tondo-er in new york.

2 days in new york.  3 more days to go.

in the concrete jungle where dreams are made of

                                                                                                                                                                   

yes, aunt may.

i'm in new york city right now.

i'm in a hotel on 43rd street.  a few steps down the road and i will be in the middle of times square where all the action is.

new york is like makati multiplied by 100.  they said it right that this city is the melting pot of the earth's cultures. thousands walk along the busy streets every minute of the day - and i mean every minute.  you can go out at 3:45 in the morning and it's like a party.  the shops fight for your attention with colorful graphics that they have outside. for instance, at the forever 21 shop along times square there's a huge screen where you can look at your own reflection a couple of hundred feet away from you.  tourists scream when they see themselves in that giant electronic billboard.  really, they do.  imagine yourself being in the biggest roller coaster ever made and you are about to take the first big drop.  that's how they scream when they see themselves in there. they scream like there's no tomorrow.

i wonder why they do that.

tourists. you can identify them with the look of wonder in their faces. one way you can differentiate new yorkers from tourists is that new yorkers ignore stop signs and cross the streets where there are no pedestrian lanes. they never look at anything - or anyone. tourists, on the other hand, are scared to break the rules.  of course, they also have cameras in their hands. i ask myself if i look like these people.  my friend who invited me over keeps asking me if i am having fun. don't i have that excited look? what he sees is the face of a guy having the time of his life. i am having fun. honest.

then there are people in super hero costumes waiting for anybody to take a photo beside them for some change. michael jackson is alive and kicking in here.  see him dancing the moonwalk and take a picture beside him if you have a few extra dollars in your pocket.

vendors scatter the sidewalks selling replica hand bags, screenplays and paintings.  if you want to see how new york looks like from the top, then be ready to shell out 25 bucks from any of the city's famous skyscrapers. a lot of people here make good money from visitors. if a street seller can get a dollar from each one of them tourists, he'd be a few hundred thousand dollars richer before the day is over.

as for this tourist, the little extra money that i have will have to go to the amazing musicians in the subway.  'amazing' is an understatement, actually. these artists hoping for some loose change are extremely talented, reality show contestants should hide their heads in shame.

it's noisy in here too.  if you are uncomfortable with silence, this is the place for you. when i see movies set in this city, i always thought that most of the noise should come from cars with drivers that are ready to hit their horns when they get upset about anything. but it's actually the humans who make the most noise.  i've never heard so many people speak in different languages in a single place at the same time. as for me, as much as i am at home with loud sounds, i like a little quiet time once in a while.  st. patrick's cathedral gave that to me.

new yorkers.  my friend said they can be rude. they never apologize for anything.  i was crossing a busy street one time and an old lady just shook uncontrollably and fell on the floor.  she might have been suffering from a stroke.  the people were there ready to help.  new yorkers are capable of compassion, after all.

more later, fellas.

from my facebook's 'notes'

unfinished. unedited.


i was rereading an old book when i saw a sheet of paper between the pages - a short story that i was trying to write just after the 9/11 attacks. it is unfinished and unedited.



**********


i was talking to my wife when it hit us.

if i remember it correctly, she was talking about alimony and how much money she wanted to support our two kids --- things that i thought were totally improper being discussed over the phone. besides, we have lawyers who are more than capable handling such matters. i imagined her in her upscale office, looking at her planner and holding her black parker looking at her bullet points while she was talking to me. she had everything on paper. The woman hates it when she does things unplanned. she was anal retentive. i seriously wished her dead.

i was in the process of calling her a ranting bitch when the line went dead. 

i heard a loud crashing sound. then i heard an explosion. but for someone who has lived in Manhattan for a very long time, noises like those are as natural as organic tomato. i didn't mind what i heard. i was angry at my wife. i looked out my bedroom window in frustration hoping to find something nice to see when i saw a burning chunk of metal fall from one of the famous office buildings. i looked closely and wondered if what i was seeing was the tail end of a plane sticking out of the tower. 

and then came the screaming. painful and fearful screams. i looked down from my apartment window and i saw all the people with their mouths open. they were in shock.

i looked back at where they were were looking and it finally sank in. and just like the rest of the people below me, i froze.







*****

the requisite bathroom shot

now if i could just steal this guy's vocal chords (lift up your face - third day)

owkayyy.

so mom, i have three blogs.  all of which have been forgotten.  this blog (my oldest one -- started in 2005), if you're reading this (if you have a lot of free time in your hands and you have nothing important to do) has a couple of new entries.  i will try to maintain this blog from now on.

the other two has entries that can also be seen here.  there are also some that haven't been cross-published.  one is in livejournal ( i moved to LJ because my friend al has it) and the other one, the one that i really love is multiply (which no one cares about anymore because of facebook which does nothing to express our individuality.  multiply gives us the freedom to be creative.  fb is all blue and white).

wala lang.

sa pamilihang bayan ng houston

nagulat ako ng...

nakita kong mas malaki pa ang pechay ni ate sa malaki nang repolyong nabibili din sa maynila.



at...

humahabol din sa laki ang saging ni kuya.


partida malaki na kamay ko ha.

talaga nga namang 'everything is big in Texas.' lol.

ceiling

i woke up thinking that

after one full week

i found nothing.

So after four months of being here in Houston we decided to hit the streets of the museum district. we took the long road so we could take a look at the houses along University Avenue. When i grow up, I'm going to get a house there.

The photo you see in the left is the entrance to one of the buildings of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.

As I've been told, the museum district holds at least three museums, some churches, a park and a few other establishments. I just wanted to see my first Van Gogh painting, so i hit the building right away.





My very first Van Gogh sighting. The Rocks (1888).

Since i know nothing about artists and their famous paintings, i only searched for the more famous ones in the lot. I saw a a few Jackson Pollocks in the American painters section. Impressive work. i wanted to take some photos but they didn't allow me.

This one, if i am not mistaken is by Monet.

I saw one painting that was mostly black. As a common tao, i thought it was ugly. really, really ugly. But then these famous painters can get away with anything and sell their trash for millions. Lucky bastards.





Then we went outside for a walk, and i saw ate getting photographed beside the fountain. Debut nya ata.



Then we took a stroll at Herman Park.








Other photos.










Oo na. Maganda na. But i still miss home a lot.

turn left turn right.

Both are convinced
that a sudden surge of emotion bound them together.
Beautiful is such a certainty,
but uncertainty is more beautiful.

Because they didn't know each other earlier, they suppose that
nothing was happening between them.
What of the streets, stairways and corridors
where they could have passed each other long ago?

I'd like to ask them
whether they remember-- perhaps in a revolving door
ever being face to face?
an "excuse me" in a crowd
or a voice "wrong number" in the receiver.
But I know their answer:
no, they don't remember.

They'd be greatly astonished
to learn that for a long time
chance had been playing with them.

Not yet wholly ready
to transform into fate for them
it approached them, then backed off,
stood in their way
and, suppressing a giggle,
jumped to the side.

There were signs, signals:
but what of it if they were illegible.
Perhaps three years ago,
or last Tuesday
did a certain leaflet fly
from shoulder to shoulder?
There was something lost and picked up.
Who knows but what it was a ball
in the bushes of childhood.

There were doorknobs and bells
on which earlier
touch piled on touch.
Bags beside each other in the luggage room.
Perhaps they had the same dream on a certain night,
suddenly erased after waking.

Every beginning
is but a continuation,
and the book of events
is never more than half open.

Love at First Sight by Wislawa Szymborska

back.

For a while i transfered my blog to livejournal since most of my friends were in LJ. But after a year of blogging there, i realized that nobody was reading my entries. Here, i used to have a couple of loyal readers.

So i'm back. and hoping that those two readers are still here.

hehe.

Oh, and i will be reposting here my old entries from the other blog soon. Ciao.

bekos!

i come from the pinoy school of english pronunciation.

that is why when i hear a word like 'because' pronounced as 'bek-hezz,'

i cringe.

***

i heard someone say 'bekhezz' lately. and as i imitated how he pronounced the word just so i could experience how saying it would twist my mouth and tongue, he said,

"ano ba pakialam mo?"

he had a point there, actually.

i won't tell what happened after he said that. 

***

i'm still craving for chocolat's 'death by tablea.'