Tag Archives: pinoy

Awesome Mush-Up

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I woke up, turned on my computer, check my Facebook account, did a little construction and rent collection of my Cityville then open Youtube to check and confirm if my personal discernment that Lady Gaga’s hit Born This Way sounded similar to Madonna’s classic Express Yourself.

Indeed, there are numerous videos in Youtube that tried to compare, equate and link both songs.  After checking out a couple of mush-ups, Fil-Am Youtube star, Manny Garcia’s funky and spunky version I think is the best.  It even got a dash of Cee Lo Green’s Forget You sprinkled with Enrique iglesias’ I Like It and Kelly Rowland’s When Love Takes Over as a cherry on top.  It’s a first-class, first-rate, five-star mush-up!

Check out Garcia’s genius work…

Tuod ang di mapasayaw nito.

Tom Babauta: The Stranger in Paradise

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I just finished watching a Filipino movie entitled Strangers in Paradise which was directed by the late film genius Lino Brocka.  The story was initially set in an unidentified secluded island where a girl grew up alone (but was later befriended by a hunky local island boy) and was ostracized by her Tagalog-speaking tribe-mates for she was a child conceived and born out of wed lock.  The island girl met a young Hawaii-based Filipino-speaking tourist who decided to bring her to Hawaii (which wonders me how did this young Filipino tourist was able to secure a US-Hawaii Visa for the island girl).  In Hawaii, the island girl was still detested yet encountered an unexpected truth about her past.

For me, the movie Strangers in Paradise is divided into three equal parts.  The first part had very minimal dialogues and seems to look like a mini-soft-porn.  It featured nothing but the incredibly sexy body of the female lead character Mauana (played by Snooky Serna), the boy-next-door charm and flawless skin of Antonio (played by Lloyd Samartino) and the to-die-for hunky flesh of the island boy (played by Tom Babauta).

The second part seems to have looked like a mini-travel show ala The Lonely Planet featuring the cultural dances and sights of Hawaii. Then the flick for its final part suddenly became a mini-soap opera that features the predictable twists and turns of a typical Pinoy afternoon TV drama.

Nevertheless, what is good about the movie is it’s not being a love story where the characters at the end would live happily ever after or had a sad ending where they ended up in tragic turns of event.  Amazingly, the ending was neither happy nor sad.  The ending was just true to what a typical life is.

tom babauta

But the main reason why I have always wanted to watch the film is because I was longing to recall and review how Tom Babauta looks like.  Thanks to Kuki Catindig, the effervescent aficionada of Snooky Serna, for giving me a DVD copy of the movie.

Young adults today may not know this, but it was the name of this B-list actor that gave birth to the coinage of a local slang that proliferated in the late ‘80s until mid ‘90s.  Out of Pinoy’s crazy yet cunning uniqueness, the name Tom Babauta during those times was conceived to mean gutom (hungry).  Often times, Pinoys a decade ago would say “Tom Babauta na ko” when they meant “Gutom na ako” (I’m already hungry).

Tom Babauta may have not contributed in the enrichment of Philippine cinema or may have not even acted very well in his role in Strangers in Paradise but his name has definitely been immortalized in the Pinoy pop-culture neologism.

Mabuhay ka Tom Babauta!

Pekyaw

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So the Gods, the odds and karma are again in favor of Manny Paquiao.  His win today against the bigger Antonio Margarito only confirms that Paquiao is the greatest boxer in modern history.  Every time Pacquiao wins a boxing fight, I am always so impressed by how the heavens answer the intense prayers of Nanay Dionisia (his mother).  Also, every time Pacquiao wins a fight, I always remember my first ever encounter with this boxing hero.

It was more than a decade ago when I was still working as the Head of HR in 3-star Royal Palm Hotel (now Lotus Garden Hotel) located in Ermita, Manila.   Pacquiao then was a budding boxing athlete who could hardly speak the English language and was worth less than a million pesos.  He was not yet popular then.  Even the boxing ring announcers during that time could hardly pronounce his name.  He is either introduced as “Pakyeyiyow” or “Pekyaw”

Pacquiao during that year was due to have a boxing fight in Manila with Mexican Gabriel Mira and no five-star hotel (I suppose) agreed to sponsor both fighters’ hotel room so the organizers settled with ours.  Both Pacquiao’s and Mira’s team were billeted in our hotel.

I remember the owner of the hotel instructed me, Mr. Sal Magugat the Resident Manager and Mr. Oca Bangayan the Head of the Security to ensure that Pacquiao be given the most comfortable room.  On the other hand, she further ordered that Mira be assigned in a crib where the noisiest air conditioning unit is situated or in a chamber located on the street-side of the hotel where the earsplitting engines and honking of public utility vehicles (like jeepneys and taxi cabs) can be heard inside the room.  That’s just precisely what we did.

The following day, it was in all broadcast media that Manny Pacquiao retained his WBC Flyweight World Title and was tagged as boxer with the greatest potential to be the next boxing hero of the Philippines.  Let me clarify that Pacquiao did not cheat it’s just that his opponent was puyat (without sleep).

Isang sikretong pati si Pekyaw di alam…

Cobre Cama

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After an epoch and a half, I suddenly felt the urge to change my bed sheets.  While tucking the seams of the sheets, like a virus awakened from hibernation in the deepest recess of my cranial cavity, I suddenly realized that almost all mothers in the Philippines changed the bed sheets of their kids last November 2.

This is attributed to the Pinoy belief that kids who play with fire like a lighted candle will end up suffering from nocturnal enuresis (peeing on bed while deeply asleep).  Trooping and spending a considerable amount of time at the cemetery is no fun if you as kid is not permitted to collect thawing wax and form it into a ball from the melting lighted candles that were lit on the tombs of the departed loved ones every November 1.  In the Philippines every November 1 at the cemetery, a kid’s coolness and savvy-ness is measured by the size of the collected ball of wax.

Though there is no scientific and empirical study on how playing with fire is directly connected to a child’s urinary bladder, let me impose my own particular explanation.  Kids during the Day of the Dead (November 1) are so engrossed in waiting for the lighted candles to melt for them to collect the liquefying wax.  Kids would not have the time and opportunity to go to a lavatory for them to release their excess in bodily fluid.  They would not want to lose the opportunity to collect the melted wax since another kid (a cousin, a sibling or a kid from an adjacent or nearby tomb) may also be eyeing to collect these melting wax from lighted candles.  Also, kids would not want to pee, do something else or walk away from the lighted candles since a melted wax easily solidifies and would be difficult to bend and glue-in into the increasing ball of wax.

With this rationalization, we can therefore conclude that there is a direct mutuality between the diameters of the collected ball of wax and that of the child’s urinary bladder.  The bigger the collected ball of wax results to bigger bloated urinary bladder.  This ends up to bed wetting which in turn also results to their mother’s changing of Cobre Cama (bed sheet) early in the morning the following day.

Susmaryosep! Nagpalit lang ng kobre kama, ang dami ng sinabi. Hmp!

Clarifying Oilyness

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Dry skin is a sign of aging.  Thank goodness I got super oily skin.  It’s so oily I’m sometimes worried that Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron or Saudi Aramco wants to install oil rigs to harvest liquid petroleum hydrocarbon from my face.  I sometimes want to enlist myself in the Guinness Book of World Record for having the face with the most sensational and over-productive sebaceous glands!

My tremendously oily skin is attributed from a deep-seated source.  Its Nengkoy’s (my mom) bizarre food cravings when my astonishingly gorgeous cells were rapidly multiplying inside her womb.  She craved for “kakang gata” (pure coconut milk)!   Nengkoy claim, profess and testify that she would love drinking kakang gata straight from a bowl.

Here in the Philippines, pregnant women’s weird food cravings (or “paglilihi” in Filipino) are a big deal.  We have this notion, regardless of whether such belief has scientific basis or not, that what a pregnant woman craves somehow has an effect on the developing child inside the womb.  It’s like the precursor and fundamental backbone of the child’s DNA mutations and chromosomal translocations.

Because of such craving with unexplained correlation to a child’s appearance, I am the offspring with the lightest complexion among Nengkoy’s children as attributed to the color of coconut milk.  However, as we all know coconut oil is extracted from coconut milk.  And in my specific case, the DNA malformation of Nengkoy’s funky pregnancy cravings happened to have localized right on my face.

Due to this, I learned to accept the fact that I never failed to include the oil blotter film, oil-controller-facial-wash and facial toner for oily skin in my grocery list.  And having a dry skin is the least of my worries.

Buti na lang ‘di sa bao, bunot o bukayo.

Free Hubert Webb

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After fifteen long years in prison, Hubert Webb is neither innocent nor guilty but should be set free!  This is my personal opinion and assessment after watching last Sunday night the TV documentary “Cheche Lazaro Present:  Dalawang Mukha ng Hustisya”.

I am saying this not because the Philippine court should have accepted Webb’s greatest and absolute defense of being in US during the time of the crime as verified by FBI and certified no less by Madeleine Korbel Albright (first woman US Secretary of State).

I am saying this because some dimwit and defective government agency misplaced and unable to find the semen specimen found in the cadaver of Carmela (one of the victims in the Vizconde massacre) so as to compare it with the semen of Hubert Webb via DNA testing.  The missing semen specimen is a definite and clear-cut evidence that could no longer be presented in court not by fault by Webb but by fault of a Philippine government agency, thus, he in effect is deprived of due process.  Therefore he should be discharged, dismissed and relieved from the confines of prison.

Ang problema hindi ako ang Suprim Kort ng Pinas.  Keys dismis!

Dimakya Island, Palawan

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Words are not enough to describe the beauty of Dimakya Island located at the northern tip of Palawan.  This gorgeous patch of paradise is so beautiful it annoys me. 

 The sky is too blue, the sunset is too amber.  The breeze is too fresh and the animals (fruit bats, turtles and various birds) were too free to live their own free lives. The sea water is too clear and too aquamarine.  The schools of fish are too gracious they don’t mind a monster like me would snorkel atop and around them. The corals underwater are too colorful.  The foliage is too lush, in fact the green is so green and the flowers were too flowery. 

 The island is too perfect, it disturbs me.  I thought I was dead and gone to heaven.

Kinukurot ko sarili ko para mapatunayang di pa ko tsugi.

In Between Slam Book and Facebook

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After the advent and fame of Slam Book, a notebook bearing questions to be filled out by the keeper’s selected friends that is later to be passed around for other invited contributors to write down their respective intimate answers.  And before the genesis of Slam Book’s virtually formatted type – i.e. social networking sites like Friendster, Multiply and Facebook – a conspicuous hype came into being in the pop culture of young Filipinos in the late ‘80s until early ‘90s.  A lot of people think that after Slam Book has depleted its popularity among the youth it was right away replaced by the web-based social networking sites.  Let me insert, inject and connect what transpired in between these two Herculean cultural revolutions.

What happened in between was the young populace’s visit to a photo studio.  During those years, if my memory serves me right, the most popular photo studio for the youth in Pasay and its nearby cities was “Dimension or Dimensione”.  Young people would schedule an afternoon wearing their most bewitching casual attire, sit on a high chair with a background or lighting of his or her choice and flash their sweetest smile in front of a camera.

The picture is not a group photo but a personal/individual close-up that is ordered to be printed on a wallet size photo-paper in abundant number of reproductions. When the photo in immense copies are already picked-up from the studio, he or she will then write a sweet dedication at the back which will be later given away and distributed to his or her friends and classmates.

Recipients then will collect all these photos and bundle it as part of their cherished possessions.  During those times they will not insert it inside a photo album since they enjoy reading the dedications written at the back from time to time.  They would not leave the thick collected close-ups in their respective houses but to be bizarrely brought along with them wherever they go.  The thickness of their photo collection would signify the degree of their social friendliness and congeniality.

Here are 2 of the amazing samples of my collection which up until now is in my possession…

marie & jhong, my wacky close friends now living in california and new york respectively

Para tayong mga ewan noon! Hahaha!

Analyses on Venus Raj Q&A

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It has been less than 24 hours but multitudes of people have been judging, mocking or are still in the process of making fun on the answer given by Ms. Philippines to the question asked by one of the judges in the recently concluded Ms. Universe 2010.  I personally believed that she was thrown with the toughest question.

But if you are to fully analyze the question “What is one big mistake in your life? And what did you do to make it right?” it’s like demanding the candidate in front of jillions of people at the arena and viewers around the world to reveal and confess one huge personal blunder that she has done.  Now, if you are Ms. Philippines, would you reveal it?  Would you have the guts to uncover it?  Would you dare make it public? I’m pretty sure you won’t!

That is why those who had an abortion; those who are drug or alcohol addicted; those who had pre-marital sex; those who are secretly married; those who had sex with their boyfriend or girlfriend’s best friend; those who are cheats and thieves; those who silently farted and made a public uproar out from the released stink-bomb; those who had an episode of violating God’s Ten Commandments; and those who had any form of booboo who has kept it in themselves and refused to reveal it, you actually have no right whatsoever to poke fun at the answer given by the 4th Runner Up of this year’s Ms. Universe Pageant!

For those who consider themselves to be an open-book and does not seem to keep a secret blooper and would proudly raise that they could have answered the question better, my only advice to you is to join first the local pageant here in the Philippines (Binibining Pilipinas) and see for yourself if you can actually land the top plum of the contest to represent our country in the next Ms. Universe.  I’m fairly sure you’re not even qualified to join Binibining Pilipinas!

Now let me personally analyze the answer given by Ms. Philippines. With gentle grace and respect exhibited by Ms. Philippines to the not-so-respectable judge who asked her, she responded “In my 22 years of existence, I can say there is nothing major (major) problem that I have done because I am very confident with my family with the love that they are giving to me.”  It’s like saying “It’s none of your damn business, Mr. Baldwin! And I refuse to answer such a half-witted private question in front of this considerable number of people!” Thus, it’s a case of giving a stupid answer to a stupid question.  At least she was stunningly graceful and incredibly tactful!

With these analyses I therefore conclude that Ms. Philippines did a great job during the Q&A.  Congratulations!

World Pis sa ebri wan…