J'adore Adele!!!!!!!

Her voice is a combination of Florence Welch's powerfulvocals, Carole King's timeless relevance, Tori Amos' depth and Alanis Morisette's devil-may-care independence...

On repeat on my I-touch!!! ..

hiatus....

It's good to do nothing. Although nothing really does not mean much to me. When I am not traveling I am just back home in sunny lil Philippines. I want to tell myself that I am not really doing anything but that's hardly the case. Doing nothing in my books means sleeping all day, coming out of my room only to drink and eat which is never the case with me. I am restless, I need to be moving a lot, I can hardly keep still.

I have been crazy about yoga for a year now. Actually I do not know how I have been able to keep this fact away from my blog but downward dogs, ujjayi breathings and shoulder stands occupy a large chunk of my week these days. I think when I have the chance I try to tuck in 4 sessions a week which is already a lot for me, considering I am still on number one in the list of things I do when I am on hiatus. Two to three times a week is fairly good for me. PLUS I get tired of things quite quickly and I want to take it easy on yoga because of the boredom factor. If i do things with constant regularity I get tired of them quickly. It's a like a big ax hanging on my head, this ugly thing called boredom, among many other axes.

How about my movie and primetime TV show addiction? With blitzkrieg quickness I pored through episodes of this insanely addicting but ridiculously girlish "Gossip Girl" TV show. Seasons 1 to 4 in just a couple of weeks!!! Well that's not exactly a record considering some people who have nothing to do with their summer vacations watch three seasons in one day. But then again they are most likely of the crime of being antisocial and I am not thatLOL. The reason why I deliberately took weeks to finish through three seasons is have been trying to postpone watching them because I originally wanted entertainment while I am away on my travels. Alas curiosity is an evil creature that ruins premeditated endeavors. How can I avoid the television show's venom? High school ("allegedly" although Leighton Meester is 25 years old) girls toting Bottega Venettas and Balenciagas while strutting through the halls of their campus is phenomenally delicious. It's the good life but with older actresses playing college girls. Roger Vivier shoes and Paul Smith ties are currencies the characters use. The girls are beautiful and the MEN look ravishing. Sadly though I am nearing the end of the line because I'm almost done with the reruns so in a short while I'm going to be subjected to the torture of waiting for the current episode to appear and only once a week - on fucking television LOL. Or I could always masochize and allow the delicious anguish of waiting for the episodes to accumulate and then devouring a copy of the whole season in one Bacchanalian viewing...sigh decisions decisions decisions...:-(

Tennis and badminton are still regular parts of my routine of course. Tennis on television though and badminton on the indoor courts twice a week. I alternate yoga and badminton as workout routines re: the boredom factor (read back to paragraph two). And anyway badminton is probably my only contact with men who do not want to screw me HAHAHAHAHHA so I constantly go back to it like a whore I regularly visit LOLLL . I have male and female friends in my badminton circle of friends and it's a nice change from my closer circle of friends. Everyone is competitive which is very enjoyable for me as well. As for tennis, eons ago I used to play it but nowadays I hate tennis club politics and anyway most of the men playing in our clubs are old overweight daddies who get drunk right after their games at night. Boohhh..

Alcohol!!!!!!! Of course my vacations are never complete without them. Aside from cheap beer that tastes like Benadryl meets citrus fruit meets horse piss (not that Ive tasted horse piss hahahaha) = Red Horse Beer, me and my friends enjoy a cocktail of rhum, Coca Cola and 100% pineapple juice. It's gorgeous and never leaves you with a hangover the next day that is if you water down the drink with the right amount of ice. BUT if you love to experience the real essence of the drink, avoid watering it down "on the rocks" of which a deadly consequence awaits you thereafter- joint and shoulder grogginess, a dry mouth and a semi-vegetative state the minute you wake up after a whole night of this LOLLL.

I guess everything i do whenever I am away from the fast pace of traveling and meeting people boils down to company. I enjoy good company, slapstick-ish humor and excellent non-cerebral conversation. Wherever the weekend or the weekday places me and no matter how inebriated I turn out the end of the evening, I always make sure I am in the company of cool and issue-free people. And freedom of speech is an absolute necessity albeit with some respectability (respectability is a grey area though particularly when things get wilder as the drinks flow more freely hahaha).

Au Revoir Winklergirl fans!!!!

an article for the pessimists...

It's been a long time since i found a brilliant and really piercing article. This one nailed it in my proverbial head. Disturbing and all the necessary adjectives that I can conjure is how I would describe this piece of writing.

ALL HAIL the gospel of Christopher Hitchens! I should get back to his book, "God is not Great" when I've built up enough tenacity and momentum to tackle it LOL ...

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Beware the In-Laws

Does Kate Middleton really want to marry into a family like this?

By Christopher Hitchens

A hereditary monarch, observed Thomas Paine, is as absurd a proposition as a hereditary doctor or mathematician. But try pointing this out when everybody is seemingly moist with excitement about the cake plans and gown schemes of the constitutional absurdity's designated mother-to-be. You don't seem to be uttering common sense. You sound like a Scrooge. I suppose this must be the monarchical "magic" of which we hear so much: By some mystic alchemy, the breeding imperatives for a dynasty become the stuff of romance, even "fairy tale." The usually contemptuous words fairy tale were cer

tainly coldly accurate about the romance quotient of the last two major royal couplings, which brought the vapid disco-princesses Diana and Sarah (I decline to call her "Fergie") within range of demolishing the entire mystique. And, even if the current match looks a lot more wholesome and genuine, its principal function is still to restore a patina of glamour that has been all but irretrievably lost.

The British monarchy doesn't depend entirely on glamour, as the long, long reign of Queen Elizabeth II continues to demonstrate. Her unflinching dutifulness and reliability have conferred something beyond charm upon the institution, associating it with stoicism and a certain integrity. Republicanism is infinitely more widespread than it was when she was first crowned, but it's very rare indeed to hear the Sovereign Lady herself being criticized, and even most anti-royalists hasten to express themselves admiringly where she is concerned.

I am not sure how deserved this immunity really is. The queen took two major decisions quite early in her reign, neither of which was forced upon her. She refused to allow her younger sister Margaret to marry the man she loved and had chosen, and she let her authoritarian husband have charge of the education of her eldest son. The first decision was taken to appease the most conservative leaders of the Church of England (a church of which she is, absurdly, the head), who could not approve the marriage of Margaret to a divorced man. The second was taken for reasons less clear.

The harvest was equally gruesome in both cases: Princess Margaret later married and divorced a man she did not love and then had years to waste as the model of the bone-idle, cigarette-holdered, gin-sipping socialite, surrounded with third-rate gossips and charmers and as unhappy as the day was long. (She also produced some extra royal children, for whom something to do had to be found.) Prince Charles, subjected to a regime of fierce paternal harangues and penitential cold-shower boarding schools, withdrew into himself, was eventually talked into a calamitous marriage with someone he didn't love or respect, and is now the morose, balding, New Age crank and licensed busybody that we flinch from today. He has also apparently found belated contentment with the former wife of a brother-officer.

Together, Margaret and Charles set the tone for the dowdy, feckless, can't-stay-married shower of titled descendants with whose names, let alone doings, it is near-impossible to keep up. There are so many of them! And things always have to be found for them to do.

For Prince William at least it was decided on the day of his birth what he should do: Find a presentable wife, father a male heir (and preferably a male "spare" as well), and keep the show on the road. By yet another exercise of that notorious "magic," it is now doubly and triply important that he does this simple thing right, because only his supposed charisma can save the country from what monarchists dread and republicans ought to hope for: King Charles III. (Monarchy, you see, is a hereditary disease that can only be cured by fresh outbreaks of itself.) An even longer life for the present queen is generally hoped for: failing that a palace maneuver that skips a generation and saves the British from a man who—like the fruit of the medlar—went rotten before he turned ripe.

Convinced republican that I am, and foe of the prince who talks to plants and wants to be crowned "head of all faiths" as well as the etiolated Church of England, I find myself pierced by a pang of sympathy. Not much of a life, is it, growing old and stale with no real job except waiting for the news of Mummy's death? Some British people claim actually to "love" their rather dumpy Hanoverian ruling house. This love takes the macabre form of demanding a regular human sacrifice whereby unexceptional people are condemned to lead wholly artificial and strained existences, and then punished or humiliated when they crack up.

The last few weeks brought tidings of the latest grotesqueries involving Prince Andrew, Charles' brother. If I haven't forgotten anything, he had just recovered from tidings involvingoverwarm relations with the Qaddafi clan when his ex-wife was found to have scrounged a loan from a wealthy American friend whose record, alas, was disfigured by a conviction for sexual relations with the underage. The loan would have defrayed part of the unending wasteful expenditure that is required to keep the Ferguson girl staggering between scandals and sponsorships. I mean, the whole thing is just so painfully and absolutely vulgar. And, among the queen's many children and grandchildren, not by any means exceptional behavior either ….

This is why I laughed so loud when the Old Guard began snickering about the pedigree of young Ms. Middleton. Her parents, it appeared, were not quite out of the top drawer. The mother had been an air hostess or something with an unfashionable airline, and the family had been overheard using lethally wrong expressions, such as serviette for napkin, settee forsofa, and—I can barely bring myself to type the shameful letters—toilet for lavatory. Ah, sothat's what constitutes vulgarity! People who would never dare risk a public criticism of the royal family, even in its daytime-soap incarnation, prefer to take a surreptitious revenge on a young woman of modest background. For shame.

Myself, I wish her well and also wish I could whisper to her: If you really love him, honey, get him out of there, and yourself, too. Many of us don't want or need another sacrificial lamb to water the dried bones and veins of a dessicated system. Do yourself a favor and save what you can: Leave the throne to the awful next incumbent that the hereditary principle has mandated for it.

(Credits to Slate Magazine for publishing Hitchens' article. Their website is www.slate.com )

Happy Birthday to a Good friend and fan of this blog!

My first video in almost four years for fuck sakes!! Haha

This one is dedicated to my friend Jai...

Lots of love darling on your birthday!!!

Mwahhhhh

The Alan Parsons tutorial...

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a place in my mind...

This is the very reason why we take images...

They take us back to a place in time where innocence, playfulness, joy, confusion, chaos, friendships, adventures, surprises and a whole lot of emotional conundrum took place....

The feeling becomes so overwhelming it makes you smile, cry, frown....it makes you burst...

These took me to a moment in time....

...and the waif remains restless after all these years...seeking new adventures in faraway lands...What has changed???

Black can be ugly...

For someone who's a year older, not necessarily wiser, a little bit more cynical (but easy to thaw! LOL) it's rather weird when you stumble upon a little proclivity that you seem to enjoy on the surface, or when it hits you the first time - like my experience with inexperienced boys! It's rather awesome to me although questionable to the morally and socially upright when I find my heart skipping like a teenage girl's hop when I am with them. Are boys the new black? :)

Well boys are in my definition lads, 20 years old and below. Although some pretend to be boys at 23, which is a bit cute and some pretend to be lads at 27 which is ridiculous and hysterical, I do not mind as long as you fall into the fresh-faced category of beings with balls laden with lots of soy-juice (protein is the building block of life!! LOL) and with the un-Imeldific collection of one pair of Nike shoes, cheap thongs and the obligatory leather shoes for school in your closet. You are a boy in my eye if you fit into this category. Also you have to be able to fuck like a rabbit - meaning tirelessly sans alcoholic influence.

They're unpredictable, they're wild, restless and they remind me of an age when I used to play badminton under the heat of the sun, minus indoor convenience for hours. Stallions but not quite stallions as they are ponies by age and looks. They're wild in the sense that they are tireless in that singular pursuit of pleasure and immediate gratification of everything from orgasming to eating whatever they want. They're unpredictable because their mood swings are mercurial, they envy almost every boy who possesses something they don't have and well yes they can be possessive too.

My encounters with them during my longer rest period back home was well, how do I put it so as not to sound so politically correct, orgasmically different but personally tumultuous? I think it's charming when they melt you with their wide-eyed looks and eagerness to please and their attentiveness towards you even on the mobile phone messaging waves but how often do I want this kind of attention showered on me, I am not so sure. Maybe sometimes isolation can be a good thing. Plus the fact that my oxygen levels cannot withstand the kind of grit and tenacity they have when it comes to alcohol consumption? For whatever inebriates me inebriates them less which is saying so much because I am not heavy onto the alcohol thing. So they'll get drunk but they have an excuse, as for me, I may have an excuse but will look downright ridiculous acting silly with a bunch of kids! LOL. The games they play...argggh!!! It has to be downright despicable if I stoop down to their level of computer action games and arcade stuff. The only thing we seem to have in common when it comes to the desktop is FACEBOOK! and that's pitiable...

On the conversational side of things though, most of them fall so flat. They talk more on a different level, I seek more intellectual, sophisticated, humorous not hilarious forms of interaction. They can talk about people and ideas but not on a very subliminal or deeper scale. People on television and neighbors will always be there but the tissues connecting these beings will never get into a conversation with the younger boy. They talk about people they mostly see, those within the scope of their relatively invertebrate little minds whereas older men can talk more philosophically and logically - which is a tad more impressive for me. Older men are works of puzzle too, they're more mysterious and if you are able to please them by pressing the right buttons they are more than likely to return the favor multiple times...:)

In the end black can be muddled, confusing, effusive, chaotic, and boys are my new black. That's why it may be preferable to embrace a lighter hue because older men fit into that mold....Hello Mr. 38 years old...:)

Shadows and tunes...

There is a program here in a local channel called "Storyline." Basically the program revolves around the personal narratives many different people have about their personal realities. They come from all levels in the Philippine society. I've seen them feature women cab drivers, midgets working in a local circus, famous politicians, rape victims among so many others. I try to always catch this program when I can which is not saying much because it is a hit-and-miss in my case. I never take note on what time they air. But whenever I can I find every story to be very riveting. People always have a story to tell, thus giving the viewers a view,no matter how personal, of their own world.

Just a couple of minutes ago I watched blind individuals talk about their existence and the daily struggles they all have to go through. They are singers by profession. You're probably thinking about the Stevie Wonder type who commands thousands of dollars or on a microscopic scale, thousands of people per performance. Far from it, and even far from the blind guitarist or pianist we see in many local bands around here, they are singers in our sidewalks - beggars: not by freedom of decision but by reality of survival.

There was a time when blind people were premier masseurs. Their skills at massage was renowned and so sought-after. But the burgeoning spa business and home massage services offered by many more progressive entrepreneurs have displaced blind people in the hierarchy of massage therapy. They talk about how those with sight have taken advantage of a niche they once filled. As a result of this change, many of them have lost their jobs, clientele etcetera. For them each day is a struggle economically. It's cruel.

Two of the guests in the show talked about the slow deterioration into blindness. They claimed to have been able to see and identify color when they were younger but then the whole world started to blur in a maelstrom of shadow and white. Another one talks about how she really was never able to view color from a very early age. She could only see shadows. She could not even see her Mom's face. This makes me sadder.

As a result they resort to more meager means to survive. This is the point where they resort to singing in the sidewalks. The props are simple. Cheap sunglasses for the eyes, a microphone attached to a small speaker or a big one(depending on how progressive they have become I guess!) , and a ukulele or a guitar for acoustics- you're all set! And well of course a respectable singing voice. They sing from sunrise to sundown or for as long as they can last I think. They're usually accompanied by an aide, usually a wife or a husband I guess, to make sure that the coins people drop on their boxes do not get stolen by an unscrupulous and merciless character.

This is the essence of their daily existence. Each drop of a coin is music to their ears. The shuffling of feet during peak hours - employees and students on their way home or on their way to school or work, motivates them to sing louder, adopt a catchy tune, jerk them out of their sedation....The earnings are enough to tide them through the grind of their economic needs.

I believe the only thing driving them to live each day with a renewed hope, a vigor that's unshakeable, are their dreams. They dream and wish of seeing their children, moving onto greener pastures like we all strive for. But it all ends there for them. These grandiose dreams are barricaded by the sad reality that their physical limitations have rendered them immobile and almost incapable of doing many things most normal people are capable of.

I guess I am not big enough to move their lives, to lift their economic standing, to maintain sustenance of their daily needs. It's fatal to feel sad but to be so powerless to do anything. The only thing i can do, selfish little me, is to appreciate the little things I have. I am a healthy human being who is as healthy as anyone can get. I have the power of choice over my every move in life - the people I just talked about don't.

Maybe I should watch less and less of these programs otherwise I will always tear myself away from the channel and reach for the controls to extricate myself from their sad realities....And this in itself unsettles me..

Vogue's Yin and Yang

Anna Wintour is the most powerful woman in fashion. PERIOD. There isn't any aspect in the fashion world where she is not involved in. From sales to design editing to celebrity styling to rubbing elbows with the mega-millionaires who own the conglomerates that turn our closets topsy turvy, she is immersed all the way to her neck in everything regarding the world of style. She advises and dictates what goes into a famous designer's show (advise and dictate become synonymous in her parlance), she launches young designers and catapults them into fame and megabucks by recommending them to all the right people and labels. (She told OPRAH WINFREY to lose weight to be on the cover of her magazine HUH!!!!!) She is the chief editor of and figuratively owns Vogue magazine, the US chapter and is responsible for 101% of what goes in and out the issues. Nothing escapes her scrutinizing eyes in terms of content or creativity when it comes to her magazine. She is not warm as her publisher says because she does not need to reach out to people who do not need her accessibility. Her private life is...private. She plays tennis almost everyday (she is already my idol) to keep fit and she is very fit, very skinny in fact. She can wear anything because she has the body and she has the power to acquire any designer's garb she wants. The infamous fringe and Chanel sunglasses are signature looks that she has never let go of for the past couple of years. She is Mount Vesuvius personified!!!.

Grace Coddington is the creative director of Vogue USA. She is responsible for the styling as well as the conceptualizing of the magazine's many fantastic editorial images which highlight the clothes and style of the season worn by the skinniest girls you can ever see in the planet. Coddington's creative eye and knack for ideas are both phenomenal. She takes out a story, a scenario, a seemingly boring and monotonous daily activity, a historical element from the past and turns it into the creative backdrop of a photoshoot but highlighting the relevance of today's current trends. She is responsible for so many of Vogue's uber original and iconic pixelated concepts e.g models wearing sheer dresses while washing their clothes in the laundromat, Kiera Knightley and designers all cast straight out of "The Wizard of Oz" fairytale book scenario, a shot of a photographer jumping while shooting a jumping model, heavily made-up girls donning John Galliano in a late night French restaurant straight out of a Brassai photograph, backpacking supermodels trying to mix and match with a crowd of Peruvian/ Andean revelers in a Teotihuacan scenario among so many others. If there is another power in Vogue office that does not necessarily complement Wintour's but is equally as forceful and influential creatively it is that of Coddington's. She believes that if you never close your eyes even if it's somewhere as mundane as being driven by a taxi to some place, you will see an outside world that will give you ideas. Any idea has value at some point in your life or career.

These are the two powerful characters that turn the wheels at the New York offices of Vogue at least if not the world of style. They are often in conflict with one another but have surprisingly worked together in the same offices for 20 years now. Surprising isn't it? Grace said it best when she was trying to describe their relationship, "I know when to stop pushing her, she doesn't know when to stop pushing me."

This is the backdrop for the documentary, "The September Issue." I highly recommend watching it. Even when you are just on the fringes of the fashion world or even out of it which I hardly doubt anybody ever really is. I mean if you're a businessman or a CEO, you always want to know which Hermes or Fendi ties look good on your suit, or which socks best complement your Bruno Magli shoes noh? Don't get me started on whether women are into fashion si? LOL

It's a fantastic film that documents the inner workings of the VOGUE team and Anna Wintour and Grace and the models and photographers and staff when they're trying to prep, create and build the magazine's September issue. It's suppose to be the biggest issue of the year because it's where all the new trends are discussed, featured and advertised. All the designers, stylists, cosmetic companies will kill to be featured in that issue. The movie showed the various chaotic elements all throughout the buildup towards the publication of the magazine. It also touches a little bit on the stories behind two of Vogue's most powerful people as well as the instances and relationships they needed to work on to achieve their Herculean status in the fashion world. It is beautiful and heartbreaking! In the end these elements coalesce to become the brightest issue of the year, Vogue magazine's September outing :)

To extract an idea...

There will be movies that make an impressive mark on people and their lives and then there will be movies that will shatter the whole world with the creativity, fantasy and sharpness with which the script was written and with the supple flow of the story. These are the movies that remind us that the film industry is in a progressive state rather than stuck in a state of regression.

I will not care to tell the story about the film "Inception" because many of you have probably seen it (but will probably write about it in such a position in the future anyway LOL). I will discuss it from a perspective that's sort of external and not assume the storyteller/ fictional writer position. Another reason I will choose not to dissect the movie so much is I have not really totally gotten to the coherence of all the scenes which forms part and parcel of the overall plot but based on the things I have discerned from the movie while I was not using it as a sleeping tablet and was actually viewing it, it is one of the most wonderfully crafted ideas in the last 5 years. The actors are stellar but the film would probably have been equally as forceful even if it did not have an all-star cast.

They set up an arcane and intelligible series of situations that made viewers sit on the edge of their seats all the time and make sure not to miss a single scene because of how each scenario was stitched carefully to another in the effort to generate an interest within the viewer that wouldn't wane from the beginning to the end. The mysterious symbolic objects in the film too gave it immortal status in this viewer's perspective. The "top" like object referred to as a totem that spun round and round and round in your dream but would trickle and fall flat if you were awake was an important antidote to the film. The film had many spellbinding elements such as kicks and the music played in order to ward off the lethargy brought about by their dreams and bring them back the world of reality.

The presence of a villainess woman - sensual, mysterious and lethal is also a key ingredient in the film because her appearances all throughout the film coincided with significant moments which generated lots of intensity and confusion among the main characters. Women being the Achilles' heels of men has long been immortalized in many motion pictures and the venomously sly character of the woman weaved itself through many scenes in the film here. She posed a great danger to the central mission of the team but ironically she was also instrumental in keeping the sanity of the creator of the master plan.

When you watch the film trailer you will most likely conclude that it's another movie that tries to fill in the genre introduced by the Matrix, Transformers and many films that require animation that wants to stump and impress wide-eyed audience viewers like us with earth-shattering destruction and histrionic sounds. But the sheer intelligibility and brilliance of the plot totally differentiates it from the usual special effect-films we have seen in the past. Only a true cinephile as well as a moderately analytical mind can appreciate and embrace the beauty and effect of the film on the reality of our existence as well as that of an existence that escapes us - dreams.

L'Amoure...

This is my future husband!!! hahahahaha

Tres Cute

Tres rebellious ( refer to the fact he hates two hour movies but he is a filmstar!!!!)

Tres funnyish

Tres skinny-ish

Tres beautiful accent :)

He probably has a big ______ ! hahahahahahahahaha

Don't like the smoking though but pretty forgivable when he looks this nice :)

HE took movie clips of himself when he was a kid! How cute is thattt! Destined to be a movie star eh???

Love the taxi ride and the walk through urban Hong kong...And the meal at the Chinese kitchenette, PRICELESSSSSSSSS!!!! Hahaha