Kiss kiss

We got the free community newspaper in our mailbox last week and there was an ad about the upcoming St Kilda Festival. There wasn’t much information on the events during the festival so I just made a mental note of checking it out later online.

We went to St Kilda yesterday to have lunch at Tien Tien, a Vietnamese restaurant in Barkly Street. We tried the pandan chicken since hubby’s been craving for the Sukho Thai (Thai restaurant in the Philippines) version but the ones we got yesterday didn’t taste the same. We walked in and around Acland street after lunch and people watched. I then remembered that there’s the St Kilda festival coming up and made another mental note of checking it out later.

St Kilda’s most recognizable icon, Luna park’s entrance. Click here for more photos

Late last night I finally remembered and googled for the festival’s site. I browsed through the site and came across one of the events called Yooralla kiss for a cause. They are inviting couples to go to the event and kiss for at least 10 seconds in an attempt to snatch the Guinness world record for most couples kissing simultaneously from the Philippines! Whoa, I didn’t even know the Philippines currently hold the record!

One google search later, I found out that there was a Valentine’s day event held last year in Manila called Close-up Lovapalooza wherein 5,122 couples made their way to the Guinness records by locking lips for 10 seconds. The event was sponsored by the government and toothpaste maker, Close-Up and drew both conservative and not-so-conservative couples alike.

Which now makes me want to see Australia try and beat the record. Don’t know yet if we’d participate. If we did participate, wouldn’t that mean being unloyal to our home country? On the other hand, Australia’s our home now so would it be too bad if we join in the event to beat the record set by the Philippines? In any case, we plan to attend the event and see what happens.

For people who’d like to have some fun on the day and join Kiss for a cause, you could register online and pucker up on the day.

* To know more about current Pinoy world records, click here.

Nip/tuck

Just finished watching the finale of Nip/tuck. To those who’ve never heard of the show, it’s a drama about two plastic surgeons, Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh), who happen to be best friends since college and are now business partners. The story revolves around these two main characters and their personal lives as well as the interesting personalities they encounter through their work.

We initially watched the show out of curiousity, we’re big fans of Julian McMahon and would like to know if this new show is a better gig for him. We first noticed McMahon in Charmed as Alyssa Milano’s love interest, Cole Turner. As one of the lead stars of the now Golden Globe awardee for Best Television Series for Drama, I’d say he got a better deal indeed.

Anyway, as I was saying, the finale for the second season was aired today and I’m left wanting more. Which led me to think about what made the show click with me, as I once thought that a show about plastic surgeons is incredibly shallow. I had no illusions that it would regularly feature people who’d like to change their appearance for vanity’s sake. So what has changed?

Well, for one, the situations the protagonists get into were interesting and sometimes even hilarious. One recent episode shown was of a pretty Latina lady who’d like to go under the knife to be a copy of Jennifer Lopez. She’s under the impression that once she looks like J.Lo, stardom would automatically follow. How would they convince her that life doesn’t work out that way and that being a copy of J.Lo just makes her that, a cheap copy?

Then there’s the steady memorable women – wife Julia McNamara, gay anesthesiologist Liz Winters, psycho model Kimber Henry, sex addict Gina Russo, cancer victim Megan O’Hara, female circumcision sufferer Manya Mabika, Saks applicant Bobbi Broderick, disfigured model Naomi Gaines, stigmatist Agatha Ripp, conjoined twins Rose and Raven Rosenberg, blind Natasha Charles and the fascinating Ava Moore (played by Famke Jannsen). As you can see, women have a big role in the show perhaps because a lot of plastic surgery patients are women.

Although all of these women are flawed and mostly misguided, they come across as being strong in their own way. They have their own problems and they may not choose the right thing but somehow you find something in them to love and admire anyway. Take Kimber for example, she has given everything for her love for Dr. Troy and has gotten into one bad situation to the next. And yet she’s still there, still loves Christian but now realises that maybe she’ll never have him. She’s currently trying to set up a business on her own. Sure she’s producing porn movies but at least she’s not crying in some corner still pining hopelessly for Christian. Maybe she’s moving on in her own way and maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for her yet.

Some people say that the show lacks moral center because it may glorify vanity, drugs and sex. Maybe so, but it also teaches us that there’s redemption for everyone, that changing your appearance may make you look attractive but it won’t give you happiness, that everything you do have consequences and you’ll have to face them sooner or later. Watching the characters in the show does not make me want to emulate them, instead I live vicariously through them. I watch them do the dangerous things they do and see that none of them are happy despite plastic surgery, money and fame. But then again maybe they’ll finally find salvation next season. Here’s to hoping they do…

Play with Words

Midst Raquel was scrivening her account, she catechized me for a surrogate word for ‘calefaction’ ergo I grubbed for one on a concordance and I acquired a plethora of highfalutin interchangeable words for it. As a manifestation of substantiation, I shall impute a further aberrant word from the wordbook to supplant sundry words from this thesis. The metamorphosed treatise may not be coherent in the expiration except congenerous to what I conveyed, it is a substantiation.

Original Text:

While Raquel was writing her blog, she asked me for another word for ‘heat’ so I searched for one on a thesaurus and I found a lot of contrived synonyms for it. As a sort of experiment, I will select a more uncommon word from the thesaurus to replace some of the words from this text. The converted text may not make sense in the end but like I said, it is an experiment.

Langaw country

Wow, it’s hot! Summer is really here with the temperature reaching 35 degrees Celcius today. And that’s just a prelude for an even hotter day tomorrow which is forecast to reach 37. Phew!

I don’t really mind the dry heat but I do detest the flies that come out during this season. For those who don’t know, Australia is home to a lot of flies who’re mostly attracted to people. Unlike the flies in the Philippines that would only bug you whenever you have food, the flies in Australia seem to have a peculiar interest in being mindless satellites to people going about their business.

I remember a friend from Manila who once came here on business during summer. He mentioned that the minute he stepped out of his hotel, he noticed a fly following him around the city for several blocks. He was puzzled as he just had a shower and contrary to what you may believe, these flies don’t care whether you smell of soap or sweat. I just had to explain to the poor guy that it’s not him, it’s just the nature of the flies here to do that.

It wouldn’t be too bad if these flies just hover above your head or land on your back for a free ride. That wouldn’t be too bad at all. But these flies have other ideas, they like to hover in and around your face, threatening to land on your lips, nose, ears or worse, your eyes. You could try to wave them off (known as an Australian salute) and they’d momentarily fly away, only to come back with a vengence. Next time they may even come back with their mates! Careful on leaving your mouth open or sucking in air at an inopportune time or you’ll suddenly have an extra dose of protein shooting through your system. Nasty.

Story Boarding Class

This afternoon, I signed up for a Story Boarding for Animations class at the CAE near work in the city. It’s a weekly two-hour six-session class starting on the 23rd of February.

According to the Class Ticket/Tax Invoice I was handed after enrolling, I need to bring to class the following: A3 cartridge paper, 3B lead pencil, watercolour paints (didn’t specify if tubes or not), A3 watercolour paper pad, brushes (didn’t say which brushes) and a Video8 tape cassette (huh?).

When I first thought about enrolling for this class, I was thinking that story boarding must just be similar to comicbook drawing without the dialogue balloons. I got that idea watching story boards of animation and movies from DVDs with Special Features that show them. I didn’t realise that it may be more complicated than planning out scenes and drawing them.

After seeing that I need to bring in watercolouring materials, I realised that I was in for more than just doodling sequential art 4×3 proportioned boxes. And of course there is the Video8 tape requirement that I have totally no clue as to what it’s going to be used for.

Still, I’m pretty excited to start. One of the motivations I have for joining this class was that I was hoping to meet people in this class I can be friends with. Hopefully, they’d be people who’d be at around my age group and interested in cartooning, movies, anime/animation, geekiness, computer games or all of the above. I’ll just have to wait and see.

When I was in Canberra, I joined a short art class too for the same reason I guess. But it was a charcoal art class which is more traditional art than cartooning (which I’m more comfortable with). The problem with that is that my classmates were generally not of the same age group as I am and they do not share the same interests I do.

Of course they are at least interested in art (that’s why they were there after all) but I realise now that I’m really more into cartooning/comicbook drawing even though I could probably carry on doing more traditional art.

So when I decided that I want to take another form of art class, I consciously looked for an art class that is more tied in to cartooning. I’m hoping that I’d be more at ease with the story boarding class and that I get to know people there that I can probably be friends with.

Also, since I’ve read a lot about cartooning and drawing already from books, I hope that this class will have something new to teach me considering the $199 price tag. Lastly, since I’m going to continue drawing my webcomic now, I’m hoping that I learn stuff from the class that I can apply to comicbook making. We’ll see.

It’s Not a Japanese Nadine

I’ve posted a while back that I may have found somebody who drew a character that looked like Nadine. But then Xellos informed me that the character that looked like Nadine in that shot is actually a character called Saber in an H-Game called Fate/Stay Night (see the character on the right). Here is an unofficial Fate/Stay Night Game Homepage. Unfortunately I cannot link the official site (in Japanese) because it contains rude pictures that may cause me to violate some rules on my host.

Click on the character to see more pics from the Fate/Stay Night game. And also click here for a fanart of the same character.

Wow. Seems like I made a fool of myself in the older post as this character seems to be popular among Japanese or people who follow Japanese trends. It’s just uncanny how the character designs are similar.

I wonder when this character was created because I fear that people will think that it was I who copied this character’s design when in fact I’ve never heard of this Saber character till now. I wonder.

What’s that in our mailbox?

When I opened our post box yesterday, we got several bills, pangarap pages and what’s that small piece of paper? I reached in and fished it out. Ohhh… what’s this? “Get fit and earn money” was the first line that caught my eye. Hmmm… interesting. Maybe I could do my daily stroll, get fit and earn extra cash in the process? A hit- 3-birds-with-one-stone sort of deal? But wait, that sounded like it’s too good to be true so what’s the catch?

I read on and I just had to smile. So this is how they recruit people who stuff our post boxes with the pangarap pages. Officially, they’re called Leaflet distributor(Walker), and not spammers as I call them.

Anyway, here’s the ad (with some of the details blocked out). For those who may be interested, there’s still enough information in it for you to be able to contact them.

Daily Stroll

Recently, in an effort to lose some weight, Raquel and I decided to start going out on evening strolls after dinner.

The first night, we decided to walk just around the block. We noticed this park nearby when we drive home from the mall on weekends so we thought have ourselves a look-see. That’s the day of the ambush interview incident.

The following day, we walked along Chapel Street to the Jam Factory (which is just another shopping centre). We actually took some snapshots of the street and some weird stuff along the way but unfortunately we accidentally deleted those photos earlier. Gaaaah! I’ll just take some more photos next time we walk along Chapel Street.

Although the walk from here to the Jam Factory is about 45 minutes, it was worth it because my favourite shop is there: Borders bookstore. They close late and they have a wide variety of books including graphic novels and manga! I just go there to catch up on my reading really.

So anyway, back to the strolling, yesterday we decided to walk nearby yet again this time along Alma Street (or is it Road?) and we happen upon this nice tranquil park. At first we didn’t know what it was called but after we’ve circled the park looking for the sign with the park’s name on it, we finally saw that it was called “Alma Park” as we were leaving. Of course!

Along Alma Park. Click here to see more photos.

The walk in the park was very relaxing and serene. It reminded me a lot of Canberra and I cannot believe that I miss this kind of thing about Canberra. I guess that place really grew on me.

I wanted to take pictures of the park but unfortunately we didn’t have our camera at the time. So today when we went for our evening stroll, we returned to the park but with a camera this time and took some pictures.

Included in the photos in the album above are four pictures we took while we were in Footscray earlier. The reason we went there was because that’s where Filipino stores are (that we know of). So while there we bought foodstuff I missed from home like the instant La Paz Batchoy noodles (think instant ramen), Flattop Chocolates, Yema (like fudge but with jackfruit), Lady’s Choice Chicken Spread, Jack & Jill’s Chippy and V-Cuts (junk food) and ingredients for Pancit Palabok. Yes. Palabok.

Also included was the photo of the “Beware of Handbags” sign Raquel saw there before.

Congratulations Kuya Kenneth!

I just received word from my cousin, Kuya Kenneth, who started as a programmer working for a prestigious US firm since 1996 (or was it 1997?) was just promoted to Vice President! And I just like to publicly say…

Congratulations, Kuya Kenneth!

Like I said before, you certainly earned and deserved it, I’m sure. Now, if only I was home for the “blow-out.”

While I’m talking about this cousin of mine, I might as well tell the rest of you something about him and how he was a big influence on me. Ever since we were young, I’ve always looked up to him as an older brother I don’t have. I valued, respected and trusted his advice in most matters. I’ve always thought of him as somebody to emulate. I’ve always wanted to be like him.

Growing up, Kuya Kenn and his brother Kaypee (which is long for KP kinda like Geejay is long for GJ but he prefers the name Patrick now) drew comicbooks on ruled notebooks. The comics were about superheroes, sports and war. When I first read one of his comics, I thought, “hey, I can also make one of these!”

So me and my brother started drawing comics of our own. A comic about a superhero and another about a group of transforming robots.

Since we four have our own superhero comic creations, we decide that there could be crossovers in continuity and together they’d be called the “Super Pauso Gang” which is kinda like the Super Friends or the Justice League of America, if you like. I know it sounds cheesy now but back then we didn’t know any better. Anyway, Kuya Kenn was the one who would write and draw the Super Pauso Gang comics. We’d just sit back and read it once he’s done. Oddly enough, he always seemed to know exactly how I wanted my character to act and so it’s as if I wrote the parts for my character. I loved it.

But then we’ve outgrown the Super Pauso Gang but not the transforming robot comics. Again, Kuya Kenn was in charge of drawing the comic books where the transforming robot good guys of each of the four of us join forces to fight their combined evil counterparts.

So you see, if it weren’t for him (and I guess, Kaypee), I probably would never have even drawn my webcomic Lovarian Adventures.

The next thing he introduced to us is this odd thing called Role-playing Games. Apparently he had played some Dungeons & Dragons before but he basically got the gist of how the game was played. So without rule books and dice, we played a Role-playing Game which we named after the setting he created called Tark-Mar with him as the Game Master (sort of like the writer/director of a movie).

We’d meet at their house in Muntinlupa every week without fail just to play Tark-Mar. I was so enthralled with playing it that sometimes I imagine I was the character I was playing: the mightiest sorcerer in Tark-Mar. Well, anyway, that’s when I started to really get into fantasy.

Later on though, I would learn about the actual Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) game and introduce it to the cousins with me as the Dungeon Master (Game Master). The game was set in a place called in an imaginary place called Lovaria. Note that I now know that there is an actual place called Lovaria in the real world but at the time I thought I’d invented a place with a unique name.

When I was Dungeon Master of our D&D campaigns, I started to do research about everything to make the setting seem more real. I became very interested in history (mostly ancient, medieval and reneissance), religion (mostly about the pre-modern Roman Catholic Church) and the occult (unfortunately).

If it weren’t for Kuya Kenn introducing Tark-Mar to us so many years ago, I probably don’t know as much about history of both the world and the church which I still belong.

I guess the final big influence he had on me was that I took the same major in University he did..

Now, we’re all grown up and went our own ways. We don’t play anymore and we don’t collaborate on comics anymore. I sometimes feel nostalgic and miss all the fun we had during our childhood. Those days are long gone but at least there still remains the influence he had on my life.

Pauso in Tagalog means Invented. But depending on context, it could probably mean “nonsense” too.

Girls only urinals?

Imagine yourself enjoying a public event when you feel the call of nature. Although it would only take a few minutes to go to the loo, you decide that you’ll wait for a break in the show. However, when that break does happen, you realize that everybody had the same idea and now there’s a long queue outside the toilet just when you’re in the brink of delirium. What’s a girl to do?

Well, some women brave it and use the cubicles inside the men’s toilet. You have to do what you have to do…

Which leads to the question, why do women take so long to do their business in the toilet anyway? Why can’t we be more like men who take just a few minutes? Zip down, pee, zip up, wash and then go?

Well soon the women in Melbourne could. With the planned introduction of the Shee Pees (as they’re known in Europe) this year, women could use a disposable paper funnel that’s supposed to be leak proof. It’s supposed to be more hygienic than traditional toilets as it won’t require women to sit on suspect toilet seats.

After reading that article yesterday, I thought it would never catch on. I mean, come on, peeing while standing? You’ve got to be kidding me. What made me rethink my position is the result of a text poll in MX (free daily newspaper in train stations, think Libre in the Philippines). Asked if it is right for women to pee standing up, 49% of the responders said Yes and 51% said No.

As you can see from these results, it was a close vote. So did I change my mind about it? Well, no. I may try it if I’m desperate but would rather not do my business in public. Some things are just best kept behind closed doors.