The Script in Manila

Am I better off dead? Am I better off the quitter?
      Last night was the most awaited The Script Concert in Manila. My Yakal friends have been waiting for this concert for months and bought our tickets ahead of time. We just got Gen Ad tickets, thinking that they're not Maroon 5 that we have to be so close as to I have to see the every contours of Adam Levine's abs.

      To start of the day, Charu, Ate Lea, Ash and I had a late lunch in Bigoli Trinoma before heading off to Araneta Coliseum for the concert. After lunch, we proceeded to searching for a nice polo for Charu's brother as a grad gift. However, our search was unfruitful is there such a word. We then left for the concert at a little over 5PM, since Cambels said that the line was getting long already.
      When we arrived at Araneta, the line was too long we couldn't even see the gate. We ended up stuck between this couple wherein the guy looked like his gay and the girl looked like a minor and then this mother and daughter where the mom looked so horrified of the couple in front. LOL When we got in, the huge mound of people got separated into 3 smaller groups going in separate gates so we still ended up sitting in the first row of gen ad. Lucky us!

me, ash, ate lea, charu
      The concert started around 8:30PM and ended past 10PM. It was my first Araneta concert ever and I think it was the first time in my entire that there was literally a ringing in my ear. The past concerts I've watched were in SM MOA so the fans' shrieks and everything get diffused to the air and the rest of the world. But this time, Araneta is a closed space so our shouts and shrieks just stay inside and reverberate coming back to our ears. HAHAHA It was a good ringing though. :)

      I would want to elaborate on the songs and the events of the concert, but I still can't put them into words. All I can say is that I'm so happy we went to that concert. Though our barkada wasn't complete and Nanay, meaning Ate Edge was there through phone patch, it was still one of the best nights I've had with my single ladies. :D So happy.

past-due rant

      I have been patient. I did my job. I did more than what my job description stated. I did everything I could to make things work and let you have the spotlight. I didn't take credit for anything though I know I should've long long ago thinking it's just part of the job just let it go. But man, do you really push my buttons.
      You have been the most irresponsible, worthless, common senseless, idiotic, freeloader, pain-in-the-ass person I know. And you call yourself a leader? What kind of leadership did you do this past year? Closing remarks? Taking credit for our work? my work? Showing up when people can see you, pretending you've been working your ass off along with us? Galavanting with your stupid, greasy, non-combing looking boyfriend?!
      My friends have been telling me to stand up and say something to put you in your place. I've been taking advantage of my friends' kindness asking them for their help to make sure things go the way they are. I figured I'm too busy doing everybody else's job to find the time to cut your stupid throat with my words. That would have been time well spent, seeing you curl down on the floor drowning with shame.
      Up to the last minute, I didn't want to say anything. After all, I survived a whole year doing what I do. But this, now, this is the last straw. After days of discussion, conversation and decision. You're telling me this now?!? That I'm not gonna get my way?!? No, no, no. I'm not letting you off the hook this time. You cannot just wave your stupid title on our faces, my face and just get your way done... or not get my way done just because of some stupid technicality you brought up a day too late. A DAY. After all the bullshit you've put us through, you're telling me this now!?! What kind of idiotic stupid bullcrap irresponsible asshole mind do you have? Or do you even have one, 'coz you sure are acting like you don't have one.
      You're not gonna get through me this time. This is the last straw and you're not gonna get your way not even if I roll up and die right now. 'Coz if that's gonna happen, I'll make sure you go first.

Food Trippings 04-09-2011

      School breaks are probably the busiest days in our house. All of us kids are at home and my mom can't get enough of us roaming around the house. Everytime we're home, we ask our parents to buy/cook us food that we don't get to eat when we're away and my parents oblige happily. Especially to me, since I'm the one who is always away and they feel like I don't eat well in U.P.
      Well anyway, a couple of days ago, my siblings and I went to Subic with our mom for grocery shopping. My Kuya and I picked up some microwavable mac & cheese, taco shells, taco mix and cheese to try out when we get home. And today we had the chance to try it. :) I bought some ground beef, white onions and cabbage to complete the recipe. Sauteed the beef with the onionsand taco mix, made salsa, grated the cheese, heated the shells and WHOLA! Instant home-made tacos for merienda. :D

taco assembly line
      The thing is, merienda is kind of a big deal in our family. It's like one other official meal. People could probably tell if they see our bodies. Haha Today our relatives came over for merienda and good thing they liked it else my Kuya and I were gonna be the only one to finish all that food. Three families ended up having the tacos for merienda.

my own taco with no gulay. hehe
      After a couple of hours, my mom and I realized we didn't have anything for dinner so we started thinking of food, 'coz last night we had Jollibee for dinner. We then remembered the Soy Chicken we had a week ago in SM Megamall at Kowloon that we really liked. And so I looked up the recipe on the net and bought the necessary ingredients. We already had half of the ingredients at home, so I just bought chicken, scallions and star anise.
      As soon as I got home from, my dad and I started preparing our own Soy Chicken following the recipe from Food.com. We kinda strayed away from some of the stuff like replacing the five-spice powder with ground black pepper, using 4 chicken thighs instead of a whole and ignoring the sesame seeds completely.

our very own Soy Chicken... yum!
      My dad was kind of skeptical about it, saying that it's just chicken dipped in soy sauce but it turned out really good even though we weren't able to thicken the sauce as much. Overall, I'd say our little experiment was a success! :D Hehe

      Tomorrow, we're gonna try the mac and cheese. If not, some spaghetti doesn't sound so bad on a Sunday afternoon. :D

My life's curse.

      To tell you the truth, although I always whine about so many little stuff, I actually am pretty happy about my life. I got awesome friends, great family and my parents give me pretty much everything I want and need. If there's one thing I would really complain about is my asthma.
      Asthma runs in both sides of both sides of my family. My Lola from my dad's mom's side died of asthma. My mom's dad had asthma and so does his sister. My cousins from both mom and dad side have asthma. And so on and so forth.. I still remember the "family nebulizer" that goes back and forth from house to house everytime one of us kids had asthma. lol
      But then, unlike my cousins and my Kuya who outgrew their asthma, I seem to be the only one who gets an asthma attack almost regularly. I first had to take steroids for my asthma when I was in Kinder II, then again when I was in Grade 3. At some point, I wasn't allowed to eat chocolates for they irritate my throat, therefore asthma. Two years ago, my cousins and I went swimming in Pansol, Laguna. In the middle of everything, I had this uber severe attack I had to take my inhaler twice or thrice before my breathing eased down. My cousins had a huge scare and only when I started drinking tequila and my breathing regulated that we kind of settled down.
    And now, my inhaler Seretide is steroids induced. This inhaler is usually sufficient to subdue my attacks. But then, there are times when I really cannot wait for the inhaler to take its effect and literally cannot breathe from coughing, so I resort to my ever reliable nebulizer.

      Just like now, my inhaler have run out and the Baygon stench in my room from earlier has not gone away yet. I couldn't breathe and my Kuya and I ended up going to the hospital to buy meds. Thank God for my ever so dependable nebulizer, now I have my life support.

      The last time I had an asthma attack before today, I ended up missing a whole week of class. I almost missed the LIS Congress. And that I guess is my only perpetual complain in life. I could've been allergic to strawberries or kiwi or something. But no, I have to have asthma for the entire span of my life.

Thoughts on China Drug Mule Execution

      Before you proceed, please don't judge me for my opinions. They're mine and I'm not imposing it on anyone. I will not however apologize for them.

      This is probably my first post that concerns politics or current events whatsoever. But OMG I cannot take it anymore. This issue should've been done weeks ago, but it still bugs me everytime I see something related to it. My friend Jane posted on twitter a blog discussing the unethical treatment of the media regarding the China Drug Mule Execution. This blog cited a newspaper article written by the awesome Dean of the UP College of Law, Raul Pangalangan. Here follows his article
Drug mules: Even in grief, we are confused

    Even our unrequited prayers for the three executed Filipinos show that we fundamentally misunderstand the problem that we face. We were half-hearted in objecting to the death penalty. We called the drug mules OFWs when in fact they were not. We lump them together with Flor Contemplacion and Sarah Balabagan, and fail to discern the differences in their cases, or ask if we could have timely asked the Chinese courts to mitigate the penalty. Protest banners call for “Justice for Credo, Villanueva and Batain.” I’m sure the Chinese will say, “Well, that’s exactly what we gave them!”, and argumentatively our only rejoinder will be to impose our own standards of justice upon the Middle Kingdom.
    Of course we must grieve that three Filipinos, forced by poverty to serve as drug mules, have been executed in a foreign land. As a nation, we must ensure that our government reaches out to vulnerable Filipinos on trial before foreign courts and ensure that they have proper legal assistance. As a people, we must look inward as well, and ask ourselves why millions of our countrymen sacrifice so much just to give their families a decent life, while top dogs in government corporations reward themselves obscene sums and top generals leave office with million-peso “pabaons.” All these, while a passive nation led by its ombudsman looks the other way.
    In sum, we empathized viscerally but maybe our brains lagged behind our hearts. We need to reconcile our official position which is to plead for mercy, with our public rhetoric which is that of moral outrage. To start with, we should have been outraged at the death penalty itself. We were not, because deep down within the Filipino heart, we actually approve of it in the first place. Look at the historical record. We abolished capital punishment in the 1987 Constitution “unless, for compelling reasons involving heinous crimes, the Congress hereafter [restores] it.” And in 1993, restore it Congress did, as a facile response to the rise of kidnap for ransom gangs. In April 2001, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo effectively suspended the death penalty by automatically commuting all sentences. By 2003, Arroyo lifted the de facto moratorium. In early 2004, Pope John Paul II asked us to stop all executions, and Arroyo obliged. In June 2006, on the eve of Arroyo’s visit to the Vatican, she signed RA 9346 abolishing the death penalty once again. There have since been periodic attempts to restore the death penalty.
    For us, the death penalty debate has been mere political football, bereft of any deeply held moral consensus. And for the current football season, the death penalty argument would not have swayed the Chinese, who apparently have the highest rate of executions worldwide and, even worse, are instinctively resistant to international pressure. But handled well, we could have capitalized on the global consensus against the death penalty, the same consensus that we mobilized to save the life of Sarah Balabagan, the Filipina in the United Arab Emirates who stabbed and killed her employer who was raping her.
  Two, there is a stark difference between the cases of Contemplacion and Balabagan vis-à-vis the drug mules in China. For Contemplacion, accused of murder, we argued that she made her first confession without the benefit of counsel. For Sarah, a rape victim, we argued self-defense. In none of our pleas to China do we even plead the innocence of the convicted Filipinos. For the Xiamen and Shenzhen executions, the best we could muster is to fix the blame on the drug traffickers fronting as job recruiters, because the actual drug carriers were apparently complicit in the crime.
  Three, I sense an initial ambivalence by our government on the issue of drug mules on trial abroad. Did we earlier give them legal aid during their trial? Even after conviction, was there any room for the judges to mitigate the penalty? Was there any room for executive clemency for the executive branch to pardon or reduce the penalty? The one-month stay of execution gained by Vice President Jejomar Binay was a feat, because China is itself building up its “rule of law” institutions, and appeals from the political branches of the Philippines addressed to China’s judicial agencies were an uphill battle to start with. In other words, the execution of convicted drug traffickers is what we call “national treatment,” i.e., how China treats its own citizens similarly situated, and what we were asking for was special treatment for our nationals.
    Fourth, I am troubled by protest banners that call for “Justice for OFWs on death row.” Genuine OFWs must object to being lumped together with the drug mules. For certain they have similarities: the pressures of economic insecurity, their vulnerability in an alien land, the spirit of self-sacrifice for spouses, children and parents. But the similarities end the moment the drug mules carry contraband on their persons and enter the Naia. By putting them all in one basket, we expose bona fide OFWs to increased monitoring (paid for by increased regulatory fees) for crimes not of their own making, and to increased harassment abroad by hostile and predatory airport officials.
    Moreover, we confuse justice with mercy, or to be more precise, the Philippine brand with the Chinese brand of justice. We were surprised that in the Chinese Supreme Court, decisions can be final. We have been so used to eternal flip-flopping, the Filipino notion that due process of law means endless process. We also mistakenly thought that an unabashed plea for mercy unadorned by legal argument would suffice, and that human drama would trump legal doctrine as handily in China as it does in the Philippines.


***
      The media kept on insisting that we Filipinos should sympathize with the 3 executed drug mules. And I get that they were Filipinos and they died. But why do we have to sympathize?!? They were criminals. More than anything, what this issue brought to the Filipino Nation was shame and disgrace.
ONE Why did they do it? Because they couldn't find a decent job in the Philippines to provide for their families. The Philippine Government could not provide decent jobs for its countrymen enough to have them stray away from crimes.
TWO They were not OFWs. Just like Dean Pangalangan said, it's a shame that they were likened to OFWs who work their asses off to provide for their families in the Philippines in a legal way. My brother will soon be leaving for Kuwait to work as a nurse and if I hear anyone say that those drugs mules were OFWs like my brother, I will probably punch him in the face or something. It's a disgrace to OFWs... or any Filipino for that matter who benefit from the Hard work of OFWs around the world.
THREE Why did this issue only come up when they were already sentenced to death? This issue should've been dealt with by the Philippine Government during the trial palang. If the government / media were going to get involved in this, they should've been there from the start. When they were arrested and presented to the court. Our government should have given them aid at every step of the way.
FOUR The government or anyone for that matter can ask China to bend their rules for them. A country's rules or any rules apply to everyone. No one has the right to make the rules work for them no matter what situation they are in. If you think about it, what if China repeals their decision on those 3 Filipinos? What would the rest of their country think of their government? How would the other Chinese people in death row think? Yes, we can plead but we cannot condemn China for not changing their mind.
FIVE This whole issue just gave the rest of the world a first row seat view of how skewe our justice system is. For the Filipino people to expect that the convicted drug mules can actually be "SAVED" from execution just shows how we belittle the whole justice system. Did we expect that China will bend their rules after VP Binay talks to them? Or did we expect that we can bribe our way through anything?
SIX The husband of one of the drug mules asked the Philippine Government to look after the education of their children. OMG. Your wife was a convicted criminal and you ask your country to look after your kids? Isn't it your responsibility to provide for your family? What are you doing in your life? And if Pres. Noynoy's administration sends those kids to school, he might as well send all those Muntinlupa prisoners' kids to school.
SEVEN The worst of all is how the media feasted on this issue like it was some celebrity divorce or something. First of all, they were convicted criminals and not some hardworking OFW who were abused. They are not alike and so we should not feel the same way towards them. They could have given the family some respect and privacy as they grieved for their loved ones. If I were one of the children of one of the drug mules, I could have punched the reporters who asked me how I felt about losing a parent. Of course I'm gonna feel sad. How else are they supposed to feel? All this uproar and misdirected sympathy is the media's fault. We cannot expect other countries to have the same faulty system as ours. Not because they hold on to their laws and principles does not give us the right to condone them. Not because we're the ones losing a fellow countrymen does it mean that we're the "dehado" side.

      Yes it is sad that they had to die. And that their lives were so miserable they were driven to illegal means just to provide for their families. But just like our parents used to say when were younger and get scolded when we did something wrong: "Kung ayaw mong mapalo, wag kang salbahe."

Home.♥

my uber cozy, green, softly lighted, awesome room
      So my semester is finally over. I've submitted all my papers and am just waiting for my grades to come up. I've been home the past 3 days and all I've done is sleep and eat and face the computer while watching TV. Check out my daily schedule. :)
10:00AM   Wake up and turn on laptop
10:10AM   Breakfast with Prada
11:00AM   Watch TV in Kuya's room
12:00NN   Lunch with family and gang up on baby brother
01:00PM   Watch TV or some DVD with my Tatay
03:00PM   Internet and merienda with Mom
04:00PM   Kwento with cousin/s
07:30PM   Dinner
08:30PM   Internet and TV
11:00PM   Lie down, read a book and sleep ♥
      So you see, I'm bound to gain all the weight that I can. My parents have this "idea" that when I'm in school, I don't eat properly so when I come home, they buy and cook stuff that I love to make up for the days that I "don't" eat well. And given the two-week break I get before summer classes start, I'm bound to gain all the weight in the world. LOL
      Plus, the only exercise I think I'm gonna get is swimming. But then, everytime our family goes swimmming, we end up bringing a lot of food and my cousins and I just eat the whole day non-stop. Hahaha Good luck to me!

It's Swatch Time

      I've always been a Swatch kid. My first wrist watch was a blue and green Flik Flak from the States. And then I had this hot pink and neon green Baby-G looking Swatch in grade school. My Kuya had a similar one with blue dial and translucent strap. My family are watch people... or whatever you call people who like watches. LOL We don't necessarily collect watches, but we don't buy watches for nothing. We have high standards for watches. My Dad has this Bulova watch that he's had as long as I can remember. And my Mom has the classic round Gucci watch with the changeable rings and this other Gucci watch. Plus, my parents have this matching pair of Longines watches my Mom bought.
      So my point is, we value our watches. yuck, parang insurance When I was a kid, I always thought that when I grow up, my Mom's gonna hand me over her classic Gucci. But then, as any other thing, her watch's latch/lock came loose through time too the point that it's too loose it falls off from her wrist. So goodbye dream watch for me.
      And then last December, my Mom and I went shopping and she asked me if I wanted to buy a new watch for myself since my Guess watch that I've been using has been with me for years already. And I was like, sure why not? But then for some odd reason when we were actually looking at stores already, I wasn't in the mood anymore. And I told her that maybe we should just by next time. may sakit yata ako nun
      So guess what... today is "next time". :D:D:D I mentioned in my previous post about my Mom asking me to go to SM Megamall to check out the watches on sale. So the thing is, when we came back today, the ones I wanted weren't there anymore. They got sold already. And then I was gonna settle for the gold version of the one I originally wanted from Guess and then my Mom was like, "Gusto mo magtingin pa tayo sa Swatch? Yung tiningnan mo kahapon." And who am I to say no?

      We ended up buying this Swatch from the 2011 Collection which makes me feel like a kid again, back to my beloved old watch brand.♥ Plus, we got it for its regular price so I'm like really thankful to my Mom and her conspiring love for me. Hahaha Before we parted our ways, her going to Bataan, me going back to UP, she told me tell my Dad and Kuya that the watch costs like 50% of its real price lang in case they ask daw. LOLz.

      I was gonna ask her to buy me clothes din sana from Forever 21 but I decided otherwise, since I was kinda feeling guilty that she bought me this watch already without any occassion or anything special.. Hahaha Just that I'm her child. Oh well, there will always be next time. ♥