Grazie!

Greetings from San Servolo, Venezia! I arrived yesterday morning, after an 8 hour flight to Dubai from Manila, with a 4 hour wait for another 6 hour flight to Marco Polo Airport. As I stepped out of the airport: Hey! I'm back in the Philippines! The weather was scorching and the 30 minute vaporetti ride to San Zaccaria with San Servolo as final destination was a welcome relief.Disembarking from the boat, I immediately realized why it was called Isla San Servolo. Because it is an island, duh! But this island, unlike in Boracay, you can't swim in the water. Well, of course you could try but that would be risking drowning or contagious diseases.That's wny I'm blogging again because the only thing to do before my scheduled activities is surfing the internet and the lying around with 24 hour airconditioning in my room.Thank God for small graces.Be blogging sooner!

Voyeuristic pursuits

The Celebrity Edition of Pinoy Big Brother kicked off last Sunday and the national past time of watching people eat, sleep, poop, bum and bitch around has started again. It's my first time to watch the program with 24/7 coverage cause I missed the other seasons being based in another country. I only got glimpses of what the fuss was all about in Youtube or in the ABS-CBN website. The present group is comprised of a couple of beauty queens, has-beens, models, starlets and anyone willing enough to sacrifice their privacy for stardom. Actually from watching the previous seasons, the strategy should be keep a low profile until the very end that no one notices you are there till you are one of the final four.Or sleep with "Kuya".Is that right Wendy?Actually the fascination is overwhelming that even my mom is updated to the current developments of her favorite housemates. I could only conclude that the show's appeal may be atrributed to this: our being innately "chismoso/chismosa". We love to gossip so much that Philippine television has set aside its weekend schedule dedicated primarily to this- The BUZZ or Showbiz Central? We have this overwhelming need to pry into people's private lives that we channel this by patronizing a TV show conceived for this very purpose: voyeurism. Happy peeping to everyone!

Back in the islands...

For those who care, I came back to the Philippine Islands last March 2007. I have been too busy reestablishing my life that I have not been able to blog for so long. Or nothing was worth blogging about for that matter.Here I go again....

Rome: Season 2 At Last!!!

It has been two years since the last episode of season 1 was aired: Ceasar was dead, Vorenus was told of Niobe's affair and Pullo found love...awwww....well season 2 picks up where it left off so Ceasar is still dead, Vorenus gets to see Niobe jump to her death again, but this time puts a curse on his family to all damnation and Pullo's still in love.Awwww. Atia is still Atia forever at odds with Servilia. She nearly gets her wish (a dead Servilia) when when she nearly gets poisoned and had her abducted and raped and humiliated and I'm getting ahead of the story. Anyway, I compiled a few of the best lines from the new season:

Atia to Octavia: "I really appreciate these little chats we have in between your drug binges." Only Atia can deliver this line with aplomb.

Antony to Octavian: "You are a ferocious little c*nt ... with a pen." Best line ever.

Vorenus: "These are my daughters. Redeemed from slavery. The eldest has been prostituted. The boy is my wife's child with another man." FYI.

Atia to Octavian: " I spit on the pig Antony for leading me astray." Or is it the other way around???

Rome. Nudity, gore and more nudity. Only from HBO.

False Sense of Spring

Last weekend, I was lulled into a false sense that spring had come early this year. It felt like late summer or early autumn, whichever you prefer, not too warm to be sweating or not to cold to be wearing pants. So I was doing my laundry in my veranda( and by veranda, the small space where my cramped washing machine is stored),wearing shorts and short-sleeved shirt enjoying the cool breeze of "supposedly" early spring, chucking my winter wear into a big box marked as "Winter stuff". The next day, after Costco shopping, we walked in the parking lot with the comment that "it felt like Christmastime in the Philippines". I slept that night with the veranda door open to let the cool breeze in. The next morning, it was freezing cold again.The next day, flurries of snowflakes fell from the sky. Apparently it was not spring yet.Oh well...

WTF?!!???

Richard Gomez for Senator? WTF??!!?? Of all the local showbiz personalities, I abhor him the most.Tactless airhead who enjoys pretending he is knowledgeable and arrogant enough to voice out his puny opinions on national television. And now he has the gall to run for senator? I dare not ask what his qualifications are ( I saw his teary plea for votes in S-files where he "claimed" to have been awarded something from his "illustrious" past in UP) and would not even want to ponder what his platform would be. Please...enough is enough.

Demise of demises

As I have written about it before, Studio 60 on the Sunset strip started of as a promising show which was highly antcipated but soon became derided for being too intellectual for middle America. I have never seen a single episode of "West Wing" so I did not know Aaron Sorkin's work before this show. The only good reviews that came out from this show is that Matthew Perry is "a wonderful surprise" and "has moved on from being just Chandler Bing". The impending demise of the show ( which is usually not a big deal because a lot of shows are cancelled left and right) is a big deal just because it's Sorkin's. The downward spiral of not being funny and the slant towards romantic tanglings between the characters just did not help the show. Well, NBC hopes "The Black Donnelly's" brings home the ratings bacon or else, suffer the same fate. At least Matt P and Matt L have more time to hang out now and reminisce the happier ratings they enjoyed as Chandler and Joey.

Countdown...

To quote from my niece Ana, "I can't believe it, we had to commute!!!" Well, delete the "we had to commute" part, it's already February 2007, how time flies. In less than two months, I would be going back to the Philippines. I have been in Japan 2 years 7 months and 6 days. It seems like yesterday I was boarding PAL Flight 429 bound for Fukuoka and meeting up with my senpai, Shigeto Sensei, being cramped in my little, bitty dorm room at Ryuugakusei Kaikan, my first shopping trip to Jusco, figuring out how to get to Tenjin, buying my bicycle, meeting up with fellow Pinoys, and all the rest. After all the work, now it comes to this: waiting...and it gets really boring at times.What gets me through the day now is the internet and new episodes of "Heroes" and "Grey's Anatomy". It gets to the point that you literally run out of internet pages to surf. As in...Looking on the bright side, I'll be home in 52 days...51,50,49,48....