Source: onlinemeditation.org

So I will learn to let go of some things and accept. I will forgive. I’ve crafted a playlist so that we may all try to chill the fuck out.

Ano ba ang pakiramdam ng wala? Mahirap isipin ang hindi naiisip. Ang hindi nagugunita ay tila hindi pinaguusapan, diba?

At ganito nalang ang nararamdaman.

Asher Roth – Dope Shit

J Cole – Work out

And something totally off tangent. A piano cover of one of my fave jams from M83. Geez, I wish I could play the keys as well as this.

M83 – Midnight City (Piano Cover)

Wish I could fly

There are just moments in life that I just want to shut out my own head and feel the molecules in my body lift up to the sound of good music. It’s by far one of the best ways to de-stress from an otherwise stressful situation.

Found a few gems that have helped me relax for a bit. I never thought I would get in to chill out music (the one by Telephonic, at least), but I always surprise myself. Kind of like getting lost in a conversation, losing track of time and possibly, falling in love with someone totally unexpected.

Here’s to getting lost and being grateful for silly things like…a gym in my building and a $5 yoga mat.

The Sea Of Cortez – Telephonic

Kaki King – Montreal

Tegan & Sara – The Ocean

Boy – Railway

Anyway so I’m having trouble sleeping.

Yessir, it's quite the ungodly hour.

As a kid, a radio would lull me to sleep. You hear the cheesiest stuff on the radio back in the early 90s. They’d play 80′s ballads like there’s no tomorrow. But that my friends, would guarantee my trip to lala-land.

Who knows why I turned out with such an eclectic taste in music?

In any case, I wondered if the same remedy still worked on me. I started with The Jets and their song “You got it all” and then followed by Billy Ocean’s “Suddenly”. Gee, these are actually the songs I think about singing in karaoke. Subconscious much?

I’m sure some of you who were born in the 80s must have gone through something similar to this experience. Ah, radio memories. For indulgence’s sake, I thought I’d post some songs I put on tonight. Oh, and watch out for the saxophone guy! Such an 80s staple.

In the process of coming up with this list I remembered something my boss used to tell me. Disc jockeys are never the masters of their playlist. They pander to their audience. There may be occasional digs but only because you love it as much as your audience. But for everything else…there’s no way you’re going to play to others the music you play in your bedroom.

I’ll let you in my room for now. Just click and listen.

Not my ACTUAL room but...once upon a room.

Warpaint – Set Your Arms [ Download ]

Oh Land – Wolf & I [ Download ]

Cults – Go Outside [ Download ]

Mumford and Sons – The Cave [ Download ]

James Blake – Limit to your love [ Download ]

I guess all forms of transformation go through some precipice.

Sunset while driving up to Los Angeles.

I’ve been fighting for peace of mind and acceptance. However, there are times when I stumble on thoughts that upon looking back with rationality, I ought to have dismissed. I promised myself that after this post I will never again speak on the subject again. After this post.

Months ago, I had been listening to a song as I always do when my heart is afloat. This song carried me through those days that I would look forward to see and hear from a certain someone. It captured how I felt about her at that time.

Right now I am marinating in the tragic implication of the song: how as time passed she relates to it with no connection to the time we shared whatsoever. It feels like…I am moved by a musician’s song not intended for me. That’s fine. That’s life.

And so I looked for other versions and I found one by The Kooks that still has that uppity beat I love about it. It’s imperative not to be a slave to something I like – the song for instance. It’s just a song, I tell myself. The one I found is different in many ways from the original, but it still carries the same poignant theme no matter how I listen to it.

The Kooks – Young Folks [ Download ]

Time to put this song to sleep and find another one.

Manning, the happy quarterback (c/o Reuters)

And there is a great show produced by Steven Spielberg that’s been tugging at my heartstrings. It is a TV drama-slash-musical featuring actresses I admire namely, Debra Messing and Anjelica Huston. But above all, at the heart of this new show are the two wonderful talents, Megan Hilty and Katharine McPhee. This is very much unlike Glee – no offense to Gleeks out there – which tends to be very adolescent. Now, THIS. This is more my age bracket. And this is so reminiscent of my good ol’ days as a Broadway kid.

If my childhood constituted as something like in this image...picture me now.

So to put it simply, I love musicals and this one certainly got my attention. Watch the trailer!

Okay, so what happened to Taylor Hicks? You know, the guy who won the title of American Idol over Katharine McPhee?

Hmm. I guess runner-ups may one day end up…in a Spielberg production.

Wish my life narrative was a Broadway show. Hah. NOT.

Certified Orange County (source: Vintagraph)

My mom used to know a man who grew oranges in his back yard. According to her, his oranges made the phrase Orange county meaningful. Paul was a world war II veteran. He was especially proud of the fact that he was a navy seal. Even when random young men were carted away to the war, only the brilliant ones were picked out to join the seals and he was one of them.

In the war, he served as an accountant. Not a typical soldier out in the front line. After all anything for the war effort was appreciated. He was really good at what he did. In his time, he topped the board for the whole state of California. That’s how good he was.

After a year in the service, the war was over. Paul worked for the government for a number of years until he decided to start his own business selling car parts. He was a hard working businessman and was unabashedly republican. He holds hard work in high regard.

Years later, he met my mom in a ballroom at Placentia. He learned that my mom had been living in San Francisco for a year until people at work started ganging up on her because they were envious of the job offers she had been getting. You see, ma is a hard worker. She then moved to Los Angeles and dabbled with work opportunities there, but her landlord didn’t like the fact she was getting a lot of calls. They were calls for job offers and sometimes suitors. For this reason, she got called a hussy. In just two months, she decided to move from LA to Orange.

Paul offered her a job as an assistant. Tax season was coming and Paul did consultations and tax audits on the side – for fun. My mom took the job right away. She’s also the kind of girl who has fun with numbers.

Paul helped my mom settle in to Orange. It was a symbiotic relationship. From the stories, I’d say he must have had an Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder. He wanted everything neat and in a certain order otherwise, he’d be irritable. My mom found a kindred spirit. Here was this old man who was as sharp and meticulous as she was.

But it was this meticulousness that created a tension between Paul and his only son. It doesn’t hurt to mention that his son is a democrat. Regardless, Paul couldn’t accept the fact that his son squandered Paul’s hard earned money and that, despite all his investment in his son’s education, the man couldn’t find himself a decent job. He grew bitter and cold toward him.

On the other hand, Paul grew soft with my mom. One day, he offered to marry my mom to free her of her woes. Her time was running out and her status was tenuous. She accepted the offer. It wasn’t a fake marriage. They truly cared for each other for two years. But they drove each other crazy. They were both too meticulous. So, they divorced.

A year later, it was revealed that Paul had cancer and it was terminal. They learned that he got himself a young Filipina girlfriend and even visited her in the Philippines. A few months later, he died and left a lump sum of money to the girlfriend he’d only known for a few months. This lump sum was worth 240,000 USD, released as 30,000 USD annually.

In his will, he stated that his son will only inherit his home and his other real estate investments by the time he is 60. If his son wanted to live there, he’d have to rent it out until he was 60.

As for my mom, he left her a note. My mom never told me what was in that note.

I guess, this is turning out to be a very personal post but I wanted to share the story of Paul, who I never met but will never be forgotten. Without him, I would never taste the sweet oranges of Orange.

Also, I used to think myself so handy when it comes to hardware. I got dizzy just trying to set up the television to my liking (what with four remote controls to work with). FINALLY, I figured it out after a couple of hours reading manuals and randomly pushing buttons.

A bunch of tech idiots

In the US, television is a big thing here, which is frankly one part of acculturation I try to resist. It’s not that easy, mind you. With over 500 cable channels to choose from and being able to instantly stream shows and films. I have to admit, the streaming really impressed me. Because the internet speed is just ridiculously fast over here compared to the Philippines, you can stream films on to your TV almost instantly without all the freezes. Wow. What really blew my mind is how I was able to find supposedly hard to find films and in just seconds they were there on the screen, playing seamlessly.

Okay, enough TV drone talk.

What I really wanted to mention was the fact that since I’ve moved here, I’ve had trouble with my FTP server. I can’t seem to connect to the damn thing. Could it be that I’m being blocked by my own firewall? I’ve been trying to read up on it but to my dismay, I could not figure out what’s wrong. So as much as I’d like to share more music, the way I usually do…I can’t.

Although, I have this to share: a really fantastic video by the artist, Lissie. Frankly, I love this song played live better than the studio record. So check this one out. For those of you back home, just wait it out to buffer for uninterrupted viewing. Yep, I know. First world internet speed rocks my socks.

Oh and to my ignorant compatriots: Here, you can watch YouTube videos on TV. Aha! Fancy that?