Decompress

artwork by our venerable tatang

if my office was a person, this post would probably be the equivalent of me looking deep into his eyes and letting out a lovesick, contented, delirious sigh. have i already mentioned that i love my workplace?

starry-eyed muni-muni aside, this looks like fun. i haven't drawn in ages -- the last time i seriously put pen to paper was doing the collage for kooky's (still unreleased) book, and that doesn't really count as drawing.

i used to draw and paint a whole lot when i was younger; then i hit puberty, lost the ability to focus, and started getting impatient. if i couldn't finish it in ten minutes, then i wasn't going to finish it, period. i took a once-a-week, three-hour-long art elective in college, where i was forced to take time with my work. the fruits of my labor were not bad at all, if i may say so myself, and i took to keeping a visual journal.

ironically, now that i work with a very visual medium, i've fallen out of touch with that part of me. although ideas are demanded of me on a daily basis, five-, fifteen-, and thirty-second bursts of words have become my way of putting those ideas across. sometimes i worry that i'm getting spoiled by having a creative juggernaut of a partner who creates visuals to match my words.

i can imagine that this coming wednesday will be extremely hectic (what with me flying off to palawan the next day!!!!), but this looks like something i should make time for. katuwaan lang naman, diba?. at may tsitsirya pa!

Meet the Captain

captain burbur

captain burbur hails from planet ocean park, in the distant galaxy of hong kong. while in his home galaxy, he was known to those who knew him (umm, bale dalawa lang kami ni marlon) by the unremarkable, if obscure, name of fu chi.

upon reaching philippine shores, he found himself possessed of powers mysterious and magnificent -- making him thoroughly deserving, he reasoned, of an equally magnificent new image and epithet.

newly clothed in a sticky, paper-thin (but virtually indestructible, of course) breastplate, a cape generously loaned to him by a neighbor named spawn f. igurine, and the vivid memory of a local matinee idol's cotton-mouthed superhero shout, he took upon the magnificent persona of captain burbur!

he stands a proud and valiant guardian over precious founts of inspiration and magic, as well as powerful magnetic fields filled with marvelous sounds and images. and his adventures have only just begun.

sundan ang pakikipagsapalaran ni captain burbur... ang pinakabigating oso ng bayan!

(so now i guess you know what account i handle. and how nutty things can get at the office by week's end.)

Franklin returns

back at the factory, one of the straws that broke this camel’s back was the introduction of a “personal productivity tool” called, innocuously enough, the myFranklin. named after the much-touted franklin planner that many factory higher-ups swore by, it was reconstituted from a thick black zip-up daybook into an excel spreadsheet with a dizzying number of cells, which we had to fill up with word counts and hours (or fractions of hours) we spent achieving those word counts.

image from www.geek.com

a number of us lower-order drones used the actual franklin planner, but the staid black, zip-up bible-like casing scared me – i felt my stubborn loyalty to my lonely planner would save me from being thoroughly assimilated by the factory. if the franklin planner in its book form gave me the heebie jeebies, its electronic incarnation had the power to draw blood from the very pores of my scalp.

here was something that literally forced our work, our skills, our very art (if you’re the type to take your profession as your art) into miniscule boxes and numbers that were forced lower and lower (well, lower for man-hours and higher for word counts), all in the in the name of the two-faced factory god, “personal productivity.” i say two-faced because way even after i left, nobody had yet come up with the brilliant plan that would transform all those cells and decimals into an actual, actionable productivity strategy. (j, meron na nga ba?)

anyway, why am i bringing up such a horrid memory? ironically enough, it’s because, in a way, the myFranklin has followed me to my new digs. my creative sanctuary, my wonderful office, with mucha and michaelangelo splashed on its walls and ceilings, has been invaded by the deadly excel sheet! aaaugh!

this time, though, the time-tallying is for a behemoth-wide efficiency audit, and the make-your-own-format spreadsheet is called, for lack of a better term, the daily diary. after the token rebellion, we creatives decided to hunker down and fill up those damned spreadsheets because, well, they aren’t really limiting or violating – they’re simply out of character for a workplace like ours. personally, i felt that unlike the myFranklin, the underlying objective and productivity strategy gave birth to the tool, and not the other way around. and i’m all for that.

plus, the daily diaries started to look even better when we realized we could use them to inform the powers-that-be of the inefficiencies that make our lives hellish. especially the ones that look like this –

2:00pm-6:30pm forced break (waiting for video material)
actual excerpt from my daily diary

so while some of us have to get our creative skills cracking (“mentoring”, “research”, “field work” and “brainstorming” now take up a *cough* significantly larger chunk of our time), it’s all good for now. i’m on the side of anyone or anything that wants to get me home earlier.

'Nlabo

… ng IE! WATDAPAK HAS HAPPENED TO MY BLOG?

firefox people, what does it look like to you? (rorschach test ito.)

Water, water everywhere

lion in the rain

first, the heng keng weather.

there were probably no two people more desperate determined to have a good time in heng keng that weekend than marlon and i. we soldiered on against the elements, despite the fact that the only protection we had thought to bring against the rain was closed flats (me) and a big red jacket (the boyf).

we made our way up victoria peak in the rain, and marveled at all the fog ("wow sweetie! so mats fag!") where we should have been thrilling to a clear, 360-degree view of hong kong. our supposed "lunch with a view" at cafe deco on the peak turned out to be "lunch with a backdrop of construction workers, bamboo scaffolding and white nothingness", but no, todo emote pa rin kami.

spot the difference

if not for a major downpour at ocean park, we probably wouldn't even have bought an umbrella. "this better have an ocean park logo on it", grumbled the boyf as he forked over hk$ 89 for a plain blue umbrella. siyempre, pag bukas namin, wala.

ocean park was probably the closest we (or maybe just i) came to giving up on the whole idea of having a good time. it was a typical bara-bara couple scenario -- the rides were closed because of the rain; we were late to the first dolphin show; and i had come to the horrific realization that i was wearing ancient mongolian torture devices disguised as flats. braving hordes that made sentosa seem like a happy memory, i sloshed forward in the rain until we collapsed in a cold, damp and almost-miserable heap in the ocean park theater.

i've seen this show once before as a kid, but the dolphins were worth it. anything that can erase oozing blisters from your mind for at least an hour are indeed God's most brilliant creations. having had our feel-good factor boosted by the dolphins, we cheerily whiled away the rest of the afternoon playing "spot-the-incoming-pirated-goods" from our perch, as well as "where-the-crap-is-that-panda" at the panda habitat.

second, the new account (a.k.a. the obsession).

shortly after nabbing the new project, i made it a point to go home early one weekday evening and curl up in bed with chocolate, pen and paper, and a tagalog-english dictionary. i was pleasantly surprised to find that we have so many tagalog words pertaining to water that all begin with the letter "A" -- perfect for my purposes.

so, yeah, it's a water thing. words fail me when i try to communicate how excited i am about it, since it will entail seeing my all-time office crush clad in something skintight, waterproof and (hopefully) skimpy.

at the moment, charlie and i have water on the brain. we're not the only ones either -- the father-daughter team being considered to do photography for this account has been doing water-y test shots. the daughter photog has invited me to do test shots with them twice now -- and the weird thing is, she doesn't seem to be kidding.

daughter: "deepa ha, next week magdala ka ng mga gown-gown, mag-test shots ulit tayo? ang pangit kasi nung model namin."

me: "sa bagay no, may baleña din naman sa dagat."

cut to me dressed as a giant pusit: "i'm ready for my closeup!"

cut to me presenting test shots to client: "and this is the visual treatment we had in mind for the account -- ay, oo nga no, ako pala 'yan, ehehehe..." (cue nervous laughter)

uh, okay.

Endorphins!

after seven rounds of boxing, i plopped, drenched in sweat and purple in the face, on the floor to roll up my hand wraps. i looked outside and said to myself -- it's such a beautiful day!

grabe pala ang nagagawa ng endorphins no? pre-boxing, i would have spent this saturday locked up in my room lolling around in bed, munching on something, and luxuriating in the feeling of being absolutely brain dead.

ah, onga pala. i box now. i didn't want to blog about it until i felt i was really committed. baka ma-capoeira kasi ako. as you probably guessed, my silence about it means i never went back after the first session. the shame, the shame! but since i've been boxing religiously, thrice a week for a month now (well, except for the week i had an injured wrist) and since i just plunked down two grand for my very own boxing gloves and jumping rope, i figured it was safe to finally write about it.

i thought i would pass out halfway through my trial round (i literally gasped "diyos ko, ang puso ko!" much to the amusement of my trainer), but in the past few weeks i've grown to really like both boxing and my boxing gym -- red corner on panay avenue, near the office. feeling ko super sulit siya, since i get one-on-one training. i always get tickled whenever one of the trainers -- all rough-and-tumble ex-boxer types-- says something like "tara na, babanatan kita sa abs ngayon!" or "hayaan mo, papapayatin ka namin!" it actually makes me feel like there's hope for my body! haha. in fairness, the locker room attendant said to me this afternoon, "ma'am, pumapayat ka na!"

my weird, never-routine workdays have actually made it easy for me to keep to my thrice-a-week commitment. i steal away from work while waiting for my daily plug material to arrive, which takes the edge off the fact that i even have to spend so much of my day just waiting. so it looks like i'm this for the long haul, or at least until makabawi ako sa gloves ko (which is about three months based on the per-session rental cost of gloves at the gym -- gawd i'm such a cheapskate.)

september will be the ultimate test of my commitment -- hello, nightly rehearsals for acs, the launch of my newest baby, plus boxing? good luck to me! kapayatan na sana ito!

Ramblings of a travel bug

update: tried getting a feel of both barcelona and madrid via flickr. seeing all the eye candy each place has to offer isn't helping me choose, but it sure is fun to look at.

so, where to, where to? check out barcelona and madrid and let me know what you guys think!

--

the obsession has barely begun, and already my workdays are getting more and more packed. thankfully, i always manage to force some spare minutes (that, admittedly, add up to hours) into my day.

and lately, aside from a smattering of the requisite online haunts, i've been spending a hefty chunk of my free time over at lonely planet (with the occasional side trips to renfe and msn travel, currently on beta). i've been on a happy mini-quest the past couple of days: after tolosa, should i madrid or barcelona?

the answer still eludes me. both are trainable from san sebastian (what seems to be the closest cosmopolitan area to tolosa). one has the prado (and can be a jump-off point to quite a number of intriguing side trips, if my poor wallet doesn't die on me first) while the other has gaudi and, well, seems to be more alive.

other areas that interest me are granada (trainable from tolosa via madrid) and valencia (which doesn't seem trainable from tolosa at all, but maybe i'm just not looking in the right place). oh and i have to check on andalucia.

--

in related news, my contribution to the upcoming family vacay in palawan is putting the itinerary together, which is pretty much done. there's not much booking to do apart from the hotel, and one can hardly be anal about anything when my family is involved.

pero parang nakakapansin na ako a. when there's a trip to be planned, i end up planning most of it. this is especially true of recent trips with the boyf. so much so that i realized he was half-expecting me to book a hotel room for him on one of his personal (non-work related) trips home recently. i'm not so in love that i couldn't tell him to stuff it, and he (dutifully, but a bit dazed) booked his own room like a good little jet-setting yuppie.

otherwise, i actually don't mind -- reading up on the destination and planning the itinerary actually psychs me up and puts me in the mood for a trip. plus, oddly enough, it makes me really look forward to the boyf proposing someday -- it'll be his turn to wrestle with logistics, moooahahahaha.

It begins

the first job order is sitting expectantly on my desk.

charlie and i have cracked open the art nouveau books. (charlie: “shet sumasakit ang ulo ko.” me: “bakit?” charlie: “sumasakit ang ulo sa sobrang gusto kong gawin ‘to.”)

we’ve set our first chicken barbecue (official food for brainstorming) appointment at our friendly neighborhood gotohan for 10 p.m. tonight.

let the obsession begin.

Office politics

warning: i'm trying to process something at the moment, so i might just end up rambling.

i actually wanted to write about work in the same post as one of my more memorable hong kong moments -- may something in common kasi sila. (or who knows, i might still. hmm.) but i think i'm too excited about my newest assignment to wait any longer.

the telltale sign of an obsession in the offing: i invested over a grand on new books with my latest project in mind, all the while mumbling to myself that i have reimbursible allowance for (supposedly) work-related expenses. i might have used work as an excuse to buy myself these gorgeous books, since i've actually been interested in klimt and mucha, and in art nouveau, for the longest time. i even had an art nouveau stained glass coloring book when i was in grade school.

so i was delighted when charlie (my partner at work) told me he'd been eyeing this style for our new baby. he'd been inspired by the giant mucha stickers on the glass walls of our pantry. sometimes i really love my office -- especially when the things put in it to inspire you actually work!

or maybe i bought the books to make me feel better about landing this project.

see, this particular account has had practically everyone in my unit drooling for over a year -- way before i started working here. it's a dream project -- big budget, great concept, super-organized and dynamic client. when i saw the material the production team was drawing inspiration from, i was hooked too.

i didn't keep the fact that i wanted the project a secret. none of us did except, ironically, the very team assigned to the account. one of the people on that team, a good friend of mine, was so deadma (or was it nega?) that every time we spoke about the project i got the feeling she didn't give a rat's ass about it.

as they say, be careful what you wish for -- it might come true. by some twist of fate my boss decided to yank out the project from under that team's nose, and tossed it into my and charlie's laps, triggering a rigodon of accounts within my unit. to my surprise (and horror), my friend on the other team was crushed when my boss broke the news to her. and so friday night, guilt was forcing me thisclose to giving up the account.

somehow i kept on thinking of my major takeaway from my factory days, and (ugh i hate to admit it) from the big bald man. he told me that "typical filipino employees" don't speak up about how they feel about work (out of, i guess, hiya). they somehow expect their bosses to read their minds, and develop all this angst when their concerns aren't addressed or their sentiments taken into account. he also told me that he hadn't expected i would be that way.

and somehow, i guess i resolved back then to prove that i wasn't -- that i didn't want to be -- that "typical filipino employee" he took me for. so i've never had a problem speaking up about what i think at work, whether it's dissatisfaction or confusion or enthusiasm or whatnot. so much so that i get frustrated when i see officemates stuck in that "typical filipino employee" mindset. my friend is one of those people i constantly nag to get out of that frame of mind.

was i an evil person? pinulitika ko ba ito? did i inadvertently manipulate a person or situation to get what i wanted? should i have just shut up about the project and not let anyone know what i felt about it (eh hindi nga ako ganun eh.) or should the team in question just have shown a leetle more enthusiasm for the project?

maybe i bought the books to make myself feel better, and to revive some of the original enthusiasm for the project that was dampened by guilt. and maybe i bought them to assert my ownership too. the account is my responsibility now and i'm going to give it my best shot, guilt or no guilt. good luck to me -- sana hindi ako masyadong ma-obsess, at sana lang may kaibigan pa kami ni charlie pagkatapos nito. haha.

random rant: it's nine in the morning on a monday and the resident office d.o.m. is playing makeout music f*ck me-i'm-high-on-ecstasy music trance. isn't it a tad bit early to be thinking about getting sweaty with someone half your age?

Three

happiness by the harbor

in hindsight, there was no other way we could have celebrated our third year anniversary.

different. a little surreal at times (planing in from two different countries to meet in one of the world's busiest airports? definitely surreal). not without its difficulties (in this instance, two words: ocean park). but always, always, full of love and laughter (and a little too much food.)

three years, and we're stronger than ever. i love you, sweetie.

Quickies

got lots to tell about the heng keng junket, but i can only manage itty-bitty posts here and there. not only do i have an injured wrist from boxing (yes, boxing, you read that right) and can barely type, but things are a-brewing at work as well and i'm eager to write about those developments.

in the meantime, check out my heng keng photos on flickr.

Live it, love it

Rain, rain go away

just got back from the third anniversary junket to heng keng. after whirling about the city in a daze for most of my first day there, i found that i had been mentally bracing myself for a thoroughly crappy hong kong experience.

at first i thought it was the literally the black stormcloud looming over our weekend (g had sent me a heads up on the crappy weather conditions the night before). as you can see on the left, our welcoming committee consisted of a less-than-picturesque mix of chinese street signs and british weather.

later on, i realized that wasn't the real black cloud hanging over my head, but one simple, emotionally loaded question. it was my mom asked me over a year ago, when i was still working for the factory. we'd been talking about how relocation to hong kong seemed to be as much as a goal as an eventuality for promising factory people, including -- it would seem -- myself.

then she let the bomb drop. "who wants to work in sh*tty hong kong?"

in it was all the resentment and bitterness she felt about my dad's experience as an expat in hong kong right before he died; how she felt, in a way, that what happened to him -- to them -- there led to the irreparable damage to his heart, to her life, to their hopes, to our life as a family.

i told marlon about this as we walked in a hong kong that seemed so full of light and life. all i could say at the time was, "it's not shitty at all." but now i know what i really want to say -- expectations and disappointments, parallels and differences, past and future all taken to heart.

it's such a blessing when, every now and again, things turn out differently.

Buti na lang

buti na lang maghe-heng keng ako tomorrow. buti na lang talaga. kung hindi, may nasapak na akong editor kanina. isn't it just pathetic when a naturally bobo person intentionally acts even MORE bobo just so he can piss you off? (note to self: when must piss off someone, attempt to do it by acting really, annoyingly smart.)

ANYWAYYYYYY. just a couple of things left to do before tomorrow -- print out my carefully (carefully daw!) researched itinerary, put the finishing touches on my gift to marlon, and pack my bags. then it's happy happy heng keng weekend! -- hugs at the airport, dinner with jambi+g+c, the great anniversary gift swap, and (hopefully) enough sightseeing and shopping to last me until the travel bug demands to be fed once more.

toodles ;-)

Pump it

black eyed peas. araneta coliseum. july 27, thursday. tickets at 5k, 3k, 1.5k and 500.

the high school hip-hopper in me is breaking out the tight top and big pants at this very moment. thank goodness though—i’m no longer that high school hip-hopper, and can actually afford decent seats.

i am so getting on the phone to reserve my ticket now, now, now! who wants to watch with me?

Anticipation

so here's the plan, sort of.

hong kong this weekend. (the boyf and i are celebrating our third year together.)

palawan in july. (the first family vacation in gawd knows how long.)

france in october. (choir pimpage.)

spain in november. (competing, as the acs, for the very first time.)

i can't wait.

The sari that launched a template

The sari that started it all

update: is it just me, or has everything on this page -- except this post -- gone italic? is it a firefox thing? gaaah!

back to our regular programming.

the inspiration for my spanking new template (care of the supertalented rina) came to me amidst a flurry of gorgeous silks and a hum of rapid bengali. that december afternoon, my indian relatives were taking me shopping for indian wedding garb, and my still-jetlagged head was a-spin traipsing about the crowded intersections and buzzing sidestreets of gariahat market.

there i was, sitting disoriented in a shop called “the silk house”, while aunts gabbered on about fabrics and colors (well that was my guess—it was all greek to me), the shopkeepers pulling out ream after ream of richly colored fabrics for my perusal.

then a flash of chameleon shimmer caught me. it makes me chuckle to remember muniya being taken by it too, and helping me protest against more silks being piled in front of me. “you like this one, right?” she asked me conspiratorially. after receiving a dazed nod from me, she erupted into a stream of tart bengali that ended in my lovely, pink-chameleon sari being rung up at the register and packed neatly into a long, flat box.

then we tumbled out into gariahat again, this time in search of sparkling goodies to drape my lobes, neck and wrists with – all matching, of course, the shining colored green-and-pink sari i held in my arms.

i’ve wanted to turn my blog green and pink since coming home from india with the sari tucked safely into my suitcase. it’s a reminder of the part of me i found there, among my family. i can still remember my grandmother saying, with unabashed pride and pleasure, “you look like a bengali girl”, the first time i modeled a sari for her.

it’s also a reminder of one of the most memorable times marlon and i have shared together. i will never forget the first christmas we spent on our own, or discovering my family with him by my side…
...or the panic that rose up in me as i realized, on the day of the wedding, that i had completely forgotten how to make the series of deft folds and tucks my aunt taught me. my mind was an utter blank, and i honestly thought i would not make it to the wedding. after over an hour of twirling futilely in yards of silk, i gave up. we called upon our resourceful muchachos to get a local girl from next door to do up my sari for me. marlon made sure to document the whole affair on video, should i be called upon to wear a sari again sometime in the future.

… or the first time i stepped out of the house swathed in all that silk. it was, to say the least, an interesting play of contrasts. the slightly unreal feeling of being utterly beautiful and regal was by the gripping paranoia that the sari would tumble around my ankles at any moment and leave me stark freaking naked. i glided down to the street only to tumble gracelessly into the four-wheel drive sent to pick us up.
so here it is, my newly sari-fied blog. eye candy (i hope) for you, and wonderful memories for me.