Home for the holidays

my flight home is tomorrow morning at 9:45 a.m. i've just finished packing, and have never packed so light for a week-long trip. well, light in terms of clothing that is -- i have two large plastic bags full of presents for family and friends, and that was my biggest motivation to keep my outfits down to a minimum. the presents also serve as placeholders in my suitcase -- for all the things i plan to shop for and bring back to singapore!

i've been in holiday mode since yesterday, a condition allowed by the surprising lack of activity at the office. this year's batch of clients, miraculously enough, celebrate christmas and are thus all on leave. apparently last year, the company was deluged by hindu and muslim clients, forcing everyone to work through the holidays. luckily, this year has allowed me to pretty much bum off. anticipation for my trip home has been building steadily throughout the day -- an anticipation that i've never ever felt before. after all, this is my first year away from home. the rush of excitement is a new and welcome feeling. 

marlon and i exchanged presents this evening after a very lazy dinner care of mcdonald's. i know, we should have some kind of elaborate christmas dinner, us being such foodies and this being our first christmas together, but i guess "holiday mode" has taken over at home as well. nobody wants to cook and clean -- not when there's a flight to catch tomorrow!

anyway, we agreed to do our gift swap (i hate it how they say "swop" here, hahaha) tonight because we were both giving each other something heavy and bulky. i want to do a show-and-tell with pictures, but suffice it to say we both loved each others' gifts! and marlon is playing with my gift to him right this very minute and has been doing so for the past hour. :-)

right now i'm a teeny bit apprehensive about the weight of my check-in luggage, and an itty bit sad about leaving rogue by herself for the next seven days, but all in all i am happy, content, at peace, and sort of full and buoyed up inside. just the way i want to be the day before christmas.

and so before i disappear into my internet void (i'm leaving the laptop here since all we have at mom's is a crappy dial-up connection), i just want to say: merry christmas everyone! i hope we all have a joyful, loving and peaceful christmas!

The tree tour!

it's time to take a mental break from work... which means it's time to take a tour of the paul-plazo christmas tree!

this is one of the first ornaments i made when i was still pretty clueless and just getting warmed up with the christmas spirit. i cut out little chinese children from a vintage - placemat that i shook-ed spirited away from the mint museum of toys cafe many months ago. i glued the cutouts on green paper, drew curlicues around it in gold ink, and stuck it on fuzzy red felt. i'm not too happy with how this turned out, so it's at the back of the tree.


next i wanted to make felt ornaments like the ones i saw on design*sponge, but i couldn't find felt that was thick or stiff enough. (moment of silence for all the "thick and stiff" jokes that are going through my head right now.) i tried, anyway -- they were cute, but i still wasn't too happy.


then i found an english-chinese dictionary in my paper collection -- and made word nerd ornaments! i used silver ribbon, glue and the words joy, reindeer, happy, celebrate, and Christmas.





as i was flipping through magazines for pictures to collage, i noticed that there seemed to be a surfeit of red shoes. so, with a bit of red felt and green paper, i made his and hers shoe ornaments! i was obviously not taking myself very seriously at this point.


so you think everything i made was along these nutty, kweng-kweng lines... think again! ito, career na!

following a how-to from the domino website, i made my absolute favorite and most labor-intensive set of ornaments. i started by printing and cutting out the handy template from the domino website, then gluing each piece on to thicker card stock for more durability. then i cut those pieces out and covered both sides with yellow and red-and-gold handmade paper that i bought on insa-dong street in seoul -- gorgeous, gorgeous printed paper that i've been saving for months. i only made eight of these, but with all the double-siding and reinforcing, i must have cut each individual piece eight times!

and here they are... the reindeer and the dove! i'm already thinking of how to unassemble and pack them so that they survive till next christmas...






we rounded off the tree with store-bought baubles and wide swathes of wired ribbon, as you can see from the photos. the store-bought ornaments are nothing to write home about... except for this super adorable ditzy angel. when i saw the completely clueless expression on its face, i knew our tree wouldn't be complete without it...


and that concludes the tree tour! which one was your favorite?

now let me see if i can get a good enough photo of marlon's masterpiece tree-topper...

Kamustahan

i liked toni's cup-of-tea questions. napaisip talaga ako. i thought it would be a nice quick update for one on things that i don't normally blog about -- or even really think about too often.

now let's sit down for a cup of tea, for what paolo would call kamustahan...

1. Now, would you like chamomile, jasmine, Earl Grey or English Breakfast?

i'll stick to my mug of milo powder. when it comes to milo, i am the papak queen.

2. How’s your health?

i may actually be in better shape than i have all year, thanks to muay thai. i can do at least ten pushups now before stopping to rest, and i survived robert's hour-long grueling circuit training last friday as the only girl among guys, with only four one-minute rest stops. but right now i feel a tickle in my throat which i hope will not turn into a cold or fever.

3. Have you done your Christmas shopping yet?

happily, yes! marlon and i did our christmas shopping in one blitz at plaza singapura and the cathay yesterday. i just have to get a gift for my sister, sir jojo, marlon's dad, bitchik, dada and binky.

4. How are you dealing with the economic crunch this Christmas?

honestly, i don't feel it. as i said to marlon and a few friends recently, we're lucky to be high enough in the corporate ladder to afford some of the things we really want, and low enough to not to really be affected by any retrenchment plans or salary cuts. if anything, we seem to be recessionistas in reverse -- we finally cleaned off the credit card debt, have the enough to help out family members in sudden emergencies, and even had a brief shining moment this weekend when we felt like millionaires. we spent sunday evening planning a budget for 2009 and it was a fun exercise. the challenge now, i guess, is keeping to that budget and saving smart.

5. What Christmas tradition are you carrying through this year?

in a year where marlon and i begin to find our own christmas traditions, one thing i am keeping from my family's traditions is having lots of little gifts to unwrap... and giving basic necessities like soap and shampoo!

i think that's a tradition we picked up from my mom's ex-fiance uncle david, who would literally put mountains of gifts under the tree on christmas day... even if they were just little things like toothpaste and soap! i only realized that this could be seen as a little bizarre when marlon gave me this funny look when i said i had to go to carrefour to buy soap for my tita.

my own spin on this tradition is that the maid's gifts can't look better than my tita's gifts... and that all the toiletries have to be terno!

must not forget: elaborate giftwrapping... something that i have enjoyed every christmas since i was nine. that year, we spent christmas in brussels and i fell in love with how salesladies at the department stores wrapped packages with scads of gorgeous curling ribbon, feathers, the works!

it's not part of the question, but i have to say it anyway: my most-missed christmas tradition is singing with acs! i've been so desperate to sing, i sang along with the video of the nordic chamber choir singing lauridsen's o magnum mysterium that gp posted on facebook... more than once! i also miss acs's fantastic and totally out-there themed christmas parties where everyone is so game.

answer these questions! it'll be fun!

p.s. yes, that's our finished and fully trimmed christmas tree!

Our first Christmas tree

the first weekend of december was reserved for bringing all things christmas into our home -- which in the case of marlon and myself was basically buying a tree and a couple of wreaths. we had decided to get a plastic tree despite the surprising availability of fresh trees here (wait, why am i surprised -- this is expatland!), and i had decided to make my own trimmings this year.

first, the tree...

the search for the perfect tree took several days of shopping. we saw sad, sparse $29.90 trees at carrefour, a momentarily stunning glossy black pine tree at paragon (which very quickly went from cool to TEE-AYCH), lush but exorbitantly priced trees at tang's ($259 for four feet of plastic!), and finally settled on a moderately priced ($95), decently shaped five-foot tree at novena square, where marlon works.

the most irksome thing about buying a tree here: salespersons attempt to convince you that every tree is a foot taller than it actually is. marlon is taller than our supposedly six-foot tree. the good thing is that salespersons actually seem knowledgeable about trees. when marlon and i were contemplating an all-white tree, the salesman at actually advised us against buying it, even if it was more expensive than a green tree. apparently customers who had bought white trees in the past found that it looked dirty yellow under certain lights, and that it was hard to keep clean. who knew?

next, the trimmings!

as we scouted around for trees, i looked at store-bought trimmings as well -- and quickly confirmed that i was making the right choice in choosing to make my own ornaments. you have two choices, basically: expensive or generic. i don't know what was a worse prospect: pay $8.90 PER PIECE for a faux venetian tasseled bauble, or having a tree that was identical to the rest of the population. 

my resolve strengthened, i trooped to art friend in takashimaya for some DIY supplies. while i was there, i picked up a dozen red and gold balls since i figured i wouldn't be able to make enough ornaments to actually fill up an entire tree. we also picked up some ribbon for the tree, wreaths for the front door and holly garlands for the window at tangs.

to work, to work

setting up the tree took two weekends. on the first weekend, marlon got to do manly stuff like unpack the tree and assemble it...

i got to do girly stuff like cut out shapes from felt, figure out how to use bits and pieces of paper from my collage collection (placemats and dictionaries, anyone?), think of cute color combinations and tie ribbons...

... and rogue got to do cat stuff like sniff around the new tree and wonder how to destroy it with the maximum amount of fun.

we also did couple-y stuff like take pictures with the self-timer documenting this historic first in our newly joint household.

and this is how the tree looked at the end of the first weekend.

our biggest achievement was just having the tree up! the second weekend though was when the real transformation took place with all the lights, ornaments, and a special something that marlon cooked up to top off the whole shebang.

but that's something for my next post! it's cold and rainy, it's a non-working holiday, and a book and a cup of coffee with cinnamon and nutmeg await my attention...

In shock

my favorite starstruck kid died this morning in his sleep. i am in shock.

he won the year i first started handling starstruck promos. he was a huge crush of mine that season, from the first pictorial where i kept telling him not to squint while smiling, through that whole shirtless-in-the-rain video (where he totally brought it!) that got everyone to sit up and notice, up until he won. 

when he started working, he soon gained a reputation of being one of the nicest young men in the network's stable of stars. i haven't met anyone who has worked with him who didn't instantly like (if not love) him. he was always so sweet to me whenever he's see me around the network. 

he was just getting started. he had some good turns, but was pretty much untested and really had to still get his big break. a plum indie role a couple of years down the line, or maybe just as part of the natural turnover process for leads in the network. i figured time would take care of that, since it didn't look like he was going anywhere anytime soon. who knew?

it's a cliche, i know, but it's at times like these that you really think, the good ones go first. why couldn't it have been some other inflated a-hole or talentless hack?

i'm so shocked and sad.

Promaxination

after staying home the whole day with a fever, i have finally run out of things to read and watch online, and am thus blogging this long overdue promax post.

a competition and conference combined, promax is the annual event for those of us in this rarely understood, oft-ignored, completely accidental (as in, you only get into it by accident, not aspire to be part of it) and surprisingly big but surprisingly small (as in, i never knew there were so many career options in this line, at the same time everyone seems to know each other) industry of on-air promotions. 

promax was one of those mythical events i only used to hear about, because only the bosses got to go. back in gma, we would religiously scan winners' reels from promaxes past for inspiration -- in fact, george made me watch a promax reel when i showed up on my first day at work and nobody quite knew what to do with me yet. every year, creative services would embark on this mad rush for spots to enter into the competition, a process that always ignited this tiny flicker of mad hope in me that we -- and maybe even i -- would win something. (of course we never did. hahaha.)

so this year, in my nerdy wide-eyed way, i was thrilled to finally be attending promax. headcount at the office was so low this year that even if we were just sharing passes, everyone got to go to at least one full day of the two-day conference (even our admin, terry!). it was a combination of anticipation and stupidity that made me turn up at the arts house at 8:30 a.m. on the dot monday morning -- whereupon i discovered that the sessions were going to start at 9:45 a.m. i should have known that no event geared for creative types will ever start before 9:30 a.m.

the arts house is a former court and parliament house converted into an arts venue, which made the whole thing look very cool. as usual, i was the only eager beaver on my team who wanted to sit up front and risk a stiff neck.

the rest of the boys wanted to stay in the back, where the seats at least faced front and there was less chance of being spotted in case they fell asleep.

nerdy confession: i secretly expected promax to do for me professionally what marktoberdorf did for me as a chorister. competing in marktoberdorf  was totally fun and inspirational. i was relatively new to the world of choral music, and discovering this huge gathering of people who were so passionate about, and in many cases, so good at, this odd thing that i liked to do was nothing short of amazing for me, and completely solidified my love of choral singing. (of course, winning that year didn't hurt my love of choral singing either!)

and in some ways, i was right. in marktoberdorf, you had your spectacular, amazing performances (like, ahem, the ateneo college glee club c. 2001) and then you had your duds (russian male choirs, or lachrymose italian female librarian choirs). i guess i was expecting all the speakers to be glee club caliber. 

the first session featuring mike reiss, a writer from the simpsons, was totally glee club. he was every bit as hilarious as you'd expect a simpsons writer to be. however the awesome start he provided went over to russian male choir territory way too fast, and i found myself wondering how logo designs from the early eighties were supposed to help me produce winning promos, and how exactly 243 clips of a storm trooper wiggling his hips in the middle of shibuya was supposed to be relevant to my job.

the venue for the smaller afternoon sessions. very game k n b?

one of the writing sessions was great, but it was more like nordic chamber choir than ateneo glee club. still, it was good enough for me to take notes the lazy way -- by snapping pictures of the slides with my camera. by this time i had identified the suite de lorca of on-air promotions -- you know, the piece that everyone seems to have included in their repertoire: discovery's "the world is just awesome" spot. and while it was really just awesome, i couldn't have helped wishing i could see something else.

finally, i felt a swell of pride to belong to bda when jens, the creative director of the sydney office came up to give his session. he was, for me, the portland state university chamber choir of promax. impressive pero hindi yung pinakamagaling, may halong kayabangan, pero tumatak. (seven years after the competition, listening to portland's ave maria by biebl still gives me goosebumps.) 

especially the way he ended his session on how to work better: stay calm and smile. (and here i paraphrase him.) because really, we work in an industry with some of the most creative, fun and passionate people in the world. we do work that barely feels like work. and there is no shortage of great colleagues and great work to inspire us. what's there not to smile about?

Making a list (and checking it twice)

twenty days to go till i fly home from christmas! and i am just raring to go! being on probation (well technically) at work, i have a limited number of leaves... which means i have only december 24th to january 1 to cram in all of the things on my holiday to-do list!

• spend time with mommy (hmm paano kaya 'to with all the stuff i wanna do)
• omygod... UKAY UKAY!!!!!
  
• stock up on fresca homemade scents at the legaspi market... come to think of it, a visit to the salcedo market might be fun too
  
• eat at bellini's and schlep around cubao x
  
• chocolate buffet with the kiddies at manila pen
• see my beloved acs again! but i am so bummed that i'm not going to hear them sing or get to sing with them at all this year!!!
• meet mimi's fiance, the famous pete
  
• visit friends at gma and eat chicken inasal at jt's manukan on sgt esguerra after
  
• eat bibingka at via mare
• eat corned beef sinigang at sentro
• eat at cyma (or manos greek taverna)
  
• celebrate our first year wedding anniversary (one year already! time does fly when you're having fun!) in tagaytay -- i hope t house or the boutique still has an available room for us though
  
• buy cinnamon rolls and stock up on kapeng barako at bag of beans
  
• get a cheap manicure, pedicure and color job at azta on katipunan
  
• buy tees and funky christmas gifts for my officemates (i know, very late, but hey -- bulk christmas shopping at home will be so much cheaper) at team manila
• check out the shoes at janylin and landmark
• stock up on rogue, preview and cheap books at national bookstore (i read somewhere that the domino book of decorating sells for only Php950!)

i know, it's all shopping and eating -- and i'm supposed to be in a country where the shopping and eating is among the best in the world. but hell. nothing like manila.

now, the only thing i'm wondering is: this list really it? i could have sworn it was so much longer in my head....

Pakiusap

i have soooo many things that i want to blog about, but i have just received my umpteenth creative hipster email (you'll know what that is in a second). i've had it up to here and just want to say:

please, please please -- stab me and cut out my heart with a dessert spoon if i ever sign any correspondence with the first letter of my name.

Hi.
This is what I mean.
Later,
D

yun lang.

High school musical

the night before the rihanna concert in singapore, i stood in front of my full-length mirror at home, held a picture of rihanna in my mind, and decided that my concert attire of wide-legged pants and tiny tee was just too 1999. after all, glamor si rihanna diba?

still i could not get over the niggling thought that i just might need to be ready to run from a riot/be crushed by the masses/get sticky and sweaty/jump over barricades/elbow crowds... in short, i could not completely dispel my years of watching concerts in manila. naman! sinabayan ko lahat ng jologs na tumalon from the general admission section to the php700 section in the bon jovi concert of 199...3? 4? and i had to trudge out in the mud, in the pouring rain, after the concert was stopped after two or three songs.

still, the next day, i dressed up my utilitarian basics of jeans, tank top and chocolate brown flats with a vintage rose necklace and lace bolero. at buti na lang! dahil pagdating ko sa singapore indoor stadium, para akong pumasok sa embassy na prom na ewan! girls were dressed to club, in little glittery miniskirts, backless tops and stilettos, and guys in this oddly justin timberlake fedora-vest-and-tie uniform. when i entered the stadium i saw why.


ang ayos diba? why can i see clearly defined rows and spaces between the seats? where's the pandemonium? the frenzied excitement? the jologs?

by some stroke of luck (probably because we came early, and they didn't sell out the venue), our seats were upgraded. an usher simply took our tickets, scratched out the seat numbers and scribbled down new ones. so we ended up here. much, much closer to the stage than we had paid to sit. my sister wasn't as lucky.


when i sat down, i found myself sitting with a pair of white giggly tween girls... and their mother. i looked around to find parents everywhere. i swear i saw more parents than i have ever seen at any kind of parent gathering at my high school. pashminas, pleated pants and floral silk blouses are the last things i would have expected to see at a rihanna concert. hello, it's singapore, moms and dads! this is the last place where you need to be chaperoning your kids to a concert!

and yes the tween level was off the scale. this is why i used the word "prom", above. if you've never heard seven thousand tween girls singing "umbrella", i can send you my recording. as i scanned the audience, i murmured to marlon, "why do i have a feeling that when the audience starts screaming, it will be extremely high pitched?"

and kids. my god. like five-to-seven year olds. i couldn't explain it, except maybe if all the moms had actually bought the tickets for their kids, thinking rihanna's last name was montana.

"eeew, so many parents," i whispered to marlon. "shush," he cautioned. "to these kids we probably look like parents too."


so the lights dimmed and the lambs tweens began screaming kasi umapir na ang lola n'yo.


winner sana ang hydraulic-assisted entrance from the ceiling. sana nga lang gumagana yung mike niya. sound crew = epic fail.


as soon as she got down from her post, she went to the side of the stage and made very big angry gestures to some invisible cowering p.a.'s. her anger couldn't have been more obvious than if she'd spelled out "what the f*ck?!" with her butt.

anyway, she got a new mike, apologized, and went on with the rest of the show -- which was, from what i hear, the same set she did in manila except without chris brown. the outfit was the same as the manila outfit too, except she kept her pants on in singapore. oh, and she wore flat boots, which i thought was nice.

i liked her makeup too -- the silver eyeliner on the lower lids. and for a black girl, she had surprisingly white kilikili.


as for the music -- it was good. perfect for the people who like their live concerts to sound exactly like the cd, or else they feel ripped off. i like a bit more variation in a live performance, like alicia keys when she came over for singfest. even if she did do this weird mariachi-ish arrangement for one of her slow songs, talagang nag-effort si bakla. you just knew she was going home completely hoarse.

si rihanna parang hindi masyadong nagpagod. pero sige lang. she did change into a skimpier, rocker burlesque kind of outfit for her last few songs. so that's something.


the concert ended after 45 minutes. which was a bit of a letdown for me -- not to mention for my sister, who drove three hours from KL.

so we went out after and had black pepper crab at jumbo, which was fun, as all the kiddies went home with their mommies and daddies.

Rihanna, puppet porn and shopping

my weekend began early. there was rihanna on thursday night. more kwento later, with pictures.

then on friday i had practically nothing to do at work because lilian was away and james was too busy fixing up the office for the promax after-party that we're hosting on monday. the evening was spent suffering for past sins, a.k.a muay thai.

today, marlon and i caught the matinee of avenue q (with, thankfully, the pinoy cast) at the esplanade. brilliant performances, and funny as hell! new urban male came out with a series of avenue q-inspired, limited edition statement t-shirts that they sold after the show: it sucks to be me, i'm not wearing underwear, and the internet is for porn. (guess which one i got for marlon!)

then we trotted down to haji lane for the street party that james told me about. haji lane is this high school hipster hangout that seems to be the shisha capital of singapore. i like it for the little interesting boutiques and relaxed vibe; i should probably go there with a camera one of these days so you can see what i mean. 

anyway this evening some credit card company held an event and the stores decided to go on sale at the same time. i discovered a cool little store called rusty button, which has a great selection of vintage and indie-designed dresses. i got a surprisingly flattering black and taupe stretchy dress with a silk-screened, kind of crazy bamboo leaf pattern for only $49! dinner was at cafe la caire, the egyptian-moroccan cafe that we've been wanting to try. yummy and cheap, but slow.

My firstborn

a public service announcement (PSA) against drunk driving (or drink driving, as they say here) for mtv and diageo. diageo had already been running an events campaign built around the idea of guardian angels who would remind you to not drink and drive. on their second year, they decided to partner up with mtv, mtv decided to call a pitch, and we decided to go for it.

it was my first time for a lot of things: win a project for my company, conceptualize and script an idea that i eventually had to actually take charge of and produce, and later on, the first time i ever had something air in four countries: singapore, malaysia, india and the philippines.this was where i started learning the ropes of production and earning the second half of my writer/producer job title. our production exec happened to be on vacation during pre-production, so it fell to me to take care of all the nitty-gritty production details from scouting for parks and bars to casting babies and caucasians, to booking the makeup artist and snapping photos of the wardrobe selections.

i learned what it really meant to work on a budget, coming from my world of virtual costs at gma. i discovered how a seemingly simple idea on paper could actually turn out to be a dizzyingly complex one when it came to execution. my idea, requiring three flashbacks, a little boy, two accident scenes, a crying baby and celebrity endorsements in 30 seconds, turned out to be the latter. i'm sure in the world of production, this is nothing, but for a first timer it was like two weeks of excruciating labor... and i mean the giving birth kind. as we spent the greater part of an hour on set prodding, poking, jiggling and startling the most cheerful baby on the planet to get it to cry (he just giggled and gurgled cutely), lilian grumbled, "deepa, next time no more babies okay???"

and it was on the guardian angel set that i overcame my fear of directing. james installed me as his assistant director largely because of his english handicap -- i could better explain to the talents what he wanted, and i had a knack for reading james' mind. later on i began making suggestions of my own, which worked, and that was great.

casting the angel was a real bitch. this was where i encountered the word "pan-asian" for the first time -- a highly prized commodity among regional promo efforts, a talent who could look like he was from everywhere and nowhere and thus work well across all markets, usually used interchangeably with "eurasian".

ngayon. sa loob ng dalawang linggo, try mo maghanap ng guwapo at murang pan-asian male na magaling magsalita, dito sa buwakanang lungga ng mga payat, singkit, at baluktot ang dila. then you will understand why rob, a research manager by day and a product of my secret casting pool, was truly heaven sent. he was cheerful, tireless despite flying back from a business trip hours before his call time, memorized his lines, and to james' great delight, registered on cam as "cute and likeable, like a chubby robbie williams". at! higit sa lahat! mura siya!

so here it is, my first born promo. i must add that after a whopping sixteen rounds of revision, the original script took a fair amount of nips and tucks. but it got out into the world, eventually, in some form and fashion. and that can only be a good thing.

Mano mano

i was in a briefing this afternoon with some clients who are going to change their on-air look into something more realistic, natural and stripped-down. one of the guys on their team said, "the airwaves are too saturated," referring to the slick, glossy graphics that is a mandatory element of modern broadcasting. 

as someone who's part of the machinery that churns out such eye candy (really amazing eye candy, i might add), i had to agree. personally i'm growing a bit weary of all the whiteness and cleanness and reflections and glassy textures popularized by apple.

then just a few minutes ago, i happened upon this striking short on youtube -- "tyger," yet another work inspired by william blake's "the tyger". i am amazed at how much artistry this one piece of literature has spawned. 

"tyger" has shadows and depth that i find satisfying to look at in the midst of this design-wide obsession with blankness and glass. it has this raw, handmade beauty that i wish i could work into a project soon. mag-conceptualize kaya ako na may puppeteers o hand illustrations o paper cutting? di kaya ako hingan ng "glassy" ng kliyente, or sabihan ng humahawak ng pitaka ng aming kumpanya, "puwede bang i-graphics na lang yan?"

Freshness

still on the obama train, i became a regular reader of the new yorker online during the course of the election coverage. and right now, i am loving this this illustration over at the new yorker.

the fact that it's a collage (albeit digital) captured my attention immediately -- collage is my favorite form of visual art. it's striking, it's clean, it's graphic, it's young. it conveys all the freshness, hope, victory and history of obama's election in a single montage.

besides, you can't go wrong with that winning smile.

Craig-a-thon

i watched quantum of solace with the entire office on thursday. watching the kick-ass opening titles by mk12 with a bunch of graphic designers was fun. everyone would go "WAH!" (our company's main intercultural expression of amazement) all at the same moments throughout the sequence. for some reason, i almost fell asleep during the movie. not the greatest reaction to get for a bond flick, although my eyes could not have been wider during daniel craig's sole shirtless scene.

then i saw it again with marlon on saturday. the second viewing gave me a full understanding of the plot -- again, not the greatest reaction considering bond flicks are not supposed to be rocket science. my dislike for olga whats-her-name intensified (so robotic! what's up with the standing with legs apart, fists closed all the fricking time? and that huddling in the corner drama! tumakbo ka na kaya?), as did my awareness of the utter lack of fancy secret agent gizmos.

on sunday, marlon and i decided to re-watch casino royale at home. whereupon i confirmed my impression that this is by far the better, sexier, funnier, more compelling, more memorable and more classic bond flick of the two.

even the aforementioned shirtless scene in quantum solace, as gratuitous as it was, just induced a wee tickle in comparison to the earth-shaking girlgasm i got re-watching daniel craig's rising-from-the- sea, skimpy-shorts glory in casino royale.

we had also planned to watch the invasion, but were too bangag to sit in front of the tv for a couple more hours. i just realized this also features daniel craig. soooo... if we watch this tonight it will be a full four days of hawtness.

the craig-a-thon shall continue!

Flight plan

lately it seems that surfing for flights has been a regular activity. first it was for the four-day chinese new year weekend next year. marlon and i had decided to go to boracay during cny instead of during christmas. i've wanted to bring him ever since the philippine star sent me there on a raket last summer.

it took a while to finally narrow down a flight and somewhere to stay (the place sure fills up fast for cny!), but finally we booked ourselves via cebu pacific for four days at the true home hotel in station one. along the way, i discovered my boracay guide, which has a super-helpful, extremely detailed map of nearly all the resorts on the island.

then i found out that in 2009, singapore will have a grand total of 10 three-day weekends -- because by some stroke of luck, all the national holidays fall on either a friday, monday or sunday (which is then moved to the following monday). this drove me a little berserk as a year of seeing sold-out flights and overbooked hotels flashed through my head. see here, since everything is online, people plan their holidays months in advance, leaving tardy travellers like marlon and myself with no flights or accommodations at all. 

i decided: never again! so i sat marlon down at the dining table last weekend to plan all of our long weekend travels for 2009. which was a fun exercise, i must say -- especially when i started surfing for flights in april 2009 and found that they were half the price they would cost if we booked next year. and that was how we plunked down six hundred bucks for round-trip tickets to hanoi half a year in advance.

we had all these other trips to yogyakarta, redang and siem reap planned, too. until i went on facebook and found out that tor had gotten engaged to her boyfriend matt! aieeeee! which is why new york is now on the travel plan -- for august 2009. by then, marlon will have enough krisflyer miles to pay for one ticket. not bad ey?

who knows, maybe we will get to still take that trip to siem reap in november 2009, during hari raya. that is, if marlon doesn't travel somewhere like japan for business -- with me in tow. then of course, at the end of the year there will be christmas in manila. 

2009 is shaping up beautifully. i can't wait.

Looks like garlic, tastes like chicken

tuesday night was the first night this week that marlon was in kobe, and i was home alone. at seven p.m., james rescued me from a lonely and largely uninteresting evening at home with these words: "join us for dinner? go to geylang. eat frog porridge."

it was my first time in geylang, the underbelly of singapore. i expected some kind of singaporean sanitized version where the words "red light district" would be a laughable exaggeration (just like sentosa is supposed to be a tropical paradise), but geylang seems to meet the global standard for red light districts, if there is such a thing.

seedy atmosphere - check. trannies - check. heavily made up, peroxided, scantily clad girls - check. shops with gaudy clothing for said girls - check. neon signs - check. overall aura of cheapness - check. icky men - check. the only thing really missing, i guess, if you're a manila girl, is the feeling that you could be leered at, held up or propositioned at any given moment. but then this is singapore, and i supposed just a genuine aura of sleaze is a big achievement.

after drifting about, lost, in geylang lorong 15, we finally found the frog porridge place -- a set of big round tables in a back alley between lorong 17 and 19. benz was appropriately little-girlish (he is, after all, a little girl), squealing and demurring and protesting as we perused the menu.

buy two frogs, get one free! (seriously)

lilian, jerrold and james couldn't get why benz was so averse to the idea of consuming frog. "but you eat balut! that's even grosser!" lilian protested.

anesh gave benz a few pushes as well. while we were checking out the menu, he told benz: "this says in chinese, everything is chicken. frog is logo only. they just put frog because they think it looks very cute." when the meal arrived, he said: "frog is not here yet. here, you eat this while waiting."

our dinner was served in clay pots, several containing plain porridge. the other pots each held frogs prepared with different sauces: spring onion, kung pao (chili) and whole white pepper. i went straight for the kung pao, but the real winner, i found later on, was the white pepper. although james was drenched through with sweat after eating it (not to mention getting the shits the next day), i found it wonderfully mild and warm. not the kind of heat that burns your lips and gums... more like a steam bath in your oral cavity. and after the warmth fades away, a faint sweet aftertaste in the back of your mouth. yum.

as for the frog: as mike said, "looks like garlic, tastes like chicken." except it was much, much softer than any chicken meat i've ever had. not bad at all. it passed one of my personal litmus tests for something good, which is if i want marlon to try it too. (we also had tofu and crispy chicken wings, and they were equally good.) i didn't bother with the frog's spine and hid it under my leftover porridge because it looked so gross, but jer just popped it into his mouth and sucked the meat off it, like marrow.

time for traditional chinese medicine 101: some foods heat up your body, and others cool them down. frog is one of the former, regardless of whether it is prepared with spices or not. (apparently this is why it's popular in the red light district.) so after dinner we had to go have something to cool us down.

and that something, it turned out, was turtle.

turtle shell, at least. the top three dishes on the menu (parallel to the chinese characters) are jelly made from pulverised tortoiseshell. i forget what the heck it's called, but it's served with sugar syrup and is supposed to offset "heatiness" and be good for your skin.

frog was exotic enough for me and i opted to have mango pudding instead, but i did try a bit of the jelly from james and mike. it was... interesting. faintly bitter, even with the sugar syrup. james' was mint flavored, which made it even weirder. i could feel my face crumpling into a befuddled grimace as i chewed, which made lilian laugh. "i knew you wouldn't like it," she said. i didn't hate it, but i didn't exactly find any compelling reason to ever order it myself.

haibo, mike and benz

haibo's wife, jerrold, ganggang (covered by hand) and anesh

lilian and james

there, you've seen my entire company (with the exception of our two admins, terry and may.) we're so tiny that a weekday dinner of nine people counts as a company outing.

Good job, USA

i was glued to the internet yesterday morning, monitoring the US election, amazed that media has moved so far ahead that i could keep such close tabs (yahoo! had an awesome interactive election map), and amazed that i even wanted to.

about fifteen minutes minutes before barack obama was declared victorious, i found myself actually doing the math on the states that had yet to report their election returns, and realizing that even if the remaining states all went to john mccain, there was no chance in hell that he would beat obama.

i caught myself for a minute there -- me, making mathematical projections on a political exercise of a country that couldn't be more removed from my daily life? hell yeah this man is inspiring.

then the announcement came and i was truly, inexplicably happy. how many more times in our lifetime will we see a politician so capable of inspiring a nation and so powerfully creating a fantastic future for his country and for the world? i am especially encouraged to see that all reports point to the fact that he is level-headed enough to put extremely capable people on his team, leaving him to be the inspiring, confident leader so many people need.

kelan kaya magkaka-ganyan sa pilipinas, ano? but then if a black man can be elected president of the u.s., which was a totally unforeseeable event given their history, then i can begin to believe that the philippines will have our great leader too.

kababawan time: i really loved it that the obamas were all terno when they appeared together on stage for the victory speech. and i know pia was like "wtf is she wearing?" but i really loved michelle obama's outfit for the mere fact that it was so not cookie-cutter political spouse. take that, cindy "stepford" mccain!

Haaaayyyy....bo

when it comes to work, the occasions when i am prompted to go "haayyyy" out of sheer satisfaction (instead of exasperation) are pretty rare. lately i've had a few of them, and they're all because of one of my teammates, our senior designer haibo.

quiet, unassuming and always smiling, haibo is one of those guys whose docile looks disguise what a freaking head case he is. for a recent project we did for mtv (a 30-second contest spot for a big slutfest dugsh-dugsh fest beach party at sentosa), we asked him to come up with a couple of style references -- animations or graphics we could show the client to give them an idea of how we wanted to execute the spot.

aba ang hitad, nagpakita ng full animated 3D scale model of singapore.


sabi ko, patay. baka pagsisihan niya ito kapag nalaman niya kung kelan ang deadline. e kinagat ng kliyente. napasubo siya bigla.

but no. within a matter of days, he produced this.


which, by the end of the week, became this.


kabog! needless to say, client loved it. (unfortunately, love is not always a two-way street. but that's another story.)

then on monday afternoon i briefed him on the requirements for a promo package based on this same spot. for the uninitiated, a promo package is a set of animated graphics with all sorts of bits and pieces that carry "branding" -- those strips on the lower half of your tv screen, logos, full page graphics where a lot of text goes (like program schedules), and more, all designed to pull a show or channel together, look-wise.

so anyway. monday ang briefing. the next day, hiningan ko siya ng work-in-progress -- screen shots to show how the whole thing is coming along. ang sagot: isang matipid na "ok. maybe finish today." (he's from beijing, so he doesn't speak much english.) within hours, he sent me not just screen shots of the work in progress, but the whole damn set of graphics. finished, animated and absolutely fantastic. nabaliw ako. and that was my first "haaay" of bliss for the week... as in "haaay. ang galing talaga ni haibo."

today, client got back to me (or as they like to say here, "reverted") with a whole bunch of changes they wanted done. i told haibo about them and retreated to my corner to play scramble (yes, it's a slow day at the office). in the middle of my third 3-minute game, he was done. alam mo yung "isang pikit lang"? yun yon. napa-"haaaay" na naman ako.

i swear this is why i'm in this job. and this is part of what i wanted for my career, come to life. i live for the flashes of brilliance and talent i see on a near-daily basis. i live for the chance to be amazed and inspired by the creations that i see and by the people who create them. and i live for my turn to create something that amuses, provokes and inspires, too.

haaay.