i once thought of a poem
it was a fuckin great one too,
cause i thought of it in bed.
it was about a girl
and how she said
i love you,
too soon
and how i couldn’t really digest it,
at the time,
mostly because i was hungry.
and how there was nowhere near to run
so i didn’t.

-mlv

oldeyorke.ca

funny. there’s more hype about the pacquiao/cotto fight coming from toronto facebook than from philippines facebook. folks over here seem more excited that the chongkeys are playing at the fort tonight; or for whatever’s going on in cubao; or for his wife’s (sweet jinkee) new and improved belo-fied rocket-body; than for manny’s big fight on sunday (saturday in north america). i guess we’re waiting to see if he wins first. show us the MONEY, MANNY.

of course, we’re all excited for the big movie:

good luck, manny.  i’ll keep my mouth shut until after you win.  then you better show me something good.  oh, and congrats on your wife, brother.  REALLY!

peace,

-mlv

oldeyorke.ca

One cool thing about WORDPRESS is that you can check how many people visit your blog, what they’re looking at, and how the fuck they got there.  I copy and pasted what people typed in search engines to find my blog from the past two days.  It’s not any different than it was any other two days since I started laowlaowpantzing, I just never thought to post it:

Today

Yesterday

oldeyorke.ca

the one that makes my mom's fake smile look like a beam of sunlight, that's my dad.

It’s my Dad’s birthday.

Hmmm.  Write about my dad.  Ok.  Fuck it.  Let’s go!

Luis turns 60 today (October 14th), which officially makes him old.  Not THAT old, but our birthday’s are only four days apart and where people are always telling me I’m a baby with my whole life ahead of me, you’d be insulting my Father’s intelligence if you tried to tell him the same.  After countless conversations in the car, just us, where the silent parts are more profound then the words spoken, I learned we share the same view on life.  That’s that simply existing can often be a pain in the ass and that having to do it mostly in the presence of other people is more a chore than a pleasure.  So you gotta give him props for making it this far.

When we immigrated to Canada I was 6 months old, my Dad left the up and up lifestyle he could have been living in Manila.  He was a journalist.  And that’s the coolest job you can have in The Philippines, because all the great ones were journalists or writers.  In the 70s and 80s there was a hint of danger added to it because the great ones usually got jailed or were already martyrs.  I stopped thinking Pops was cool when I was around 14, so it was great to go back to his hometown and hear people tell of what a smart and good-looking guy my Dad was at my age.  The chicks he got and his cool job.  He was the kid from the small-town that moved out to the big-city.

Then he became the man from the third-world moving to the big-shiny first-world.  I learned a term today used at the University of Toronto, instead of saying third-world they say “Global South”, which is like saying the “World’s Crotch/Ass”.  And Pops might as well have come from the Ass of the world, because for ‘THEM’ <— interpret that however you want- to consider him on the same level, even after all his top notch big-city education and experience, he had to go through parts of high school and all of University all over again.  We’re talking about a guy who speaks perfect english, reads EVERYTHING and had to live with my Lola as his mother-in-law who was pretty much the smartest-meanest woman alive.

So he worked odd jobs during my infant and toddler years.  The story goes is that he used to bring me along to interviews because there wasn’t anyone to watch me back then.  One of the odd jobs was being a busboy at the now defunct Montreal Bistro (legendary jazz bar in Toronto).  A gig he’s particularly proud of and one that mirrors my own journey through Toronto.  He finally ended up working a desk at Air Canada for around 20 years.  Nothing exciting really happened during that time.  I guess that’s where ‘existence’ got him.

I owe a lot to Pops.  I owe my near obsession with Filipinoness to him.  When he taught me that basketball was a Filipino’s favorite sport I made it my own.  He taught me how to shoot on a net he set up in my room.  Gave me loonies to blow on basketball cards.  Drove me and my friends to our games.  And didn’t deny me my dream of being the first Filipino in the NBA, even though he knew I sucked ass at sports and he really wanted me to be nerd like he was.  But back in the nineties, we were the only two people who knew that Micheal Jordan wasn’t the best shooting-guard in the league, it was Joe Dumars.

He still never denies me my hopes and dreams, even when he thinks they’re a bad idea.  Like this trip to the Philippines.  And he’s always bailed me out of the shit when I needed.  Which is probably why I walk through life happy go-lucky and seemingly invincible because I know I can always fall back on my Father when I’m bound to fuck up.

I never asked him why he came to Canada and what it cost him, I imagine it was a great deal.  I have to thank him for doing it because being Canadian grants me the opportunity to be a fuck up all around the world and makes ‘existence’ more of an intellectual pursuit and not a matter of survival.  We don’t talk much, so I can never be sure if he’s ever been proud of me.  I’m sure when he used to take me along on those interviews, put his palm on face, and tell me stories of ‘back home’ he never intended on me becoming this strange less-serious cartoon-version of himself.  To that I say “maybe you shouldn’t have left all those dirty garage sale novels lying around and maybe you should have insisted I study harder instead of telling me to marry a rich girl.”

Just kidding, Pops.  Congratulations, you made it through another one.

peace,

-mlv aka BOOM-BOOM

I’m assuming that if you’re one of the five people that read my blog, you’re probably one of the five that follow my facebook.

If you want some background on some of the shots go here:  BAITBOOK!

I can’t be fucked to write that shit again.

for information on how to DONATE or VOLUNTEER please visit:  http://tfchildrenofthestorm.wordpress.com

peace,

-mlv

the kids.

I dunno what it's like for normal people
but whenever i hit that 'new post' button
I get a tingle in my gut
and it's like "oh, shit here we go again"
especially when I'm going through
one of those parts in my life
where I'm aware that shit's going on
and I'll later refer to those moments
collectively as "one of those parts in my life"
who the fuck actually knows
the right things to say
while they're changing?
and to BLOG about it?  fuck!
when I get back home
EVERYBODY is going to ask me
"how was it? how was your trip?"
and I'm going to wish I was in bed.

-mlv

a short video i made during the big scare last night as a second typhoon past over the city.  something light while i work on the ‘official’ video.  hope people get my sense of humour.  i figure a city-boy balikbayan that doesn’t know how to dredge through the mud is good for a laugh.

representatives from several child right’s organization circled the Olandes, Marakina community taking down family names and distributing stubs.  prioritizing families with small children.  one per family.  then they were given a time and location where they would be able to pick up a relief package.  this system was used in order evenly distribute relief.  the first waves of relief were distributed by trucks that would stop by the side of the road and hand out on a first-come, first-serve basis making it difficult for families and individuals deep in the middle of the community to receive packages.  as you can see in the video it is not a treat walking around the neighborhood.

after 3 efforts, with the help of students from the UNIVERSITY OF THE PHILIPPINES, we were able to distribute packages of clothes, hygienic, and non-perishable food items to 1100 families.  there are approximately 3000 families in the Olandes community alone.  so prioritizing was necessary until we are able to accumulate enough goods and relief to cover the whole community.

Volunteers and community workers also participated in cleaning homes and the Batibot Early Learning Centre.

Of course, relief is exactly what it is, relief.  The ‘effort’ doesn’t stop there.

to help in toronto : kapisanancentre.com

in the philippines:  childrehabcenter.org

salinlahiphilippines.org

Well, it’s my mother’s birthday.  That’s her photo by the way.

So I’m going to get off the urgent appeal’s for a second to say “hey” to Ma and “happy birthday” and stuff.  They’re probably gonna go out to eat at some shitty chinese restaurant (cause Ma knows that the shitty ones are usually the good ones) and spend no more than 30 bucks feeding 5 people.  She always gets a kick out of seeing that bill.

Unfortunately, I’m not in the same country, so can’t be with her on this day.  And I probably won’t be able to even call.  But she knows what’s up.

I love my mother, everybody fuckin knows that.

One time her friend asked her for the recipe of a roasted chicken she once prepared.  My mother doesn’t really cook with recipes, she just makes shit up so it’s different everytime.  “I dunno?  which one?” my mom asks.  “I think it was like Drunken Chicken, cause you put beer or wine in it, remember?  and it was butterflied down the middle” her friend reminds her.  “oh, that one!  That one is called Prostitute Chicken cause it’s legs are open.”

Today I was at Olandes, Marakhina in the Metro Manila area helping out and documenting the Typhoon Aftermath caused by Typhoon Ondoy.  This giant 9 year old kid was complaining to the teacher that brought him along.  He had already fell in the knee-deep mud once, and his flip-flop popped and he probably spends most of his time online gaming.  He understandably didn’t know if he could take anymore.  There’s garbage everywhere, you feel shit swim past your feet, it smells . . . The teacher was telling him that he can’t whine like that because there’s kids that have it much worse.  You can’t play basketball or dick around on the computer while these people are struggling to live.  This teacher is a bit of a spark with a gift for putting things lightly, she ended her lecture saying “if you’re going to be like that, then you better just die.”  The room gasped.  But  the way she said it so casually reminded me so much of how my Mother spoke to me, I burst out laughing.  It made the fat-kid cry.

Had to slip that in.

Happy Birthday, MA!

-foofy

help with the flood:

URGENT APPEAL FOR SUPPORT FOR THE VICTIMS OF TROPICAL STORM #ondoy (ketsana) in The Philippines: http://wp.me/pvQl-fI

email sent out by Salinlahi | Alliance for Children’s Concerns

thanks to those who’ve already donated or lent a hand.

LENDING A HAND FROM THE HEART:
Child Rights Advocates Work Together to Help Typhoon Ondoy Victims in Marikina City

In the most trying of times, a strong commitment to look beyond our own woes and working collectively with others are proven remedies for coping. Banding together for DAY 1 of the relief operations to Typhoon Ondoy victims, child rights advocates of the SALINLAHI Alliance for Children’s Concerns, Children’s Rehabilitation Center, Parents’ Alternative for Early Childhood Care and Development, the Association for the Rights of Children in Southeast Asia and the BATIBOT Learning Center distributed relief goods to 300 families yesterday, September 29. Aside from pooling together available resources from their respective organizations, relief goods were also donated by the Citizen’s Disaster Relief Center, the Gabriela Women’s Party, La Salle COSCA, some corporations and concerned individuals.

Beneficiaries are families of sitio Olandes, Bgy. IVC in Marikina City. Sitio Olandes sits right between the Marikina River and the more affluent Cinco Hermanos Subdivision (see google map as of April 2009). It is home to almost 3,000 families, 90% of whom live below the poverty line.

When Typhoon Ondoy hit Metro Manila, 99% of the households were completely awash with water AND MUD from the overflowing Marikina River up to the roof level of 2nd-storey houses. On that day, September 26, teachers of the BATIBOT Learning Center were conducting a child rights orientation for the parents of the community. When water levels started to rise, the teachers sent out alarm messages which other child rights advocates responded to by going to the community. Unfortunately, they all were trapped when the water level quickly rose. They had to spend the night on the roof until the water level started to go down.

Next order of the following day, September  27, was to evacuate and rescue as many children as possible, which they did to the best of their abilities. Some child rights advocates had 5 kids clinging to them as they waded over the muddy waters. Other child rights advocates who were not residents of the community volunteered to help clean up houses. In the meantime, appeals for relief goods and other forms of support were sent out and a more organized system of relief distribution was planned. September 28, relief goods started to arrive and a system to repack as well as distribute numbered stubs to the first batch of beneficiaries was done. September 29 came and the child rights advocates of said organizations are happy to note that planning a well-organized distribution system paid off. There was no scrambling for the goods and everyone waited patiently in line knowing that they would all receive their share of the relief goods.

One can especially take note that children themselves were part of the relief operations by helping repack and distribute the goods. No amount of lecture on altruism can surpass this real and practical experience in giving and helping others….

And what of today? We move on and target more beneficiaries… 500 families in all. Still tomorrow, more families continue to need our help and we are out of rice… SALINLAHI estimates that for a pack of at least 2 kilos of rice per family and at almost 3,000 families needing immediate relief, we will need at least 120 cavans (50-kg sacks) of rice.

For the moment, families in the community are busy cleaning up their houses and washing their mud-drenched clothes. Least among their current concerns (for today, at least) are the medical needs especially of the children. SALINLAHI, CRC, PAECCD, BATIBOT and ARCSEA are planning to organize a medical mission towards the weekend (October 2 onwards) if services of enough medical professionals are available.

In the meantime, relief efforts continue…

related posts:

http://wp.me/pvQl-fI – urgent appeal by CRC

http://bit.ly/crmYm – help if you’re in TORONTO