July 2008 Archives

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine ANTICIPATION truly is half of satisfaction. Surprises are powerful but also elusive. It's when we spend day after day looking out the window waiting for something, anything, in particular, that the little fragments of satisfaction are accumulated. Disappointment waits in the wings, of course, but that danger is part of the lure. Here then are the eight things I look forward to the most every year: 1) The Christmas season: It sounds cornball and can even be nerve-wracking as the activity and stress levels rise, but nothing comes close to the anticipation awaiting Christmas. From the shopping to the colors to the temperature, Christmas is the coolest occasion of all. 2) Last day of school: It is so primal for Filipinos to long for summer, but summer is most important because it heralds the end of the school year. Two semesters can stretch very long indeed, so when that final bell goes off, it is a cathartic sound. 3) The start of college basketball season: July was a ho-hum month when I was younger, but once college began, July was accompanied by the syncopated cheers, the synchronized drumming, the shrill whistles and the slide of sneakers against parquet. UAAP or NCAA: July is a month of welcome madness. 4) The Oscars telecast: Yes, the show's too long. Yes, the gazillion commercials can be irksome. But the potent mix of movies (hopefully good) and good hosts (hopefully Billy Crystal) makes this a cinematic guilty pleasure by itself. 5) Formula One starts: March is a month that goes by so fast, just like the machines that inhabit the grids of Formula 1. The engines are started, the drivers get set and everything is go, go, go! At least until October. Luckily that's when… 6) The NBA season kicks off: The best basketball in the world. Every day. The Celtics. The Pistons. The Warriors. The Cavs. The Suns. The Wizards… and whoever the Sonics are going to turn into. Hoop heaven. 7) The Manila International Bookfair: Wallets get lighter and book bags get heavier. For the Filipino bibliophile, the World Trade Center becomes the must-visit destination for the weeklong exhibition of book lust. 8 ) November 3: I don't know about you, but the intricate craziness that builds around cemeteries on Nov. 1 and 2 is truly not of this world. I want to remain solemn about the occasion and remember lost loved ones, but it's kind of hard when it takes two hours to get to the memorial park and people are trying to sell you cold pizza. November 3 sees the world go back to normal. See 11 new talents to watch out for in 2008 in the August 3 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine EVERYONE’S affected by the economic crunch, and we all have to find our own ways of getting through the crisis with aplomb. Here are my five tips for riding out the crisis:

• Borrow, borrow, borrow: I understand we live in a highly acquisitive environment, but books, DVDs and the like are truly expensive these days. I won’t argue whether they’re luxuries or necessities (you can guess though) but creating a circle of borrowers can be helpful. Since we’re lending our own things, we should take care of what we borrow. Additionally, you can arrange for borrow, say, magazines from one person, books from another, DVDs from someone else and so on. At the very least, it can be a pleasure to explore someone else’s book shelf for a change.
• Take the jeep: The MRT/LRT/LRT2 is the height of public transport in the Metro, but now everyone and their entourages take the train, leading to some ridiculously backed-up crowd during rush hour. Buses are scary; tricycles are weird. Now it’s time to relearn how to take the jeeps. They run throughout the city, are still relatively cheap; and it’s just a matter of figuring out the labyrinthine routes they run and weaving them together.
• Take home everything: Foodies come in all stripes and sizes, but leftovers now become more than just an afterthought; they can be part of your daily meal routine. Think about it; when eating at a restaurant with big servings, you can already plan in advance to take the food home, making it part of your next meal (heated up, microwaved, heck, some even like pizza cold) instead of becoming literal dog food.
• Discover Book Sale: It’s actually insane how good the stuff is at Book Sale. Between the novels and the magazines, one just has to be very patient wading through the rows and rows of items. Ideally you could spend half a day at one Book Sale branch alone; you can spend the next day at another. And there’s no denying how affordable their merchandise is.
• Use landlines: Remember these? Most of these are not metered, have excellent reception (no more “Can you hear me now?” nonsense) and are just a glance away. The only downside is that you can’t move around while talking, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s very much a back-to-basics move, and makes a whole lot of sense.

Read about all the ways to ride out the economic crisis in the July 27 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Leica R. Carpo, Publisher Sunday Inquirer Magazine 1. HITCH a ride. 2. Drink Coke Zero for dessert; it's cheaper than chocolate. 3. Recycle your wardrobe with the help of a stylish friend. 4. Sleep with no airconditioning. 5. Bring your own water bottle or coffee to work. 6. Buy from local designers. 7. Use the Internet to shop for best bargains. 8. Only buy secondhand. 9. Patronize your local library and borrow books instead of buying them. 10. Learn how to cook; it's cheaper than eating out. Check out this Sunday’s Inquirer Magazine. Free with your copy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz, Executive Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine “PARA kang si Bella Flores!” This, is usually hurled at me by assorted white-knuckled siblings holding their water, while I mopped the bathroom floor. "No, you shall not pass! Wait till I’m through and the floor dries. You should have gone yesterday," I would declare, summoning my inner villain. And that is why they often called me Herr Bella to my face. Now there’s a compliment. I’ve always been enamored with kontrabidas, these strong-willed women who know exactly what they want, and that is to make life miserable for the often insipid leading lady. Why, I don’t mind coming across as a kontrabida myself, thanks to being the second in a brood of six and having to holler to be heard. No wonder I identify so much with Zeny Zabala, Carol Varga, and oh yes, Bella of the blood-curdling brow-beating bluster. (Right, so I’m dating myself. Well, no one else will, ho ho ho!) I call them Ladies Who Launch into Diatribes. Boy, how they make plots more interesting in the often saccharine Sampaguita Picture movies we’d come home to in the early afternoons of our childhood. Totally evil was the way to go for villains among us weaned on Walt Disney’s black and white morality plays. And what joy to see these maleficent caricatures finally stir up some starch in the lead’s mewling character who, for the better part of the movie, stoically accept the scheming, the plotting and the hissing asides of the slithering villainess. But while I relish the cathartic explosions of the ballistic Bella that considerably enriched my vocabulary of street slang, I am enthralled by the saucy and sassy rejoinders that today’s younger kontrabidas dish out with throwaway casualness. How many of us can forget Cherie Gil’s iconic spiel from "Bituin Walang Ningning?" How many times have we used it in jest ourselves when faced with an unexpected nemesis: “You’re nothing but a second rate, trying-hard copycat!” Feels good just saying that, one plucked eyebrow raised infinitesimally. Of course it does not hurt that this villainess looks cool and soigné even while mouthing those toxic words. There are none of those blazing Bella eyes that surely would mean crow’s feet a few years down the line, or the temple-thrumming veins that telegraph a stroke waiting to happen. There are none of the hair curlers and dirty dusters, or the red gash of too much lipstick that identify the kontrabida as fat, frumpy, slutty or totally déclassé. Alas, now that we’re fast becoming that Woman of a Certain Age, we realize how emulating the once beatified Bella can wreak havoc on our face value. Imagine the wrinkles! The knotted brows! The deeply-lined forehead! The downward turn of the mouth! The turkey neck from too much screaming! The migraines from too much scheming! And of course those terrifying tight curls in this age of rebond. Well, who wants all that? It’s bad enough that we’re sliding there no matter the tons of moisturizer we pour on our faces, but to bring them on ourselves from misplaced idol worship... So I guess I’m shifting alliances at this late point. From now on, whenever I feel contrary, I shall channel Miranda Priestly, that glamorous and imperious fashion editor from “The Devil Wears Prada,” whose impossible commands take on a murderous ring even when murmured with nary a facial tic. Now, excuse me while I practice stalking without wobbling on these Manolos. For more on why we love to hate kontrabidas, their most memorable lines, and the villains from Filipino literature, check out this Sunday’s Inquirer Magazine. Free with your copy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine I first encountered the phrase "Bring on the Bad Guys" in one of my favorite media: comic books. It was the title of a Marvel Comics compendium covering the Marvel Universe's top villains, the work of creators like Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and the King Jack Kirby. It was irresistible, the idea of a book dedicated to the villains instead of the heroes, a novel concept back in the 1980s. Since then, it has become far more common to highlight the lowlifes as the bad guys, the black hats, the black hearts, are always cooler. We have our favorite TV foes, our top movie villains, so now let me indulge my inner reader by celebrating my top ten villains from written literature, in no particular order:

1. Lord Voldemort: It's a little hard to be scared of Ralph Fiennes' movie version because, (a) It's Ralph Fiennes -- even his villains look handsome and (b) He has no nose; it's like being scared of someone from Sesame Street. But J.K. Rowling's resurrected font of evil -- the erstwhile Tom Riddle -- doesn't sweat possessing school girls, doesn't hesitate to sacrifice his own people if it serves his purpose and, gasp, was a good student. His is the never-spoken name of evil for an entirely new generation of youngsters who didn't think they liked reading.
2. Baron Harkonnen: As vile as the screen versions of the baddie from Frank Herbert's desert epic "Dune" seem to be, it's nothing compared to the original version. In the book, Harkonnen is vile, disgusting, obese, perverse, and floats because he's too heavy. Yuck.
3. Pennywise The Clown: Stephen King has uncorked an entire Pandora's Box of horrific things, but nothing matches the horror that is Pennywise the Clown from the novel "It." Yes, he can turn into pretty much anything you're scared of, but it is in the form of the actual Pennywise that he remembers the simple truth learned at birthday parties: Clowns are scary.
4. Craddock: Joe Hill may sound like a relatively anonymous name, but Hill, a brilliant writer in his own right, is also the son of Stephen King. And early on, he has already unleashed a villain deserving of the pedigree: Craddock, the suit-wearing ghost from "Heart-Shaped Box." Who knew online auctions can be so dangerous?
5. Mr. Harvey: He is the seemingly innocuous neighbor from Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones," and from the very first chapter, we know it was Harvey who raped and murdered the narrator, a young girl named Susie Salmon. That nobody else could seem to figure out that Harvey is a child-seeking serial killer only adds to the scare factor of this not-so-good neighbor.
6. James: That he is immortal and fearless only adds to the danger represented by the thirsty vampire of Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight." His companion Victoria seems scarier because she seems constantly on the verge of losing control, but James's smile and calculating nature makes him much, much more of a threat.
7. Pumpkin: Most will point at the temperamental geisha Hatsumomo as the antagonist of Arthur Golden's "Memoirs of a Geisha," but it was the homely Pumpkin's willful betrayal and resentment of the well-meaning Sayuri that left an impression on me. Nothing hurts or scares more than when someone you're helping actually resents you and wishes you ill because of it.
8. Grendel: This is literally going old school, but the man-hating creature at the dark heart of "Beowulf" represents the antagonist as a force of nature. Though his mother avenges him effectively later on, it is the creature Grendel who first taught children the meaning of unnatural.
9. The White Witch: The ice queen of C.S. Lewis' "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe" set the standard for beautifully wicked monarchs. Plus, she used Trukish Delight to ensnare one of the Pevensies. Now that's low.
10. Padre Salvi: Have to admit, Ambeth Ocampo was right about this one. The entire time, we kept focusing on Padre Damaso and his conflict with Crisostomo Ibarra in Jose Rizal's "Noli me Tangere," but it was actually the malicious successor, Pade Salvi who did the real damage, all disguised by his clerical office. Yikes.

By Eric S. Caruncho, Staff Writer Sunday Inquirer Magazine Being on my third iPod (the 80-gigabyte, fifth generation), it goes without saying that I have finally succumbed to MP3 technology along with the teeming masses. There is something to be said for having all your music at your fingertips. If I get a sudden yen to listen to a particular song again, all I have to do is turn the clickwheel and there it is. Not too long ago, such an urge would have entailed digging through my collection of 1,000 plus CDs or 2,000 plus LPs and 45s and God knows how many cassettes, firing up the stereo system (assuming I actually managed to locate the cut I was looking for), and playing the track. If it was on vinyl, there would first have to be the complex ritual of cleaning the record with my antistatic brush and home-brewed cleaning fluid, cleaning the stylus of my turntable with a different brush, and carefully dropping the needle in the groove with the volume off to avoid any speaker-damaging noise, before turning the amplifier up. Now it's all there in my hard disk, neatly filed into folders and partitions. Acquiring music has also never been easier. To be honest, I haven't bought a CD in years. Why bother when almost all new music is just a download away? Even the most esoteric recordings are surprisingly easy to track down on the Internet, and with a fast connection, it only takes a few hours to download. Now my music library is bigger and broader than ever before. Not only am I more or less up-to-date on the latest indie releases but I have also been able to catch up on music I missed out on from decades past. When I look back at the amount of time and money I spent in the last 20 years hunting down and acquiring music, I just have to shake my head. If I had dedicated the same amount of time and passion to something else, I could have mastered two or three foreign languages, or worked a second job. Now all I have to show for it are shelves of CDs and LPs and tons of stereo equipment gathering dust while I listen to my iPod on headphones. Something's amiss, however. I've never been able to get rid of this nagging feeling that in embracing the convenience of MP3s and music downloads, something has been lost. And I'm not only talking about the superiority of analog over digital music that purists have always held against the admittedly sonically inferior MP3. In making music so easy to acquire, MP3s and downloads have all but eliminated the thrill of the hunt, and maybe that was more than half the fun. Music used to be hard to get. When I first started buying records, an LP cost seven pesos—way out of my league. It took many months of saving up my school allowance before I could purchase my very first album: the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. My second purchase took even longer: it was Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, a double album, which set me back all of P14—a princely sum in those adolescent days. In any case, I only had a few records, which I listened to over and over again, on my father's stereo system, usually at night with headphones, until I literally wore the grooves out. I knew every note Jimi played on "Electric Ladyland", every tape splice in "Sgt. Pepper", by heart. To save money, I would borrow my friends' albums and tape them on my father's reel-to-reel. There were a couple of places in Sta. Mesa Market and Farmer's Market in Cubao that would tape imported LPs for you, and that's how I got into the likes of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Larry Coryell. I would also borrow Thelonious Monk and blues LPs from the old Thomas Jefferson library and tape them. This was the forerunner of music downloading. The music industry even launched a campaign against it: "Home taping is killing music", they cried, successfully lobbying for a tax on blank tapes. Unless you had generous relatives living abroad who would send you records, music was still hard to find in the late '70s and early '80s. I remember scouring the racks at the record section in Unimart in vain for something to buy and found nothing but Styx, Kansas and Reo Speedwagon. Worthwhile releases were few and far between, and the local release of something like Blondie's "Parallel Lines" or the first Joe Jackson album was enough to get my blood pumping. I still relied on borrowing or renting LPs and taping them, however, for my music fix. "A to Z Records,” run by Leslie David and Ces Rodriguez, a couple of congenial music mavens and record hounds, was my haunt. A handful of us music-starved and cash-strapped wretches would rejoice whenever Leslie and Ces managed to get their hands on something choice, like the latest from Japan (the band, not the country), the Cramps, Husker Du or the Smiths. An import LP was something to be cherished, savored and shared, passed from hand to hand, turntable to turntable, its essence imprinted on magnetized oxide particles. The advent of the CD put an end to all that. Many music aficionados found it hard to make the change. The first generation CD players were frightfully expensive, and the CDs themselves were initially costly and hard to get. But as the music industry got behind the new technology, they became somewhat easier to acquire. Being now gainfully employed, I found myself, like so many others, having to buy "Sgt. Pepper" and "Electric Ladyland" all over again, bedazzled by the new medium's crystalline sound and convenience. Even with the opening of Tower Records, however, finding new music was still a challenge, not having unlimited funds. The game was now how to get your hands on that rare import CD without having to pay the ridiculous amount Tower was charging for it. With patience, fortitude and a keen nose, it could still be done. The advent of the CD burner also revolutionized music collecting. Tapes were unwieldy, noisy and sonically inferior to the original LP, but a CD copy was sonically identical to the original. Of course, none of that matters now. Technology has overtaken the CD, and the format appears to be on its last legs—at least as the chief medium for mass marketing music. In only a few years, MP3 music downloads have become the dominant format for distributing new music. The advent of peer-to-peer networks and torrent sites on the Internet has become the bane of the music business and a boon for music hounds, opening a virtual cornucopia of music to anyone with a fast connection. The downside is that finding music is no longer the adventure that it used to be, and without the thrill of the chase, catching the prize often feels like a hollow triumph.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine THINGS in the Big City are hard enough, especially in these days of spiraling gas prices, but there are some things that really make life even harder. Beware: 1. People who line up to use the ATM on payday with TWENTY-ONE ATM cards from their officemates! 2. People who line up at the CASH ONLY line and insist on using credit cards! 3. People who line up in the EXPRESS LANE with more than 10 items! Learn to count, people! 4. Drivers who move across FOUR LANES of traffic to turn right! 5. Telemarketers! Telemarketers! Telemarketers! 6. Customer service “hotlines” that put you on hold FOREVER! 7. People who send CHAIN LETTERS! 8. People who drive scooters WITH SOUND SYSTEMS! 9. People with FAKE AMERICAN ACCENTS! 10. People who don’t like movies THEY HAVEN’T WATCHED! For more of what really drives people crazy, check out the July 20 issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

By Pennie Azarcon Dela Cruz, Executive Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine THE THING is, I was raised to scrub the toilet. With five girls in the family and Nanay being the scourge of hired help, the household chores were evenly divided among us siblings. Ate got to cook and was soon attending night courses at a nearby public high school learning to bake cakes, make embutido from scratch and concoct commercial-type goodies. A younger sister was in charge of setting and clearing the tables; the fourth sister was the designated dishwasher, and the youngest girl was the all-around go-fer. I don't remember if we drew lots, or if this was payback for my incredible good looks and brilliant mind that surely must have stirred terminal envy among my other siblings, but I wound up being assigned to clean the bathroom, the toilet and kitchen floors. This was fine for my Cinderella complex for some time, but soon enough, my Bella Flores nature began to surface and I was Herr Bella to anyone who dared cross the kitchen threshold or had to use the bathroom while I was scrubbing them. I swear you could eat off my toilet floor. Why, even Adrian Monk would approve of the antiseptic gleam that my labors induced from these ghetto areas. Things were fine -- until I got married. With us living with my in-laws, I had to somehow prove myself domesticated enough to stir the pot. In my previous forays in the kitchen, I had been known to burn a hole in the ozone layer when I attempted to cook gumamela jelly in a classmate's house in Pampanga. But being a type A personality, I immediately sought to rise above the scorch marks and tackled other fancy dishes meant to impress my in-laws. To dismal results. Fortunately, the hubby was complicit enough to help me get rid of the evidence -- until his rapidly expanding belly literally became Exhibit A. Realizing that her son could only do so much for love, my mother-in-law soon planted a simplified cookbook among the dishtowels. Thus began my delicious adventures into gastronomy and my enduring affair with the Lifestyle Network's Wolfgang Puck, Giada de Laurentiis, Nigella Lawson and oh joy, the "Iron Chef"! So imagine my excitement when Unilever Foodsolutions invited us media folk to the launch of its new product (Aromat seasoning) by recreating the "Iron Chef" challenge, complete with a chef's jacket and Crocs non-slip chef's clogs. The jacket and clogs were two sizes too big, but the event itself stirred my gastric juices into a foamy broth. Real chefs for every team! A secret ingredient! A two-hour time limit! Several dishes to prepare! Judges! Rolling cameras and interviews like we're really on TV! The only thing missing was the chairman's somersault. Otherwise, it was "Allez, cuisine!" With Chef Martin guiding us, we made off with all the ingredients we could cart in our market basket to turn the secret ingredient -- lamb -- into two appetizers and two main dishes. To my disappointment, I was assigned to fry the potatoes and chili strips. Hey, I wanted to protest, I make excellent callos and pochero, not to mention Vietnamese lumpia and sukiyaki, and my New York-style cheesecake is to die for! But I guess even that "Ratatouille" rodent started with the garbage detail, so if the chef tells you to peel potatoes, you shut up and peel. Alright then, perhaps I could plate our creations in what humorist David Sedaris describes as the very trendy skyscraper style, like the plate is prime real estate so the only way to go is up? Well, Chef Martin got to do that too. In the end, because we didn't win the cooking challenge, my fellow sourgraping teammates and I took to gossiping about our youngish-looking chef. "What? You're already 26! I swear you look like a high school kid!" my seatmate exclaimed. Yeah, and I bet he wants to look older too, I said mournfully, looking at the only other teammate older than me. Talagang no justice in this world, we both grumbled, stuffing our face with the desserts that came with the Unilever lunch. Some weeks later, as we were preparing this Sunday's issue of the Magazine, cover guy Chef Paolo Sia confirmed what I had learned from that "Fearless Kitchen" experience: contrary to what you see on TV, being a chef is never a glamorous job. I know, I know. Two hours before a sizzling nonstick pan and I wish I had ordered out. Sunday Inquirer Magazine's July 6 issue dishes out more "Kitchen Confidential" stories and sizzling secrets behind the toque. Get it free with your copy of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor Sunday Inquirer Magazine I LEARNED how to cook out of survival. I have always tended to eat at the most godforsaken hours, which goes well with the fact that I tend to work at the most unusual hours as well. When you're awake at 2 a.m., you don't want to have to wake up other people just to grab something to eat. This also has something to do with the fact that I'm not crazy about leftovers, and have a particular lack of interest in cold leftovers. So I learned how to cook, mostly through experimentation, but also with the invaluable help of my friends who did cook. My dad always cooked and cooked well, but in small portions and purely by feel, and he cooked a lot less in recent years. My mom didn't cook at all, but is a virtual wizard when it comes to recycling food. I learned slowly, beginning with easy stuff like eggs and hotdogs, moving on to rice. Incidentally, these are the three things which I've discovered other people expect anyone to be able to do at the very least: boil an egg, cook hotdogs and make rice. Oh many a confused egg, burnt hotdog and watery rice batch was sacrificed on the altar of my DIY cooking start. But then I realized I actually enjoyed it. I particularly liked cooking pasta and meat, even learning to make my own variations. There was even a time when I seemed to have been possessed by the cooking spirits themselves, as I would cook, on my own volition, for visitors and even prepared complete meals for my birthday. I learned to read about cooking and converse about it. I discovered that there were still people who were shocked to find out that guys cook. Or, for that matter, that girls don't -- or can't. This was before the current fervor for becoming chefs and the like. Over five years ago, people cooked either because they had to, or because they really wanted to. I think the key has always been to have fun when you cook and to sincerely want to cook something that other people will find good. I hold no illusions regarding my occasional forays into the kitchen. If anything, it has made me far more impressed and appreciative of people who cook well. It is both gift and calling. It has enabled me to discover new unexpected authors such as Anthony Bourdain, Ruth Reichl, Peter Mayle and so on. In the end, when the kettle is singing and the tools are willing, what I always ask myself isn't how it is that this guy has learned to love cooking, but why doesn't everybody? For more on chefs, the latest cuisine and cooking as a career, check out this weekend’s issue of the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, out July 6 with the Philippine Daily Inquirer.