but first, a little vanity

I mentioned it here, so I have to update my thoughts on the matter here as well.

If you remember, I wrote about a recent photo shoot where I felt particularly ugly and unattractive and unphotogenic. Luis even sent me an SMS after reading it that I had no right to feel that way (but in his sweet, gentlemanly manner, of course). Still, I felt really panget in that photo shoot and I was inconsolable.

First why? - The photog didn't want me to smile my normal smile. He kept saying, "Not too big, smaller smile..." and I couldn't do it, and he had to make me blow air from my mouth to relax my lips and "Now, small smile." I was not accustomed to this and felt like a freak.

Fast forward a few months to the release of Isang Bagong Bituin souvenir programmes. Most of the photos used in the company artists section were from that photo shoot. I had seen most of them before in the MB programme, but not mine because we had, well, been on leave. In this programme, I was very shocked to see my photo - I was gorgeous. Not even just okay looking, given how bad I felt about the photo shoot, but I was so stunning (as in, I stunned myself) that I couldn't keep my eyes off it.

You know how there's a certain way you know you can look in pictures and wish you looked like that 24/7? Or, at least, in every picture taken of you? This was the very look I always wanted.

I loved it so much that my Dad was making fun of me. At first, while staring at myself in the programme, I kept saying, "Shit, ang ganda ko! Grabe!" And he would say, "Sino naman nagsabi na ang ganda mo?" And I would smile and say, "Ako, baket?"

Mom said, "Sanay na sanay ka na sa Daddy mo no?" and I said, "You know, Ma, I think I kinda look like you here..." because something about the photo looked really familiar to me. And Daddy said, "Ay, ang kapal ng mukha mo!" Amid the laughter, I finally got it and said, "I know now! I look like Mamia's portrait!"

Mamia has this big painting of herself as an early 20-year old hanging in her living room. She's very gorgeous in it that she jokes that it's not even her. "Tisay ka na pala," Mom chides as Daddy exclaims, "Nako, ang ambisyosa!!!!"

Later, Mom tells me how all her sisters-in-law are always saying that Mamia's old pictures all look like me. "Maybe you'll also look more tisay when you get older," she adds. Ha, pigs will fly. But then, I guess there must be a really valid reason why I'm Mamia's favorite in the first place, other than I'm her first granddaughter.

mishaps, gluttony and wasn't watching how you spend money a new year's resolution?

My phone crashed again. Keep two hundred messages in the inbox and guess what happens. Anyway, I should by now learn my lesson about my cellphone crashing because it's not cheap to get it fixed.

I had a really tough weekend (yeah, what else is new) and part of it was feeling that I was indeed spoiling myself too much and what kind of glutton I have become. But not having a cellphone over the weekend made me realize how important it still is to me; perhaps not as important as when I was organizing press interviews and photo shoots for Tata Young, but important still.

The punished glutton in me was also feeling very bad about not earning enough money to the kind of lifestyle I had become accustomed. Either I find more means or I learn to live within them. Here's where my phone fits in. I may have mentioned I have a second job: it's freelance work and it hasn't really kicked in yet, but rushing myself to meet deadlines was quite difficult if I didn't have a way to talk to my editor, who has a first job similar to mine. So while I was feeling guilty that my phone was good for nothing and deserved to be on the fritz, panicking over the article I had to submit last Friday reminded me not to give in to melodrama as everything has its own importance some way or other.

Yes, I notice that I'm starting to talk like some weird zenmaster. That's just me, coping.

----

By the way. Since my phone stores numbers and messages in the phone and not on the SIM and I have no idea how to transfer them to either SIM or memory card (what for to have a 32 mb memory card? To store pics and videos, of course...), I lost all (almost all) your numbers again. Do me a favor please and send me a text, but let me know it's you. I still have the same number. Thank the lord for small favors. And thank you! Mwah!

first, last, always

I stole this meme from LJ. Whee.

First name: Joelle

First nick name: Joelle

First school: Benedictine Abbey School for just a year.

First word(s) spoken: Ma, probably

First CD purchased: I have to really think about this. I only started buying CDs late in life because I would rather buy tapes for my walkman. And then I got jobs where I get them free. Argh, I hate having to think when I happily wasn't prior to.

First job: Teacher Joelle when I was thirteen.

First time on TV: my dad's students and I danced on Discorama, back when Aga Muhlach and Gretchen Barredo were still an item and singing/lipsynching to each other on TV hahaha

First time in the newspaper: I'm sure it was ballet related. I kinda remember a press release for a show under my dad's school. The earliest one I kept is also a press release for another show, for my college dance company, and I don't look like myself.

First screen name: Joelle Jacinto, now a legend. Seriously, it really creeps me out when anybody says to me, "You're Joelle Jacinto?!" (Enter hirit: "How could you not know?" hahahaha...)

First pet: I got them together, so two dogs, Starsky and Hutch.

First piercing/tattoo: Ears, I was two, I think. Or earlier. My mom's a sadist.

First credit card: I'm careful with my Dad's, hehe.

First enemy: Grade school, I wouldn't go to this girl's house. She said bad things about me to people. Later on, we have a confrontation and become friends again. She was very pleased when I went to her house to hang out. I remember thinking she must be very lonely.

First big trip: I know my dad took me to Cebu on a commercial flight while my mom and sibs took a cargo plane. My dad said I threw up on him.

First concert: In high school, Violent Playground and the other Ten of Another Kind bands played in our school gym. I was impressed there were a lot of local bands who were not the Dawn.

First musician you remember hearing in your house: toss up between Led Zep and Pink Floyd.

First house you lived in: The flat behind my grandparents' house that my Dad had built and lived in as a bachelor pad before marrying my mom. We stayed there three years.

First room color: I remember it was light blue.

First time drunk: Damn, I'm so old that I can't remember. I must have gotten drunk before popping tequilas with my cousins around 1989, but I don't remember.

First time high: I think I was high second hand a lot most of my life. On my own, it was around 95 or 96, it's hazy...

First grade teacher: Ms. Almeda. She was beautiful! She changed her name when she got married.

First time on a roller coaster: the Space Shuttle at Enchanted Kingdom in 95; I was a big Octopus fan before that.

Last car ride: Home to the Las Pinas house from a date, yihee.

Last good cry: Right after the second movement of Classical Symphony during the Saturday matinee because my heels were killing me. I guess people are bothered, seeing me cry, as I'm supposed to be a pillar of strength or something like that. Erica told Mitzi, "I want to cry too!" as Mitzi swatted her face.

Hmmm. Though I did shed a few tears last night. Just a bit. They weren't sad or anything.

Last magazine you read: It's been a while. I haven't looked at a magazine in months.

Last library book checked out: An actual book - Ways of Seeing by John Berger.

Last movie seen: King Arthur - panalo! It's so strange, I always favor the bloke who DOESN'T get Guinevere; in this version, kinikilig lang ako watching Lancelot cast furtive glances on her but not making any moves because he's Arthur's friend.

Last TV show watched: Parts of Extra Challenge and a Ginebra-FedEx game which is how my sister watches TV.

Last card game played: I won my first game of Pusoy more than five years ago. Stopped playing cards since.

Last cuss word said: "Putangina!!!" while watching the leader of the Saxon army kill Tristan.

Last words spoken: "Hey, Miss World is on."

Last kiss: Last night.

Last hug: Last night.

Last sleep: Last night. Many things happened last night.

Last food consumed: Spinach and Mushroom pizza from Sbarro.

Last phone call received: a few minutes ago.

Last phone call made: Last night to tell Mom I was going home to the summer house that night.

Last cigarette: This is something I know for sure I will never do.

Last time drunk: Hahaha, I was being handed San Mig Lights August 2003 because I thought I was being cheated on. I've never been that drunk since; I instead get only slightly tipsy.

Last time showered: Yesterday. I will again soon.

Last shoes worn: My white shoes.

Last shirt worn: a black shirt with tiny rainbow-y stripes.

Last pants worn: Do shorts count? If not, it would be Wednesday that I wore my khaki slacks.

Last CD played: Frou Frou! "I'm high enough from all the waiting to ride a wave on your inhaling... 'Cause I love you..."

Last CD bought: Pearl Jam bootlegs. This was a couple months before I was employed in Sony but I wouldn't be able to acquire them anyway, because each bootleg is one copy of its kind, well, in this country at least. I like the ones I got.

Last item bought: Coffee in the House of Expense. And I wonder why I'm so broke.

Last annoyance: Wanting sleep and being unable to get any.

Last amusement: Lancelot's running joke that the other knights would one day be wondering why their kids look like him and the spot on exchange with Guinevere before facing the Saxon army on the ice --

Lancelot: You look nervous. There are a lot of long-lonely men in that army.

Guinevere: Don't worry, I won't let them rape you.

I love witty repartee. I want to marry it.

Last disappointment: Being tsked at again by people I don't want tsk-ing at me, few weeks ago.

Last soda drank: Coke with pizza.

Last thing written on paper: A phone number.

Last key used: The key to my Las Pinas house.

Last IM: Right now.

Last ice cream eaten: Hmmm, not for a long time. We must rectify that.

Last person spoken to before sleep: I thanked a handsome man for the ride home. Everyone at home was pretty much conked out by the time I entered my house. I know he isn't a person, but I did pat Doggie on the head and say, "Good Doggie," before I went into the house.

and i hate math enough to not care about counting the points

I saw a bit of an ice skating competition this morning while cleaning my apartment. I normally don't like watching ice skating as I'm worried they'll fall on their butts on the cold ice, but that's just me. I have never wanted to ever ice skate, not even when Megamall was the only place that had ice skating and it was a fad to go ice skating. I have enough of a problem with balance without teetering on bladed shoes on slippery surfaces, thank you very much.

This time, however, I was drawn to the ice skating comp on TV and felt myself thinking lots of comparative stuff to ballet. I'm still not, YAY ICE SKATING! but I concede that it's not easily dismissable. What these girls are doing is Hard. They jump in the air, turning multiple times, and they have to make perfect landings or else they don't get points. The US champion who just came from the Olympics (I think she won the gold) is Michelle Kwan and she did this incredibly difficult leap (so said the commentator) not too well and so she was ranked second place for this heat. I thought she was stunning - she was very expressive and artistic (I loved her, hikbi) and just because she didn't perfect a landing, she was graded poorly. There's gotta be something wrong there.

At this moment, there's a NAMCYA competition for ballet and Tiff, Tara and Jared are all competing. I was thinking lately about how arbitrary competitions are and how grades and points do not capture your measure as a dancer. Sure, I'm very hard on myself when I don't execute a step perfectly, but I sure as hell am glad I'm not graded for each thing I do.

From the last show, I've been thinking that all this nitpicky perfectionism is just for me. The artistry and expression is for the people watching. Put 'em all together and I'll feel like I won a competition. I don't need points or anything - I would know. And so would the people who watch and like what I do.

While waiting for her scores, Michelle Kwan looked bummed; when she saw her scores, she was shrugging and looked, "Oh that's okay." Interviewed, she said, "I have time to relax and regroup, I'll be able to concentrate more for the long program." If she were a ballerina performing onstage, I'm pretty sure she would have gotten screams of "Bravo!!!" and may be a little disappointed, but she might have been happier.

There was this one girl who did a number inspired by Holly Golightly - Breakfast At Tiffany's set to Moon River, and after her piece, she was super happy with what she did. That's what I would feel like: super happy that I had danced my best, never mind what points I get. A couple weeks ago, Tiff and Tara were talking to me about their competition concerns, then Tiff sighed and said, "I don't care if I win, I only hope that I do well." I hope, as she completes her variation, she'll feel like she was super happy that she had danced her best, never mind the points.

Update on my poor heels: they've adequately dried up and I danced in my Gaynors pain free today in a performance of Fiesta. I like that I'm starting not to care too much about the tiny things I didn't do perfectly. Nobody's keeping score anyway.

time offline

Relaxing in the Las Pinas summer house after the show. A little birdy (not me, though it's possible) used up all the internet, but I didn't skedaddle getting new creds for the dial up as I was doing other stuff that I've been neglecting. I finished a load of laundry, organized my closets, repaired my nice ballet shoes, tinkered with my laptop, started writing my new assignment for job #2. I also wrote in my offline journal - important stuff I want to keep to myself, thoughts about my show, conversations I've been having with my favorite man, plans I want to make. I feel good.

I also relaxed my heel. In my last entry, I complained about my heel bothering me, well here's why: there's a blister the size of a ten cent coin on my right heel, it hurt slightly the first two shows but really nearly killed me on the Saturday matinee and I couldn't walk or jump. Then, on the evening show, my other heel felt left out and started to open up a blister all its own.

Why I got them: my Gaynors are too small for me? Tara says she also got blisters on her heels the first time she wore Gaynors so it's not quite a foreign thing; she advised me not to peel off my callouses if I wanted to be able to use my Gaynors for a long time.

After dancing this weekend trying to zen myself from all that pain, I realized that my pain threshold must have gone up a bunch of notches. BDS&M, here we come.

Well, if I wanted to, of course, hehehe.

happy opening night!

I could nitpick and enumerate everything that went wrong with my dancing tonight(there were three, hehe), but I will not do that. Instead, I will recall one of the nice things that happened.

It's the last movement of Classical Symphony and standing on the side too long has made me forget to smile. It also has me wanting to get the dance over with already.

Then, Aileen temps leves into my line of vision and I watch her dance and see how animated and full of joy her face is even though I know she's always freaking out at this part because she can't seem to remember where to put her arms. She does it flawlessly of course and I am reminded why I'm dancing. It becomes easier to dance from that point onward.

We have two other ballets to complete before the end of the show. The audience loved Isang Bagong Bituin and everyone is happy kissing and hugging each other after the curtain has stopped going up for our bows. I am happy - more than, actually - but I don't go kissing and hugging, I'm already thinking about tomorrow's show, hoping it's better than tonight, not just as good as. Also, my damn heel is killing me, so I bend over on my way out to the dressing rooms, and pull the heel off my pointes.

Then someone grabs me and shakes me and says a very heartfelt, "Hoy, congrats sa 'yo!" I look up and it's Aileen, the original Bituin. I'm stunned and it dawns on me that tonight really was a job well done.

That's just one of the nice things about tonight. There are lots. In the long run, those happier things, and not the tiny mistakes that no one even notices, are the ones that really matter.

i want my sleepyhouse... but first i blog...

I had a horrible last three days, mainly due to ballet and trying to get my life to fit everything I wanted to throw in. I was awake too long and my body needed the sleep pretty badly as I'm in too many dances this show and I have to be awake early to teach still. I don't get enough rest. I had a few hours sleep both Friday and Saturday nights and all day Sunday, I wanted to curl up somewhere nice and warm and just fizz out. I got to bed only around 6:30 in the afternoon and when I woke up the next morning, it still didn't feel like it was enough.

When I got to CCP, I felt like one of the walking dead. I waded through Anatoli's class like I was watching it in a movie instead of real participation. I blocked the dances so quietly, I was expecting people to think an alien invaded my body and didn't know what a loudmouth I usually am.

I perked up during the run-through. Although there are sections that were confusing - getting used to the stage the first day is always confusing, but add all the changes they keep putting in - I was back to my old self and was dancing happily.

The way there is hard and I should've stayed away from fries and mayo tonight, but dancing rocks. I do believe I enjoy it more when I'm the only one I have to think about.

I gotta hit the sack. I finish enrollment tomorrow and I have to get everything done by noon. Wednesday morning, I watch Saranggola ni Pepe. And in between all that and production week, I have to write an article about businesses preparing for February. Now that I've acknowledged I'm not Supergirl (or Elastigirl, hoho), I realize what a dork I am doing all this the week of my show. God give me strength.

which brings us right here

The strangest thing happened to me the other day and, stranger, it only bothered me today. Well, it sort of bothered me the other day, but I pushed it from my mind because I had rehearsals and I had other fun stuff to do and I seem to have a filter for the bad things that happen to me, at least recently. But I got to thinking about it today, during rehearsal, and I decided I wanted to say something about it and then leave it in peace.

The reason why I'm blogging about it is it's about my blog. Well, about my last blog, not The Sleepyhouse. But it's related to why The Sleepyhouse exists, so there.

I ran out of masking tape and went to the office to scrounge for some and while taping my feet, administration (well, it's just Cherie, Tito G and Angie now) were all aflurry with getting press releases and invites to the press. Tito G was non-stop, "Text brigade!!! And get it on the internet, email details, whatever you can! 50% off!!!!" I said, "I put it on my blog already."

As soon as I said that, I was a bit glad that everyone may not have heard me because 1. I didn't want to really get into what a blog was and 2. I wasn't going to show Tito G what I wrote about him not finishing his choreography on my blog. And then Cherie sweetly said, "I've seen your blog, Joelle."

First thought was, oh well, Tito G may find it cute the way I said it. Then, Cherie continued and said, "It was an entry about being happy that everyone were like one big happy family and the company being close-knit."

WTF?

I then realized, she meant my last blog, Joelle So Far on jete.blogspot. It was an entry I wrote during La Bayadere. I meant it at the time, but that was before certain people thought we had stabbed them in the back.

Because of my killing Jete, I vowed never to blog about people who work my nerves and why; most especially people in the community I work in. But can I just say that whatever I blogged that day, I super take it all back. One big happy family my fat ass.

In rehearsal, though, I felt a small compensation to see that what happened because of our disappearance did not turn out to be so bad. Quite the opposite. As a result, certain people got chances to dance things that they normally wouldn't have enjoyed. And I found I could do things beyond all known philosophies. Cryptic, I know, but I don't want to go into detail, lest Cherie googles a word or two in the future and finds this blog.

In a nutshell, may I reiterate: the universe knows what's due us. Peace out.

first thought: ew, those baby angels? ew!!!!

Let's take a break from all this ballet angst and breathe. Here's the most wonderful Quizzila quiz ever!


What Angel on the Hierarchy are you?
brought to you by Quizzila

other people would call me sexy

Jacqui was walking behind me the other day and suddenly said, "Grabe, Joe, ang payat payat mo. But... (scary pause here) you have pwet. And boobs." I look back at her to see her studying me skeptically. When she sees me looking at her, she continues her train of thought and says, "Isn't that great?"

I'm not too worried about my boobs, they'll shrink when I get my period. But I'm not as happy about my supposed kapayatan as my sister is.

I don't feel thin. But I think it's just perspective. I'm PMS-ing and therefore feel the need to stuff my face every five minutes. I feel like I have a huge tummy that I have a hard time sucking in (hence the messed up center). On the upside, I seem to have thinner ankles.

I have always had a complex about my ankles. People give me really cute anklets that I never wear because they make my already thick ankles look thicker. Yes, I've been told that I'm hallucinating, I don't have thick ankles, but yo, these are my legs. I would know. Okay, they're not Nordic peasant girl ankles but they're thick for the size of my legs and if you have short legs like mine, you kinda notice the things that make them them shorter.

In this regard, it may interest you then that my ankles seem to have shrunk somehow. (Well, it interests me!) They're not as thick as they used to be and I do look like I have longer legs. I read somewhere (in my ever endless quest to lose weight) that there are parts of you that get smaller first before other parts do, hence the idea of the trouble spots. I guess, before my trouble spot - my tummy - it's safe to say that fat leaves my body in so far the following sequence: chest, face, arms, back, hips, legs (and by association, ankles).

Now if only my stomach will get with the program.

i'm a flash in the pan

I realized something about myself. I can do the amazing tricks, like jumping really high and turning while jumping really high and all sorts of aerodynamic stuff, but I can't do the basic stuff. Okay, not can't but I have a hard time. It's being in class doing adagio that I can't perfect. For girls, adagio should be the most basic thing - even if you're killing yourself lifting your leg that high and moving it around your body. I realize that it may feel like killing myself to me, but other people may have an easier time with it.

It's not only that I'm not centered. I'm not, but there it is again, another basic thing that I have problems with. I think the bulk of my training is we were made to be soloists - to perform steps that the principal dancers do. I am very impressive when it comes to variations. To the layman, a variation is a solo; we call it that because there's always a standard solo in ballets but it varies from ballet to ballet (at least, I think that's why it's called that). I can do all sorts of nifty variations, perfectly (as I've been restaging entire ballets for the last ten years, I know most of them by heart). But I suck during the adagio combinations in ballet class. There's something wrong there.

Mikah told me this story about this guy asking Pablo Casals what he was practicing. The master cellist replied that he was doing basic exercises over and over, which stunned the guy who asked him but made perfect sense to Mikah and myself. Well, I'm not sure how exactly it made perfect sense to Mikah (hehe, I may have stopped listening to him at this point) but to me, if you can do the basics well, everything else should follow.

I guess it's a given that I know many tricks ("Tricksy hobbitses!!!!" Yes, that's me.), but dancing isn't just about being able to do tricks and making audiences stand up and erupt into applause. That would be nice, but it's something I want to veer away from at the moment. I'm not a principal dancer so there's not really much space for me to be doing any tricks.

Right now, I want to work on the basics. I've been frustrated in ballet class too much last week for me to want to get my shit in gear. I will work on this slowly; I started with the adagio combination in class today. Anatoli doesn't usually let us repeat the combination to give time for other stuff, I decided to take things in my own hands (and legs) and repeated the combination with the second group, just so that I got a chance to. I then notice that when I repeat it, I become more comfortable with the alien-seeming steps and I figure out better ways to do them. A complex version of practice-makes-perfect.

I really want to stop being frustrated with myself; I've been too impatient too long that it's sucking the joy out of dancing. I'm glad I'm more aware that I should work on the more basic stuff (thank you Mikah and Pablo!) and I'm glad my body isn't deteriorating yet for me to worry that even the basic stuff won't help me now.

Also, it's been an ongoing thought of mine recently that the kind of dancing I want to do is more the kind that moves the audience to tears. It's the basics that will get me there. Anyway, all my flashy jumping is just, usually, for me.

hey friends... watch me dance... please...

There's a scene in Tito Gener's Isang Bagong Bituin (which he has yet to finish choreographing) wherein Mama Joel and I get married. We're just a prop in the lead character's monologue/dream sequence - she has to choose between love and a ballet career, and we're standing in the corner as one of the things she wants to do and is torn about. In the piece before that, she dances with a gauzy cloth; the cloth is set aside for the next dance. Mama Joel and I walk in during the chorus ("Kailan maghihintay ang walang hanggan...") and walk off again. We wait at the side of the studio where the cloth is. Mama Joel picks it up and says we should use this as a veil. I told him, "You wear it." He was extremely pleased and I was extremely amused.

I'm just announcing in case there are any takers, Isang Bagong Bituin will premiere next week at the Cultural Center of the Philippines Main Theatre. Shows are slated at 8pm on November 18, 19 & 20 and at 3pm on November 20 and 21. Included in the programme are Classical Symphony, Tzigane and David Campos Cantero's Carmina Burana. You can get tickets at half price if you buy yours from the dancers (like me, for example).

(Actually, I think it was an incentive thing for us to sell tickets; they'll give it to us at half price, we sell them at full and then we get to keep our half. But, like I've said a million times, I'm not dancing for the money. And anyway, it might be easier to get my friends to watch if they knew they were getting bargain tickets. Right, friends?)

a molder of minds. eee, scary.

Kiara and Zeena, "conversing" as palace guests at Princess Aurora's birthday party in The Sleeping Beauty

In Act 2 of The Sleeping Beauty, a hundred years after Aurora falls asleep, the Prince walks through the forest and is surrounded by forest nymphs who show him a vision of the Princess. There's a soft Lilac Fairy's leitmotif when the nymphs swoosh on and off the stage. In this section, I give Kiara a little solo. She's one of my Primary kids, one of the smartest ones (actually, I could challenge that; I'm pretty sure she's the smartest, given that she's only five years old and she's smarter than some of the kids a couple years older than her). All she does is run in, wave her arms a little while doing a little courus in place, and then run back out.

The reason why I believe Kiara is uber-smart is because she knows the dance after learning them and doing them once, she knows it perfectly with the music, the exact steps to the exact counts. Beyond that, if she could run the rehearsal and take my job, she'd be the happiest five year old ever. My favorite moments are when Daddy is rehearsing and he asks one of the lost kids, "What are you supposed to do there?" (to establish that they should independently memorize their steps) and Kiara pipes up, "She's supposed to do this!" and demonstrates. She cracks me up.

And how many five year olds do you know dance and perfectly hum the music along?

So I give her her little solo. She is sooooo adorable. As she runs offstage, Daddy says after her, "Ang galing naman ni Kiara. Parang si Teacher Sol." She kinda looks disappointed and we older people laugh (Sol is especially amused). So Daddy says, "Sige. Parang si Teacher Jacqui." Kiara looks at Jacqui, Jacqui waves back at her, Kiara looks at my Dad with still the disappointed look on her face. So Daddy says, "Sige na nga, parang si Teacher Joelle." And she smiles and nods.

Daddy hollers, "Sipsip!"

It kinda makes me think about how impressionable my students are and how many students I have impressed so much over the years. We did The Sleeping Beauty over ten years ago and they were all a different set of kids except for our oldest student Mimi, who just celebrated her debut last week. A friend of mine tells me, "Hey I met this girl who reminds me of you," and she turns out to be a student of mine, more than ten years ago.

The part about her reminding my friend of me has been making me think. From the testimonials my former students have written about me on Friendster, I would say I played a big part in their formative years. It makes me rethink about my entire teaching persona and regret all those times that I've ever lost my temper. These are kids and they looked/still look up to me. Even if it seems strange, I must have made a really big impression on their lives. And I continue to do so, apparently.

No more losing my temper in class, I swear. Next time it rises up, I shall flash an image of Kiara in my brain and calm down.

things to do

I made sure this time and checked that reg in UP has started, will go on till today, after which late reg is officially on until the sixteenth. They keep telling me, "Check the website, check the website..." as if it's common knowledge what the URL is, and when I called to ask if reg had started and what the URL was, my secretary friend from my department didn't know either because she said, "the UP website." I had to google it and came up with www.upd.edu.ph. You can check the class you wish to take on CRS, which stands for Computerized Registration System (this is the URL: http://crs.upd.edu.ph/). This is my class:

13927 Art Stud 299 MIJK
3.0 M 1:00p-4:00p lec CAL 202

It's the Research class. By its course number, you can tell that it's what comes right before the thesis, which is coded Art Stud 300. This sem, I want to take Research and Thesis at the same time. We'll see if whoever advises me this reg will agree.

I bought Lucas' laptop. Well, since he's my brother, he's giving me a really good installment plan. He says he only needs it for presentations to clients and will only borrow it from me in that event. But, he insists, I need it more as I have that new regular racket for Rhea and my thesis to write. I want to also be able to connect to the internet on it so that I can surf and chat during my ballet breaks but Lucas told me that WIFI is a hundred bucks an hour. Man, that's steep.

Anyway, I have a new very gorgeous laptop, I have extra work, I have schoolwork this semester. Additionally, I have ballet and my love to keep me warm. Even if shallow dorks live in my midst, I should be okay.

Oh, and my brother wants to drop by and say Hi!


All you jabronis out there, can you smeeeeell what Quincy is cooking?

selfish, graceless, centerless happy me

I need to fix my center. The center is from where everything moves. I need it to transfer weight from one position to the next, to change positions more fluidly. I am so bad at that. My biggest thing is I need more control - I need everything to move in one seamless motion and still have high legs, perfect execution, grace. I need grace, dammit.

Hats off to Daddy. Because of all the rigid training I had to undergo learning his choreographies, being choreographed by any other choreographer is a piece of cake. Tito G is working on his new piece "Isang Bagong Bituin" and in the couples' group dance, he would set the choreography on me for the other people to learn. I wonder how other dancers survive, without the same kind of training. It's probably easier and more difficult at the same time. More difficult because they learn things the hard way. Easier because they don't have to deal with my father. I should consider myself lucky.

The NAMCYA has included ballet as a competition category this year. From PBT, three dancers have joined and made it through the first elimination. Second elimination is middle of this month, after our show. One of the three is kind of asking me to mentor her. In the current company ballet heirarchy, she is getting better roles than I am. I'm thinking it's too weird that she looks up to me as an authority figure when I can't even get my own dancing into gear.

Okay, okay. I know it's not that weird, because I did leave ballet for a significant time but I was still a ballet teacher all throughout the time I was gone. Many teachers never really made it to the principal level; they retired early from dancing and opted to teach instead, and many teachers are actually better teachers than dancers. Many principal dancers don't really make good teachers. I had a long argument with Marga about this idea; she couldn't understand how you couldn't teach something you can do well or how you can't do something you teach well. In ballet, it's different. You can have an eye for what's correct technique, yet you can't execute it yourself because of the limits of your body.

I know I can probably train this girl for her competition. But I don't want to. I want to focus on myself. I know, that sounds really selfish, but I have a few years left and this girl is only half my age. There are things that I am just now figuring out about dancing and I don't want to impose them on impressionable girls who were doing fine without me. And I can see it happening: I'd be very concerned about her, perhaps more than I would be with myself and I don't want the shift in priorities right now.

When I was her age, I wasn't mentored. It came a year later, when I entered UP. My mentor had long ago turned her back on dancing and ran her own school while teaching in UP. Similarly, I didn't need all that much mentoring, just a lot of reminders about my center and my attack/approach to the dance, a lot of direction for the kind of dancing I wanted to do, for the kind of dancing that I was capable of and didn't know it. I am grateful for that, never mind the training I endured from my father, without this pushing from my college technique teacher, I doubt I'd be the dancer I am now. I don't think I'm ready to be responsible for someone that way, not yet.

I need to work on myself first. I want to be selfish, while I still can.

you don't know what's comin' at ya...

IF YOU WERE A GUY...
1. anong name mo?
Angel. My girlfriend will call me Devil when she wants to get some.

2. style ng hair?
I want Ethan Zonn curls! But if I were a boy and I still had straight hair like mine is, I'd keep it short and out of my face. I probably would have bangs.

3. Local & foreign male celebrity lookalike mo?
I don't want to look like anyone. One of my mom's friends was once looking at one of our souvenir programmes and asked, "Which are your children?" She pointed at us. Friend said, "He's really handsome..." pointing to me. Meaning if I were a boy, I'd be more handsome than either Quincy or Lucas. Panalo. So, I'll look like myself still.

4. height mo?
Not too tall. I'm one of those cute medium sized boys that girls can't resist.

5. talent mo?
Matinik ako sa chicks!!!! I'd probably still write. I'd probably make more pirouettes, hopefully seven.

6. sinong gf mo?
Joelle Jacinto. And I would love her so much.

7. skin complexion mo?
Creamy, with the tendency to get all peachy-reddish due to heat, embarrassment or overexertion. Joelle kinda digs that color in guys, now that she thinks about it.

8. gwapo, cute, fair?
I'd be more gwapo than cute. Like now.

9. career mo?
Timpani player. Assuming that if I were a guy, I have more coordination than I do as a girl. I don't like how this implies that there are some careers that men do that women can't. I know there are, like what woman would want to tweak breasts for a living? I guess if I had enough coordination, I'd also be a timpani player if I were a girl. But lacking the right coordination, I would say I would still be a writer. Also, ballet dancer and I'd feel so inferior to Lucas and Quincy. But I will find solace in the fact na mas gwapo ako sa kanila and I have such a dishy and extremely brilliant girlfriend who never gives me a hard time.

10. age ka magpapakasal?
Joelle doesn't want to get married so I'll humor her and let her string me around for the rest of her life.

11. built ng body mo?
I have wide shoulders. And a nice Angel Corella round ass.

12. formal, informal?
Not too much of either. Just right.

13. hair color?
black

14. style ng bag mo?
Backpacky or mailbag. Doesn't really matter, so long as it's blue.

15. usual get-up mo?
t-shirt and jeans, collared shirts and jeans (but bought in People Are People or G2000 because their men's collared shirts are REALLY nice), I'm pretty sure I'll have really nice colored shirts. And really nice sneakers.

16. sports aside from basketball?
I can't play basketball. I'll be a swimmer or a middle-distance runner. Yeah, I have endurance, baby.

17. nick mo?
Loverboy.

18. almost perfect sa physical mo?
Care to find out? *wink*

19. first step sa first day ng pagiging guy mo?
I'd stare at myself in the mirror for a while. Take pictures of my face and beautiful chest. Take my shirt off and walk around in front of people. I'm not saying I want to do that as a girl, but I was thinking being able to do that because I was a guy would probably be neat.

20. last step sa last day ng pagiging guy mo?
I'll be harassing Kitch to sleep with me till the end, which she'll pretend to go for because that's her nature, but I bet the weirdness of it - additionally, that I will turn back into a girl, her very homophobic friend, the next day - will creep her out. I'm not sure if I will sleep with Kitch if she does agree to sleep with me. I'm not really sure how I would feel about my homophobia if I were a guy and my homophobia would be nil because Kitch would be of the opposite sex. And then there are the moral issues - how will I still be friends with Pye if I do? Factor in the knowledge that Joelle, whom my heart belongs to, will never speak to me again because I slept with one of her best friends. Ah, so many considerations.

Yes, I'll be spending my last moment as a boy shaking my head.

raining aaaall the tiiiime...

On our way home from our ballet school the other week, Daddy played a CD of really sad jazz tunes sung by some of the best torch singers around - Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Nina Simone, Ella Fitzgerald. I then started to notice that if I were heartbroken (which, by all accounts, I should be, but it's strangely not the case), I would be hating this CD. It was all sad songs, starting with "Cry Me A River" and peppered with "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," "La Vie En Rose," and that song that goes "Though I can't dismiss the memory of his kiss..." and the "Stormy weather... since my man and I are not together..." song. Even the version here of "Come Rain or Come Shine" is totally depressing. And then, strangely again, there was Etta James singing "At Last" right smack in the middle of it. A sliver of bright light in the midst of gloom.

I was sitting in the backseat and just listening, being grateful that I wasn't heartbroken and thinking how strange it would be to mix such a CD; the theme would be too sad to listen to. I mean, I would make a happy CD for when I feel happy, I would make myself a feel-good healing CD for when I feel sad (yeah, Razorback!!!). But I wouldn't make myself a CD of all the saddest songs in the world, what am I, suicidal?

Stranger then when I realized that Daddy got this CD from Twinkle, my brother's new ex-girlfriend. They had just broken up a couple of months ago; there was much ado about how this relationship ended and I don't plan to get into it here. Suffice to say that during the break up, he managed to give us a lot of stress and now he's happy with someone new. Should it have been that easy? we wonder.

Anyway, I wondered if Daddy was aware he was playing sad songs from the CD Twinkle gave him, and if he's doing this on purpose: playing sad songs for Twinkle. He didn't even like Twinkle that much, but I wouldn't put it past him to do anything to irk his own children - perhaps, someone should mourn Twinkle a bit.

The other day, again on our way home from ballet, he played a different CD, another one that Twinkle burned for him. It kept skipping, as some burnt CDs do. After a while, Daddy ejected it from the player and said, "Ever since Quincy broke up with Twinkle, her CDs don't work anymore."

My dad has a rule about not wanting to meet our chicks unless we're absolutely sure this is the one. He hates the idea of getting used to somebody only to have this person ejected out of his life because they were ejected out of ours. Or at least, that's his explanation to the boys. He had met Twinkle and had gotten used to her, now he wonders why he was so polite when he went to visit. And he had met Erica and is always making jibes about her and Lucas getting back together.

As far as I know, my dad has never wanted to meet my (ex-)boyfriends. There was never any idea of the possibility that he may get used to them one day. I'm not even his baby. I can't wait till Jacqui falls in love.