I guess that’s why they call it the blues

Somewhere in Greenbelt 5, evening of 07 January 2010.

DEPECHE MODE’S Somebody playing first on the radio, then on constant rotation in my head, didn’t help at all.  While I may have ended up calling this post by another English man’s song’s title, it was the haunting ballad from arguably the most successful electronic music group in history that made me realize one thing.  From the opening strains of the line: “I want somebody to share,” a neuron crossed a synapse in my head and I wondered – almost out loud – “Damn, I’m alone.”

Though I’ve never had any problem asserting my independence – even quite unapologetic whenever I spew out my one-liner, “table for one, please” – for the first time I had become aware of the fact that I was indeed alone.  Single.  Solitary.  Solo.  Unattached.  Uncommitted.

And passing by one sales associate painstakingly removing the stubborn foil snowflake stickers on their window display just further reminded me that the happiest of seasons had surely passed and it was already time to take down the holiday trimmings.  And it seemed sad.  Thought bubbles popped atop my head as I took the sight in.  How I wished I were with someone to share my thoughts with.  Nobody was beside me to nudge when I had to point out that the mall had still kept the giant white Christmas tree and the French sofa beside it.

Trust Ms. Kris Aquino to dole out snippets of wisdom be it from her P.O.V. desk as she opines on showbiz matters of national interest; or as she sashays towards her perfect blocking on SNN.  I credit her for categorically stating that in life, one can only be so lucky with one of two – career or (love)life.  But hardly ever both.  Even one really close friend who had his birthday recently claimed the same.

I pondered on this thought further as I went to Zara, the first store on my list of post-holiday S-A-L-E events I have decided to go to.  (Zara’s sale started yesterday, January 7^th).  But the conflicting thoughts in my head heavily interfered with calculations on the cost-per-wear mileage a gray coat would give me.  So I replaced it on the rack.  I looked at the unforgiving bright lighting fixtures on the ceiling, noticed that the air conditioning was terrible, and right beside the “795-pesos-a-piece” table, I accepted I was alone.  I left.

Yes, alone.  But not sad.  The will to be happy is just something I will not compromise.

I flung open the door to Cibo Café and politely asked, “table for one, please.”

"Wish" the blues away.

      

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Don’t push Button

I MADE a new friend on New Year’s eve.  Warm and fuzzy.  With blue eyes.  Has a steady and imposing gait for his height.  He’s not high maintenance and subsists on standard fare.

His name is Button.  And don’t you push him!

I took him out for a walk on New Year’s morning, right after I’ve fully recovered from my ER episode hours before.  We covered a great distance within my brother’s community.  I raided the breakfast table right after the walk.  As for Button, he had to take a nap.

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit – Yes, Sagewin, I didn’t get to change my shirt at all.  We didn’t plan to stay at my brother’s overnight.  But with the firecracker incident, we ended up having to.  Don’t worry, it wasn’t much of a stench.  Hahaha!

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Attempted and achieved to keep a joyous tradition

A SENSE of fulfillment underscored the first day of the new year – not to mention, the new decade – for me!  First thing on New Year’s morn, I claimed my Starbucks® Coffee Company 2010 planner.

At last, my love has come along!

I earned my first sticker on the promo card on the evening of the 12^th of November.  Actually, as if setting myself up for dismal failure yet again, I posted here the challenge I had put upon myself.

For the first time in three years, I made good on this personal goal and had finally affixed a tick beside the words “Starbucks® Coffee Company 2010 planner” on my list.

And yes, I had help.  Thanks to Batman and to Harryboy for the stickers they contributed.  They’re the best!

For posterity... Finally claimed my first ever Starbucks® Coffee Company 2010 planner. And on New Year's morn at that!

Just had to take another shot of the planner.

My Starbucks receipt. A couple of drinks finally scored me the planner.

 

Does this mean that I will be Starbucks-ing the whole year round?

 

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Never again

IN THE car ride to the emergency room, I was already rehearsing my spiel should a network field reporter ask me the million-peso question, “Magpapaputok ka pa ba?” (So are you still going to use firecrackers?)

Unfortunately, the one I was brought to was a picture of peace on earth.  Save for another injured patient, an 11-year old girl who sustained worse – much worse – burns than I did from the same cause, everything seemed to be really quiet.  (Minutes later, a hacking victim was brought in and then a man that was hit by a stray bullet.  So, four patients in all.)

While the question I was daydreaming to be foisted on me was quite rhetorical, let me respond to it here in this space:  NO.  No, I won’t light firecrackers ever again.

The irony of the matter was that the roman candle in question (I had kept referring to it as “luces”) was the last one and nobody wanted it.  I jumped from my seat and had it lit.  One.  Two.  Three.  It backfired!

Thank God for fresh milk, distilled water, and povidone iodine, they got me prepped well enough for the short trip to the ER.  Later on, I had a little potent cocktail made of antibiotics, painkillers, and a good shot of tetanus toxoid.  My dear sister-in-law who is a doctor and holds clinics at the hospital they brought me to, helped attend to me.

I’m quite thankful it turned out to be much minor than I had feared when the “blast” happened.  Looking back, I realized that it all happened so fast.  And my first instinct was to look at my hand.  I thought I lost it.  And it didn’t matter at the time but I guess I held it at a good enough angle – totally avoiding my face and my torso, with the backfire swooshing down through to the garage wall at the back of the lot.  Hindsight really is 20/20 vision.

Look at that huge clot. Thankfully, it's just that, first degree burns and cuts that I sustained.

 

Being attended to at the ER. The cuts really hurt...

 

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Sloshed on crimson tide

The lovely Piuquenes Cabernet Sauvignon from Argentina, together with Martinelli's, make for an excellent drink – my brother's "Crimson Tide."

FROM THE moment Martha Stewart poured a very lovely well-chilled bottle of champagne into a glass with a scoop of the very best, ripe passion fruit, I knew she had awoken that part of me that has never taken to drink.  The sight of carbon dioxide forming pretty patterns with bubbles that sizzled all through the length of the flute, not showing any sign of fizzling out, did exactly that to me.  Added to it was the tint the passion fruit pulp gave the drink.  It was very pretty.

Unfortunately, I don’t drink still.  But the holidays were a good enough excuse to pour glass after glass of bubbly.  Or a good chardonnay, pinot noir, chianti, or sauvignon blanc.

Or a really good cabernet sauvignon.

My youngest brother asked if I wanted a drink while I finished the kare-kare (oxtail stew in a peanut butter sauce with lots of fresh vegetables).  He handed me a concoction of one part Martinelli’s Gold Medal Sparkling 100% Apple-Cranberry Juice and two parts Piuquenes Cabernet Sauvignon from Mendoza, Argentina.

It was really fruity and pleasing to the palate – from the first sip and sustained all throughout – that I loved it so much.  I told my brother that he should name this drink.  He turned to me and rattled off, “Crimson Tide,” owing to the rouge origins of the cocktail’s components.

I thought the name to be catchy, with good recall that I had to name-drop it on the New Year’s message I sent my friends: “Now sloshed on his third “Crimson Tide”…”

I really was sloshed.  I was already referring to myself in the third person.

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

2010

IF MY MEMORY SERVES ME RIGHT – what a morbid conditional statement to kick off the year! – no other year in the past decade was quite as challenging as 2009.  Even the financial and economic crash in late 2008 paled in comparison to the convolution of natural and man-made disasters in the past year that I hope, would not make 2009 live forever in infamy.  We’re done with it and that’s it.

Christmas to New Year’s eve saw me really bidding the year with a bang – I had acute tonsillitis on the 24^th and stayed in bed watching “A Walk To Remember”…  twice; enagaged in a Mandalay Bay-caliber bout with gastroenteritis on the 28^th to the 29^th; and in the revelry to get 2009 over with, ended up as a statistic under the header of “firecracker-related” injury.  But they’ve all passed, and in the wise words of Stavie, 2010 should be all about happiness.

WE USHERED in the new year at my youngest brother’s family’s new house in Las Piñas.  And what will an occasion be with me without some of my favorite wristwatches.  So, here they are.  Happy new year!

All my wristwatches are wound 30 minutes ahead (so these ones were at 10 minutes to midnight). It's one of my quirks. I can't deal with a ticker that's wound any less or any more than that. Notice that the Technomarine says "THU" still when it should've been "FRI" already. I don't know but the day part of the "day-date" aperture feature lags by half an hour.

 

Once more with feelings!... A shot that includes the (vintage) Swiss Army automatic I was wearing on my right hand.

 

Copyright © 2010 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

It’s a wrap

This is half – one of many – of a large Starbucks® Coffee Company takeout paper bag that served a major purpose for me this holiday season!

 

An array of Starbucks® Coffee Company paper bags to choose from. All pretty enough to serve the purpose.

I THINK I would make a very good gift wrapper.  If ever that is what they are called.  I’m talking about the doer of the deed – not the paper.

To be a good wrapper of gifts you have to be very good with your hands and I am very good with mine.  You have to be creative and I guess I am.  You have to be someone who doesn’t mind working under pressure, surrounded by an organized chaos of all kinds of adhesive tape known to mankind (scotch, masking, packing, double-sided), globs of glue, puddles of paste, sheets of sometimes tacky paper and rolls of sometimes even tackier ribbon choices.  And I guess you have to be someone who wouldn’t mind sharing elbow space with a few other “wrap artists” as you get bossed around by demanding customers.

I realized this first hand while patiently waiting for my turn at the very busy, space-limited National Bookstore gift-wrapping section at Town.  No, I wasn’t waiting to have my purchases wrapped.  I was just there for the ribbon – the understated yet elegant yellow ribbon.  While extolling in my head the virtues of one shade of yellow over another (I had plenty of time for a debate), it was then that I noticed how insensitive this young lady was in demanding the ribbons to be tied and cut a certain number of ways.  I was so tempted to tell her off, to tell her to do the wrapping herself.  But the fake Coach bag she was brandishing caused too much interference in my neural traffic that I got stumped and didn’t know what to address first.  Hahaha!

Going back to my gift-wrapping.  For this year, I exerted effort to minimize my carbon imprint and opted to recycle paper.  I realized I had amassed tens and tens of Starbucks® Coffee Company’s large takeout paper bags.  So I tore them open, cut the uneven bottoms, removed the handles, and they were ready to wrap things with!  Each large bag yielded two sheets.  As if channeling my Japanese origami phase in my youth, I used each whole sheet and just folded and folded without cutting any of the excess.

Every gift I handed out was lovingly ensconced inside these recycled sheets, finished off with the decoration of a classic ribbon (in yellow!).  For the gift cards, I used fragrance testers I would collect from duty free shops whenever I traveled.  These are the pretty cards they spray the fragrance on for you to try.  Basically, a judgment call based on purely the top notes when you are pressed for time.

The gifts I wrapped may not be as polished as what the professionals would make, but they carried a part of me with them.  And more than anything, I guess they earned Batman’s stamp of approval.

Some stuff waiting for their turn with the "wrap" artist!

 

This latest installment from Jessica Zafra got garbed in recycled paper. Very shabby chic.

 

Two down, many more to go. I didn't sleep this night – first of three gift-wrapping marathon nights!

 

A couple of my work get appreciated.

 

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

To kill a mock Birkin?

SEARCHING FOR some books prove to be an exercise in futility.

Case in point?  My recent search for a copy of the very elusive “Bringing Home The Birkin” by Michael Tonello.  It’s one of the books I gave away this season.  Here is a short tale of one of the more hilarious of those futile attempts.

Obviously, the "elusive" book is not in this pile of oldies.

 

SOMETIME EARLY DECEMBER 2009.  But late into the evening.  The tundra that is the mall.  Yet again, another branch of National Bookstore.

Silence.  A weird silence in eNTeNG’s head.  The bookstore seen from the air.  A sea of anxious and easily agitated holiday shoppers for aisle after aisle, for bookshelf after bookshelf.  The fluorescent lighting fixtures are very unforgiving to faces that have skipped required every-two-weeks facials.  A lady wearing a Franck Mueller wristwatch has to keep her designer shades on to protect her eyes against the light.  Who is to blame her?

eNTeNG browses through books – spine after spine – the bright light reflecting off the sapphire-coated glass of his Philip Stein wristwatch, its reflection swimming over the contours and indentations made by the shelved books.  Running late for his shabu-shabu dinner, he resolves to finally resort to the years-old tried-and-tested solution:  ask the sales associate and hope that he shall receive.

eNTeNG:  “Do you have Michael Tonello’s ‘Bringing Home The Birkin?’”

Sales Associate:  “To Kill A Mockingbird?”

eNTeNG forces a half-smile.

eNTeNG:  “Oh, thanks.  I’m running late.”

eNTeNG exits and thanks God for the promise of a good dinner.  The book hunting is put off for yet another day.

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

I could’ve sung with Lea!

THE PROBLEM with Ms. Lea Salonga is that she has consistently been an excellent and oustanding performer that sometimes, her amazing vocals and impeccable phrasing would just pass you by.  That is not to say that she can no longer stop us on our tracks when she hits those notes.  Because frankly, she still does.  She ALWAYS has.  It’s just that since we have been so used to her level of excellence, we have already exhausted all superlatives to describe her.  And sometimes, we’d fall prey to throwing blurbs like “wonderful!”, “astonishing!”, “captivating!”, “truly world-class!” in our attempt to accord her artistry the respect and recognition it deserves.  And when we do, we actually are just trying to say that she – the Ms. Lea Salonga – has done it again.

That was exactly how I felt, standing firmly on my two feet for nearly an hour and a half, as I watched her free Christmas Concert at the Activity Center of the Alabang Town Center last Sunday, the 20^th of December.  I was there – ticketless – at the mercy of whatever firm foundation my two feet could provide.  I had to chide myself repeatedly as the voice over kept repeating his spiels.  “I should be one of those few lucky people cordoned off from the maddening crowd.”  If only I took the little time it needed to turn thousands and thousands of pesos worth of Christmas shopping into free tickets.  Oh well.

I have to give it to Ayala Malls for pulling all stops in turning the Alabang Town Center Activity Center into something that brings a colossal concert hall to mind!  Honestly, days ahead I couldn’t envision how they’d put up a set design that would do justice not only to Ms. Salonga but also to Musical Director Gerard Salonga and the Filharmonika.  But they did.  From the mall’s ceiling they hung pristine white drapes that gave the impression of a major stage.  And they put up all the lights and spotlight that were needed – not to drown the show’s featured artist but to reinforce the brilliance of her own ethereal luminosity.

I’ve been to numerous mall shows and I couldn’t help but take note that this one started at 6:00 PM on the dot.  Wow, a free concert that didn’t make the people wait.  That’s a first.  It spoke volumes of the professionalism of Ms. Salonga.  Seriously.  Gerard Salonga was a commanding presence conducting the Filharmonika.  With the very first authoritative, powerful gesture of the kapellmeister’s hand, I felt Christmas had come upon me.

Profuse with the meaning of the season from its title alone – “A Chance To Share” – Ms. Salonga’s concert’s repertoire was a stunning showcase of her musical gift.  She was a most selfless act as she shared a moment with the Woodrose and De La Salle Zobel choirs who sang two songs and backed her up in the finale; and one lucky audience member who was given the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sing a duet with West End and Broadway’s original Kim.  The choirs were fabulous!  When they hit that high note on the line “Pick up your feet” from “Jingle Bell Rock,” I swear I thought all our hearts’ wishes for the best Christmas ever went shooting through the roof all the way to heaven.  All the more that we wanted to whole-heartedly give to Ms. Salonga’s concert’s cause.

Ms. Salonga sang a total of 11 songs.

Be Brave Little One.

Two Words.  She lovingly paid tribute to the lyricist and composer, Mr. Louie Ocampo.  I just had to text my good good friend Rizzie Cruz Ocampo-Lontoc to tell her that Ms. Salonga acknowledged her Tito Louie.

Grown-Up Christmas List.

Part Of Your World.  Ms. Salonga is truly unrivaled in singing Disney.  Her enunciation, her diction, her phrasing – flawless.  Interesting bit of trivia:  this was her audition piece that got her the Mulan part.

Reflection.  She sang the full version.

A Place Called Home.  I’m unfamiliar with this song.  Yet, with the first line, she captured my attention and managed to tug at my heartstrings.

Nothing (from the musical “A Chorus Line”).  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

A Whole New World.  The duet that never was!  I was so envious of the very talented lady she picked from the audience.

Everybody Says Don’t (from “Anyone Can Whistle”).  A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!  There’s just no other way to describe what she did with the song.

One Voice.  Listening to her sing, her vocals buoyed by the angelic voices of the Woodrose and De La Salle Zobel Choirs, I almost immediately wanted to do my part to make this world a better place.

Encore:  The Christmas Song.

What?  This free show that featured the country’s best musical artist gave in to demands for an encore?  Yes.  I guess it was yet again a generous gesture from Ms. Salonga who had, at that moment, unknowingly breathed life to her concert’s purpose – the chance to share.

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.

Wonderful newspaper read

THIS POST is about breaking my ultimate blog rule.  Eversince this page’s inception, I’ve resolved to only post my own writing.  However – for the first time – an outgoing link deserves mention on this page.  Thanks Sagewin for sharing this most wonderful read.  You are such a “wonderland.”  Hahaha! 

One of my favorite guitar men, the John Mayer, is a wristwatch afficionado!  Read David Colman’s “The Time Keeper” in The New York Times.

“Even a brief brush with Mayer’s wrist will tell you that the man has done his homework. He got through childhood and adolescence with two watches — a “Star Wars” -themed Armitron, followed by a Casio Databank. (There was also a Swatch or two in the mix, but nothing memorable.) In college, before he dropped out to pursue music full time, he had a Timex Ironman. It wasn’t until 2000, when Mayer was 23 and making it big, that the collecting bug really bit.

“When I started to make a little bit of scratch, I thought it was time to get a Rolex,” he said, recalling the swagger with which he picked the Explorer II, with a white face. Although buying it was a marker of success — like his first Grammy, which he’d won for “Wonderland” — it wasn’t long before it was not enough. “I get very into something. I want to research it and check it out,” he said. “The Rolex was just kind of the first rung on the ladder. I remember people saying, ‘Oh, Rolex is all right, but IWC makes a great watch. Audemars Piguet makes a great watch.’ So I go, ‘What’s IWC?’ ””

Copyright © 2009 by eNTeNG  c”,)™©’s  MuchTime™©.  All rights reserved.