In a nutshell, Mr. Granada, a noted Filipino singer-composer, voiced his sentiments against GMA Kapuso Foundation, regarding a jingle that he composed music for. According to Mr. Granada, GMA rejected his study for the jingle, but allegedly used his revisions for the lyrics (which was provided to him by GMA), and based the final tune on the musical structure of his study, all without attribution or pay. It would be best that you listen to the audio cast and hear it in detail and come up with your own opinions regarding the issue:

What makes this audiocast special, however, is the extent of Mr. Granada’s use of New Media — aka “Web 2.0″ — to detail his complaint, in a totally unprecedented manner, and against Mainstream Media to boot!

In the audiocast, he included a clip of his original study, the final product, and a detailed explanation on the musical structure of both, including the musical theory behind his gripes and a re-rendered tune comprising of his accompaniment and the tune used in the final cut of the jingle. To say that Mr. Granada maximized new media to explain his side is an understatement — he clearly understood that this is the best possible way to make people understand the situation in its fullest extent.

Myself being an amateur musician, I fully support Mr. Granada in this effort, and as an IT professional, commend him for this exceptional and well-considered use of new media and the web to air his side of the issue.

I wish him all the best.

I watched Cloverfield last night and while to say that the conception of such a creature is awesome would be an understatement, the movie really wasn’t about the monster.

Surprisingly, it is a movie about people: the person who held the camera to film a surprise going-away party of his best friend, his best friend and his rocky relationship with his ex-girlfriend who will be left behind, and the other people who were in the party when the monster struck the city.

It tells not of the monster but of the way people react to dire circumstances. It shows that heroism isn’t something that is innate in a person — that sometimes heroism is nothing but a whim, part of the plethora of responses to man’s instinct to survive when life is threatened. It tells of love, of immaturity, of the choices a person makes. It tells, in its own special way, the value of telling the person we love how we really feel.

And this is why the story was told the way it was. Had the movie been made in the style of Godzilla (1998), it would have been cheesy, boring, and just-another-special-effects-flick. To show everything through a hand-held camera allows viewers to immerse themselves in the situation, literally putting moviegoers in the shoes (and eyes) of the character holding the camera, and gives insights into the decisions each character makes. Cloverfield doesn’t simply tell us a story. It puts us into it.

It will frustrate some that nothing much will be known about the monster, and the constant camera shake will frustrate people sensitive to motion sickness, but these are some of the things that make it such a striking, deeply moving film.

Highly recommended.

So some pics for now from last Saturday night’s pictures of Pinoy Big Brother Season 2 big winner Bea Saw’s birthday bash, where I finally stopped envying my sister:

Bea celebrated her birthday at the Elbow Room in Metrowalk.

I accompanied my sister, an avid Bea supporter who got to meet her cousins during the season, and eventually, Bea herself after she won. There were only five of us fans there, the rest were family and friends.

Yes I am a fanboi.

There were a few other housemates as well:

That’s Bodie, Yeng, Bea and Geeann, with companions.

Geeann and Bea

Bodie and Bea. As for the non-housemates,

Bea’s cousins, who organized the party. I first met some of them, along with Bea, at Glorietta a few months back. With an awful lot of kapal ng mukha chutzpah, I introduced myself as my sister’s brother. They figured out who I was in the nick of time, which means a few more seconds of my babbling and they would’ve called security.

Bea, Chim, Apple and Apple’s best friend Che. It’s always a bad idea to have two cameramen stand side by side.

Bea with director Wen De Rama. I wonder if that means she’s doing a movie? Hmmm….

Oh whaddaheck we just partied:

Wasted and puffed up (no thanks to the tasty sisig) me, with Meds, Sheggz, Bea and Angel.

Of course I have to thank my sister Angel for making me her driver and chaperone tagging me along this time.

More pictures from Bea’s party here.

I have, and I’m not proud of it, and that’s a story that I’d talk about some other day. But I can relate with these Japanese guys who have been reprimanded for contributing to Gundam’s wikipedia entry. 260 times. Using the Japanese ministry of agriculture’s computers.

Reminds me of the memo the DENR issued to their employees. The subject? Accessing Friendster during office hours.

Fortunately sometimes both sci-fi and Friendster have their legitimate uses in business. Some businesses actually use Friendster (or more commonly, MySpace, and more recently, Facebook) to market their products. And a guy actually used his obsession for Star Wars costumes to get a job:

I rode to the 6th floor and the doors opened. An Epic Games employee stood there, mouth agape. My trooper voice said, “‘Scuse me sir, ~click-shht~,” and I headed down the nearest hall, looking for any open office door. Another employee appeared and the trooper asked, “Which way to Epic Games.” It wasn’t a question. I was telling him to direct me. Because by now the sweat from my forehead brought on by the humid 95 degree weather was stinging my eyes and I needed to get this done. With a big smile he asks, “Oh cool! Are you here for the meeting?!”

[...]

I told him I was there to deliver a portfolio for Chris Bartlett. You see I wasn’t Chris Bartlett anymore. I was Trooper TK409 on a very important mission. I talked about Mr. Bartlett in the third person. It seemed like a good idea, but sounds kind of geeky now that I write that. He said, “OH, You should talk to our Creative Director! He’s right down here, let me introduce you.” So the CD was just coming down the hall coincidentally and I shook his hand, to which he said, “This is… awesome.” I told him I was there to deliver a portfolio for Chris Bartlett and I thrust the tiny trooper with the web address at him.

He says, “Oh, Chris Bartlett, yes I know his work, he’s a graphic designer and animator, yeah, I like his work.” Then he thought for a second and said…”Are you Chris Bartlett?”

Again, uncomfortable? Yes. But honesty is, after all, the best policy. I paused to consider the ramifications of being revealed as the world’s biggest nerd. And then I confessed, “Yes…….. clik-chht.”

[...]

So, they tell me I moved to the top of the pile from that point on. 25 interviews later (this place is like Fort Knox) I was offered the position, and today was my first day at work. [TK409.com]

Some people equivocate a career or a job with “something serious” where they shouldn’t have fun in, but it takes courage to admit that even your most mundane passions can be taken advantage of in your career development.

So if you’re stuck in that 8-5 job and you absolutely hate it but you’re keeping it because it pays the bills, calm down, take a deep breath, accept it, and just shout it out — I HATE MY JOB! And find a way get the job that you really, really like. You can even do something crazy like what Chris Bartlett did.

The point is, do what you really love doing and you’ll achieve much, much more.

Over the comments at the blog post linked above, I saw her say something about being called “uragon” as an insult when I had the impression that it had a positive connotation. See, the Legaspi chapter of IPMS Philippines – Bert Anido calls itself the Uragon chapter, and that made me think that “uragon” was actually positive thru-and-thru.

Reynz explained that, if a person close to her called her “uragon”, it may sound positive and treated like a term of endearment, but if it was someone else, “uragon” would actually be an insult.

It took me a while to get it, but I realized that, among gay Filipinos, if one is called “bakla” by a person close to him, it is likewise treated as a term of endearment. However, it would be insulting if that same gay person is called “bakla” by someone he doesn’t know.

Later in the day, Wake T-Rex posted an entry positing that Desperate Housewives was taken out of context and illustrates through this videoclip:

Likewise, Tess, a practicing physician, and Benj, a med student, both stated that they didn’t find the statement offensive. Tess even laments that a person is annoyed that she wasn’t offended.

There are valid points on both sides of the argument, but at the end of the day, I might ask, were we genuinely offended because the statement was invalid? Or were we riled because the person stating it is a foreigner — an American at that? Forget the fact that it’s actually a comedy show — because the joke is on us? Forget the fact that we’re just as guilty of having racial stereotypes?

Or are we reeling because it rubs salt on the wound opened by the nursing board exam fiasco of 2006?

Apl.d.Ap, in the lyrics of “The APL Song”, a song that was released internationally, laments that life in the Philippines is a mess. Why aren’t we offended despite the fact that he’s American? Or is it okay because he was born here and he’s half-Filipino anyway? If a Filipino character in Desperate Housewives said the offensive statement, would we have been offended?

I agree with those who find the calls for a boycott of Desperate Housewives unnecessary, and I seriously think that this might be a case of oversensitivity. Oversensitivity that can actually be a telling sign of a deep insecurity — a deep insecurity fueled by the painful truth that there are diploma-mill med schools in the country, and many of these schools churn out graduates who has the United States in mind.

Honestly, tell me, are you offended that I am not offended?

Ahay! Charing… nabuking ako. Erase-erase… eto pala:

You gotta admire Bea for the way she handled Maricris’ psychosis early in PBB Season 2 and Wendy’s tantrums towards the end. She really deserves to be a big winner.

As for my sister, she has to be thankful that she’s a girl. If she were a brother I would’ve killed “him” for not tagging me along. LOL.

UPDATE: Guess what: since I’ve written this piece I’ve met Bea, and she’s even kind enough to have commented here.

Thanks Bea! Next time papa-picture din ako kasama ka para may proof. Hehe

• 7 hour flight delay
• A quartet of crying babies
• A staff that gives all kinds of excuses and lies
• No food
• No option to go back to the terminal and pick another flight

 
This is probably a valid reason to shout “I have a bomb!” just to be able to get out of the plane. Sure you’d get arrested, but at least there’s food in the jail, right? The plane feels like a prison when in this situation anyway.

I wonder if, in a similar situation, I could file habeas corpus charges against the erring airline?

On a similar note, a disabled, single mother from Beaverton, Oregan was incessantly harassed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over allegations that she illegally downloaded music from the internet. Their harassments never stopped even after an expert who examined her computer proclaimed that she didn’t have any illegal copies of music on her computer. The persecution even involved threatening to interrogate her 10-year-old daughter.

How did the harrassment stop? When the court ordered the RIAA to prove that she illegally downloaded music.

Andersen finally filed a motion forcing the recording industry to provide proof that she illegally downloaded music. Hours before the deadline to respond, the recording industry dropped its case. [OregonLive]

So the RIAA can harass people with intellectual property lawsuits without any proof? Sounds like the RIAA’s on a witchhunt, burning innocent customers at the stake.

Despite it still suffering from some of Filipino telenovela’s perennial flaws and traditional subplots, e.g., dragging extender episodes, a rich-vs-poor love story, overly-”evil” antagonists, amnesia, convenient deaths, and even a sudden and almost immediate recovery from two decades of nervous breakdown (thank God there’s no facelift subplot, at least not yet), it is redeemed by one story-telling skill that’s completely absent in other telenovelas: character development.

Not only is this the only Filipino telenovela I have ever seen that explores, in great depth, why its characters are the way they are, but its characters constantly change places in the traditional antagonist/protagonist roles of tragedies:

The main character, Eli (John Lloyd Cruz), once upon a time gentle and righteous, is now a vengeful, spiteful man.

Eli’s wife Jackie (Bea Alonzo) knows that he’s a different person from the one she fell in love with, but hopes that one day he’ll have a change of heart, just like what happened to his father Fidel (Christopher De Leon).

Fidel, then a rich and powerful banking magnate who used his power to control the women in his life (he once harbored a deep hatred for his manipulative mother), has been humbled, but fails to receive forgiveness from his son-in-law.

Celine (Anne Curtis), best friend and cousin of Jackie, who at the start of the series was portrayed as a liberated bitch-type, is now a hurting foster mother, her husband Brian (Ryan Eigenmann) having recently died.

JB (Sam Milby), then a Vice President in his mother’s now-bankrupt shipping company, had accepted a lowly supervisory job at a smaller company, and is attempting to make amends for his treatment of Celine in the past.

These are just a few of the character transformations in the series, and despite its other flaws, I still think “Maging Sino Ka Man” is a huge leap beyond the traditional Cinderella-evil-stepmother/evil-stepsister-type antagonists that still plague the other telenovelas around.

For an unofficial rundown of its cast of characters and synopsis, click here.

When the part came where Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) was going to be replaced by Michelle Morris (Sharon Leal), Melynn noted that Sharon looked Filipina.

Well, IMDB confirms that Sharon Leal indeed is of Filipino and African-American descent.

Gail Dela Cruz:

• 2nd Place Best Overall Design for the theme Kurtina 1.0.
• Best Use of Colors for the theme Dapit Hapon 1.0.

Derek Punsalan:

• Most Creative Design for the theme Foliage Mod 1.02.

Check out the complete list of winners here.