Mobile Reading

I don’t have a kindle. I haven’t seen a kindle and I can't see myself having a kindle in the near future. For some like me who can’t even afford a decent pair of running shoes, mobile books like kindle is the last thing in my mind.

But in the last 3 years of constant public transport commuting (read: jeepney/PUJs) from Jaro to Iloilo City downtown has proved stressful because, of the worsening traffic congested. It used to be a lot easier when the flyovers were non-existent and when LTFRB did not “sell” jeepney franchises like hot pandesal. (Those who say otherwise, raise your hand!)

I've recently knew that traffic congestion is one of the many stressors to a city resident, leading eventually to heart diseases and, well yes, premature death due to road rages.


My solution: read.

Read a book.

I have recently rekindled (no pun intended) my love for writing and reading, and I've amassed quite a number of books in the past few months. Most of them I bought because I wanted to write better.

My love for mobile reading, I discovered while reading J.R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar. Mine is a hardbound copy with about 370 pages and I finished reading it in about a month, I guess.

It’s slow read, when you come to think of it, but I did it during my 20-minute jeepney rides from Jaro to my office in downtown Iloilo City. I realized that if I kept myself busy with the book I would not take notice of the clumsiness and the road butchery of the public transport drivers. And yes it helped, most of the time.

Prior to Moehringer’s, I’ve already started trying, first with Tom Wolfe’s From Bauhaus to Our House. 

Keith bought it about 8 years ago, along with Albert Camus’ The Stranger, which, thanks to the termites, has been wiped out from my collection. Bauhaus to our House was a difficult read for me because I was practically unfamiliar with the names of all modern architecture gods mentioned in the book. I also didn't understand Wolfe’s point—did he actually like the transformation to modernism of his beloved America or did he hate it? Sarcastic? Funny? So I had to read it again. And again—the third time I started highlighting the architects' names and the name of the buildings mentioned. Incidentally, I’ve started my love affair with pushpullbar and some other architecture readings so Wolfe’s became easier to understand. I got his point. Or so I think.

With Booksale conveniently located at the mall across where I work, I was practically hooked. Next I bought was Over the Moat: Love Among the Ruins of Imperial Vietnam, written by James Sullivan. 

I was never a fan of love stories. In fact, the last love story book I recall reading was that of Sweet dreams, back in my elementary days. It was also because my father banned these kinds of books at home. I bought James Sullivan's book because at that time, I did't have a husband-writing-about-his-wife book and because it’s about Vietnam. My roster also lacked a memoir about Asia. I have nothing on travelling, more so about travelling in Asia. I thought finding this book was timely. I finished the book in 3 weeks. Again, slow read because I was still adjusting to the art of reading inside a full-packed, overspeeding jeepney.

Then there came Candyfreak which I totally enjoyed. It was written by Steve Almond, a candy-loving Jew, and proud to be one. I think I bought it together with that Sullivan book. Because it was so funny and because I enjoyed every page of it, plus the fact that I have virtually mastered the reading the seemingly rollercoaster-ride that is the jeepney, I was able to finished it in a much shorter time. And also because, it was an easy read. Tender Bar was also beautiful, but it required a more detailed reading. When I was almost done with the book, I found my 3 year-old son one night, running his beloved scissor on its cover, so silent, like a ninja. Three slits. The next day, I brought it with me, unrepaired—three slits on the cover and all. I’ve almost forgotten how weird the book looked until I saw a handful of people staring at the book I was reading. 

Two of the most emotional books I read on the jeepney were Change me into Zeus Daughter by Barbara Robinette Moss, and Shot in the Heart by Mikal Gilmore. I bought Moss’ book because it's a memoir about a family. 

Plus, it was written by a woman. I still didn’t have that kind of book in my collection. Gilmore’s, I bought because it was a memoir written by a brother about an older brother in death row. Again, I still didn’t have that kind of book with me. Of all the books I read, these two were perhaps the most engaging because even when I was home, I read them before going to sleep and right after I wake up. It came to a point where I asked my kid to sleep on his own minus our reading of baby books routine because I couldn't wait to read my own books.
These two are hardbound, wider than the average size of the books and therefore, heavier. The stories were as heavy as the books.

These days, my jeepney companion is Daniel Treiber’s Frank Lloyd Wright. Again, it’s a difficult read because as much as i hated to admit it, I’m pretty low on the visual and spatial intelligence. 

Descriptions about the roof, the house lay-out, the panelings and glazings and all that stuff are hard for me to imagine. I would spend more time staring at the pictures of the houses than their descriptions. But even if that is so, there's no denying that this books has clearly showed how advanced FLW is for his time. Frankly, even if i'm a fan of modern architecture, Taliesin (East) remains to be a dream house. So there, that’s Wright education for me, courtesy of Keith.

The National Geographic Magazine is also a constant companion and every time a subscription arrives, I leave my book behind and bring this along. It takes me about a week to finish a magazine. By the time I’m done, the cover is wrinkled in faded from wrestling with all the knick knacks in my bag.


Reading is really fun. Cliché as it may, it’s my number 1 stress reliever. And maybe you should try it too. Especially when you’re in the middle of a terrible traffic congestion. But of course, not when you are the one driving.

Fin.

ED.u.Cate.

A teacher friend, ABD, just sent his whole class outside. I thought it must be the 2-hour brown-outs. I was wrong; said it’s not PECO-related but brain-da related.

It’s is just not the only but one of the many whines I would often her from my teacher friends: students just getting dumber and dumber.

(News is…there’s a budget cut for the state universities. I wonder where that will lead us.) 

I wish to present a listing of valuable statistics on the decline of Philippine education but I still don’t have them.

One of my bosses, a former university professor, says the same. Teaching post-bacc is getting to be more and more frustrating because each year, students, she said, seem to be getting dumber and dumber.


What about us? In what spectrum of dumbness do we belong?

Then again…perhaps it’s where we are really heading? (If you googled for “Philippine education+students getting dumber” you’d get links to articles not only talking about Philippines dumbness.) Who knows what the teachers complained about me, or my batch perhaps? – students getting lazier to edit because of MS Word spellcheck and grammar auto detect? And how about the students, decades before? And the ones before? I’m wondering what the Egyptians or the Incans would complain when they see us now. Maybe laugh at our buildings and the atrocious planning? I’ll give them the liberty because after all, the Burj Dubai is really nothing compared to Machu Picchu.

Sending students out do not help, ABD knows that but sometimes it’s really too much. Either that or a heart attack. I will choose sending them out. Better to preserve ABD than a class of 30 morons. 

On to another friend. He helps students make their papers readable. He’s rather amazing, this friend of mine, because he’d actually allow himself to be subjected to such torture. He does it for a pay of course, and frankly, the pay is chicken feed compared to what these dumb students are subjecting him to. On some occasions where, I’d help revise a chapter or two, sometimes he’d beg me to help him. revising requires a lot of mental preparation. To prepare, I’d scan the first page, pencil in hand, to see the extent of work I’d have to do. Seldom would I encounter a paragraph, more so a sentence, that does not need any form of revision. And patience is a virtue that I always try to keep but standards is something else and before I lose them both, I’d resort to revising the whole first page. It doesn’t end there. Eventually, the decision would be to revise the whole chapter. It's no use revising a chapter what can be more clearly explained in 2 paragraphs (because the remaining 80% of the chapter is pure trash--apparently there's too much copying and pasting that happened).

This kind of black market “employment” is not commendable in the university where ABD, paper-revising friend (PRF)and I come from. I personally keep mum about it because it embarrasses me. I do not want to be called a thesis reviser, nor the local version of Recto. But I understand how it works with PRF—he has actually had a handful of “best in thesis” (both masters and undergrad) in his portfolio and numerous network established because of it. He should be proud of this achievement, and of the fact that in all of those things he’s done, he’s virtually made himself a dengue expert, a peace and order expert, a computer science expert, a childcare expert, to name a few. He learns a lot from them, I wonder if the experience is the same to the other party.

Of course, PRF learns from them because that how he’s reared by our university, the way ABD and myself were reared also. We know learning does not end after university education (and motherhood—thou shouldn't be your children’s slaves).

So how do we really make these dumbasses want to love school? How do we make them ask intelligent questions? How do we make them learn to problematize (beyond the “how’s” in getting the latest model iphone or ipod, or the latest in facebook), feed their curiosity, make them go to the library, make them read book other than their text books, make them work on their paper—not by copying and pasting, but, this time, by using their head, when we've practically done everything possible?

Dumbasses and morons, stand up. It’s time you defended yourselves.

dialect tics

This weekend, while discussing our recent personal projects, among others, i happened to mention the "workshop-workshop " that I've participated in these past few months. Liby (he doesn't have a site i could link his name to but i think  THIS will do) grinned. And mentioned something about people repeating words. I was confused there a bit (in short, nag-mango ng 5 seconds) until he mentioned "theater-theater" and the thing i just uttered: "workshop-workshop". Apparently, he found this practice rather weird and i was compelled to explain, despite my obvious lack of expertise in linguistics.

It's not only Liby who's pointed this out to me-- the tendency of Filipinos, if not just Ilonggos, to repeat words( and even names – my nickname is Bimbim, my brother, Dindin). I've been asked by my Japanese boss about this before. Take (ang) saya saya (tagalog phrase meaning "very happy/utmost happiness"), for example. Doubling saya here does not entirely change the meaning of the word--the context maybe? -- and saya can certainly stand on its own. On the other hand paro-paro which, if devoid of its other half would mean nothing (maybe like the funny word: irregardless). The Japanese language, however (as per story of my boss) has a different story to tell. One example is this: Japanese language technically assigned cho-cho as the equivalent of butterfly but one can just use cho and it would still mean the same: butterfly. Tagalogs do not and will not call the butterfly by its half-a-name, paro. We kiniray-a and hiligaynon speakers don't cut the name short to alibang either. Alibangbang. it's always alibangbang. (Boss mentioned other japanese words but of course i cannot recall any of them anymore.)

"Maybe it's a form of humility," I say, referring to "workshop-workshop" and "theater-theater". I'm not trying to say that by using the "workshop-workshop" the writing workshops I've been involved in are lesser in value than those considered by the literature majors the "ultimates". ABD is a wonderful mentor. He's inspired me in many ways than i could possibly think of, and i am completely satisfied by what i'm getting from all of these WS's. I meant to say “workshop-workshop” because I am not gaining any additional scholastic degree from it, nor will I be given additional academic credits. But no, it is not something that I do not take seriously.

And comes the remembering: when we say dugay-dugay (short pronunciation, not the /doooogay-doooogay/, which has a different meaning), we mean "sooner" than soon. Medyo-medyo = lesser version of medyo. I'm not sure about sala-sala, though. But it seems to me that this becomes some form of a mockery to the doer.

Ms. Raj's speech, in my opinion, is a direct result of this language quirkiness of ours. "Major-major" to signify a lesser form of the "major" -- or maybe she meant the opposite?

Gamay-gamay, dako-dako, hinay-hinay, todo-todo, laba-laba, lip-ot - lip-ot – doubling them rather exponentially changes the meaning of the "singles" (imagine: gamay squared), unlike the medyo-medyo.


Hmm…that is really something I should read about.

But then, the listener seemed satisfied by my short, amateurish explanation, and i don't think i'd like to expound further. He got up and went to look for the missing head of his wayang golek.


Fin.