that was the essence of the reunion. listening to the first strains of the song alapaap brought the 20,000-strong audience back to 1994-1995. the eraserheads proved that they are still the best band out there even though they were away from each other for at least ten years.

there were thousands of us singing as one last night. so many came, even without mass media advertising. the concert venue was devoid of vestiges of corporate sponsorship — just like an indie act but with thousands and thousands in attendance.

i thought something was off. i told my sis-in-law that ely buendia was wooden. initially i thought of the rumored tensions between band members that led to the split of the supergroup. then i remembered that ely’s mom just died this week. he probably barely slept at all. or as my sis-in-law said it was probably the typical stand-off-ish suplado ely.

but wooden or not, the fans just loved them. the whole of fort bonifacio sang with them. we sang our hearts to them, to the band that made the soundtrack of our young lives.

i knew all the songs played during the first set but i cannot for the life of me remember the sequence. i got this instead from karla redor.

1. Alapaap
2. Ligaya
3. Sembreak
4. Hey Jay
5. Harana
6. Fruitcake
7. Toyang
8. Kamasupra
9. Kailan
10. Huwag kang matakot
11. Kaliwete
12. With a Smile
13. Shake Yer Head
14. Huwag mo nang itanong
15. Lightyears

i was shocked at how thin and gaunt ely looked, especially when his aviator shades were gone and i saw his sad/weary eyes. i wasn’t able to capture it on camera because it was difficult to fiddle with the numerous settings of my fujifilm digicam while things happened so fast.

after the 15th song, ely slumped and hugged his guitar. that’s when my suspicions were confirmed that he was not feeling well.

then the counter was back on again for the 20-minute break before the second set.

but second set there was none.

ely’s sister came onstage and read a letter of appeal/regret that the concert had to be cut short because ely was rushed to the hospital due to chest pains. Lally explained that due to circumstances known to all, ely has been suffering from a lot stress, physically and emotionally.

i can’t remember if it was buddy or raymund who asked the audience to stay calm and to understand the situation. and because the eraserhead fans are already mature people (we’re already professionals in our late 20s to early 40s), no one even whimpered a protest. when the concert organizer asked everyone for a moment of silence/prayer, everybody obliged. it was so eerie, so quiet that it was almost scary.

from a high adrenalin moment, we plunged to a bewildering denoument an anticlimax. everybody walked away from the venue calmly. no boos or bottled water-throwing incidents. it was like we all understood. and we had to accept the fact that it was not yet the time for a full reunion concert.

according to karla redor, this was supposed to be the lineup for the second set:

1. Maskara
2. Poorman’s Grave
3. Torpedo
4. Trip to Jerusalem
5. Back to Me
6. Maselang Bahaghari
7. Maling Akala
8. Tikman
9. Spolarium
10. Magasin
11. Para sa Masa
12. Overdrive
13. Pare Ko
14. Minsan
15. Ang Huling El Bimbo

hayyy…the last three songs would be soooo super nostalgia! but then, things happen for a reason. thank you e-heads for the 15-song trip down the memory lane.

i captured on camera ely’s physical state before being rushed to the hospital

according to jessica zafra, ely’s mom passed away this week. 

“Ely is now in stable condition. According to family members, he had passed out from fatigue, stress, and lack of sleep following his mom’s death. He is resting and will be fine. Meanwhile we’re going to have to deal with our own Ang Huling El Bimbo/Magasin/Pare Ko deprivation…”

i can relate to the fatigue that ely felt tonight. when my father died, that whole week we were like zombies just floating fueled by caffeine. my brother who has hypertension, had to be rushed to the university hospital due to stress, fatigue and emotional whatever. what more pa kaya si ely who already has a heart ailment?

i’ll blog/post more photos when i’ve finally had my own sleep.

all along i thought i was set to watch eraserheads tonight. but then my sisters bailed out (they just told me this morning through text) since my mother has been sending them feelers that she wants to be picked up from our house in the province and brought to manila by my older sister.

that leaves me with no car nor a condo where i could spend the night after the concert in Fort Bonifacio. Other Half is in indonesia and won’t be coming home until sept 2. i can’t drive his car because it is pawis-steering and i’d rather take a walk than drive that thing all the way to Fort. another problem is that cabs are really hard to come by at the Fort, especially when there are hordes of fans who are going to watch the e-heads. it’s particularly difficult for me to get a cab since i live in some faraway place and the house’s (where i live) legal papers say it’s already located in the province of rizal. so only option left to me is to crash into somebody else’s place but i can’t think of anywhere i can go to other than my sister’s condo.

to go or not to go, that is the question…

i dread tomorrow’s business.

i’m going to cover something tomorrow for a special report that has been assigned to me by my boss eons ago. i dread going back to work. i dread going back to my beat. i’ve been doing more ‘desk’ work these past 2 months and it was ok with me. but thoughts of going back to my beat is giving me nightmares.

now i know i don’t wanna go back there again. the problem is how can i do that without giving up my job?

ate luming (yes, the same immortal ate luming at the UP CMC college sec’s office), handed me my long-lost leather organizer/notebook this afternoon while i was frantically trying to salvage my damaged list of thesis defense panel (that’s another story).

i’ve almost forgotten about this.

she said my organizer has been with them for almost 3 months now. i just nodded and did not contradict her. i just told her i think i lost it during registration. but i think it has been longer than that since i last saw this…

and just as i suspected, it has been years since! the last month and year that the datebook had an entry was for march 2006! the page of the week after my compre (march 11) was clean.

ohhhhhh…yeah, i remember. i left this at the journ department after my comprehensive exam. masyado akong windang, nakalimutan ko na ito. SOBRA. nakaipit pa dun sa organizer ko (well-preserved ha!) yung compre guidelines.

“the exam will be divided into two parts. The first part will be from 8 am to 12 pm. and the last part will be from 1 pm to 5 pm. It will be held on March 11, 2006 (Saturday) at the Department of Journalism…”

at hindi yan ang masakit eh. andaming readings, hindi mo alam ano sisimulan. sobrang kalat yung mga topics na pwedeng pagkunan ng tanong, mawiwindang ka kung ano aaralin mo. parang kukuha ka sa langit ng kung anong pwedeng ilagay nila sa exam. mas masakit pa nito and kinalabasan isang tanong sa umaga, isang tanong sa hapon. konti lang tanong di bah? pero ang haaaaaaaaaabaaaaaaaa ng sagot.  meron isa sa amin na hindi na makapag-type (we were using laptops and desktops during the exam) dahil walang maisagot dahil siguro 1) na-mental block; 2) di nya naaral at sobrang na-lost na sya.

di ko makalimutan ang araw na yun. para akong nag-UPCAT uli. naalala ko nung UPCAT, sandwich lang ang lunch ko nun and nagdala ako ng chocolates para energy source habang nageexam. ganun din ang ginawa ko sa compre.

nakakatawa pa nun, kung ano yung inaral ko sa pagca-cram ko the night before, yun ang lumabas din. nyahahaha. grabe, master crammer talaga ako…gandang training galing sa highschool namin. ganyan din nangyari sa akin sa UPCAT. kung ano yung last minute na pinag-aralan ko, yun yung naalala ko.

ipepreserve ko yung recovered guidelines na yan. badge of honor ko yan; at least nalampasan ko sya. panibagong kalbaryo na naman ako.

since i went back to using the old school datebook for my appointments and to-do list, i will be able to use again this leather organizer. i tried using the hand-me-down treo 600 that Other Half got from his brother as my PDA but i found it too cumbersome to enter information even with a stylus QWERTY keypad combo. i also tried using my cellphone’s calendar function but the problem with that is 1) again it’s too cumbersome to enter information; 2) useless when the battery runs low on power; and 3) i’d be lost when the cellphone is snatched from me.

plus going analog is better for me since i easily see the past and future appointments that i have. plus there’s this inexplicable romance of handwritten history. browsing through my organizer which was missing for more than 2 years, i can’t help but smile at the entries like my weekly expenses, the list of expenses when Other Half and I went to Singapore, project notes for my “raket” then…

oh yeah…looking at my notes here, i was working on a series of scripts for a radio program for RMN with dong abay as the main composer for the music. and it all comes back to me now…i’ve almost forgotten that writing for a special radio program/drama was bloody hell.

see? that’s the beauty of analog organizer.

yes, my ipod is a lemon. it died on me AGAIN yesterday. my sister-in-law tried to turn it on but it won’t. it stubbornly refused to show the apple logo.

MY IPOD IS DEAD AGAIN, the second time within the span of less than six months. i take care of all of my gadgets. i seldom take off my ipod’s crystal case, my bag is padded and as far as i know it didn’t suffer from falls and other scream-inducing incidents that could’ve contributed to its second demise.

iphone batteries melting, cracked iphones, dying ipods…steve jobs, what’s happening?! robbing us of money and leaving us baffled and asking “why?!” i’m back again to my trusty 1gb creative muvo that i mainly use as a voice recorder.

i’ll visit the apple cemetery at megamall on tuesday. *sigh*

i was disturbed by this entry why we should abolish the mainstream media by ordinary reportage.  i do agree that media corruption and abuses degrade the credibility of mainstream media and it is rampant. as in. but abolishing mainstream media is too extreme. i cannot imagine life without mainstream media and just relying on blogs for information.

but then, i realized this rant about mainstream media is hollow skewed and not based on hard facts when i read this:

“First, do NOT buy any newspapers. None of them are worth reading anyway and you save money and paper. Instead, go and listen to the news on the radio instead. WHY radio? First, because even if radio reporters can be as corrupt, they’re usually the POOREST in the media industry. They don’t get as much “PAYOLA” as those in the newspapers and those on TV…”

the writer doesn’t know what he’s talking about (i’m assuming he’s male…wala lang). corruption is corruption; it doesn’t matter how much you get. and who says they don’t get as much as the next print reporter out there? ah…an older colleague told me an interesting story about the P5,000 pabaon in congress. it also includes radio reporters.

“Third reason we should boycott the media is so that we can deliver a message that we no longer trust them. They’ve been feeding us BS for a LONG time.We should learn to stick to the RADIO so we do not SEE the products that are advertised and we don’t get the URGE to buy because we’re VISUALLY tempted to do so. Remember that these media corporations are dependent on advertising. It would also discourage Malacanang to spend millions (something also done by the opposition) on HUGE ONE PAGE ads that costs us taxpayer millions.”

to boycott is fine since it helps to send the message across. but remember all media outfits except for goverment-run or church-run media entities are dependent on advertising. it also include radio. you can check the financial statements of MBC at the philippine stock exchange website. as for the advertisments that we “see” on TV, i don’t think the audience is so dumb as to lap everything up — as i’ve learned in my media studies classes. kaya nga tama si psychogodess na media literacy is the key, not abolition of mainstream media.

“Fourth reason is simple. It will educate us and our kids better if we stick to CNN, BBC, or even Fox News. Of course these three news outfits can also be irritating BUT at least we’re annoyed by other people, not those whom we know. Also. Make SURE to watch The Red Eye at Fox. It’s my favorite news program.”

while i do not watch local tv news that often (i only do that for monitoring purposes) especially tv patrol and 24 oras, i do not agree with this premise “but at least we’re annoyed by other people”. and his choice (Fox? really FOX?!) is really a bad one in my opinion. any student of media/journalism/mass com knows what i am talking about. even those that are not media savvy know that. and the masang pilipino cannot afford to have BBC and CNN on their boob tubes. they can barely make ends meet now with high gas and food prices, cable subscription pa kaya? as prof. randy david said in my interview with him 3 years ago, the local media should shape up because it is the masa they should be educating. the rich have a wide array of choices from BBC to the internet but the poor are left in this media explosion. an educated masa leads to better nation-building.

we have excellent news programs in our midst like the probe team and the ones that show howie severino’s documentaries. they are really educational and fascinating — a must for all filipinos, rich or poor. too bad their time slot is pushed back to ungodly hours because of those inane soaps.

“Fifth reason we should boycott the mainstream media is because we don’t like it to exist anymore. Instead, we want something like PBS where there are NO ADVERTISEMENTS and there are NO INTERESTS (even government) protected by our crummy reporters.”

not all people would want mainstream media to disappear like he claims that “we don’t want it to exist anymore”.  and if he does not want advertisements, then he could easily turn off the tv or switch channels. like it or not, advertisments are needed to pay for the salaries of media outfits’ workers. the more advertisments, the more revenues, the higher the workers are paid, the less they are tempted to accept bribes, “sidelines” (PR work) and so on and so forth.

the key here is the audience should be vigilant and should let their voices be heard. speak up! they can call the attention of the erring media outfit. and pag narealize din yan ng advertisers na “hey, something’s wrong with you”, they will pull out their ads because they do not want to be associated with an offending media outfit (or even person e.g. celine lopez and plains and prints). advertiser pullout = revenues fly out the window. if the media outfit does not do anything about it, it will lose revenues and that’s the last thing they would want.

the problem is the media market is so small that advertisers are stuck with only two networks (the others do not capture significant household numbers), which gives the two tv networks so much clout = prone to abuse. same goes for newspapers. ads are concentrated on the three newspapers, giving them so much resources and power.

kaya nga siguro tama yung direksyon ng UP masscom sa media studies…that media literacy should be taught in all schools, all levels so that the audience is better informed and can make more intelligent choices. so nakita ko na rin siguro significance ng pinaghihirapan ko ngayon sa graduate studies ko.

yes, i am a journalist but even if i weren’t one, i’d still be having the same stand on the issue.

some of us try very hard to be upright and try to uphold the journalist’s code of ethics. some of us put a lot of effort into our work by studying not only on the job but also off. even while we sleep. it is not as if all of us are hopeless corrupt bunch of critters.

the initial steps towards erradicating corruption in media is: 1) companies should stop giving gifts. gifts are nice but some of us go to press events not for the gifts but rather we need news and we’re afraid of being outscooped by colleagues (yeah lame excuse for going there pero minsan matter of life and death yan. papatayin kami ng boss namin pag nascoopan kami). so whether there are giveaways or not, we would still go. i just don’t know about the lifestyle beat.

2) stop worming your way into the editor’s heart through gifts. ewan ko lang but mas naiirita boss ko sa mga ganyan. he would rather run a press release (on the supplement or people-places-events page or whatever) that did not come with anything at all than run a press release with the suhol pero ang kulit-kulit naman ng PR porke nagpadala sila ng something, ineexpect na nila lalabas yun. eh pano kung walang kwenta talaga yung release?

yun nga lang, madami na din kasing editors na nasanay sa ganyang kultura eh. kumbaga sa like-parent-like-children syndrome, ganyan din sa dyaryo eh. kung sala-sala editor mo, malamang prone din ang reporter na magiging lax sa ethics.

marami pa akong pwedeng sabihin pero baka masabihan lang akong impokrita. magsusulat na lang muna ako ng thesis ko.

just watched 秒速５センチメートル Byōsoku Go Senchimētoru,/5 cm per second on dvd here on my toshiba laptop in the dead of the night with my earphones shoved up to my eardrums. the anime movie was divided into three parts, which is basically the three stages in the lives of Takaki Tono, Akari Shinohara with “special participation” of Kanae Sumida.

“i understand why tono-kun looks different from other people. at the same time i understand that he never looks at me…”

“Tono-kun is kind, very kind…But Tono-kun is always looking at something so far away that i can see my wish won’t be granted…even so i like Tono-kun even after today, the day after tomorrow, forever.”

- Kanae

for me, the most powerful and heartbreaking lines without being melodramatic in the movie were spoken by kanae. let’s just say i’m a sucker for unrequited love.

–

takaki and akari were close friends — let’s call them childhood sweethearts — in gradeschool. they were both sickly kids so they spent a lot of time together since a lot of other students were into sports and other extracurricular activities while they were usually in the library.

i’m not sure but it seems like they promised each other that they would watch the cherry blossoms, the petals of which fall 5 cm per second, together every year. but then takaki’s family moved around a lot due to his parents’ work (which was not mentioned in the anime) so inevitably he had to transfer to another school at the end of the term. takaki and akari regularly exchanged letters and it seemed like the letters were the source of each other’s strengths and these kept takaki and akari from being lonely. they promised to go to the same junior highschool but then akari wasn’t able to get in.

when they reached 13, they had had set a date, time and place when they would see each other again.

after so many phone calls, letters, a couple of train delays (takaki traveled for hours!) and snow storms, they finally met again.

and the snow substituted…

for the cherry blossoms they weren’t able to see together

they parted ways the next day, without knowing when they will be able to see each other again.

apparently they lost each other’s contact details and communication was cut off.

chapter 2. fast forward to junior (or senior) year in highschool, a girl named kanae was telling her story about how her classmates were busy applying and taking exams to enter university while she was in “suspended animation” (as we call this peculiar situation in our media business) — not knowing where she would go and would like to do. but one thing is very very much clear to her: she likes “tono-kun”, a transferee, so much that he is the only thing that keeps her going.

they often go home together but they weren’t an item. kanae always waits up for takaki a.k.a tono secretly so she will be at the scooter parking area at the same time as takaki. basta, she will find ways that they would be able to go home together.

kanae finds takaki sitting alone on a hill, looking at something so far away

kanae learns that takaki intends to move away – so far away in kanae’s words – by applying at tokyo university. this breaks kanae’s heart but what could she do? takaki doesn’t know how she felt. he never regarded her as someone special anyway. one day while they were walking home together, kanae suddenly burst into tears, unable to tell takaki “please don’t go!” but then she hit a realization that telling takaki that would be no use at all:

“i understand why tono-kun looks different from other people. at the same time i understand that he never looks at me…”

“Tono-kun is kind, very kind…But Tono-kun is always looking at something so far away that i can see my wish won’t be granted…even so i like Tono-kun even after today, the day after tomorrow, forever.”

“only tono-kun is on my mind as i fall asleep”

but the thing is, takaki couldn’t even remember the face of the person he has been yearning for. she only appears to him in his dreams. memories of akari haunts him, shutting everyone out. especially kanae.

chapter 3. takaki, now a computer programmer, goes through the motions of living but he’s emotionally empty as a paper bag. he has a sort-of girlfriend who says “i love you” but he couldn’t respond nor give back something — anything — to her.

seems like something’s missing. something or someone he must find. he is haunted by the memories of that someone. pining for the past.

but that someone has already moved on. akari is now about to get married and apparently she’s happy. she remembered a very special boy named takaki tono when she unearthed a letter she wasn’t able to send him. they were sweet memories but then she lives for the present.

“yesterday i saw a dream. the dream about the past. in that dream we were still 13 years old and we are in a wide, snowy, empty field and the lights that come from the house look dimmed and so faraway. only our tracks are on the road that passes by us. and with that scenery, someday we will see the cherry blossoms together…”   - akari

takaki felt that he and that someone crossed paths one day but when he realized that, they were already separated by the railroad tracks barrier. then trains arrived, preventing him from seeing whether the woman, akari (so it seemed), would turn around like what she used to do…

but when the trains were gone…

…she was no longer there.

i think it was then that takaki realized that he should stop living with a ghost. he smiled upon realizing that the woman did not care to look back and continued walking to where she was supposed to go.

so should he.

–

the movie is simple but the execution was great to the point that it didn’t have to be loud just to evoke deep emotions from the audience. typical of japanese of other asian movies, it shows scenes seemingly unrelated to dialogue/monologue of the central characters (falling snow against the dark sky, dragon flies flying around) but i think these were employed to give the audience “breathing space” (with hollywood movies, every gap must be filled with dialogues, music, what-have-you — making the movie too busy to be effective in bringing out emotions from the audience). it may strike other people fed regularly with hollywood fanfare that these devices make the movie crawl but 5 cm per second has used this effectively.

i can’t put my finger in it but this movie tugs at your heartstrings without too much effort. it won’t make you cry (since that is not its primary purpose) but it would make you think and recall the past. basically it makes you think of whether you’re still holding on to ghosts of the past, of what might have been and whether you’re still pining for the happiness of yesterday.

in takaki’s case, holding on to yesterday was destroying him since he could not have meaningful relationships and he is just living for the sake of living, making him a hollow man.

how many of us were able to let go of the past?

i really love watching anime and other live action japanese movies or series. however what really annoys me gets under my skin that makes me want to hurl the nearest chair at the screen are the weak, helpless and whimpering female lead characters.

to be fair, there are good female lead characters as well that i really really like or identify with like motoko kusanagi of ghost in the shell and re-L mayer of ergo proxy. (hmm… come to think of it, these two characters are major biatches in their own right. haha.) at least kauro kamiya of rurouni kenshin is far from being the damsel in distress even though she was still living during the restoration period (i.e. old japan). another strong character, even though she is not a fighter in the sense that she does not know any martial art, is fuu of samurai champloo. i mean she does not cry when she gets stuck; she finds a way even though the scheme is idiotic. at least she is doing something, unlike other characters who just sit and cry and wait for somebody to fix their shit.

like this girl, akiko, in shounen onmyouji.

she just sits there and cry. it’s just too painful to watch. i don’t know if it’s juts PMS or what but my blood begins to boil everytime she does this. and because she is so weak, she expects people to protect her and take all the blood and gore for her.

another one is the love interest of miyamoto musashi in the movie the samurai (three-part movie). that girl irritated me so much that whenever she came on screen, i would leave the couch and Other Half until she finished her waterworks. that character did nothing but cry! cry after musashi, cry about her fate, cry about — everything.

ok, i should cut them some slack because akiko — a princess — and the girl in the samurai lived during feudal japan. probably society expected them to be hothouse flowers and do nothing but cry and be helpless. but then again, there were female warriors also at that time (there are martial arts practiced mostly by women like the one which uses the  sai, according to Other Half’s martial arts books) and even some of them even practiced ninjutsu/ninpo so it’s not taboo to deviate from being a “typical” delicate female or mere decoration or baby machine during those times. there’s also murasaki shikibu, the japanese noble woman who wrote the tale of genji so i think she is far from being an idle in util helpless woman. so i say it is not the milieu that dictates the female characters but the writers. it’s the writers’ fault! (yeah yeah always blame the writer…)

and as i said those endless helpless crying irritates me no end. but on second thought, a movie may become so bland without the helpless female to rescue…

HINDI rin. in ghost in the shell and ergo proxy, there are no stupid helpless females. even the androids are far from incompetent. and these series aren’t not bland or boring.

there are also real-life damsels in distress and i’ve encountered some of them. they’re not my friends, as you may have guessed. these people sap the life out of me and their “helpless” attitude sometimes rub on off on me. i tell you, that is not a great feeling. telling them that their problems will be solved by acting on them so they better pull themselves together is not enough. they expect some knight in shining armor will rescue them and then their problems will be blown away by this dashing fellow. aaaagh!

i’m not saying that it’s bad to cry. i do cry a lot but crying and waiting for someone to rescue you without exerting any effort on your part is a bit too much.

as the late chikatime would say, yun lang pow.

it’s weird. i never heard of tornadoes striking los banos in my lifetime. my brother’s hichschool classmate texted my sister that climate change has come closer to home.

Whirlwind hits Los Baños
By Thea Alberto
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 22:04:00 08/14/2008

MANILA, Philippines — A whirlwind hit the town of Los Banos in Laguna province Thursday afternoon, stirring panic among its residents.

Eyewitness accounts said the tornado was seen between 4:30 to 5 pm.

Harold Grande, an instructor at the College of Development Communication in University of the Philippines Los Banos, said he was inside the classroom when he heard a commotion outside.

“I was at DevCom and the students were shouting outside then I saw it [tornado] forming then it dissipated,” said Grande in a phone interview, adding that it seemingly lasted for five minutes.

“It was like those in the movies,” he said of the rare phenomenon in the science town of Laguna.

Meanwhile, Pamela Lomaad, a senior BS Economics student at UPLB said the tornado formed twice. She even took a video of the incident.

“We saw nets and leaves flying. You can see the tornado really forming,” she said.

“Students were amazed at first but they were in panic later,” she added.

A Philippine Daily Inquirer editor, quoting eyewitnesses, told INQUIRER.net the whirlwind damaged some buildings near the main intersection of the town.

that was probably scary. i called up my mother and asked if she was ok. she said houses along the lakeshore were damaged as the twister peeled away the roofs from homes and then my bro’s highschool classmate texted my sister that Crossing was full of debris, causing heavy traffic jam. my mother also said that the twister passed over BioSci and classes were suspended because of this rare phenomenon.