how now brownpau
There’s a typhoon passing through the Philippines today. Outside, it’s dark and gray, with a stiff gale and a light shower; just the kind of inclement weather I love, perfect for cozying up in the office with a tall hazelnut latte while the blustery wind blows outside the window.
Oh, and advanced Happy Fourth of July to you guys in the U.S. :)
“In essence, Jesus says, ‘Continue steadily on with what I have told you to do, and I will guard your life. If you try to guard it yourself, you remove yourself from My deliverance.” Even the most devout among us become atheistic in this regard — we do not believe Him. We put our common sense on the throne and then attach God’s name to it.” – Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest
I have been guilty of this. I have, in my planning sessions, looked at the options for my future and weighed them in terms of their monetary and temporal advantages. I have chosen the easiest, cheapest, most convenient, or most expedient courses, and then called that my destined path, the will of God. But it should not be so.
I have failed, in this process of planning, to first listen to the Lord, and then act on what He says. Rather, I have forged ahead without leaning upon His guidance, and then asked Him to bless what I come up with on my own. And I admit, I often omit His guidance out of fear: fear that He will tell me to put aside my plans, put aside my ties to worldly things, drop my possessions and relationships, and walk a narrow, narrow path of suffering and sacrifice for Him.
Lord, teach me to follow You wholeheartedly, to walk Your steps and not my own. Only by following Your path will I find true, lasting joy.
If any of you guys are songleaders at church, just a word of advice: please don’t wear a black trench coat on stage while you belt out your praise choruses. This is worship service, not The Matrix. (cringe)
Update: Trench Coat Biteback, a response to the “Get a life” comment.
I don’t have much time to blog lately. Lots of work, lots to do.
Yesterday was a long, eventful Friday. Lunch was spent with ******* and Ada from PEX, the three of us talking about the nitty-gritties of witnessing and testimony. A few tough questions were answered, and some interesting insights reaffirmed over a yummy Chinese hot pot meal.
That night, *******’s radio station staged Maestro Filipino III, a classical concert tribute to Filipino performers and composers. Lots of great music by great classical masters of the Western and Filipino traditions alike. The gamelan group Kontra-Gapi had an especially rousing percussion number, using kulintangs, gongs, drums, and other authentic native instruments.
We also had a great performance by a pair of excellent singers, Lawrence Jatayna and Rachelle Gerodias, with opera excerpts from Rossini and Mozart, plus a few other Filipino classical composers whose names I forget again. (Well, sorry, I lost my souvenir program.) Lawrence is an excellent bass-baritone, with a rich and deep voice, and Rachelle is an equally proficient soprano; both of them definitely rising stars in the Philippine classical scene.
Some clues for the clueless, however, when attending at a classical music concert:
* TURN OFF THAT CELLULAR PHONE. It never fails. Even with repetitive, clearly enunciated reminders over the P.A. system before the concert and between performances, some people still had their phones on, beeping and ringing away. Some rather inconsiderate Nokia owners even had the obstinacy to leave their phones either in LOUD mode, or ASCENDING, thus marring some otherwise excellent piano and vocal works. If you can’t TURN OFF or at the very least MUTE your phone at an event like this, then you have no business attending.
* DON’T BRING YOUR BABIES. The PWU Guitar Ensemble was rather rudely interrupted at one point by the piercing cry of a little girl near the front row. The child had already been making loud utterances and gurgles even beforehand, and I had to shake my head and wonder who the genius was that had thought of bringing a baby to a classical concert. Babies cry, and babies crying, well, that can bother performers and audiences alike.
Well, it was a late night, and I got home at midnight, at which point I fed Foxe (Tommie’s brother, also a stray kitten), then plopped into bed without even showering. Not wise; I still felt dirty and grimy when I woke up this morning. So, I got into the shower, poured Tea Tree Oil Body Scrub on a loofah, and scraped myself to bits. Now I have to go moderate my PEX forums and work on Pula.ph. Excuse me.
I am typing this out in Notepad because I cannot get on the net. The task of dialing up to the Internet from my room at home is fraught with rigourous obstacles, requiring much forbearance and repetitive effort just to get a tolerably decent connection.
First, I have to access the village trunklines to dial out. More often than not, the phone system is clogged, and the lines are busy.
Next, if I get an outside line, I have to dial up the ISP. Again, busy signals, sometimes even at four in the morning. And if I have to hang up because the ISP is busy, I have to return to step one and contend once more with the village’s screwy phone system.
When the ISP finally answers, I have to hope that local line noise between here and there is enough for my modem to decipher the carrier. (This often involves me picking up the phone and listening for line static right up until the characteristic “click” preceding the whine of the ISP’s carrier.) If there is too much noise, my modem cannot log in, and it hangs up. (Or worse, it connects at 2,400 bps, so I have to hang up anyway.) Or, about a quarter of the time, it connects and starts to log in, then rejects my password FOR NO REASON AT ALL and hangs up on me. Back to step one.
To make matters worse, Impact is far from the best ISP in Manila. When it isn’t busy, it’s slow. Quite often, even after logging in, I am forcibly disconnected by a server timeout, or must unwillingly hang up when I realize my browser is returning nothing but “File Not Found” errors, and the little modem icon in my system tray is no longer blinking.
My characteristic equanimity does not apply at times like this. In especially trying situations of telecom horror, I have cursed, sworn, yelled at the air, banged on the table with my fist, and, once, dashed the telephone to the floor in a choleric fit. Not too dignified, I admit. But dealing with three kinds of busy signals and any number of connection errors on a near-daily basis can do that to a person.
GRRRAAAHHH!!! I should stop inflicting this on my febrile self and get to bed before my coughing gets worse. Good night.
(Well, since you’re reading this, I obviously managed to dial in. It wasn’t easy.)
Two words: Tazo Chai Spice. Whoops, that was three. Yum yum. My mucus-clogged throat feels better already.
1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
3. The adverb always follows the verb.
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. Remember to never split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
23. Don’t never use a double negation.
24. capitalize every sentence and remember always end it with point
25. Do not put statements in the negative form.
26. Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
27. Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
28. If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
29. A writer must not shift your point of view.
30. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
31. Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!!!!!!
32. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
33. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
34. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
35. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
36. Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
37. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
38. Always pick on the correct idiom.
39. Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; they’re old hat; seek viable alternatives.
Mayon Volcano erupted yesterday afternoon, raining molten boulders and ash on the surrounding area. Those of you who have never been here, Mayon is the perfect-cone volcano you see in all those Philippine postcards. It’s a few hundred miles south of Manila, so we don’t get to see any action, but think about these poor folks who keep their farms in the 6km danger zone at the foot of the volcano. Talk about front-row seats; fortunately most if not all of them were evacuated with lots of advance warning.
Here’s a photo of the eruption yesterday, showing the intense pyroclastic flows and ash clouds surrounding the irascible mountain.
Celebrating the 20th anniversary of McDonald’s in the Philippines, the “Kay Sarap ng Ngiting McDo” (loosely translated, “How Delicious the McDonald’s Smile!”) TV commercial ends with a little girl offering a birthday cake to a statue of Ronald McDonald, which springs to life and, wordlessly smiling, accepts the cake with a cuddle for the little girl.
Is anyone else bothered that this is an allusion to pagan idolatry, or am I just being a hyper-reactive fundamentalist? I can’t seem to shake the idea of a heathen food offering being made to an anthropomorphic wooden idol. Or a red-headed clown mascot.
Oh, well. I will ruminate on that over a Filet-O-Fish and small french fries.
Just returned from watching Planet of the Apes, and I was disappointed at being left hanging with a blatant segue-to-sequel ending, without sufficient background to explain why, if Earth has suddenly been overrun by apes, their civilization’s monuments so closely resemble our own. And it’ll take a rather large leap of plot logic to get General Thade to historical Earth from the future of the Ape Planet. I must say, from Star Trek: Generations, to Lost in Space, to Tomb Raider, to Planet of the Apes, time travel has become a much-abused plot device.
Speaking of time-travel, why is it that, after twice seeing the time-vortex send humans and chimps far into the future, Mark Wahlberg’s character so readily assumes that his next trip through it will send him into the past? And after arriving in the past, how does he get to Earth so quickly? Do little pods like that have warp-drive in 2029? Will we even have little space pods, space stations, and genetically engineered chimps by 2029? Somehow I doubt it.
Funny, how an astronaut who says, “Never trust a chimp to do a man’s job,” manages to botch up two planetary landings after emerging from a time vortex; while the chimp, after emerging from said vortex, executes a flawless landing in the middle of a huge human-ape battle.
I also find it unbelievable that enslaved humans — who are intelligent enough to speak English, learn to ride horses, and swim better than apes — still haven’t mustered up the intelligence to launch an organized revolt? (Well, to the movie’s credit, humans don’t seem to have discovered fire yet; none of the tribals carry torches.)
And whenever we heard the male apes talk, why were Tiff and I constantly reminded of Klingons?
Still, all things considered, it was at least worth seeing Charlton Heston’s cameo, where he gets to repeat his classic line from the 1968 movie — only with a pronoun changed. And that inter-species kiss, though brief, is sweet and classic. Helena Bonham Carter’s talent shines right through the ape makeup — which, by the way, is as superb to this 2001 movie as the old makeup was to the original 1968 film. Writing notes with opposable toes is also very cool.
All in all, Ebert echoes my feelings: “Ten years from now, it will be the 1968 version that people are still renting.”
Update: Hee hee, did I sound too harsh, Ching? Don’t worry, I’m usually cynical about most movies — even the ones I like! I did enjoy myself, despite my heartless nitpicking. And speaking of nitpicking… ;)
