Rude Awakening

Was still wiping the sleepy cobwebs from my eyes when I woke up at 6.30 am to check on a certain package I had sent last Wednesday.

I took this package to the post place Wednesday at 6pm. I forgot the fedex hub in Subic had been closed.. which is why the package only started moving the next day at around 3pm. What it is, is a fashion design drawing, a flat pattern drawing and fabric swatches for a contest I am joining to be held in Japan. I just really really hope it gets there before this day ends.

Clicked absentmindedly on the Stumble button as I waited and landed on this nothing website with a post about Michael Jackson passing away. It seemed a mean-spirited joke. And just to make sure I checked on ever reliable TMZ. And I couldn’t believe it. He really is gone.

I believe the first bit of news out was that he suffered a cardiac arrest. And the things people said!

“Cardiac arrest? He shouldn’t have looked at the man in the mirror!”

“His nose fell off!!!!!!!!!!!!”

“I think he’s been anorexic for many years, this probably had something to do with it..”

“I just read somewhere else that he has been pronounced dead. Overdose of sleeping pills. Apparent suicide.”

“Let him rot.”

And as a commenter said, “This could be very serious. I cannot believe people would be that cruel. Fan or not, have compassion for a fellow human being.”

Michael Jackson concert tickets for an arm on ebay. Maybe they could turn them into a tribute concert instead.

He went to the Philippines way back in the 90’s I think, but I was too young to be allowed. All I remember was seeing that concert on TV and that there was a lady with glasses who got up on the stage with him but was quickly escorted off. I always thought I’d see him in concert, not anymore. Rest in peace Michael Jackson, there are no users, no papparazzi in heaven.

“Dame Elizabeth Taylor is too devastated by the passing of her dear friend Michael Jackson to issue a statement at this time.”

Elizabeth Taylor first dubbed Michael the King of Pop

on michaeljackson.com

Un Nuit Au Maroc

Thursday last week, Amanda Agnes and Sari Lazaro organized a fashion show for their production class. It was one night of fashion in Morocco. Designer students from our school, LaSalle College International, showed their stuff: Athena Tandoc, Finela Gregorio, Engie Garcia, Marge Regala, Kristine Bautista, Miki Hahn, Sari Lazaro and me. It was a great show, thanks to Amanda and Sari.

The location nearly ruined everything but it still was a great show, thanks to Amanda and Sari, everyone who helped and the designers. The place, and I mention this only once, was Warehouse 135. It was such a bad experience I shall never come back there again of my own accord, but the YoU Magazine launch this Saturday (in which I will be showing some punk rock clothes) will be held there so that will be the last time. First, they had to be told to turn the a/c on while we were setting everything up. And there was no help or any kind of assistance from them at all. When we arrived there late afternoon, the place, looking all dilapidated under the unforgiving lights was dirty, with cigarettes butts everywhere, probably from whatever went on the night before. The toilet had a lot of cockroaches. The backstage was upstairs and I was always scared to leave our things without someone we know because this dodgy crook-like man was always hovering nearby. He won’t even fetch water for my friend who needed to take some medicine. And while the models were undressing, the crook-guy and another goon were stealing looks! Athena had to tell him to give us a bit of privacy and he took one step back. We had to compensate and hide from them when they should be helping make things better. While the show is on-going, I was watching from the balcony backstage, waiting for my turn, and one guy came up to me and had the gall to tell me to tell everyone else to not nudge the stupid tables because the club’s power breaker thingy whatever will explode. What?! That totally doesn’t make sense. And it isn’t even my problem if they have some hacked-up electrical wiring that could cause major accidents with a single nudge of a table. It’s their problem and they either fix it or someone ought to investigate that. They were really gross and rude and unprofessional. I don’t know where the people who work there come from or how they were trained (if there was any training at all) but since they represent that “club,” everything about it was revealed to me in very poor, but clear light.

So next time you think about going there, don’t be fooled by the sparkling lights that hide all the ugly reality and stay near the exits because someone just might nudge a table and cause an explosion: you are in a warehouse that declares the fact in cheap tarp in front and that’s all it really is.

Thanks to:
stylebible.ph
Flip TV
Konrad Ong
LCI photography students
everyone who made it a nice event.

From Inside a Moving Car

Capturing random but meaningful photos from inside a moving car must be an art.

First, it takes some getting used to to realise there’s something worth taking a picture of. I once saw a funny sign while driving down a road I most likely will not pass through any time soon. I took pains in pointing it out to the other people in the car so they can see it and laugh with me. If I had just taken a picture, it’d have been lots easier to show what’s so funny. Other than that, it’s pretty useful to have proof when something wrong has happened, like car crashes or other accidents. A good photo or two of the scene as-is (untouched) is all you need and you won’t have to look for pen and paper or cellphone to take note of license plates. No one can lie and get away with it. I mean, there’s a reason there’s hardly a single episode of CSI that goes by without someone taking photos of the crime scene, right?

Then there’s the camera draw. Sort of like how cowboys draw their guns. You have to do it fast. Look-for-bag, open-bag, look-for-camera-pouch, take-camera-pouch-out, unzip-pouch, pull-camera-out. All at lightning speed- or as close as you can get. Picture-worthy moments spotted while in a moving car won’t run up beside your window for you to take a photo of. Competent equipment helps a lot. You only have a few moments and if your camera takes a few seconds to start up, you’ll end up trying to console yourself with the ‘arty’ photo of the dust trail/skid mark that the cool Lamborghini left behind. And mind the settings. Automatic setting for digital cams are your always best bet. I mean, try to take moving pictures with your camera set to night-shot. Yup, very bad.

Now you’ll have to deal with the photo taking itself. You are moving and chances are, the shot will come out blurred in the wrong way. But blur isn’t always evil. You can try moving with the car while you take your shot. If you do it right, the foreground subjects (e.g. grass) will come out blurred with the main subject (e.g. a sunset) well focused. You also need to remember that you’re taking the photo from out of a window. It’s a pain trying to avoid including those wipers or other parts of the car in the picture.

Of course if all else fails, you can always have the car stop. But you have to admit any good photos taken that way won’t be as “amazing” as if it was taken in a moving car. And one last important thing: NO flash. Unless your window is rolled down. What do you get when you take a flash photo of a scene on the other side of your window? At best, a good abstract photo of mostly white.

So much for that, here are some photos.

Sundown

An overcast, rainy day.

A wee hill.

Nature

Raindrops

They’re called law enforcers for a reason. They ideally should enforce the law, not step on it like what this guy with no license plates is doing.

(Along SLEX) I thought the Koreans came to the Philippines to study English. The way I see it, either they learned nothing or someone should sue whoever made this poster.

(On the Skyway, Monday the 30th) We saw this jumble of cars clogging the speedway. Everyone turned around and drove the wrong way. It took us a few days to realise what’s going on here.

Try to guess why they’re doing what they’re doing. Answer in the next photo.

=s

On to other stories (and photos).

I always thought my name’s uncomplicated. I’m always proven wrong.

All photos above (except the last one just before this, duh) taken by this lil guy here. Not Paddington. The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-N2 10.1 megamixel camera. What a mouthful. I won it in the Candy Magazine Blog Awards. It’s very good. Takes clear photos with little fuss and is easy to use.

Speaking of the Candy Blog Awards, here’s the video of the dinner when the winners were given their prizes: Click Me!

R. I. P. Lolo

Friday Night, Saturday Night

Friday night: Nikki’s birthday celeb.
Saturday, whole day: with hun.

All I can say is, it turns me off when someone takes my niceness for granted. I’m the least naive person you’ll know. And I’m not talking about Saturday at all. I don’t care to elaborate.. Go figure.

Anyway

Pictures here: Click.

It was nice to see Nixie and Kaye again =)

It was a Very Expensive Breakup

… or so I thought. Last Thursday night, my boyfriend and I sort of broke up.. online. The next day, just before going to my classes, he told me to wait for him, that he has just finished packing and is on his way to the airport. I wasn’t sure what will happen when he got here, thought maybe he just wanted closure or something. And I wasn’t even sure if he was seriously flying over here.. Well, I won’t be going into the details but suffice to say, we’re back together and better than ever.

We watched 300 last Saturday (my first time and Choi’s 2nd) and I just love it. Every scene is super eye-candy. And Choi couldn’t stop doing his version of “Madness? This is Sparta!!” lol. But that was after the movie. While we were watching it, I had the misfortune of having to sit next to imbecilic boys who just won’t quit dissecting every scene ala play-by-play. Come on! It’s not like they’re at a live boxing match.. it’s a movie for crying out loud.

The CAFA (college of architecture and fine arts) Exhibit was still there so we looked around. There were paintings, sculptures, mixed-media art and scale models of buldings etc. And surprise, surprise.. I didn’t know of my my works was included! It’s so cool seeing people look at my sculpture and talk about it. Haha. Here are some pictures.

I started watching Heroes on his laptop. I’ve watched only until episode 14 and I am completely hooked. It’s very interesting. I think I like Peter Petrelli’s power the best. Just like a sponge, he absorbs other heroes’ powers and retains them. He only has to learn how to call them up when he needs a particular power. And Hiro is sooooo funny! (Mista I-sa-ak!) I like his character a lot.

Choi’s gone home today. After my classes, we had a late lunch at La Maison. Their ribs are pretty decent, the onion soup different but good, the lobster soup not so good and the churros were very disappointing. Then we hung out at Starbucks until it was time to go to the airport.

He gave me his phone. I’ve been almost bursting with all his sweetness the past few days and I think this was the cherry topping everything else. I miss him even more.

P.S.
That mango tea frappuccino thing at Starbucks is poison. Ew. Ew. Eww.

Bits and Pieces

I drew the bunny on the left and Bruce made that scary mutant bunny to the right. Lol. He printed it out and I think it’s hilarious that if you press Print on Doodle, it prints the picture out with a frame and everything. I just had to see it so he took a photo of the print he made and showed me.

It’s dark, the air is heavy and there’s an ominous feeling about. It’s raining so hard. This night totally matches my feelings right now. If I were an old garment and God is the designer, he must be redoing some parts of me because I feel like I’m being unravelled in certain areas. I just hope I’m strong enough to get out of this just fine, with all the snipped bits connected to to where it should be, the garish details taken off, the frayed ends stitched up properly and the soiled areas washed clean.

We Have Brought Culture to Our Street!

I remember coming home to have my socks checked by mom. More often than not, they were black. Not because I wore black socks or that I had no shoes. I have just been playing “10-20″ at school. You know- that game usually played by girls where you jump around a length of garter as it gets higher and higher.

When we still lived in Holland, my sister and I taught the kids on our street how to play that game. We bought a length of neon pink garter and showed our Dutch friends Antoinette, Leonie and Anouk how to play it. They liked it a lot. And since they were really tall people, I thought that they only needed to get the hang of it and they’d be able to beat me everytime. I was wrong. They ARE tall but they haven’t got my mad skillz! Haha.

Then one day, as we were driving along our street, coming home from a movie, we saw this bunch of girls hopping up and down with a piece of neon green garter- they were playing 10-20. And that’s when it dawned to me: We have brought culture to our street! hahaha.

I’ve been recently frequenting this blog that talks about trends from the 90’s. And it’s got me thinking about my childhood. I started recalling details such as what I was wearing at one particular day and what my 2nd grade class adviser’s full name was down to what pattern was on my socks on a particular day. And that’s pretty scary. You see, I haven’t got a photographic memory. Far, far, far from it. I even forget things I told myself to remember yesterday. So finding out that these long-forgotten specles of memories are still there in my head somewhere came as a huge surprise to me.

Polly Pockets, My Baby-All-Gone, Totally Hair Barbies.. my toys then definitley reflected what kind of child I was- completely girly-girly. Princess Starla and Jewel Riders, Sarah the Little Princess, Sailormoon.. Dana and I were talking about Sailormoon just a few days ago and it was funny how much we knew about it and how completely normal it was to us that a character be named “Chibyusa” or to yell “Moon Crystal Power… makeup!” It all sounds so silly now.

As I talk about this, I realise there’s just way too much to cram into one entry. So maybe I’ll just make a category for this and gradually write down all these startlingly vivid and detailed memories as they bubble up in my mind’s murky memory pool.. they might start fading away and it will be a huge shame if they do. And thus, the birth of a new category: “The Past, Revisited.”

Baubles and Bonbons

I like the two words. Baubles and bonbons- gaudy decors and sweeties. And they both sum up what Christmas has come to be:plastic garish decorations and over-the-top everything.

Christmas has brought out the opportunitists in many people, specially the hard-up ones. What was once, is supposed to be and should always be a meaningful season has become just another excuse to make more money, party carelessly or go on retail therapy.

My mom, sister and I were in a mall the other day and needed to transfer to another mall. Since we were just dropped off there and didn’t want to have to fetch for the ride just for a less-than-5-minute drive, we decided to take a cab. We looked for the cab area but there weren’t many cabs there. The man managing the thing told us that traffic jams were everywhere so the cabs are getting stuck in traffic. We said we’d wait a bit. Then he said he’d take us to the other mall for Php150. 150 pesos. Cabs, by law, are required to have a meter which starts at 30 pesos. The trip we needed to make wouldn’t have cost 50. And here he was siezing the opportunity to shell off money from poor helpless people who do not have any choice. Well at least, that’s what he thought. For we were neither poor or helpless. And most importantly: we were not stupid.

Last night, we were held against our will inside a church during the last Misa de Gallo. The new priest whose turn it was to say the mass had this little project wherein children were going to carol us with songs and dances. Well and good. But last night, we couldn’t leave because right at the very end when the priest was supposed to bless us and end the mass, he had the children go in front and dance and sing. After of which, they would go among the seated people with little sacks of cloth where we were supposed to put money as “donations” to them. A mass, which is a solemn celebration, was not the time or place to do that. There already was the first collection which is standard in all Catholic churches: you just give any amount of money you can. On top of that, that said church also has a second collection which they say is for building the church (which looks all right to me). And then these kids come for another round. It’s just wrong and very opportunistic. And imagine those kids were dancing during the consecration.. How wrong.

I heard rumours about Jay Leno making fun of the Pope who spoke about about avoiding buying expensive gifts during Christmas and about its true meaning. I believe that JL had thought it funny, ironic even, that the Pope said all that and then went back to his “gold and marble apartment”. I think JL was under the impression that St. Peter’s Square and the stuff inside with all the scepters and chairs and vestments were symbols of materialism. He must be really running out of things and people to pick on for him to aim at such a pun only to completely miss the mark. Maybe he thinks Pope Benedict bought St. Peter’s Basilica because it was gold and pretty. I don’t know about you but to me, good comedians are witty and that it’s because of that that they make you laugh at the joke. Since when has ignorance been witty? I laughed a little all right- but not at the joke.

I haven’t really an ending to this. Just wanted to write about some stuff that’s been long overdue and I haven’t really written anything in a long time.

Anyway, today is Christmas eve. And for the family Noche Buena, I’m in charge of the cocktails. It’s just our family having the dinner at home tonight. It makes it so much more special and meaningful. Having too many people, in a way, makes for more distraction. As we always do it every year: closest family for Christmas and then everyone else for New Year. There’s always so many people to meet and have parties with. I know I do with my different groups of friends and relatives. There will be time for everyone so I like that we reserve Christmas Eve just for the family.

Oh yes. I got the Starbucks planner last night. It was funny, the barista seemed to be a little “out-of-it.” I order 4 drinks, meaning 4 stickers. So I pay up and he proceeds to stick the stickers onto the booklet thing. I get my planner because I completed the booklet and he sticks the remaining stickers onto my sisters booklet thing. But we receive only 3 drinks. So I come back to the guy who took my order and tell him that I was supposed to get 4 drinks and that he already gave me 4 stickers. Then he patted me on my arm! He had on this oh-lookie-aren’t-i-so-nice face and told me “It’s all right.” Meaning he thought he gave me an extra sticker and was being nice by letting me keep it. So I was like, “Um no, my sister wants her drink. You didn’t punch in her grande chocolate frap and she wants it.” He looked a bit flustered for a bit and then went to look for her drink. He finds it and asks me what name it was on and I told him my name. Then he gives it to me and says goodbye. I was like, “Um, I’ll have to pay for this……………..” and he was like standing there thinking. So I just handed him the money, trying hard not to laugh. And well, the end. Lol.

Oh yeah look at this. I’m sorry I just find it really really funny.. lol.

You Have GOT To Be Kidding Me

(Read to the music of “Stupid Girls” by Pink)
There’s this Multiply account of which main page greets me with MY OWN WORDS. I mean wtf. Not another one.. =s There is four of them who shares the site. Don’t they have enough brain cells combined to think of their own words? I mean seriously, they view my multiply account and have seen my rant about being plagiarised (the other incident) and they think this lil deed of theirs would go by unnoticed? If they really think so then I do understand why they must share one account: Must be way too taxing for them to manage an account all by themselves.

You girls must be feeling pretty damn smart to have those plastered on your web. But using paragraphs taken from my blog entries only show how completely lacking in class and manners you all are. You go against every word that you copied from me, the original of which is: “When trash sells, I stand for class. Vulgar is never the new demure. Far from being old-fashioned or uppity, I belong to the world. I’ve been where most only dream of. It will take so much more to break me. I am a third culture kid. I love. I am Crisel” (Go ahead, Google the entire paragraph- my name comes up.)

Changing a few words to “accomodate” the four of you does not make my words applicable to any of you. First of all what you do is pretty trashy. Copying even my replies to the emails I have personally received is not classy. So no, none of you are fooling anyone when you say you stand for class. And do any of you little girls even know what a third culture kid is? I rest my case.

I dont get it. I mean, have people stopped thinking altogether while I was sleeping or something? When did it start becoming “cool” to be considered and actually BE copycats? So much for originality and sincerity.

To “Ishi”, “Bianca”, “Krissy” and “Khazel”: “If I could have just one wish, I would wish weirdos like you stop existing or at least stop stealing from me.” You’re all bloody uncool.

The screenshot:

I’ll Make My Way

…sigh.