Ang kang Tatay

Magnet #1153 - Van Gogh's First Steps After Millet

So apparently, Van Gogh used to recreate Jean-Francois Millet's artwork in his own voice - something like 21 paintings, during his asylum time at Saint-Rémy. This painting, First Steps, After Millet is hanging in the Met - and here's Millet's original crayon on paper for comparison.

I do love this painting, because it's a supercute image of a child's first steps - especially if you see that the child is headed straight for the father's arms across the way.

Ya'll have heard it before - despite the fact that I don't want one, I'm a baby whisperer. For the most part, babies love me. I maintain it's because they see themselves in my chubby face.

It's been a fun year and a half, because two of my good friends had little girls, born 10 months apart. It's actually one of the advantages to being down here in NC this year, because I get to see both girls more often, and get to see them grow up, close up. Or, almost, anyway.

Last week, my BFF asked me to come sit for a bit with her daughter, who was supposedly just gonna sleep the whole time. It's possible that my BFF needs to read my blog more often, because I could swear I've done a blogpost about not allowing me near babies trying to sleep.

Here's why:

I learned that night that my threshold for leaving crying babies in their cribs is just about 10 minutes. What's worse? That baby totally knew I was putty in her hands, which is why she spent the next hour in my arms.

Couldn't help it. And she didn't sleep, either. She didn't cry at all, even as I spent most of that hour humming and singing the same Filipino lullaby over and over again.

It was like a magic lullaby, which totally kept her quiet the whole time! It's below, the lullaby that Tatay, quite possibly the original baby whisperer, always used to sing to us when we were little:

Ang kang Tatay
nga mga saging
nan gatumba kay gihangin

Ug wala pa unta hagagina
ang kang Tatay nga mga saging
dili matumba.*

Who knew? Filipino lullabies work on white babies!



*Translation:
My dad's bananas
have fallen because of the wind.

If it weren't for the wind,
my dad's bananas wouldn't have fallen.

(Yeah, I laughed at that, too.)

Annnd the world got a little smaller...

Magnet #1093 - Richmond, Virginia

Remember how I spent a week in Richmond, and then failed to actually pick up a magnet for the collection? Voila!

Picked it because I recently watched Tim McGraw trace his paternal family tree all the way back through Virginia, Washington, D.C., New York and then Germany, where his eight-times-removed grandfather came across on a ship via England with some of Elvis' relatives. Pretty cool.

I've only seen two episodes (David Tennant's [natch] and McGraw's), but whomever came up with the show Who Do You Think You Are? is a freakin' genius. Originally a UK show, it follows celebs as they trace their bloodlines as far as they can go.

The cool thing is that the bulk of the work gets done for them, either by Ancestry.com (great placement, by the way) or various libraries or genealogy experts, leaving us to tag along with the celebs as they discover where their people came from. I mean, ole Tim had me sniffling with just his opening scene!

In seventh grade, I traced the family tree back a generation or two through oral records and hearsay, but I didn't really have anything official. My parents came from the Philippines through LAX to O'Hare a year before I was born, so I'd have to travel a world away to trace my heritage beyond my grandparents.

Which is what one of my Twitterpals did, as it turns out.

She and I have Twitterbonded over TV shows and cuteboys over the last few months, but never really knew anything personal about each other. When I Tweeted that I was watching Tim McGraw's story, she mentioned loving the show, and how she went to go find her own grandfather's roots.

And I said exactly what I said above, I'd love to do the same, but I'd have to travel to the Philippines, and Lord knows how their records were, after a certain point.

That's when I learned of her journey to do exactly that - taking a five-hour bus-ride north of Manila to her grandfather's village, and finally managing to track down a first cousin of her grandfather's. (I wish I could link to the LJ story, but best not to without permission.)

Still. An amazing, and quite inspiring story. If she could track down her roots in a remote village, finding mine in Cebu City should be a piece of cake! Food for thought on our next trip to the homeland.

Hearing her story also makes me wish that they'd do a regular folk Who Do You Think You Are? series. The journeys would be just as cool, methinks.

Of course, I do find it extremely funny (and fitting!), that in all the world, through an online friend that I met on a completely separate messageboard, I somehow managed to end up Twitterpals with a chick who is part-Kababayan.

So desu ka

Magnet #1083 - Kawaii girl

I picked this Japanese Kawaii girl at the AnimeFest portion of Comic-Con last year. I just thought she was adorable, and figured I needed her as part of my collection.

She reminds me of all the Japanese classes I had to take at Carolina to appease my mother. I blogged about it before, she was totally convinced that Japan was poised to take over corporate America and that I should be ready. But man, those classes were seriously the bane of my existence my first two years at college.

I loved, loved, loved writing the characters, but I was absolutely terrible at comprehension and spoken Japanese. It definitely wasn't the prof, because I have a friend who started out with me in JAPN101 and he's totally fluent and loves the culture and its people. Puts me to shame every time we get together, he does.

Because I didn't want to finish out the final JAPN course, for fear of tanking my grades further, I ended up taking a crib class - Spanish. Flew through that class with flying colors. The Filipino language is somewhat based on Spanish, so there are many common words and even accents that Filipinos use. So I just pretended my parents were speaking Spanish to me in my head, and I mimic'd the Filipino accent. It's how I got my A for SPAN101, and funny praise for my terrific Spanish accent.

I picked this magnet for today, because I never really notice my Asian-ness as much when I'm walking through the streets of my small hometown. In a Southern town of about 28,000, with only about 200 Asian people living here, that's probably not surprising.

Hello, luvah

Magnet #555 - SoapNet's Love

So in complete opposites to my last SoapNet swag magnet for Punk, here's one on Love.

I finally understand Carrie Bradshaw's love of a good shoe.

Despite all the Imelda Marcos jokes that can be made about Filipinos, I'm most certainly not a shoehorse. I'm generally the basic inexpensive brown, black and blue - in heels and casualwear - and I'm a pretty happy camper. Every once in a while, I find a shoe that I fall in love with, and its usually something printed or embroidered with pretty colors.

But yesterday, I found the perfect shoe - comfy, despite its height, and I could walk across the slick poured concrete floor at Fossil, without busting my behind. In two colors, gorgeous black and brown - styled very 40s, with an art-deco'ish (even almost Frank Lloyd Wright-esque) 3.5-inch-heel.

Frankly, the heel is what sold me, because it's just so well designed.

Love.

Then, I went to go look up a picture of the shoe - a picture which totally doesn't do it justice, but I draw the line at taking a picture of my shoes. It's funny and fitting, and somehow Fossil, that their site says my shoe is part of their Vintage Sole collection, and the page header is "It's all about the architecture" and the blurb is all about the lovely design and attention to detail.

Oh, Fossil. How I love you. And especially your outlet store at outlet prices.

eta:
Yes, that's right. I just blogged about a shoe. I had a whole long and frankly lovely post about love in my head this morning, not to mention a good two weddings and another friend's baby due later this year to blog about love. And I still chose the love of a good shoe.

Dang. They better still be wonderful after the first day I wear them!

The pope, the priest and the man who would be godfather

Magnet #511 - Pope Benedictus XVI

Yep. Just when you thought I couldn't possibly have a magnet for everything, in pops Pope Benedictus XVI, who apparently injured himself today. I hope he's ok!

My soon-to-be brother-in-law bought this for me - you know, the only man (besides my dad) who has ever managed to get all three of us girls into a church at the same time on a non-holiday. The same man who, at his insistence, has convinced Save the World sister to get married. In the Church.

I was going to save this magnet to tell you guys the funny story about how Save the World sister had to make a detour to the Philippines "on her way home" from Nepal to get confirmed. And, then how, after speaking with the archbishop (coincidentally with our same last name) for a couple of hours, she was about to get confirmed, and found out she needed to present her baptismal certificate, which then sparked a panic call to my dad in NC, who was away from home and then had to drive the 4 hours home and back, to get the church to pull her certificate.

Whew. The things we do for love, I suppose.

Don't get me wrong, we were raised Catholic as Catholic can be - my parents were married by their best friend, Uncle Oscar, a priest whom we took very much into our family and our family vacations. But, the three of us have dealt with religion in our own ways, me personally drifting in and out, but knowing He's always there for me. I've never particularly been that attached to the church at home, so my closest connection to the Church was always Uncle Oscar.

But, I picked this magnet for today for a couple of other reasons. Mainly when I was riding home on the bus, my Blackberry buzzed with the sad and breaking news from CNN about Walter Cronkite passing away at 92 (92! Wow.). And for a quick second, I thought, hmmm, wonder who the other two will be.

But then when I got home, sadly I got one answer, when I found out my godfather, Uncle Oscar's brother, passed away in the Philippines a couple of days ago. We haven't lived in the same town for more than 30 years, but he and my godmother have always been a presence in my life.

They were the sweetest couple ever, never found one without the other for very long, always off having adventures around the world, and often in search of miracles. The last time I saw them, we visited them in the Philippines. A fantastic hacienda, filled to the brim with every memento from their journeys through life.

And, that's how I'll remember Tatay Toting, with the love of his life, both playing host to the three American girls running around, exploring their treasures.

Fearsome foursome

Magnet #445 - Philippines Fish

I picked this up during the last visit to the Philippines. Weird how I came home with two fish magnets, plus a seahorse. That trip was the last time I saw my last remaining grandparent, though - in a hurried welcome home at the airport.

It's funny what you remember about your grandparents...

I don't remember my dad's mom - I think she passed either before I was born, or when I was a baby. I dimly remember going to the cemetery to visit her, I think.

My mom's dad, I remember living with us for a little while when I was maybe 8 or 9 or 10. I remember going to some weird factory to pick up Linotype letter pieces for his printing press back home. For those of you that grew up with me, he's the one whose ghost used to stir his coffee at the kitchen table of the old house, in the middle of the night. During that rare sleepover, I remember at least one person trying to stay up to see if they could see him.

My mom's mom, I remember most, because she was probably in and out of the house the most and the longest before she passed. She loved hanging out with my baby sisters more, mostly because I had quite a mouth on me when I was younger. (Still do, truth be told.) Every morning before school, we'd play tug-of-war with the blankets, and I'd argue everything under the sun with her, right down to just a few years ago, when I tried to explain to her that the priest told us during the sermon that I didn't have to go to church just to pray.

And, as for my dad's dad, who passed away at 92 yesterday in the Philippines, there's a ton of stuff I remember about him. For instance, right about now, I'm craving one specialty of his that I've never been able to duplicate - no matter how hard I try. Egg fried rice. No, not the kind that you get at the Chinese restaurants, or even the supergood kind my dad makes...but just dropping a regular old egg into leftover rice and frying it up. I swear, it's the best thing you've ever had.

One tangible thing we have from him is this gorgeous Victorian dollhouse that he built from scratch. Two stories, with a wraparound porch, and a hinged rooftop for the attic bedrooms, and meticulously painted blue and white. I remember outfitting that thing with the best dollhouse furniture, lighted fixtures, carpets and wallpaper. It's quite simply fabulous.

Anyway, over the years, that dollhouse got filed away with time, a little bit like my grandparents, taken for granted, because it's just something we've always grown up with.

Now, the fearsome foursome are somewhere above, knowing every little secret in every corner of my life.

Hmm. I dunno how I feel about that.

*waves to Heaven*

Dayon, dayon!!!

Magnet #426 - Shangri-La's Mactan Resort and Spa

Or, welcome, welcome! to Fantasy Island.

In my very first magnetpost, I mentioned the Shangri-La in Cebu, Philippines. Truly an oasis. Our port in an otherwise hot and humid storm. As part of our family trip, my sisters and I made sure that the three of us booked at least one night in this gorgeous five-star resort. Some resorts bill themselves as world class, but the Shangri-La is world-class.

Please, don't get me wrong - we were staying with our family in Consolacion, and it was a gorgeous house. It's not like we were roughing it at all during our trip. But, we knew after all the running around that we were doing, we'd need a break to pamper ourselves.

And by pamper, I just mean nonstop air-conditioning, cool to the touch sheets on perfect beds, people calling us mam left and right, and gold star service wherever we turned. Oh! And a business center. Shut it.

The sad of it is, most of the resort went to waste on us - we're not spa people, so we didn't even check out any of the spa offerings. I don't even think we had dinner there, at least, not from what I can remember.

In the end, we really only had time for the pool that night (all of our relatives and their helpers came over to hang out), and then the beach the next morning. I've said before that I'm not a beach person, so I got to plop down on the beach and clear my mind, while the two sisters snorkeled. No, they didn't see any seahorses. Note, I did go into the water - but my problem was that it was too clear, and I just didn't want to actually see the fish I was wading with.

I'm also not a pool person, and to be honest, I've never, ever understood the need for chlorinated pools when you're right by beautiful stretch of beachfront.Nevertheless, we sure had a ton of fun in the superfun submerged chaise longues, and making our way through their incredibly large pools.

I'm betting that after the end of my sister's confirmation trip (yes, there's a magnet, and a story there) there this coming week, she'll wish she'd booked a stay here again. Lord knows, next time I get a chance to stay at a Shangri-La, I'm taking it, with no reservations about it.

I bought this seahorse tongue depressor bookmark magnet at the little lobby shop. They had no other magnets, so, as usual, I had to jimmy something up. I picked this one for today, because yesterday, Neatorama featured Evil Mad Scientist's 17 Cool Magnet Tricks blogpost.

Holy freakin' cow. There are 17 more fun things you can do with magnets! Other than having a magnetblog! Make a motor! Use magnets to pull out batteries from things! Fool your Mac into going to sleep! Find studs! In your walls!

But, buried within the magnet tricks post, was this even better 2006 post, Making Crafty Fridge Magnets! Jeepers! A whole magnetpost on how to make your own magnets out of eclectic food packaging. Altoids! Sun-Maid Raisins! Yoo-hoo!

Ok, ok. I know, I've been jimmying up magnets out of whatever the little shops have in lieu of magnets - usually keychains, buttons, or stickers. But dudes. I've never thought of making cool food packaging magnets. Good gravy.

Just. You. Wait.

Viva Pit Senyor!

Magnet #327 - Sinulog Festival and Pit Senyor, Cebu, Philippines

No, your eyes are not deceiving you - that's baby Jesus on this magnet. Totally bought this at the Mactan Cebu International Airport.

Taking a step back...

Back in the 1500s, Ferdinand Magellan of Spain discovered the Philippine Islands, and thus began more than 400 years of Spanish domination. So, it should be no surprise that Catholics actually make up more than 80% of the population in the Philippines.

My parents took us back to their home island of Cebu a couple of years ago to see Sinulog, the largest religious festival in the country. It's to celebrate Pit Senyor - Baby Jesus, aka the Santo Niño de Cebú ("Holy Child of Cebu"), the patron saint of Cebu. Thousands make the pilgrimage to this tiny island, and take part this week's worth of celebration, culture and prayer.

I've always thought that religion was a personal thing, not really something to be shared or experienced with others. And, I'm not hugely religious here in NY. But, for some reason, whenever I'm in the Philippines, I can definitely feel religion there.

During the 6am Mass, everyone had balloons - which sounds weird, I know, because it looked weird. Until I realized that people were pinning all their hopes and dreams and prayers on those balloons. Then, they were all singing this wonderful song and then let go of the balloons into the air and then they waved (!) good-bye to them, in hopes that they would reach God and their prayers would be answered. It was quite an amazing experience.

The other great thing we did was visit my dad's old high school, where several different groups put on various shows for us, all about how the natives were there, the Spaniards came and then voila, Pit Senyor! This performance was my all-time favorite. The shows were all entertaining, and the crowds certainly loved it. Of course, they were all there in the grandstands to hang out and gossip with each other, as Filipinos are wont to do.

Definitely visit my public FB album link - pretty pics! And, since Sinulog is going on right now, here are some pics of the current Sinulog activities on this native Cebuano's blog. For more Sinulog background and pics, you can check out here and here.

It was a great week, where we visited our parents homeland, saw the processionals, did the mass, watched the performances, and in general, learned how well Catholicism took, literally a world away from Spain and the Vatican.

Light! Light!

Magnet #325 - John Hancock Building

When I was very little, with my parents in Chicago, whenever we would approach the Loop, we'd see the John Hancock building, and according to my parents, I used to yell out, "chu-ka! chu-ka!" and open and close my hands in some sort of jazz hands thing.

My parents' native Filipino dialect is Bisayan, and the word for light, is suga, so that's what I was yelling out whenever we'd see the light signals flashing from the tops of the Hancock Building. Yeah, you probably have to be there to see how much fun my parents have telling this story.

I love the building, for the giggles it still gives my parents whenever they see it, but also, because it's a pretty neat building in its own right. Designed by Fazlur Kahn of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and known for its X-cross bracing, that criss-cross all the way to the top. It's shaped into a wedge, which makes it look much taller than it is.

It took something like 5 million manhours to build, and stands at more than 90 stories. Supposedly, if you include those lighted antennas, the John Hancock Center is the fourth-tallest building in the world.

They just refurbished the Observatory last year, so I bet it's supercool up there. The building is multi-use, which basically means that people live and work in it - they have something like 48 floors of condo space there. Dudes, that'd be an awesome address and view, I'm sure.

The skyscraper was named for John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, the company that was named for John Hancock back in 1862. And, the reason I picked this magnet for today?

Today's the birthday of John Hancock - President of the Second Continental Congress, first signer of the Declaration of Independence, and nine-term governor of Massachusetts.

Odd. Big signature. Big buildings. Hmmm...wonder how tall he was in real life.

Goooood morning, Nepal!

Magnet #284 - On-Air Newseum

My sisters and I all ended up in some form of communications. I started out in publishing, and am now in advertising. The middle sister, who gave me this On-Air magnet from the Newseum in DC, is in newspaper journalism. And, at least until April, the youngest, is in broadcast radio. In Nepal.

We probably inherited it from my maternal grandfather, who after gotten his law degree, published the only newspaper back in Cebu City, Philippines. They owned a building on a town square, and on the ground floor, that's where they had the printing press.

My earliest memories of both my grandfather and the Philippines are of seeing the giant presses, and when Grandpa would come to the US, we would take him to some sort of press equipment place, where he would go and purchase the individual typeset letters to bring home to the PI. And when Grandma found out that I would be in publishing, she offered to give that same press to me, in case I needed it for my work. Very sweet.

The reason I picked today's magnet is because the youngest sister is part of Equal Access, a nonprofit organization, that put together charity football match to benefit children living with HIV and AIDS. She helped voice a PSA for the event, where she sounds supercool. I mean, I'd want to go to the event.

She posted about the experience on her blog...but you know the coolest part is that apparently the event was actually covered by BBC News!

Superneat! And for a great cause.

And of course, I'm going to have Robin Williams in my head all day now.

Maybe I should have given her shades?

Magnet #122 - Psychic Advisors

I want to say this was a magnet tchotcke from a stock house, either Corbis or Getty.

But, it seems somewhat apropos, in light of Saturday night's Doctor Who in the UK. And that's all I have to say about that, in order to respect the US broadcast schedule and not post any crazy spoilers.

Anyway, if storefront signs are to be believed, psychics seem to be everywhere, and who knows for sure if they're real or not. Over the years, I've gone to a few, mostly for fun. At Manhattan street fairs, at their storefronts in the Village and Midtown, and even to a private home in North Carolina. They've all given me various and sundry predictions, none of which I've remembered enough to take completely to heart.

But, last year, on a family trip to the Philippines, we met this elderly great-great-aunt-ish relative, who actually reads palms for a living. The whole family seems to be a little in awe of her, only because supposedly what she says is usually true - and it freaks them out a bit. And, we're a superstitious lot, Filipinos.

We'd never met the old crone before - and she was this tiny, tiny thing, bent over with age, with a weathered face that looks like she's lived a million years and then some. That old face was balanced by some rather youthful salt-and-pepper twin braids, a la the old Sun Maid raisin girl.

When she walked in to the house, the first thing she did was read our palms. She took my youngest sister's hands, and my middle sister's hands in hers, and mentioned (in native tongue) that they both have happy and bright futures - actually went so far as to say how many kids, marriage, etc., etc.

Then, she took my hands in hers, and she looked perturbed. She spoke to my aunts, and the gist of the conversation was that she couldn't read me.

Seriously. She said my future's unclear, and that she couldn't read my palms.

Hello. The woman's been reading palms for longer than I've been alive, and she couldn't read my future.

Yep. Officially freaked out.

I got sand in my pocket

Magnet #38 - Hawaii

Here's weird. I hate the beach. I hate the sun. I hate the sand. It's also weird that I hate all three things given that my peoples are from the Philippine Islands.

So, it's weird that I would have so many magnets from Hawaii. No, really! Everyone I know who goes to Hawaii ends up bringing me back a magnet - which of course, I love, (thank you) but it makes me giggle whenever I see them. This lizard I had to make sure was from Hawaii, and I got it confirmed when my friend who brought it back for me said she wasn't totally sure that's where it's from, but she thinks of Hawaii every time she sees it, so it must be from Hawaii. Right?

But, I digress. It should be known that I place the beach-hatred blame on the weekend getaways to the beach down in North Carolina. Actually, I use the term weekend loosely. Mainly, it would be a random Friday night, where my parents would come home from the office and say, pack up, we're going to the beach.

And at 3 or 4 in the morning, we'd be rousted from our beds, piled into the van, and would arrive at the beach about 4 hours or so later. We'd basically spend the morning and afternoon on the beach, and tis true - it was fun. Until the ride home on Saturday night. Where we'd have to change back into our quite sandy civvies, and sit in the van - damp and sand-ridden all the way home. Ugh. Sand in our underwear - not fun.

So, beaches = nofunjoy.

One fish, two fish

Magnet #1 - Cebu, Philippines

April 1981.
- The Space Shuttle Columbia passes its first test flight.
- The first IBM PC is introduced.
- Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse.
- The joyfam visits Cebu, Philippines, for the last time until 2007.


January 2007.
The good:
- Familiar faces - and they all know who you are, what you do, and where you live...that's if they can tell you apart from your sisters.
- Familiar places - everywhere we went felt as if we'd been there before (see Malls, below).
- The Shangri-La. It's no joke, a little piece of heaven on earth. Air conditioning, gorgeous views, wonderful beaches.
- Su tu kil: Open air dining, where you pick your meal from the day's catch (*points to magnet*). Soooooo. Good.
- Seeing your parents in (and out) of their elements. Like, my dad climbing a tree to pick my mom's favorite Filipino fruit. (all together now, awwwww!)
- No more oil barrel to hold the bathing water - I'm talkin' running water, people!!!
- The USD goes a loooong way there.

The bad:
- Helpers. Yeah. I'm on the fence. It's unnerving to be introduced to people you think are your cousins...but they're not.
- No driving laws. Well, there are, but no one follows them.
- Too many bugs. Wayward snakes and lizards in living rooms.
- Hot. (But that's not the Philippines' fault.)

The malls?
- Malls. Filipinos love their malls. Nope, not all that different than America.
- Hot boybands in malls. Nope, not all that different than America.
- Filipino cuisine in the mall. Totally made of win.
- Did I mention there were a lot of malls?

Cuz there really were.

A lot of malls.