Reunions - do I attend or not?

          In general, people tend to be excited about reunions of any kind - clan reunion, class reunion, etc.  But I have been thinking that may be this is not what all people think.  I know people who would say yes when asked to attend one but does not appear on the very day and there are people who explicitly detest reunions. Are there as many opinions on reunions as there are people? I hope not.  But maybe there are categories.
          For sure, people who are very successful look forward to attending reunions.  This is a given.  For why would he forego flaunting his material wealth or perhaps academic achievement.  In this case, material success seems to win by a far margin.  Ladies who married into riches may well belong to this category.   And why would a failure want to go to a group of enviable, successful high school or college classmates just to be reminded about how unlucky he was.  But those whose career is marketing might see this as an opportunity to sell all those 'dons' and 'doñas' goods or insurance or whatever.  But I do know of somebody who did not amount to anything and yet so cheerfully enjoys all this reunions to the extent of organizing small ones.Maybe he is just a good-natured guy or perhaps he enjoys free drinks and meals every now and then (this is the condescending me speaking).  Failures who have successful children feel that their failure has been wiped off forever.  I agree that success is not only the things that you yourself achieved but also how you raised successful children.  But I have no high regards for reunions with the children attending.  You know why?  Because the children would be the theme and focus of all conversations; they would steal the spotlight, so to speak. from those people who are the genuine focus of reunions.
          But what about the single people vs the 'happily' married ones?  Do single people feel uncomfortable attending reunions?  Single people are of different kinds.  There are those who have stayed single all of their lives and these people are very much able to muster courage to face ex-classmates and be able to answer questions of why they have stayed single all this time while at the back of his mind that everybody thinks he or she might be gay.  Or that she is a single mother, and this is a lot tougher to a very judgemental society like ours.  The other kind are those that have been separated or divorced somewhere else.  Definitely, those that belong to this group are attendees to reunions.  This is because our society values the adage of 'it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all'.  But conversations with them are heavily weighed on philosophical rationalizations of difficult relationships without giving any direct hint about their own specific cases.  There is a tendency that his case might be the topic creating the much needed attention to himself.  To the ladies who are separated, this is a taboo topic, and all kinds of brushing aside will be demonstrated.  But people who are genuinely interested may pry into the specifics, feeling that the 30 years or more since they saw each other were just days ago that close friendship still exists and that the sanctity of privacy could be waived for the mean time.
          This does not mean that reunions are not valuable social interactions.  They are indeed to my opinion.  And also the stereotypes I imagined may not fit exactly any kind - they may overlap or perhaps altogether disproven. It all depends on who and what character one has.  So let us all do it and enjoy reunions.
         

The Big Guava Tree

Whenever I see a big guava fruit (now named guapple), I am reminded of my high school days.  I studied in Quirino High School in Project 3, Quirino District, Quezon City in Metro Manila.  I also spent a good deal of my childhood in these areas.  Most of my classmates live near the school which includes my classmate Benjamin Ramos who live in Acacia Street (if my memory serves me right).  They have a big guava tree welcoming everybody in their very nice residence there.  Now that I'm reminiscing it, I can't help by salivate over the thought of a nicely sliced guava dipped in Ilocano vinegar and sprinkled with salt. I don't remember now the name of the vinegar but it is comparable to the red wine vinegar I usually use in my cooking nowadays.  Ben's place is THE place for all 10 male high school classmates saved one who did not really socialize much with us.  It is the place where I drank my first alcoholic drink, the place where I drank to unconsciousness and the place where bets were placed during the 'Thrilla in Manila' days.  I always associate Ben's place with the guava with vinegar and salt.  It was such a wonderful memory that I always cherish up to this day.  Thanks to Ben and to her family who always welcomed visitors in their home, not to mention the countless sleepovers that took place there.

Boracay during Holy Week

          When I was a teenager (long time ago), holy week meant that my sisters and brother would be stuck in the house for a week and together bear the intense heat of summer.  Our mother would be blurting out commands for errands or any other household chore help.  It was also a time not to try to do menial things on a Good Friday or even on a Black Saturday. I could go on and on listing down all the donts on these two days.  But nowadays, when Holy Week is just around the corner, people start planning and budgeting. For what? For a big beach exodus.  Here in the Visayas, the big word and the place to see and be seen (in the words of my friend Tukayo) is Boracay.

          I have spent a number of Holy Weeks in Boracay in my 20 years or so here in Panay.  Just mention the name of the place during  Holy Week and it would elicit envy, excitement, among other things among the young ones.  At the gym, it is commonplace to hear one saying to another at the locker room while looking at his half-naked self in the mirror - is this body ready for Boracay?  The first time I heard it, I thought that people are joining Bikini Contests during this time but would be surprised when I looked at them and thought their bodies were far from being prepared for such display of narcissism.

          When I announced in FB that I drove from Iloilo to Caticlan and back, two of my friends could not help but comment.  In summary, they hoped that the effort and most especially the splurging was worth it.  Finally, they were unable to control their distaste for Boracay as a place of wild, rowdy crowd and a place to see and be seen.  While I agree partly with them, they were not altogether describing the reality there.  For one, there are three stations there -Station 1 and 2 are mostly party areas but Station is the cheapest and the quietest area there.  So there you are, there are choices.  If you are a party animal, go to these two stations but if you want serenity, you can have it.  In other beach resorts, you do not have any choices but the deafening silence.  Another is that at night, the eat-all-you-can dinners are competing with each other and the result is that they try pulling down their prices to outdo each other to the benefit of the beach goers.  I have been to a smaller but similar island in Negros Occidental, food is so pricey since there is no other entity to compete with.  At any rate, the sunset and other sceneries and the people are the attraction of Boracay not to mention the number of movie stars that go there year in and year out.  I enjoyed it so much during the Holy Week that I am going back this week.

After such a long time

Hello readers (if there are)

This is the first time in almost a year that I am back to this blog site.  Now I understand how some people could have their blog sites continue to churn out articles without really trying hard like I do.  Maybe I lacked time, maybe I lacked inspiration or maybe I was not born a writer after all.  At any rate, here I am now writing and how frequent and for how long I do not know.  My apologies for those who noticed that I stopped writing who I suspect there are none.  So I think I should voice out some opinions soon.  Thanks for stopping by

Chicago - The Musical

               Admittedly, last night was my first Broadway Musical ever performed by no less than professional actors.  I saw the student production of Fiddler on the Roof at the University of Rhode Island in 1999 and I could say based on only one comparison that students could only perform around 60 percent of what a professional actors can.  But that is just my opinion. The stage at URI that time was a revolving one so that technically, the student production was even more lavish than that of Chicago.  And yet, Chicago is miles away in impact because of superb performance by no less than a group of professional actors who sing, dance and act almost all their lives.

               Since I have confessed that I have seen Chicago The Movie once at the theater and more than ten times in DVD, I would say that I know the dialog and songs in great detail.  While I was watching the Broadway presentation, I could not help but compare it with the movie.   I would say that the first half of the musical resembled the movie in terms of dialog and approach.  In fact, I have always anticipated correctly the punchlines.  But the second part, after the break, the presentation of the musical totally departed from that of the movie.  Assuming that the original script was the musical, understandably, movies have more leeways in giving more details and explicitly feed the audience with such details in storytelling and imagery.  The Broadway musical, on the other hand, relied on stylization (if I may borrow the terms of Stageplay people) rather than on accurate imagery and setting.

               The sequence of events were slightly improved in the movie version, perhaps to make the whole story easily grasped by the audience. An example of this would be the arrest of a daughter of a pineapple magnate in Hawaii which was shown a bit early in the stage presentation.  At least four songs were not sung in the movie version such as 'Unimaginable' (titles are mine as I heard the presumably repeated word in the theme) sang by the character of Velma Kelly and then later duet with Roxy Heart.  Another is the almost operatic song by the journalist Mary Sunshine which could be titled Something Good in Everyone.  But the song that was not included in the movie which I find really good is the duet of Velma and Roxy that could be entitled I am My Own Best Friend. I instantly fell in love with that song.  The very colorful and circus-like court hearing climax in the movie was really reduced to a very simple and no-frills approach on stage but not necessarily the impact.  The theme song in the movie which was sang at the beginning. middle and end 'Isn't it grand, isn't it funny' (forgot the title) was not the theme song of the musical although it was sang in the finale.
                The characters too, in my opinion, were slightly different in importance.  Mama Morton was a little emphasized in the movie as well as that of Velma Kelly while these were deemphasized in the musical. The character of the journalist Mary Sunshine was given more meat by having a solo song and part of the stage surprise last night was the pulling off of the wig of Mary revealing the true gender - a male. This is presumably a modified surprise because it so happened that he is an alternate actor for that character. Who knows whether the other one is a she.
               My friend Edwin, who treated me to this musical, tried to rank Chicago the Musical among the numerous musicals he has seen in Broadway which is many because he lives in New York.  I refuse to listen and I think that for my first ever musical performed by professional actors, Chicago The Musical is the best. Don't laugh now.

Your honor, it was a gift not a loan...

               It has been a decade ago when I was so enamored by live small claims court on TV here in the U.S.  I suspect that they are the original reality shows ever.  Ever since I have watched my first show, I could not get to miss a single one.  A decade after, which is the present time, I'm still at it.  What makes it so interesting, I ask myself.  Perhaps it is the narrative of the plaintiff and the defendant that gets to me.  They are excellent narratives and excellent unwritten scripts.  I'm not a scriptwriter but I do know that there is a certain strategy of screenplays/stage plays that tells  an incident in two or more ways until the truth on what really happened is realized at the end of the movie/play.  Unwittingly, this is also the style in live TV small claims courts.  Judge Judy Shiendlin would ask the plaintiff on the circumstances of her suing the defendants and then this is followed by a completely different version of the same event by the defendant.  Then, before you know it, your appetite is whet by the question 'who is telling the truth'.  Then the judge would barrage each one with a series of direct and cross extermination questions and in a matter of  minutes you would know who is telling the truth and who is lying.
               By frequently watching the programs, you would not only be entertained, you would also know more of the American culture, of the laws and regulation that you never knew before, and lessons to be learned as if it were a self-help book.  Of course, money is almost always the only remedy in a civil battle such as the small claims court.  But in the numerous times I've watched Judge Judy, Judge Alex, Judge Joe Brown, I have come to the conclusion that a good number of the cases are legal battles between former lovers, former espouses, former best friends, tenants and landlords, roommates and house mates.  But above all former lovers/espouses.  They usually sue their partners for loans which did not have any written agreements which the defendant would claim as gifts.  The TV viewers, if they ever want to learn anything from this seemingly useless shows (my sister thought they are not real people but only actors), they should try to integrate the various cases on how the judge resolved them.  For example, if the quarrel is between former lovers, the judge would like to know whether there is a pattern of gift giving from one to the other.  But the most damning thing is if the defendant has given some initial payments, then it was understood that it was not a  gift.The whole show is very informative.  The judge would explain, for example, what is the proper disposal of things left by a tenant who just left without a word or without paying the remainder of the rent, or circumstances where the tenant could throw away a lease agreement due to inadequate attention paid by the owner on his/her apartment.  On  a personal level, it was very helpful to my sister who has been here for more than a decade but does not have enough knowledge of some laws and policies since she does not have time for TV.  Of course I was the one who did all the watching and learning, and I shared with her some of the things I learned.
            

Manhattan as I see it.

I have seen Manhattan, New York three times in a decade now.  The first time when I taught at the University of Rhode Island in Fall, 1999. I came on a field trip (not my class but some other) from URI with various students whom I did not know.  At the moment we disembarked from the bus to the buzzling Rockefeller Plaza, it was love at first sight.  We went there to spend just one whole day to be a live audience in the show 'The Daily Show' and before that I had a chance to roam around the 5th Av.  I felt magic just walking around the studio of NBC at the Rockefeller Plaza where people suddenly would scream to find out later that a movie star/idol passed by.  I also had my very brief chance to glance at the then Vice President Al Gore who stood right out of the skyline mirror window of his limousine and waved at the shrieking crowd.  I saw the unbelievable Philippine Consul there which made me very proud to be a Filipino since as far as I know, no other country has an embassy in such a flashy place. The Radio City which I only saw in movies and tv shows.  The various signature products from clothing to perfume were all there.  It was too much to see and too little time.  I said to myself that someday I will explore this place in detail.

               Then in 2007 I came again in winter.  I braved the freezing temperature to be there in Manhattan a few days in a row.  I saw Times Square with all its neon lights, shopped in Macy's, Modells and other places, sat in various parks.  I did not enter any museum since at the entrance it said no camera allowed; I did not not want to leave my camera at the entrance.  Also, I thought an entrance fee was required.  The same thing I thought about St. Patrick Cathedral.  Now, I had a chance to walk inside the famous Central Park.

               This year, I have had the chance of experiencing my first springtime and perhaps summer in New York.  Thanks to Facebook that I met again my long lost classmate in UPLB, Edwin, who toured me in places in Manhattan where I've never been before.  These were Brooklyn heights, Grand Central, Wall Street, Chinatown etc.  But I must say that when summer approaches, Manhattan looses its magic in me.  This must be because people are now in their skimpiest attire such as shorts and flipflops that it could be that fashion might have something to do with the magic as I perceive it.  And now, I just realized that the No Camera allowed sign is just a policy not followed at all in museum and also at St. Patrick Cathedral.  And that the entrance fees at the Museum of the Arts is just a recommendation.  The whole point in this blog article is to say that Manhattan is an endless surprise to all visitors. Too many attractions in too little time.  The feeling of magic is in the air, some of it would be lost and some would emerge.  I am looking forward to having another tour this Sunday with my long time college classmate Edwin.