stories from the middle earth press room

in my past life, i wrote press releases for a government agency and an IT company. i also wrote semi-technical and popular articles on scientific studies for our internal publication and for the mass media.

i remember how my colleagues ranted about how reporters "plagiarized" or didn't even acknowledge the source (i.e. the writer) in their articles, how this columnist or that columnist gets paid for using our articles.

on the other hand, there were times that we get equally frustrated that mass media i.e. print media do not even use our press releases/articles that we consider our "labor of love".

now that i am on the other side of the fence, i could totally understand why.

however, it's hard sometimes to balance things since i've been in both worlds.

as i've explained to styar one time, we use press releases as backgrounds for our articles since we don't have enough time to scrounge for more info (try to write kilometric articles in 30 minutes just to beat the deadline!). some reporters use the whole press release (and i have to admit i do that) since that is our only source of information, especially if the institution is really hard to penetrate (hello central bank!).

i told styar reporters commit a "crime" if they used the press release as is and nilagyan lang nila ng pangalan nila yung article, passing it off as their own. the "legal" general practice is if the newspaper is going to use the press release verbatim, no byline would accompany the article.

but it's common practice for newspapers not to use the name of the press release writer and cite the instutution where the press release came from instead like "According to a statement from Malacanang..." not "According to ______ (name of writer indicated at the bottom or top of the press release)..."

dati kasi di ko naiintindihan yun. blame it on my ego that sought acknowledgement for my hard work. pero masakit ang katotohanan that PR writers don't get their own bylines, unless the writer sends his/her article as a contributor in a publication that accepts these (i.e. MARID agricultural digest).

minsan naman nasasayang ang press releases pag di ginagamit ng reporters o ng dyaryo kasi 1) pangit ang pagkakasulat so masakit sa ulo intindihin what the writer was trying to say or 2) walang significant na laman puro motherhood statements or flowery praises. sayang ang espasyo ng dyaryo.

sayang naman yung effort. i feel for those writers kasi i've been one of them for almost 3 years. kaso talagang masaklap eh...ganun ang buhay ng PR writer.

kaya nga mahirap maging PR officer: inaapi ka na nga ng mga salbahe/mapang-abusong reporters, wala ka pang recognition as a writer.

---

there was this time when i was still with styar and barefoot tennis in that institution, a radio reporter went barging in our office and wanted to interview me. i declined and i told the reporter that i was not the source of the information and i was just a writer who based the article on a scientific paper, ergo, i was not a reliable source. it is best that he should've gone to the proponent of the study because he/she is the primary source and i was just the medium.

he was persistent but still i was adamant. he got pissed off with me.

my point was, he should do his job and not resort to short cuts that could be disastrous in the end. what if may tanong sya di ko masagot ng maayos dahil hindi nga ako ang primary source at napilitan akong mag-explain kahit wala akong nalalaman talaga? oh di ba ampangit. magagalit pa yung mismong source, di ba?

i gave him the contact details of the primary source and told him he could use the article but he should recognize where he got that.

ewan ko kung nag-follow up sya dun sa primary source.

there are days i wanna be out and jump in another boat and that boat has been waiting for a month now.

and there are days that i am overwhelmed with guilt and with sentimentality.

however, my younger sister said i am no longer in a position to wallow in guilt nor have the luxury to indulge in "learning experience". i'm past that stage now, another former newspaper editor said.

i'm so confused that i cannot work properly. 

punta muna ako quiapo church.

para mamili ng DVD. 

so much for noble intentions.

got sidetracked on saturday by our animefest that i wasn't able to go to the hospital that day.

potatochips and my sister spent the weekend in our house and watched new episodes of bleach on dvd, non-stop from 4 pm 'til 9 pm. then we had a massage at a nearby spa in the subdivision then proceeded to watch bleach again until 2 am.

woke up on sunday bleary-eyed.

ergo i lost my will to visit the hospital. plus the bar salubong wherein they close down taft avenue and the rain added to my reasons not to go.

hah excuses, excuses.

next time.

--

SHOOT 'EM UP is the funniest movie i've seen this year

as the title said, it's about shooting 'em up from the start of the movie until the end. something like qunetin tarantino's from dusk 'til dawn, which literally was about killing vampires from dusk to dawn.

so anyway, the situations in the movie were so absurdly funny that i can't help but laugh out loud because of the improbability of it all. imagine clive owen assisting a pregnant prostitute give birth WHILE shooting goons left and right. then he could not find anything to cut the umbillical cord with, he decided to shoot the cord with his gun to free the baby.

duh.

then he runs with the newborn baby with one hand while the other hand shoots then he jumps from one building to another. the baby should've died at that moment with brain damage.

so i decided that i should view the movie like i was watching a quentin tarantino film. i shouldn't take it seriously.

if it weren't for clive owen and monica belucci, i wouldn't have finished the film. i as already asking Other Half to take me home (we were in mall of asia) but he said we ought to watch it until the end so he would have closure. unlike in resident evil, where until this day Other Half is still waiting for his closure because i threw up in SM North's cr due to the claustrophobic feel of the movie so i walked out on it, leaving Other Half scratching his head. he didn't have any choice but to follow me, leaving the movie unfinished.

and he doesn't have the dvd of the movie and he's still searching for it.

back to the subject on hand, shoot 'em up was probably a satire on gun control in the US (which was part of the story) so all the funny violence is not all for naught. as they say, almost all people in America have access to guns.

and oh, clive owen was crunching raw carrots all through out the movie, like bugs bunny. but unlike bugs, clive owen uses his carrots to kill like stabbing the eyes of his oponent with carrots.

and paul gimatti was the principal antagonist.

there are teachers who can make or break you.

i encountered a highschool teacher who had the audacity to compare me to my siblings "who were this and that while i was ONLY this and that"...if she just wanted to put me down, she could have done it straightforwardly. but noooooo, she further rubbed my inferiority to my face by measuring me up against my siblings. she wanted me to feel like a rag.

i hated her for that.

maybe because of that i became the epitome of the infamous (to our school) inferiority complex very much in vogue in highschool. i was very hard to deal with at that time...add a dash of teenage angst to the mix. phew, that makes me one hell of a teen.

i was just an average student (albeit with red marks in my maths) among the the selected few who made it to become highschool isko at iska. for me being there was enough. i didn't have to prove anything; i just wanted to have fun.

and i just vented out my frustrations to my journal. and my stories.

BUT then there was this highschool teacher who looked beyond medals and grades.

in her subject, we not only read literature (the prophet) but we also wrote our own literature.

and then she saw me.

she picked my story as one of the best in the batch and had it included in our literary magazine we self-published.

i revealed to her i already had two short stories published in a national magazine prior to our dabbling in literary writing. no one in our school knew that.

she encouraged me to go on.

probably, she thought i would have become a fiction writer. maybe i would have...but i realized i wouldn't be able to fend for myself if i just rely on writing fiction. i'm not that brilliant. maybe i would just opt for something else, i thought.

she had a one-on-one talk with me one day some weeks before we graduated. at some point we both cried. she prayed over me.

and now i want to give back to her the support she gave me 11 years ago.

i'm doing my best to help in raising funds for her heart surgery that she sorely needs even though i have little time to devote on it. without the surgery, she would surely die soon. her husband died two or three years ago. she has young kids who are still in school.

but we need at least half a million for the surgery.

when we were in highschool, she was also sending two dirt-poor kids to school even though she could barely make ends meet on a teacher's salary. she said she is not worried because God will always provide, especially for those who help provide for others.

and if the responses we're getting now is an indication of whether we can raise the money in time, then she is right: God always provides.

i'm going to visit her this saturday in the hospital, hopefully. i'll tell her i've finally become a writer.

----

UP Rocks!!!

thanks for mimi and karl for the photos. you rock!

at walang kaduda-duda, kami ang nagwagi. go UP PEP!!!

sorry. this is just too cute to pass up...

got this idea from some blog i read weeks ago and this originally came from russia. see the proponents' website here.

actually, these things didn't come from my pockets but rather from my sling bag.

let me see...

1. i often carry my digicam with me (just in case something really interesting might happen) so that's why it's here.
2. of course, money,
3. my lip gloss (gave up on lipstick for some reason),
4. my credit card,
5. perfume from the face shop that i transferred in a smaller atomizer bottle,
6. smart buddy load,
7. band-aid for my feet because of my horrible new shoes,
8. my spa membership card (i'm a big massage freak),
9. 512mb flash disk,
10. nokia 6151 cellphone,
11. my creative mp3 player/voice recorder which i always carry with me for ambush interviews and presscons,
12. and tons of pens. there's nothing worse than a writer without a pen. especially a writer in my field.

and seeing the contents of the "pockets" of those who uploaded theirs in face your pockets, i can say most of the people are ipod and nokia fans.

someone even scanned his cat. poor kitty.

many of them managed to keep their eyes open. tried it but the results aren't pretty.

some have nifty cameras like twin lens reflex cams and lomo...i am sooo lusting after lomo now.

may napansin ako...maganda pala kulay ng buhok ko sa scanner. hehehe.

--

i am falling in love with lomo

from therapeutik's flickr account/lomomanila pool.

Other Half and i watched SOCO on abs-cbn two nights ago, which featured the lenny villa case...

i was forced to watch it. maybe my husband wanted to experience schadenfreude even just for a wee bit.

Arthur Schopenhauer puts it succintly: Neid zu fühlen ist menschlich, Schadenfreude zu genießen teuflisch: ("To feel envy is human, to savour schadenfreude is devilish.")

because he's from that other whatever. hehe.

anyway, UP would not be experiencing a lot of frat-related deaths if it had a system similar to that of Ateneo Law's SOP response: if involved, preventive suspension agad. if legally implicated or whatever you call it, then automatic expulsion. sabi ni Other Half madami na naki-kick-out daw sa ateneo dahil sa gulo sa frat. nakakatawa nga lang kasi dadalwa na nga lang sila sa ateneo ang gulo-gulo pa nila. hehehe.

bakit hindi nila masuspend agad ang mga sigma wrong -- este sigma rho? and tha gall of those ipis, sila pa ang magsasampa ng kaso sa UP! ang kakapal ng mukha! pwe!

buti na lang salonga decided to resign from sigma rho. kasama kasi siya sa recruitment materials/pitch ng sigma rho kasi. sabi ng iba sa peyups self-serving daw or something as bad as that pero sa akin ok yun. why tolerate it when ayaw nilang lumabas para masolve na ito. kung wala silang kasalanan, eh di lumabas sila para malinis nila pangalan nila. pero rereklamo nila kasi trial by publicity daw blah blah blah (the defense of those people backed into a corner) eh kaso nga nagmumukha nga sila lalong guilty dahil nagtatago pa sila.

so anyway, pinakita sa SOCO na nasuspend agad yung mga aquila legis members na kasma sa finals na bumanat. and good for lenny (at some point) dahil kumanta yung mga supposedly batchmates niya kaya nasampahan agad ng kaso.

masama nga lang nabaligtad sa court of appeals ang kaso.

sabi ni Other Half, strings were pulled. everybody knew that. isipin mo, ag daming witnesses. the evidence were strong. pano maabswelto yung mga yun?

kahit na ano pang sabihin ni bikoy, fraternity realationships go beyond schools and hi-hellos outside.

he said:

"Let me address one of the issues some of your questions raise. This mafia, job secutiry, social prestige allegations are really passe...

...In other words, this idea of super exclusivity has really been so abused...

...Don’t tell me you have a problem when brods help each other in times of need in their individual capacity. True, that may be considered a fraternal advantage. But don’t we all invoke other associations (as per previous example, we went to the same school, we’re from the same town, etc.) when we ask for help or lend a hand, more so in frats when the other party is someone you consider a brother."

and people in law circles know that there is really a mafia of something-something there. and fraternities do count a lot, especially when vying for plum posts. --- erase, erase. may mga sinulat ako dito kanina na sobrang incriminating na binura ko baka habulin ako ng mga 'to.

tanungin nyo na lang ako sa ibang pagkakataon.

anyhow, sana may mga batchmates si cris mendez na lumapit at magsabi ng totoo. sana makonsyensya sila. how can they enjoy their membership knowing one of them -- a batchmete -- died?

at sana sa mga perpetrators, mamatay kayo sa guilt.

--

mas maganda pa kung ang mga frats eh katulad ng napanood ko sa stomp the yard kanina on dvd. should do their chest-puffing chests during stepping na lang. yes, there are greek-letter orgs out there who compete in stepping kesa magpaluan ng tubo.

during weekends, i spend 70 percent of my time in bed and more often than not in a horizontal position. when i'm in our "transition" house (btw which is still an issue with me), i don't have much incentive or reasons to get out of our room because:

i have a tv and dvd player inside the room, i have my laptop and wifi with me in there plus the bathroom is just a step away. there's our substitute for airconditioning, the "aircooler" sm is selling for about three grand or so. all i need is to bring food inside, which is the only time i get out of the room. hehe.

since i've realized that i've become a sloth again, i went out to go biking around the neighborhood and went to my sort of favorite spot because of the open space...and open space is really vital to my survival and without it i'm will go crazy.

i'm kinda contradictory...i'm trying to lose weight and yet i'm being a sloth during weekends. i try to exercise but i eat in bed. i don't drink softdrinks (never been a softdrink person to begin with) but i can't give up chocolates.

agh.

before i talk about the erap verdict coverage...

as of this moment (8:00 pm), cnn (on cable) has given at least an hour of airtime for the breaking news on the sumatra, indonesia 7.9 magnitude earthquake. on the other hand, bbc has reported it but not as extensive as cnn's coverage. reportage of shinzo abe's shock resignation was given equal if not more prominence (as of this moment) than the earthquake.

actually, nakakaumay na yung coverage ng cnn kasi they've devoted more than an hour on the earthquake eh wala pa silang nakukuhang concrete reports from bengkulu province (nearest the epicenter) so paulit-ulit na interviews lang from jakarta.

however, cnn's coverage probably is more beneficial to ordinary people around the indian ocean since the threat of a tsunami happening is not remote. who cares about shinzo abe's resignation over the failure of japan to send naval support to international troops in afghanistan?

as of this moment, i don't have any explanation why this is so. probably indonesia is far from the brits' consciousness. i don't know.

and oh, erap's guilty verdict barely made a blip in both news agencies.

--

i was about to eat my breakfast when our house help tuned in to abs-cbn for the sandiganbayan verdict on erap's plunder case. i was suprised that the reading of the decision was brief. my colleagues and i were expecting the coverage would last until 3 pm, given that the court secretary (is that what they call that person?) had to read at least a thousand page decision.

moving on...

karen davila strikes again. she again asked stupid questions like did so and so cry and stuff. like hell!

first off, the anchors should have asked about the details of the decision (which was not read) like what was the basis for jinggoy and serapio's acquittal or why was erap guilty of plunder only? what happened to the other crimes he supposed to have committed like perjury? these should have been discussed within the first 30 to 60 minutes of the coverage.

what was the basis for the guilty verdict? why beyond reasonable doubt?

i think those are the first and most important questions that reporters and the anchors could have asked their panelists/experts on board.

even if viewers are not lawyers, at least sana abs-cbn and gma7 could have enlightened us with the legal implications or the stellar (if any) points of the case.

but then again, the two networks might have attempted that and probably i wasn't able to watch it since i was about to leave for work.

during the first 30 minutes to an hour of the coverage, no one made a recap of the circumstances that may have brought the guilty charge like:

"Meanwhile, another accused, Charlie "Atong" Ang was sentenced March this year to up to six years in prison on charges of corruption of a public official after entering a plea bargaining agreement

He admitted delivering part of P130 million tobacco excise tax funds to Estrada's Greenhills residence and pocketing P25 million, which he would return to the government by offering his family's mansion at Corinthian Gardens in Quezon City in lieu of cash.

At least 71 prosecution witnesses were presented throughout the Estrada plunder trial which include Juetenggate whistleblower and Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson, who testified between July and September 2002; star witness Clarissa Ocampo, who testified in November 2002 and bank officials."

lifted from gmanews.tv

i don't know if it's me, just nitpicking again, or i may have missed these points again because i've already turned away from the television.

and what's the deal with conrado de quiros being one of the panelist on abc 5's coverage of the erap case? he's not a lawyer nor a political analyst by profession but a columnist so in my humble opinion he's not the best person to make a commentary on tv. or i could be wrong, since i am wrong about many things naman.

i would have welcomed legal stalwarts' and political analysts' say on the case but a columnist on an important event like this? just because he is a columnist of PDI?

don't get me wrong. i sometimes like conrado de quiros (kasi minsan nakakaumay na din yung paulit-ulit nyang GMA tirades kahit na ayoko din kay GMA) but getting him as a resource person was a little out of whack. FOR ME. i'm not saying for people in general. oh well, abc 5 may have bigger reasons why they should get a columnist.

--

it was so funny that some of our sources this afternoon were averse to giving their opinions about the verdict. it may be true that the local market may have reacted positively only because new york stock exchange closed on a positive note due to better chances that the US Feds might cut interest rates next week rather than to the erap verdict. but still...the business community may have been worried or elated over the sandiganbayan decision.

other sources have been outspoken about the issue.

then i found out that the Bossing of this people we were talking to were allegedly friendly with the erap camp. well, that was according to some of my colleagues. ah...that makes sense why they didn't want to be quoted.

I went to the dentist this weekend to have my molar tooth fixed, hoping my dentist would not delve into its root canal.

Habang kinakalkal nya kalooblooban ng ngipin ko (and damn it was sooo painful!), a thought struck me. Joining a frat probably is like going to the dentist. You voluntarily went there to get hurt.

You know you'll get hurt and suffer but you know you'll come out of it alive.

So being an amuyong is like that, you know what to expect but you know you'll live. That should ALWAYS be the case, di ba?

But in the case of Cris Mendez…

Kaya nga mejo tanga yung mga nagsasabi "he took a risk and he should know that". T*angna! Hindi niya nirisk na mamatay sya noh! He took the risk na masasaktan siya pero hindi ang mamatay.

Parang ako, I risked na masasaktan ako pero alam ko at buo ang tiwala ko na hindi ako papatayin ng dentista ko. Pag pinatay ako ng dentista ko, liable ang dentista ko. Hindi nya pwedeng sabihin na "she risked it eh". Gago di ba?

Sorry mababaw ang pagkumpara ko pero kasi yun ang unang pumasok sa isip ko nung tinotorture ako ng dentista ko (di kasi siya nag-offer ng anesthesia eh). Para bang napaghambing ko lang yung sakit. Hehehe.

O sige, I'll bring it closer to home…I joined a greek-letter org in college and I know mahihirapan ako pero alam ko na hindi ako mamamatay. Di kami nagkaiba ni cris at ni along villanueva (na pumasok ng APO sa UPLB last year) na hindi namin ginusto mamatay, pero ok lang na masaktan o mahirapan. Pero sila namatay at hindi nila ginustong mamatay.

At kaya hindi dapat sabihin ng mga tao na walang kasalanan ang APO at sigma rho. They conduct initiations not to -- supposedly -- kill.

But they did.

And they should be responsible for it. Just like if my dentist accidentally killed me (oo, masakit talaga yung ginawa nya sa kin…pero lab ko dentist ko ha suki na yung pamilya namin and friends).

Ang titigas pa ng mukha ng sigma rho, sampahan daw ba ng kaso ang UP for dismissing the officers of sigma rho. Eh automatic yun eh, preventive suspension baga.

These frats are breeding monsters. And to think that some of the sigma rhoans are entering or are now in the law profession. Tsk tsk.

--

que horror! see this video of miriam talking about the "rape initiation" rites in some frats and sororities in UPLB.

frankly, i'm not suprised. heard of it before. and the person involved had a face and name (to me), not just some kwentong barbero or urban legend floating around the campus.