Sometimes we need a little bit of inspiration to keep on writing. Based on my experiences, they usually come from the oddest of places. Living in a small third-world archipelago in Asia, where the laws are sometimes suggested rather than enforced, and where Asian and Western influences are seen in very strange and creative ways, there’s always something unusual to see. So for every 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month, I’ll be posting five pictures I’ve taken of random places, people, and things here in the Philippines. Hope you guys can find a little bit of inspiration from these!
A police station where policemen are allowed to stop suspicious-looking motorists in order to prevent anti-carnapping in the area. The absence of police and the two women sent to guard the station is probably one of the better visual explanations of general police efficiency here in the Philippines.
The Del Monte market, which sells fresh meat and some produce, but is also more known for one of the best places to buy cheap but good quality flowers of different varieties.
A queue of jeeps lining up to take passengers across from the Virra Mall shopping complex.
Deep-fried crablets are a specialty here in the Philippines.
All known Kitkat flavors known to man!
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Posted on May 11 2012 at 09·18 PM / Permalink
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Sometimes we need a little bit of inspiration to keep on writing. Based on my experiences, they usually come from the oddest of places. Living in a small third-world archipelago in Asia, where the laws are sometimes suggested rather than enforced, and where Asian and Western influences are seen in very strange and creative ways, there’s always something unusual to see. So for every 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month, I’ll be posting five pictures I’ve taken of random places, people, and things here in the Philippines. Hope you guys can find a little bit of inspiration from these!
Sign reads, “Largest and Only Grizzly Bear in the Philippines”. Well, doesn’t it follow that if it’s the only bear in the Philippines it’d also be the largest?
CD-R King, the compact ‘techie’ version of Walmart. Minus the food, and everything was made in China. Find anything from blank CDs to LCD monitors and security cameras, to memory cards and foot massagers to  even large safes and filing cabinets.
The ‘tiangge’, or flea market. A common sight in Manila. This aisle sells bags of all kinds - sometimes, including fake brands.
Filipino cuisine - not for the fainthearted, or the vegetarian / vegan. Â Most of the meals found here are made from various pig parts (brains, tripe, ears, etc.)
roasting chickens on a spit, from a popular chicken stall called Chooks-to-Go (I understand Chooks is Australian slang for chicken, but am uncertain whether a connection exists in this case.)
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Posted on April 27 2012 at 02·14 PM / Permalink
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Sometimes we need a little bit of inspiration to keep on writing. Based on my experiences, they usually come from the oddest of places. Living in a small third-world archipelago in Asia, where the laws are sometimes suggested rather than enforced, and where Asian and Western influences are seen in very strange and creative ways, there’s always something unusual to see. So for every 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month, I’ll be posting five pictures I’ve taken of random places, people, and things here in the Philippines. Hope you guys can find a little bit of inspiration from these!
Stalls selling jewelry from Mindanao, the southern part of the Philippines. There are dozens, almost a hundred stalls selling different south sea pearls here.
Typical garbage bags, waiting for the garbage collectors. Signs like these are also frequent, as a lot of people here have a difficult time remembering not to otherwise.
An old abandoned house in my neighborhood that has not been lived in for years.
A little humor from a Yellow Cab (a local pizza parlor) advertisement
sweet cakes from Dolcelli
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Posted on April 13 2012 at 02·45 PM / Permalink
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Sometimes we need a little bit of inspiration to keep on writing. Based on my experiences, they usually come from the oddest of places. Living in a small third-world archipelago in Asia, where the laws are sometimes suggested rather than enforced, and where Asian and Western influences are seen in very strange and creative ways, there’s always something unusual to see. So for every 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month, I’ll be posting five pictures I’ve taken of random places, people, and things here in the Philippines. Hope you guys can find a little bit of inspiration from these!
Hopia (bean pastry) is a favorite snacktime food in the Philippines, introduced by immigrants from Fukien province, China. Here, a baker makes large batches of hopia for all to see.
Old and various degrees of valuable Filipino peso and centavo coins. Several antique shops in stores have these on display and for sale, showcasing the different shapes and sizes of the coins through the years.
A street vendor is preparing products for the lunch hour. Workers (often those working less than minimum wage) too poor to eat at even fast food restaurants are her best clients.
Club Zirkoh, a comedy club now closed and in disrepair.
Filipinos love milk tea (made popular by the Taiwanese and the Japanese). While most favor freshly made tea at mil tea shops, some Asian groceries (like the Konbini) offer packaged milk tea of various flavors and prices.
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Posted on March 30 2012 at 02·46 PM / Permalink
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Sometimes we need a little bit of inspiration to keep on writing. Based on my experiences, they usually come from the oddest of places. Living in a small third-world archipelago in Asia, where the laws are sometimes suggested rather than enforced, and where Asian and Western influences are seen in very strange and creative ways, there’s always something unusual to see. So for every 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month, I’ll be posting five pictures I’ve taken of random places, people, and things here in the Philippines. Hope you guys can find a little bit of inspiration from these!
The poor man’s gambling arcade. Most afternoons will find lots of people gather around one of these, betting tokens on mechanized frog races. They in turn resell these tokens to other gamblers to redeem their money and earn a profit.
A jeepney driver working on repairs by a gas station
Pork and shark’s fin siu mai (Chinese dumplings) steaming behind the glass of an indoor dimsum cart
A warehouse of slippers and sandals priced at an average of $.050 a pair
A closed flea market in Greenhills Shopping Center. Stall owners are assigned different spots every month, and for a day or so in the middle of each month the stalls are closed to prepare for the relocations.
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Posted on February 24 2012 at 04·29 PM / Permalink
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Sometimes we need a little bit of inspiration to keep on writing. Based on my experiences, they usually come from the oddest of places. Living in a small third-world archipelago in Asia, where the laws are sometimes suggested rather than enforced, and where Asian and Western influences are seen in very strange and creative ways, there’s always something unusual to see. So for every 2nd and 4th Fridays of every month, I’ll be posting five pictures I’ve taken of random places, people, and things here in the Philippines. Hope you guys can find a little bit of inspiration from these!
An artist at his stall, hard at work. All the art featured here were drawn by him using charcoal pencil and pastel. He also does watercolors and oil paintings.
This man spends his days begging on a footbridge near a popular shopping mall. He explains he’s too old to do much else, and it’s his way of helping his family (who sets up a small stand on the sidewalk below the bridge daily, selling small snacks and soda to passersby).
An old abandoned water fountain no longer in use - oddly enough, at the heart of a busy shopping complex.
Local governments do not always practice safety standards - to frequently unfortunate results during the monsoon season. This is a common sight to see when in Manila.
Filipino fast food stall. Serving delicacies such as depicted here: rellenong bangus (milkfish stuffed with diceed vegetables), sinigang ng ulo ng lapulapu (sour tamarind soup with fish head), salted duck eggs, and barbecued pork.
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Posted on February 10 2012 at 04·23 PM / Permalink
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Last month, I bought front row tickets to see my most favorite band in the world ever, live in concert - Train.
Uh-huh. Cause I am fly like that.
There aren’t a lot of things sexier than listening to Pat Monahan’s voice, except maybe listening to Pat Monahan’s voice while he’s singing four feet away from where you and a horde of other girls are gathered, shrieking for a lock of his chest hair and punching bouncers for getting in their line of vision. (That he started peeling at least one layer of clothing off after every song might have contributed to this.) I am trying to sound cool and cocky as I write this like I hadn’t succumbed to the teenage fangirl mob mentality at any point during the concert, but unfortunately I was right up there with the rest of my crazed Train-loving soul sisters, screaming my lungs out.
But the biggest surprise came when he sang “Marry Me”.
Yes, this “Marry Me”.
At this point, Pat Monahan abandons the stage and begins dancing his way through the crowd like the stampede of girls suddenly attempting to track the coordinates of his booty-shaking path down the aisles ISN’T HIS FAULT AT ALL, NO SIREEBOB. But what startled me was when he picks up a hysterical girl’s camera, aims it in both their directions, and snaps a photo on the fly. Then he hands the camera back to the now-orgasming lady, finds another camera, and takes another photo of himself and a lucky fan.
Eventually, dozens of girls are now waving their camera screenshots in the air and hollering like mad, and from every one I could see he had captured the photos perfectly. Centered images, no heads were sliced or harmed in the making of this picture kind of good. It’s hard enough to take pictures of yourself, much less if it’s not even your camera to begin with.
Holy shit, I thought. For all his suave and talent and booty, I never would have expected Pat Monahan to not only possess the same skill subset as your average narcissistic thirteen-year old tween, but that he would pwn it so, so hard.
And then, because writing is never that far away from my mind even when you’re in the same breathing space as one of your favorite celebrities, that got me thinking about characters. One of my favorite fictional characters is a little Belgian detective with an egg-shaped head, named Hercule Poirot. He’s very dapper and elegant, dines at only the best restaurants with unpronounceable French meals, and has bank drafts of four hundred and forty-four pounds and four ounces. He likes toast because bread is symmetrically shaped. For all his finickiness and seeming orderliness though, Poirot also picks locks with passing familiarity, trespasses frequently, reads suspects’ personal love letters with little inclination for personal privacy, and has even [HIGHLIGHT FOR SPOILER]
| murdered to save his best friend |
[/SPOILER]. It seems like a walking contradiction when you understand Poirot always advocates for legal justice, but this apparent inconsistency makes him a more interesting personality to me (and his views on the subject changes gradually the more cases he undertakes, as seen in the Murder on the Orient Express and the Murder of Roger Ackroyd.)
you had me at mustache.
That’s what I try to think about when writing characters. No one is ever one-dimensional. Just because someone seems happy and cheerful most of the time doesn’t mean he’s happy and cheerful all the time. And part of the challenge is adding in an odd quirk or habit to a protagonist or antagonist that makes readers think hey, this is not a skill or a trait I would imagine this person to have but that’s awesome, and still make it work.
YES I AM THAT GOOD.
Train’s been writing and performing for years. I can’t imagine how many tours they’ve been on, how many people in sold-out concerts they’ve played to, and how many times Pat Monahan’s taken photos with fans. So when you think about it, it’s pretty logical that he could take a camera, gauge at a glance how it works based on the hundreds he’s already handled, then angle his arm the right way to snap the perfect picture. He’s not good at it because he’s vain, but it’s a side effect of being a performer beloved by his fanbase. In the same manner I could write about a surly, sword-wielding teenage boy who happens to be afraid of heights, or an awkward, stuttering geek with no upper body strength but with a natural grace that could put Igor Zaripov to shame, and find ways to believably string these contradictions into their personalities.
It’s not the only step toward making a three-dimensional, rounded out character, but it’s one of the best places to start. As Monahan himself would sing, in a slightly out-of-context song: shake it up.
Also: an extremely crappy and incomplete recording of “Save Me, San Francisco”, taken from the concert. Apologies for the very sucky bass sounds. My camera hates subwoofers.
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Posted on January 27 2012 at 05·45 PM / Permalink
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To those who didn’t know: on the 27th of November last year, I got a new roommate. We celebrated this by dressing up, booking a garden venue and inviting over two hundred and fifty people to watch because here in the Philippines, we take finding a a good roommate very seriously.
made for me by my sister, Kim
Jun Salud: wedding coordinator for the day
Also, a very different kind of wedding video. Because we’re too cool for slow romantic songs and crap like that.
A quick rundown for everyone who’s interested (and I recommend everyone listed here):
venue: Fernbrook Gardens
video and photos: Wally Gonzales Photography
wedding dress: Merlene Marcelo
caterer: Josiah’s Catering (facebook)
hair and makeup: Realm Make-Up (ote_realm [at] yahoo.com, contact: Â 3770623/09198013388)
photobooth: Purplebox Photos (facebook - guests, get your photbooth photos here!)
music: Serene8 Music Company
flowers: 15-58 Flowers (facebook account)
wedding coordinators: Jhune Salud
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Posted on January 13 2012 at 08·58 PM / Permalink
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Not nice.
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