Moronic Show Without Equal Part 2

Revillame has been caught red-handed switching the winning numbers in his noon time game show, Wowowee. This is really old news. What is appalling is that a lot of people still sympathize with him. Amazing.

Moment Magique

"Meditation" de Thais - Berliner Philarmonique sous la direction de Placido Domingo. The voluptous et tres, tres feminin Sara Chang performing Jules Massenet's masterpiece. Merci mademoiselle pour ce moment magique!

Massenet - Sarah Chang
Uploaded by midu92

A Lesson on Humility

Finally, the porky lifestyle columnist Malu Fernandez resigned from Manila Standard after bloggers tore her into pieces. And with good reason. In her column in People Asia, she had the audacity to thumb her nose down on OFWs on her way to Dubai en route to a vacation in Greece. She said she felt like "slashing her wrists" in the company of migrant workers (she flew economy) who smelled of Axe and cheap cologne.

I don't think her article (it's all over the internet) was tongue-in-cheek at all. You can be ironic if you are driving home a point. In her case, she was just nasty. By adopting a high-and-mighty and undeniably condescending tone on our hardworking OFWs, she only succeeded in projecting a Paris Hilton wannabe image, ya know, a social climber.

Yes I'm joining the call to turn her into a tocino.

Hot Potato

Since you fed me to the wolves and put me on the spot on more than one occassion, I have to get away from the pack. I realize I cannot spend a lot of time with the wrong people, life is too short for that. Friendship can melt like a candle. It waxes and wanes like the moon. Let's move on to better things and better-minded people.

La Chaconne in D minor BWV 1004 de Bach "arrangée" par Ferruccio Busoni

Can somebody please send me the piano score for this one, J.S. Bach's Chaconne in D Minor BWV 1004 (arranged for the piano by Feruccio Busoni). I'll be indebted to you forever :)

Hélène Grimaud interprets. I listen to this over and over again. This is the same piece on the video sidebar with the piano score, which is interpreted by Pletnev.

Crunch Opportunity

Bernanke reduced a key interest rate by half a percent (discount rate), infused more than US$60 billion into the financial markets, relaxed terms extended to banks (such as honoring mortgage-backed collateral) to mitigate the impact of the credit crunch and prevent it from spilling over to the so-called "real" economy.

This has markets all over the world rallying. Imagine, my FLI dropped to below the secondary offer price of PhP1.608 to PhP1.38! A perfect opportunity to accumulate, really, if only I have the money.

But then again, I believe the volatility will remain. You see, the carry trade phenomenon (borrowing in low-interest rate countries like Japan, and investing in higher yielding instruments like US bonds, which is currently unravelling) has in a way, spread the risk everywhere else. In the coming months, I'm sure many finance companies will start reporting bad news, a consequence of the turmoil. For one, insurers in London will likely take a big hit. So whether or not the Fed's move is simply a stop-gap, temporary measure, remains to be seen.

But valuation wise, stocks are ripe for the picking.

Major Headache

The sub-prime crisis has started to become a major contagion, with investors in Japan and Australia, not just in Europe, taking a direct hit. As confidence by US home builders have dropped to low levels, this has definitely affected the credit markets and consequently pushed equity markets southwards, with gains achieved over the past year virtually wiped out in a matter of days. Should these developments significantly affect access to capital, US demand may be affected as well. A slowdown in US demand (or consumption) means a tailspin everywhere else. In the age of globalization, people, we're more connected than ever before. A hairpin dropped in the Argentine pampas can be heard in volcanic Rejkavik or in God-forsaken Timbuktu. You get the drift, don't be literal.

I digress again. Since almost all major investment banks have poured funds into US treasuries, if the sub-prime woes spill over to other sectors, we'll have another financial crisis. I'm just concerned about China. With over US$1 trillion in reserves which is the largest in the world, a considerable chunk of which is in US treasuries, I wonder how big is its exposure, direct or indirectly, to the sub-prime mortgage market.

But jaded market observers like me believe that what is happenning is basically a cycle that has to run its course and is in fact, a healthy correcting mechanism. As a frustrated economist-wannabe, I believe various forces will always work towards a state of equilibrium, and the boom-and-bust cycle is just a manifestation of this natural order of things. What goes up, goes down.

See, I have a nice way of rationalizing my losses, albeit incoherently.

Duo des Fleurs

From Leo Delibes' Lakmé, the Duo des Fleurs (Flower Duet).

Visual Arts

Renoir, Monet, Manet, Matisse. French impressionism at its best. Music by Richard Strauss.

Another Mall

The new Trinoma mall located at the North Triangle fronting SM City has a mini park at the 7th level. It is ideal if all you want is a nice stroll or a quiet dinner, and you need to rest your legs from all that walking.

I have two projects that brought me researching in Trinoma: soup and adhesives. Nice combination, eh? Actually I could have gone to a nearer mall but hey, it's a good excuse to explore the place, yah?

Anyway, I'm sure SM feels threatened in a way. It used to lord over the retail landscape in the country. The malls started out as really ugly gray concrete boxes. There's nothing like competition to jazz up the field. SM now cares about aesthetics. Gone are the gray behomoths that added to the woeful urban blight we see everyday. In fact, SM City nowadays looks different compared to when we were in college, Marc :)

Hellbound

When I met up with Frodo last night, he told me Paragon of Virtue and Morality (PVM) had the temerity to ask him if, as roommates, I tried to sexually harass him the whole time we were in China.

PVM even dug even further back to the Taiwanese races in 2005, revealing with obvious glee, as if she had just discovered a secret passageway to Yamashita's treasure, that the teammate I was sharing the room with was actually my lover as well.

How she came up with these scenarios will forever astound me. But I don't really care. There's really nothing you can do about a fetid imagination brewed in the cesspool of a putrid mind.

Geez girl, whatsamatter with you? Repent now, because your end is nigh, and I'm sure as the day is long, that you will definitely burn in hell.

Really?

I didn't believe it when I was first told about it because I thought my surname didn't sound like one: I have Italian forebears!

Two cousins I have only met once on separate occassions gave me a condensed lecture on family history, knowing fully well that since I didn't grow up in Bohol and I obviously knew next to nothing about geneaology (correct spelling?), they needed to fill me in on this one.

This Italian guy reportedly travelled with the Spanish missionaries (I can't remember which century) and settled in an old town south of the capital, Tagbilaran (Marc, I'm not sure if it's Dauis).

I didn't really give it much thought until I visited Singapore last year and met my project employers, one of whom was Greek. She promptly asked me if I have Italian roots! Greeks, after all live right next door to Italy.

If I have more time, I'll try to dig up on old family files and trace the family tree. I strongly suspect there's a Chinese side as well, my brother, my grandfather (ma side) and myself are all slightly slit-eyed.

Girl from Ipanema (Updated)

Dailymotion deleted the video featuring Andy Williams and Antonio Carlos Jobim (below), so I'm reposting it. In addition, here's the Frank Sinatra-Antonio Carlos Jobim version. Video's not that good, though.

Andy Williams and the legendary Antonio Carlos Jobim, performing Jobim's The Girl from Ipanema, a true bossa nova classic. Let's clamp a pair of headphones over Siti's ears and force her to listen to this. Hopefully, she'd stop singing the inappropriate bossa version of the schmaltzy "Fixing a Broken Heart".

myTV

The myTV service offerred by Smart is a cool idea, it generates the usual buzz and excitement associated with innovative technology stuff. I just don't think the hype will necessarily translate to a higher consumer take-up, with all due respect to my friend Estela.

Remember the hype surrounding the launch of 3G services? It went nowhere, considering the bulk of handsets sold remain non-3G. Even when pricing schemes were revised to be more mass market-friendly. The handset turnover is becoming faster, I think, as phone companies routinely come up with new models every year. However, the country still has a huge market for used or "second hand" units, mostly older models that are equipped with only the most basic functions of voice and text, and unless these consumers upgrade, 3G services will remain a novelty.

As for myTV, the market is even smaller. Mostly those who are always on the go. I mean, if I want to watch TV, I'd tune in to a television set, not my cellphone.

For this service to pick up, Smart may want to subsidize handset cost again and target the pre-paid segment. It doesn't make sense to focus on the small premium market for myTV, revenues generated may not be able to recover investment costs. To make this service a major contributor to overall revenues, I think myTV compatible handset prices will have to fall and the company has to come up with really attractive pricing schemes to convince existing users to upgrade, considering that revenue growth in the core segments (voice and data/text) may stagnate as the market matures.

Making the handsets more attractive means outsourcing production of unbranded compatible phones to Taiwan (or South Korea) to reduce costs, rather than wait for Nokia and Ericsson to come up with their models, which, because of branding and marketing costs, are obviously more expensive. Taiwanese companies are in fact, responsible for producting Apple's highly popular iPhones and they specialize in producing tech gadgets for big name companies in the US and Europe. Smart has done this before when it came up with its own Smartphone brand (and went out just as fast).

What's really interesting is that the Philippine market is way ahead, even of some developed countries when it comes to mobile services. We'be beem texting hither and dither since 1997 (it started as a free, value-added service by Globe). And it's only been recently that teens in the US have taken to texting! Those greeting-card messages complete with graphics are sooo 1999, I can't believe I still receive them from abroad.

On-the-air pre-paid loading, anyone? You can even send money (even remittances from abroad) through text! Cashless shopping and dining (paying via text!) however, didn't fare well and consumers simply ignored it. Recently, we navigated the streets of Hong Kong through the street map my teammate Ayris downloaded into her cellphone (which included the entire map of Guangdong province). Really practical and useful.

But watching TV? It remains to be seen.

Moonlight Sonata

The Beethoven piece I played in Guangzhou, the haunting Adagio to the Moonlight Sonata. The video images are stunningly beautiful as well. Intepreted by the Portuguese pianist Maria Joao Pires.

Wagner: Overtures

I do not know if Georg Solti is a Wagner specialist, but he led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a well-applauded interpretation of Wagner's most well-known overtures to his operas: The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Tristan and Isolde.

Wagner's overtures follow a dichotomy of ideas: two colliding motifs, or opposing themes play themselves out. In the Flying Dutchman, the overture introduces the Dutchman's struggle to free himself from being made to live at sea under the terms of a curse, with the release motif representing the love of woman that will finally set him free.

Similarly, Tannhauser's carnal (bacchanalian, in fact) desires for Venus and her world clashes with his responsibility as a Christian knight. Again, the overture introduces these two competing motifs, with one finally winning over the other.

And probably the most profound (or boring, depending on your inclination) love story ever, Tristan and Isolde. Wagner inluded the Liebestod to the overture in the concert version. Thus, the beginning and the ending of the story. Here, the themes do not necessarily collide, but complement each other. The delicate introduction is among the most beautiful Wagner ever wrote, a paean to, should I say it, erotic love. (I watched the entire opera on DVD, and I lost count of the number of times I shouted, "Oh please, get a room, will ya?). The Liebestod, erroneously translated as a Song of Death, actually implies love that transcends death, a final bonding of souls that even death couldn't break apart.

For the performance, I prefer Abaddo and the Berlin Philharmonic over Solti and Chicago. But Solti's dazzling take on Tannhauser is a class of its own, it brought the house down. The Tristan prelude was sensitive and impressive, although I have heard a better interpretation by Zubin Mehta in Munich during the full performance of the opera.

Chopinesque

The full-length video of Yundi Li's interpretation of the First Movement marked Allegro Maestoso to Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor. A personal favorite, especially the close of the first movement when you feel like your spirit has been finally set free and starts to soar.

Sub-prime Woes

One of the unfortunate consequences of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US credit market is the inevitable rise in interest rates. Banks would now be seeking higher margins to protect themselves against default risks.

For now, the crisis seems confined to the sub-prime sector. However, large investment funds from Europe and Asia with significant exposures in US mortgage securities take a beating, with the French investment bank Banque Nationale de Paris leading the way in freezing investments linked to US mortgages.

Is the local equities market affected? Yes, of course. When the US catches the cold, the rest of the world start sneezing, as they say. Considering that the market is heavily foreign-fund dominated, the bearish sentiment would weigh down heavily on stocks across the region, as we have witnessed so far.

The main concern is whether what's happenning in the sub-prime will spill over to other sectors of the US economy. How big is the sub-prime market anyway? How large are investment funds' exposure to these? Will these affect future consumption in the US significantly?

As I understand it, sub-prime is classified as a derivative, and as such, is used for hedging as well. I believe this is fairly recent, so I still think the bigger and resilient economic numbers will ride out the mortgage crisis.

But then again, I'm no expert. I am simply speculating, as I always do :)

Classical Beginnings

The historic concert of Van Cliburn in the Soviet Union in 1962, during the height of the Cold War, playing Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 (Final Movement). Cliburn won the first Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958.

I grew up listening to Van Cliburn. In a way, I am grateful to Imelda Marcos. She brought the American pianist to our shores. While other kids in the neighborhood were crooning to Air Supply, I set out on a different direction and turned to classical, courtesy of Van Cliburn.

Rain, Rain, Come This Way

Over the week-end, Cardinal Rosales asked the faithful to pray for rain, considering that the dry spell has started to wreak havoc on farmlands and is threatening water and power supply.

It has been raining for two days now.

Books

When I was a kid, my sister would borrow books from the school library, mostly Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and promptly relate the stories to me and my older brother. My mom used to subscribe to vernacular magazines Bisaya and Liwayway, and that whet our appetites for good stories.

As I grew older, I raided my mom's mini-library, filled with Mills & Boons, Agatha Christie, James Bond and Perry Mason titles. I couldn't stomach Mills & Boons, Agatha Christie was OK, Ian Fleming's hero didn't really appeal to me that much, but I got fascinated and thoroughly enjoyed Earl Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason thrillers.

In high school, while flipping through the pages of my mom's Woman Today (I think) magazine, I chanced upon a serialization of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The rather dark, brooding, passionate love story blew me away, it was unlike anything I have read before.

But the book that I really, really cherish up to this day is H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines. Maan, I really thought it was real. And when I saw the movie adaptation starring Richard Chamberlain, I couldn't hide my disappointment.

Stepping into college, I devoured Jane Austen (not a good choice of word, eh?), honestly, I really liked Pride & Prejudice. Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure still haunts me (what a really, really sad ending). I read every single Sherlock Holmes. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina annoyed me, Kafka's really strange Metamorphosis lead me to Eric Gamalinda's unforgettable Planet Waves. It was only a matter of time before a copy of Garcia-Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude fell into my hands.

20th Century literature fascinated me, starting with Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence and E.M. Forster's Maurice and Howard's End. I absolutely love Somerset Maugham, especially his monumental Of Human Bondage. And who could ever forget John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath?

I read a couple of Sidney Sheldon and Robert Ludlum, but since the novels end up predictable and unexciting after a while, I began to look for something with more substance, ya know, stories that are insightful.

So I turned to short stories, I read Flannery O'Connor (all her novels and short stories), Gilda Cordero Fernando and Lakambini Sitoy.

This may seem like just another list of all the books of fiction I have read. A lot of these, however, have influenced my views and outlook in life.

cheers!

Milking Cows

The controversy over the two broadband projects costing US$789 million Gloria entered into with the Chinese has all markings of corruption written all over it. When she visited China, she promptly entered into an executive agreement that gave the Chinese Telecom firm ZTE Corporation the rights to undertake the projects, defying our own existing laws on transparency and accountability. Public bidding be damned. Not surprisingly, Gloria's lackey at the Justice Department, Gonzales, claims that the deal is above board since the projects were part of an executive agreement.

And this is where it really gets suspicious: in the age of photocopying machines, hard drives and the internet, copies of the contract were reportedly lost in a hotel room of the Philippine delegation. Maybe the term "soft copy" hasn't entered their vocabulary just yet.

So how can Gonzales claim to defend the agreement as legal when he presumably hasn't seen the contract yet?

Two UP Economics professors (current and former deans) slammed the project, arguing that the haphazard manner by which the contracts were entered into, without the benefit of any careful feasibility study, and the obvious fact that two existing broadband backbones (of PLDT and its competitors) render the projects redundant and outside the core competency of the government, will likely end up as another White Elephant, very much like the useless NAIA-3 and the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, all blatant examples of government corruption on a large-scale basis. Gloria wants to hook up all government offices as well as the little sitios and barrios in remote areas to the Information Age, when basic infrastructure such as power supply and my gulay! good roads are not even in place yet.

The details of the contracts remain hazy, but what is clear is that the Chinese government will offer the loans to finance the projects.

So here's the catch: Beijing gets to call the shots, the Chinese company earns from the onerous deal, government officials get kickbacks-- all for projects that are doomed from the very start.

And we're the milking cows.

Mysterious Skin

Mysterious Skin, Greg Araki's adaptation of a Scott Heim novel, is a difficult film to watch. In fact, it is a numbing experience. It deals with a taboo subject most people simply whisper about in quiet conversations: child molestation.

The movie centres on the lives of two teen-aged boys who happened to be molested together by their Little League baseball coach when they were still eight-years old.

Neil, played by Joseph Gordon Hewitt of Third Rock from the Sun fame, ends up being a gay hustler on the streets. He seems to relish the sexual relationship he had with his coach and tries to relive those moments through his trade.

Meanwhile, Brian played by Brady Corbet, unable to remember those events, keeps on having nightmares, black outs and nosebleeds, believing that space aliens abducted him when he was a kid. While Neil is unable to forget, Brian is incapable of remembering.

Inevitably, Brian's search for answers leads him to Neil's, where the truly shocking revelations were laid bare.

Mysterious Skin is definitely not for the squeamish: it includes a brutal rape scene and one involving fire crackers. Raw and graphic, it feels so real, and the events and the milieu surrouding the acts seem so commonplace in today's society. It's not something I want to watch again.

An examination of the psychological impact of child abuse, the movie avoided being preachy, focusing more on character. It made the elements of the movie more powerful when they finally appear.

The two leads gave excellent performances. Gordon-Hewitt looks withered and dried-up enough for a fifteen-year old hustler, while Corbet manages to retain the innocence and wide-eyed look of someone who's totally clueless about events in his past.

Mysterious Skin is a moving, gripping and uncompromising work. It is definitely not for everyone, but is insightful nonetheless.

National Broth

I've been going to Joey's carinderia for two years now, mainly for the sinigang (pork cooked in vinegary broth and assorted vegetables). Joey's version includes gabi, or taro and okra to achieve a semi-thick broth consistency. The meat is tender and the flavour made rich by the long green pepper, onions, tomatoes and aubergines.

Yesterday, I had lunch at my favorite restaurant in Marikina, the Krung Thai at the back of the public market near the Municipio. I'm glad it maintained the quality of its best sellers, the Tom Yum Shrimp and the Sesame chicken. The servings are generous, too.

For dessert, I moved on the nearby Red Ribbon for brewed coffee and the industrial black forest cake. Since it was still early, I decided to walk a few blocks to Blue Wave and had a Tazo Green tea frappuccino at Starbucks. It's a good thing they removed that really awful banana java chip frap. Yuck.

Real Score

Earlier today, Bart rang me up on my mobile, asking for advice over his FLI shares.

"Should I cut my losses and sell it now,?" He asked me. Bart bought the shares at its highest price so far, I even chided him for not consulting me first before placing his order. And now, share prices seemed to be nosediving on account of investor fears due to the sub-prime mortgage debacle in the US.

"It will still go up, but maybe you should consider a longer investment horizon, like the medium-term. As it is, you bought the stock at the worst possible time."

It's true, I remain optimistic on the local real estate. Interest rates remain low (it did rise, benchmark 90-day T-bill rates are above 3%), OFW funds keep the housing market bouyant, peso's strength mitigates rises in material and fuel costs, and most importantly, consumer spending and corporate profits do not show any signs of a slow-down. Even in the US, the fall-out on account of the sub-prime mortgage market exploding has not really extended its tentacles towards the prime market.

So equity jitters are all sentiment-led, and will likely reverse itself when the stronger fundamentals bear out the real picture, at least for now.

Fishy

Imee Marcos claims the Duavit shares in GMA Channel 7 belongs to her family; her brother, Bongbong Marcos also contests Lucio Tan's majority ownership of Asia Brewery, Fortune Tobacco, Philippine Airlines and Allied Bank, among others. If all of these are true, then it goes to show that the former strongman did use dummies to hide the extent of his wealth. Curiously, the PCGG seems to be on the side of Imee. Also, a former Marcos ally, Estelito Mendoza and the current lawyer for Tan, finds himself sparring with Bongbong.

Something fishy is going on. Ya know, the Marcoses just got back several properties previously confiscated and declared ill-gotten wealth by the government, and now this. Could there be a compromise agreement between the government and the Marcoses regarding the contested assets?

The List

On the LRT bound for Recto, I sat beside a burly guy who looks like he's been slacking and falling behind his gym regimen, with his mp3 player's headphones on. He probably didn't notice it but the music he was listening to was loud enough for me to hear as well, and...and...gasp! he digs Whitney Houston, "boom!...Indaaaaay will alwaaays..." I gave him a look which says, "mister, I...didn't...know...you...were.." but snapped myself out of it and banished the thought when I saw that his fist could easily send me to the outer reaches of the galaxy.

Which reminded me of Jun's "fool-proof" list, more like a three-item questionnaire meant to determine whether a guy is straight or not, drawn up during his high school days when about half of his male colleagues, according to him, were either gay or gayish. Indifference to, or even dislike of, basketball, familiarity with Oscar Award winners, and affinity with Miss Universe and Miss World beauty pageants sealed the subject's fate.

I have my own list as well, sort of like a veritable gaydar metric system, reinforced by that LRT experience. Since I am a market researcher, I design questionnaires meant to gauge market response. Very much like a pre-employment personality exam, here it goes:

Diva test: Would you rather listen to Celine Dion or Mariah Carey than Eminem or Snoop Dog? Localizing the question, do you prefer Regine Velasquez/Lani Misalucha over Salbakuta/Kontra Gapi?

Guy factor: Would you rather watch a concert featuring either or both Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby than a Cecile Licad concert at the CCP?

Diction test: Do you pronounce "Kamuning" with a long "e" as in Kamuneeeeeng, rather than the crisp and short "e", as in, well, Kamuning?

Answer a single Yes to any of the questions above and you're just gay curious; two, and it makes you gayish; answer Yes to all three questions and you're hopelessly and unequivocally, gay.

Which reminds me of Pansit. You see, Luis Manzano, in his Lucky Me Noodles TV commercial, doesn't pronounce "Pansit" (or noodles, for my non-Tagalog speaking friends) as "Panseeeet", but "Panset", and he sounds gay just the same.

You finally snap and go, "Ron, you listen to opera, and that's probably the gayest of all musical arts." Outlandish costumes, heaving bosoms and voices that could shatter glass panes and give you a heart attack, you may be right -- but I make the list, and this is my blog :)

According to the Stars

Yojin told me he just got out from the hospital wearing a neck brace. He broke his neck when the FX taxi he took on his way to the rowsite figured in an accident.

A few months ago, he fell face down and sufferred cuts and abrasions on his legs and the palm of his hands when Jong and he tried to simulate a hundred meter dash-- in a carpark!

Not to mention that on more than one occassion, his bags and celfones get stolen more often than, well, probably all the rest of my teammates combined.

It's probably the position of the stars, ya know, cosmos, universe, milkway. I told him before to read his horoscope before leaving the house.

Boon or Bane?

PAG-ASA says the country needs two or three strong typhoons to raise the water in Angat and other dams above critical levels, avert a looming power and water shortage and prevent a dry spell from wreaking havoc on agriculture harvests.

We need typhoons. Nyah, I never expected people would be saying this, as we normally associate this weather disturbance with landslides, flooding, destruction to property and endangering lives.

There are always two sides to a coin, yah?

Compromise

Walking along Raon St. in Quiapo, passing through the underpass adjacent to the Quiapo church and emerging on the other side on Hidalgo St., the place looked, uhm, different. Gone are the makeshift street stalls and itinerant ambulant vendors selling just about anything--from sour green mangoes to unidentified sex gadgets.

Mayor Lim cleared Carriedo St. and the adjacent streets, opened it up to foot and vehicular traffic, and prohibited street vendors from taking over the place. It made Quiapo less chaotic and improved the traffic flow, but I must admit I symphatized with the vendors. All they could do was watch from the sides.

Perhaps both sides can agree to a compromise, right? Carriedo is a perfect venue for a night market, a la Bangkok or KL. As long as everything is cleared and tucked away the following morning.

Charge to Experience

The problem with watching a feel-good independent movie is that sometimes, you'd end up not feeling good at all. This of course explains my aversion to that Oprah-inspired, Helen Hunt starrer Pay It Forward.

I won't even tell you the title of the movie. Bad acting, boring and corny script, excessive sentimentality, and not to mention that aside from having only three characters, the movie seemed like it was made under 50 bucks. It was sooo bad it broke through the other side and became profound: this viewing experience induced me to go into a zen-like trance.

So why did I watch it? I downloaded the movie from the internet, I thought it was really interesting, the trailer appeared like it was. The thing is, my broadband connection took me several hours. You see, I went through all that trouble, so to make sure that all my efforts didn't go to waste, I sat through the damn thing for more than an hour, which, for crying out loud, turned out to be a mini-crying festival. I've been flogging myself mentally for wasting precious time and electricity.

I know, I need to "charge it to experience", hoping never to repeat the same mistake in the future.