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.

Muay gulay

about an hour into muay thai last night, in mid-pushup, my arms suddenly wilted into gulay (perhaps steamed bok choy, for that local touch) and simply refused to flex. this morning, while i can still rely on my arms for basic functions like opening taxi doors and resting on tabletops as i type, if someone put a gun to my head and made me do a pushup now, it would be the end of me.

yes, i do muay thai now, to fill the void left by boxing. serendipity played a part in my new choice of sport -- there's a muay thai gym called punch academy about five minutes from the office. since marlon's always wanted to do muay thai, and i figured whatever i was doing to lose weight (read: not much) was not working, we bit the bullet a couple of weeks ago and signed up for forty lessons.

if you've never worked out and been drenched head to toe with sweat within half an hour, you have to try muay thai. i don't sweat much, but i was a veritable geyser of perspiration in my first lesson. after that first class, marlon and i staggered out the door and plopped down at the next-door kopitiam for dinner. we just sat there panting and staring at each other for a good ten minutes, not knowing quite what hit us.

so far, all my lessons have turned out to be the same. it's positively boot camp, which is probably why i see boot camp bodies all around me whenever i go to the gym. perhaps, after thirty-seven more lessons of muay thai, one of those will be me. and perhaps gulay-ness is simply the first step.

Home alone

i just dropped marlon off at the airport for a four-day business trip to kobe (as in beef). and while i love coming home to the quiet solitude of our little place with its cozy lighting, newlywed furniture and manic kitten, i could use a sleepover at someone else's house just about now. 

agree or disagree: sleepovers are a staple of a girl's life. do guys sleep over as much as we do? i don't think so. 

my sleepover history started in second grade, when my mom and her then-BFF tita nettie decided to introduce their daughters to each other, spawning a lifelong friendship and a spate of almost-weekly sleepovers. i still remember my first sleepover at chiara's house -- she told ghost stories that ingrained in me a staunch refusal to sleep with (1) my hair spread out over a pillow, (2) feet pointed towards a closet or door, (3) with closet doors open, and (4) in front of a mirror, to this very day.

i think i stopped sleeping over at friends' houses when i lost touch with chiara and nash, two of my childhood best friends (probably because my mom didn't trust any of my school friends enough for me to go and sleep over at their houses). 

in college, when my mom decided she would rather entrust me to friends then make me commute home in the dead of night after glee club rehearsals or performances. thus began a sleepover renaissance, and my kaladkarin days: sleeping over at leo's, pia's, dianne laserna's, justine's, gids', lesley/mags', eunice's, gutsy's, chris', gp's, maggie's, mimoy's. (omigad ang dami. i'm sure kulang pa yan.) 

while they were mostly necessities, college sleepovers were also the most fun i ever had. maybe it was because they usually were with big crazy groups of people, involved cry-your-eyes-out laughter and eat-till-you-burst food, and were flavored with anything from adversity (preparing for a tour, reviewing for philo orals) to whimsy (midnight baking frenzies) or obsession (marathon tv series) for that extra kick.

what do you know, i started out sleepy -- now i'm just sentimental. that tells me that it's time for bed. good night.

Post # 500

to mark my five hundredth post on this blog, i would like to post the following thought-provoking questions. to uphold the true interactive thrust of the web, and to invite spirited banter and stimulating dialogue from all of you, i ask:

1. where the f*** are my archives?
2. why can't i post my friends and links and all that crap?
3. does anyone know xml or how to figure this s*** out?

losty loo loo.

that said, i really like this new layout. i thought it was very me with the notebook and paisley, uses my current favorite clean fonts (arial and helvetica -- boring i know, but all designers seem to love helvetica), and isn't as precious and frou-frou as some of the notebook layouts i've seen out there.

it was slightly discombobulating to re-enter the world of templates and blog settings. habang nawiwindang pa ako sa bagong buhay, bagong trabaho, nakapag-move on na pala ang blogger. i felt profoundly older learning how to install this xml template than i did celebrating my 27th birthday (which was 2 weekends ago). my disorientation was even worse than the feeling i get when i look at miley cyrus, the jonas brothers, katy perry and wonder what the big deal is (and why i don't get it).

A bit of tweaking

if you haven't noticed, i got a bit bored with blogging. so, perhaps some change is in order. 

a new template may be the first step to getting back in the groove. let me just get it all sorted out.