Our Tuesday Night Music Club.

Last night was Alfredogs night, to 4 of us, at least, because the other two travel-happy ones are again out on the road (rather on a plane) to HongKong.

ABD brought along a handful of high school kids and for a while i was happy to see myself in them from 15 years ago. When Keith arrived, i kidded them kids that they'll look exactly like Keith does 15 years from now. I am not sure if the thought horrified them considering that Keith had longish hair and clearly didn't look like anybody doing serious office work. Meanwhile, i looked like a lady pastor, in my skirt and flats, lacking only one heavyweight bible to complete the whole Lady Pastor fashion. Maritess (PSD) was in suspenders and her bangs unevenly cut.

I'm taking back what i said earlier. I'm now sure the kids were horrified. When they get home, each one of them would be swearing he doesn't want to see himself degrade into something like "us" come 15 years.

But ABD kept them happy in mocha and strawberry shakes, and sizzling spicy sausage and mushrooms. (what the hell was i saying here!?) And sent them home about 30 minutes past the agreed send off time. What can we do? The kids were enjoying the reggae band.

I told them to leave early so we can start talking dirty, adult things. And flashed a smile.

Some frustrated Crazy for You singer (may i correct myself: sessionist. Yap, she was JUST a sessionist) thought she was great on stage but the "I see you in the smoking air" did not work. Apparently. We gave half smiles. Frustrated Lady Sessionist (FLS) started calling out for song requests and when no one asked, she chatted with the guitarist as if they were good friends who just bumped into each other on the side and decided to have a small chat. Then when that didn't work, too, because the singer/guitarist didn't want to have small talk on stage, FLS started answering text messages on stage.

Singers who can't tell that something is very very wrong with "I see you in the smoking air" should be put to jail.

And it was a reggae band, for chrissakes. Grow some brain.

Meanwhile, in the next 3 hours i would be continuously blinded by camera flashes from the group of students who thought last night was the best night to take night out photos for facebook. Beeeh. But you could say i was just jealous because my elvis presley camera did not come with a free blinding flash. Whatever. Keith took his camera out and started taking pictures of the candle on our table. Slightly annoyed, i nagged him about wasting precious frames. But my voice was obviously overpowered by the crowd’s and the band’s, and because our Tuesday Night Music Club venue has terrible acoustics.

Then I requested for Santeria because I can’t remember “What I Got’s” title. Today I searched the internet and found “What I Got” in youtube in less than 5 seconds.

“Very violent song,” Keith told me.

“Tell me that again,” I said. Santeria is really a murderer’s song neatly package in beach-y beats.

We clapped. The band sang some Tropical Depression’s, a Yano song (the singer pronounced Ya-no ‘Yuh nuh’; I heard it “anna”) and some Jason Mraz that the audience—excluding us—requested. They played covers really well. The other guitarist (Keith said is the son of the local luthier) is even better and plays a 7-stringed guitar. They all look like they do not have day jobs but seemed happy.

It’s a good thing.

I took a picture of them, on a 50-second exposure. I hope it turns out well.

Keith took a picture of ABD. His camera, manufactured in Bagets era, is a girl version of my Elvis Presley. I also took a picture of ABD and PSD from the opposite side of the table. I also hope it turns out well.

"'It has been taken CARE of', is the correct form," ABD lectured. Yes, we have random grammar lectures every now and then. It just pops unexpectedly in the conversation but nobody in the group is a self-proclaimed grammarian. It's just the way things go. With us.

Grammar happens.

Keith and I found ourselves playing charade in the middle of a noisy bar.

“I enjoy both of you. You easily amuse each other,” ABD said just as I guessed the word “eagle”.

Keith, by the way, is the terrible-st charade player ever. I don't want him to be my charade partner again.

At half past midnight, we went home intoxicated from/with/in (???) laughter.

Photo post: Morning Shots

Here's the recent addition to the photo post list.

Most of the photos here were taken in Iloilo City, except for a handful that i took in other places.

I'm using a normal lens (58 mm) and ISO 100 colored films. No flash.  I still hope to be able to use a black and white film someday but as of the moment, i do not have access to a b &w film that can be processed using the c41. there is someplace i can get a b & w (fuji neopan) but it's processed using the d76. As far as i know, c41 is the only way most developing centers here process films.

but i am not complaining. just looking forward to the day i'd finally shoot in black and white.

Yulo Street, Iloilo City in the morning.

Quirino Bridge, Iloilo City.
This bridge leads to Lapuz and Barrio Obrero, Lapaz.
The shadow belongs to my friend who took morning shots with me.

Arroyo Street, Iloilo City.

View of the grain silos from Muelle Loney Street, Iloilo City.

Forbes Bridge, Iloilo City
(It connects the "island" city to the main Panay Island.)

a modern building at Bonifacio Drive, Iloilo City.
(One of the buildings in the City that i like.)

Another view.

Former Iloilo Rehabilitation Center (IRC). 

Guimaras Museum.

Masonry of the crumbling old Spanish building that once housed the United Distillers.

Window space, abandoned architecture.

  

Gaisano City, Iloilo City.

Abandoned architecture.

Abandoned but drawn on architecture.

Wall. Abandoned architecture.

Boyz in the hood.

  

Husband and wife.

man portrait.

Man portrait.

Teen portrait.

 They were hungry. They looked very hungry. It was not good for us to come there and took their pictures but they wanted us to photograph them, and i still feel guilty for having somehow exploited their poverty for a "good photograph". 

We thanked them, gave some small change for coffee and left hurriedly.

Telloy.
He cuts my father in-law's hair, my husband's and now, my  son's.
Then one day, at work, my female boss told me she'd be out early for a haircut.
"Who does your hair?" I curiously asked her.
"Oh, the neighborhood hair-cutter Telloy. It's where the old (not to mean age-related) Ilonggos have their hair cut."

Waway.
He drives a sikad (pedicab).

Chris.

The three stooges.

Boat men.
They willingly let me into their parked boat so i could take a picture of the water taxis.
I am still not comfortable taking pictures of strangers but they requested that i take their picture.
I think they expected to view the shot after but i told them i'm on film. 

Telloy in his shop.

Water taxis.

VIrginia Bridge, Guimbal.

I dedicated some 20 slides for that morning's picture-taking. On my way home, i again took the very back seat in the van expecting to get a better picture of the Virginia Bridge. 

And i did. 

FIN.

Books and I.

“One of these days, I will set your books on fire,” my mother told a depressive 2003 version of me.

It was almost a week since I had my presence felt around the house. The truth is, the books did not keep me preoccupied because as far as I remember, it was my intention to become invisible at home. It so happened that I had books in my room and my mother caught me several times in bed with Franny and Zooey. I didn’t panic because the least that a depressed person usually feels is concern for anything.

Frankly though, books, next to music, saved me.  

I was sent away to live with strangers when I was in high school. I stayed in a boarding house, sharing a very small room with two more students. Sometimes it was with a college student, other times with a high school. In those times we didn’t do much except study, netbooks and ipods were a thing of a future and the biggest mall in the city was just a large version of a grocery store. One of us brought a stereo cassette player and all the boarders would share in the free music.

In our little boarding house reading became our way to spend our leisure time. There, in our little house we formed groups based on literary genres—if you can call it such. I remember the two distinct groups: the romance novel group and (for the lack of better group name) the non-romance novel group. This non-romance group read varied stuffs, from the Melville, Kafka, Agatha Christie, and the pop-horror Stephen King. Sometimes these two groups merged, particularly when the topic of Sweet Dreams comes upon. In the romance section, I only went as far as Mills and Boons, my first introduction was when I was in grade 5 (11 years old) bored with nothing to read for summer. My mother had, in our rickety rattan bookshelf, some twenty something Mills and Boons (which I’m not sure if she’d read) given to her by a friend for safekeeping. What I’m not sure though, was, if Mills and Boon was my first introduction to “dirty books”, but I stayed away from them when an older person told me it had “dirty parts”. (What that old person didn’t know was, I already knew about the dirty parts.) My board mates however, were fond of Judith McNaught. Romance novels, like exotic foods, are acquired tastes and it was a taste i never did acquire. 

Looking back, it seemed that weekends in those days were very lonely, and comparing it to the lifestyle that kids now have, we’d be the geekiest lot. We spent our Saturdays holed up in our rooms, finishing a novel or two. Some of our housemates start as early as Friday night if the books were interesting enough, finishing 2-3 novels by Sunday. Book rental stores were in vogue 10-15 years ago and it was our habit to rent a handful of books for weekend reading.

I eventually developed dependence on books—and music—to keep me company, and to help me not make unnecessary small talk when I am around people I do not like to associate with.

My love for books was a double edged-sword. While I was gradually becoming better at my literary tastes and my skills in writing, my drive to focus on my academics waned. Arriving from school (already in university), I would plop myself in the most comfortable corner of my bed and read. Staying up very late reading, Having stayed up late reading, I would come to class tired, lethargic and impatient for the day to end so I could go home and melt in my bed reading. Reading (or reading for leisure) proved to be an addiction that led to my eventual failure, but it is a habit I never regretted getting. What I regretted was appreciating my textbooks too late; because when you’re a rebel and you’re hip, staying out of school and dissuading your textbooks seemed the coolest thing to do.

I found work in the city and moved out of my parent’s, leaving a good collection of second hand books, some, rare out-of-print editions. It has always been a strictly enforced rule of mine that all of my books are for “room use only”, having lost many from avid borrowers and admirers of my library. One day, our schoolgirl braved to browse through my dresser-pseudo-bookshelf and found out that most of them were just for show. The termites have eaten through 80% of my books and all that remained of them were the spines, a horrid reminder to a self-absorbed, book-hoarder me. My mother kept the news a secret, the way she kept the news about the death of my dog from me, convincing my younger sister (at that time my city roommate) to break it to me when the time is right. My mother salvaged all that’s been clean of live termites, stacking them inside the straw sacks. I told them to burn everything that isn’t readable anymore, but when I returned years after they were still there. Books with covers so pristine but once turned over, is nothing but a big hole right  the middle of the back cover straight through page 1.

I stopped buying books for a while after that and never went anywhere near Booksale. I also considered blaming my parents for the lack of bookshelf in our house considering that all of their children are avid readers, but I know that is not right because if there is a thing that should be blamed, it is the termites. And maybe myself.

When i was a graduate student, pregnant, out of work with lots of time and learning from past mistakes, I read and worked hard in my academics. Thanks to ABD, I found a connection in creative writing and my field of study. Creative non-fiction and I were a perfect match and I need not give up on my line of work to be able to write imaginatively. It was then that I re-discovered my love for books, books that tell stories, stories that are real.

My collection is growing again, albeit more expensive one this time, especially with that of my husband’s combined. Last night, avoiding the rush hour congestion, the three of us—husband, kid and I—went to the second hand books store hoping to find a cheap addition to our mini-library. I bought 4—Larry McMurtry’s Roads (and a bonus of 3 museum passes, a boarding pass of London-Istanbul trip of the book's previous owner), Gunter Grass’ Peeling the Onion (PHP20.00 only!), James Wood’s How Fiction Works, a socio-ethnography book and something about the war Iraq (again—I already have about 4 books about the war in Iraq). My fascination with war diaries and war stories came after the invitation to join a project in Afghanistan, which, much to my husband’s delight, did not push through—my joining, not the project.  Husband wanted to buy the Museum and Art Spaces book, thought it was expensive and accidentally found Phillip Nobel’s Sixteen Acres instead. He checked out the book because the title font was interesting, and found a gem.

 

Books. Books are the most reliable material friend to have around. They will never let you down and they will never leave you unless you intentionally lose them or let them go, or unless your mother sets them on fire. 

FIN.

Photo posts

I use the YKL100 (fuji)--it's a very cheap film. costs about PHP72.00 for a roll of 36 shots. There's a more expensive kind (still cheap, though) Fujicolor film, which costs around PHP90something pesos for a roll for 36 shots. Both films are developed using the c-41 process.

I wanted to try black and white photography but we do not have black and white films here. And also because i don't think the photo shops here still develop black and white photos. I think some black and white films can be developed using the c-41.

I wish i have somebody to talk to on this matter because most of the information i have i got from film photography forums whose members are mostly from north america, places with at least several options when it comes to film processing.

Also i want to learn darkroom developing but i'm not sure if i can acquire the chemicals cheaply. but the main reason i can't try it (even with the chemicals available) is the lack of space. We barely fit in our own little apartment. (yeah, we sleep side by side the pots and pans, actually.)

I have my films processed at the FUJI photo shop (can;t recall the official store name). They develop the film at PHP60.00 and it only takes an hour for them to do it. I went to Kodak but i get bewildered looks when i told the photo lady i would have a FILM developed.

"Film, Ma'am?"
"Yes, film."


She went to call the other photo lady.


"Yes, Ma'am?"
"I want to have my film developed?"

"Film, Ma'am?"

"Yes, film."

"Not digital?"
"Film, not digital," and i showed her the cartridge.

The two ladies look at each other.

"Oh, digital takes only minutes to print for film it would take a day."
"I will only have it DO'd."

Again, surprised look

"I will have the film developed then when the film comes back i will choose which i would want printed."
"It will still take a day, ma'am. We really have a lot of clients waiting for printing right now."

So i left and went to FUJI.

here are the pictures.

Duck.
(Taken by Kit)

Mary.

Gina.

Gogol.

Kit and Gogol.

Aluminum cup, box of cookies and bell. 

Bell.

Lola Pila. 101 years old.

Lola Pila. 101 years old, wearing her DIY bell-necklace.

Lola Pila. 101 years old.

Lola Pila. 101 years old.

Rej and Lola Pila. 

Rosarito.

University of San Agustin waiting shed.

Virginia Bridge.

San Jose, Antique.

UP Visayas.

Hospital maintenance center.

Full moon.

that's it!