On the eve of Zari's birthday...

A few days ago I got a text from Zari: "Happy birthday to me." Thinking it was Zari-ese for, "you forgot it's my birthday!" I immediately replied with a greeting. And then she replied: "Sa Monday pa, excited lang ako." I was in the middle of running the opening ceremonies of that CPAs' convention at the Baguio Convention Center. That morning started out slow - arrived at 8am to get a headstart on the many things we still needed to do before the house opens at noon.

Focus lights.

Sound check.

Finishing touches on the set design.

Polish opening dance number.

Finalize backstage traffic.

One last runthrough of the sequence.

By 8:30AM I've had two cups of instant coffee, on top of the two mugs of our home brew earlier. I needed it, I had to stay up all night to finish editing that 9-minute video for the opening dance number. At 9:00AM MV arrived with his LCD projector, the one we're gonna use for the center screen (there are two other on either side of the stage). Idol's supposed to bring the extra two projectors, and he arrived half an hour later. Still no lights and sound crew in sight.

I start clipping the papier mache foliage in the back, moving the papier mache tree trunks here and there and the dancers started showing up one by one. It's almost 11:00AM, do you know where your crew is? No. Nah, I did, but I wasn't sure. I fire off text messages one after another: none meritted a reply. F. arrived at, though earlier than most, a wrong time, since I was ready to explode. I regret not having the ability to be pleasant that instant, the memory of the last time I wasn't in a holy mood was still fresh.

The sound guy is taking forever setting up six microphones on individual mic stands on stage. And the lights guy is running around like a headless chicken. I don't have a copy of the script, not even the sequence guide. I call for a company call.

The gyst of what I said is: If everybody else is preparing for the same show I'm preparing for, then that show should be ready in an hour, and I'm wondering why everyone seems to be taking their time and at the rateThey go back to their respective areas of responsibility with a bit more sense of urgency they're going, they're not gonna make it in time for my show. this time.



The rest of the staff arrives: I got my script, my sequence guide. I'm happy. These days, it takes so little to make me happy.

The client comes up to me and asks if we could take down the two extra sheets of greenery we hung at the back the night before... I looked and saw that he had a point, and said yes. He goes up on stage and starts taking it down, A. asks me if I knew about what the client's doing, I said yes, I did.

Finally, the set's ready, but focusing the lights took a while. As soon as I'm done focusing a set of lights and move on to the next, a spot light or two would go off for unknown reasons. They said it's the white lady that lives at the Convention Center (the one that was caught by a camera phone the previous night). I didn't know whether to climb up the ladder to check on the bulbs myself or to do a ritual to appease the soul of the lady. But after going back and forth the two light towers, we finally focused all the lights. And the set looked good - it looked so much better than how I saw it in my head when I put it down on paper. For how the set turned out, the staff's blood, sweat and tears weren't in vain. Let it be said, I appreciate it very much.

The next we knew, we had to open the house already. And the rest of the afternoon was like a blur: an opening production number, a prayer, a march, opening remarks, welcome remarks, the symbolic key to the city brought in by a guy on horseback, another dance number, and blackout.

There were mush less people the next day: a certified public accountants' national convention should be a walk in the park, though it took a while to get the walk-in-the-park rhythm going, we got it on the second day.


J. didn't have to be there, but was there anyway to take photos and double as impromptu deputy stage manager. E. and D. assisted backstage. JC showed up and did a great job hosting the evening's program (with two song numbers that brought the house down, to E.V.'s virtuosity on the guitar).

As the thousands started leaving the theater when the house lights went on, I scanned the slowly emptying theater: on that same stage I've performed a monologue in Ilokano, directed the first musical I wrote, staged a Broadway hit, directed a beauty pageant, and planned to do a production later this year: Serapio in-the-round. That would have to be put on hold for a long while. The walk in the park was really exhausting, it would take some time to recover from it. And I will.

Aren't we supposed to go out with a bang? Zari asked me on the eve of her birthday - we were at a friend's son's birthday eating menudo and candied tamarind and chocolate cake.

Nah, I said, a period would do.

Today is Zari's birthday. Happy birthday, Zari! May this day be the beginning of something great for you (as I'm sure it will be).

*photos by Jojo Lamaria

ahhh, the world wide web

I entered Rumours on Session Road one early evening last month and saw the usual familiar faces. Local photographer Jojo Lamaria was there with some friends and among them Natz Navarro whom I've known for quite some time. Went over to her and gave her a hug and they I realized that though it's been a while since I first “met” her, I've only know her in the virtual world of Multiply.com (http://natznavarro.multiply.com), a social networking site on the web. And just this morning, I said hello to a woman named Villia whom I've known for a year or so now at Cafe by the Ruins only to realize that like Natz, I've only known her through the thoughts, ideas and photographs she's posted on her Multiply site (http://villia.multiply.com).

There's this virtual neighborhood on Multiply composed mainly of artists in Baguio, and every single day we are given frozen moments and bits and pieces of life up here as seen through a photographer's lens or painted by a poet's pen (or keyboard). Photographers Rudy Taborra (http://ruditabora.multiply.com) and Boy Yñiguez (http://boyyy.multiply.com) constantly whet our appetites with their series' “Mangan” and “Kain Na”, respectively: hunger inducing photos of local dishes.

Multiply also hosts the sites of Jojo Lamaria (http://jlamaria.multiply.com) and Harley Palanchao (http://smallopening.multiply.com), two local photographers who capture anything and everything that comes infront of their lenses.

Even those of us in the performing arts find little use for the traditional printed posters to promote our latest productions these days: Multiply has offered us a virtually free venue to make our productions known, and with a seemingly wider reach too. I remember a few years BM (Before Multiply), our posters would be up for a couple of weeks already with hardly any feedback from the public. But now a few hours after posting an event online, we get inquiries and the day after a performance, we can expect to see a review somewhere in the world wide web. And since most local theater productions run on a really tight budget (sometimes no budget at all), our posters back then would be limited to photocopied monochrome layouts to cut costs, but now we can go crazy with as many millions of colors as your next-door internet cafe's monitor would allow. Since our productions usually cater to local students, we usually conduct an open forum after each show and now those fora extend for weeks after the last performance on the web, and these interactions often catch the attention of people from all over the world giving more color and interesting perspectives to the conversation.

News travel faster in this online community: when I wrote about a nasty experience at the Baguio Country Club (http://altomonte.multiply.com/journal/item/127), for the next couple of weeks I'd bump into people who read about it online asking me for details of the story. When wrote about my sentiments about the recently concluded flower festival (http://altomonte.multiply.com/journal/item/130), it triggered an online forum with insights coming from the different parts of the world.

Among the recent additions to my virtual neighborhood is local videographer Francis Paco (http://francispaco.multiply.com), whose site features interesting explorations in digital animation, which renewed my interest in that field. I learned a lot from Kidalt de Guia's adventure in Mindanao with his blog entry on his site (http://kidlatgulat.multiply.com/journal/item/3/Ganda_ng_Mindanao). Jack Cariño's site rivals the History channel with intersting tidbits of historical footnotes in phogoraphs and video (http://jackcarino.multiply.com). And I'm quite sure this virtual neighborhood played quite a role in U.S.-based Baguio boy Jessie Mina's decision to invest in a better camera (http://jrgamina.multiply.com) to be able to take better pictures to post on his site.

I recently got an invitation to join another virtual community: Facebook. But after a couple of weeks in it, I was slowly getting bored. All it is are stupid quizzes and hundreds of unwanted applications. I was just about to close my Facebook account when I received a video post from someone in my network (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LU8DDYz68kM). It was a video taken by a group of tourist presumably in Africa of a group of lions waiting to punce on an unsuspecting buffalo. The shot panned from the approaching herd to the waiting lions, and when the herd settled near a creek, the lions sprang up and went for the usual victim: the weakest in the herd, in this case a calf. They pinned the poor calf down while the herd tried to run away from the attacking beasts. A couple of lions rolled and rolled with the calf who was trying so hard to free itself predators' jaws. They rolled too near the river's edge where a crocodile was waiting, which bit into the rear end of the calf - and a tug of war between predators ensued. The lions won the battle, but what happened next they probably never expected to happen at all, not even in their wildest lion dreams. The herd of buffalo came back to rescue the calf. At first the lions would simply roar in their faces and they would step back, but it only took one brave buffalo who perhaps thought that a tiny calf's life was worth risking its own: it charged towards the surprised lions and soon the whole herd was chasing the predators away.

And I thought, the predators amidst us these days better watch out, it only takes one angry, brave buffalo to rally the herd to chase them all away. I decided to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt, for now. And I realized, this story was really what I wanted to write about when I sat down infront of my computer.

Ah well, among the banes of the world wide web, there's just too much information going around that it's easy for one to be distracted.

(A repost of my column, Tales From A Hill Station, in Cordillera Today March 16, 2008 issue)