Thank You Mr. Awa

Never shall I forget English and Literature sessions under the heat of the afternoon when i was still in my younger years. This time of day would have conjured memories of the sweat trickling down my white and bland uniform or thoughts of dismissal time where more play would commence thereafter. No nada non. The biggest prints these humid moments made on my mind was of interactions with my English teacher Mr. Juanito Awa during many of his discussions in his period at this time of day. He is one of the biggest inspirations in life. I know he would never have known about this but I salute him everyday of my existence.

His position in my personal hall of Fame stems from the fact that he has made me learn to love the use of the English language as a medium of communication and as an outlet for expression because of the way he has softened the edges of an otherwise challenging proposition for many young Filipinos who usually develop stunted tongues trying to speak the language perfectly. His manner of teaching and his pleasant style of speech made it seem so easy to love the subject and to whallop my way through the difficulties of conjugation, past tenses, subject-verb agreements. Because of his personality he has kind of cultivated this gene inside my chromosomes with the disposition towards the love for English and Literature subjects.Our Literature classes never seemed like paralytic struggles unlike other English classes because of how beautifuly he presented and analyzed works of fiction together with us, his students. The discussions were just so fluid and gregarious that it was never a bore when he was at the blackboard and delivering his gospel to his students. He is prophetic!

As a result of his molding, and creation of this beautiful genetic code for the love of English inside me, it has become so easy for my future English teachers to further my mastery of the medium. I would never be able to tell you if it was my natural aptitude for the subject or because I had excellent professors but I came to embrace the language and its literature with such gusto and energy. My attention seldom wavers when it is time for this period unless the teacher was in a bad mood and was out to pulverize someone's brain. I simply was so attentive that it became a love affair which has went on for the longest time.

I know that I have no one else to express my gratitude to but this man, the family name in the title of this blog. He deserves a monument in my opinion and I think in my mind where I am mayor of my imaginary city he is an honorary citizen whose contributions towards my development and blossoming deserve no less than hundreds of gold medals and plaques which will fill up his home. Wherever you are Sir, I salute you with respect, awe and gratitude. Thank you for the memories too of those sweaty, heated yet intellectual and definitely enjoyable discussions of the distant past......

over and over and over and over....

I love this song!!! Roisin Murphy's delicious voice rocks!!! The song was played on the Gucci Spring 2008 show along with a remix of one of my favorite Sinatra songs "Strangers in the Night."

double click on player if it doesn't start and you can always click on the youtube video too!!!

more baker baker!!!

Again....I found another one of my Baker favorites.....

Love this love this love this....perfectly expresses the intensity of how I feel about Mr. Winklergirl too!!!!

Anita delivers songs very realistically...she hits the high notes with effort and emotional intensity without any attempt to mask it....

She embodies the song with her sublime gestures and facial expressions...it seems natural to see her whinge over a high note and soothe down over a low one...

Love her love her love her love her foreva!!!!

(the first video features the original recorded track and the second one features a live performance of the same song...don't forget to click twice so the vid plays!! enjoy!!!)

no one in this world ...

This is delicious...I love Anita Baker's soulful renditions of songs!!! Click twice and you will fall in love once again!!!

I look back on all those good times

We once shared and I must have been blind

Just to think I'd find someone new

One who'd love me better than you

Well, it may come as a surprise

Loneliness has opened my eyes

I tried every love I could find

Still I can't get you out of my mind

[Chorus:]

Cause there's no one in the world to hold me

No one in the world's gonna move me

No one in the world can love me like you do, baby

Everytime I'm with someone I'm

Loving you yet, and want to run

Slowly, love me

All is forsaken, I love the love we're making

Cause it's truly lovely

I'll never leave you, you'll know I need you baby

[Chorus]

gorgeous Griffin and Sabine...

These two books are just the most unique creations I have ever pored on....

They're about the correspondence between two people from halfway across the globe and the book is literally a correspondence, with its series of pop-up mail envelopes, magnificently illustrated postcards, surrealistic artwork and letters complete with larger-than-life stamps. This is just amazing presentation and packaging as well as beautiful literature inside and I believe this is a one of a kind artwork too as the person who gifted this said he just bumped into this book in the Soho section of the giant city of New York.

I wish to share the book in pictures with you as much as I want to share the whole story. I hope you are able to find the title in your favorite book shops and of course I want to give a gigantic thank-you to George for this thing of beauty and creative excellence. I will share this with my husband who is not a big book reader but as this is truly a wonderful read, he may actually clamor to read this hehehe :)

pedestal me....

For the past twenty four hours, and about forty eight hours after a friend gave me the web link, I have been absorbed by this blog http://delfindjmontano.blogspot.com. And this one too http://delfindjmontano.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2008-03-10T13%3A53%3A00%2B11%3A00&max-results=15



To the uninformed let me tell you that this blog basically highlights the controversy behind an Australian landscape artist Brian Gorrell accusing his ex-gay lover, a writer for the Philippine STAR, DJ Montano, of swindling him out of US$70,000 that he had lent him, purportedly for the purpose of putting up a restaurant. He also drags into the filth and accuses Montano’s high society and high climbing friends – the Gucci Gang members one of which is Celine Lopez, who is a well-known figure in Philippine high society and the lowly scum-filled world of cocaine addiction it seems who is Montano's best friend — of covering up the deed. The blog is basically put up to place literary or internet media pressure on Montano and for his circle of pals to pressure him to return the money he swindled out of Gorrell.



The blog is a Pandora's box of the habits of the so-called elite society of the Philippines. Because Gorrell has unleashed the dirty but probably well-known secrets of this "brat-pack", the whole thing has become a popularity and tongue-bashing circus both on the net by anonymous "comment-ers" and in real life, the friends of these major players of Manila's dynamic social scene. Not only is the expose on gay materialistic tendencies one of the major popularity fuel in this issue but the nasty habits also equal if not surpass the juiciness of the aforementioned gay sex scene hullabaloo. The most badly hurt names are the friends of Montano, those who belong to the list of the so-called high society if there is such a term for a Third-world country anyway hahahaha. I am pretty sure these colorful characters are hemorrhaging at the thought of their names being splashed all around the net with unGodly acts attached to their daily resume of activities. Cocaine addiction, indiscriminate spending of money, use and abuse of political and social influences and even the sporting of fake Birkin bags are enough to make many of these social climbers convulse at the thought of these biblical revelations.



The whole plethora of events remind me of a scene from one of my favorite author's, Charles Dickens, book, "A Tale of Two Cities" where the bloodlust for a high-society scapegoat hung in the air among the lower class French citizens due to the social unrest of the said period and the many misaccused poor political Frenchpeople in the Bastille. Knives being brandished and Madame Defarge's intensity on her needlework come to mind too except that the whole Montano issue is set in my beloved but wrecked nation, the Philippines.



Wrecked is appropriate a description because in this country we all enjoy putting ourselves on the pedestal by attaching an irrational importance on family names and ancestral lineage. Your family name is a gold Visa card that will ease your entry to concerts, events, and a load of other opportunities. Because you are a Zobel or an Estrada, or one of those famous names with a lilt of European or American to it, you are significant and deserve recognition!!! Babies of mixed race are considered important here. Because you are half Polish or half English or half Kiribati-an for all I care, you deserve that fine table in a restaurant or a concert hall!!! Isn't it ridiculous? Why can't we all just work our asses towards that front seat or podium instead of relying on our fat-ass names? Because the Philippines is a country of lazy, distorted and self-important individuals that's why!!!



Self-proclamation too is a most famous pastime in this pathetic dump of a society. "Queen of this City," "Scion of this province," and "the First Lady of this locality" as well as "It Girl," "Most Charming," and "Face of the night" are just among many abused titles in our sick high society. Attaching oneself to an already famous name is a popular hobby as well. The definition of famous hinges on your political, social, ancestral, and financial biodata. You MAY not work for your name to be deemed important but you may grab one of those fancy titles! If you do not have that fancy and recognizable family name then God-forbid you haven't arrived yet! LOL



I have veered so greatly from the main issue here which is the blog of the Aussie bloke here and his woes but I cannot help but give my opinion on the many issues which have cropped up with his many revelations. I have to laud his literary and moral bravery at opening many eyes with his exposure of the goings-on in Manila's high society. The artificialness, ingenuity and the superficiality of it all just astounds me. What was purported to be one thing may be something else indeed! All I can really say is that if he is doing it for what he believes is right and justifiable then so be it. I wish him all the luck in the world if dredging up the filth many of my countrymen revel has a causal precedence to his goal. Of course I thank him for the colorful, juicy stuff he has unleashed so far because they make so much for an interesting read during my vacant times...

Smooches, and Smacks....

Haha this is another good one my good ole cousin Christine from Nevada sent me...

This is to my Mr. Winklergirl during our passion-filled lengthy lip-locking sessions hihihihi and to all of you who enjoy indulging in it with someone fun and special :)

Are you a good kisser?

By Nicole Kristal

My friend Sean thought his date went well—she laughed at his jokes, ordered dessert, and even asked him up to her apartment for a midnight make-out session. But it’s been over a week and she hasn’t returned his calls. Sean’s starting to wonder why. Little does he know, the answer’s in his kiss. I should know. I made the mistake of kissing him once.

Plenty of people worry about whether they’re good in bed, but few worry about their skills when it comes to their triple-tongue-swirl maneuvers. So people like Sean are often left questioning what went wrong on a date, even though the reason is quite literally under their noses. Sadly, no one wants to tell anyone they have the kiss of death, which means that unless you’ve been praised for your soft lips or tantalizing tongue, someone might be cringing about your not-so-sensual smooches as well. Here’s a cheat sheet of oral offenses, so you can avoid being thought of as a cringe-worthy kisser.

The Vampire Lip-Sucker

When my date Andrew first started biting and sucking on my lower lip, I tried to redirect the kiss by going for his upper lip. But when he kept doing it and my lip began to throb, I pulled away with a not-so subtle, “Ow.” He didn’t take the hint and with each tug, my lip grew rawer. The next day, at a family barbecue, everyone wondered why I had a purple lower lip.
Sure, a soft bite on the lip can be a turn on, but 10 in a row can leave your date looking like she got punched in the mouth. The first sign of a bad kisser is the inability to respond to feedback (sorry, Andrew; it’s true). If you’re not getting a positive response, don’t be afraid to stray from a move that you thought worked on someone else. Bad kissers often make the mistake of hoping you’ll grow to like whatever weird thing they’re doing. This almost never works and almost always leaves your lover bemoaning your inexperience.

The Speed Racer

Another common attribute of a bad kisser is out-of-sync kisses that don’t match the other person’s rhythm. Just as relationships are about finding a happy medium, kissers should try to conform to a mutual speed. The one time I made out with Sean, he threw on a Prodigy album, and then proceeded to kiss me faster than the driving techno beat. When he wouldn’t slow down, I politely grooved my way right out his door.
I have a tongue, too, thank youTom was a good-looking, smart guy who played guitar and opened every door for me, but he also had a knack for filling my entire mouth with his imperialistic tongue, which completely crushed mine as it recklessly reached for my tonsils. No matter what I did, I couldn’t remove it, mostly because my own tongue seemed to have disappeared.
Lots of oral offenders’ tongues make the mistake of setting up permanent residence in their dates’ mouths. The tongue should be about playful give and take: Tease, then pull back. If that gets a positive response, venture a little further, but never leave your date thinking, “What the heck happened to my tongue?” or “Red alert: Suffocation setting in!”

Mr. Hoover

Mr. Hoover is the opposite of the previous smoocher—he likes to suck your tongue right out of your mouth and hold onto it. If your date’s entire head is unwillingly following yours because you’re holding her tongue hostage, that’s probably not a good thing. Tongue suction is tricky. Unless you know exactly the amount of suction to exert and the duration to hold your partner’s tongue captive (Hint: it’s not five minutes), you’re treading into Bad Kisser Land.

The Cheek-Licker

Licking or lapping your date’s cheek will leave him or her either (a) grossed out or (b) laughing. Licking people’s faces isn’t hot. (I don’t care if your girlfriend freshman year loved it; she was one in a million, maybe 100 million.) When it comes to kissing, the tongue should make contact with two — and only two — places above the shoulders besides the mouth—the neck and the ear. But if you shoot for these erogenous zones, don’t overdo it. Wet willies and hickeys are for amateurs.

Ladies, you can stink, too

From the above, you may get the impression that I think only guys can be bad smoochers. Not at all! Though men get a bad rap for not caring about kissing, many guys like it and expect some creativity… and are disappointed by what the women they date dish out. “I’ve been with women who are repetitive kissers—they kiss with the same motion over and over again,” complained one male friend. “It’s like you’re on a four-second loop but you can’t break it.”
My male friends’ most important piece of advice—kiss like you mean it. “A heartless kiss makes for bad kissing,” explained another guy friend. It feels like she doesn’t want to be kissing you, he said, “and that’s really annoying.”

======
So, ladies and gentleman, realize that if your date kisses you once and doesn’t want to continue, it may well be for a reason. And it usually has nothing to do with your SAT scores. Kissing is one of the biggest deal-breakers in early dating, so drop the misguided moves or your dates will drop you. Here’s an added incentive—good kissing can make other faults forgivable. I once went out with a guy who had no car (hey, I live in California; cars matter) and no job, but soft lips and the most amazing kiss. We dated happily for a while… until he goosed me. Oh, well. A good kiss can’t compensate for everything.

arctic thoughts....

is there a way to cryogenize time?

when you are in the arms of an entity you have yearned to be with for the longest time, don't you just want to achieve the above effect? When everything has built up to a crescendo in the guise of a destructive wave gathering power as it strokes through leagues of water through numerous oceans and with the intensity of a vociferous whirlpool, don't you just wanna be able to capture the moment when the maelstrom achieves its greatest destructive potential, that instant when earth crumbles to its impact and everything in its path is demolished? When you have pined for his presence and reality for the longest and have almost pained yourself at the thought that your rendezvous is getting closer, do you not want to suspend that singular motion when your hair is stroking his face and your lips are on his shoulders?

You want to remember every detail of his existence, his tangibility, and his realness. Every nook and cranny, every crevice and cove, every protrusion and recession is desired to be imprinted in the map of your mind. You try to achieve this by looking, touching, memorising the inches from his shoulder blade to his collarbone, his elbow to his shoulder joint, the size of his hands through touch, sight and taste. You painstakingly stare at the minuteness of his lips, the tiredness of his beautiful eyes, each and every sallow point of his facial structure. and yet you know you are in an uphill battle because they will all fade as fast as the miles between you get bigger and bigger when you cease being with each other. That's why memory is defined as such because it serves only as a reminder that both of you were at one point in ONE PLACE, ONE TIME, ONE MOMENT, together. Its invisible yet cruel suffix and keyword is PAST and nothing seems capable to suffice the need to capture the smells, aura, and motion of that magical instant?
The world has gone so far in the arena of the trickery called technology but has someone manufactured a machination to suspend and relive that heavenly moment of two people nestled against each other? Of the palpability of intense emotion inside the enclave that holds both of them? Aren't photographs sometimes a waste of time? No matter how satisfactory they are at reliving memory, aren't those frozen images of people, places and moments so insufficient to represent all the senses working in that magical instant of union and intense emotional connectivity?

Can we still freeze time though?

outside looking in....

i thought people were going to condemn me for the intellectual decline of my blog. But is there really such a thing as a decline in my case? I hardly have an inkling if there is but i do know that there is so much room for variety in my life. I am very spontaneous and i am very random. But you have to take into account that there is just too much occupying the hemisphere called my mind and they cannot all be written with just one go. Therefore it cannot be pointed out that the similar momentum with which some of my entries in my internet diary seem to indicate are slides into oblivion and the rusting of my intellectual capacities. Why? First of all there are enemies of many forms which prevent me from producing blog writings like a cookie-cutter worker. Laziness, time and definitely the presence or absence of the tenacity to use depth and skill in weaving words into syntax into supreme ideas are the biggest factors towards scribbling all of the thoughts and events that commence in my life. As if that is not difficult enough, the mere task of deconstructing and analysing each and every phenom of my own reality is quite a labor for my rotting husk called brain LOL.

Add to that the randomness with which I do things considering time and space and moment and context and then the lack of diversity sometimes when the topics become too singular in substance, these all coalesce to burden me with the guilt of lack of coverage (wow it took me a long time to get to that word!) and scope in my presentations. But certainly that is far from the case. Each entry is a depiction of the exact emotional and mental quadrant I am in. Each story is different although you may notice a certain trend but behind each and every one of them is a painstaking effort to create and recreate that single, momentuous flick so you may personally experience an event that was similar to my own.

I might have written stuff like the more recent ones example of which are lots of music and show business and political nonsense because I am on vacation, so everything that relaxes and is care-free and is devoid of tension oozes from my fingers onto my keypads and onto the small box ironically called writing space.

Then again when you look back there are also writings which are very intense, personal and extremely as close-to-home as they can get. That also is indicative of the mode of thinking I was in during that sliver of my life and perhaps even my current location as sometimes there really are feelings that need release and wind-blowing valves to satisfy my inner and ever-questioning being.

And then there are some entries that are far from fair and unbiased and almost unethical especially the ones that are open criticisms of other people. Guess what though? I am not apologetic for any of them. Why? Because as this is a personal space where I destroy caveats of any form and let my artistic and psychotic seventh or tenth or second personality roam free, because I have sworn never to subdue myself so in the grandest of terms I shall maintain my integrity and disregard external pressure of any form which prevents my freedom from being exercised in my personal haven.

If the social boundaries called norms and structures attack and cloud and vacuum us all throughout the day, then we have more than enough reason to manufacture a bubble which people cannot penetrate. This in my case is the altar of my artistry, the bible of my demented forays into questioning the realities and surrealities of life and in the end the only lover I can rely on when I am truly alone...my blog....

music and style 1

I love the music of the fashion shows and right now I am immersed in the Fall winter collections on FTV, style.com and the music of the fall-winter season...

This is my favorite tune from all of them...I first heard this on the Blumarine show...so everytime I listen to the song, my imaginative and playful mind envisions Anja or Natasha or Jessica Stam or Lily Donaldson strutting the frothy, furry and flimsily beautiful creations of Anna Molinari on the catwalk (Anna is creative director of Blumarine)...

Enjoy the music!!! and watch the photos of course while listening hehehe.... (Of course don't forget to click LAUNCH STANDALONE PLAYER if the music doesn't play in my blog page :D )

love this for the longest time....

this is a beautiful fusion between two different genres, Madonna's and Massive Attack's ...

Hope you enjoy as much as I have since I first heard this....

(Note: DON't FORGET to click LAUNCH STANDALONE PLAYER IF THE SONG DOESN'T PLAY AT FIRST...)