Hey Pitch!

i keep forgetting to water you on time.
Sorry Pitch! things could be better.

Film Stock and Memories

I'm sifting through years of family photos, there is so much to scan. I miss working with polarioids. I adore my Dad for getting this brown accordion-type polaroid cam (SX-70) when my brother was born. Too bad the polaroid film stock has been officially discontinued, it signals the end of a forerunner in instant photography. But the demand by enthusiasts has been strong lately, hopefully the Polaroid company would stay true to their word.

A Tale of Two Cemeteries in Pampanga

There are two cemeteries in my mother's town in Pampanga. A private one called a Memorial cemetery with its manicured lawns, drainage system and sprinklers. Here the funeral rites often have this cowboy and his horse-drawn carriage bringing out the dead.

The Memorial cemetery used to be a rice field and a nesting ground for migrating herons.

Now its too crowded out here on All Saints Day. You could hardly see the tombstones, it feels more like a park or some outdoor barbecue event.

The other one is the Public Cemetery, the one I am more familiar with. There is no planning or mapping involved in creating this sprawl. Here the sepulturero is King. He decides who comes and goes where and for how much. He knows the empty plots, the forgotten bones and the fresh ones still decomposing since what year. 

Pink is the color of the season

Some tombstones are handmade and handwritten with love

While some remain forgotten and nameless

Some remain grand, towering over others. These are spaces for people who once walked the earth. They are known as Condominiums.

Some do get evicted from their plot. 

Some are hidden by the laundry of the living.

A few are still swimming in some organic soup since the typhoon.

This small town public cemetery in Minalin is also a testament to centuries of inbreeding. I could map out the families and realized I am not far removed from their bloodlines. Kampampangans tend to intermarry into clans within the town.

I also find interesting what other people often put on the grave while visiting- food, shoes, letters, trinkets, toys, beer, photos and even pieces of clothing.

Excuse my tapophilia, my fascination for cemeteries stems from no underlying deathwish, but from a grave need to understand and archive the past in my own way. 

Oral Sex on the MRT

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Darn Dengue

I went to Makati Med after spending the day at the Fire Station. I had to visit two friends stricken with Dengue- one is Ligaya's 11 year-old nephew Gelo and her boyfriend Q.

Too bad for Q. This is his first vacation in the Philippines and in less than a month he gets Dengue. There goes the island hopping plans. I can't blame him though MMC has just eaten through their vacay budget.  

He looks really pale now that his platelet count is really low plus the rashes that comes with Dengue is unbearably itchy. I also discovered doctors don't allow Dengue patients to eat dark colored foods, in case some part of their GI tract starts to hemorrhage and bleed, they can easily detect the blood in the wastes.

Now he's going back to NYC much sooner than expected minus Ligaya who wants to spend more time with moi. Q confesses he can't stay longer in Manila past Christmas. It must be the humid weather and yeah, our killer mosquitoes.

On Queue: Last Day Registration for 2010 Elections

We pinoys are definitely Vogons. Bureaucracy comes naturally to us, we like sending paperwork back and forth, we like signing things in triplicate plus making xerox.

I'm a first time voter (well by 2016 I will still be one) I have failed to register for a number of years now. And I have failed miserably today.

I have always been lazy at the idea of going back home to the province just to register. This is the only time I actually felt the election would matter.  So I got my residence certificate and passport and headed to the nearest voter's registry. Perhaps all this effort came in way too late. Well, so much for 2010.

Some people have been here since 5am at the Makati Fire Station. They were told to come back in the afternoon after all their papers have been processed. They came back around 1pm - no dice. The lines were still long and the paperwork still undone. More people even showed up, maybe half the population of Rembo Makati.

The second floor is packed tight like an MRT tram on rush hour and by 4pm, the staff stopped giving out voter forms. They told those who came in past 4pm to come back as early as 4am the next morning to get in line again. Though the official registry wouldn't start around 8am. It kinda felt like lining up for Wowowee.

Well, I'm not coming back to go through hell again. All I ever get at queuing at government offices are these horrendous varicose veins.

Sing When You're Winning

Today, I think about all the friends I made in Singapore and most of them are from Manila. Yay!

We are all bloggers. And we are a cult. Well to some people, it might seem like that.

I guess during the trip I realized, I kept boxing in every nook and cranny of my life into several specific blogs of interests. I don't really have one that's quite normal, where I could relax a bit and not really think so much. In writing on my other blogs, there's always this pause, this conscious effort to make every post cohesive with the overall topic. Never veering or straying away.

It's about time i let loose a bit and just blog for pleasure. If there is such a thing.

MadManila is the perfect spot now to add everyone I know online, regardless what they are blogging about. 

So guys please send me your blog URLs :)