Telling it like it is

Finally, the travel story I wrote about Saigon has come out. You can read it on INQUIRER.net’s Roadtrip.
Excerpt:

HO CHI MINH CITY–It was hard to miss the swarm of motorbikes on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, also popularly known as Saigon. The Vietnamese love motorbikes. Young and old, men and women dressed casually or formally, young couples, friends, neighbors — every person you can imagine was riding motorbikes. It was an amazing sight.

Motorbikes came from all directions. Crossing the street required guts — lots of it. The motorbikes seemed extensions of their feet. They moved around streets like pedestrians in a sidewalk. They followed an invisible line. They never bumped into each other despite the absence of traffic lights. It was, as one foreign journalist described, an “organized chaos.” But I watched them with delight.

On my way from the airport to the Claravelle hotel in Saigon (which happens to be right beside the Opera House), I saw two guys side by side talking (note: not on the same bike) while negotiating the streets of Saigon. I saw another man in his 30s talking with someone on his mobile phone not minding the risk of slamming into approaching motorbikes from the other direction. My eyes followed him. I was afraid he might hit another motorbike. In Saigon, bikes outnumbered cars. There were taxis in the city. But motorbikes were everywhere.

There are some four to six million motorbikes in this city alone, thanks to the cheap imports from China. But this is Saigon, a place featured many times in movies and in books like “The Quiet American” by Graham Greene.

Sa Wakas! Our book is out.

Tikman ang Langit: An Anthology on the Eraserheads is a collection of essays on the superproxy band Eraserheads. Contributors include Joey Alarilla, Abigail Ho, Chong Ardivilla, Claire Maneja, Edwin Sallan, Faye Ilogon, Jing Gaddi, Jing Garcia, Joel Pinaroc, Julio Dela Cruz Jr., Marco Abella, Vernon Sarne, Vincent Batacan, and yours truly. Mensa Philippines president Dimpy Jazminez also wrote a nice poem for the book.

Thanks for the links to the most of the contributors’ blogs, Joey.

The book was compiled by Melvin Calimag and Jing Garcia and edited by Cez Rodriguez. UP Professor Robin Rivera (who was behind Pop-U and other early E-heads albums) also wrote a very insightful foreword in the book. Nakaka-inspire. Gino Borja was behind the nice cover design, and the book is published by Visual Print Enterprises.

Writer and columnist Jessica Zafra, music journalist Eric Caruncho, and writer and lead singer of Radioactive Sago Project Lourd de Veyra also contributed blurbs to the book. Maraming salamat.

Of course, thank you to Raymund Marasigan, Buddy Zabala, and Marcus Adoro who took time off to write opinions about this book. Kudos! And for Ely, thanks for all the good memories and the songs.

As the back cover of the book states: “For most Filipino youths in the Nineties, the Eraserheads was the band that defined their generation. From the underground scene, the band led the alternative music’s invasion of the mainstream and ushered in a new era of Pinoy music.”

The book also features a compilation of rare photos and, as Raymund Marasigan states in his blurb, “a lot of fresh insights and revelations on the band you’ll find interesting and amusing.”

Thanks Melvin and Jing for making this book a reality! I know how difficult it was. But this is a feather feather to your cap. Jing and Dodong Viray thank you for the nice photos. It does take us back to the 90s.

The book will be available soon in bookstores.

Also thanks to Janette Toral who also announced the soft launch of the book.

Put the hours in; do it for long enough and magical life-transforming things happen eventually.

-Hugh McLeod, How to be Creative (cartoon also by McLeod)

I was up all night (or morning) trying to come up with a crude podcast. After hours of trial and error, I think I’ve done it! Why did I do it, you might ask. Honestly, it’s a bragging right!!! Just kidding. Seriously, the technology is here to do podcasting (without the usual bells and whistles). I just wanted to figure how to do one using “crude” methods.

Since I started blogging, people had also been asking me why I blog. Why do I spend time updating this personal blog without the prospect of making money out of it. (I know some people who have). But the point is this: it’s fun to blog and to be part of what techies now dub as web 2.0. I must admit, I’m a tech junkie. I love technology and what it can do to mankind (woah! that’s deep). Blogging also helps me flex my writing muscle. I remember a friend quoting one local columnist about the secret to good writing is to write 1,000-word articles a day. I also remember science fiction and fantasy author Ray Bradbury repeating such advice, but in his case, he suggested to write at least one chapter a day.

My mind races whenever I’m online. I find so many ideas, insights, and interesting stories that I often want to blog about. But I have to be picky or else I will have to quit my day job and do this full time, which I don’t think is a good idea. When I stumbled upon McLeod’s How to be Creative manifesto (thanks to Guy Kawasaki’s blog), I just wanted to shout Eureka! I’m no fan of how-to books ever since another author exposed the big industry behind it. McLeod, however, makes perfect sense.

Great ideas don’t have to be big. Sometimes they happen while your doodling on the back of a business card, as McLeod puts it. Thanks Hugh! I think what you’ve put into writing are some things that many of us have somehow known but have chosen to ignore simply because we’re chasing a pipe dream. We should stop running and start doing!

(Postscript: Thanks to Blogging Journalist and Munir Umrani for recommending this blog post and for the heads up. As Dory of the animated movie Nemo would say, “Keep on swimming, swimming, or should I say, blogging, blogging. heh.)

The technical advisory body admits there is ‘little time for poll automation,” while Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos says the poll body has no budget for modernization.

Meanwhile, Alex Villafania gives a preview of the upcoming Windows Vista, as he got his hands “dirty,” testing and playing around with the new operating system.

Finally, Joey Alarilla marvels at Singapore’s high-tech industry and environment, and suggests that the Philippines should start learning now from this country with more than 4 million people. He concludes:

The future is already here, and we can’t rely on someone else to take us there. Let’s come up with our own Seldon Plan (from Isaac Asimov’s book*). Let’s build our own Foundation. Let’s do it now. It won’t happen in a day.

*italics are my own words.

I really don’t know much about comics. So when I was given an assignment to cover the Komikon 2006, a Philippine comics convention, I bumped into some people who ignited my interest in comics. Remember the days when you tried to draw the best copy of Voltes V? Well, these days manga is more popular. But there is a growing group of indie comic publishers who have developed their own following. They publish their own comics using photocopiers. And they sell them through these events, such as Komikon. To know more about what happened there, please read my story.

Yes, I own self-help books. I bought them because I found them intriguing and entertaining and not because I believed they will help me make better decisions in life.

I was on my way home from Hong Kong when I chanced upon this book titled, Sham (Self-Help & Actualization Movement): How the Gurus of the Self-Help Movement Makes Us Helpless by Steve Salerno.

A quick check on my library, I found that I owned the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Purpose Driven Life, 42 Laws of Power, and Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff in Love, among others. Of the three titles, I think I finished reading the 7 habits.

What this book has exposed is a booming and lucrative market for self-help books, which have been producing off-the-cuff solutions to life’s problems. They’ve created celebrities from people who have discovered 7 steps to (put any phrase here). Of course, not everyone was happy about the book’s arguments, as evidenced by reactions at Amazon. In fact, if you read Salerno’s blog, you’ll find that the SHAM industry is dissing him left and right.

It is really up to you to decide whether you’ll like this book or not. But it is just like reading Fastfood Nation. It is an eye-opener and a revelation. You’ll understand why American culture is now grappling for answers on many life’s questions, and these new-age gurus are now providing them the answers.

In the Philippines, self-help books are also getting bought and read, but I believe our culture is less likely to swallow every word they produce. We are often too busy working our butts off to pay for the next meal. As most Filipinos would says these days, “Isang kahig, isang tuka.”

I was lucky to have caught up with New York-based author and activitist Ninotchka Rosca. I exchange email messages with her and found her responses intriguing and downright funny. This report is about the exchange.

Read the full version on INQ7.net Infotech or see excerpt below:

NEW YORK-BASED Filipino author and feminist Ninotchka Rosca is working on a gender analysis of the war in Iraq for an October 28th statement of the Women’s Anti-Imperialist League or WAIL/US when this writer caught up with her via e-mail.

She is also busy writing an update for the Women’s Media Center website on the final report issued by the Women’s Human Rights Delegation of the National Lawyers Guild and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

She is also working on a book based on a 10-year diary of a Filipino housekeeper.

Gone book hunting in one of the local bookstores and I found this book interesting (haven’t read it yet, though).

A snippet review from Fully Booked: “Throughout human history. certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period.”

Read the rest here.

Joel Christopher Remadan, author and successful mailing list builder, is visiting the Philippines, INQ7.net Technology reports.

Popularly known as Joel Christopher, the Tabango, Leyte-born expert in Internet market hopes to help Filipinos understand Internet marketing.

He was co-author “Mining online gold with an offline shovel: How to build a massive online mailing List by mastering offline promotion.”

I did a search on the Internet, and indeed, he’s quite popular abroad. He’s also author of Political Correctness Is Killing America.

He went to the US to work as a physical therapist. But he eventually decided to focus on Internet marketing and publishing.