musings

Step 1

Step 1 to achieve peaceful inner self and nirvana is to clean your house. Get rid of things you dont need! Besides, we cant bring all our material “wealth” (if you may call your sentimental junk that) to heaven.

This will help you learn to let go of things you actually dont need, like that electric coaster you got as a gift or the box that came with the printer you’re saving to fill with more junk that you also need to throw out.

By this, you will realize you can actually see the floor and can move around. Seats are meant to be sat down by you, not a terminally temporary storage for paperwork. That funky smell will go away once you throw out that old mattress you set aside for guests. You will feel liberated and the new minimalist look of your house might actually go well with the chinois triptych wall decor you thought was a good bargain from bangkal. I tell you, take those down! Eww.

Just let go! You wont feel better afterwards but youll appreciate the long term benefits in the long run. Sure.

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laundry therapy, musings

spring cleaning

the past month, ive been doing a lot of cleaning. before i left for mindanao, we cleaned out the back area in katipunan, throwing away old baskets, bottles, boxes, even a dried up rat carcass. in cagayan de oro, i cleared out my closets of junk and began to organize the whole mezzanine bodega. one closet now contains mostly old decor from the 80s, the other contains books. one closet houses my cousin’s stuff and another, my sister’s sentimental junk. in the end i had about 3 balikbayan boxes of old clothes ready for sharing/giving away/selling/burning, 2 boxes of old shoes, and 1 with old bags. i filled up my big orocan trashbin 6 times!

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this extended back to manila when i took time to sift through my boxes of old papers, readings, books and magazines. design magazines went to 1 pile, fashion to another, movie mags another. i threw out old issues and some i would probably not read again. overall i filled up a big sack of papers for throwing and another box of readings that can be recycled.

in lots of ways, the practice of cleaning up is therapeutic and by ridding material extensions of myself, it is spiritually cleansing as well. if i cant organize and clean out my room, how well can i fix my life? i need to identify new goals and plot out my life’s direction.  routinary actions and unhealthy habits need to be recognized and changed i.e. my spending lifestyle is not parallel to my earning capacity or how my mother raised me up to be, im spending more than i can afford and i dont care anymore.

i used to be ambitious, full of dreams and ideas.  now, i just went through a really bad burn-out, my grandmother and my dog died, im jaded about most things and indifferent to the rest.  yet, the world continues to change and we’re starting to feel the effects of climate change; the world is going down as we speak. we’re all getting older, my skin is breaking out every week and my midsection gets wider every month.  im only 32, for crying out loud!  i need to make the most of life before we fall off the face of the earth.

time to take out the trash yet again.

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food trip, musings

chorizo love

Everybody who knows me well enough know i go bonkers over the chorizo from cdo. i remember this from my childhood when having chicken a’la carte in cogon market, usually eaten with puso (rice in a woven palm leaves bag).  Sweet and best grilled over hot coals, cousin ygan has since been serving this chorizo in his bbq spot in nacalaban st.  cagayan de oro.

Probably unknown to him, he was mentioned in an article on street fare by food magazine in nov 2008. Im posting the scan below. three cheers to bbq’ed chorizo and to cagayan de oro! wohoo!  🙂


ygan diaz’s bbq is an a’la carte dining eatery located at 29 nacalaban st, cagayan de oro, near the cagayan medical center. they usually open around 5pm until a little after midnight. aside from my favorite chorizo, they also serve grilled chicken, fish and a lot more.  beside the bbq place is mandex bar. more on that in another post  🙂

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art & design, filmmaking, musings

past imperfect. future tense

We shot a film in may this year with the same motley crew of MANGATYANAN. i had the most fun working with jerrold tarog and his staff that i had to do his next feature.


SENIOR YEAR coming to you soon! 🙂  btw, the poster was designed by arnold arre (mythology class, martial law babies). more on this film later. yey!

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laundry therapy, musings

graba

I havent written anything much here since Graba’s death in may 2010. Not in wordpress, not in facebook nor elsewhere. I guess i havent recovered from it all along.


graba at 2 months

He was the 2nd pomeranian to live in katipunan and was a complete opposite of Nuk. Where Nuk was reserved and preferred to be alone, Graba was a ball of energy and was excited to greet everybody that enters the house. He was smart, emphatic and super cute. It was a no-brainer he’d be friendly to the new dog in the house, pogi, when we brought him in december of 2009.

Theyve become inseparable ever since. Of course they had their spats and petty squabbles but Graba would be the reason why a shar-pei, bred to be an aggresive guard dog, would grow up to be playful and loving. Pogi, always surround by this small breed of dogs, grew larger but thinks he’s as small and lightweight as Graba and Nuk.

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