Theater Tales

My classmates and I already ended Theater 12 at UPD with the Insiang presentation but I really need another fix of creative activity. I was fortunate enough to have found a certain theater company in Makati which offers seasonal theater acting workshops. And so I gave their office a ring and asked for details. It costs 2,700 pesos. I was surprised and ready to back out because I can’t shell out that amount of money every week. But then the secretary replied that it was for the whole duration of the workshop, 8 sessions until December 1. I was surprised again. That’s surprisingly cheap considering that regular summer workshops of the same caliber are usually more than double that price.         

Sinabon Ako ng Bonggang Bongga ng Boss Kong Hipon, Dude

Kindly translate: Hipon naman ang mga model ng Bench e! (Bench models are shrimps!). When I first saw this in an online forum, I was quite lost guessing what the poster really wanted to say. Well, hipon (shrimp), just like any other seafood, is malansa (fishy) and I think that adjective is associated with being gay. So maybe the poster was insinuating that Bench models are gay. It was not until a classmate presented a monologue in theater class that I found out what it really meant. The character she played said something like, “Hipon siya (He is a shrimp), (referring to invisible boyfriend) delicious ang katawan pero patapon ang ulo (the body is delicious but you get rid of the head)” Eureka!

Apparently when someone is referred to as hipon (shrimp) in modern Tagalog slang, that person has a hot body but face value is zero. So again when I encountered a post in another online forum saying, “Hindi dolphin si Michael Phelps, isa siyang dambuhalang sugpo (Michael Phelps is not a dolphin, but rather a giant shrimp)” I was not lost in translation anymore, unless they were insinuating that a quartet of shrimps could outmaneuver four dolphins in a 4x100 meter relay.

We Won Gold! Too Bad It Doesn’t Count...

The Beijing Olympics ends tonight. If you missed the opening ceremony two weeks ago like I did then you have missed a lot, believe me. With Zhang Yimou heading the said cultural presentation, it is guaranteed to be a spectacular show. The closing ceremony will be aired live tonight at 8 PM, though I do not know if they could replicate the grandeur of two weeks ago.

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was once quoted saying that one of her legacies would be a gold medal in the Olympics. We have to congratulate her because it came true! We won a gold medal... in Wushu, which really does not count because it was just an exhibition sport. I saw a replay of the awarding ceremony earlier this morning. There he was, our Wushu Olympic gold medalist, singing as our national anthem was being played, the Philippine flag flying high between the flags of Malaysia and Chinese Taipei. 

Overbooked

Three months in Tokyo, two months in Seoul, five days in Brisbane, and two years and a half of haggard slavery to earn the bucks that would maintain the complicated mechanism called My Life running. This is what’s in store for me after I get my hands on that freaking diploma. Wow, maybe I should just jump off our veranda, *joke!* I don’t know why I subject myself to this kind of torture. Hopefully I’m not the only one. How retarded is this?

It will always remain a mystery as to why some people can never be satisfied in leaving their life to fate. Life could be as easy as one, two, three, but why do some people make a complicated Math equation out of it? And to reiterate a favorite quote which happens to be a personal cliché, “Having too many plans in life is worse than having no plan at all!” In the end you don’t end up following anything anyway and to worsen the situation you’d come to realize that you did not enjoy the ride because you were too busy being paranoid all the time. Of course when you have no plans in life you just go with the flow and try to enjoy the journey. I think the reasoning is flawed; well life too!

Beware, I’m Jurassic

It’s actually easy. All I’d have to do is make an afternoon side trip to Bench or Penshoppe and shop for those Bermuda shorts and collar shirt thingies they usually wear. It’s very easy to blend in; what with my petite frame and aura of naiveté it’s easy to mistake me for a minor. I don’t know. Perhaps I really just don’t want to because there’s no reason for it. I’d rather stick to my all black wardrobe screaming “BEWARE! I’m more Jurassic than you think!”

Having students born in the 90’s onwards as your classmates could only mean that you are loitering around campus for quite some time already. It always makes me laugh, thinking about it. These entities were the ones busy engaging in fist fights and showing off their Pokemon card collections while I was patiently waiting for my university entrance exam results.

Shirtless Theater Monologues

I first encountered acting when I was about to graduate from elementary. My Filipino teacher was organizing a play sponsored by a popular chocolate milk drink and they needed someone who looked malnourished enough to play the role of the child who just didn’t want to drink his milk. She asked me to run to her as if she was my mom. Apparently even that I couldn’t do convincingly and so the role went to someone else. Thank God, or so I thought.

In every high school in the country there is that English or Filipino teacher who just has to stage a play, a play which one way or another would involve that stereotypical boy whose main purpose in life is to be his father’s punching bag. Unluckily I always fit the bill. In my freshman year my English teacher asked me to audition, which I did. I managed to disappoint them with my “acting skills.” I got off the hook. For sophomore year the play was about cock fighting so I enjoyed a year of tranquility knowing that the organizers would not stoop so low as to dress someone like a chicken on a cockfight. And then came junior year.