Lately, I’ve noticed that I’m attempting to live my life through other people’s lives. Does that make sense?
I use other people’s lives as a means of escape. I use their works, their photos, their words, their films to visualize and progressively capture the feeling that I should be getting in real life if that were to happen to me.
Maybe that’s one of the reasons I can’t seem to fully appreciate my own works, because I know what was in my head when I created them—they lacked passion, whilst when I see what other people have done, the time and strength it took to accomplish them—I just can’t seem to emulate that.
Most of the time I just feel so suffocated and at the same time empty.

Make your life as wonderful as you make it seem.
How and where do I start?

What is it with Filipinos and their perverted fetish for rooting for the ‘underdogs’? More importantly, how does one define an ‘underdog’?

I fail to comprehend how ones ethnicity, social standing and economic status could define a person? How could they be factors for condemning someone?

The film documentary Give Up Tomorrow recounts the tale of the Chiong Sisters’ rape and murder/disappearance on the sixteenth of July in the year 1997—well it recounts the other side of the tale, the one that was often ignored and distorted by the media and, yes, by the Philippines’ own judicial system.

A film that took 7 years in the making, followed Francisco ‘Paco’ Larrañaga along with the six who were accused, convicted and sentenced with a life sentence then a death penalty for a crime they persist they didn’t commit—but this, film, it really is more that that. This film is bigger than the case, it is an indictment of this ridiculous circus (with a flair for the melodramatic, might I add) that we call our justice system.

What I find really frightening and infuriating (this may veer a bit off topic but I really have kept this theory for a long time and I find it somewhat relevant) is the thought that we imprison individuals for their petty crimes when the much larger criminals are up there sitting in cushioned leather chairs, leading this country. And, as Ms. Jessica Zafra had put it, if the ‘Chiong 7’, boys from well off families, really are innocent, how easy can this happen to someone else? And just how many innocent men and women sit in jail, being punished for crimes they did not commit?

(Source: ang-paraluman)

It’s well past 4am, everybody’s sleeping and on their way to waking up in an hour or two—and me, I just finished watching Ruby Sparks.

I’m not here to critique on the movie—I’m here to make an observation. About myself. Because I’m self centered like that. Also, as Julie Delpy had said in 2 Days In New York, I am the only person I know completely, well not even—but close enough.

Now, about the observation. In a movie like Ruby Sparks, one would think the moral to be picked up is something relationship-oriented, the relationship with onesself, relationships with other people, with society and whattnot—and that’s just the surface of the movie. But what I observed was how, well, stable the character’s lives were, in terms of finances. They all had nice apartments or houses, nice cars, pools and they didn’t do their taxes. Although, they may have done it inbetween scenes, I don’t know.
I suppose what I’m trying to get at is—movies, or anything really, needn’t remind me that the only thing worth pursuing in life is happiness—and I know how where I may find my happiness, I know what happiness for me is. It just sucks balls that happiness, along with almost everything else costs money nowadays. Money equates to freedom, money equates to power, to possibilities. In order to get money one must follow the step-by-step process constructed by society, and that’s where shit starts to get complicated for me. I can’t even—I’ll get back to you when it’s not 5am.

Cheerio.

Got around to posting my own photos now. Apologies.
It may be sixteen days too late (fifteen if you’re in the other part of the hemisphere) but let me just get this out of the way—Shine bright like a diamond!* Happy New Year! ♥

* I just had to, I’m sorry

(Source: ang-paraluman)

First off, I’d like to introduce to you the newest member of our family—This is Osito, don’t be fooled by his adorable puppy-dog looks he’s a hurricane pooper.
It took months to prepare for this little fat boy; he’s a present, a new buddy for Matilda—and they really did hit it off from the start. They have so much in common! They both poop and pee a lot. 

Oh and I finally got around to posting the photos I took of Matilda’s 3rd birthday party, I’ll post them as soon as I find the time to fixing the photos. I’ll give a few hints as to what made up her birthday though, for anyone who cares to know—it consisted of a bunch of flailing kids, a lot of crying, dogs, Adventure Time and a moon bounce.

I really hope I get my priorities fixed and my projects done well before the deadline.

(Source: ang-paraluman)

Have you heard of the ‘#AMALAYER’ video scandal? If not then, good for you.

The video starts with a burst of screaming, the camera is a bit shaky, obviously hidden—you see a young girl and a police woman, they’re having an argument although the girl seems to be getting the upper hand screaming ‘So I’m a liar? I’m a liar?’ you see the policewoman doing a half-assed attempt at trying to explain? To calm down the young woman? The young girl then proceeds to this man in uniform; he may be the superior of the policewoman that she is currently berating. The young woman goes on to tell the supervisor that the police woman is the liar, that she treated the young woman in a rude manner so it was only just that the young woman return the favor.

This goes on for a full minute or so.

Then it’s posted online.

People are demanding that the girl be expelled from her school, on what grounds I may ask? ‘Because she didn’t use proper English pronunciation and grammar thus shaming our institution’—that’s why. People lambast her, bash her person, and would even go so far as to send death threats.

Pinoy mob mentality at it’s finest.

Philippine social media demands internet freedom yet they cannot act responsibly within it’s walls, Philippine social media so narrow-minded yet insisting that they are forward-thinkers, that they are ‘liberated’, Philippine social media condemning acts of real life bullying by taking to the internet and cyber-bullying the individual at ‘offense’.

Yes the girl was rude, but guess what so are you.

The Philippine media is rude, the person who posted the video is rude, the Philippine government is rude, Filipino drivers are rude, crowds at LRT/MRT stations are rude—where are their videos? Why aren’t you ‘fighting’ them?

This may just be me going off on a far-off tangent but—with this mob mentality that the cyber social media is forming, so easily offended by misunderstood words (i.e. Lucy Liu ‘Filipino comment’, timothy Bradley winning the title, Jessica Sanchez bullshit—really, I could go on…) that this blind sense of justice—of self-entitlement—it’s a fine example of why the country is regressing.

People have so many qualms with each other, with practically anything and everything and out of all the things that they could do to ‘resolve’ the matter they choose to take to the Internet and rant.

#AMASHAMED

(Source: ang-paraluman)