stories from the middle earth press room

i wonder what kind of world we have today if he won the presidency. american soldiers won't have to die everyday in a war they didn't want. that the iraqis didn't want at all. the US may also have signed the kyoto protocol.

i'm talking about al gore, the newest nobel peace prize winner. he and his creepy documentary. that scared the shit out of me, as i've said in one blog entry before.


another winner was the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

climate change is beyond politics. all people from different political color should understand that this is a serious threat not only to wildlife but also to our way of life. to drive the point home, isn't strange that temperatures the past few days were unbearably high? it's already october.

think.


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Holy crap. i wish i was as good as this artist! watch the video of his/her painting process. galeng.

biggest frustration in my life was fine arts. i dabbled with charcoal and watercolor in highschool but that's it. i didn't have the resources nor the time to indulge in it. i was too busy playing characters on stage and the allure of the klieg lights was more attractive.

that's the trouble with me, i have too many interests that i never focus on one thing. Other Half told me that the only thing that i stuck with was writing.

i've been wanting to enroll in some art sessions with the Saturday Group in araneta, cubao. i've been telling that to myself year in and year out. ilang taon din yung sambit sambit ko but i never got to do it. now i wonder if they're still there.

whenever i'm at the basement of fullybooked in bonifacio high street, i am being seduced by these shockingly expensive art materials (oil, acrylic, watercolors, canvas). i was tempted to buy one set of those watercolors (rembrandt artists' watercolors) but i held back because i knew i didn't have time for that.

ah. when you're a media practitioner time is so precious that any idle moment is spent for sleeping. the only reason why i was able to blog for a few straight days is because my older sister was so generous that she gave me her virus. ergo, i'm a walking zombie with a splitting headache. i've been working at home for a few days now. my body is aching. and to keep me from being bored i blog in between articles.

so anyway, since i'm a frustrated artist, i figured i could turn to photography. however, the hideously expensive DSLRs out there would never do. i have a Nikon FM2 courtesy of my geologist uncle who thought i could use it since i am a journalist (err...uncle, photojournalists use DSLRs nowadays...). the old SLR is tough and really good for professionals and amateurs but who uses films nowadays (except for "lomographers")?

besides the Nikon, my family has a Canon EOS Rebel II SLR at home with 35-80mm and 80-200mm lenses that no one uses. but then, it's too expensive to be playing around with films these days. although you can have the films developed straight to cds (try digiprint, lomographers swear by their service), it's still expensive compared to shooting and uploading photos in the computer to see your masterpiece.

so when i was in HK in august with my colleagues, it took some great willpower to keep me from buying the nikon d40x (which was really cheaper compared to prices in quiapo or in malls here in manila). i thought about those SLRs gathering dust at home.

i figured i could just buy those prosumer cameras from nikon or fuji to satisfy my need for manual controls and zoom. if i buy a DSLR, i would always have this urge to upgrade lenses and all those friggin' kits. besides, DSLRs are too bulky and cumbersome to lug around. as they say, the gadgets do not make a photographer rather it's the "eye" and capturing the "moment".

i don''t know if that's true. or maybe i'm just justifying my choice to get a prosumer camera instead of a DSLR. what you think?