How Often do You Shower?

I have heard of people who don’t bathe and people who do two to three times in a day. The first one I’m sure will give me a body odor. The second one, I am not used to. My derma wanted me to shower in the evenings to clean up dirt accumulated during the day and to avoid a scalp problem. What if I have that evening shower and just wash my face in the morning like some dorm mates? Shucks, I did not like the way I smelled even if with that, I scrubbed my ass. So then I showered twice a day feeling happy, fresh and clean. At TTH, I’m home by 9PM and on other days; I’m home late only when I’m off somewhere after a day shift. It meant sleeping by 10PM after a shower and waking up to shower again at 2AM to prep for work so that I ended up getting sick with cough. Another physician I went to

Onlyme_6000: And may I ask what shampoo must we, multitaskers, use?

told me that I need not beg for a leave of absence from work because she would definitely be prescribing me bed rest—which actually helped.

Hmm, the last time I showered twice a day for two straight weeks, it gave me a headache. Well, I’m back to my once daily shower. I still wash my face though and you know what else before I sleep. With the old routine, I ain’t coughing no more.

Psychic Living

Genre: Advice and Self-Help

Creating a sacred space gave me the creeps. Probably, because it was my first journey to the universal with only a piece of book for a guide. Regularly doing its first few steps, I found myself murmuring the ritual in my sleep, I woke up terrified knowing that I have not memorized the entire process, I might especially miss the petition for safety. I remembered Staccy mentioning a cat she did not have, jumping out of a bag at home. As for me, it was though someone else was in the bathroom when I was really just by myself.

I love this modern book although I am not really up to now done with it. I guess I would never be until I tried to follow the steps conscientiously to its last page only to be dismayed in the middle part by someone who actually consulted the same psychic and claimed that the latter made a mistake in one of her readings and should not be trusted.

While others claimed to have reaped rewards, I am stuck with the question of whether I am ready to call for an Angel Party. So there, like her cover pose, it sits waiting for me to pick it up and read from where I left off. Don’t dare me. I know I’m chickenshit.

AM Radio to Little Lorelie

Decades ago–back when I was not to cross the street without a companion, my thoughts could not go beyond what kind of a life I could have in the future sans radio. Influenced by my yaya*, I quit nursery school because my yaya would rather listen to her favorite radio soaps finishing at that time than miss it by bringing me to and from school. Honestly, I enjoyed listening full-time to the radio! I was mesmerized by the lovely voices of the characters who portrayed their roles very well. We would go through a marathon of soaps packed with action, drama, comedy, love stories…Name it! It was the most enjoyable way of spending siesta. That neighborhood we lived with then must have thought so too because whenever I came out of the house, the people had their radios on aloud. My mother cared less. As a working mom, she also spoke less to me. Rather than meet her complaining how tired she was to tell me a bedtime story, I could sleep satisfied with a radio so alive with its stories, complete with playful voice overs. Listening to the AM radio went out of the picture when yaya got pregnant. She had to leave the house to have a family of her own. Life went on for me and AM radio remained up until now, even if I had already diverted my attention to school; even if, other forms of recreation had emerged. I wondered what would have become of me if I missed higher education for the love of listening to the radio? I missed yaya and the happy-go-lucky siesta hours we spent but I have remained to be an ear for others. I would delight listening as others tell their stories to me. (Sometimes though, I get bored when they couldn’t tell it with life) and people appreciated me for that.

________

* A yaya is Cebuano for a female household help who is tasked and paid to care for children in the household. In other words, a nanny.

Death Wish

may not be as tough as diamond but somehow my father’s cruelty helped me to be forbearing and tolerant. Alcoholic, my father would always pick on me. “You, good for nothing!” was one of those belittling remarks. I arrived home one evening from a date when he scoffed “I will laugh at you if ever you get pregnant. Obviously, I didn’t grow up to be confident. I learned to talk back until I could not but one day wish for his death. Then it occurred to me for no reason that someone was going to die. Immediately, I’d get a mental picture of his co-teacher slash drinking-buddy-after-office-hours. His daughter was a schoolmate, that, I felt sorry if ever she’d lose her dad so I wished that her dad be kept alive. Little did I know that a wish can have a consequence. It was on that weekend when my sisters and I came home from a movie and our uncle broke out the news “Your father was declared DOA at the hospital.” It was as if I telephatically told the Angel of Death to spare his buddy. Not realizing that he’d go for my father. It shocked me to have my death wish granted too soon! During and after the wake, I thought I wouldn’t get affected but I grieved. Years passed, my sister quit a job she found because she couldn’t stand a condescending boss she served for less than a week. Nobody could persuade her adamant self to retract. It’s never a good feeling to be verbally abused. I’ve had offensive bosses and colleagues who made me cry. As for me, the constant unwanted insults from my father made me withstand affronting attitudes. I realized that there would always be difficult people in this imperfect world.

The Women’s Room

Genre: Feminist

Other than the coincidence how “toilet booth” let me see our local kasilyas as a bifurcation–an answer to my homework, Marilyn French made a catchy start here; otherwise, I won’t have checked out The Women’s Room for two weeks. The main one she named Mira, a straight A’s student, highly estimated by her teachers got married to Norm who’s graded C’s and found herself supporting him through medical school until she agreed to full-time domesticity when he earned his M.D. (half-way of a 686-page bk). Yes, she could’ve left Norm but she had to bear his children to be eventually suctioned into this “secret society” conceived of by French or else we wouldn’t have met French’s beautifully dressed “playdolls” that she paraded using reality as a backdrop. I was glad to once again meet so few of my friends or to have met people that I haven’t or perhaps will never meet if at all. I was glad to read of the idiosyncrasies of Mira’s friends as she rose up and down the economic strata. I just lost count remembering who to pair her fictional characters with who every now and then. Val, one of Mira’s friends, shared her stand on Harvard (at that time the story was set), gays, love (and because I just borrowed The Women’s Room I recorded myself (click here) reading an exerpt that I enjoyed with its “mockery and adoration” or communes, rape (near the denouement), men… The novel rippled back and forth in time. Marilyn shifted perspectives and at times conversed as to how her novel might have been written or what’s going to happen next then it’d unfold after several pages like a TV soap. She would then ask her reader if she’s a convincing misandrist. I swore at two or three of her dragging rationalizations and as if predicting the mind of her audience, she continued to recount. This one is definitely written by a woman with a gift of gab.

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Childhood

Writer: Andrei Alexis

Genre: Trinidad Blues

Personal Rating:

Thomas was fair to his description of Henry; complementing his eccentricities with his gentleness. I admired the latter even with his refusal to see his mother’s defects, for not reproving Thomas despite his lies, for the lessons he taught him in his lab—-what if everything else including manure and cotton could be turned to gold? Like Thomas, I wondered why Kata chose to be with “abusive and loveless” men but on her deathbed sought for Henry’s presence, undeniably the one she loved after all– the same man Thomas would have wanted to be revealed as his father. I admired the writer’s peculiarities — with all the timetables, bullets, assumed dialogues, the footnotes, lines of poems quoted –every single thing which made perfect sense to me as I got to its finale, where it became clear as to where Thomas got his sense of humor, or if the rigorous training from his Trinidadian grandmother paid off. What a moving book this is from Andre’ Alexis! Alexis is a natural joker who is logical and sentimental at the same time. Every few pages or so, I reacted “hah!” Twice, I really laughed so hard. I didn’t expect to be crying but I did for the same people Thomas was bereft of. No wonder in 1999 this became a prize-winning national bestseller in Canada!

Novel reviewed by Lorelie

Pelikulakbay 08

1st of 5 Indie movies

Title:  Ang Sakristan

Directed by: Dave Cecilio

I especially liked the dialect they spoke which was different from what’s heard here in the heart of the city but the sound effect was disgusting. There was too much noise, I could hardly hear the characters speaking. Remember the scene at the wet market? The antagonist’s words, however, I was sure it came in very clearly to those who were from down South but the lines of some altar boys were eaten and difficult to grasp. The acting of the altar boys was OK assuming the creator randomly picked anyone he could get from that place. There was no need for the emcee to be apologetic or to tell us not to spare judgment on how they performed.

The sound of thunder went fine but the rain looked like coming from a hose sans the sprinkler. If not for the thunder, I thought somebody was just watering the plants. The antagonist stared at the camera at least twice to show that she must have seen something but then it would stop at her face. Twice there was no scene following what she exactly saw. There were insertions that needed to be cut while she was talking about meat and fish on Good Friday. The movie tried to be intelligent and to extend the thought of its audience. It was a thought-provoking depiction of the evil it could bring to your neighbor for not abiding by God’s 8th commandment.

2nd of 5 Indie movies

Title:  Baclaran

Directed by: Dave Cecilio

Baclaran seemed almost a monologue. Jossa’s voice drowned out all others’ dialogue that was often indistinct. I liked the quality of his voice though and the way he delivered his lines except that his face was transfixed. He carried the same expression throughout the entire movie. It was an unhappy but a deserved ending –his execution that fell on a Wednesday at 3PM–both being significant schedules to devotees of the church he turned as venue for his racket.

3rd of 5 Indie movies

Title:  Ang Pagbalik

Directed by: Publio Briones

Bambi was very poetic in Ang Pagbalik. Her deep voice was OK to me but to my seatmates, they were rather unsure if she was male or female. The person who told her what she had left from her mother’s death sounded very natural. Where she stood with an umbrella and looking across a body of water was somewhat picturesque but then often the moving pictures were dark. At times, you could only see her yellow umbrella moving horizontally as the rest had gray or black undertones. There’s some sense of humor attached to it. I was looking though for the morale behind her coming back for the priest she knew 25 years then.

4th of 5 Indie movies

Title:  Obsess

Directed by: Publio Briones

Of the five short films presented were to be judged by audience impact, Obsess would’ve won. The writer’s plot was believable but then the sickly mother was not. She did not look like one for she was very plump and I doubted that she would just lie there to be strangled. She might have just regained consciousness that’s why she stood knocking and following her daughter around. No, I was just kidding. She actually died or else, at the time her finger was cut off, that would have awakened her. On my way home, some students went talking about it and how scary it was. Obsess was aptly titled and I wouldn’t have titled it otherwise. Here, you’d see the obsession of the mother (assuming it was a spiritual haunting) or the daughter’s (of the crime she was about to commit and committed) and the cop’s obsession to materials things such as the ring.

5th of 5 Indie movies

Title:  Krisis

Directed by Dave Cecilio

Krisis worked along great at the onset. To compare all five, Krisis was best in cinematography and direction. The acting of the mother to the yaya to the students to driver was good. Even the lovemaking that wasn’t really it but only seemed so was not a put down. The boys, however, were too mestizo-looking for their parents unless they were adoptees. It ended abruptly as though it still had to be continued and the entire movie was meant to motivate to further development. It came to me as another trailer. I wanted to see more.