Can't Have It All

Awww... one of the most fascinating singer-songwriters just released a new music video. Remember me writing about the uber fabulous - and my long-time crush - Jay Brannan here and here?

This new video is very, very melancholic but the lyrics makes it totally cute.

Well it helps as well that Jay is the cutest thing around, right?

cant have it all
music and lyrics by jay brannan

applying moisturizer in the microwave window
for the tenth time, he shouldve called me an hour ago
would he be here with flowers if i lived in arizona?

they say theres no love left in the big cities, its kinda true
i guess youll find me coming soon to a small town near you
ill sell my guitar so i can by myself a tractor

fuck this, this cant be my life
i moisturized ten times tonight
why cant i sit down and write,
bring this question to light?

chorus

do you want a lover, or do you want a life?
one hand or the other, the butter or the bread knife?
do you choose winter, spring, summer, or fall?
its driving me crazy that i cant have it all

if these walls could talk, theyd probably cry out for mercy
til im outlined in chalk, ill be romantically thirsty
so i drink and drink from the proverbial time sink

fuck this, this cant be my life
tears flowing in full force tonight
why cant i sit down and write,
bring this question to light?

chorus

do we hold the future, or does it come in peace?
and if its in my hands, are you sure it should be in brittle hands like these?
life, love, and the pursuit of all the things they promised me
can i have all of the above? are the best things in life truly free?

chorus

© 2008 great depression publishing

Weekend Report: Something Else

Since my publique demands for a weekend report every Monday, I could not help but post about it. You know me naman, very customer-oriented, di ba?

So here it goes.

Friday evening I went with Maggie Cheung and Bubbles to the Bangkok Arts and Culture Centre (BACC) to check the preview of Thailand's entry to the 53rd International Art Exhibition for the La Biennale di Venezia.

The installation of Thailand is called Gondola al Paradiso (website here), which examines how the country represents and packages its culture and landscape for tourism purposes. The installation is akin to a travel agency and I see it as a critique of the commodification of culture to lure in more visitors bringing much-needed money.

We also happened to catch Hypnosis, a graduate exhibition of the Textile and Fashion Department of the Faculty of Fine and Applied Arts, Thammasat University.

The students' creations mainly feature reconstruction of fabrics and other materals. Placed in a frame, they are veritable artworks.

The top floor of the BACC holds Campaign for Art. The BACC is a result of a ten-year campaign by a network of artists, including protests, marches, and other gatherings.

To commemorate that successful campaign called "We Choose an Art Centre, Not a Shopping Centre", some two thousand pieces of artwork on cloth that were produced during the campaign are now laid down on the cavernous halls of the art center.

The pieces capture the spirit and passion of the artists, along with students, passers-by, and other members of the community, who fought for the establishment of the BACC. It's a very inspiring exhibit that showcases the citizens' strong preference for a temple for art and culture over a temple for consumerism.

Last night, together with Shanghai Tang and a couple of his French friends, I also caught an "experimental performance" that mixes movement, live video, installation art, and theatrical play of B-Floor Theatre, one of Bangkok's most provocative and unconventional theater companies.

The performance is called Something Else, and freewheels into the complexity of human relationships. Five dancers-cum-actors demonstrate how fragile our connections are with people and the dissonance between our self-perception and how others perceive us.

The fusion of different artistic media keeps the performance engaging. However, eighty percent of the lines were in Thai, sans subtitles. Of course I did not understand any of the dialogue so I had to cling on the acting mainly. Fortunately the performers were very, very effective in evoking the message of the material.

So there, that's my weekend.

I also did a bit of drinking last Friday and Saturday with Bubbles, Maggie Cheung, and Neomie Lenoir.

And had my ears checked coz until now I have yet to fully recover from a little ear damage during our diving trip. I discovered that I have allergic rhinitis, which prevented me from properly decompressing. So for now I'm taking medicines to clear my nasal passages.

And oh, a couple of things to look forward to this week:

One, my sister and her Davao friends are dropping by Bangkok. I cannot be more excited to see my sister for the first time since I left Las Islas Filipinas.

Two, I'm flying to Phuket for a few days for something I'm too embarrassed to talk about here. I'd try to win Best in National Costume, ok? I'd show you my crown when I come back. Wink, wink.

Processing: To Blog or To Date Edition

Agent BangCock: did you not notice na halos lahat ng bloggers na bading eh single?

Celia Rodriguez: hahhahaha

Agent BangCock: well except sa yo... but most di ba? tama ba ang observation kez?

Celia Rodriguez: oo nga

Agent BangCock: why kaya? there should be some correlation between being single and how much time you spend blogging or dating

Celia Rodriguez: kasi nga in your own words... ang taas!

Agent BangCock: ang taas talaga natin ning kase cocooned tayo in our own little, idealistic world.

Agent BangCock: in fact, it might not just be idealistic, but more of narcissistic. scary!

Celia Rodriguez: kasi i think blogging is almost a dead giveaway na ang tao itong has a tendency to intellectualize experiences

Agent BangCock: ay tama!!! korak.

Celia Rodriguez: kaya hayun

Agent BangCock: kaya nawawalan ng sense of adventure, ng sense of spontaneity

Agent BangCock: kawawa... or maybe not

Celia Rodriguez: hindi naman. mas nagkakaroon lang ng doktrina, ng dogma on what should and should not be; lalo na sa relasyon

Agent BangCock: hmmmm... korak. kase iniisip natin ang pag-ibig ay isang blog template. nahuhulog lahat ng tags sa tamang post at ang right column ay always expected to include the links.

Celia Rodriguez: hahahaha! winner

Agent BangCock: kaya feeling natin ang pagibig ganun din, pwedeng i-align at i-classify nang ganun kadali

Celia Rodriguez: cut and paste mo na lang yang linya na yan. sooo bloggable

Agent BangCock: salamat. ikaw ang may sala nito. ikaw ang catalyst ng mga walang kabuluhang paguusap na ito. talk about intellectualising mundane stuff.

Celia Rodriguez: naman. nailabas ko na.

Taking Chances

First there was this post from G's blog.

And then minutes ago I watched this 12-minute short film (for the love of God, please watch this touching clip).

Are these signs?!

To tell or not to tell?

To make a move or not?

Where do I get the courage?

Processing: Selfish Edition

Agent San Franciso: a friend said we are good at convincing ourselves that what we did is always right

Agent BangCock: hahahaha. well ganyan naman talaga dapat!

Agent BangCock: everything is an illusion anyway. so we have to create the illusion that best serves us.

Agent San Franciso: i totally agree.

Agent San Franciso: what is difficult is to convince other people. but who cares no?

Agent BangCock: yeah! deadma na yan.

Agent BangCock: you are only accountable for your own sanity. other people can take care of themselves

Agent BangCock: selfish ba? but who is not selfish these days?

Agent San Franciso: not really. there's nothing wrong with taking care of ourselves

Agent BangCock: very much so. coz nobody else would.

Agent San Franciso: indeed

Agent San Franciso: at the end of d day, if everything fails, you only have yourself as your refuge

Agent BangCock: korak

It's All About Me

It all started with "25 Random Things About Me" on Facebook. It pretty much spread like SARS. Soon enough we learn that one of your high school friends has a scar on his left knee, or that your ex-colleague eats Cerelac sans hot water while watching Friends, or that a guy you slept with eons ago can SMS while shitting.

(Read what The New York Times and Time Magazine had to say about the... ugh, phenomenon.)

And then last week my newsfeed on Facebook was flooded with results of quizzes that my friends took. These are mostly ludicrous "personality tests" such as "what color are you?", "what kind of woman are you?", "where should you live?", and so on. There was even a quiz on "how gay are you?" (which I took!).

I could've easily ignored the results of these quizzes but really they annoyed me to bits. I just wanted to tell my friends to F off coz I don't care AT ALL. Besides, there's an option to not publish the results of the quizzes. So puhlease, keep your color to your self.

But that's the problem with Facebook; you simply have to let your friends know coz that's what social networking is all about. What bothers me though is that instead of people actually connecting with each other we have in fact spent more time navel gazing and, worse, proclaiming to the world how vapid we exactly are.

Don't you think that Facebook is effectively feeding our inner narcissists?

Most people have this innate need to be heard, which I believe is normal. But social network sites like Facebook, and to a larger extent Twitter and Plurk, gives us these platforms to get as much attention as we can. Oh, mostly undeserved attention, I should say.

Through Twitter for instance, we get feeds like "So and so is having breakfast at Jollibee", or "So and so just arrived home". Wow, groundbreaking! Thanks for telling us about it. But seriously, how can people think that their friends even need to know what their greasy mouth is munching on at the moment?

Exactly how much time do we need to spend on talking about our sorry asses? Even without Facebook and its ilk, I noticed that people are so obsessed with talking (about themselves) and doing less of listening.

How many conversations have you had lately that's mostly one-sided?

Some people can talk endlessly about their boring lives and when you have the two seconds to inject your opinion their eyes would instantly drift only to become animated again when they are back to talking about something "interesting"... about themselves of course.

They cannot help it; they just need to hog the spotlight. There are just some people who need loads of affirmation, no? I call it an issue of low self-esteem, if not outright narcissism.

Honey, wake up coz the world does not revolve around you. [Snap, snap, snap.]

And yes, Facebook comes into the picture to give these people a boost, giving them the illusion that they are the center of the universe.

But who am I to criticize them when I have this blog that offers paean after paean to my gigantic ego? Ha!

3rd Blog Anniversary

Wow, tomorrow I celebrate three years of inanity on www.kawadjan.blogspot.com. Who'd have guessed that with my infamous attention span I sustained this blog for three long years?

Oh the hours and hours of spewing trivialities, of uploading the masterpieces of my camwhoring, of aggrandizing my otherwise boring life. Could you imagine how much effort I spent on this little shrine to my skinny ass?

Interestingly, may pumapatol sa kabaklaan ko. I do have readers despite the sheer mindlessness of my posts. If there's anything I proved through this blog it is that kabaklaan sells. From two readers last year I managed to double my publique to a grand total of four! I can't be prouder.

What amazed me most about blogging is how it connected me to people who I would not have met in any other way. That for me is the best part of blogging so far.

Mostly it all started with me leaving a comment on someone's blog that captures my interest. And then a few exchanges of comments later we decided to YM and so on. Of course the chemistry was almost instant coz both of us had been following each other's blogs.

Many of them are not BKK-based; mostly Filipinos overseas. It was not until they dropped by the City of Angels did I have the chance to finally see them beyond their persona as bloggers.

Within the past year or so, I breathed the same air with some of gay blogdom's superstars.

First there was the itinerant [G], followed by the queen of Khmerlandia, Fuchsiaboy. The three of us eventually decided to wreak havoc in Laos in mid 2008 and we have been BFFs since then. Virtually no day goes by without us "processing" something.

In the last few months I also had the wonderful opportunity to meet Kiks and Kiel. Both have a huge following among Filipino gay bloggers. So you would understand why hours before meeting them I was in a quandary over what to wear. It's like a first date, no? You have to make a good impression. Also knowing how fierce Kiks and Kiel are I don't want to be outwerqed. Choooooozzzz!

The only BKK-based blogger I've met so far is the hugely popular Bangkok Dreamer of Bangkok of the Mind, who I had beer with Bitch of Bangkok. I swear I felt like I was meeting Madonna or someone equally iconic. Really, Bangkok Dreamer is no diva but in fact he made me feel at ease way before my beer arrived on the table.

And of course, just a couple of weeks ago I was blown away when I finally met some of the biggest names in Filipino gay blogdom: Lyka and Her Stepsisters.

If before I only watched videos of them prancing in their home-made gowns, I was enthralled to see Lyka Bergen, Mama O, and Ekra Tan in the flesh (Jezebel Patel was on tour with the Moscow Ballet).

Di ba, it's tantamount to meeting mythical creatures like the Three Magi for instance? Or the Three Musketeers? Or the Three Blind Mice? But no, Lyka and Her Stepsisters exist! They eat, smoke, drink, strut, dance, flirt, and laugh like the rest of us.

For roughly five days I had absolutely a wonderful time showing them around BKK.

One evening, I decided to bring them to Nana, one of Bangkok's main red light districts. The place is made up of three floors of bars featuring girls in various states of undress gyrating under flashing lights. I just wanted them to get a feel of the place so we walked around, peeking into the curtains that separate the men from the... uhhhmmm... bayots.

When we reached the second floor Mama O suddenly stopped in his tracks and, in an Ilonggo accent, said: "Tayo na day. Di ko na kaya." And this was only two bloody minutes after we reached Nana, ha? In fact, Lyka Bergen was also thinking of the same.

Aha, only the stench of vagina would shock the bayots from San Francisco. So for the next few days we limited our nights of debauchery within the gay area of Silom.

Anyway, that's just one snippet of the time I shared with Lyka and Her Stepsisters. Tse!

On that note, I dedicate the third anniversary of my blog to my blogger friends who made blogging more fierce and fabulous. A million thanks for the inspiration, and definitely for the friendship.

And to my dear four readers... I would like to believe that I don't care so much for you, but I sincerely do. I deeply appreciate your feedback, especially coz virtually everyone had been nice. Thanks for the support, thanks for the advice, and thanks for the occasional bitchiness.

Please feel free to tell me what you want to read more in this blog (duh, as if I'm not revealing way too much already).

Whew, 485 posts so far. Just stay tuned for mawr, bitches.

Estado? As in, Estado?

I was YMing with my sister last Friday morning and somehow we ended up talking about our cousins' lives. Well it was mainly about some buntisan issue chenelyn, which is really nothing shocking to me coz I know I come from a family of sluts. Chooooozzzzz! (To the famille... JOKE!)

The point is, my mom supposedly SMSed my sister that she (my sister) is pretty much free to start a family of her own blah blah blah.

But for some reason, I was an addendum to my mom's unfailing concern for her kids.

And this is exactly what she sent my sister (in Suriganon, with virtually no punctuation marks):

"sagdi rkan si gp amo n gjud tingali ija stado nadawat na nato jaun. isa ry tagkahadlukan bc msakit i2n nan AIDS simbko lmang."

Ok, let me try my best to translate this to Tagalog:

"Pabayaan mo na si GP [my nickname]. Ganyan na talaga siguro ang kanyang estado. Natanggap na natin yan. Iisa lang ang kinakakatakutan ko, baka magkasakit sya ng AIDS, God forbid."

Honestly, I don't know how to precisely translate that to English, but basically what my mom was saying, or at least what she implied, was that she had accepted my sexual orientation and that her only fear is that I'd contract AIDS.

How tumbling moment can that get, aber?

My first reaction was really to LOL! That's honestly the best thing I could do at that time. What exactly is my mom thinking?

However, looking at it now, I reached a couple of conclusions.

One. My parents are at least aware that I'm gay.

Like, haler!!!??? What can be more obvious, di ba?

But the point is, my parents can talk about it now. For so long we've always adopted the don't-ask-don't-tell policy. I never really found it imperative to come out to them coz I simply don't see the point. But c'mon, in my case, coming out is just so... fucking redundant.

The bottomline is, as my mom said it, they have come to terms with my sexuality, di ba? I think that's the most important part. Relieved ang bayot.

Now moving on.

Two. My parents are concerned that I'd get infected?

Duh.

This one concerns me more than the former coz I can't really believe how ignorant my mom is on this matter (sorry, mommy). Ugh. Most Filipinos haven't really let go of their stereotypes about gay people, my mom included unfortunately.

Well, ok, I appreciate her concern. But there are more things to be concerned about, mom... like, if I get enough skin hydration every night or that my shoes match my scarf.

But AIDS? I don't think so.

For one, my mom raised us talking about sex relatively openly. We learned about contraception, so in effect protection as well, since we were at least eight years old perhaps.

Second, I do get regular HIV tests, espcially here in BKK where it's free.

Third, I've ALWAYS, ALWAYS practiced safe sex. Gosh, what can be more difficult than that? Wait, probably braiding hair is harder. But no, I can braid hair with my eyes closed. Ooops, and having sex too, in many cases at least.

And fourth, she has no idea that ten years of going to Catholic school made me a true Dalagang Filipina. The nuns would be so proud of me! I don't sleep with just anyone; I sleep with EVERYONE. Choz!

Hay ambot! Hay ewan! Hay inday!

I don't know how to explain to my mom that her fears are totally misplaced and in fact baseless. I wish she knows me more.

Anyway, I'm just amused. Yun lang.

Diving in Koh Tao

I finally got a PADI open water diving certification after a four-day trip to Koh Tao with Maggie Cheung and Neomie Lenoir.

So in effect the trip did not feel like a holiday at all coz we were studying every evening - things like diving equipments, respiration, breathing air at depth, compass navigation, and using the confusing, but nonetheless interesting, recreational diving plan (some bleeding matrix).

We did not even get wasted in the evenings coz we had pages and pages to review for an exam that we took every day. Besides, obviously it is very dangerous to dive when you have a hangover. So we were studying like crazy instead.

We used the services of Planet Scuba Koh Tao with our South African instructor, Ash, who ends virtually all his sentences with "cool". He is a cool guy indeed, and very supportive at that. One time, I dropped my mask to a depth of about 15 meters, and he had to dive down to pick it for me. I apologized profusely but he was fine with it.

We took a total of five dives, with depths ranging from about three meters, all the way down to roughly fifteen meters. We did get a glimpse of the majestic underwater world of Koh Tao, supposedly Thailand's diving mecca.

I was not quite impressed with the corals though, neither with the variety of fish and marine creatures. I remember Puerto Galera, where I went snorkeling once, had a more vibrant underwater environment. But for what it's worth, Koh Tao is a wonderful place to dive in, and some of its beaches are quite stunning.

Aside from scuba diving, on our free time we rode on motorbikes to explore some snorkeling areas on the southern tip of the island. Neomie Lenoir supposedly saw some small sharks (I forgot what they're called), but I did not join him all the way to the sharks coz I panicked and had to swim back to shore when I realized that the water was dark and deep (haler, what else can it be, aber?).

One afternoon, we also climed Two View, a section of one of Koh Tao's hills, that has a panoramic view of the eastern and western sides of the island. We had one majestic sunset the day we climbed the hill (actually, we took a 4WD truck and hiking was only like 1/8th of the trip).

So there, I'm wearing a delicious tan right now. I just love it to bits. Also, I have one small cut on my right knee when I scraped it on a coral on our first dive. A scar... I'll remember this diving trip though a scar. Sigh.

A Day Trip to Saphan Buri

Oh my gawd, I can't keep up with blogging about my week. For now, I'd leave out the parts about the visit of the wildly (in)famous - choz! - Lyka Bergen and Mama O. Gosh, I don't even know where to start on that.

But for today I will just post pictures of my trip to Saphan Buri to visit the Dragon Descendants Museum and Sanam Chuk Market (supposedly more than a hundred years old) - two hours away from Bangkok.

As usual, I'd let the pictures do the talking coz I'm still sooooo pagoda tragedy.

To my publique... I shall be away the entire week as I'd be observing the mating habits of the fish in the Gulf of Thailand. See you soon, bitches.