Fine Lines

#171: At Dawn

The grono burns on, shedding artifical light on the wrinkled skin over her hands. The song lingers in her head. The scent sticks to her hair. The line blurs. And she writes what Art Garfunkel croons. It is a fine line between the darkness and the dawn.

Easter Pics

Apr.15.2006 True Blue Filipino Party. Well, Filipino-Canadian friendship-Easter dinner-karaoke-silly dancing party.

Apr.15.2006 Saner times. Before getting egged for the cacophony.

Apr.16.2006 Jim from Canada. Senior Consultant. Definitely not a singer.

Amazing Love

#170: Lyrics of a Wonderful Song

My Lord, what love is this
That pays so dearly
That I, the guilty one
May go free!

Amazing love, O what sacrifice
The Son of God given for me
My debt he pays, and my death he dies
That I might live, that I might live

And so they watched him die
Despised, rejected
But oh, the blood he shed
Flowed for me!

And now, this love of Christ
Shall flow like rivers
Come wash your guilt away
Live again!

Stephen Speaks

#169: Covey, I mean

I'm looking for strategic fit. I need to determine internal and external alignment. What I'm doing is assessing to reduce variability, uncertainty and risk.
It's all part of good governance to minimize disjoint between management and shareholder interests.

And yes, I'm talking about relationships.

My friend Lee will probably not be surprised that I talk like this. How many dinners or Starbucks sessions have we wasted dissecting relationships - whether ours or others? What will probably floor him is that I've gotten so much worse.

Years back, a friend of mine turned to me when his fiancee stepped out of the car and confessed: You know what's hard sometimes? It's that I can't talk to her the way we can talk. She's in the medical field. She doesn't understand business jargon. And I don't understand the stuff from her work as well. I mean, I don't even know where my spleen is.

Well, I don't know either. I don't know many things too. Like the level of military spending in the Philippines. Or in the US compared to Canada. I draw a blank when people talk current affairs. But I love bullet points. And I know what reverse engineering means. I do it when I see odd couples being sweet to each other inside the bus. And I will do it when I see my friend and his fiancee-turned-wife again.

Art Attack

#168: Looking at the Road Untravelled

A couple of Fridays back, I was in the middle of a party and amidst the loud music, I found myself talking to someone about an alternative path I could've taken a few years back. He's a graphic designer, just like my brother, and because of a previous project together, I felt I had been able to see a side of him I could trust. He had been working in Marketing and after discussing how bad the ads are on Australian TV, I found myself opening up to him about how, as a child, I had been strongly inclined towards the arts. I originally wanted a career in Advertising. At some point, I thought that after completing my business degree, I could take up Visual Communications at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts as a 2nd degree. But my mother, whose advice I respect, told me that working on Advertising is better on the client side because you have the decision-making authority. Marketing is the way to go. I loved it so much I never looked back. Until now.

Last Friday, I was sitting on one of the steps at Coogee Beach looking at the pink and purple horizon when I remembered this guy I took a photo of in Italy. He was by the water, painting the horizon. The thought made me wonder if I'd ever have the time, the willpower and enough talent left in me to do that. I turned to my friend and told her how I wrote this musical play more than 10 years ago which involved at least 5 original songs I composed, put lyrics on and actually played. I can't play the piano anymore. I had, what my mom used to call, a natural oido (not widow, silly me) for it but I had lost it. Sometimes I wonder if I had lost my art too and the only way I am able to express my creativity now is through simpler venues like photography and having the advertising agency churn out things for me to choose from. (FYI. Bad advertising is primarily the fault of the bad brand manager who approved it.)

Yesterday, I went to the Easter Show and found myself playing critic to some paintings on display. There were two sets of paintings I found myself being drawn to - ones that I admire and cannot comprehend how to create, and those that I admire and can actually imagine myself doing. I remember the time I used to join art contests or have my artwork on display for the whole school to see. I wasn't sent to Science Contests or Math Quiz Bees. I was always picked out for art ones. So what happened on the way to adulthood? How did I get to the point of seemingly having wasted all of the talent away?

This afternoon, I got to talk to my brother for more than an hour. He was describing this horrible horrible design created by someone who actually had more talent in the arts than we did back when we were younger. I feel his disgust. Bad design disgusts me too. My brother charges it to taste. Some people have the talent but not the taste. "I mean. Look at you," he tells me, "you have no technical knowledge in the matter, but you have good taste in design." From a Masters in Arts in Graphic Design student, that's a compliment. But in the light of how I used to share art classes and art supplies with this guy, that line seems a bit sad. Do I really have no technical knowledge in the matter anymore? I want to disagree but I cannot prove it. I don't know if I have the time, the willpower or enough residual talent to prove that line wrong.

"What do you want to do if you don't have to work?" I asked my friend last Friday. She said she wanted to travel and eat. I said I wanted to travel, to photograph the world, do missions, write, play the piano again, paint again...

My voice trailed off as my train of thought dissolved into this image of a man by the water, painting the horizon.

Apr.02.2006: In fake Italy with Andrew.

Unplan

#167: Plans Come Undone

Sometimes, you just have to drop the grand plans so you can be a good friend.

I went to the city with a friend today. Over banana cake and a tropical smoothie, autumn winds carried her heavy words to a head which understands but doesn't know the depth of her pain. There were sunset-colored tulips we saw which I may give her one day, when she finally goes back to her homeland to reclaim her freedom. There are also two jackets, two sweats, and a glittery bag I need to be cured of. They join the fruits of another lapse in judgement last week, still sitting inside shopping bags. (And please, let me not think of the salon treatments I signed up for with her. It's all in the name of friendship. Bonding. Good hair.)

Yesterday, it was crab meat risotto with another good friend. It was in Leichardt where ladies in fashionable sunglasses transport you to a strangely-constructed Italy. Was that an uninspired recreation of the Spanish steps, the ones of cold gray stone? Were engineering undergrads tasked to recreate these supposed windows of Venice? The only thing close is this green window against a Medici pink wall, high above all the activity, noticeable only to me, I suppose, because I have a picture of the actual Venetian window it was trying to copy. But I loved the place, first because it's not the kind I see outside the bus window going to the University; second, because I had good company. Or maybe it's the other way around.

In the evening, I had planned to go to a 2nd church service just to see if it's better than the morning services I usually attend. I axed that plan because it had been a long time since this friend and I spent time together and cutting it short for something I could easily do the following week didn't seem sound.

But what shall I do with the rest of this week? All the time and none of the concrete plans I usually have. I want to strangle my abnormal friend who has been flip-flopping over flying to Sydney. If he hadn't announced his grand plan to drop in over my break, I would've made plans to go to Gold Coast with some hags instead of draining my extra money little by little on irrational impulses that leave me ready to clothe five other people for winter, while waiting for him to make up his mind. Maybe the converse works: sometimes to be a good friend, you have to push through with the grand plans. Or maybe I'm just freaking out over being caught without a plan on how to optimize the use of my precious break. Control Freak, be gone.

To cap it off, tonight, this other person cancelled his invitation to Port Macquarie after I started asking about details of the plan. Ah. How nice. Good thing I was merely asking for details to consider it as an option. Imagine if I was asking details because I really wanted to join. Boo.

With plans like these, who needs spontaneity?
Randomization, anyone?

Home Along Maroubra Road

#166: First Official House Party

Background: Term 1 is over. Or shall I say, the torture is over? Finally. Now I can snap out of this zombie-ish state I've descended in in the last three weeks. That should stop people from asking if I'm alright. (I'm fine. Don't let the dark circles around my eyes and the alternating intense-and-blank look on my face fool you. And no, I am not on the brink of a nervous breakdown.) And so, after three months of living in this space and always not having the time nor the energy nor the brain space to orchestrate a Vivaglam-worthy party, I finally said 'yes' to my flatmate. Yes, we can now throw the 'housewarming' party we promised our good friends from Oakhurst early in January. And yes, I am sure it will be a blast.

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Dear Guests,

Welcome to our Humble Abode!

The theme of tonight’s party is “Home Along Maroubra.”
(Inspired by the Filipino show, "Home Along Da Riles")

Our building, as you may have observed, is not the poshest place on earth. Our mailbox is broken, the elevator smells like an old man who hasn’t bathed for 2 weeks, and there are a lot of grammatically-challenged graffiti ‘artists’ who continue to deface the elevator walls everyday. If you leave a shopping cart outside, some psycho will bash it to some unrecognizable form; and at night, if you stay up late enough, you will hear some guy screaming at his ‘b*tch.’

But on the Nth Floor, in Unit X, we’ve been able to make a nice home out of a space initially dominated by Mr. Sundal’s countless hair particles. We’re proud of our humble table which can only accommodate two people but which we assembled ourselves. We’re pretty proud of having bought (for a very good price) this spiffy-looking branded hand-me-down entertainment showcase which now serves as meal companion and distraction-from-studies all- in- one. We’re proud too of the way our couch – the cheapest model in IKEA, along with the color-coordinated KMart cushions, has been able to bring a semblance of poshness in our space. We’re proud of the little touches here and there which speak of our desire to make the most of the little that we have and make this flat a continuing and living joint project. Most of all, we’re proud of the warmth and joy that the Lord has blessed us with in this house. For two people who were strangers to each other less than a year ago, we’ve been able to bond as good friends and sisters over the countless Kelly Clarkson and Rascal Flatts songs we sing our hearts out to, the numerous contestants eliminated from Biggest Loser, and the incalculable number of clothing articles ruined by color runs.

The menu for tonight is a fruit of a few “Aha!” moments we’ve had over dinner when something hurriedly put together came out surprisingly good. It’s not much but we hope you enjoy.


Gladys & Monica