>2002 Carlos Palanca Awards for Literature

congratulations to the ateneans who won the palanca this year. :)

- Marco Antonio V. Lopez
Instructor, Filipino Department, Loyola Schools
1st prize, Maikling Kuwento

- Alvin B. Yapan
Instructor, Filipino Department, Loyola Schools
1st prize, Future Fiction

- Nathaniel Joseph F. de Mesa
AB Interdisciplinary Studies 2000
1st prize, One-Act Play

- Genero R. Gojo Cruz
Student, MA Literature in Filipino
1st prize, Short Story for Children

- Edgar C. Samar
Asst. Instructor, Filipino Department, Loyola Schools
2nd prize, Tula

- Francis Joseph Tanglao Aguas
Asst. Professor, Fine Arts Program, Loyola Schools
2nd prize, Full-Length Play

- Joseph Patrick F. Arevalo
BS Management in Applied Chemistry 2001
2nd prize, Short Story for Children (Filipino)

- Michael M. Coroza
Instructor, Filipino Department, Loyola Schools
3rd prize, Sanaysay

===
...i'm going to see neva's name on that list someday.

i believe in you, neva! yeba!

aaah, i just ended one of the most relaxng bum fridays i've ever had. but i'll write about it later in the day.

i just checked my mail because i wanted to check if my best friend pam emailed me, but she hasn't. i'm kinda worried. anyway, i got this story from search-in's heil hitler teddy instead and it's pretty funny. well, at least i had a good laugh.

i'm so buzzed. i love pale pilsen. i'm going to sleep well.

i'm going to The Little Gym in Filinvest today. hay, good luck to me. if they accept me in december, then i'll have to rethink my future.

i'm also going to the parlor. wahoo!!! i love not going to work on a weekday. :)

>quark's everywhere!

quark's in The Philippine Star yesterday, and he'll be there again today and tomorrow, so look him up.

i noticed that he was interviewed by butch francisco, and i remembered that the last review that i read on Gamitan was written by him. he really loved the movie and has high hopes for quark. that's good.

i'm still trying to get used to the fact that quark is getting so much attention in the papers, not to mention the tabloids. i'm really proud of him, but at the same time i'm really scared for him. i hope that nothing stupid or dangerous will ever be published about him. at least he has a lot of good friends who'll always be there no matter what happens.

i also think that people should be more excited of what the future may bring. some day, quark will make the movie that he really wants to make, and whether or not that movie makes the box office, i know that it'll kick ass.

what i find admirable about this jolly friend of mine is that his intelligence (naks!) and love for film always shows. he always knows what he's talking about, name dropping and siting examples and shit. when i watched him in Tell the People Now, i think he intimidated everyone there because he knew so much about film and its history and the people who are in the business. i think he had more knowledge about film than they did.

he said something really good in his interview: ...telling the story in unconventional ways doesn’t mean the public won’t get it. way to go, quark!

this is the sony digital camera that i want. it's almost as small as a credit card and it comes in silver, baby pink and baby blue. sayang, walang baby purple.

i got this from miggy today. :)

Odd case.

Excerpted from an article which appeared in the Dublin Times about a bank robbery on March 2. "Once inside the bank shortly after midnight, their efforts at disabling the security system got underway immediately. The robbers, who expected to find one or
two large safes filled with cash and valuables, were surprised to see hundreds of smaller safes scattered throughout the bank.


The robbers cracked the first safe's combination, and inside they found only a bowl of vanilla pudding. As recorded on the bank's audiotape system, one robber said, "At least we'll have a bit to eat." The robbers opened up a second safe, and it also contained nothing but vanilla pudding. The process continued until all the safes were opened.


They found not one pound sterling, a diamond, or an ounce of gold. Instead, all the safes contained covered bowls of pudding.
Disappointed, the robbers made a quiet exit, each leaving with nothing more than a queasy, uncomfortably full stomach.

The newspaper headline read:

IRELAND'S LARGEST SPERM BANK ROBBED EARLY THIS MORNING.

for more odd cases, click here.

care of neva's interesting quizzes, i found myself surfing the site of someone named muted faith. she's the one who makes the quizzes and apparently, she's the one who draws them as well. she's an artist and her work is sort of anime-ish, but softer. i think it's because of all the brush marks. i love brush marks. with the brush marks, her art looks chaoticaly (if there is such a word) clean. she also has some sketches, but the colored ones still take the cake for me. they're just so eye-catching. they're full and bold, yet extremely clean.

some of her work reminds me of mark lavin and harvey ong's work.


this is my favorite so far. it really makes you feel small. well, yeah, the jpeg's small (duh), so just visit the site to see her work in the bigger picture.

it's her!!! it's really her!!!

in fairness, mookie looks really cute. but who the hell's the guy? nyeh. and where did ramon get this picture? from a website? or maybe he bought the book. hmmm...

tried something interesting today.

since i can't fucking shot list, i decided to research on the changchun acrobatic troupe from beijing for my next wygp?. out of the blue, i decided to check up on cads' gig sked. so i searched for cads and came across a blog called choreographies. so i clicked on it and it was actually owned by a cads dancer FROM MY BATCH! there was no name, though. he (or she) also had a tag board, but i couldn't really tell who the blog owner was. he mentioned noelle hechanova, quark and Gamitan...who was this guy?!?! ...or girl?

then, ayun! may "email me" siya! so i clicked on it and checked the email addy: rsolis@something.something. RANDY!!!

i'm sleeping over in the office because i'm supposed to shot list, but christian locked edit 5 (because of that new and stupid dvd computer whatever) and my tapes are in there. sigh. as alexis would say, "crazy."

It’s September 11 in the States right now.

About 9pm last year, I received a text from Tricia that a plane hit the World Trade Center. I was drinking with the GamePlan people (we were depressed), so I just thought that it was a really wild accident and I continued drinking. Then I received a text from Maggie that she needed to contact Chris via Quark’s cellphone in New York, but she couldn’t reach him. So in my tipsy state, I wondered...were things really that bad in New York?

Camille and I asked the bartender to put his TV on Studio23 and we saw the second plane hit the WTC. The rest of GamePlan rushed to where the TV was and we were all in shock. When the first building collapsed, we panicked and started calling anyone we knew in New York.

I realized that I had to check up on so many people. Chris, Quark, Jomi and Lia were taking their film workshop in NYFA, and Mookie was staying there with her sister. Maradee was there on vacation, and Steph and Sam were studying in NYU. Issa Lorenzo and Cara were also studying somewhere, Gars and Ernie (my best friend Pam's brother) were working there, and Papa was supposed to fly to New York, but I didn’t know when. And even if he hadn’t gone to New York, there was still a possibility that something would happen in San Francisco.

The biggest problem was that the phone lines were down and I couldn’t get to anyone, except Papa who was still in San Francisco (thank goodness). Luckily, I thought of calling Marily and she said that Jomi called earlier and said that he, Chris, Quark, and Lia were all together. So I called Maggie to tell her that Chris was alright. But my worrying didn’t end there. Kage and I were desperately trying to reach Maradee and Leah (who lived in San Francisco), and Carla was trying to call Gars. And then I realized that another plane crashed in the Pentagon, a few minutes away from the University of Maryland where Pam stayed. You can imagine how her mother must have felt, having to worry about one son in New York and a daughter near DC.

After more than 2 hours of calling people I couldn’t reach, I decided to email them and pray that they would reply to say that they were alright.

The next day, all the emails came and everyone I knew in the East Coast was ok. I can’t believe that it’s been a year. Ramon wrote a good post in his blog about 9/11 and he’s right, we should never forget what happened that day, who died in WTC and in the planes that crashed.

Whenever I hear or watch about 9/11, I try to just forget about it and I think about the present. Maria Ressa said on The Probe Team last night that 9/11 was only one event and it just so happened to be a successful terrorist act among many other attempts. There are still many fights here in our very own country and we should focus on those for now.

But one really can’t help but remember what transpired last year. The images keep flashing by and there are many Americans visiting ground zero in memory of the people who died. One of the images that enters my mind is the couple holding hands before jumping from the WTC. It’s an image that Ramon actually wrote a story about. In Chris’ email last year, he mentioned that he was sitting in a bus and a man just kept on muttering "all those people are dead. all those people are dead."

But the one image that I can never get out of my head is the cameraman running away from the collapsing building, and you can see his shadow on the ground running for his life while holding his camera backwards.

I don’t know what I would’ve done if I was there, but I am thankful to God that all my friends and family were safe from harm. And I am truly sorry for those who lost their loved ones because of heartless terrorists trying to make a point. And to think that none of them want to even take credit for this attack! Shit heads.

===
Albert and I are watching the opening of the new Stock Exchange in New York and my hair is standing because they're singing the Star Spangled Banner and I just love how they sing their anthem. It's always so serious, beautiful, and full of respect, hope and belief.

===
I actually love the fact that Yahoo is in black and white today. At first I got pissed, but that was only because I had to remember everything again. It was just so heartless.

===
Last night, Ma'm Cheche reported that more than 60 registered bombs in the Asian region are missing. That's a very scary thought. What also scares me is the fact these bombs are actually registered. egad.

===

here's another good picture from the 911 digital archive where i also got the sad New Yorker picture above.

shit. i still have so much basketball to shot list, but i'm sooo sleepy. i'm shivering. that's a sign. and i'm a little pissed because i feel so bloated for some reason, my jeans feel kinda tight. but all i ate was an ole burrito! oh, and some cup noodles just now, but i've been feeling fat since i got back in the office. argh. this is bad.

i'll sleep it off na lang. leche.

I watched Road to Perdition tonight. Wahoo! I rule!!!

At first, I was a little worried about Tom Hanks playing hitman Michael Sullivan, Chicago’s Angel of Death. He’s a great actor, no doubt about it, but I’ve never seen him play a gunman before, or maybe he did and I just didn’t see the movie. Looking back at Forrest Gump, Cast Away, Philadelphia, and most of all BIG and Splash, Tom Hanks has come a long way and playing a 30’s hitman must’ve been really different, not to mention cool.

The movie was beautifully done, one of the best-shot gangster movies I’ve seen so far. It opened peacefully and quietly, and then it shifted to young Michael (Tyler Hoechlin) delivering newspapers, he’s biking, he’s biking, and then he was biking through all these people who were walking in the opposite direction. It was a beautiful and smooth tracking shot. I loved it.

In Ramon’s Indiefil review on Amelie, he wrote that “Jeunet has said that if possible, he would like every single frame of his movie worthy of framing.” I think that most filmmakers should achieve this kind of goal. When every frame is near perfect, you don’t get bored and you’re in awe of how beautifully framed the shots are, even if you’re not a film buff. And I love period films because they make you want to experience that certian period. For instance, gangster movies have this gangstah look that makes you want a bowler hat, a trench coat, and a cigarette in a poorly lit sidewalk at night.

Director Sam Mendes made the whole movie frame-worthy. The Hitchcock shot under the flyover, Mike Sullivan (Tom Hanks) and Michael walking through the Chicago crowd of bowler hats and trench coats (don’t you just love the 30s?), Mike sitting in a hall full of businessmen reading newspapers...everything was very cinematic. Conrad Hall, the DOP of the film, lit everything so well. I loved the shadows, the smooth camera movements, and the RAIN! God, the rain was so beautifully lit! And the natural sound was so good that every gunshot made me jump in my seat.

(NOTE: SPOILER!)

What I can’t get out of my mind is the heartbreaking scene where Mike kills all of John Rooney’s (Paul Newman) men in the rain, and he killed them one by one. The scene was edited to music only, no natsot, and I think that that made it more intimate. Mike killed about 6 men by himself, and he was about to kill the man who practically raised him and loved him like a son. I was tearing, and when Rooney said “I’m glad it’s you,” ...BANG!, my eyes welled up some more and I sank in my chair. It was so sad. I remembered the first God Father when Santino (I think. Basta, the eldest!) was ambushed at the tollgate; but that was full of the audio of random gunshots. This one only had music and slow mo video with a very well choreographed tracking shot of each bodyguard getting shot.

I also love the shot where Michael was waiting in the hotel room, and Mike arrives after killing Connor (Daniel Craig). That was such a quiet shot. Most of the shots were very quiet, and I think that’s what I like about the film. Quiet is always more painful to hear.


And before I forget, the acting was top notch, and Jude Law who played hitman Maguire was such a freak! Horrible teeth, even more horrible nails, that cool trick he does with the coin, put them all together and you’ve got a psycho photographer slash assassin who has this fetish for photographing dead people in a murder scene. Oh, and his photographs were actually pretty good. They remind me of all those bloody pictures in Pulp.

===

Ramon asked me if I had read the Road to Perdition comic book, and I said, "No. Me pa?!"

Sometimes I feel bad that I didn't read much as a kid, but that's the life I chose and I think that I achieved a lot in sports. Now that I'm older and my vocabulary has improved, reading has become interesting to me. I guess it just goes to show that it's better late than never.

Now, if only I had the TIME to read...

haha! got this from mich's live journal. it's really cute, and that's really how she and pia would look in anime. :)

To hell with Monday Meeting!

The office was really happy today! Forget the economic crisis, forget the media industry’s crap...it was Ma’m Cheche’s birthday yesterday! And we’re going to surprise her! Woohoo!!!

We didn’t have Monday Meeting today because Ma’m was so busy this morning...and we were busy getting the surprise ready. It was difficult to buy all the stuff first thing in the morning: pancit palabok, 10 balloons (5 of them got stolen in Glory’s, but what the hell.), tons of coke, 2 KFC chicken buckets (I reserved a drumstick beforehand!), and a Goldilocks birthday cake [which Jay-O dissed. I don’t know why, but I’m going to probe him one day. Grrr]. And talk about pressure so early in the day! Not only did we have to get the food in the office by lunch, but we had to surprise Ma’m before she went out to shoot spiels. Who the hell scheduled a spiels shoot during the boss’ surprise party? I don’t know, but there was no time to complain anyway, so useless.

We got to back to the office before noon and pulled everyone into the tiny kitchen. Gretch and I had our cameras and we were waiting, waiting, waiting. It’s so hard to wait for the celebrant during a surprise party. It’s one of the most stressful things to do, especially when the celebrant’s someone you’ve looked up to for so long and finally had a chance to work with. Everyone was getting restless. Joy started hitting people with her balloon, and Albert became the butt of jokes because he asked if Ma’m was busy. We too his answer as “BC” and he was really embarrassed because I got his comment on cam. Heehee! Corny! Then we realized that we forgot to buy candles!!! So we just got one of our save-the-ozone candles form the bathroom and used it as a prop. At least no one would know how old she really was, right? Kung BC ba o hindi?!

Finally, Albert decided that Ma’m’s meeting with Yas and Rin was taking too damn long, and the deliciuos smell of the KFC chicken was making our tummies rumble. So he picked up the cake and said, “Sugod!!!” We all walked out of the kitchen and crashed the Probe Foundation’s meeting!

It was really cool seeing Ma’m Cheche’s face light up (even if she was behind the blinds!), and it was really fun filling up her room as if we were playing sardines. And the best part was that after singing “Happy Birthday”, everyone started singing “Ave Maria” because she was born on the same day as Mother Mary. Haha, sama!

I love Ma’m Cheche. She has kept this company alive for 15 years and she’s still doing what she does best. The Probe Team started out in her son’s bedroom, and now it’s a company with over 30 employees; and she manages to be the Mother Hen and the Big Boss at the same time -- always smiling, always pushing, always trying to lift us up when we think we’re incapable of any more outputs. She also enjoys the company of the younger generation and is always trying to keep up with the times so that every new idea gets out there and gets recognized.

I love my boss, and that’s a rare thing for an employee to feel in a country such ours.


===
i got this in the mail and i thought that it was pretty sweet. the first 2 are my favorites. :)

Keep these thoughts with you throughout the coming years:

1. If God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.
2. If He had a wallet, your photo would be in it.
3. He sends you flowers every spring and a sunrise every morning.
4. Whenever you want to talk, He'll listen.
5. He could live anywhere in the universe, and He chose your heart.
6. What about the Christmas gift He sent you in Bethlehem; not to mention that Friday at Calvary.

Face it, He's crazy about you.

oh well. at least God's crazy about me. :)

===

the probe team got in the MILF base. God, that's so scary! ma'm cheche, jay orense and eliza zamora were allowed to enter the base for an exclusive story on the MILF and it's connections with the Al Qaeda. i'm so impressed. i'm going to be watch that ep tomorrow.

before the day is over, happy birthday to maggie costello, mrs. cheche lazaro lim, and Mama Mary. woohoo!!!

===

drove to paul's place this afternoon for one last goodbye [and for my work folder ‘cause i left it last night. Oops.] he's leaving for the states on the 11th (oh God.) to study in stanford university. that’s so cool!!! i’m so proud of him, and i’m so happy that we ended up being good friends in college [and after college], along with carlo and nikki [aw, the southern group!], and the rest of the pubroom people.

paul is such a great guy and i love the fact that he’s so darn down to earth. He’s already achieved so much: zobel valedictorian, ateneo suma cum laude, a job offer for p100,000 a month (which he didn’t take it because he wasn’t done studying (what a noble student.), microsoft .NET awardee, and now a scholarship in stanford. man, he’s got it all and he’s not even bragging about any of it. he’s just plain old paul who used to paint our banners for cheering. :)

i can see great things happening for paul. years from now, he’s going to be one of the most successful people in the world, and he’s still going to be as friendly as ever, reminiscing with us about corned beef in katipunan and acting for the one of the girls award.

===
paul’s despidia party last night was one of the best parties i’ve ever been to. Good food, good friends, a lot of drinks, and 2 really good games of chess!

the first game was quark vs. alia. at first, quark was really cute, adding sound effects to his every move. later on , the match became really intense, and he started using his ala BASEketball tactics on me. “o ano? ano? what’s going to happen if i put my bishop here? ha? HA? ANO?! WHY ARE YOU SMILING?!?!” it was such a good game. after almost an hour of playing, i finally beat him. heehee!

Immediately after our game, chris stepped in and said that he was going to fight me in the name of men! in the beginning of the game, i had him scared [i think]. i concentrated 4 of my big boys on the right side, hoping to corner his king because he made a castle early in the game. but he brilliantly countered my attack! and to make things worse, i had not noticed that one of his pieces was guarding my queen. i was moving so quickly, hoping to get to plan B and wham! he swiped my queen and gave a loud YEAH, a victorious cry from the gut! i shrank in my chair and pulled my bangs over my face. stupid, stupid, STUPID!

the game lasted another 20 or 30 minutes. It was really good, and it felt so cool to be playing chess again after all these years. the last time i played was in senior year college, also against chris. but before that, i forget. in the end, chris had all the smart moves. he cornered my king with 2 rooks and the queen. dang! what a good game!

i can’t wait to play again. i should practice on my palm.

the score: alia=3 vs. chris=1. [i’ll get you next time, costello!!!]