Wednesday, October 17, 2007

love at first flight

Almost got late for checking-in at the Manila Domestic. Arrived minutes before Counter 22 closed. Aboard the first flight of my life bound for Iloilo. Love every single moment of it. Always knew travelling was part of my system. Landed at the Iloilo International. New and shiny airport at the outskirts of the city. Not very third world. Love new things. Love it. (Will try to post pics from Mam D's cam).

Checked in at the Westown Hotel. It's new and shiny also hence, love it too. Have inclination for shiny and glittery objects. Hotel has free internet and location is perfect for night life. Visit the place if you happen to be in Iloilo. It's near everything.

Taxi rides are delightful as compared to the Metro. Cabbies don nice uniforms and don't choose passengers. Perfect tourist guides. Taxi meters work. Recorded message plays when the meter stops to remind passengers of belongings. And for the first time, it felt right to tip the cabbie. Again, not very third world.

Had lunch at Tatoy's. Delicious oysters. Delicious everything.

Off to SM City to burn calories. Ultimate markers of civilization. Bought pain killers. Just in case. Searched for the elusive Globe loading outlet. Had nail art done, hot pink zebra stripes. Chipped them off on our taxi ride on the way back to the hotel. Dammit.

Passed up time watching ANTM and reading Lord of the Flies. Should've slept instead.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

italian night

I'm feeling all sloppy right now and my work efficiency is spiraling down to extremely low levels. It's as if my stars have picked the most perfect time to be misaligned what with all these things I have to pressure my self to finish and a lot more. Come to think of it, I haven't been feeling like my usual perky self all October. It's like bad hair day, everyday for nearly two weeks. I wonder what my astrology update has to say about this.

Anyhoo, it's Italian night once again with Sed and Kare. Mad dash to the CCP to catch the 7pm screening of *Travolti da un insolito destino nell'azzurro mare d'agosto, a 1974 Wertmuller film roughly translated in English as Swept Away (first to memorize the Italian title wins). Madonna, stars in its 2000 American remake by Guy Ritchie. It's a political film with lots of scenes alluding to sex. The violence was tiring. Carunchio is a pig. Sra. Lanzetti is a goddess. Love her, especially that black number she sported the day they got stranded in the island. It's so fazyon, you wouldn't think it's from the 70s. Travolti is one of those films that seem to run too long, draining your energy along the process. Even before the credits started rolling, we have already been tired and famished.

And as we were in the Italian spirit that night, even more influenced by the food of the Italian elite we saw in the movie, Sed, Kareeza and I craved for good ol' spaghetti (We don't want fettucini, thank you!). Then, armed with a camera phone, we spent the rest of the night cam whoring by the bay.


*Swept away by an unusual destiny in the blue sea of August

Monday, October 08, 2007

oathtaking

The idea of cramming in tens of thousands of people in an enclosed space had me suspicious. Especially that I already had my doubts with the event organizers founded on the poorly planned sytem (or lack thereof) of the NLE application filing for the June 2007 Board Exams. My suspicions were affirmed, somehow ominously, by the sucky weather on the day of the Oathtaking and the rather ambivalent cabbie who drove us to the venue. He had my eyeballs rolling at dangerously blinding degrees with his account of the road situation at the various routes we could take going to Araneta Center, as if we hadn't already known that a) traffic was bad especially in this weather and b) yes, it was probably flooded.

Then I had sort of an epiphany of all the taxi rides I have been in my whole life and I realized, how much stressful these rides were, which totally defeats the purpose of taking them in the first place.

We arrived in Araneta an hour and a half later than scheduled, I blame it partly on the weather, and the rest on my genetic predisposition to be tardy. Luckily, there had been a delay with the program because apparently the guest speaker was likewise marooned due to heavy rains. The ceremonies, dare I call it, have just started when I finally got to where my friends were.

As if it was not enough that we had the attention span of hummingbirds, the volume of people, nurses at that, inside the Coliseum, was overwhelmingly distracting. So trying to pay attention to the speaker's cookie cutter speech was a real struggle. From where I sat, all I could see where tiny other nurses in white. The Araneta Coliseum suddenly became a gigantic ant hill of tiny white ants who move and talk as if it were a single unit. A single mutinous ant, backed by thousands of likewise mutinous but far more cowardly ones, could only mean stampede. But fortunately, nothing of that sort happened. People there, well just as Joy Behar's aunt would put it, just remained.


So ok, we were there, now what?

Ironically, that summarizes my life so far. I have hurdled the test and am now a professional nurse but what happens next is all a mishmash. But don't get me wrong. I have plans. Oh I have lots of them. I have future end goals, and milestones I wish to achieve are deeply planted in the cortices of my brain. I know what I want, where I'd go, but it seems I do not know how the hell I'm going to get there.

And now, I wander.

inasal and italian

Graci to my former professor, current boss, Prof. Shiela who told me all about it, Sed, Kareeza and I (the super draggable trio) met for a mid evening rendezvous at the CCP for the Italian Film Fest screening of Pana e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips). Despite the seemingly unbearable facts that I was finally succumbing to mumps, Kareeza still had to come from Katips, Sed was terribly hungry and the annoying drizzle was not helping, we were off to the movies.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Italian movies or maybe Italians par se, can be quite a distraction. So much that I totally forgot about the subtitle for the first 5 minutes of the show. I'm not sure if its the heavily passionate Italian or the utterly tacky clothes that looked straight out of German Moreno's wardrobe. I mean, come on! a silver wind breaker? What the hell are they thinking?


Pana e tulipani tells the story of housewife, Rosalba, at a crossroad (literally or figuratively) on her middle-aged life, of finding freedom from her tyrnannical husband and her highly domesticated life in the most beautiful of places and of rediscovering her life's passion. It is mid-life crisis told almost in a dream with a large helping of comic relief

In a world which hails bubblegum pop and a culture of swooning over matinee idols and teenage girls in mid-rifs, middle-aged romance may not be on everyone's comfort zone. I mean it's not even cute. But they nailed it! With witty dialogues, sarcasmic undertones, unpretentious scenes and wonderful, wonderful Venice, it won our hearts over.

After the movie, grumbling protests from our stomachs declared we should probably eat lest we want to be malnourished, not that we still aren't. So the three of us decided to have dinner just across the CCP. There were a variety of dine places to choose from, we picked Inasal for the very convenient reason, thanks to Kareeza, that it does not have a branch in Katipunan. Well, as for Sed and I, we just wanted food.