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Thursday, January 30, 2003
We just finished assembling another episode and some of us hungry producers walked over to Paprika for an early dinner. I was so hungry, I ate 2 serving of Ging's delicious pesto. Actually, Cam and I were supposed to share one, but she ended up giving me the whole thing. Yummy stuff. Cam and Gretch are still in Paprika planning a project together. I'm just waiting for them to come back so that Gretch and I can share a cab to Makati. The Probe Team people are speaking with an English accent. It sounds funny, bordering on annoying actually (no offense, guys! :), and it reminds me of Marelle when she used to talk to Chris and Amelita with an accent, except hers sounded more authentic ("Mr. Costello."). I have to wake up early tomorrow to observe a class in The Little Gym in Festival Mall, Alabang. Then I've to rush to work for a 3pm meeting. So much crap. And where are my friends? Watching Oro Plata Mata in Greenbelt. I'm so jealous. Meanwhile, I haven't seen One Hour Photo, Catch Me If You Can and 8 Mile. All these good movies are out right now, as in NOW now, and I haven't seen them. *** Chris and I sat in Quark's class in Ateneo last Monday (Or do you say "sat-in in Quark's class"? Ah, whatever.). It was my first time to really see Quark teach a class and I was amazed to see him lecture for 2 hours straight before calling a break. Wow. I remember sitting in Joey's class on Independent Film for ACP and he just kept on talking and talking and talking, this film, that film, this director, that writer...my friends are like walking film encyclopedias. If you record everything they say, you can probably make an Every Wednesday book on filmmaking. Which brings me to this. During Quark's lecture, he'd use certain films as examples to explain a point. I think that it was appropriate since he was teaching a class on filmmaking. But there were many students who hadn't seen some of the movies that Quark mentioned. The student beside us was humming to himself while the class discussed Ringu. There were also other movies like Panic Room and In the Bedroom, two really good movies worth watching. I must admit, though that I haven’t seen Panic Room myself, and I was reminded of the time I sat in Direk Marilou Abaya’s Directing Class and she talked about the ending of Sixth Sense. I hadn’t seen Sixth Sense (Still haven’t.). This is why I know that I cannot be a filmmaker. TV producer sure, but that's different. I think that if you want to be a filmmaker, you have to go out of your way to watch as many as movies possible. A video production class will teach you how to produce a video, the basics of it and the technical terms. To be in a digital filmmaking class or a directing class, however, requires you to go up a notch. Study the different styles of different directors, the writing styles of different writers, cinematography, lighting, acting, music, immerse yourself in the film world by watching, reading and, ideally, enjoying. I was talking to Alexis about this once and he was explaining that like everything else, we are exposed to what's in the mainstream. In films, we're exposed to the Hollywood films. But when you truly build interest and passion, you go deeper and you look for other films and that database in your head gets filled up with more facts and beauties in the business. In short, if you really want to succeed in something, you've got to go a step further. So if you want to be as knowledgeable as my friends, well, go watch as much as they do. We also got to watch Quark's A Date With Jao Mapa during his class and we had fun mouthing the lines and laughing at the back. But I wondered if everyone in that class knew who Marnie was. You'll never know. Maybe they didn't watch Ang TV. Or maybe they didn't watch any local TV at all. If so, maybe they didn't know the history of Marnie and Jao. My favorite part was when they were making out and Jao started saying, "Marnie, oh, Marnie..." And then Alexa, played by Marnie says, "Did you just call me Marnie?" Hehe. Not many students laughed at that, though. Sad. I wish they laughed as much as we did when we first saw it in fourth year. Aw, that was fun, wasn't it? :) *** The US Congress gave Bush the go signal for war. Shit. *** The GSM Post-Christmas Party and Sugarfree Album Launch pictures are up. :)
Tuesday, January 28, 2003
Don’t work too hard to give yourself the best of everything; instead, make a greater effort to give God the best of yourself and God will take care of the rest. :) Thanks, Mama! *** Sickness is depressing. My sister Bianca is in the hospital right now for some kind of food poisoning. Mama and I brought her to Paranaque Med at around 10pm last night and Bianca was really pale by the time we got there. The nurses did some tests and Mama went to the cashier to get a room, so I sat in between Bianca and the doctor and I was asked if we were diabetic. My heart jumped. I said that diabetes was present in our family history, but none of us have been diagnosed with it. Questions as serious as that scare me, especially since 2 of my titas recently died of cancer, and our first cousin in Denver is going to undergo chemo for breast cancer. I don’t like sickness. I feel that it’s something you can avoid. You eat right, workout and drink 8 glasses of water. So when people get diabetes or cancer, you can’t be rid of them completely, and that just kills me! And my sisters and I hate needles, so that makes the risk of getting diabetes extra scary. Speaking of needles, I don’t think the young nurse who took Bianca’s blood knew what she was doing. She strapped Bianca’s arm with a rubber band, looked for a vein on her hand and popped the needle in; but she didn’t get any blood at her first pull. So she pushed the syringe pump back and pulled out again, this time getting blood. The blood wasn’t enough for testing, though, so she pushed the pump back and pulled again. I think she didn’t get the needle in right, and I don’t think you’re supposed to push the pump back because you may be putting air into the vein. Right? I don’t know. Call me a paranoid sister, but Bianca looked like she was in real pain and those things aren’t supposed to be that painful. Even when I had dengue and they used a big fat needle to get blood from my arm, it didn’t hurt that much. We brought Bianca to her room...actually it was her “suite” since everyone that day coincidentally had stomach problems and used up all the more affordable rooms. But her “suite” wasn’t exactly sweet. The floor and the walls were discolored, and the little TV was in this hole in the dusty cabinet. Mama and I just complained and complained until Bianca fell asleep, and to bring some comedy into the situation, I told Mama that she had her shirt on backwards. Haha! She cursed me for not telling her earlier, and I told her that the nurses downstairs were the ones who told me. Hahaha! I slept in the hospital ‘til 6am and when I went down to go home, I realized that the hospital was horribly small, so small that even the chapel was just a hole in the wall with a mini altar and 4 pews. They didn’t even have a decent library for all their files. The hallway going to the ER had stacks and stacks of brown folders with names and filing numbers. I wanted to take pictures and mail them to Mayor Marquez. Yeah, he has money to send birthday cards to us residents, but hello! Look at the darn hospital!!! And you call my sister’s room a suite?!?! I’m going to pick up Mama and Bianca from the hospital at 11. They’ll both be glad to sleep on their nice beds when we get home. :) *** Since I’m on the topic of sickness, our yellow lab Max is pretty sick, too. He just turned 3 human years old yesterday, but he has this condition that makes his body grow twice or thrice as much as it normally should (Remember robin Williams movie Jack?). He has a hyper thyroid that’s secreting too many growth hormones, which is why he’s so huge. He also has a very low metabolism, so he tends to sleep all day like a cat. Because he’s overweight, the vet said that he could have a heart attack at a very young age. How sad. He’s the nicest big dog in the world. I swear! Grrr. I hate sickness.
Sunday, January 26, 2003
 Parasailing with GamePlan in Subic.
 Captain Mike playing with the controls and dippng me in the water.  Going up!  Yes, this is me at more than 200 feet.  The traditional Probe Crew pose. Thanks for taking shots of me, Gil! :)
Saturday, January 25, 2003
I am turning into a shrew. A scrooge. An overworked member of the Philippine work force, a money-minded workaholic, an SMS slave, a computer games addict, and a couch potato with no care for who's talking to me when I'm watching a show. That's horrible. I'm horrible. I'm so sorry, Mama.
Thursday, January 23, 2003
I came from the Universes Tala at Tula in the Ateneo a few hours ago. My favorite poem was that of Ms. Cuyegkeng (Did I spell that right?), the chem teacher I never reached when I was still in Bio. Her poem was about silk worms and how humans think that they are wearing silk when in fact they are wearing the soul of a butterfly that wasn't given the chance to be. Ouch. How sad. My mood was actually set by the first poet that I listened to. His name escapes me (so shoot me for I'm not worthy), but he's a freshman high school teacher in the Ateneo and he wrote about autumn seeing autumn with his wife. What touched me the most was his poem entitled Snapshots. The only problem was that by the time he read this, he had already read two of his other poems that were also about autumn. So hearing the names of the different hues of autumn over and over again was a little disappointing. But watching Joey Ayala was the best. I've never seen him in person before, and most of all, I never thought that he could be funny! He sang a song called Organic (And Pag-Ibig Ko) and it was hilarious. I grew up with this image of Joey Ayala, the voice that made me an environmental geek, and with this one song, that image came crashing down, and I was cracking up. Dang, I wish I had a picture with him. If I were brave and corny enough, I'd tell him, "You're the reason why I stopped littering!" I really wanted to listen to what Quark was going to read, but he was in the second set and since the program started really late and I had to leave early for an edit, I wasn't able to wait for him. Sigh, next time.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
I'm really busy these days, but this cartoon really made my day. It was forwarded to me a long time ago, but who cares. Enjoy! [Go!]
Saturday, January 18, 2003
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
I'm supposed to be editing Gretch's spiels for the Dakak Special. Shucks. I just realized that I haven't edited anything since December, before the Christmas break. Now I'm nervous. I hate this. I hate trying to get my groove back (Yup! I just saw The Emperor's New Groove on the Disney Channel and it was such a riot! Sigh, sorry. No connection.). Spiels. Spiels. They're just spiels, Alia. And most of all, they're the in-your-face type. Audio bed. Music. Insert upsots and cure montages. Go!
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
My money’s been going to Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers! Oh my God! That’s all I can say about this movie! Oh my GOD!!!  Warning. Spoilers. I just saw The Two Towers for the third time today. Yes, obsessed is the word. My family and I had lunch with old friends Tito Dennis Javellana and his eldest son Andoni, who will be flying back to the States tonight. I didn’t have to head for work just yet, so I dragged Andoni with me to G4 to watch The Two Towers with me on the big screen because he’d only seen it on DVD. We made it just in time for the beginning and I love the opening sequence with a passion, when Gandalf falls with the Balrog and starts striking him with a sword and they fall and they fall and then you see a body of water beneath them and bang! How the hell did they do that whole sequence? The shots, the editing, the sound, it was like Rialto in Enchanted Kingdom! No, it was better! God, what else was good? I should’ve taken down notes. Ah! The horses were beautiful! The travel montages with aerial shots were beautiful! And the makeup of the orcs was so disgusting and sick that it was so cool! I really love this movie, and seeing Peter Jackson throwing a spear at the orcs and his little children (who were also the cute little hobbit children in the first movie) hiding in the cave was amusing. Of course, it was a fiesta ng mga gwapo with Legolas, Aragorn and Faramir being their macho selves. And Gimli, well, his character is just so funny, and I liked the fact that this movie showed that he and Legolas were already good friends. Too bad they didn’t really show the growth of that friendship in the first movie. Oh, but let’s not forget Smeagol! My God, Smeagol was so real in this movie, it was hard to believe that actor Andy Serkis was just covered with CG the whole time! That was acting! It was, right? And that whole psychotic sequence where he’s talking to himself and trying to shoo away his Mr. Hyde side was so good, your mood shifts from funny to sad in a second when he starts to cry. I cried in different parts of the movie, but I wasn’t sure if I was crying because the scenes were sad or because the cinematography was so beautiful. That scene where Smigol’s talking to himself, the editing was so psychotic, I felt so sorry for him. And when the king was being dressed with armor, oh my God, the white light coming from behind with soldiers walking by once in a while, it was so sad. And lastly, Frodo ready to cut Sam’s throat with his sword when Sam says, “It’s me. Your Sam.” That’s love!!! And then the audience starts to giggle. Yeah, yeah, they look gay, but what can they do? They love each other! If you were put in that position, you’d cry like Samwise The Gay, too! Ok, let’s talk about love. Love is Aragorn and Arwen. Yes, that is obvious. But love is also Frodo and Sam! Love is also Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn! Love is Elron and Arwen, Theoden and Rohan, and the Ents for the Earth! Love is Frodo trusting people, 4 of them whom he had just met, and risking his life to destroy the One Ring to save Middle Earth. Love is Sam who chose never to leave Frodo’s side, even when he’s being screamed at or threatened with a sword. Love is two little hobbits clinging to hope with dear life, holding on to the belief that there is “good in the world and that it’s worth fighting for.” Ok, I sound crazy. But really, truly, I wish people woudn’t laugh. It’s like the soldiers in Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan. If you were in their shoes, let’s see you keep yourself from crying in fear, from crying in pain, from crying for your Mama. *** >Before this news gets old... The Manila Film Fest had some pretty cool movies. Spirit Warriors 2 and Agimat turned out to be really entertaining. The effects were good and the pacing wasn’t that bad. There were still a lot of inconsistencies in the sripts, though, things that could’ve been corrected. But all in all, they both delivered, even if the acting was nothing great. Jaime Fabregas was in both movies. How weird. Oh, and Spirit Warriors 2 was way better than the first movie. Yey! Lastikman was so bad that it was funny. Vic Sotto and Donita Rose looked awful together, but what the hell! There were also all these little PSAs that popped up once in a while. No to pirated CDs, don’t believe everything the media says, shucks, I can’t remember the others were. But please, the scene where he’s a chair and Donita sits on him and when she leaves, this bump suddenly grows out from the chair...gross! The best was Dekada ’70! Wow, what a movie! Although I had some problems with the editing (the prom scene wasn’t cut to music, and, as usual, some scenes could’ve been shortened.) and the different wigs of the children, the cinematography and the acting were wonderful. Not perfect, but wonderful nonetheless. I’ve more respect for Piolo Pascual and Marvin Agustin. Pascual doesn’t know how to smoke, though, but he can really act. Christopher de Leon hardly had to speak to show that he was trying to keep himself from breaking down. He was the man of the family and he had to live up to what that meant. The same with Vilma Santos. She talked more, but there were many scenes where she didn’t have to speak and your eyes would start to well up just looking at her. De Leon and Santos both deserved to win for Best Actor and Best Actress, but no. Those awards had to go to Eddie Garcia and Ara Mina, which brings me to my last MFF movie. Mano Po. Crap. Honestly, if I were Chinese, I’d be insulted by Mano Po. First 10 minutes into the movie and I was already dying to walk out. Cogie Domingo’s Chinese accent was horrible! Hey, a movie’s opening could make it or break it! Sure, sure, Mano Po has many good messages about the relationship between the Chinese and the Filipinos, but the portrayal of the way the Chinese lived didn’t seem right. I think that more research should’ve been done, that there should’ve been more care for the details. If you grew up speaking Mandarin, would your Mandarin be slower than your Tagalog? Things like that. Call it nitpicking, but really, details like that shouldn’t be overlooked. And what was with the crazy nonlinear treatment and the inconsistent documentary video of the half brother? You know what really sucked about this movie? It had a big budget and a good cast, but everything was just left to bahala na. So many things could’ve been corrected, but they weren’t. They could’ve gotten real Chinese actors, but they didn’t, not even for extras. They just got Chinese people, not actors. The Mandarin of the actors could’ve been better, but it seems that the language lessons were rushed. And the music could’ve been better, but it was horrible, HORRIBLE! And whenever someone cried, this awful piano piece would come in. And lastly, the ending montage showing famous Chinese Filipinos...where did that come from? Yeah, I get the fucking message, but there was nothing leading to that montage. Nothing! What, they thought that the voice over of Maricel Soriano or Ara Mina or whoever the fuck was talking would do the trick? Because man, you couldn’t even tell who was talking. All these stupid inner monologues with no order, no organization. Argh! What a waste. And this is Mother Lily’s legacy? Dang, I enjoyed Spirit Warriors 2 more than this.
Monday, January 13, 2003
This actually cracked me up. Thanks, Kathy.
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
Yesterday was a good Tuesday. I was doing some nonsense stuff at home and at around 5pm, Louie Chikiamco showed up. Ack! And the first thing I said to him was, “You jerk! I haven’t taken a bath!” I run into the room to change into something more decent and I run back out and call him a jerk again because I hadn’t brushed my teeth either. It was so nice to see him. He had just come back from France where he’s studying to be a chef and will be here for vacation and a little OJT ‘til March. We sat in the lanai and talked about his work and apparently, cooking is pretty dangerous. He stabbed his thumb while opening some oysters and he almost chopped off his finger with an axe (Sounds so barbaric.). Ah, the dangers of cooking. That’s why I prefer not to cook. :) Smoking with him was a little weird. Back in high school, we didn’t think that we’d ever end up smoking when we were older. And now, well, things have definitely changed. So I had my first smoke with Louie and in a few weeks, we’re going to have our first drinking session. Completely different from our chocolate milkshake and banana split days. Wow, how Archie! I hitched with Louie to Filinvest at around 7 and got in a cab because I had to meet the GamePlan producers in Xaymaca in Timog for our first GamePlan gimmick. Woohoo! We got to watch Noel Cabangon and I think that each of us had about 4 or 5 beers each. Cam and I had some zombies, too, and I must say that their zombie’s pretty good. We also brought an intern named Barbie. It was her first day at work and already, she went drinking with us. Haha! Swerte niya ah. We had so much fun, and Noel’s such a good singer. We had a group picture with him after his first set and we gave the waiters so many sheets of tissue paper with requests...which he didn’t even sing! But that’s okay. He sang Pana-panahon anyway. Wow, melt. After the success of our first gimmick, we decided that we should to this kind of thing once a month. So we're watching Cynthia Alexander in 70's Bistro in Feb. Yey!
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Sunday night, the last night of my beautiful and fattening Christmas break, I went to my Mom’s room to talk to her about something and when I kissed her goodnight, she said, “I like it better when you’re home. “ Well too bad, Ma! It’s back to the GamePlan grind for me. We had our first Monday meeting and it was filled announcements, some Mano Po jokes and me demanding that Ma’m Cheche watch the movie. I’m dying to hear what she thinks of it. After the meeting, we went straight to Paprika for lunch and decided not to work on anything just yet. We agreed to have a slumber party in the office tomorrow, so I got to leave work early with Camille and I met up with Meg and Yagi in Mega Mall. I was late, though, so I ran from Emerald Ave. to the mall and I must say that I need to exercise bad if I’m going to shoot the triathlon in Cebu next weekend. I watched Dekada ’70 for the second time and I’ve decided that I will never watch a Tagalog drama in Mega Mall again. The people around us were so noisy, especially the two ladies seated behind us. It’s aright to speak during a movie but yo! Keep it down! Meg and I kept on turning our heads to them and giving that irritating shhhh’s, but it was cool when Meg actually told them off: Girl 1: Ano ba siya? Engineer? Girl 2: Pwedeng architect. Tingnan mo yung gamit niya. Girl 1: Pwede. Pero pwedeng engineer. Girl 2: Pwedeng architect. Meg: Pwede sa labas na lang kayo magkwentuhan? Haha! Ganda ng timing ah! Pero seryoso, Meg...pwedeng architect. We had dinner in Mann Hann afterwards and I had my favorite yang chow rice. Mmmmm. I love Mann Hann’s yang chow rice. I remember the first time I ate there with Mark on my 19th birthday. We had 2 orders of yang chow rice, sweet and sour spareribs, loads of dimsum and lots of coke. Yikes! We ate so much, especially me because I was so disappointed with the Discovery Channel Exhibit upstairs. It was only my fourth time ever to go to Mega Mall and I wanted to go to the exhibit because I was such a huge Discovery geek back then...and it was full of crap! So we ate a lot and watched Blair Witch. Haha! Bad idea! I wanted to vomit afterwards. Today was a fluke. Today was like the first day of school with nothing much to do but get re-acquainted with the educational system, say hello to classmates old and new and check out the curriculum. So I looked at the show lineup and my God, we’re going to be very busy during the first quarter of this year alone. But albeit the lineup from hell, things are looking up for us. We already won Best Sports Show for the CMMA 2002 and I just found out that our Carrera Habagat 2001 episodes bagged First Runner-Up for Best Sports Coverage at the Asian TV Awards last December. (We lost to the World Cup Korea coverage. Duh.) I hope that our luck continues to grow this year and that people keep watching us...or at least try to watch us. Hello! We exist! We are GamePlan on Saturday Nights at 7 on Studio 23! Dehin na yung mga game shows na yan! Sigh. Why do we have that timeslot anyway?
Thursday, January 02, 2003
I didn't have an excellent 2002, but thank God Christmas was good. I had fun with new friends and old friends alike, and most of all, I got to stay home with my family. Well, not that I was very productive as a daughter or a sister. My room's still a mess. :)  The late Ateneo fire tree. Remember this tree? It used to stand beside the College Chapel, behind the EDSA Walk benches. A storm blew it to the ground in Senior Year, and now there's a cemented pathway that goes through the grass to the dormitory. Good thing Nikki and our Batch 2000 friends decided to have a picture taken under the tree. It stood for many things like beauty, changes, senti crap like that. We used to stare at it and dream of autumn in New York. Now all I have is a picture and dreams of going back in time, to college. During the Zobel reunion, I dreamt of going back to high school. And yesterday, after welcoming 2003 with a few bangs, my childhood friends and I got together and we talked a little about what we used to do as kids, stories that we all knew but laughed at again and again anyway. Yes, I dreamt of being a child again. I think the Peter Pan syndrome runs in our family. But seriously, a lot of people just want to go back in time to fix things or relive things, just to be there again and again, whenever we wanted. This is also what keeps us from discovering what may be better for us. We're always holding on to something in our past that we become too jaded to embrace whatever the future throws at us. Every year, we're forced to move on and let go of moments that we wish could've lasted a little longer than they did. Interesting conversations, healthy hugs and romantic kisses, spectacular views, happy drunk drinks and extremely fun laugh trips that left your cheeks aching. Yeah, there's a lot to miss, but there's also a lot to look forward to. If nothing meaningful happened last year, then make it happen this year. And if it means letting something go, like a bad habit, then by all means, let go. Sigh, so easy to say, so hard to do. Such is life.  Last cigarette, last cigarette... My love, cool off muna tayo, ha? I've sporty dreams to reach this year. :) *** I'd write about every wonderful party or gathering I attended over the Christmas break, but I've no time. So instead, I just made a photo album! :) More pics to come when I find more time. Happy 2003, everybody!
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