I’ve always loved making mixes. Some are really hard to do, this one came to me pretty easily. (Funny how the title seems to hint at something completely the opposite.) I nearly broke my weird rule (about adding more than one song by an artist) but I prevailed, and it turned out pretty OK.

Here’s the tracklist:

1. “Ask” by The Smiths
2. “Slow Hands” by Interpol
3. “Tulips” by Bloc Party
4. “Do You Remember?” by Ra Ra Riot
5. “Run” by Vampire Weekend
6. “Whiskey” by Voxtrot
7. “Futile Devices” by Sufjan Stevens
8. “Ghosting” by Freelance Whales
9. “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith
10. “I Found a Reason” by Cat Power (The Velvet Underground cover)
11. “Call Me On Your Way Back Home” by Ryan Adams
12. “Slow Show” by The National
13. “The Wind” by Cat Stevens
14. “Maps” by Arcade Fire (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover)
15. “Wait” by Death Cab For Cutie (Secret Stars cover)
16. “Sa Madaling Salita” by Ang Bandang Shirley

There’s a story in there somewhere.

Download here.

I’m sure you all know how much I like reading. I have this (maybe obnoxious) belief that not reading really takes away a certain kind of quality from your life. Of course, people who exercise or sing or take care of children can say the exact same thing to me about what they do that I don’t, so I guess that’s neither here nor there.

The point of this post: A-HA! Learning Center Needs Volunteers!

What is A-HA!, you ask. According to their Facebook page:

A-HA Learning Center is a free tutoring center for street children who belong to communities living in the South Cemetery and Catholic Cemetery along Kalayaan and Reposo Streets in Makati. The center started in May 2009, and currently services 65 school children from grade 1 to 3rd year high school, offering English, Math, Science and computer classes.

A-HA Learning Center also takes care of the yearly school supplies, tuition, and shoes of the children, along with educational fieldtrips.

A-HA Learning Center is a partner of Binhi English Literacy Foundation, and is currently using the Binhi English Literacy Program for children 6-12 years old. It is also a partner of Got Heart Foundation.

Basically, my friend Jaton, his sister and a bunch of other good-hearted people have been tutoring children and helping them with their education. While they teach them much more—I think they also hold other alternative classes—I think that helping children read is incredibly important, because it will help them along with their schoolwork, and also their futures.

I have been asked by Jaton a few times to volunteer, but I haven’t found the time to, yet, but I figured that this is the least I could do, while I haven’t been able to help out as a volunteer yet. If you are interested, or know of someone who would be, please contact Jaton at 0918-979-3629.

Please also feel free to re-post and spread the word. :)
Poster is by JP Cuison.

Volunteer sched is M-TH, 4-5pm, and Sat from 8:30-10:30 AM,
10:30 AM -12:30 PM, 1:00-4:00PM.

A-HA Learning Center is located at 9708 C Pililia St, Rizal Village, Makati.

I was going to make a massive post about things I am thankful for, after Baddie and Isa made theirs. Unfortunately for me, I am the kind of person who needs photos to accompany posts, so it became something I put off and put off until it was, as it were, too late. I was in a really great mood, starting off the day. Which sort of degraded into a really foul mood by the time I was about halfway done with the workday.

As it is still Thanksgiving in some parts of the world, I didn’t want to dwell on life’s minor frustrations. And even though we don’t really celebrate Thanksgiving in the Philippines, it never hurts to look at the brighter things in life, especially when things start turning sour.

A Partial List of Things I Am Thankful For:

1. Friends. Before deciding on doing a mostly general collage of photos, I was gathering photos from Facebook, of people I knew. I was still in a pretty foul mood, and looking back at all these people who had been a part of my life, at one point or another, was really sort of therapeutic, to be honest. I had to stop myself from making this a trip down memory lane, posting pictures of myself with people that mean/t a lot to me.

   I know I joke a lot about not having friends or being a hermit, and people generally know me as someone who likes to keep to herself as much as possible. But the truth is, I don’t think I would have made it as far as I have if it were not for the people I got to know along the way. I am thankful for friends near and far, and for those I haven’t even physically met yet, and for people who have extended kindness to me.

Continue reading Thanksgiving….

Or, There Will Be Mild Spoilers

I have really, really mixed feelings about this movie.

I think that it’s probably why it has taken me so long to write this review. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One) on Thursday night. It is currently Sunday, and I still haven’t gathered my wits about me to write a ‘real’ review for it. As a fan, I think I’m predisposed to love it automatically. But let me quote the teen classic (LOL) 10 Things I Hate About You to illustrate what I felt when I was watching the film, “I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?”

The past few days, I am usually in that place where even though I am not super satisfied with the film—but this just might be because they left out this one part that I held dear and found really crucial to the story so I just might be resentful—I also want to maul and attack everybody who says that they found it dull, boring, and dragging. Much like this dude.

My Harry Potter film reviews always seem to turn into a long list of all the parts left out from the movie, so I’m going to try and not do that this time around. I think that because this series really, honestly means so much to me is why I am so protective of how it is being portrayed and adapted. And when people write it off, I get defensive because I truly feel like I am being personally attacked, even though I obviously am not. (My issues, not yours, don’t worry. I’m trying to get past~ this.)

Yes, it was a very beautiful movie, both visually and score-wise. The shots were beautifully composed, and it gives us a change of scenery, and also a change of overall mood. The tone of the film is set by the Minister of Magic, Rufus Scrimgeour’s speech, preparing us for what is to come. The film’s aesthetics really matched the content—most of it was dark and dreary, ominous and at times, kind of hopeless—and coupled with the excellent score, the scenes were made whole. I think, though, that they succeeded so well in upping the excitement of the fast-paced parts, and highlighting the hopelessness of the the dreary parts, which is why when the parts filled with action were punctuated with those bleak and tragic times, there was such a big shift that it was a bit confusing to deal with. Which is why some people found it boring and dragging. Everybody stepped up their acting, especially the Trio, with performances that have into something really commendable.

One of my favorite parts of the film was something that wasn’t in the books, but encapsulated just why I loved Harry and Hermione’s friendship. It was when they were dancing to a song by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, inside a tent in the middle of nowhere, after being abandoned by Ron. I am definitely not a Harry/Hermione shipper and, even though people might read this scene that way, I feel like it was really such a great depiction of their sibling-like relationship. The song choice was also perfect, speaking about living with circumstances that they could not help.

The Harry Potter franchise is largely about friendship and bravery, the weight of our choices, the complexity of a person’s character, the presence of good and evil in each person. And following that vein, I think the Deathly Hallows worked pretty well, but I also feel like this is also where it failed. A friend of mine said that what she loved about the series is that everything, everyone is so grand, and I agree with her. You see how even the slightest gesture affects the greater outcome, how a person’s decision to be good or bad can weigh so much more. To borrow a line from the Great Sirius Black, “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”

To display that complexity, and reduce it from a book that is a few hundred pages long is a really hard thing to do. They obviously tried to condense it to fit as much as they could in such a short amount of time, but I really feel like a lot of the tension and moral dilemmas and character layers were glossed over and lost. Speaking of moral dilemmas, I loved what they did with the Malfoys. I really have got to hand it to Draco, and obviously, Tom Felton. It was one of the better performances in the film, for me, and I’ve always loved how they got into Draco’s character. Such a great source of tension—you can really see the fight going on in his head.

Continue reading Half of an End of an Era: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part One)…

This isn’t my Harry Potter post, sadly! What a misleading title, though, isn’t it? What you must know is that I have seen it, and I have loved it, and during the screening I was watching, I won myself a faucet:

The thing is, I have been so swamped—with work and with other deadlines—and I have been preoccupied with other things that I haven’t found the time to write a proper review. I just am disappointed by two things that they glossed over, because those parts really were important to me, but I generally found it such a great adaptation. More later.

Now, about the title. It’s not a big secret that I am easily excited about things, but here are a few that have made the past few days pretty bearable, despite the stewing holiday stress and busy-ness. Obviously, Harry Freakin’ Potter is one of them. From the last post, you could say that I was conducting an experiment. Here’s what came of it:

More photos under the cut, way down in the post.

I’ve also been making other book-destroying (please forgive me) experiments. Tonight, I started on this one:

I think it’s pretty obvious what I am trying to do. Broke 3 blades so far, but I’m on page 157 now.
If this were a horcrux and I was the hero, we would all likely be dead by now. As I am slow.

And then, books! Excellent poetry collection by Katrina Vandenberg called Atlas. It was published in 2004 and is absolutely beautiful. Will post my favorites sometime soon, maybe? Also in the middle of “Till We Have Faces” by C.S. Lewis. And in the mail, I have finally gotten some chapbooks from Mr. Steve Roggenbuck. It’s a collection of short poetry, and I’ve got a few copies I will be giving away, so if you see me in the next few days, holler! I will hand you one. :)

And here is my brother painting during a Liz Lemon party.

We saw a lizard. :)

I actually really do have a lot more to say about these things, but I can’t seem to find the time to really think about what to say and what to write about them. I keep thinking, “Oh, I would love to tell everybody about how this is so-and-so,” but every time I sit down, there are a million other things I have to attend to, and my brain flits around too much and I end up not saying or doing very much.

I think that’s an indication of something; I’m just not sure exactly what that something is.

P.S. I think I will change the font size of this blog. Is the text too small? I’m kind of thinking that it is.

Continue reading Accio Excitement….

If it isn’t already obvious, I’d just like to point out how my life has been (sort of) resembling shambles lately. I’m not going to go into the details—that’s what LiveJournal is for—but I will say this: making things has been a pretty good remedy for quarter-life panic. There’s something about it that really calms me down. I’m working on the painting (it’s going well, but I can’t find the time to really get into it) and a bit of other things, but for an upcoming group exhibit, this is what I am working on:

I’m pretty excited about how it’s going to turn out.

Another thing I have always thought of making, I finally got around to actually putting together tonight. I was going to go with a few friends to Rockeoke, but felt guilty about ditching work. So, I did the responsible thing and stayed behind to do some work. The Internet started acting up by around 6PM, though, and finally died by half past eight. I really, really got upset, but I didn’t have a social network to whine to, given the death of my internet connetcion, so I decided to try and actually start on my chapbook.

LOL. I bet you’re sick of seeing that darned deer.

It doesn’t have all of the stories I want to put in it, not even all of the ones in the fake table of contents, but I just wanted to try out the technique and see if producing a small print run was feasible. I think the size (4.25″ x 5.5″) might be a little small, but it’s a nice fun size, so we’ll see. Maybe if I have enough material for one that can handle the perfect bind.

Cutting. This is just a working title/placeholder. Also, it is a brilliantly sad song.

This story needs editing, but it’s got some of my favorite sentences.

Teaching myself how to use Masters, etc. This is a fake table of contents. Obviously.

Trimming the edges.

A few things that I’ve realized:

• I need a pen tablet. The fact that mine died a few months ago is upsetting to me. I never realized how crippling it was to live without one, once it’s become such an integral part of one’s process. But I digress.
• I need a heavy-duty paper cutter.
• I need an awl.
• I need good paper, waxed string, etc.
• I really, really like making books. This is actually more of a reinforced idea than a realization, but whatever.

And, you know, it sounds like so much work, trying to figure out Masters for InDesign pages, and printer settings, and margins and packaging contents, et cetera, et cetera, but it has, so far, worked best at calming me down.