Wits and Whips

Photo taken by: L.R. De Guzman
Taken on: December 2009
Burby's, Diliman Center, Commonwealth Ave., Q.C.

There are times when we look for something more interesting than the usual daily conversations in our life. A conversation where learning is derived from. A sharing about life. These conversations, I miss.

December 23, 2010

Facebook Chat

Ha. The joy of death nga naman po.

hahaha

indeed

3:56am

Relief from the trappings of this world.

haha

death could be the best resort at times

Partly the reason why I find it peculiar that a lot of people search for immortality.

Indeed. :))

But I do not approve of suicide, btw. :))

Religious point of view ba yan?

or what?

self-check

haha

Deeply religious po kasi ako.

Catholic?

So, of course, I won't be able to steer myself away from that mentality.

so are your beliefs bound by the sanctity of your religion?

Parang thinking away from your thoughts. Malabo.

Born-again po.

Let's just say that my mind was shaped by my religion.

hmmm

that is somehow dangerous

how so?

there could be a tendency of you closing your mind into some other possibilities beyond what your religion can show you

I think of myself as open-minded.

Tipong, I believe in everything that my God has said.

I see

But it could be that He did not bother to mention insignificant things, things that are of no concern to His general bounds.

But what if God doesn't really exist?

Nowhere in the Bible can one see that we should use the wheel, or that we shouldn't eat chocolate. Perhaps it is because He gave us the freedom to choose in things that are of no particular concern for Him.

Personally, I believe He does.

I mean, I credit Him for keeping my life smooth sailing amidst the stormy seas.

But if God doesn't really exist, would my practicing the tenets of His religion be senseless?

I think not.

I joined RCY because of Him.

Apir!

If I lose my faith in Him, should I quit my org?

Hehe!

Apir po

The truth of our God is far superior than any other truths.

diba kachurch po kita? wala lang po

Hahaha

Haha!

before tayo maging churchmates, i was a non-believer.

I agree

Oh. Sino po naghatak sa'yo, si Ate Byang?

nope

Aw.

closest friends in college

Pero siya po nakita kong kasama mo hehe

hahaha

bihira yun

Good thing you're saved, kuya

I don't like to call myself saved

Haha!

unfair for those who have not yet known Jesus

hihi

Then can yourself in whatever way you wish, then.

I think more appropriate ang blessed.

I believe that He does not judge the innocent

whatever God does, God does. God is in his heavens.

I agree.

I base my belief in the Bible. Fundie, if you may. :))

Liberals are born from Fundamentalists.

So I do not see the reason why we should know how many angels can fit inside the eye of a needle when there is nothing in the Bible to indicate such, and there is nothing in the Bible to say that there's a need to know such.

Haha!

I just don't see myself as following traditional Christian doctrines, unless otherwise said in the Bible.

So, Liberal Fundamentalist?

labo.

wag na nga lang i-tag ang sarili. :))

:))))

labels, sometimes cause more confusion.

I agree.

But sometimes, labeling oneself is the only way to explain oneself to others. Sad truth.

ironies of life

Haha!

Ang deep na po ng usapan. Nalulunod na ako. :))

Thanks for the time po.

hahaha

Sige po, tulog na ako at aabutan na ako ng araw. :))

Let there be light...

Photo taken by: L.R. De Guzman
December 4, 2010
Meralco Theater, Pasig City

Stage and lights design for the Still Madz About Love Here and Now Benefit concert with the Philippine Madrigal Singers and Jose Mari Chan. Hindi ito ang actual lights, emergency lights ang tawag nila dito. Pero ito ang actual na arrangement ng chairs, syempre part lang ang kinuhaan ko ng photo para may dating.

Thank you Kuya Manny Castilla and the rest of the lighting team who helped me in setting up everything.

To Kuya Manny Castilla, I owe you everything that I learned behind the lights console. I pray that God will provide us with more avenues to work together. I have never felt the craving for lights design learning until the last two concerts we had with Madz at the Meralco theater.

To everyone who had participated in the pre-production and production phases, God bless you all! You did a great job.

Mia, thank you so much for this opportunity, likewise Loren whom if without, I wouldn't have become a part of this project. I owe you two big time. Hanggang sa susunod na concert. I love you guys! :)

Maan, salamat sa mga kwento, sa mga bonding moments habang inaasikaso ang ilang bagay sa logistics, at sa pasensya. Haha. Remember that I have always been praying for you and you-know-who. HUG. Next time, kapag hindi na ako yung masyadong needy, maihahatid na kita sa Parañaque, hindi na lang sa SM Makati. Haha!

To Trish, hindi ko alam kung bakit, pero may takot factor ako sa'yo. Haha! I just pray na hindi ito dahil sa age gap, dahil alam kong magagalit ka. Haha! Anyway, maraming salamat sa pagiging 'Ate' figure (at least for me). I hope to work with you more, cheers para sa mga susunod pang events! :)

To Weng, para sa kaisa-isang one-on-one natin sa alumni living room habang naghihintay sa ibang people na dumating para sa meeting. I will never forget, "Wag ka nang bumalik sa call center." - Weng, 2010. Haha!

Carls, thank you for the hardwork sa marketing. Wala pa akong masyadong experience sa sales and marketing as far as I can remember, but I know for a fact na mahirap siyang gawin. Salamat sa pagtitiyaga at suporta sa team. :) God bless! :) Hanggang sa susunod na event. :)

Chai, sana may laptop na steno ang gamit para realtime ang pag-type mo ng notes everytime na may meeting. Thanks for always giving us updates/sending us updates. Thanks for the hardwork and patience. Until sa susunod na concert. :)

Faye, mabait na bata.Sana magkaroon pa tayo ng maraming opportunities to work with each other at si Bro na ang bahala dun. Salamat sa lahat ng ginawa mo para sa concert. :)

Viory, sana kasing galing mo ako sa Math. Haha! Apir! Salamat sa patience sa pag-compute ng projected ticket sales, at sa kung anupaman ang binilang mo. Haha! Mahusay!

Loren, 'save the best for the last' ang sabi nga. Dahil sa'yo nandito ako. Maraming salamat. Sana college palang naging close na tayo. :) Para tuloy gusto kong balikan ang college days natin. Yikeee. Haha! Anyway, wala tayong naging bonding time masyado, hindi naman natin pwedeng isisi ang pagiging malayo ng Bulacan sa Pasig. Alam mo na. Haha! I pray na maraming opportunity for career development ang mag-open para sa atin, sa'yo lalo na. And 'wag ka sana magsawa na i-tap ang iba nating batchmates, kahit na yung iba turn down agad. God bless! Hanggang sa susunod. Kapag ikinasal ka na pala, ako videographer mo ha. Haha!

To the rest, CONGRATULATIONS! CHEERS! Until next time! :)

God bless everyone! :)

REPOST: Don't work. Be hated. Love someone.

Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
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I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.