april's metro

That is how Judai works. In that aspect, Judai has not changed. It takes a movement of tectonic plates to make her bulge or complain. She goes to the set and set aside all qualms or concern. There is not a shred of diva in her. She does not flaunt who she is or what she has. She does not even carry a Louis Vuitton or Hermes bag to quantify her stature.
--- jose javier reyes ---

small screen relish

tiger woods triumphant return to the winners circle was hardly surprising to anyone who have followed his talent and tenacity during the last twelve years. but i admit, it still took me with huge strides of wonderment. wasn't he injured during the last ten months? but then some people are gifted with amazing skills. golf is not merely a good walk spoiled but a back page frolic that let pros compete until they're fifty and beyond. while former athletes in their late thirties are sprucing up with their car pool duties and weekly poker games, golfers are still gracing the sports pages with their clubs and follies plus their sponsors' names emblazoned in their hats.

now for a sport that favors the nimble and young. the week of figure skating has finally come to an end, it has been a beautiful treat. it's all about tricks and elements these days. the more triples, the less mistakes, the higher the scores. what if skating is judged without the jumps? i prefer grace and beauty with the skates rather than pyrotechnical axels. michelle kwan and sasha cohen were both elegant on ice. but sasha just couldn't skate clean two programs in a row while kwan's artistry was pulverized by those triple-triple specialists in the olympics. presentation has been relegated to the attic, it's more of a plus and minus in rotations of those flips and salchows. these skaters were a wonder in their time although i also like both joubert and evan lysacek. kim yu na short program was feted with difficulties and garnered such a high score, that all others were left reeling including defending champion mao asada. but i reckon miki ando's free skate was awesome and minus that fall on a triple axel, mao asada is still a gorgeous skater.

a flutter and a drip

after a whole day of wheeling and dealing with sweet colleagues and cranky curmudgeons at the same time, the thought of updating this page is always an exciting prospect. if only i could create and conflate unnerving and raw emotions into beautifully crafted paragraphs. this is my indulgence, a kind of longer and more vague version of the facebook status update or the high visibility of twitter. sometimes my replenishings takes days or weeks to evolve into a profound read. but i'm no longer as fastidious as when i was younger. my anal phase has been obliterated by exhaustion.

the sports week has been great, murray beat federer at indian wells. anybody who beats federer are my golden boys -- nadal, djokovic included. all hail wimbledon, there would be an uproar in the finals if the scot would even make the semis. i've never been to SW19. sampras is long retired, wtp. although the williams girls are still in the battlefield. but i can't shake off the inundation of hoity-toity hauteurs.

from little green balls, to white balls with markings. it was hard fought, but otherwise the much maligned tottenham keeper kept chelsea at bay on saturday while the lakers are still pushing for a best nba record. the nba playoffs are in april, while the premiere league's yarn is carrying on until may. it's great to watch football, but for reasons known only to me, i can't wait for this season's curtain call.

then there's the saga of manny pacquiao and murmurs and clamors behind his bout's televised coverage in RP. it's barely a month before the event and the pambansang kamao has got to concentrate on training. the boxer from manchester is no pushover. the brits are a bit clannish in behavior and temperament. we are too, in a way if we are not barricaded by our individual languages and dialects. generally, a few close-minded circles look down from way up above the tower. in some trenches and uncanny chicanes, the view is marginally still not color blind.

uncluttered

it's still a bit chilly, but at least the sun is now shining and the days are getting longer. after a week of spending most of my daytime sleeping with the sometimes bromidic night shifts, i'm on the verge of tidying up the clutter as part of of my serial proclivities, which is far from an anodyne proceeding. hopefully i won't be caught web surfing or reading trash from all the papers and journals diffused all over our very tiny nook. but beware thy master procrastinator, as always letting the clean and washed, but crumpled pieces of apparel accumulate to asinine levels. so there's my concession for the weekend, to commence with my share of hoovering in every dessicated corners of the nest to a respectable calm.

narration overload

to loll in a picturesque horizons and being totally enraptured in art appreciation is a foremost craving set aside by the imposition of hard times. but enough about my egregious yearning. vicky cristina barcelona has been sprayed with four stars and eviscerated into every shredded emotion by almost every reviewer worth its salt that i couldn't help but ask, WTF? the movie is a chronicle about two friends who met a guy and his crazy ex-wife. the setting is beautiful, it's spain for crying out loud. specifically, barcelona with all the gaudi structures and a little sidetrack to the city of oviedo. rebecca hall is vicky, traditional, calm and practical, in other words, a total bore. scarlett johansson, in another of her temptress incarnation is cristina, a blonde radical in the art and science of love and relationships. the guy in the middle of the foursome is juan antonio, played by with gusto by javier bardem, who kept on reminding his ex-wife, maria elena (penelope cruz), to please speak english in front of cristina when she diverts into spanish. although penelope cruz expresses fervor and sentiments with much more depth and earnestness when she delivers her lines in her native tongue.

the narration conveys the action on the screen. but my dart thrower harped on the necessity of narration in films when viewers aren't basically devoid of intelligence. perhaps we could have done without the grating voiceover, the story would still be easily perceived, for its restraint and clarity. vicky cristina barcelona metamorphosed more as a travelogue rather than an escapade of desire and illicit liaisons. the real star becomes spain and its city of barcelona, a lavish and lovely milieu for the artists that are juan antonio and maria elena, and the budding photographer that is cristina. vicky, who inititiated the trip to the spanish city, is finishing her masters in catalan identity despite not speaking a word of catalan or spanish for that matter. this reminds me of gwyneth paltrow, she's maybe ten years older but she has a fluent grasp of spanish. it's a stereotype of the ages that a banker, not that i know one personally, is unromantic but reliable while an artist is passionate. the way i see it, a nine to five ordeal is much more comforting in these era of downturns and combustions.

torment in the burbs

there was the desire to read the novel first to truly come into grips with the emotions of the characters. but i reckon, the film itself is overflowing with heartfelt despair and despondency that i no longer want to inflict torture upon myself. revolutionary road is a study of entrapment and sullen discontentment. as we go through our journeys in our lifetimes, a series of options are beamed over giant television screens in our minds and we have to tick the appropriate boxes to charter the journey of our lives. suburbia with its cardboard houses and manicured lawns resembles a final resting place. april wheeler ticked her chosen boxes. marrying a guy because he had a nice smile at a party was hardly a fitting choice. the 50's may have been an era of domesticity but there were women who worked and achieved fulfillment, bugger-all with the conservative naysayers who threw invectives behind their backs. bored housewives inveigled by the silence of an empty habitat, bode well as gossipmongers.

for the disgruntled, unfulfilled wife, there's the flow in revolutionary road, the street where frank and april wheeler lived with their two children. frank may have had the dead end job saddled with the spirit of the times but his wife was astonishingly uncompromising, hence all the tearful histrionics. the haunting music, the beautiful imagery permeate the film with melancholic allure. the acting is superb, from the leads, winslet and dicaprio to the support lead by michael shannon who eschews the best lines in the endeavor. the movie is so brilliantly bleak and heartbreaking that it's video disk is a perfect gift for one's frenemy.

pepperoni season

a few hours after arriving from transit, i was depleted of energy and in dire need for some endorphins to re-start my system. i was basically just super tired. it has been an interesting weekend. the north east of england had never felt so deviating. i lived and worked there for more than a year in this decade and the return imbued a strange sense of detachment with the place. probably it's just the accent. i've also worked in the shires where the locals sport the posh twang but are more condescending towards the children of the far east.

the weekend though did not float and soak in boredom. there was the football. there was my personal tour of millfield. there was the stressful excogitations of work. there was the family. the ministrations of the past and present collided with nary a tinge of regret. facebook became an afterthought even after i was already munching in the rapture of pepperoni conversations amid bleeping canisters and extremely pricey dressing foams. i'm back to tuning into tons and tons of rubbish. any bits for twenty five random things can be found on this blog. bless the people who shortens my name into one syllable when they address me in texts, e-mails or a mere chat. the long version seem so businesslike. i'll be drifting off and be awake later.

miscellany

after a backbreaking routinary house chore and my endless bouts with tension headaches, i'm settling in my sanctuary staring at the downloaded pages, typing away the fine print of paragraphs with long words indecipherable to souls who reside outside my inner circle. with the wonders of world wide web, i often wonder if during the decade of my adolescence, i would have been able to handle this very handy creation. there was hardly a computer when i was in school. there was no friendster, facebook or myspace during my obstreperous high school years as i was facing romantic rejections in the face. ditto with my university years, full of longing and anticipation for a whimsical crush. i would probably made an ass of myself if texts and e-mails were vital ingredients of our standard living. writing assignments, processing school projects are easier these days with innumerable information in a click. back in my long ago youth, we had to meander and brave the rain unto the cramp and shabby city public library with obsolete encyclopedias and decayed journals.

there were no cellphones either when i was growing up. our residence didn't even have a phoneline. we had to go to the neighbors. oh those dark, dark ages. we only had a phone connected when i was already in my twenties, when my key to happiness was to earn my keep and not the search for the absolute hunk.

the library, bookstore and museum are few of my favorite retreats from stress. whenever i'm in a new city, i always seek refuge in a place full of dusty tomes. people find that dorky, which is hardly helpful to the self-esteem. but when one adores the lore of art and history, it just makes sense to enjoy the sweet life. who cares what other people think?

the jock

the stereotypical jock is all brawn and no brains. i first heard of the moose mason syndrome (how i miss archie comics) in college from one of my predecessors in the sports pages of our school paper and the name just stuck. she then listed names of students of our university forging double acts as scholars and athletes. the sports scholarship is one of the main features of scholarship programs in higher education in the US and the philippines since probably the beginning of ti. but its different matter altogether in the UK, blossoming athletes as young as the age of ten enter sports academies, forging their concentration on harnessing their sports skills and aspire to be the next hotshot premiership player. as a result their academic work suffers and once they become prominent, are not highly regarded for their intelligence. david beckham is always riled by the british media for his lack of wit. i will no longer touch on the examples of stephen gerrard or gary neville as i myself is a serial stutterer.

as for the looks department, beckham wouldn't be as huge if he relied mainly on his football skills. he's very marketable due to his handsome visage. the spice girl wife is another appendage to the image. i follow the tottenham hotspur football club. any player who ditches the club for a big four prospect, i simply regard with disdain. do you copy scornful ex-spur?

david bentley is a tottenham hottie (right). but he missed his penalty shot on sunday. time will come when an englishman will not dread a shootout.

vedran corluka (left), croatian and very telegenic. he didn't miss his penalty shot on sunday. it such a joy to trail the spurs camp when these players light up white hart lane. COYS!

as with the discourse on beauty, brains and brawn, "what is essential is invisible to the naked eye." i'm quoting the little prince but mostly ruffa from her miss world stint in '93.