Word Shot # 1

Word Shot is a weekly exercise from TheWritersBag.com. Every Monday a random photo is posted, and you can write a sentence or a paragraph or a story describing the photo and enter it as a comment; you can also (constructively) criticize the comments of others, if that's your thing. It's a wicked fun way of getting your creativity moving, and I had lots of fun doing this first one. Oh yeah; the site's owner, Steve Osborne, will pick one winner at the end of the week. This week's prize is free copies of his e-manuals on writing. Man, I wanna win. XD

Steve kindly allowed me to post the photo and my story-comment here; here it is, for your enjoyment. :D



Sand. Sand everywhere. It covered the quarry beside the town in tall gray mounds and snaking rivulets, as if some god-child had been playing in his own cosmic sandbox with real buildings and a factory whose tall smoke stack spewed real, putrid smoke. Above dark clouds hovered sluggishly; the only sunlight that could filter through them was wan and gloomy, making the quarry look like a gray wasteland. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought that I was in the set of some apocalyptic movie instead of on the weedy hill at the outskirts of San Mateo, the town I grew up in.

My sister Lena stood mutely beside me. Her hand was clenched around my small fingers in an uncommonly tight grip; I could barely feel the softness of her palm. She was staring at a little brown box beyond a wall-like mound of sand. When I squinted at it I could dimly recognize the squat outline of Ma’s apartment building. Lena had hurried me out of bed and through the door while Ma was snoring loudly on the table, her half-empty glass of bourbon sitting quietly beside her head. I wanted to call out to her and say goodbye, but in my heart of hearts I knew better than to wake her up after she’d been drinking. Her screams and blows echoed in my mind as we stood in silence for several minutes on the hill facing the quarry. At that time I wanted to scream too, but no sound would form inside my throat.

When Lena said, “It’s time to go,” I nodded and followed her over the other side of the hill. Neither of us looked back as we made our way down the barren path.

Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko

Another (somewhat) bad translation from yours truly, this time requested by my bespren and bosom buddy, Aims. It's an old song, something our parents were listening to in their early twenties, I think. ^^ Hope you like it.


Kahit Maputi Na Ang Buhok Ko
lyrics by Rey Valera

Kung tayo ay matanda na
Sana'y 'di tayo magbago
Kailanman, nasaan ma'y
Ito ang pangarap ko

Makuha mo pa kayang ako'y hagkan at yakapin, hmm...
Hanggang pagtanda natin
Nagtatanong lang sa'yo ako pa kaya'y ibigin mo
Kung maputi na ang buhok ko

Pagdating ng araw ang 'yong buhok
Ay puputi na rin
Sabay tayong mangangarap
Ng nakaraan sa'tin

Ang nakalipas ay ibabalik natin, hmmm...
Ipapaalala ko sa'yo
Ang aking pangako na'ng pag-ibig ko'y lagi sa'yo
Kahit maputi na ang buhok ko


Even When My Hair Has Lost Its Color
translated by Tina

When we're old and gray
I hope we don't change
This is what I long for
Wherever I am, whatever the time of day

Could you bear to kiss me and hold me in your arms, hmmm...
Until we grow old
I'm just asking if you'll still love me
When my hair has lost its color

The time will come when your hair also loses its color
Let's dream together of good times past

We'll bring back the old days, hmmm...
I'll help you remember
The promise I made to love only you
Even when my hair has lost its color

Joh-pahy, kah-moose-tah kuh nahhh...

It's usually really amusing when an American tries to speak Tagalog. He tends to prolong the vowels or put the accent on the wrong syllables; for instance, he might say "Tag-uh-lohg" instead of Ta-ga-log, or "muh-boo-hey" instead of ma-bu-hay. Once he's familiar with the rhythm of the language his efforts are easier to understand, but the accent remains; he now says "Thi-gah-luhg" and "muh-boo-high." Still amusing, but improvements nonetheless.

Now, an American singing in Tagalog would be another matter altogether. You can imagine my amusement when one of my roommates showed me a Youtube video of this white guy from New Jersey singing covers of Pinoy rock bands. He calls his music jOePM, a pun on what an American guy is usually called in the Philippines, and the acronym for original Pinoy music. So far he's already sung songs by the Eraserheads, Parokya ni Edgar, Sugarfree, and Mayonnaise. His pronunciation is pretty good, albeit still accented (hence the title of this post); it looks like he's been practicing. I doubt that he understands what he's singing, though. ^^ At any rate, he seems to be a true fan of OPM, and apparently the Philippines in general - in his video of Jopay, there's a Philippine flag hanging from a table in the room. From the looks of it he either has Filipino relatives or Filipino friends, maybe both; he even visited somebody in Kalookan City and played for a bunch of kids while he was there. It's heartwarming to see his enthusiasm for Pinoy music; when he says, "Kah-moose-tah muh-nga rah-kees-tahng Pee-noy? (How are you, Pinoy rockers?)" I wanna reply, "Rakenrol!"

He accepts requests for OPM songs, although I'm not sure if he sings any non-Tagalog ones. Maybe I should request Francis M's Mga Kababayan Ko (My Countrymen), or Three Stars and a Sun; maybe he can rap too. :D

0% Interpersonal??

Your result for The 4-Variable IQ Test...

Mathematical

0% interpersonal, 25% visual, 30% verbal and 45% mathematical!

Brother-from-another-mother! Like mine, your highest scoring intelligence is Mathematical. You thrive on logic, numbers, things representing numbers, and sets of things that are sets of other things, with numbers nowhere in sight. You probably like the online comic called XKCD, and if you don't, check it out.

You probably knew you'd score "Mathematical" as you took the test, and mathy types are usually super-high scorers on this axis, and low on the others. Why? Because you (we) yearn for math.

Anyway, your specific scores follow. On any axis, a score above 25% means you use that kind of thinking more than average, and a score below 25% means you use it less. It says nothing about cognitive skills, just your interest.

Your brain is roughly:

0% Interpersonal

25%Visual

30%Verbal

45%Mathematical

Matching Summary: Each of us has different tastes. Still, I offer the following advice to the world.

1. Don't date someone if your interpersonal percentages differ by more than 20%.

2. Don't be friends with someone if your verbal percentages differ by more than 25%.

3. Don't have sex with someone if your math scores differ by over 40%. You might kill them.

Take The 4-Variable IQ Test at HelloQuizzy

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No, I wasn't expecting to come out Mathematical - I was fully expecting Verbal - but seriously. 0% Interpersonal? Am I that antisocial? XP

And the guy who made this test is right, I did like XKCD... Laugh-out-loud geekiness. It's awesome. XD

Man of the Hour

This title is just apt for Sir Quiwa. Maybe I should listen to the Pearl Jam song of the same title while I'm doing the first draft of the character sketch. These lines encapsulate everything I feel for him, especially now that he's about to retire soon:

And the road
The old man paved
The broken seams along the way
The rusted signs, left just for me
He was guiding me, love, his own way
Now the man of the hour is taking his final bow
As the curtain comes down
I feel that this is just g'bye for now*

I'd forgotten that we were only supposed to do a character sketch. A thousand words isn't much; that's just three pages of double-spaced paragraphs. I guess I confused my own desire to learn more about him with what we were required to do in a thousand words: present a vivid portrait of the chosen subject using facts and anecdotes. I thought I needed to know him inside out, to put a label on all of his ideas and motivations. I'd forgotten that an artist paints what she sees, and what she thinks she sees; she has no real knowledge about her subject, only what she has seen and heard and deduced on her own. I had thought that this was simply a limitation that I had to overcome. Unfortunately, it's the limitation that shapes perception; we cannot ever truly know one another as we know ourselves. When writing about another person, I must always write from the viewpoint of the outsider; in this case, the student in awe of the maestro.

I cannot adequately quantify the good that he has done me, as well as the other Computer Science (CS) majors past and present. Many of his lessons are exemplified in his conduct: he never misses a class, never turns away a student in need. His door is open to all who approach him, whether delinquent or star student. He recognizes his role as a shaper of minds and fulfills it with utmost seriousness. I don't think I've ever known anyone whose genuine concern and love of work equals his; maybe I never will. It saddens me to think that, a few years from now, future batches of CS students won't even know him. By the time they set foot in Engineering and the CS department's new building, one of the department's founding fathers would have already gone. The man of the hour is taking his final bow.

One of my teachers said that we, as his students, are Sir Quiwa's legacy. A teacher's influence spreads at an exponential rate: his students will go on to influence others – friends, family, coworkers, their own students for those who become teachers. One cannot underestimate the power of a teacher to change the course of his students' lives. The least we can do is to reward his efforts, either by excelling in our chosen fields, or taking the path that he took – the path of self-sacrifice, of endless patience and faith in human potential. His greatness should not, must not come to an end with us – we have been given the task of taking on the mantle he is about to relinquish.

Hopefully my character sketch will do him justice. My original goal had been to understand how he can command the respect of so many people, when he always stays in the background, never taking credit for everything he has done; my interviews and conversations with him have helped me answer this. My new goal, then, is to communicate to others those qualities that make him the man of the hour. I hope that my words, like the brush strokes of an artisan, will portray him with the vibrancy and warmth that endears him to everyone he meets. I truly hope so.

I'll be posting the final draft of my character sketch here, as well as the final drafts of the other essays I'll be writing for my Creative Writing class. Watch out for them ^^


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* the lyrics of Man of the Hour are copyrighted to whomever owns it ^^ they most certainly don't belong to me

The Bud

This is an entry for Scribbit's August Write-Away Contest :) It took me all of a couple of hours to write this in pencil in my notebook, I guess I was on a roll...all comments and criticisms are welcome, especially constructive ones :D Enjoy.


One time I decided to sit on one of the stone benches near the university's main library to clear my head. The padded straps of my backpack bit into my shoulders with urgency; the worn rubber soles of my shoes padded quickly over the grass that grew between two fatherly acacia trees, their boughs shading the bench I was rapidly approaching. With one smooth motion I slung my backpack off my shoulder and plopped thankfully into one of the U-shaped recesses on the bench. I unzipped my backpack, pulled out a bottle of bland apple-flavored tea, took a couple of long swigs and emitted a sonorous belch. Then, rather self-consciously, I turned to my left and saw her.

If I hadn't turned around I may not have noticed her at all. She had short, unkempt hair that stopped abruptly just below her ears; it looked as if it had been laid out on a block and shorn with a power saw. She kept her gaze fixed on some anonymous patch of weeds in the sunken field directly in front of us. Her head was bent slightly and her hair hung over half of her face, like a bead curtain. She seemed entirely oblivious to my stare, and for a while I was too. Behind the curtain of hair I could glimpse the profile of an exquisite apricot eye, a small Malay nose and full lips lying in a matter-of-fact line on her face. Her skin was the pale brown of parched earth. My mouth went dry, as if I had not downed half a 500mL bottle of diluted tea a few minutes before.

We sat in silence for the next half hour. She could have been an immensely lifelike statue carved by a mischievous sculptor if not for the rhythmic, almost invisible rise and fall of her shoulders and the occasional flutter of her hair from the breeze. Her close-fitting T-shirt was the nascent pink of a little flower that grows in the cracks of a cement sidewalk, her jeans the faded blue of many nameless journeys. As I sat there, lost in my own thoughts, I compared her to the many anonymous girls I passed by in the corridors of Engineering. She could have been any one of them, except for one thing: she lacked their vibrance and purpose. She sat here, moored in her own little universe, whereas those Engineering girls were laughing on the benches of their organizations' allotted hang-outs, or walking briskly toward the stairs right after a class. She stayed still while the rest of us flowed with time, living and loving. In my heart I pitied her, but I could think of nothing to say.

When I got up and left without a word I cursed myself for being so helpless. I threw the half-empty bottle into the nearest cement garbage receptacle with more force than I thought I possessed. She stayed in the back of my mind for the rest of the day, patiently waiting. That night I resolved to go back the next day and strike up a conversation.

She was already there when I arrived, sitting in the exact same place with the exact same pose. Only the color of her T-shirt was different - the soft green of new grass. Tentatively I sat down, easing my butt onto the cold red stone with too much care. Although I hadn't been to church in months I prayed fervently that I wouldn't fart. She ignored my nervousness with singular indifference; I could have been a dead leaf that had fallen from a nearby tree, for all my troubles. Nevertheless I plowed on. I inhaled deeply, closed my eyes, opened them again to gaze at the people playing frisbee in the sunken field, and began to talk.

I wasn't talking about anything in particular. I just said the first things that came into my head: flunking the midterms, cramming papers, getting drunk at the open-air watering hole my friends frequented. My stories were probably dull, the kind of things that happen to almost everybody on a regular basis. Excerpts from the archives of any of my friends' blogs, with different actors in each predetermined role. I considered myself a nobody in those stories, the nameless narrator who recorded the antics of others. Even so I had been there; each event was burned into my memory, and indication of my existence at that particular time. Perhaps it was this that I was trying to share with her. My life force, my vital energy. I scoured my reserves for anecdotes and insights until evening dimmed the surroundings and I realized that I had been silent for several minutes. The U-shaped recess beside me was empty, the red stone cold to my fingers.

I trudged back to my dormitory in a state of lightheaded weariness. I felt like I had run a 5-kilometer marathon with weights strapped onto my wrists and ankles. I sagged onto the thin foam mattress of my bed and slept after barely shrugging off my backpack. I dreamed of a solitary flower bud growing amidst the mossy stones set into the sidewalk in front of Engineering. There was a large gash in the palm of my hand. I crouched beside the little bud, letting the scarlet drops flow straight into the puckered mouth of petals. With each drop the bud grew fuller and more brilliant; its petals were opening ever so gradually. I knew that I had been crouching there for a long time - I knew my knees were ready to buckle - but I hung on stubbornly. I wanted to see the flower unfurl its scarlet petals, scarlet as the jagged lips that had torn my palm asunder.

I went back to the bench several times over the next few weeks, but she wasn't there any more. Sometimes I would sit in her spot, trying to locate the weeds she had been staring at on the day that I had met her. All I could see were lush green grasses that stretched on and on throughout the sunken field.

Once, while heading for the bench, I was surprised to see an unfamiliar girl sitting in her spot. At first I felt indignant, almost wanting to drive away the intruder. Upon closer inspection my heart began to palpitate wildly; I knew that lithe form, those dark locks. Her skin had grown rich and earthy; her clothes seemed fresh and lively, although she had not traded her T-shirts and jeans for anything else. With great trepidation I divested myself of my backpack and crept quietly into the seat next to hers. This time she turned and smiled the most radiant smile I had ever laid eyes on.

My mouth hung open, and I found myself mumbling an incoherent "Hi." She said nothing; her smile washed over me, and I basked in the glow of her presence. She leaned closer - so much closer - and soon I felt a pleasant, unknown wetness on my lips, sweet as the dew on silken petals.

No. 1 Fan

Right now I'm hung over this song by one of my friends from Java Boot Camp. He's got this wonderful, smooth voice, and he composes his own songs; he says he gets the tune in his head before the words. He used to sing in the middle of our programming exercises. Sometimes he'd whistle a tune and get us to guess what it was. He can whistle entire songs, right down to the little nuances in melody. Awesomeness. XD Well, as you can see I'm biased... I want to believe I'm his no. 1 fan, it's not like his songs are on the radio or anything (wouldn't it be cool if they were XP).

In case you didn't catch that link up there, here's another one. Oh yeah, this is still an incomplete version... He and his bandmates (yes, he has a band :D) are planning to revise it, since the version currently up doesn't have the beatbox accompaniment yet. And they're also planning to fix the lyrics... You might notice that the words are a bit...odd. ^^ Oh well. I have to wait a couple of weeks - until after his final exams at the end of August - before they can get back to working on the song. Until then I have his acoustic version to tide me over. :D