What I Did When i.ph Was Down

Unlike most people I know, my blog is not hosted by blogspot or wordpress or livejournal; rather, it’s by i.ph, which is a local company that’s merely few meters from where I work. It’s been almost two years since I started posting stuff here, and I have no regrets at all because I’ve been given great service almost consistently. The operative word, of course, is almost, as last week my blog was down because i.ph had to deal with database issues. But it’s great that they dealt with it and got things running again without deleting anything that I’ve stored here. It only goes to show that they really do care about their users.

This is what I did and what happened to me during the 2-3 days downtime of I.ph.

1. Played Street Fighter IV and beat the game with Guile and Ryu, unlocking Sakura in the process.

2. Bought two thick computer books and dislocated my shoulder from carrying them home. Okay the latter is a lie, but they’re still hella heavy.

3. Heard horrible news about someone close to me being diagnosed with leukemia.

4. Wanted to rag on i.ph for putting lolcat image on my blog while it’s down because lolcat jokes were overdone and unfunny, but I decided against it. Besides, they were doing their job anyway, and maybe posting the lolcat image was their good intent of getting us to laugh or something.

5. Read and put down Inkheart again. It’s probably the most unexciting children’s book I’ve ever read.

6. Did not come up with something to write about, which is why I’m responding to a meme that I was not tagged in.

7. Twittered.

8. Played Red Alert 3 intermittently and finished plenty of Allied missions. Looked for pictures of its very own Gemma Atkinson whenever I wasn’t playing. Dang, that girl’s hot.

9. Overslept.

10. Went to Greenhills surveying for the latest geek stuff - toys, videogames, comics, books, and anime - but left without buying any. Still, I’d be very happy if anyone would give me Brothers by Yu Hua.

As you can see, things have been quiet here in this boulevard named “my life”.

海角七號 Cape No 7

When I first heard 海角七號 (Cape No 7) uttered—which is a month ago when I was in Taiwan and at a family reunion—it instantly became an unforgettable movie name to me, because everyone within earshot lit up and then lectured me about how successful it was (the movie, not the earshot, though I guess the earshot was also successful given the reaction). My parents, aunts, uncles and cousins, in the rare moment when both the young and the old agreed, dropped trivia about how it’s second to Titanic as the highest-grossing movies in Taiwan’s cinematic history, and how it will be remembered for the next 20 years, and how I could be so stupid for not having heard let alone seen it. I called foul, coz I’m not stupid! I just hadn’t been catching up to Taiwan’s pop culture, and clearly I had to do my assignment by watching Cape No 7. Thank you, condescending relatives!

So last Sunday I took my first step to the path of “getting my haughty relatives to stop calling me a banana (derogatory term for Asians who are overly ‘Westernized’)” by watching that numerical Taiwanese movie that they can’t stop gushing about. The first thing I thought about was probably irrelevant to the movie itself: why are so many movies numbered 7? There’s Magnificent 7, there’s 7 Samurai, there’s Seven, there’s 7 Years in Tibet, there’s Nana (o yay, I’m now the wannabe-nihonjin), there’s Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, and now there’s Cape No 7. Where’s all the love for 6 or 9? Why can’t it be Cape Number Sixty-Ni… nevermind.

The movie begins with the scene of a Japanese ship leaving Taiwan. An unnamed Japanese teacher narrates his love to Kojima Tomoko (a local girl whom he met when he was in Taiwan) and his regret for leaving her because the Japanese occupation is ending. It comes complete with a soft piano background music that will get the New-Age loving crowd to pause the DVD so that they can Google-search Cape No. 7’s OST and download it illegally. Fast forward—or resume button, as would be the case of the aforementioned New-Age hippies (probably the least cool kind of hippie)—50 years later to the present, and we see Aga, a frustrated rocker, cussing, getting gonzo with his guitar, and then riding his motorcycle from Taipei back to his hometown Hengchun, which takes 6-8 hours in real life, but since we’re not watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas we don’t see road trips (and drug trips). Born to be Wild doesn’t play here; instead it’s a song with clumsy English that Aga sang in his unsuccessful gigs.

I keep talking about music because music takes a big role in the movie, as you’ll read about later on.

We go to Hengchun province and here we are introduced to the movie’s quirky characters. I want to be done with the enumeration, so I’ll be quick in describing them. (Not Kojima) Tomoko is a Chinese-speaking Japanese model whose current gig is to guide obnoxious tourists. Uncle Mao is an “elite” postman who’s too old for his job, so the jobless Aga got manhandled by his stepfather, who’s also the town representative, to take over the posting duties. Rauma is a short-tempered police who beats people up but is still nice compared to the police from the country just to his south (i.e. Philippines). Frog is a mechanic who has a crush on his boss’s wife and you’ll often see her cleavage, but I’m not posting the pics here, and you can’t make me! Malasun is the prototypical ingratiating door-to-door rice wine salesman. And Dada is a 10-year-old pianist who gets kicked out of the church because priest says her playing is too hardcore! (Dada is the Chinese for Big Big. Aspiring rappers may want to steal that name because it’s hood-to-the-core, yo! Who knows, maybe you’ll even make it big in Taipei. I can just hear it, “NOTORIOUS DADA RIPRIZANT!!!”Just remember to pay me royalties: I suggested the idea in case you’re forgetting.)

Anyway, soon, Tomoko’s agent tasks her to organize a concert in Hengchun for a Japanese band, but since the town rep wants to give the Japanese band an unforgettable presentation from his own homeland, he forces her to assemble a local band to perform the opening act. She gets Aga, Uncle Mao, Rauma, Malasun and Dada together, and since they are of different backgrounds and have contrasting personalities and musical skills and tastes in music, they drive her nuts.

In the middle of everything, Aga sucks at being a postman. He doesn’t deliver the letters, but dumps them on a box in his room. There is one package that needs to be returned to the sender because it’s addressed to a place that does not exist, but he opens the package anyway and reads the contents – which are seven unsent love letters the Japanese teacher wrote to Kojima Tomoko.

The story is not what you’d call “high-concept” and it won’t appear on avant-garde sci-fi compendium. It’s also not the acid trips that are Wong Kar Wai’s (thankfully that also means no Zhang Ziyi, who’s become a one-trick horny pony). Instead, it’s a straightforward love-story-slash-musical, and anyone who has seen movies from either genre can predict its outcome. How much you’ll enjoy the movie really depends on how much you can care for the characters, and I’m rather disappointed that this movie is only strong in characters and not in plot.

The seven unsent letters I mentioned way back drives Aga—hey, guess how he’ll feel about the present Tomoko—but they do little more than be the MacGuffin. They do sporadically lead to scenes of the teacher narrating his undeclared love to the past Tomoko, but these scenes are not poignant. They’re clunky and melodramatic, and they take you away from the downer-to-earth present, of which they have little to no connection or significance. I can forgive the plot being predictable, but I can’t ignore its weak and distracting transitions from past to present.

Using that phrase “down to earth” again. I think much of the movie’s success comes from how real the characters are, although that quality may be lost to the Western viewers. Its greatest accomplish is the empathy it has for the lifestyle of the sleepy-towns in Taiwan countryside; no wonder that it resonated with millions of Taiwanese viewers. As someone who’s lived in Taiwan’s provinces, I can imagine bumping into any of its characters in real life. In short, I really liked them…

Or most of them anyway. Alas, I hated Aga. He treats Tomoko, his stepfather, and everyone in his band like crap even when they’re trying to help him. Nobody is spared from his hostility cracks. He doesn’t even bother doing the work he’s paid to do. He’s just another in the long line of jerk male protagonist that Taiwan shows are getting since the 90s. I think a longer discourse needs to be written about this subject, but the short is this: why are Taiwanese so fond of the emotionally-charged, antisocial, self-absorbed, effeminate, menial-labor-hating, Strawberry generation asshat who smears angst on everyone he meets by disrespecting his elders and hysterically spitting-and-shouting to the girl he “secretly” harbors feelings for? Wow that’s a long sentence. First there’s Dao Ming Si in Meteor Garden, and now Aga, plus a whole bunch of copy-pasted Taiwan “love” dramas and movies that are aimed for brain-dead youths (that I had to be tortured with since even Philippines’ TV stations are force-feeding me with these shows). I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hang out with this kind of clown in real life, and yet there are these shows where he’s the hero who gets all the girls? And we’re supposed to sympathize? Hello, he may become a wife-beater! Are you Taiwanese women masochists and do you seriously fall for this kind of guy? Is my not being one the bloody reason that I’m still single? I don’t think it’s my looks, because I think I’m rather good looking, you know. I don’t get it. But I digress so that I can comment just one last thing about Aga: his abrupt transformation from a jerk to an okay guy is unconvincing. I’m not buying it.

Music is really a very subjective thing, so it’s hard to suggest that my opinion of it is the gospel truth (as should be the case!). But anyway, this movie has a band in it, so music plays a central role in it. Near the movie’s end, the casts play a few songs. I find all of them disappointing. In the same way as how I’m sick of Taiwan shows’ male protagonist, I’m tired of Taiwan (mostly Mandarin ones) pop music because they always follow the same format: one upbeat rock or dance number, and then one middle-of-the-road ballad. Most of the casts here are unknown actors, so you can consider this movie indie. Yet, for something indie, the songs sure are trite.

At this point, it’s fair to say that I’m ambivalent about Cape No 7. I recognize what made it tick and why it was met with resounding success. I’m glad I watched it and its memorable characters. But, if you ask me if it’s the best movie of all time, or just simply the best Chinese movie I’ve seen, I will tell you that I never claim a movie with a protagonist I want to punch in the face my favorite. Make him someone I want to get behind, and perhaps I’ll be more favorable.

How to Spot the "Artsy" Dilettanti in the Philippines

(Copy-pasted from a chat with my friend. Not all items are written by me.)

1. They have uncombed, probably unwashed, hair.

2. They’d wear maroon or lavender or stripey maroon or stripey lavender shirt (or any color gravitating to a brownish hue), and scarfs that make no freakin’ sense to wear in this sweltering tropical country.

3. They’d refuse to listen to any types of music unless it’s rock. If it’s not rock it sucks, but if it’s a rock rendition of any songs from other genres (like Sade’s No Ordinary Love) it’s automatically good.

4. They’d brush up knowledge on super obscure indie artists or movies or books to appear more “well-versed”. But, if you mention ANY indie artists they don’t know of, they’d snark and say “I don’t like them anyway” and then proceed to mention OTHER indie artists until it becomes a game of “who drops the most names”.

5. They’d never dance, unless it’s mock dance. like “ooh look at people dancing to Rihanna’s Umbrella [which I really don’t like, in case you’re wondering], i’m soo gonna dance to it too in a snarky way to prove just how stupid everyone else looks!”

6. They LOOOOOOVE Tim Burton and especially his Jack Skellington!

7. They’d refuse to watch basketball or any sports by saying it’s too physical and therefore barbaric.

8. Ask them about what they like in a certain music, book, and movie, and they’ll say things like “avant-garde”, “its brilliant scope”, “the masterfully meticulous setpieces”, or “the grandness of its visions”. Setpiece, too, seems to be their favorite word.

9. Their favorite style of photography is Lomography.

10. They’d always look smug, and they stare at you not with their eyes, but with their noses.

11. They’d tell you “MULTIPLY, FACEBOOK, FRIENDSTER, TWITTER AND PLURK ARE FOR WUSSES” (even if they secretly have accounts on those places) and say the ultimate social networking site is DEVIANTART!

12. They like making swirly-swooshy digital arts.

13. They only know 2 kinds of moods… sullen and more sullen, as though the world owes them for not understanding them better.

14. Whenever anyone confesses to liking something popular, they’d have just 1 knee-jerk reaction: “You’re into that?! *snickers*”

(I am guilty of at least 1 or 2 items.)

25 Things

I couldn’t write a real post today (been busy), but since this blog needed to show lifesigns, I instead chose to post my 25 things that everyone’s written as notes in Facebook.

1. Few weeks ago I got a brand-spanking-new CPU. After installing all the apps and the drivers, I vow to avoid doing it again as much as I can. The CPU’s so brand-spanking-new I see slap marks all over it, and they give me nightmarish visions of S&M.

2. I’m a certified dork. Before dorkiness became cat’s meow, I was already bumming my ass for hours playing videogames till I could hear roosters crowing or drunks snoring.

Ye be the judge of which of the two comes later.

3. To further reinforce my dorkiness as authentic and primordial – existing since the dawn of civilization even - I watched manga way before everyone else. Oh yes, it’s true. Did you know that Slam Dunk first played in the Philippines at ABC5? Or that in Taiwan , Yaiba’s name is translated as “Nine Dragon Balls” while Dragonball’s is “Seven Dragon Balls”?

I better stop these geek trivia before I bore everyone to death and then to life again (so that’s a boredom so supreme it spurs reincarnation).

4. True story, I have only fallen asleep once in the theater, and that was when I saw “The Awakenings”. No, I’m not being clever, that happened! It’s a great movie, though; I was merely too young to understand it when I first saw it.

5. I sometimes get this fits of being super annoying in an instant messenger program. I ask people to play paper-scissor-rocks with me there despite knowing that we will in no way come up with a hand simultaneously.

6. Family is becoming even more important as I grow older.

7. I’ve never held a Nintendo Wii all my life. That means I’m still a manly videogamer!

8. I really want to buy a new pair of sneakers. The last one I bought was from year 2005. You might want to write that down!

9. I want to change - change the way I write, the way I think, the way I behave, or the way I view at things. I’m changing not because Obama is inspiring it; I’m changing because I don’t often get the best out of my life and I think I’m at least partially responsible for it.

10. I’ve never used a karaoke all my life. Breaking people’s eardrums is not my favorite way of punishing people.

Err, I don’t have a favorite, if you’re curious.

11. I look forward to having a family vacation in Italy a few years from now.

12. Right now you feel like picking your nose. Oh yes, you do. Don’t you dare deny it!

13. I speak Manfutaglish with my siblings. It’s the amalgam of Mandarin, Fukien , English and Tagalog. Nobody can seem to comprehend it.

14. I don’t watch TV at all. I play videogames, I watch movies, I read books, I listen to music, I surf the net, but I just don’t watch TV – except for the occasional NBA games, that is.

15. Speaking of music, everybody knows me as a jazz aficionado. Some of my favorite jazz musicians are Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, and Sonny Rollins. I also like soul music and some early-day RnB’s, especially songs by Stevie Wonder, Donnie Hathaway, and Gil Scott Heron.

16. I really really really really like quoting videogames.

“How are you gentlemen!”
“The president is kidnapped by ninjas! Are you bad enough dude to rescue the president?”
“Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind!”
“What is a man! A miserable little pile of secrets!”
“Heaven or hell, let’s rock!”
“Can love bloom in the battlefield?”

17. I am right now craving for calamansi juice, buko juice, and dalandan juice.

18. When this year began, I promised to myself that I will improve my drawing skills.

19. I started a chat with someone a while ago. I asked “how are you?” she replied “I’m good” and I said “of course you are. I don’t expect you to be evil. I expect you to be good.”

The king of lame comments is I.

20. I don’t like our new NAIA Terminal 3 (airport) at all. The queue for any booths at NAIA3 was unbearably long and the immigration was unbelievably understaffed. It’s so unbelievably understaffed that for one moment I thought I arrived at the airport of East Timor. I’ve never been to East Timor , but I believe their airport is understaffed too, for whatever reasons.

21. I always geek out by how much mangas there are in Taiwan . I can’t keep up at all. My bank account sympathizes.

22. I deleted my plurk account. Too much noise. I went back to Twitter and I prefer my friends in Facebook anyway. They’re nicer. And lovelier. And smarter. And smells better too. Plus I can be unbelievably chatty there and no one would complain. They’d merely fall sleep. Hey, wake up!

Anyway, my twitter account is twitter.com/nightdreamer.

23. I find going to clubs to be a futile pursuit. There’s nothing that anyone can do there to deepen their relationship with their friends that can’t be done elsewhere, plus the “acquaintances” met there are rarely there to establish long-term relationships anyway.

24. Contrary to popular belief, I’m no Mr. Congeniality. If you think I’m nice, that’s because I think it’s less trouble to be pleasant than it is to be an ass. I hate the stress that comes from being hostile to people, so if I don’t like someone, I just snub them off.

25. I’ve once been driven out of classroom because I’ve fallen asleep while a teacher rants about his house’s malfunctioning air conditioner. I’ve since learned to respect air conditioners more. They have feelings too.

Remembering the Koln Concert

I’m not gonna deny it - last year when I tried to do the All Jazzed Up series of posts as an attempt to hook everyone to my favorite music genre, I didn’t foresee how hard it is to consistently update my readers with new recommendations. Although I love talking about music, I also think of it as the most challenging topic to write about, not because it’s always going to be deep and thought-provoking (more often, no), but because no two people will ever be in complete agreement about what they’re hearing and whether they’re melodious or cacophonous. It certainly doesn’t help that jazz is very difficult to define that its own name doesn’t suggest anything definite. How exactly do you put into words the improvisations you hear in most jazz music and have people imagine its sound with any accuracy? You can’t.

All my frustrations aside, I still miss talking about jazz and getting people acquainted with it. For now, though, I want you to listen to some great solo improvisations from Keith Jarrett’s Part 1 (of 2) of his Koln Concert, right here. This is improvisation at its finest, because accordingly, Keith Jarrett came up with this music the instant he was on his piano and playing it. He didn’t write any of the notes down prior to the day he performed, and he won’t be able to play the same tune (he doesn’t want to, anyway), note-per-note, again.

Anyway, in that link I provided, the track got capped to 10 minutes because that’s the time limit for youtube videos. It originally lasts for 26 minutes. If you like it, be sure to grab a copy of the album.