPO/call center workforce.
Many students still have classrooms. Some of these promote practical and hands on education. Students can make detailed observations of the underwater greenery in their flooded rooms or learn proper garden shovelling when the water subsides.
Classroom sharing can be done across one grade or year level so students can concentrate on learning just one lesson at a time. This serves the dual purpose of values formation. Students learn quicker the value of endurance when they have to share a tight square space with 60 to 90 other human beings.

President Aquino is eager to add two more years to the high school level. It’ll be interesting to see how/where else students can hold classes. Well the trees are still unoccupied.

Blog Camp In Cebu - No Campfire Horror Stories

2011-05-31T16:28:00.008+08:00

My trip to the Cebu Blog Camp 2011 gave me the chance to stretch my limbs and introduce some movement into the rippling folds of fat I’ve accumulated through my stationary work situation. What did I think of it (the camp, not the exercise)? Was it worth the monumental effort of using a crowbar to pry my existence from the computer chair?

The Sugbuanons did not fall below expectations. They delivered exactly what they promised. There was little room for drastic last minute program digressions that would have made visiting bloggers appear polite and pleasant only to leave trails of virtual discontent.

When they said they’d offer insights into photography and travel for bloggers, they did just that. By the end of the day, I was again entertaining the grand delusion that I could ride a bus into the sunset to the distress of my paranoid blood relations, discover hidden retreats where there are no Jollibee outlets, learn to ask “Where is the toilet?” in 101 dialects and add my voice into the teeming mix of Filipino travel bloggers.

I must say though that I did entertain other hopes (a.k.a. ulterior motives) when I attended the camp. Since I work for a foreign internet-based company, I needed to find out if any of the speakers would mention the words internet marketing in the same sentence.

In the various blogging events I’ve attended, the Filipino bloggers I’d met were schooled in the belief that one should blog just because of one’s passions and interests. I’ve never attended an event in Vis-Min that taught bloggers to treat blogging as a real world business. That sometimes makes me think real Filipino internet marketers prefer to stay under the woodwork where they can secretly burp to the tune of five figure dollar incomes, away from the all seeing eye of the internet’s version of Big Brother.

Is internet marketing (IM) a forbidden topic in blogging events? Is IM the equivalent of horror stories told around campfires? No one really wants to hear them and have nightmares of Big Brother taking away blog page ranks and contextual advertising accounts.

The last two speakers, Coy Caballes and Reuben Licera, social media management experts, came closest to approaching the topic that must not be named. Licera in particular was perhaps the father I never knew and would have given me the right guidance to taking baby steps in the traffic laden streets of Facebook, where crazy virtual drivers on steroids can run you over and cause death by social media, if he had more time.

By the end of the day, I could not resist the itch to ask why no one had yet said anything about future plans of teaching Pinoy bloggers IM that I made an effort to overcome my fear of men in shades and approached Philippine Blog Awards top man Juned Sonido to ask. He said plans for IM seminars might be in the works and that they have not consciously been avoiding the niche at all.

For the record, there are ethical ways of marketing online so future blog campers perhaps do not need to fear getting raided and rounded by Big Brother’s agents in ninja suites. I’m looking forward to those seminars Mr. Sonido.

Tween Romance With Pimples On The Side

2011-05-16T19:45:00.001+08:00

My six-year old kid has developed a liking for a tween-oriented Sunday show. When I’m not snoring away to recuperate from my endless quest for financial survival (if that quest were equivalent to physical exercise, I’d have washboard abs), I get to watch snippets of the show with her.

It’s a lot like watching a visual scientific exposition of the life, death and multiplication of acne. Every forehead and cheek shot is an insight into the oily bane of adolescents. Other than that, I didn’t think the show had any more biology lessons to teach my daughter.

Yesterday, she asked me if the cute pockets of acne in her favorite show were boyfriends and girlfriends. I missed a beat.

It’s not just the show that taught her the concept of romantic relationships. In our neighborhood, adults already have “pairs” in mind for their kids. In fact, my 2nd child, who still has more gum than teeth, already has his pair. In school, the more astute little kids, just a year out of their diapers and now missing front teeth, already steal kisses.

They start so early.

I never like lying to my girl. When she asks sensitive questions, I like to stick as close to the truth as possible. Of course, I still really wish she’d just ask me about the life cycle of Propionibacterium acnes.

Mall Rats and Mall Horses

2011-05-02T16:57:00.001+08:00

Malls are marvelous inventions of modern society. They’re like the Swiss Army knives of life. You can do almost anything in a mall--- shop, eat, work, take a nap while sitting through two hours of Richard Guttierez’s stoned/stony/stone age movie acting. Despite initial objections, Catholics can now also pray in malls in the midst of worldly allures.

One of the more recent additions to mall services are play areas. Now you can drop your kids like bags in a baggage counter and claim them with a numbered card after an hour of shopping. I do that all the time. After all, I only have two arms and two lungs, not enough to lift 30 kilos worth of kids through endless aisles of merchandise.

The all in one play areas are the best options to deposit little people with short attention spans because these places have varieties of diversions to choose from. Specialty play pens with shorter play minutes have been offering good competition though. These are perfect pit stops for parents who just need to make a trip to the loo.

One of the more popular specialty play areas here offers stuffed horseback rides. This one I find a little disturbing. Just like I’ve never really warmed up to masses in malls, there’s just something odd about fake animals in malls.

I’m not over analyzing this. It just feels weird. I was lucky enough to have ridden a real horse as a child. I’m not sure if my kids will ever be able to ride more than stuffed animals. That’s sad.

Vanity Attack

2011-04-16T15:44:00.002+08:00

Some people set a thin line between vanity and good grooming. For example, I’ve been given the advice that before applying for a job, one must pluck one’s eyebrows and apply makeup because these are components of good grooming. That’s news to me. I grew up in an environment where anything beyond washing one’s face was considered vain. Yeah, for the nth time, I had lots of nuns in my BFF list.

I still don’t “groom” myself very well despite the good advice of other friends who don’t hang out in cloisters. The last time I put on makeup was five years ago when co-workers convinced me that the only way for customers to take me seriously was if I painted my face.

I’ve also aggressively refused to pluck my brows. The clerk I was with yesterday convinced me that I made the right decision. Whoever “groomed” her gave her a perpetually surprised look. She probably realized the magnitude of the disastrous grooming session and decided to grow out the plucked parts so now she has something akin to stubble on the wrong part of her face.

I must admit, it was a lot easier not to care about my looks when I was younger. Seventeen years of lack of sleep, lack of exercise, and regular McDonalds fixes have joined forces to ruin my skin quality and create dark continents under my eyes.

The dark circles around my eyes are the hardest to ignore. They’re like the hole in the ozone layer. They grow larger every year. Fellow online workers who share the same look are considering putting up a Panda Look-Alike Society. Why pandas and not raccoons? Because we now also have the girth to match pandas, thanks to our bad eating habits and sedentary work.

A few weeks ago I thought I found the solution to the negative evolution of my facial looks. I bought a product that promised to take care of the 7 signs of skin aging in just 7 days. The product ad said nothing about doing cartwheels or replacing my daily diet with generous helpings of grass so in the guise of scientific testing, I gave in to my sudden attack of vanity and bought it. Seven days later, I looked like I aged 7 days.

Perhaps the product only works for folks who don’t get exposed to the sun, who sleep 15 hours a day and who thrive on wheat sticks. For the rest of us regular folks we only have three choices to look good: pluck eyebrows and put on makeup; live healthy lifestyles and look for golden flowers to sing to like Mother Gothel.

I still refuse to pluck my eyebrows so I’ll try exercise next week.

MisObedient

2011-04-04T15:42:00.002+08:00

My daughter just wrapped up her first year of school. Whew! One year down, 15 more to go of sleeplessness, financial juggling, project-making and time mismanagement.

Predictably, schools have their ways of making parents feel glad that they went through all that stress, distress and duress. My kid’s school had a special awards day. Their teacher was so considerate and understanding of what we’d gone through that she gave all 55 or so pupils in her grade level a special award. They should have called it the common awards because there’s nothing special about something that everyone’s got.

I suspect that the teacher must have had a really hard time. Aside from having had to think of multiple synonyms to respectful, diligent, helpful and everything nice until she got 55 awards, she also had the monumental task of rationalizing each award.

My daughter was awarded Most Obedient. That was after she snuck out of class after I told her to stay put. She only made it in time to the ceremony thanks to a harassed teacher assistant who managed to locate her without a tracking device and drag her and one other deserter to their proper places.

A couple of other parents commented that their kids’ awards appeared to be positive takes on gray character traits. That led to a panel discussion among the more humorous parents.

This is what your kid’s awards might really mean:

Most Energetic – Your kid can’t stay put and is the reason why his teacher’s curly hair is now straight

Best in Performing Arts – Your kid loves to dance on top of tables and impersonates the teacher behind her back

Most Well-Groomed – You or the nanny is obsessive compulsive or has a phobia for dirt, the exact term for which your kid will never ever get to spell correctly, ever

Most Resourceful – Your kid can figure out how to give his classmates a black eye with a paper clip

Of course, we were just kidding. We all really love and appreciate our kids, even those who seem to redefine their special awards.

How The Fortress Was Won... By FB

2011-03-13T16:15:00.002+08:00

It felt like I was the last person standing. While the world around me succumbed to the siren song of the curly-haired demigod of geekiness Mark Zuckerberg, I built an anti Facebook fortress where the mere mention of Join, Like or Connect were punishable by beheading.

Last week, a small hole in my wall finally let the virus that is FB in and life as I knew it has never been the same. My former student, Bianca, says my being in FB is the equivalent of the Berlin Wall falling.

The first few days seemed almost like standing trial for crimes against humanity. Those who knew me well enough expressed such great surprise that I was convinced I committed murder. I killed my image... er... principles, I meant my principles.

Of course my friends are all happy that they can now get updates of what I eat, think and the amount of fat I've put on since high school but I still feel like writing a ten-page defense.

I need to be in FB because online work is how I put food on the table, send my kid to school and keep the Bureau of Internal Revenue happy. Anyone who's worked online for a living knows that lighting incense and offering baskets of eggs on the altar of FB's creator is part of the gig. Competing services and products who already have one million Likes will kill you if you don't have you're own page to gather your friends and stalkers.

So how cool is a job that let's you work in FB? At first it's as cool as drinking tea in the middle of the Sahara. I don't just interact with friends, I also create and manage Facebook pages. Finding out where all the buttons, features and functions are and what they do is like reading directions to the comfort room in hieroglyphics in the middle of a maze.

The first time I jumped into the morass of social media, I found myself screaming in the halls of a virtual sanitarium, "...Bleep... you Facebook! Go to ...bleep... Facebook!"

My second attempt left me temporarily immobile after 8 hours of trying to decipher geek speak for Like boxes.

My third try killed the nerves in my eyes but not before I managed to create the first FB page I owned with enough bells and whistles to cause brain damage.

Now that that's done, the next step for me is to figure out the delicate dynamics between Google and Facebook and why Mark Z doesn't seem to be in speaking terms with the big G. I need to figure this out because some online properties have reportedly been caught between the exchange of bad blood and male bovine manure between the two giants.

Yay, it sure is fun to be in FB.

Remember Your First Real Dance?

2011-02-26T13:15:00.003+08:00

That poor chap outside of your family circle in his father’s extra large suit, who had the misfortune of being picked for the first rose in your 18th birthday, was not your first dance. Go back many years more and you might be able to dig up suppressed memories of that fateful day when you were led to believe you looked cute in crepe paper, a banana headdress and a polka dot dress. Our minds are wonderful auto organizers so if you’re having a hard time recalling, you’ll find your memories filed in a folder labeled “Embarrassing School Foundation Days”.

My daughter just had her first dance. We were never told there’d be one. The kids were measured for costumes without parents’ consent and the next communication simply gave us the bill. I had the courtesy to ask my daughter what she really wanted to do with her life and she said she wanted to dance instead of getting a PhD in nuclear physics.

I figured she wasn’t being exploited or abused so I let her do the twist with her friends. They danced happily, oblivious to the world around them and even to their flailing, out of step partners. Despite the complete lack of synchronized movement and understanding for what they were doing, the kids managed to draw oohs, ahhs and wows from their captivated blood relations.

The older pupils who were required to dance upwards of the 60s didn’t fail to please their parents as well but the kids themselves looked like they were in mourning. These are the kids trapped between the internal tug of war between childhood and adolescence and who are incapable of busting a convincing groove if a song doesn’t contain “Baby, baby” every ten seconds.

One group dutifully pointed up and down to the tune of the 70s under the watchful eyes of teachers who probably included “grades” in every sentence to the pre dance pep briefing. That group forever redefined the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive”. Except for those who enjoyed the shiny costumes and the fake sideburns, the rest had the pained, unhappy expressions of kids under raw vegetable diets. I’m sure it got worse for some of them. Young parents under the spell of his royal geekiness Mark Zuckerberg will not fail to populate the web with photos that will forever defy “delete” or “forget”.

Seriously, why do we do this to our children?

There’s a Fly in My President

2011-02-14T15:55:00.002+08:00

A couple of weeks ago Archbishop Oscar Cruz revealed that two powerful groups (distributors of political steroids, no doubt) have decided to flex their well-oiled, influential muscles and kick President Aquino off his seat. My eyeballs rolled involuntarily when I heard that and as I struggled to regain control of my organs, the distraught Pinoy in me whispered, “Here we go again.”

Cruz says Aquino’s incompetence has diminished his cutie points considerably. Well, in the seven months he’s been on the helm, lives have been lost, justice has been denied and the dumb have grown dumber. Also, the belt-tightening has grown so extreme that I now have the waistline of a waif. Two more inches tighter and I’ll qualify as a supermodel.

I wonder who they think is a better fit. The last time we raised our hands and complained, “Waiter, there’s a fly in my president,” we got served a chipmunk with a penchant for the shiny baubles in our coffers. Sadly, those who complained a second time to the waiter were thrown into jail. Apparently, exchange policies for tarnished presidents are valid for only one swap.

I don’t think we’ll ever get one who owns a magic stone he can swallow to turn him into a caped champion of the masses who can drag goons to limbo by their nose hairs, make oil companies drop to their knees, force politicians to do the public a favor by drowning themselves in their own dirt and whip the trash in the Pasig River into gold. For now, all we have is this president who seems to be losing the loyalty of his hair follicles and who might be having a hard time grasping the full scope of his work; but would you really rather have another economic genius with itchy palms?

What is Marriage?

2011-01-29T13:15:00.001+08:00

I’m sure Wikipedia has the long, convoluted, partially correct answer, but since four years of college and another four years of trying to decipher Google’s Terms of Service have damaged my brain, I am now incapable of understanding definitions beyond “Duh”.

Sometimes I get the impression that marriage is a legally binding agreement that allows individuals to demand that their partners, who have future plans of hiding from obligation in the Swiss Alps, listen to the now classic song “Financial Support” by Kevin Federline. Those who actually have partners who cooperate fully may alternatively use their documents to gain express access to their rights and benefits and to those of their children, financial or otherwise, from legal institutions.

That inaccurate definition is the result of two decades of watching friends and family hit their heads against marriage contracts that have the physical attributes of paper but the internal qualities of concrete. I’m certain that if I said that in one of my six theology classes in college, I would have never been given my diploma.

Quite recently, this simplistic perspective has expanded a bit thanks to Vilma Santos. In one of her movies she complains to her partner that the reason why he is compelled by his parents to provide for their needs first rather than hers is because his parents bank on the fact that they aren’t married. That implies that if they were married, she would have had the right to demand that she and their kids be the first in his list of concerns.

I pretty much put my ear against closed doors or watch quarreling neighbors with a popcorn bucket in one arm. I remember one woman very close to home echo a similar line, “Why do you always go home to your parents when they call for you? Don’t they know we’re married?”

Actually, the couples I know fight in very public places where they prefer to spill their guts and all the gory details of their disastrous unions. What I gather from them pretty much verifies the truth behind Vilma’s lines.

So that means I can now turn to my husband and demand that aside from surrendering his wallet, assets and die cast car collection to me, he is now required to prioritize my demands because we have a marriage contract. Sweet.