tago and its curse

The common question for the three finalists in last year’s Search for Mutya ng Tago was: How would you describe Tago to a blind person?

As contestants groped for words, an answer formed in my head: Tago is like an orgasm---intense, beautiful, and above all, addictive!

Addiction is the essence of Tago’s curse.

My father once told me what is perhaps an apocryphal story that happened many, many years ago when Tago was still an agricultural horn of plenty; when birds hovered low over streams sparkling and pristine; when winds could be summoned by mere whistles from the unpainted lips of women winnowing rice under fruit-laden trees; when every year, at harvest time, tago turned into a nerve center of commerce and trade, with people from as far as Luzon peddling their wares to farmers whose kalero dotted the fields like golden hills.

Lording over these peddlers with his multicolored blankets and mats was Simon, a Batangueno with an easy smile. One early morning, as he was leaving Tago for Batangas, Simon was robbed and murdered.

What was strange about Simon’s death was not the single stab wound in the form of a tiny crescent moon on his chest; it was the soil that crammed his mouth.

It took an old mediko who lived by the Camagong river to unravel the mystery. In the throes of death, he said, Simon must have eaten soil and uttered a curse. Eating soil is the ultimate form of curse because it’s irreversible and everlasting and condemns the person or place for whom the soil is eaten to live a life of misery and misfortune!

The only way to shake off the curse, the mediko said, is for Tagon-ons to leave Tago and find their luck somewhere. But because the curse has imbued Tago with a certain charm to make it hard for them to leave, many continue to suffer.

And like them, I’ve chosen to stay.

friends

i value my friends dearly. but our closeness aside, i don’t ask questions, much less expect them to open up at trouble’s first flash. no, i’m not insensitive; it’s just that friendship for me is all about respecting personal space. and get this: the more i become close with them, the more i value their privacy. but make no mistake, i have my ears all ready, with an advice or two should they ask for them.

right now, a very good friend is experiencing difficult times. and what is killing me is not so much as learning her problem's enormity from others; it’s the fact that i can’t do anything to help her.

“oh, God! make me win the Lotto.”

(note to self: practice shading numbers before buying your first ticket ever.)

martini, please

i was in butuan a few sleeps back and found steve martini sharing a dusty shelf with steele and tartt at the basement of Gaisano.

after over five years of not hearing from each other, steve martini, the man who breathes life to paul madriani, my favorite legal eagle since jeniffer parker, still doesn't disappoint.

you can have all the grishams you want; just give me a martini.

snakes in the year of the ox

“In the year of the Ox, Snake people will have better luck because the Ox and the Snake have attraction relationship. The Snake people's career performance will have significant progress and their money luck is much better than most people.”

Hmmmm.....

“buy filipino”

For 2009 and beyond, I’ll be a full-fledged member of the movement called “Buy Filipino Made Product.”

If truth be told, I began practicing this tack, albeit half-heartedly, way back when JoeCon was our secretary at DTI. His pitch then was that Philippine made products could be at par, if not better, than those produced elsewhere in the world. From that sound byte, he coined the catchphrase, “Yes, the Filipino Can!” But because pundits at DTI are a hilarious lot, they lobbied for the slogan to be in Filipino for consistency. And so it became, “Oo, ang Filipino lata!”

But I digress.

Buying products “Made in the Philippines” gets the businesses going; it sustains jobs and even creates more; and it allows money to change hands among Pinoys inside this country of 7,100 islands. All these are good for the economy, the better to placate, if not eliminate, recession jitters.

But, let me make one thing clear: this is only as far as my spending goes. Because if friends insist on giving me a high end YSL shirt, they’ll earn my eternal gratitude. Just a caveat though: they just have to make sure it's a YSL original. As in, Yari Sa Liliw.

on cam

My 2009 vision board includes an Asian destination. And this early, I know what to do: leave my camera behind!

I’ve learned from my Singapore experience last year that a camera is all you need to take away the excitement from your trip. Because with it, you tend to spend hours freezing in time the sights rather than delighting in them and living the moment. Has it ever occured to you that you need not take pictures of these sights because over at Google, they come in a shot much better than yours?

While on a pleasure trip, you wield your digicam like a soldier firing indiscriminately at his enemies. And just when you think you have had enough and begin to appreciate for real the Merlion for its artistry, the cam whore in you takes over again and makes you gun for the 984th shot, one that has you catching the water spewed by the half-lion, half-fish. Now tell me, where’s the excitement in that?

We need photographs for the memories, alright. But do they have to cram a 2-gig SD card?

What about proof, you say. Well, I’m afraid you have to poke my snake eyes and see what pixelized memories they hold. I’ve read somewhere that no camera has been built that matches even partially this thing called windows-of-the-soul whose sensitivity and performance characteristics approach the absolute limits set by quantum physics.

But wait. If preponderance of evidence becomes a real issue, then I shall have my plane ticket laminated and hung on the wall, just above the toilet bowl.

on writing

Carlo Vergara, the author of ZsaZsa Zaturnnah, shared “13 Things About Writing” in his blog, The Carverhouse. The post was light, playful, and most importantly, insightful.

Of the 13, #11 struck me the most, thus: “Writing is meticulous. ‘Hello! Bakit hindi capitalized ang sentences mo? Mag-aral ka nga ng subject-verb agreement! At gumagamit ka ng textspeak, yuck! Eto ang thesaurus, lamunin mo!’"

It's sad that in a country where textspeak rules, the rules of grammar and composition are thrown into the wind. Like caution.

But I refuse to conform. And so call me a fossil, call me passe, but I will continue learning the Elements of Style. Even if it kills me.

vision board

The gospel according to Google says that a vision board (see sample pic above) is simply a visual representation or collage of the things that you want to have, be, or do in your life. The purpose of a vision board is to activate the law of attraction which states that we attract into our lives anything that we give attention to, regardless whether it be positive or negative.

The concept of the vision board (also known as a goal board, goal map, or treasure map) has been around for generations, but it has gained a renewed interest and popularity after John Goddard---the number one goal achiever in the world---reveals that it’s his greatest secret, something that has helped him achieve over 550 major goals.

A personal vision board is only limited by one’s own creativity. And so for myself, I have designed my 2009 vision board in such a way that it includes most of the general elements. It’s highly visual to begin with because my college psychology teacher said that the subconscious mind works in pictures and images. By putting more pictures and phrases, I increase its capacity to draw emotional response from me. Simply put, the mere sight of my vision board should fuel my passion to achieve it.

While others place their vision board out in the open, I have mine inside my bedroom. Strategically located, it’s the first thing I see in the morning when I wake up; it’s also the last thing I see in the evening when I sleep. Yes, there’s something personal behind this. Not that I can’t handle criticism which is said to damage the delicate energy that my vision board emits, it’s just that I hate it when people ask me for justifications.

I’ve been doing a vision board for two years now, and I say that, on the average, it has helped me gain focus, enough for me to have achived most of my goals for a given year. Regrettably I can’t say the same for my new year resolutions of old.

new year resolution

Before you pin on the vision board your 2009 must dos and must haves, just a few words about correct usage. It’s “new year resolution.” yes, that’s right, no “apostrophe” and “s” after “new year.” My—uhmm—source says that if you say, “new year’s resolution,” it’s the “new year,” not you, that’s having a pledge or a resolution.

“To stress the point,” my source says, “have you ever heard someone say, ‘What’s your birthday’s wish?'”

No wonder most of the promises I give myself every year are not kept because I never own them in the first place. Now, there goes a nice scapegoat.

"you gotta have faith"

In the smash tv series Prison Break, young Lincoln Burrows said these four words to his younger brother, Michael Scofield, after their mother died and their father disappeared. Years later at Fox River Penitentiary in Chicago where they were both serving time, Michael said the same words to Lincoln, then a dead man walking for a crime he didn't commit.

Might as well make “you gotta have faith” my mantra so that this blog will not fall by the wayside of neglect. Just like my old one.

Happy New Year!