Reading Native
Did you grow up with foreign fairy tales or local legends? If you were fortunate, your childhood was prominently graced by both. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White were occasionally interspersed with an “alamat” or two featuring disembodied body parts growing into fruit trees. It’s actually nice to contrast those narratives between local and international now that we’re old enough to appraise them side by side. It’s hard to find a fairy tale analogous to the sad story of Aging who had his hand cut off by his lady love’s father leaving her to grieve and bury his hand which led to the growth of the first banana tree. It’s surprising that young children told native folk tales don’t have more nightmares. I certainly didn’t. One of the coconut legends is even more grisly. It follows a similar plot to the banana tale and concludes with a coconut tree sprouting from the burial site of a man’s disembodied head. The coconut is supposed to resemble a head. Definitely food for thought next time you’re having a coconut drink or dessert.
There are also the stories of Juan Tamad which encourage us to be more industrious. There’s no use sitting under a tree with your mouth open, waiting for fruit to fall into your mouth. Releasing crabs bought at the market and trusting them to go home to be cooked leads our hero nowhere fast. Most of his tales ends up with him being heavily chastised for his laziness but he never seems to learn. Instead, we’re expected to learn in his place. Amusing cautionary tales are there to spur us on and keep laziness at bay. These are the sort of stories best told by a grandparent from memory at bedtime. It makes a young mind wonder how older people are capable of remembering so much until they grow up and realize that they know the stories by heart too from listening to it for so many nights.
Reading the same stories now offers a trip down memory lane. We look at the story of how Pasig supposedly got its name from a drowning Spaniard who was out on a boat with a girl named Paz. He fell out screaming “Paz, sigue me” until he was claimed by the depths, gurgling “Paz, sig…” as his last words. We end up wondering about things like cultural context. I always thought that the Pasig River has something to do with the native word “dalampasigan.” However, the story of tragic love is certainly fanciful and conjures up an image that’s most likely to inspire poets and artists.
Children born in this country shouldn’t grow up with just mainstream fairy tales. They should know these old folk stories as well. It’s all part of the tapestry of our culture and demonstrates the Filipino penchant for storytelling. Some of these stories predate the invention of writing and yet they’ve survived this long. We can’t let them die now. Do yourself a favour and read up on some old native tales one of these days. You might be surprised at just how interesting they are.
Election Fever
The recent Senate elections have proven to be particularly polarizing for the country. From social media to the streets, everyone is eager to express their opinion. The news is flooded with the latest tally of results and commercial breaks overflow with commercials endorsing candidates with cheesy jingles and campaign promises. It’s practically a circus reminiscent of the chaos described in the film Chicago as Richard Gere croons “Razzle Dazzle.” “How can they see with sequins in their eyes?” It’s hard to know how to cast your vote with earworm melodies in your ears, a surplus of campaign posters outnumbering any for a blockbuster, and free t-shirts being shoved into your hands. You’re being dragged every which way with sweet promises to go with the jarring jingles. In all this mess, it’s hard to tell what’s true.
Talking to friends, classmates, and co-workers only further complicates matters. People tend to gravitate toward those who share their opinions so arguments are bound to erupt when you’re not rooting for the same candidate. Alongside the conflict between the candidates, we find ourselves in conflict with the people we regularly interact with. This tends to be the case whenever people congregate to discuss matters they happen to be passionate about. Over the course of election season, some people just find it hard to live and let live, looking to sway the opinions of stubborn peers only to be met with a brick wall. This is probably why politics is a hot button issue most people hesitate to touch. It just gets hard to ignore when everything around you is saturated with it though.
This extends to the social media sphere with comments and posts in excess that involve political opinion. It’s not uncommon to see threads between “friends” descend into bickering once politics comes up. Memes are a dime a dozen as well with photos of candidates being subject to Photoshop both for the sake of laughs and propaganda. The political circus out on the street is wild but it could be argued that the circus on the web is just as wild if not wilder. The factor of anonymity is thrown into the mix so people are far more frank while bordering on hateful. As much as people dislike Nancy Binay for propagating a political dynasty and lacking experience, must the line really be crossed to poke fun of her personal appearance? It just goes to show how thick your skin has to be if you even want to consider politics.
Once the senate is elected, there’s no doubt that there will be grumbling over both the winners and losers. If you voted, you have some right to your discontent. After all, you did your part to fill those seats with who you believed to be the right choice. If you didn’t, you’ve surrendered your entitlement to whine about it. Just keep in mind that after a few months, the circus will die down. The airwaves will be back to carrying their regularly scheduled ads and the streets will lose their political clutter. Until then, sit tight and let the fever burn itself out.
Trekking on Tumblr
Tumblr is proving to be quite a versatile form of social media. With its focus on sharing images, it affords users a chance to tell stories through pictures. From memes to images that evoke nostalgia from decades gone by, there’s practically nothing you won’t be able to find on Tumblr. Sometimes, images even gain a new dimension as users add captions to it, giving it an entirely new meaning. GIFs featuring moving images evoke an era gone by. It’s like the silent films of early cinema have come back into fashion in this digital age. Based on all these wonders, it’s not surprising that celebrities would be attracted to this platform. It’s a lot less mundane than Twitter.
One celebrity who has recently joined Tumblr is George Takei, an actor most famous for his role of Hikaru Sulu in the original Star Trek series. He’s also well-known for promoting equality as a member of the LGBT community. The man’s a hero both onscreen and off-screen. With the recent buzz around the sequel to 2009’s Star Trek franchise reboot, his Tumblr is a nice little glimpse into a man who helped turn the sci-fi series into a cultural phenomenon. Besides, there’s a certain joy that comes with his quirky sense of humour along with the excitement that he may very well end up re-blogging one of your posts.
The first thing you’ll notice about George Takei’s Tumblr is his love of puns. He makes a point of posting many images with witty lines of his own. For instance, a picture of Barack Obama photo-shopped to look like a classical musician features the line “An instant classic.” He also posts a picture of an action figure Thor accompanied by “Here’s to a Lo-ki Friday, friends.” Two horses kissing in a meme marked “A stable relationship” gets Takei to quip “Just a little horsing around.” It’s his cleverness made short and sweet while accompanied by visuals. Once you click on his Tumblr, it’s likely that you’ll find yourself scrolling through for hours. It’s definitely a great way to pass the time while waiting to see the latest Star Trek.
Dumbing Down with a Dub?
TV5 has recently started airing English films dubbed in Filipino in an effort to make them more accessible to local audiences. At first glance, this appears to be a commendable act in order to provide entertainment to a wider range of people. It helps more Filipinos get in touch with films outside the local scene. It’s a glimpse into cultures other than our own by making them more understandable via our native tongue. Foreign material is altered for local consumption thus providing a new outlet to gain more knowledge about the rest of the world. Surely, there can’t be anything wrong with that.
Well, the intentions are good but you know what they say about the path to hell. The ad campaign that accompanies these dubs is proving to be problematic in terms of depicting its target audience. TV5’s ads to promote their dubbed films involve a man watching television in English. As he watches, he ends up increasingly confused by the words spoken by the characters on-screen. As a result, he ends up suffering from a nosebleed due to the intensity of his befuddlement. His affliction is only relieved when TV5 shows the same film in Filipino thus permitting him to understand what’s happening.
This is a problem because it depicts the viewer as being illiterate to some degree. It assumes that most viewers aren’t smart enough to comprehend English movies. This just isn’t true. The Philippines is an Asian country that can actually boast of a high proficiency in the English language. Ad campaigns like this serve to undermine that great achievement of the nation. It encourages people to settle for dubs rather than helping to expose them to a means toward gaining more English vocabulary. Anyone trying to learn a new language knows that the best way to do it is through osmosis. Aside from language lessons, it helps to listen to music, watch TV and read books in the language you’re trying to learn. These dubs tend to discourage this type of learning.
Aside from that, it’s an insult trying to pass itself off as a gag. It assumes that most of the audience don’t understand English and have no interest in doing so. The audience is supposedly so averse to English that trying to comprehend it makes their noses bleed. Their entertainment has to be chewed up first before it can be fed to them. They’re too dumb to process it otherwise. It’s a case of the media mandating what the masses are fit to consume. It has decided that films in English are too much for our poor brains to handle so it’s altered them to be easier for us to digest. Never mind the fact that Filipinos have been watching films in English for decades without complaint.
The lesson to be learned here is that many of us need to learn not to just take what the media feeds us. We should be responsible for our enjoyment rather than simply have them decide what we would enjoy. This is why the internet is a godsend. It allows for discussion on polarizing matters like these. Where do you stand on this particular matter? To dub or not to dub?
Micro-blogging Isn’t As Small As The Name Suggests
In the first decade of this new millennium, we find ourselves on the brink of massive change. Advances in new media have been made beyond our wildest dreams. The response? To dream wilder. Computers, cellular phones, high-definition television and many others mark this decade as one of notable progress. But these are merely devices; what about their intended purpose? Communication is central to many of these hallmarks of technological progress. Consider what some may perceive as an average evening in the United States: You can watch American Idol on Fox, make your vote using your cellphone (probably powered by AT&T) then later use your laptop to tweet your thoughts on the episode in one concise statement. The tweet’s relevance is subject to question though. Just how important are your thoughts on the entertainment you consume? Does reducing that thought to a length of 140 characters reduce the meaning behind the thought? What is tweeting or, to use a broader term, micro-blogging? How does it impact the world of technology and communication as we know it today?
Let’s start with a definition. According to the Macmillan Online Dictionary, micro-blogging is “putting short updates such as brief texts, photos etc. on a personal blog, especially by using a mobile phone or instant messaging software.” It’s classified as a “buzz word” or “a word that has become very popular, especially a word relating to a particular activity or subject.” From this, one can surmise that micro-blogging is a fairly new term for an activity that has reached popularity only recently. Macmillan goes on to briefly detail the word’s background by breaking it down into its two component words for the sake of etymology. “Micro” means small while “blog” is short for “weblog” or “online journal.” The latter concept was conceived in the early nineties with the advent of the internet we know today. (Macmillan 2011) With this in mind, we can clearly see that micro-blogging’s ancestor is less than two decades old and already spawning. Technology has its roots firmly entrenched in its consuming public and is branching out with new tendrils every day. We’ve gone from diaries for our eyes alone to blogs for an online audience to micro-blogs for instant gratification in disseminating our opinions. It seems our voices get louder as technology makes it easier for us to be heard.
But what is the nature of this new-found voice? What is micro-blogging to the average person? Now that we’ve broken it down into its simplest essence through the dictionary definition, I present here my anecdotal definition. As I see it, micro-blogging is a more personal method of communication in that it tends to be more impulsive. A single sentence escapes one’s fingers far more easily than several paragraphs. If one has certain feelings, a single burst comprised of 140 characters (perhaps rife with typos and shorthand misspellings) is far easier to manage and post than a blog entry comprised of a multitude of thoughts in hundreds (maybe even thousands) of words. With the latter, one is forced to introspect and ponder, to re-read and analyze. Is this really fit to post? However, with a micro-blog entry, one simply hits send upon finishing the sentence, almost as if to punctuate it. “Send” is the new “period.” Indeed, errors might add to what makes a micro-blog more personal. This is a heat of the moment impulse thought presented raw with mistakes and all.
However, more personal as it may be, does it get the message across better than a blog entry that’s been thought out? Blogging versus micro-blogging can actually be seen as analogous to letter-writing versus e-mailing in this way. It takes time and patience to compose blog entries and handwritten letters while e-mailing and micro-blogging offer instant gratification. There’s also a contradiction here though. While both e-mailing and micro-blogging offer instant gratification, the latter is far more personal. Why is this so?
First, let’s look at the eldest of these forms of correspondence. In the letter, your penmanship is a concern along with the choice of words and the frequency of error. When writing out a letter by hand, it’s common for people to first compose a rough draft. From that rough draft, a final draft is copied out which lacks all the mistakes present in the rough version. There’s no backspace key when it comes to putting pen to paper. Then, when it’s time to mail your letter, it can take days, weeks or even months to reach its destination. The effort in producing a letter is palpable and therein we find the personal appeal. It’s a form of one on one correspondence that transmits a willingness to exercise effort for the receiving party.
On the other hand, e-mailing is much faster. Once you hit send, your message is now in your intended recipient’s inbox. It doesn’t matter if they’re in the next room sharing your wi-fi connection or on the other side of the planet; the amount of time it takes for your message to come to them is the same. Though some actually do put in the effort to spell correctly in their e-mails, the norm (as I’ve experienced it) is to treat it as a less formal medium of communication unless one is corresponding with an authority figure. Text-speak and typos are common especially when an e-mail is rushed. There’s no personal touch brought by penmanship when one simply selects a font. So this begs the question: how does micro-blogging, despite being faster than e-mail, somehow end up being more personal? What sets it apart from the standard blog format?
We’ll have to first look at the blog before we can arrive at an answer. In a blog entry, one is essentially writing a diary entry for the public. Though certain web platforms offer you the option of locking an entry to a select few individuals, what you write here is still intended for some form of public consumption. Most blog entries tend to be comprised of at least one paragraph; a far cry from the character limits one finds in micro-blogging. In fact, one could say there is no word limit to a blog entry. You can go at length about a certain topic with no end in sight should you wish it. But is it enough to hold attention? Most of the time, when people surf the internet, they tend to simply scan over a text rather than truly assimilate. In this way, the impact of your thoughts may be deadened. If your intended audience’s attention span isn’t focused, your message is unlikely to get across.
Going back to our earlier query about why micro-blogging is more personal and likely to get across to readers as opposed to a blog entry or an e-mail, we can surmise that the answer lies in impulse control, length and audience. When one is micro-blogging, the words come easily because one must be concise. Hardly is there ever a spell-check function or an option to change fonts to distract you from the words you wish to post. You simply type what you think and hit send. In a way, it can be comparable to instant messaging or text messaging where you find yourself speaking to the other party directly. Micro-blogging feels like a conversation as opposed to simple blogging which feels like you’re putting your thoughts up for peer evaluation. With its short length, micro-blogs aren’t difficult to read. You can go through hundreds of tweets on someone’s Twitter feed over the span of a single hour. In this way, the audience is compelled. Rather than becoming bombarded by a wall of text, they see information in manageable chunks and thus have an easier time focusing.
But what about e-mail? Aren’t they similarly short at times? Don’t they also fulfill instant gratification in being easy to send and receive? Yes, but e-mails tend to fulfill a different need than a micro-blog. With a micro-blog, you are writing for an audience. With an e-mail, you are writing a brief one-on-one correspondence like a text message. Writing for one just doesn’t fulfill the same social expectations as writing for many. In an e-mail, one can perhaps revive the length of the usual letter format and fill it with one’s emotions but then we come to the same problem we have with blog entries: length that requires more attention to focus on. In the end, micro-blogs are more personal than e-mails because they encourage impulsiveness and do so with an audience watching. It’s a new kind of digital exhibitionism.
But, as we all have already learned when it comes to technology, new doesn’t necessarily mean “good.” Micro-blogging is something users must be responsible with. After all, since it appears to be a license to be impulsive, one is now more likely to post something one might regret. A harsh Tweet can’t be taken back easily. Sure, you can delete it but there’s that saying about things on the internet being there forever. One can say that the same standard for even the simplest form of communication applies here. Think before you speak or, to be more apt, think before you Tweet. You never know who’s watching on a social network. You just might put off future employers and ruin your chances at an excellent opportunity. That’s the power of 140 characters. Micro-blog responsibly.
A New Foreign Correspondent for the New Millennium
In our rapidly changing world, there is now a growing reliance on social media and other mobile technologies. These developments have made being a foreign correspondent more of a challenge. No longer are they the same as they were in the 20th century. In the 21st century, we don’t have just men of action out on the field. No, women are out there, too. They’re competently gathering the latest happenings on foreign lands in the same fashion as their male counterparts. On top of that, the foreign correspondent doesn’t necessarily need to be on foreign soil to perform their duties anymore. No, they can actually gather information from the comfort of their own home. What kind of developments are these? Are they to the advantage or detriment of this profession?
The answer is: it depends. New doors are opening for those who would not have found a job in this field long ago. You don’t have to be middle class or higher to perform the tasks expected of a foreign correspondent. Even those who aren’t as well-off can do this job provided they have computer access. With a phone that can connect to the internet, you can easily catch the action as it happens and immediately upload it. People all over the world will then be able to see it. Isn’t that what foreign correspondence is in a nutshell? Taking a story and sharing it with an international audience? Now that’s possible for anyone who has the technology.
At the same time these doors are opening, other doors are closing. This job is not as easy as it used to be. You can’t be pampered when it comes to deadlines. After all, you’re competing with the internet for speed and, more often than not, the internet will beat you when it comes to a scoop. If you think you’ve got an exclusive on a story, you better check Twitter first. It may already be a trending hash tag before you can type the first word for your newspaper. The world travels at the speed of information and foreign correspondents have trouble keeping up. They shouldn’t be trying to. Trying to keep up with the internet in the information race is like trying to race a train to the station. It’s far more productive to hop on the train and let it take you where you need to go. Foreign correspondents need to use the internet instead of fighting against it. In this way, they’ll be able to meet more deadlines at a faster pace.
There’s now a wealth of information available to support any story. It’s not like back in the old days where the foreign correspondent might be the sole authority on a particular current event in another country. It’s far easier to check the Twitter accounts of people who actually live in the nation being covered as opposed to paying for the airfare of a foreign correspondent whose coverage may be out of date by the time he arrives. This curtails the independence of a foreign correspondent these days. It makes deadlines tighter.
There’s also an increasing reliance on locals outside the press bureau in the country one is covering. The news isn’t just at the press bureau. If you really want a scoop, you have to go out there and get it. To get a true exclusive that doesn’t feature content already available on the internet, you really have to put yourself out there. That means learning the language of the country or at least bringing a local contact along to serve as an interpreter. In this way, you get your information straight from the source. It’s going to be raw information that can’t be found anywhere else. This will definitely be an advantage as 21st century correspondent.
You have to be careful about where you get your information from though. A foreign correspondent lives in a glass house. All your facts can easily be checked with a single click of a mouse. Everything you do is transparent so the public can see every move you make. Now, more than ever, you need to get your facts straight. If you’re caught delivering half-truths, your career could end in a snap.
The foreign correspondent of the 21st century can’t be too specialized. In fact, they have to fit the bill as a Jack or Jill of all trades. As a foreign correspondent of this century, you have to be capable as a staff of one. That means having skills like writing, live reporting and video editing in your arsenal. You write your own report and read it in front of a camera that you set up on your own. Afterwards, you edit the resulting footage. If you can do that, you can become indispensable to your bureau. After all, most news bureaus are looking to cut down on expenses. It would be a boon to them if they only had to pay one salary instead of three.
The trick to becoming a foreign correspondent today is to be adaptable. You have to be ready to take the lead if resources are lacking. Don’t have a camera? Use the camera on your phone to take the footage. In this day and age, you should use technology to your advantage rather than fight it. Tweet those pictures immediately. It’s not uncommon for journalists to keep Twitters now. It’s a good way to give immediate up to the minute coverage at minimal cost. The trick is not to fear social media but to master it.
In the end, the foreign correspondent of the 21st century knows no gender, class or race. Anyone can step into this field and that is not something to be feared. It’s something to be celebrated since it extends more opportunities to everyone. It also encourages foreign correspondents to learn more skills. This leads to self-enrichment in the long run. All in all, the future is bright for aspiring foreign correspondents. They just need to adapt and the world will accept them with open arms and a wide smile.
Timing is Everything
There are a lot of old quotes and proverbs about time. Time is gold. Time is money. It makes it seem like time is the most precious commodity there is. After all, when you run out of it, you die. Time decides how hard you work and how much money you make in those hours. It determines your biology as it takes its toll on your body. This is likely why people find the concept of time travel so fascinating. It’s a matter of cheating death and bending the laws of physics to look at a point in history before one existed or after one is supposed to have died. It’s a way to change the course of events if your life has dealt you a bad hand. After all, how many of us have wanted to go back in time to fix a mistake or go to the future because we’re not satisfied with the present?
Science fiction is definitely not short on time travel when it comes to its plots. Star Trek has been doing it for decades. The most recent Star Trek film even has time travel as a major plot point with the primary antagonist travelling back in time to destroy the planet Vulcan and enact revenge on our intrepid band of heroes. Of course, we’re keeping it purposely vague here for the sake of those who have yet to see the film. If you haven’t, it’d be a good idea to do so soon since a sequel is set to be released in May.
Speaking of sequels, the Men in Black franchise has never shied away from science fiction tropes. In fact, MIB 3 uses time travel as a driving force behind its plot. We get to meet a young Agent K in the sixties and marvel at how Josh Brolin handles Tommy Lee Jones’s role with much aplomb. Again, this is another film with a major plot twist regarding how time travel is used. This seems to be a trend in fiction that makes use of changing the past. Just know that you’re sure to enjoy this flick if you’re a fan of seeing younger versions of well-beloved characters.
And, of course, we have to go back to the timelessness of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine which likely inspired a lot of today’s science fiction using time travel as a plot device. Our intrepid hero travels to the future only to discover that humanity has destroyed itself through hedonism and a ferocious species living underground serves to hunt down the evolved humans who seek nothing more than to spend their days lost to pleasure. It’s a dystopia and it definitely puts things into perspective about what we may become once we cease to innovate. Could “dusty death” be ahead for humanity? Anything is possible. Though we can’t travel through time to change the past, we can try to predict the future and change it if we feel we are headed in the wrong direction. Don’t long for the past or yearn for the future. Live the present wisely and the years to come will be bright.
Cooking 2.0
With the internet’s evolution, the way we do many things has evolved as well. For instance, sharing recipes has never been easier than it is today. Websites are devoted to trading the secrets of old family feasts. Now everyone can enjoy the morcon you grandmother makes at Christmas. You can also get a taste for the fried chicken as made by someone else’s dear mother. Culinary wisdom is now reaching a wider audience than ever before. Recipes handed down through generations are now being immortalized through the power of the web thus ensuring deliciousness for many more years to come. Of course, this comes through various media as well. Online cooking shows are a growing trend and they’ve served to diversify the palates of every netizen.
Take for example the YouTube channel “Cooking with Dog.” At first glance, you may be horrified at the potential connotations implied by that title. Don’t worry. There’s no dog meat being served up here. It’s a show dedicated to displaying Japanese cuisine and quirkiness while teaching you how to cook food from the Land of the Rising Sun. The show is hosted by a poodle named Francis or so the voiceover claims. A Japanese woman cooks the dishes as Francis the Poodle points out ingredients and narrates each step in English. It’s a sight that has to be seen to be believed.
For people who are into an assortment of fandoms, Feast of Fiction may be right up your alley. Every week, two intrepid cooks venture on a quest to recreate your favourite fictional foods. Thus far they’ve tackled lamb stew from The Hunger Games, butter beer from Harry Potter, lemon cakes and milk of the poppy from Game of Thrones, drink me potion from Alice and Wonderland and an assortment of other edible curiosities that exist in the imagination. Each video shows the procedure in detail while the hosts clearly demonstrate they’re having a good time. In fact, their video for bacon pancakes from Adventure Time is done entirely as a song.
Of course, if you’re more hard core about experimenting in the kitchen, there’s something for you as well. Epic Meal Time is not for the weak at heart. They take high cholesterol food and mash it up to create even more radical unhealthy meals. This is not the channel to click on if you’re vegetarian or on a diet. They do things with bacon that many may not even have considered to be possible. Fast food onion rings in French onion soup? Yes, that’s how they roll. Click with caution. They’re not shy about wasting food either. It’s a testament to gluttony.
Just know that you’ll never be short on meal ideas while clicking around YouTube. There’s always something new and exciting you can whip up. Have your friends help you out for the ultimate culinary bonding experience. After all, a meal is always better when it’s shared. Be adventurous in your gastronomic endeavours. To quote Francis the Poodle, good luck in the kitchen.
A Frosty Future
Cryonics is a popular plot device in science fiction. This was the method used by Mr Freeze to keep his wife alive in Batman. In Prometheus, the sleep capsules used some form of cryonics for interstellar space travel. The film Moon also makes use of cryonics though there’s a twist on how it plays into the plot and you should probably read no further if you’re trying to avoid spoilers. The film is a true tour de force when it comes to Sam Rockwell’s acting. It’s practically a one man cast in the same vein as Will Smith’s performance in I Am Legend. Think wisely before spoiling it for yourself since you’ll be missing out.
To start things off let’s take a look at Mr Freeze and his role in the Batman films. One of his defining points is the fact that he keeps his wife, Nora Fries, frozen until a cure can be found for the disease she’s suffering from. This is actually a viable use for cryonics that medical professionals are trying to implement. If you suffer from incurable cancer now, technology is in development to freeze your body so you can hibernate until a cure is found. Sadly, that technology isn’t quite within our reach yet but it’s good to know that it’s under development. It just goes to show hoe technology develops after fiction does it first.
Prometheus also makes use of some form of cryonics for long distance space travel. The crew of the Prometheus ends up in stasis pods so they won’t have to eat or experience aging over the course of the long journey. One can clearly see why this is a practical course of action. It cuts down on the use of resources as well as potential waste. On top of that, it decreases the time in which our space travellers are exposed to the potential threat of disease or injury. They don’t age so a journey of a hundred years will be merely a blink of an eye to them. It’s ideal for travelling long distances that might take several lifetimes to traverse.
And now we have Moon. If you’ve read this far, you obviously don’t mind spoilers. Moon user cryonics to store clones. The protagonist is actually a clone of the original person in charge of operations. The system on the moon has it so every time a clone falls ill, he is told he is “going home” and put in a stasis pod. In truth, that stasis pod is incinerated and a new clone is released to replace him, bearing the same memories of the original. It just goes to show how this technology has a dark side. Will we use it responsibly? Only time will tell.
These are just a few examples of cryonics in sci-fi. It’s a pretty popular plot device due to the multitude of ways it can be utilized and the fact that it’s plausible just adds to its appeal. Do your favourite sci-fi films feature cryonics?
After the Explosion
The bombing at the Boston marathon last April 15, 2013 has left the United States reeling. It’s said to be the worst attack on US soil since September 11, 2001. The casualties and injuries are far less than 9/11 though. It is reported that three people were killed and 183 were wounded. This is a stark contrast to the thousands killed during September 11 but it’s clear to see why such a disaster would be a cause for concern to the United States. It targeted a major sporting event where a crowd had congregated thus displaying a malicious intent toward murder and harm. The outrage that followed this act is more than logical.
After the attack, grief over the tragedy was apparent. However, the fortitude of the American people was also on display. Investigations to discover the responsible parties were immediately underway. It just goes to show how the human spirit won’t be felled. After all, this disaster occurred at a sporting event which is the very definition of human triumph over difficulty. A marathon is not an easy thing to run and yet so many choose to participate in it to push themselves to the limit. The bombs may have tried to destroy this Boston tradition but it appears as if all its done is united the community further in adversity.
People all over the world sympathize with the victims in Boston just as Americans have sympathized with them in the wake of their own disasters. There’s nothing like a disaster to bring people together regardless of race, sex, or beliefs. We all agree about the senselessness of human lives being ended far too soon in violence. We all agree that no country should have to suffer something of this magnitude. It’s not just news sensationalism. It’s a matter of showing that bad things happen to good people so we should be all on alert and watch out for each other.
Social media is definitely one outlet where this attitude of support is really apparent. Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook are all abuzz about these recent events. People are checking up on friends and relatives. Even strangers are using this as a form of communication to help warn people in Boston who may not be aware of the imminent threat now that a manhunt is underway. Due to the threat of potential shootouts, homes and businesses are now on lockdown and people are on social media talking to each other to help keep each other calm. It just goes to show how the advances of the digital age can help in trying times.
The bombings may be over but there’s still much left to be done. Suspects still need to be brought to justice and Boston needs to heal from this trauma. However, the world has faith that all this will pass. The good thing about humanity is it gets up no matter how many times you knock it down. Before long, this tragedy will be just a memory of how adversity and disaster was overcome by the strength of the human spirit.
Apocalypse Then
Science fiction has already visualized many ways in which the world might end. Meteor strikes are fairly popular. After all, Armageddon and Deep Impact came out in the same year. Both stories are eerily similar. A meteor is hurtling toward Earth and a ragtag band of astronauts has to intervene to save the world. Granted, Armageddon is likely a bit more popular due to the involvement of Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, and Liv Tyler along with its Aerosmith theme song “I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing.” NASA actually uses this film in astronaut training to see how many inaccuracies might be spotted by those aspiring to fly into space. The record thus far stands at 168 impossibilities.
It seems we’re all obsessed with how the world might end. We keep predicting it and it doesn’t come to pass. We thought it would end in the year 2000 and it didn’t happen. We thought it would happen again in 2012 and, again, our predictions were off the mark. One might wonder how we’ll watch the film “2012” about a decade from now. Will we be seeking out the scientific inaccuracies in it, too? The notion of sudden spontaneous earthquakes and a sort of Noah’s ark reserved for mostly the rich is rather telling of the times when the film was made. The economy had just crashed and it showed up on the big screen as the rich crushing the poor when the apocalypse came along.
Contrast this with the nineties and Terminator. Class struggle isn’t really at the forefront in these films. It’s more optimistic about averting Judgement Day. We have a hero in the form of a young boy who tames the savage robotic threat from the future and turns it against its original purpose. Terminator is a bit more hopeful about what’s to come if you choose to ignore the most recent film featuring Christian Bale. Our viewpoints on the end of the world tend to shift based on what’s currently happening around us. Cinema changes to give us something that reflects our current world view.
Just look at Alien. The past Alien films have a saviour in the form of Ellen Ripley but the world is mostly decimated and it’s pretty much a bad future. The film was released in 1979 and it’s one of the first times we have a heroine at the forefront of an action flick that’s gone on to be a blockbuster. It reflects the change we’ve seen in attitudes toward women during that time. When the world finds itself on the brink of ending, a woman’s there to save it. This is turned on its head in Prometheus where Elizabeth Shaw appears to open Pandora’s box thus releasing the horrors that Ellen Ripley will eventually have to deal with. It feels like a step back but it also reflects the culture of this decade where women have to deal with blundering even as they rise to power. Men had their blunders too but women seem to draw more scrutiny.
The fictional face of the apocalypse is always changing. How will the world end next? All we can do is wait and see. Maybe some of us may even get to write it.
Page-turning in a New Age
Not long ago, walking around with a small flat TV screen that fits in your hands was the stuff of science fiction. In fact, the gadget was featured in Star Trek episodes as an item known as the PADD. Now we have the PADD in real form via the iPad and an assortment of other tablet PCs like the Samsung Galaxy and the Google Nexus. It’s strange to think that Windows 95 kids now have a lot more digital power at their fingertips than they could ever have fathomed back when they first touched a computer. There’s a lot of impact tablet PCs are having on already established technologies and that includes certain things that have been around for centuries.
E-books are a fairly new development and yet they are taking the world by storm. It’s a lot easier to just download a book rather than walking all the way to the bookstore to buy a hard copy. It’s a lot cheaper, too. In some cases, it’s even free thanks to privacy. You can’t compete with free. In the United States, this is why bookstores are on the decline. Borders Bookstore recently went out of business and some might say that e-books are to blame. Now that the market is leaning more toward e-books, there’s less opportunity for people who sell hard copies to make a viable profit.
This is not to say that e-books are likely to wipe out books completely. Naysayers said television would kill radio and that didn’t happen. Looking at it in the context of books, it’s unlikely that they’ll be going the way of the dinosaurs any time soon. After all, books have been around for centuries. They don’t require electrical power. You can drop them from a great height without fear of seeing them shatter to pieces. In user-friendliness, they don’t require a manual at all. Books are timeless and e-books are merely another incarnation of them. They won’t be absolutely replacing their predecessor any time soon.
E-books come with the convenience of less cost. There’s also something incredibly appealing about touching your fingers to a pane of glass and watching the page turn beneath it when you’re reading on a tablet PC. You feel like you’re touching the future. The novelty does wear off though if you have a tablet PC that’s in the habit of hanging. Sometimes, the pages just don’t turn fast enough. Sometimes, the e-book glitches and turns to previous pages even as you try to move forward. Technology has yet to perfectly replicate the joy of a real book despite some added convenience. There’s opportunity cost at play here with certain losses despite benefits gained.
How does one prefer to turn pages in this new age? Are you more traditional, preferring the scent of old paper and the roughness of it on your fingertips? Or do you like the sleekness of glass at your touch as your words are lit up as pixels on a screen that used to merely be the stuff of our imaginations?
The Breast of Sci-Fi
If you’re a lady who happens to be spending your winter in Istanbul, you may run across a curious winter drink known as Boza. It’s a fermented concoction said to enhance one’s breasts without the aid of chemicals. The drink is supposedly 100% natural and has been around since 9000 BC. Now that’s definitely a piece of history. The drink is described as having an “acidic sweet” flavour and contains just a smidge of alcohol. It has a thick texture and is made primarily of malt and fermented grains. Based on this second-hand account, it would probably be an acquired taste to any who choose to try it for the first time. It’s heavy on lactic acid which may explain why it has its claimed properties. The drink used to be preferred by ancient armies though. It just goes to show how times change. Now, it’s the women who prefer to imbibe the drink and they take it for completely different reasons than the armies who chugged it for nourishment. One would think that such a thing would be the stuff of fantasy or science fiction. After all, both genres aren’t short on well-endowed women. It could even be argued that these genres have contributed to this particular body image issue
In Star Trek: Voyager, the former borg known as Seven of Nine wears a skin-tight catsuit that shows off her curves. It seems that even in the future, a full figure is something that draws the eye. It definitely didn’t hurt ratings when Jeri Ryan walked around in her slick costume. What does this say about the pop culture of the nineties though? We’re moving backwards through the decades. Starting off with the curiosity drawn by a natural breast enhancer in this decade, we glance at the past and see how our visions of the fictional future impacted our current point of view.
1990 brought us Total Recall which, despite its name, isn’t all that memorable in a lot of aspects. Most people remember it for featuring a prostitute with three breasts. Numerous pop culture references have been made to this glorified extra. She’s even included in the 2012 remake featuring Colin Farrell. Again, here’s a vision of the future rife with objectified women who aren’t even human. Why do we see the future in this manner? Why is this one scene that particularly sticks out in the minds of moviegoers? Is it because it’s both seductive and repulsive at the same time? Because we wonder how other human beings could come up with something like this and put it on the silver screen?
Princess Leia’s bikini from Return of the Jedi is iconic for a reason. It might be cheating to call Star Wars “the future” since it happened “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” but you get the point. Even imaginary races end up taking on our traits and it’s not quite clear if this should be disconcerting. To put things in perspective, think of it this way: women are in a tizzy over breast enhancement and pop culture is a factor in that. Why else would a drink like Boza draw so much attention?
April Follies
April 1st means an abundance of pranks from all over the world. The internet was definitely one of the platforms where pranks were most prevalent. It allowed for tomfoolery on a global scale. Gone are the days when pranks are limited to merely shocking a member of your family or friends circle. Now, you can go on the web and potentially let millions fall victim to your sense of humour. This was definitely the state of mind when more than a few prominent websites saw fit to either amuse or panic the people who used their services for this one holiday.
Google decided to go old school in the digital age by introducing a new “treasure map” feature for Google Maps. By clicking on this feature, one would be able to view a version of Google Maps that looked like an old treasure map drawn in ink on old paper. That isn’t the only trick Google had up its sleeve with this map though. If you were to choose to zoom into South Korea and look at its Gangnam district, you would be greeted with a tiny image of Psy in his novelty dance pose. Definitely not something from hundreds of years ago, but it’s a nice touch.
When it came to Facebook, those following HBO’s Game of Thrones on the social media outlet were in for a nasty shock. A prank article announced that they were replacing Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister with Warwick Davis who famously played Professor Flitwick in the Harry Potter franchise along with an adorable alien Ewok in Star Wars. If someone were to actually read the article, it would be immediately apparent that it’s a prank. Those who chose to read just the title though ended up immensely frustrated and horrified until they realized it was a prank. A flood of angry Facebook comments commenced until the hoax was officially admitted the next day.
YouTube also announced that it was shutting down much to the shock of many users who were unaware of the date. The video basically announced that YouTube would be offline until 2023 while they selected a winner for “best video” on the website. The humour in this is obvious but people hearing from second-hand sources probably weren’t immediately aware of the nature of the joke. The creativity used by YouTube in conveying the spirit of the holiday is far from surprising. They’ve been a bastion of creativity for ages and several YouTube users made their fair share of pranks through the site.
There seems to be something for every prankster on the web. What pranks did you run across on April 1st? Were you fooled by any in particular? Did you participate in any pranks of your own? Share your experiences with April Fools’ Day!
Winter on Easter
Easter Sunday is set to be a momentous day for more reasons than just egg hunts. For fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones, the long wait for the third season is about to come to an end. Winter is coming for your TV screens no matter how brightly the sun happens to be shining. The Starks return to rant about climate change and dodge impending doom along with the rest of the colourful cast. Dragons and lions and direwolves, oh my. It’s best to go into the show free of spoilers to fully feel the impact of the massive twists so we will not be going into much of the plot here. Instead, we’ll be keeping with the theme of Sci-fi Sunday and putting a fantasy twist on it by trying to figure out how certain elements in the show would work in the real world.
The manner of the planet where the show is set has been the subject of much discussion. Westeros is one of many continents on this world and it experiences winters and summers that last for years. How is this feasible from a scientific perspective? George R. R. Martin mostly just explains it as magic but that doesn’t deter fans from trying to figure out. At least fans seem to have gotten to the bottom of how long a year is in Westeros. They speculate that it lasts roughly the same as an Earth year of twelve months. As for the months, those are determined by the lunar cycles. The calendar is pretty much cracked. It’s the seasons that require more speculation. Does Westeros experience short term ice ages followed by regular climate? Fans speculate that perhaps the planet has a strange axial tilt that shifts around due to the gravitational pull of a distant star. Unfortunately, astrophysics is far more complicated than saying “it’s magic” so we may never get a conclusive answer.
The flora and fauna are interesting though. They have “winter roses” that are blue and bloom in the frost. Direwolves are an actual species that existed on Earth during the ice age. Mammoths are mentioned as well along with shadowcats that are striped and may be analogous to Earth’s extinct saber-toothed tigers. These animals are entirely feasible in the context of our world’s past so it’s nice to see a shout-out to them. As for the roses, there are flowers that are known to survive the frost like “snowdrops” so again we have something within the realm of possibility in Earth’s nature. For a fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire seems intent on clinging to plausibility when it can. This probably adds to the charm of the narrative. It blurs the line between fantasy and reality rather than just hitting us with pure fantasy. This is probably because George R. R. Martin has background as a science fiction author. In a way, he’s managed to marry the two genres in a seamless manner through his most popular work. When you sit back to watch the Game of Thrones season 3 premiere, try looking into the details of the world and you might be surprised at how much of it is actually possible.
Wholly Weak
It’s not unusual to feel rather small during holy week if you’re particularly invested in the religious aspect of it. We’re “wholly weak” in comparing the little sacrifices we make for the sake of penance to the trials and tribulations faced by the messiah. Of course, not everyone is religious but this week definitely lends itself to us as a time to reflect. School is out for most students and there’s no work to do. It seems some higher power is seeking to offer us reprieve and it’s up to us to use that time wisely. Though we may subscribe to “sacrifices” like giving up meat, it’s not exactly something that works for the modern age. In fact, seafood seems like an indulgence these days. It certainly costs more around this time of year.
Some people choose to sacrifice things that certainly aren’t prescribed in scripture but are far truer to the spirit of the season. A vegetarian who doesn’t eat meat on holy week doesn’t really count for much. However, someone addicted to Facebook who vows not to log-in during Lent understands what this week is really about. It’s something often discussed in priest’s homilies. Things have to be updated to suit the standards of the current century. One can only hope they apply the same perspective to reproductive health and marriage equality soon. Until then, we have to take the good with the bad. As old as the Church is, it’s still undergoing growing pains.
This is also going to be the first Easter with a newly ordained pope. Pope Francis is the first of his name and will hope to serve as a harbinger of change. He’s the first Latin American pope thus adding diversity to the Vatican. Times are changing swiftly but are they changing swiftly enough? Only time will tell as this new pope’s reign progresses. For now, we mostly tend to our own affairs and see what we can do to feel cleansed over the course of this sacred time. We draw strength from pushing the pause buttons on our lives and discovering ourselves during this short reprieve.
Holy week is a quiet time where one can walk the streets on a Black Saturday and get a feel for the post-apocalyptic. A majority of businesses are closed and the sidewalks and roads are mostly empty due to the exodus to provinces and vacation spots. It shows us just how small we all are in the scheme of things. Despite the surrounding emptiness, nature still runs its course. As a species, humans fail to realize how weak they truly are. Now is the time for a change of perspective for the sake of humbling one’s self. It really helps you look at the world with an unclouded point of view.
No matter your religion, try and take time to reflect this holy week. Evaluate you weaknesses so you can come out stronger. Learn the value of sacrifice and tolerance. In this way, you can build the strength to withstand most anything.
Fun and Function with Freeware
It’s always a drag when you’ve just bought a new computer and have no idea what to install on it in order to maximize its usage. It’s even worse when you realize how much it will actually cost you to start loading your system with programs that will help you put it to good use. Piracy is an option but it’s not entirely safe and it skirts the law so you may end up paying a bigger price in the long run. Aside from that, you could very well end up infecting your new computer with malware from pirated software and this is the last thing you want to do. This is when freeware comes to the rescue. There’s actually a lot of software available on the internet that’s free and reliable for your personal use.
Wrestling with Packaging
The earrings I prefer tend to be the loud sort. Big and flashy. They also tend to have long, blunted points to them, almost needle-like. This is the means by which you attach the accessory to the hole pierced in one’s ear. Such are the simple mechanics of this accessory. In any case, having a semi-sharp object of this nature around has proved quite useful when facing a daily blight: TEAR HERE.
Bags of chips lie. Packaging lies. They say “tear here” and then, when you actually try to tear at the point specified, you find yourself wallowing in utter disappointment. The packaging leads you to believe that “tear here” indicates a weak point in the barrier you wish to penetrate on the way to sustenance. Nay, I say! Rare is the occasion when “tear here” actually reaps rewards. More often than not, I find myself seeking out scissors or going for more primal methods like the use of teeth. The latter tends to lead to disaster as the contents of the packaging spills out. It’s like watching an action hero run from an explosion in slow motion only less epic and more tragic. You find the contents you were so desperate to attain spilling onto the floor, no longer fit for consumption.
So earrings? I have a habit of taking mine off and toying with them in fits of boredom. I also have a habit of keeping a bag of chips lying around. The latter is a very bad habit. Convenient, but bad. But I’m digressing… In light of my frustration with packaging and noting that, decorative as they were, earrings were a sharp implement; I decided to try a little experiment. Taking the end of the stud usually used to pierce the hole in my ear, I punctured the foil pack with it and let the air out. This really didn’t accomplish much other than tell me how much of a rip-off chips truly are. The bag deflated to less than half its size. However, I resolved not to stop there and I took that earring and thrust it upwards into the whole creating a larger gash in the bag. Needless to say, I haven’t opened chip bags the same since. Practice safe packaging removal, kids! “Tear here” is a lie! Ladies out there now have a better way of dealing with hard to open chip bags. For the men, a straightened paper clip can likely perform the same feat so have no fear.
When it’s time to eat and you find yourself wishing not to soil your fingers, keep a pair of chopsticks on hand. It keeps you clean while also teaching you self-control while snacking. After all, it’s a lot harder to shovel chips in your mouth while wielding a pair of chopsticks. I highly recommend this for anyone going on a diet. Slower eating also means you get full faster thus killing your cravings more efficiently. What about you guys? Do you have any unorthodox ways to deal with mundane packaging and other problems?
Of High School Crushes and “The One That Got Away”
Crazy Little Thing Called Love 2010 Trailer
It’s Good to Be a Freak: How Freakonomics Encouraged Social Change
The groundbreaking book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything offers a unique perspective to economics that brings a new dimension to it other than what we learned in the classroom. Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner make their subject of study fun and engaging to any reader. The former is an economist at the University of Chicago while the latter is journalist for the New York Times. Together, they wrote this book to reach out to the public and make economics more accessible by showing actual cases of it being used that are certainly relevant to everyday life. That’s definitely relevant to social change.
The book is divided into six chapters. The first deals with cheating but for two very different sectors of the population: school teachers and sumo wrestlers. The second chapter involves information control but we see yet another jarring difference in those they are applied to since the subject matter is applied on real estate agents and the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan. The third chapter tackles how drug dealing isn’t profitable leading many of those who practice it to still live with their mothers. The fourth chapter is seen as the most controversial. It deals with abortion and how its legalization apparently brings down crime rate. Fifth, we have how good parenting affects education. The final chapter talks about how the names parents give their children affect them later in life.
It’s already starting to sound like something drastically different from your economics textbook. Starling change came along when this book became a best seller for non-fiction. Suddenly all this knowledge was available to even laymen in economics. Suddenly all these controversial points of view were there for public consumption. There was obviously uproar over that fourth chapter. Levitt and Dubner weathered it and stood by what they had written.
Dubner and Levitt possess qualities which qualify them as change agents and those are apparent in their work. They took a subject matter that most consider mundane and turned it into a bestseller. Furthermore, they were not afraid to make a controversial claim knowing they had worked hard to provide data to back it up. They acted as producers and disseminators of knowledge. They provided a different point of view and helped others see the same way.
Levitt and Dubner are mavericks in this new age not because they published a bestseller but because they published a bestseller about a subject that seems unlikely to draw interest. Even better, despite criticism, they have actually released a sequel entitled Superfreakonomics showing that they are dedicated to their work despite what pundits have to say. Their fourth chapter on abortion got them in a lot of hot water but they made the best of it. They addressed criticism calmly and showed proof rather than act irrationally in defending their findings. For this reason, change arose instead of conflict and many of those who disagree with them actually have a grudging respect for them. Do you have tales of similar movers and shakers in this new millennium?
First Desserts
As a child, I was stupid. Some would say that I still am. I’m not inclined to argue with them on that matter since they might be right. Still, one has to concede that I’m not as intellectually deficient as I used to be. For example, unlike when I was five, I no longer see the appeal in scraping off the ice from the frost encrusted walls of the freezer and eating it. I think it might have something to do with the fact that my mother told me it was poisonous. Then again, I’m still alive today. Was she lying or did I just not eat enough of it?
Graduating from freezer wall ice, I then learned the delights of freezing juice foil packs, cutting them open and eating the contents by squeezing the resulting slush out. It wasn’t a favorite food of mine but I remember it because my sister and I found it so amusing. What else could we do? We didn’t have cable so we played with other appliances. Freezing things came in second only to sitting on a working washing machine and enjoying the butt vibrations.
We would take boxes full of juice packs and stuff as many of them as we could into the small freezer compartment. Apple, grape, orange, guyabano. You name the flavor, we’ve frozen it. We never ceased to be amazed at the resulting “ice cream.” Again, there goes my stupidity. How could it be ice cream? There was no cream.
And how did it taste? Well, it was sickly sweet at first. As you went on eating, it got more diluted. The first few slurps of the slush were guaranteed cavity bait. I suppose that’s where all the flavoring goes since once you get to the bottom of the pack, it might as well be water. I don’t understand the chemistry of this phenomenon but it gave us the dose of amusement we needed in a world without cable.
Though this juice freezing of ours was commonplace, one particular instance stands out. During a power outage in the middle of a storm, my sister and I “rescued” our slush from the freezers and ate it all before it could melt. Headaches ensued but so did much laughing. It kept our mind off the heat and stuffiness from having all the windows closed with no electric fans to let the air circulate. We raced to see who could finish a packet faster, blended flavors together resulting in mixes that tasted like cough syrup, and spilled a sticky mess on the wood floor so the dog could join in on the fun. The household help was not pleased with us once the power came back on.
But were we pleased with ourselves? Most definitely.
I don’t know exactly when we stopped juice freezing. We eventually got cable so the television became more amusing than the other appliances. Sorry, freezer. You’re still cool but we’ve found something new. Still, I’ll always remember those times when we were forced to innovate in order to have fun. I’m way too heavy to sit on a working washing machine now but I can still freeze juice packs. My five year old self might have been foolish but she sure knew how to have a good time.
Prince of the Sea by Felaine Andrea Palacio
Syrena(see-ree-na) felt the cold touch of the sea water as she walked barefoot along the shore. She was the crown princess of their kingdom and in order to relax from her role for a while, she decided to have a vacation in a beautiful countryside near the sea. The people there were joyful and easy-going and that helped to release some of her stress.
After minutes of walking, she spotted something on the side of the cliff. She came near it and saw that it was a cave. Syrena thought twice about going inside but her curiosity triumphed.
The cave was cold and dark so Syrena thought about going back outside. But just as she was about to go out, she heard a very beautiful melody from inside the cave. It was the singing of a man. It seemed to hypnotize her.
She wanted to know who the singer was so she headed towards the source of the sound. She squeezed through a hole in the wall of the cave .But when she got in, she saw no one. The beautiful melody that she heard earlier also stopped.
“Was It just my imagination?”, she asked herself. Then she heard a splash of water which startled her. Then she noticed a pool in the center of the cave which must be where the splashing came from. She wondered what it must have been.
A Future for Filipino Literature
There’s been a distinct lack of Filipino literature written by local authors for a local audience. From what I can see, a majority of it comes from Filipino-Americans or Americans overseas. One has to wonder why that’s the case. In my opinion, it’s because Filipinos don’t think they have an audience here in the homeland. They “assume” that Filipinos don’t read as much when that simply isn’t the case. Filipino literature would probably thrive more if our movies and local TV shows were based on books by Filipino authors rather than the same old soap opera rehashed material. It would open up the doors for a lot more creativity on the big and small screens.
Insecurity may also be a factor. Personally, I prefer to write in English and I fear being perceived as “pretentious” for it. The language I choose also limits my audience. However, if my work had a shot at being translated and adapted for TV or the movies, that would be a godsend. I’m always looking for the experience I felt when reading Sa Kuko ng Liwanag by Edgardo M. Reyes. It clearly painted a picture of the Philippines in a bygone era and the use of Filipino wasn’t too deep so just about anyone could read it and appreciate how beautiful the Filipino language can actually be. I lost my copy but I always keep thinking back to the scene with construction workers eating their lunch and one of them squeezes a tomato to go with his fish. The tomato water turns black from the soot on his hands. That image is burned into my mind and I sincerely hope more people would try to do that in their writing but they need to know that there’s a payday in store and that they’re going to get the audience they need. Otherwise, they get discouraged and all that talent is squandered.
The Filipino experience is a rich one but people let their biases get in the way. It’s always been a dream of mine to write a novel on steampunk in Intramuros but use a pseudonym and not reveal the location and ethnicity of the inhabitants until the end. It’d be a nice surprise like discovering Johnny Rico from Starship Troopers was a Filipino at the end of the novel. I’m always looking for an experience like that when it comes to Filipino culture in fiction. However, there’s always lingering insecurity over attempting such a feat. Is it too ambitious? Will people look at my work and see it as derivative? Would my style be lacking in depth? There’s a lot of doubt lingering in an aspiring author’s mind. It’s far easier to play it safe. But playing it safe doesn’t get you anywhere. You have to take the leap. Jump at any chance you can get to be published even if it’s just on the internet. In fact, that’s what this site is for. Get your start by submitting to Kendii and you may be taking the first step to your future success.
Sex as a Local Language
Sex/Seks
Discussing intimacy by using the vernacular seems to be an endless challenge. After all, “pagtatalik” brings up images of animals rutting in the field. It’s the same word used in science shows like Sineskwela to describe animal reproduction so it’s understandably hard to hear it in another context if that’s what you grew up with. Its closest English equivalent is “mate” thus explaining its lack of appeal. You don’t walk up to an attractive man or woman at the bar and invite them to mate. That sounds like something an alien out of a sci-fi movie would do. Seduction is nowhere to be found in that particular Filipino word but can it be found in others?
A rudimentary Google search doesn’t offer much enlightenment. Tagaloglang.com is actually unintentionally hilarious in handling the subject matter by telling us: “The Tagalog word for ‘sex’ is ‘pagtatalik’ but most Filipinos just say seks.” It’s a bit problematic to think that we have to borrow a word from English for the sake of discussing intimacy. Sadly, the site is accurate. When most people discuss sex in Filipino, they do so using the English word. It renders the concept into something that might almost be perceived as foreign which ties into how it’s considered taboo for a lot of people in this predominantly Catholic nation.
The site’s unintended humour goes to further extremes with their list of sample lines to use when conversing about sex. For example: Gusto kong mag-seks sa kusina. Sa kama. (I want to have sex in the kitchen. On the bed.). If a foreigner were to browse the site, they might be led to assume that a bed in the kitchen is commonplace in a Filipino household. Aside from that, the way Filipino syllables roll off the tongue doesn’t exactly lend itself to seduction. Whispering this in your beloved’s ear is more likely to get a laugh rather than seal the deal. It’s a bit too cut and dry. Where have the poets of yesteryear gone? The ones who could use the local tongue without being too vulgar or upfront while still expressing intent toward intimacy?
The site even goes the extra mile in its sample dialogue by expressing female apprehension in the vernacular: Ayokong magkasakit. Ayokong mabuntis. (I don’t want to get sick. I don’t want to get pregnant.). Perhaps this is a sign of modernization. It shows the perspective of a woman who doesn’t perceive sex as a purely procreative act. She approaches the matter with caution. Times are changing in this country and it’s starting to show. The only problem is the fact that we don’t know how to properly discuss these matters with a straight face. There needs to be a serious dialogue on sex in the local language. Only then can we find understanding on the matter. With the RH bill recently passed, the stage is set for a more thorough discussion of sex on the national stage. Will we be ready for it when the time comes?
The Science of Vampires
Vampires nowadays have a pretty good reputation compared to their counterparts in earlier centuries. They’re saturated into pop culture from the sparkling “vegetarian” bloodsuckers of the Twilight films to the magical ring-wearing day walking vampires of The Vampire Diaries to the more mature “out of the coffin” vampires of True Blood. There seems to be a vampire to suit any taste whether you’re a bibliophile or a TV addict. They’re everywhere and the fad doesn’t seem to be dying down any soon. It might make one wonder if such creatures are plausible in our world. No, we’re not talking about the figurative vampires who such the joy out of your day. How likely is it that these human bloodsuckers could walk around in our world?
Sony: Sexy or Sleazy?
Sony is under fire for a recent ad they ran for the PS Vita. The ad features a woman’s torso displaying double the expected cleavage with the usual lady lumps in the front and an additional pair in the back. The ad features the tag line “Touch both sides for enjoyment.” It’s hard not to end up thinking of the three-breasted hooker from Total Recall when looking at this ad. It makes female anatomy look practically alien. Reception to this ad has ranged from anger to amusement. I find myself somewhere in between. It makes me wonder what Sony thinks of its player base. Do they think they’re all shallow men?
Cat and Computer Mouse: A Love Story
Internet culture and cats seem to go hand in hand. From icanhazcheezburger.com to Instagram and Tumblr, our feline friends are finding the spotlight in cyberspace. There’s even a website dedicated solely to Cute Boys with Cats (cuteboyswithcats.net). As it is aptly named, you’ll find no shortage of attractive menfolk and the cats who love them. It works on the same web format as Tumblr so you’ll have no problem wasting an afternoon scrolling through the site and sharing a ton of pictures with your followers through the convenient magic of re-blogging. It’s no surprise when you find five minutes turning into an hour as you promise yourself that you’ll look at “just one more picture.”
Defending Against the Undead Plague: Quarantine as Effective Disease Control
When you’re looking at a zombie bite, it’s certain that you’ll require more than chicken soup to cure that infection. Fictional scenarios like George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” has those afflicted by the disease of the undead recognized as lost causes. The only “cure” is to say good-bye to your loved ones and take a gunshot wound to the head in order to avoid menacing your fellow humans once you perish and reanimate. However, can this no-win scenario be avoided? Looking at modern disease control, the answer is yes. But can everybody avoid it? That’s a question we intend to answer over the course of this article.
True Blood and Serials
While we tend to think of serials as stories in defunct magazines, you know the one where the only thing with color is the magazine, this cliff-hanger type storytelling is still very dominant in today’s instant society. Take for example, True Blood. It runs very much like a, well, a telenovela. Yes. In Philippine culture atleast, the telenovela reigns supreme as the number one serial format.
We are Aliens: A Brief Reflection on Vogons
Vogons are a species of alien found in The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It’s a rather successful series of books I’d encourage everyone to read. As a work of comedic science fiction, it’s definitely not something you come across every day. The best part about it is the satire sprinkled throughout the work. For example, let’s look at the opinion of Vogons on evolution:
“Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?, and what nature refused to do for them they simply did without until such time as they were able to rectify the gross anatomical inconveniences with surgery. ”
10 Must- Dos Before Graduating College by Julian Savard
- Take a Detour
For sure by now you know how your school looks, it’s no problem for you to find your classes and you could pretty much map the campus on the palm of your hand. But why not try and take a detour down the corridors you have yet to see? Or behind your school, in the nooks and crannies of the buildings and dorms? Ateneo de Manila has one of the biggest forests in its campus, unexplored. You don’t know what secret places you might just discover. For example most P-UPs (students from UP) had no idea there was a lurking carinderia in their neck of the woods that not only serves the best home- cooked meals, but for an affordable price too. So while you’re still enrolled, take a stroll.
The Computer Monitor as Political Mirror
At the tender age of eighteen, every individual is given the chance to exercise the right to vote. Granted, the process of registering and attaining the proper identification to head to the polls is an arduous one involving heavy exposure to the very same government bureaucracy we support by pledging our votes while they constantly disappoint us. We line up for hours on end to get our clearance to fill out our ballots. However, there’s always lingering uncertainty. Will our vote be counted? Will we be cheated if we opt not to exercise our right when another unscrupulous individual steps up to claim what’s rightfully ours? After all, election season has a way of re-animating the dead to exercise their right to vote. This is not a George Romero movie though. What we’re seeing is corruption pure and simple. Question is: can information technology help change this trend? Can it make us better informed? Can it drive us to care? Well, speaking from personal experience, it at least drove me to line up for a voter’s ID. All my friends were updating their Facebook statuses about getting theirs and I felt an indirect peer pressure to get mine as well despite knowing the difficulties that would likely result. Yes, Facebook made me a more responsible citizen when it came to the elections.
Rebound Love by Juliann Savard
Man cannot live on bread alone. Adam couldn’t survive six days in paradise by himself, and then came Eve .Classic example dating way back to the common form of love we see nowadays: rebound. A term connectively used in sports, with the prefix “re” suggesting “to do again” or simply “to repeat.” If Adam couldn’t survive six days, what more in an age and time where who you’re with means a lot more than who you are?
Teenagers usually find themselves stuck in situations of the “rebound” after having been committed and steady in a long- term relationship. People, in general, find it difficult to cope with a sudden solitary stage in their life, thus the medical term, separation anxiety. The only difference is, in terms of romantic relationships, this separation may be permanent. And the absence of permanence is temporariness. We result in finding “companions” rather than “partners” to, sadly say, fill a void. When once, every morning was greeted with a “have a good day, I love you” text on your phone, you wake up to your alarm and zero messages. You find yourself hating the PDA of other couples, you check the movies to make sure no chick flicks are playing, and you turn off the radio when you hear Taylor Swift singing “You belong with me!” because at present time, you belong with no one. And so you resort to quickly finding someone who can hold your hand, someone who you can always text, someone who can bring you to chick flicks without you feeling like a total outcast, and someone who will belt out alongside of you in the car. First sign of rebound? Check. But is it love? Question.
Clothes about Where You Live and Love: An Interview with Mauricio Zuniga of Location Apparel
After our recent article about Fashionalismo and its impact on Filipinos, we decided to look at the same issue from a global perspective. Thankfully, we were fortunate enough to get in touch with Mauricio Zuniga, CEO of Location Apparel. With his insight, we can better learn what it means to wear your identity on your sleeve by donning clothes about where you live and love. There’s also a lot one can learn here about handling an online business and expanding worldwide via the web. If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, the wisdom from this maverick businessman is definitely not to be missed.