9 posts tagged “tata”
My first writing gig for the year. (Woot!)
The laidback pace of the South has a direct influence on the content and flow of conversation. For our semi-annual South night, Paige and I met at a neighborhood burger joint where we talked about everything from work to love to the Juno Soundtrack. And we talked slooooow, and at certain instances, our conversations were no longer just an exchange of words but a soulful experience.
In Makati, where time is gold, we'd probably be switching so quickly from one place to another, cut our chatters short, and lose the 'sanctity' of the spoken word all altogether.
At Tides, where rhum coke was only over a $1.50, Paige and I exchanged POVs like buddies drinking beer at the backyard. I like talking to friends that way - no holds barred, all guards down. For a moment, we were a scene straight out of the Starting Over House sans the cameras. (Btw, I had three rhum cokes and feasted on nachos as we talked about everything.)
The whole time, we were also waiting for Tata to show up after the 10:45pm screening of Dark Knight. She surfaced a little after 1am for our Mango Daiquiri pitcher showdown and that was when we took camwhoring to the streets.
More than the conversations though, the best thing about hanging out here are these girls. For all its laidback pace and cheap rhum coke, the South will never be what it is without them.
Tear!
Art Appreciation was a subject I unfortunately never had the chance to take when I was in college. Good thing it never became a speck in my eye for things that are beautiful.
So, armed with an unschooled love for art and a pretty Plus One (Tata, who just got back from India), we scoured downtown Pasig City for Denise's art exhibit entitled 'Deus Ex Machina' last Friday evening.
I was joking with Tata en route to the event, 'Wow! So we're part of the art crowd now?', though I'll be the first to tell you that I am engulfed by the 'grandness' of art exhibits. It's just something I can't wing - unlike my job!
So imagine the relief of being met by a small space filled with personal art and a mishmash of eccentric and 'normal' Denise Fans.
Each lantern gave everyone a glimpse into the artist's past, present, and future. Inspirations were her deus ex machinas - friends, loves, flowers from outside her window, and the idiosyncrasies of her everyday.
Says the invite: 'With mixed emotions, mixed media of images, colors and text, the irrational, peculiar and nonsensical is trapped around the surface of spheres illuminated by light of varying hues. The light at the very center enforces some sort of hope or offers a hint of enlightenment to the viewer.'
The installation above called 'You' was my favorite for its downright honesty. Tata agrees. Below is our favorite line from 'You.'
The one you see below is entitled 'Self-Preservation'. Also doubles as the artist's self-portrait.
The focal point of the exhibit's second floor was not a sphere, but a two-dimensional installation. Aptly entitled 'Reiji' (see below), shots of the guy who hooked us up last year (her best friend) were interpreted the 'Denise' way. Reij, isa kang muse! Basketball team na lang ang kulang!
Denise's friend Bam played 'The Whole Of The Moon' by the Waterboys right before Tata and I left. I sung my way out, but not without a photo op with the artist du jour.
The exhibit runs until April 9 at the Cubicle Art Gallery, C Raymundo Ave. cor Stella Maris St., Brgy. Maybunga, Pasig City, Philippines. For more details contact: 0920-9051346 or email denrocs@yahoo.com.
Kudos to Denise for lending your heart, mind, and soul to those spheres! 'You're the best thing that ever happened since Coke Zero!'
For the third straight year, I have been celebrating Enzo's birthday with Tata and her family at their home in BF. This year was quite different though since Peewee is already in Dubai (missing you!) and I did not show up with a gift. (Wait. Tata, did I give Enzo his present last year? Shucks.)
Anyhoo, my trips to the South always conjure up memories of my not-so-distant youth, having spent my last two years of high school in one of those bratty academic institutions scattered around BF Homes. I also remember hanging out in BF as a kid, four years old to be exact, as that was the only happening place south of Makati at that time. Alabang was not yet the nouveau riche haven as everyone knows it now and had muddy, yes muddy, cinemas as the only source of entertainment.
Back to the present. Tata and I planned a week before to drink a little after the party and try one of those neighborhood bars along BF's main thoroughfare, Aguirre Avenue. (Last year, we hit Central together with Peewee, Paige, Gisele, and a couple of the twins' friends. You should try Central's Bad Boy concoction!) This year, after being entertained by Enzo's pitch perfect rendition of the Beatles's 'I Feel Fine', we drove to Sophie's Garden. The bar has a cozy, country-like atmosphere punctuated with touches of Zen. Affordable drinks. Their Long Island was just a little over two dollars.
We had a good time chatting over long island, margarita, daiquiri, and mudslide. As usual, and as directed by alcohol, we opened our Pandora's boxes and let out our demons. But not without laughing. I felt right at home, like our glory days at work.
The waiter told us it was closing time at around 2am. I figured he didn't need to tell us. Their pirated Kylie Homecoming DVD was already jumping and could not get past the fifth song, as if a sign telling us that they didn't want to entertain us anymore.
Right before parting ways, we thought of camwhoring in the middle of the road. Our photoshoot was traffic-stopping - in a literal sense.
I basked in my comfort zone that evening. The south is a place I am very familiar with, the company I kept knew me really well, and our rants and raves were like a song we've been singing all our lives.
Now back to reality.
I find this picture funny. Look at Tata and me sipping our Long Islands while the rest of the crowd was too busy schmoozing. We didn't care. We came there to drink. Hahaha.
Love that pout, Ta!
When my favorite friends and I constellate,
it always turns into an alcoholiday.
[this is good]
So we both moved out of Princess Sophia. :-) Glad we both have Vox! Welcome welcome welcome. This is your housewarming. I propose a toast to our new common spot.
Everyone, add TaTa up! That's http://ttfn.vox.com.
Whereas a good number of people I know express emotions as quickly as a digicam gratifies you with a display of the last image shot, I find myself to be the conventional camera that needs to be taken to the photoshop for 1-hour processing. There's quite a delay in the way I absorb, accept, and, manifest my feelings for the things that truly matter to me. (I'm witty and quick about less important stuff - like work or people I don't like.)
I haven't exactly written about or debriefed myself after Tata left our office in pursuit of greater opportunities. She was my buddy, my sister, my constant date, my pseudo girlfriend, and seatmate at work. It took a while before the whole moving on thing sunk in. It took me 2 weeks after the start of her 30-day transition to finally accept that she was leaving. Damn, I found myself crying alone at 3am, in the dark, while I was trying to get myself some sleep. I called and cried to her and finally told her of how I truly felt. It would have been the right teen-drama moment for us, save for the fact that she was handing out an assessment at that time and her trainee was taken aback as Tata was also in tears, test papers in hand.
I miss the girl. I miss the ditz. I miss the subculture we've formed in our common workstation we fondly call the "Princess Sophia" flat (in loving memory of the movie "How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days"). I miss working with her in the morning and hitting the mall together in the afternoon. I miss those random phone calls to her son Enzo. I miss her energy, that energy that binds the team together. I miss my fake Brit accent partner and the laughs we shared over piles of nonsensical shit. It's not gonna be an everyday thing anymore.
Ok. Enough of the drama. It's not like she left for Addis Ababa or the Falkland Islands. But yeah, I miss her. And I made sure she knew how much I loved her even before this whole exodus happened. On that aspect, I was a high-tech digicam.
I suck at goodbyes. I'll let Mr. Coehlo speak.
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.
Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.
None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot forever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.
That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person - nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.
Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.
