Live Nyornyal

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You donate the ingredients! We haul the industrial stove from PenPen. We cook the Arroz Caldo on the site. We serve it with Hard-Boiled Egg + Pandesal to those who need it. As opposed to dropping off relief goods to barangay centers, we personally make sure the evacuees RECEIVE it! (Apparently, there are Barangay officials who take advantage of the situation.)

INGREDIENTS we need for ARROZ CALDO:

MALAGKIT/GLUTINOUS RICE
KASUBHA/NATIVE SAFFRON/SAFFRON
GARLIC
ONIONS
GINGER/LUYA
GROUND PEPPER
COOKING OIL (gallons)
PATIS/FISH SAUCE (gallons)
ROCK SALT

PAN DE SAL or TASTY BREAD
WATER GALLONS!!!

TRUCKS/ SUV's/ 4x4's / VANS/ PICKUP's would be great!
Also hardworking & speedy COOKS or RESTAURANT KITCHENS!

I am personally shelling out all that I have right now. Leni Velasco and team of DAKILA volunteers are helping out with manpower. So any help would be greatly appreciated. We are no longer accepting CHICKEN & EGGS since they are hard to store, but if you have ingredients deposit them @ PenPen Restaurant. You deposit monetary donations @ any BPI branch to:

CRISPIN C MEDINA II BPI MORATO SAVINGS ACCOUNT NUMBER 3149 0943 84

Keep 'em coming! Thanks much :)

- PING

( CALENDAR )

Canned goods not within budget? Supermarket lines too long? Relief goods too hard to transport? Then BARANGAY SOUP KITCHEN is calling you!!!

SOUP is the most basic need right now. It contains CARBS PROTEINS VEGETABLES & most importantly, WATER... Dehydrated kids cannot properly digest! Follow these 3 easy steps:

1) Go to your nearest PALENGKE/WET MARKET... Prices are lower there!
2) Now what's your FAVORITE soup? Chicken Sopas, Arroz Caldo or La Paz Batchoy? Purchase ingredients needed.
3) Go home and make a huge KALDERO of your most lovely comforting soup!

DONE??? Organize a community SOUP KITCHEN in your own BARANGAY!!! You will find that there is a RELIEF CENTER near you.

(Soup is the ultimate comfort food for the rainy season. But don't forget, it goes perfectly with BREAD :)

I'M PROUD OF YOU ALL! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!!!

- Ping


( UPDATES on bargain prices, hearty meals & priority areas )

Alexis Tioseco

ReINTRODUCTION: A Different Approach To Film And TV Acting
A Workshop by Pen Medina

Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.
~ Rosalind Russell

Learn important elements in acting such as:

Acting For Auditions
Subtext
Acting Truth
Building A Character
Relaxation
Improvisation

Existing film scripts (written by Ping Medina) will be used as acting exercises. These exercises will be shot to produce a short film for the students to take home at the end of the program.

16 yrs old & above:
MON-WED-FRI (1pm - 6pm) April 27 - May 29
SAT-SUN (9am - 4pm) April 25 - May 31
* Fee: P8,000. (full, installment or deferred payment)

8-15 yrs old:
T-TH (1pm - 6pm) April 28 - May 28
* Fee: P6,000

Maximum of ten (10) students per class.

With special insight from film and TV actors Joel Torre, Ronnie Lazaro and Willie Nepomuceno.

Venue: Nuevo Mundo Innovative Learning Center (Katipunan-Xavierville area).
For inquiries, please call 996-1907 or 0917-5347464.

See you at the workshops! :)

(Acting workshops WILL CONTINUE after the summer! We also accept late enrollees.)

For every woman who is tired of acting weak when she knows she is strong, there is a man who is tired of appearing strong when he feels vulnerable.

For every woman who is tired of acting dumb, there is a man who is burdened with the constant expectation of "knowing everything."

For every woman who is tired of being called "an emotional female," there is a man who is denied the right to weep and to be gentle.

For every woman who is called unfeminine when she competes, there is a man for whom competition is the only way to prove his masculinity.

For every woman who is tired of being a sex object, there is a man who must worry about his potency.

For every woman who feels "tied down" by her children, there is a man who is denied the full pleasures of shared parenthood.

For every woman who is denied meaningful employment or equal pay, there is a man who must bear full financial responsibility for another human being.

For every woman who was not taught the intricacies of an automobile, there is a man who was not taught the satisfactions of cooking.

For every woman who takes a step toward her own liberation, there is a man who finds the way to freedom has been made a little easier.


By Nancy Smith
Copyright 1973

From page 100 of Haruki Murakami's "Norwegian Wood", my 2nd favorite book from the author. :)


“… So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who would love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year. I was still in elementary school at that time — fifth or sixth grade — but I made up my mind once and for all.”

“Wow,” I said. “And did your search pay off?”

“That’s the hard part,” said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking. “I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfection. That makes it tough.“

“Waiting for the perfect love?”

“No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, say I tell you I want to eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for.”

“I’m not sure that has anything to do with love,” I said with some amazement.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t know it. There are times in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important.”

“Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?”

“Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. ‘Now I see, Midori. What a fool I’ve been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey shit. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and buy you something else. What would you like? Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?’”

“So then what.”

“So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done.”

"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives, jobs. And maybe your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery, isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance. Of how much you really want to do it. And you'll do it, despite rejection in the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods. And the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."

-- Charles Bukowski


KAMPAI FRIENDS! :)

I've been good! How you been? Things have been moving quite a bit around here. Lots of plans. So many things to do, but doing one thing at a time. Quite scared when I'm visualizing plans, but I always think, what the heck. My tito just passed away, and I might do the same at whenever.

I quit smoking! Ever since I moved out and away from all the ciggies at home, I've been the cleanest chimney Santa can ever pray for. I rarely get cravings, and it's usually the very negligible kind. Withdrawal was nonexistent, so I believe in the power of the mind. Now if I can only "power of the mind" my health. I've been hovering between eating and exercising and this stupid holidays cough (even though I haven't smoked in ages). My weight has been hovering too, sometimes I'm pudgy, sometimes I'm meaty, sometimes I'm just plain dried out. Good thing the cough and phlegm's starting to subside. Time to be healthy again! Have to get ready for the holiday parties hahaha!

My first Syquoia Xmas party was great! My camera died on me early in the night though. Stupid me, I opted not to charge. Will post about it in a later time. Brought Megra along because I know it's her dream to live in Syquoia. She dubbed it, "the best party ever." We're good. She makes me smile and laugh on a daily basis. And I learn so much from her all the time. She pushes me to be a better person by barking like a crazy attorney. Those are the very important things.

Rest in peace, Marky Cielo.

At four in the morning came a sudden intuition to call Dad. He passed up watching a Mike De Leon film the day before because his youngest brother, Tito Mel, had passed away that morning.

I had a feeling he was already in Pampanga to tend to the wake. So now I'm checking up on him, to see how he was dealing with the sudden loss of his youngest brother, six years his junior, to a sudden heart attack, the same way he lost my grandfather Apong Seong to a weak heart, while Dad himself has been dealing with his own heart problems as of late.

My father tells me they're burying Tito Mel's body in a few hours, not opting for a prolonged wake, and nobody bothering to tell me because they thought I had work. The realizations choked me; Tito Mel won't be singing karaoke this Christmas, and even though Dad was telling me, "Baka ikaw pa yung mag-breakdown ah," his voice sounded different, it was just him quietly grieving on the other line, and I had to leave now.

I take the first bus going to Arayat. It's a trip I take every year with my family. Now it's all so strange, taking a bus full of strangers, a trip three weeks early, heading to Arayat for an entirely different ocassion. But with funerals, especially the sudden death of my 52-year-old Tito, who is relatively young, one can never really know what to expect.

I arrive to my brother outside, distant relatives greeting me, close relatives all puffy-eyed from the night before, Tita Nina still high-strung from it all, my Dad listening to the tail-end of the sermon. I see Tito Mel's photo, and the open casket.

The procession starts, I haven't had any decent sleep, I don't feel an ounce of tiredness, passing out from the heat was the last thing on my mind. It's the last thing I am ever going to do for my Tito Mel. I walked and remembered he smoked a lot, liked drinking with us Christmas Eve then Christmas afternoon, liked singing karaoke and always wanted us to sing. I thought it was still too early for him to go. I shook my head a lot of times. I told my tito's and tita's it was still too soon for him to go. He didn't even say goodbye, he just got up and left.

We will miss you, Tito Mel. See you soon.