Friday, September 30, 2011

Poetry by J: Pains from the indecisive lover

The affairs of this world are full of woes.
To great intensity, they involve the heart.
Aches and pains thy faculties can't let go.
Akin to cancer, they grow like hideous warts.

So gentle fellow, I pray for thy infinite kindness.
cease the torture on my frail punished soul.
For my senses commence to betray me, it is blindness.
Until death himself abducts me for his avid ghoul.

I besiege thee, halt thy advances, halt thy retreat!
For thy action becomes a daunting pendulum.
Thou art a madman, entrench thy buttocks to a seat.
Speak thy final wisdom, and end my malignant gloom.

Whatever flourishes yonder, It becomes me to know.
For my ship is ready to depart these treacherous shores.
The hopeful sun is sleepy, I need that trailing glow.
To venture to a loving pasture, and weep for thee no more...



PS: I think I wrote this in my early college days. I do not know what the source of the inspiration for I have not experience love and betrayal at time.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Brookfield zoo

Pics from a recent trip to the zoo using my new smart phone.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

There was one good thing.

I moderate comments in my blog cause I delete nasty comments. Pasadena dude commented on my FOB English blog entry. He called me a snob and sanctioned me for finding humor with bad English. And for the record, I did admit in my blog that I can be a snob sometimes. He claimed that it was ironic for me to be laughing at people with bad English when my blog is full of grammatical errors. Sure I will admit that my blog is not free of rare grammatical errors but I definitely speak and write better English than a lot of those born, raised and educated in this country. Considering that English is not my first language, I think I am doing pretty damn good. Let him find any grammatical errors in this entry. Anyways, this guy did not even appear to have a blog and his comment was also grammatically incorrect. Seems like he is one of those overly opinionated people who hides behind the anonymity of the computer. The kind who has nothing better to do but criticized others and fail to see their own fault. Perhaps his lover can barely speak English. Who knows? He sure has a chip on his shoulder about my blog entry when it was meant to show humor more than anything else. I will give very little care about him after this entry. At least he gave me another idea on what to blog about. And he also showed me that the commenting aspect of my blog is working just fine. For a while there I thought nobody can make a comment on my blog anymore. Thanks Pasadena dude.

Friday, September 23, 2011

Israel Trip - Capharnaum

Capharnaum is the excavated remains of the town where Jesus lived. Among the significant excavated structures are the old synagogue and the house of Peter. Above the house of Peter is an octagonal Church standing on pillars to preserve the remaining excavated stones of the house. In the middle of the church is a glass window that shows the excavated house below. Our guide pointed to a room in the excavated house and said that Jesus use to sleep on that room. My eyebrow rose immediately in skepticism. How do they know that Jesus stayed in that particular room??? In fact the claim that the excavated stone remains was indeed Peter's house is rather dubious already. They might as well claim that the cat we saw in the area is the descendant of Peter's cat!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Blogging and me: Glad to have my own blog

Long time ago, I contributed to my friends Blog. Two of my friends manage the blog and I was one of the contributing author. One of my blog entry then was about this Filipino actress who we called frenemy amongst ourselves. It has something to do with the fact that she was not gracious and friendly to one of us Filipino in one of those stage door situations. And my blog entry was an announcement that the fenemy was coming to perform at a certain location. One of the blog manager thought we should not mention fenemy in the blog so I took down the entry without further discussion. But it did not end there cause the blog manager hinted that the readership for that particular day when I had that fenemy entry declined because of it. I thought it was a rather ridiculous accusation cause if my blog was really objectionable to the readers, the declining effect would not be on that day but days or weeks later. People would have to read the blog to find it objectionable and if they read the blog, it will register on the readership stats. So the decline of readership for that day would not have been from my particular entry for that same day.

This incident was just one of the several incidents that made me decide to contribute less and less till the day came when I removed myself entirely from their blog. I wish them success in their blog but I am very glad I had my own blog. This way I suffer no censorship/editorial and I have complete artistic control on what goes in my blog.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Pet Peeve - it takes so long to turn on.

It is nice to have all these HD TV and modern DVD player. The picture quality is great but one thing I really hate is it takes forever to get the machine playing after I turn it on. For example, my HDTV takes 18 seconds before I actually see a picture after I turned it on. It takes the TV 12 seconds to show picture after I switch it to the HDMI channel from a video channel.

As for my DVD player, it takes 17 seconds for the player to be ready after I switch the ON button. Once I load the DVD, it takes another 23 seconds after loading before the DVD actually plays.

I sure sometimes miss my old picture tube TV and VCR player. It turns on within 2-3 seconds after I press the ON button.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Ernie told Mary

2 months ago, Ernie and I had a quarrel over the dropping of his camera. The way he blamed me completely for the incident without taking responsibility for his own fault to the incident did not sit well with me. It was his condescending manner of lecturing me that I am not refined and that I am a grabber, with a hint of superiority that he is better and more refined. Needless to say, I took a break from him. You need that sometimes.

One time I was with our mutual friend Mary and I had to borrow her camera cause I forgot mine. Mary jokingly said to be careful and not drop the camera cause I know the consequence. It became obvious to me that Ernie talked to Mary about our quarrel over the camera incident. So if he talked to Mary about it, God knows who else he talked to about it. If he can talk to our friends and acquaintances about me, then I feel much better blogging about it. At least in my blog I did not reveal his true identity so anybody who does not know about our quarrel won't even know it was him I am blogging about. So if he told others about it and they read my blog, then it is his fault for talking about it cause I did not drag anybody into our quarrel.

I just need to get my frustration out.

Monday, September 12, 2011

The Irreverent songs of Avenue Q

I saw Avenue Q while I was in NYC. It was one of those show that everybody raves about that I have not seen. So since it was half price at TKTS, I got myself a ticket. Now I can see why people raved about it. It is funny and irreverent. The topic they talk and sing about are often not mentioned in polite society but here they explore it through humor. It was refreshing to hear them sing about things like pornography, homosexuality and racism. I love it. Here are some sample of songs they sing about. Enjoy!









Saturday, September 10, 2011

Anything Goes was de-lightful.


Saw the revival musical Anything Goes in NYC with Sutton Foster this past labor day. Prior to seeing this production on stage, I was already delighted by the Tony Awards performance of Sutton and the company of Anything Goes. So I was really excited to see this on stage live. I tell you it did not disappoint. Sutton was truly deserving the best actress award she got for portraying Reno Sweeney. She was funny, magnetic and just a total delight to watch. Her tap dancing prowess was also a crowd pleaser. Oh I need to mention that the guys who played sailors were also very pleasing to watch. Good dancing and a sailor uniform = a hit in my book. And I must not forget to mention that Colin Donnell who played Billy Crocker is so dreamy. He can sing and dance too to boot. Joel Grey who played Moonface Martin was hilarious. I liked him despite of the fact that I did not care of his Blue Bird song. Adam Godley who played Lord Evelyn Oakleigh was also a funny character. It was unfortunate that he did not come out to meet his fans at the stagedoor. I would have love to chat him up with my attempt at an English accent. I must say every cast member did a very good performance that only added to the show's success. The first half of the show was the more fun part with songs like You're the top and It's De-lovely that are very catchy tunes. And to cap the first act was the song Anything Goes with its song and dance extravaganza. The second act was also good with songs like Blow, Gabriel, Blow and The Gypsy in Me. The middle part was slow in my book with that Blue Bird song.

There is one small thing that I have a beef about this show. The setting of the story was suppose to be in the 30's or 40's and it was before the integration of blacks in society. So as my friend points out, how come there was a black sailor out in the deck serving with the white sailors? From my understanding the blacks served in the galley back then. And a black up dancer for Reno Sweeney? I know the smaller roles are not that obvious that they employ blind casting. I honestly did not mind seeing the black cast, it just takes away from the show's realism and authentic atmosphere.

Cast members in the pictures are Robert Creighton (ship's Purser), Colin Donnell (Billy Crocker) and Laura Osnes (Hope Harcourt), respectively. They were all very obliging to their fans.

This will have to be in my top 5 of fave musicals.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Tennis stars upclose

Here are the pics of the players I saw during the US Open of 2011. Of course I only took pictures of the one I like. Not exactly up-close but close enough.



Simone Bolelli






Jurgen Melzer






Roger Federer





Andy Murray






John Isner





Pablo Andujar





Stanislas Wawrinka





Juan Martin Del Potro