The Marocharim Experiment

Up the Ironies, c. 2002

Transportation and Claustrophobia

By on February 27th, 2008 in Food and Travel | Leave a Comment

   I feel a bit of Deleuze coming on.  It is at work everywhere (at least here in the Metro), functioning smoothly in North Station, at other stations in fits and starts.  It breathes, it heats, it eats.  It’s shit, and it really, really fucks.  What a mistake to have ever rode the MRT.

As if I had any choice: the most convenient way to go from Quezon City to any other place in the Metro Manila area is the Metro Rail Transit.  I have never – and by that I mean ever – rode a monstrosity like that back home.  Maybe my provincial sentimentalities are still with me: that women and old people always go first, and that you always yield to passengers, that you give room for people to breathe and to move around.  Not so in this Frankenstein monster that is the MRT: whether you like it or not, you just have to keep on shoving it.

One of the first things I did here was to buy a Stored Value Card.  My cousin says that it’s for the benefit of my own sanity and my wallet that I drop the extra hundred bucks to buy myself one.  I’m a very patient man when it comes to queues: I can stand there all day if I wanted to.  Back in college, I stood at the queue to the cashier for around three hours to pay three units worth of knowledge and miscellany that I still found justifiable back then.  I don’t know about Manila folk, though: as much as many of them understand the word “queue” in terms of fried bananas in skewers (banana cue) or a fashionably jologs gay term (“kwe-we,” pardon the localized onomatopoeia), but we live in a culture that has a word for the queue – pila – but don’t really understand the principle of it.

I’m quite appreciative of Japanese transport systems: at least they pay people to shove and push you into the train.  Here, it’s different: paying passengers shove and push you around as if it were the very fist of tardiness would descend upon you, any which way you choose.  And this, believe it or not, was 6:15 AM at Quezon Avenue.  Don’t ask me what’s up at 6:15 PM at Ortigas Station.

Do I mind being in a literal torture chamber of sweaty people?  Do I mind getting a wee bit paranoid that I might be groped by a gay dude?  Do I mind getting a wee bit paranoid that I might get robbed by a pa-simple train-riding pickpocket?  Or do I even mind getting extremely paranoid that gay pickpockets would rob me of my manhood and my personal belongings?

There are a lot more things to get paranoid about.  Like office cubicles, for example… but that’s for another Experiment.

The Eagle 2.0 Has Landed

By on February 23rd, 2008 in Food and Travel | 1 Comment

   Back in Original TMX, I swore on God’s green earth that I will never – ever – return to Metro Manila to do absolutely anything ever – ever – again.  I am so wrong.

   I am dead wrong, and I’m damn proud of it.  These are moments where I can’t fuck up anything anymore no matter how hard I try.  Which is one of the benefits of being wrong: P70.00 taxi fares, big hulking luggage, and your own bank being temporarily disconnected to Megalink.  So no matter how hard or how much I try, I’ll always be damn proud and damn wrong from this point forward.

   Marocharim has landed.  Prepare for heck, Manila.

Razor

By on February 23rd, 2008 in Stuff | 4 Comments

   Karlo Mongaya of Postcard Headlines wrote some thoughts about postmodernism yesterday.  To be honest, I have had my own fair share of “paradigm shifts” over the course of my active intellectual life: like most UP students, I started out reading Marx, but eventually moved my own line of thinking parallel to anthropological theory, where names like Tylor and Morgan come to the fore.  Then I became a bit radical: later on in college, I became riveted to the ideas of Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, and nowadays I’m doing some self-study on the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

   I can’t say I understand every bit of them, but I try.

   I met up with Tano, a philosophy instructor and a friend of mine back in college, yesterday, and she put things rather bluntly: “That’s the problem with you: you are the exact opposite of Ockham’s Razor.”  To which I playfully responded: “Because I don’t shave.”  Did William of Ockham have a beard, a stubble, or was he clean-shaven?

   I’m reminded of the Sokal Affair: basically, a physicist named Alan Sokal wrote a “piece of nonsense” and the paper was eventually published in a journal.  I don’t know: I can claim publicly right now that my own thesis on Friendster played on the Sokal Affair (although I’m not saying that my own thesis is a bunch of bullshit).  I could have entitled my thesis “It’s Complicated,” but I opted against it.  My own “philosophy of social science” can be summed up in one sentence:

   “When confronted with a social problem, fuck it up.”  To which the response would be, “Depends on how you fuck it.”  Basically, a social problem is a whore, and you can penetrate it by the ear or the nostril if need be.

   I’m off to Manila, and I’ll be explaining this through a 20-minute lecture in two weeks.

Fromn Ten To Eternity*

By on February 22nd, 2008 in Stuff | 2 Comments

Ten years ago (1998), I…

  1. Almost got sued in juvenile court for breaking somebody’s arm using a door, an armchair, and a well-placed dropkick.  So I got kicked out from my section.
  2. Found out that people found me “extremely weird” because I was talking to plants.
  3. Realized that I’ve been missing out on the pleasures of eating cheese-flavored popcorn and melon-flavored snow cream.
  4. Played the first computer game I was legitimately addicted to, and that game was StarCraft.
  5. Was introduced by my own parents into politics by asking me what I thought of them voting for Jose de Venecia instead of Erap Estrada… and the Sunday night political roundtable over dinner began.

Five years ago (2003), I… 

  1. Was in my sophomore year and was introduced to left-wing activism through the campus press.
  2. Was the first student in my batch to consciously use a curse word (“fuck”) to emphasize a point in graded recitation.
  3. Found out that the best way to kill seven minutes and spend two bucks is to smoke a cigarette.
  4. Found out that the best way to kill five minutes and spend ten bucks was to buy “manggang international” from Manang Mani (mango, chili-flavored salt, bagoong, vinegar, and topped with a small amount of peanuts).
  5. Started The Marocharim Experiment, and things will never, ever, be the same again.

Three years ago (2005), I…

  1. Had my first legitimate, recognized and highly-publicized relationship that ended up on the kind of sour note that cemented the saga of it on the annals of campus history.
  2. Had my first legitimate, recognized and highly-publicized romantic relationship that ended up on the kind of bitter note that cemented the saga of it on the annals of The Marocharim Experiment.
  3. Realized that fighting for the one you love, and for causes you believe, in takes a lot out of you, and you start questioning things one by one.
  4. Made friendships I never thought existed for me, or would last so long.
  5. Entered phase one of my quarter-life crisis by hitting the big Two-Oh.

A year ago (2007), I…

  1. Embarked on the thesis project that would have my very name etched in stone.
  2. Realized that having a neurochemical imbalance isn’t all that bad, except that people want you to talk about it openly so that they can talk about it behind your back.
  3. Realized that I don’t really have to put up with things I can’t do, or things I don’t like, so maybe I should start making myself happy for once.
  4. Met the biggest group of hemorrhoidal, diarrheal, constipated, fistulated assholes in the world that to call them mere “assholes” is to dignify their statuses as such.
  5. Finally got over my anger issues and began to deal with my inner self.

Yesterday, I…

  1. Got to talk with my dentist, who says that I’m better off allowing my mild tooth-root abcess to go away on its own because no man can stand the pain of extraction sans anaesthesia.
  2. Was watching the news and was sold on the genuineness of Jun Lozada, and that Gloria Arroyo should take the high road and resign.
  3. Started familiarizing myself with the taste of Pepsi and RC Cola, because Manila is not the land of Coke.
  4. Heard of what happened in UP Baguio’s miting de avance and resolved not to write about it because I don’t have actual evidence to start ranting.
  5. Played the 20th loop of “Uninvited” on my phone, so I resolved to buy a bigger memory card with my first salary.

 Today, I…

  1. Explained to my mom that Chucks are perfectly suitable for my work attire.
  2. Opened a bank account, but my mom and the teller were kind of surprised that I don’t know how to count money fast.
  3. Helped a neighbor out by loaning out one of my suits for his high school prom.
  4. Am planning on watching a “Maalaala Mo Kaya” episode.
  5. Developed a celebrity crush on KC Concepcion (I don’t know who I’m crushing on anymore: Anne Curtis, Shaina Magdayao, or KC)

Tomorrow, I will…

  1. Never know.

* – grabbed from Erik

Big Move

By on February 22nd, 2008 in Personal | 2 Comments

   Tomorrow is the beginning of a whole new chapter of my life: I’m leaving Baguio – my home for all my 22 years – and I’m moving to Metro Manila.  I’ve never been so prepared for a big move.  I’ve just opened my own bank account, bought myself a new pair of red-and-black Chucks, and even went so far as to pay my last cedula (community tax) in Baguio for quite a while.

   But still, I can’t help but feel a bit sentimental.  Sure, signing a tax identification number that makes me an official taxpayer for Pasig City doesn’t mean much, but it struck into me a sort of epiphany: everytime I’ll come back to Baguio, I would be no different from a tourist.  I would probably find myself in the pasalubong sections of the City Market buying peanut brittle and strawberry jam for friends and family in Manila, and the Baguio brooms I have grown so accustomed to would all of a sudden become novel.  Somehow, I hate the thought of leaving, but we all can’t have our cakes and eat them too.

   The Big Move will mark the beginning of my personal and financial independence, but I will miss a hell of a lot of things about being dependent.  With great personal and financial power comes great personal and financial responsibility.  Now that I’m “free,” it doesn’t sound as good as I always thought.  My daily allowance is now at the palm of my hand, and the same goes with rent, food, and other expenses.  I can’t ask for my mom to give me another hundred bucks to tide me over for prepaid load and for snackage.

   I made my own bed when I told my parents I’m off to find my fortune, and to fend off for myself.  Now, I have to sleep in it.  Not just for a six-hour bus trip to Cubao, but for the rest of my life.  The Big Move marks the beginning of my freedom, but it also marks the end of my life as a tax dependent.  It marks the end of my life as a kid, and the beginning of my life as a man.

Game On 1

By on February 21st, 2008 in Stuff | 3 Comments

   What’s been keeping me occupied at home is not kicking ass in Civilization IV or learning how to drift in Need for Speed games (you’re damn right I don’t know how to drift), but the Dream Day games: DD Wedding, DD Honeymoon, and DD First Home.  Finding stuff in a pile of clutter is irritating, but it’s kind of exciting once you get the hang of it.

   I’ve also been using arcade emulators lately to practice on old arcade classics like Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, X-Men: Children of the Atom, and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.  Yeah, I just went retro.  Here are my characters:

  • MSH: Psylocke, Captain America, Blackheart
  • XSF: Cammy/Rogue, Magneto/Bison, Cammy/Chun-Li
  • CotA: Psylocke, Colossus, Iceman,  Spiral
  • MSF: Ken/Ryu, Chun-Li/Ken, Spiderman/Captain America

   Tekken is no longer a top-priority for me: I’ve just grown too good at it (whatever).  I just Perfect-ed a Korean playing Sergei Dragunov with my Steve Fox, which still does not have a juggle in it.  I’m not looking forward to playing T6: I don’t have problems playing Bob in the future, but I do have a problem with Miguel (who, strangely enough, looks like Antonio Banderas in “Take the Lead”). 

Evil

By on February 19th, 2008 in Politics | Leave a Comment

I don’t mind if Romulo Neri confirms or denies that he called Gloria Arroyo “evil.”  At this point, annotations on GMA’s morality are irrelevant.  In fact, almost every opinion on GMA being embroiled in the biggest scandal to rock the country is rendered irrelevant: it seems to me that people just don’t care anymore.

Apathy is evil.  If by now you still have nothing to say about the NBN-ZTE fiasco… connect the dots.

Benny Areola, a TV personality here in Baguio City, says, “Evil triumphs if good people do nothing.”  This is exactly what Mr. Neri did: he did absolutely nothing to confirm or deny a hand in the NBN-ZTE deal.  Right now, Mr. Neri’s possible testimony is all that stands between Lozada’s word and justice.

I would, like John Nery in today’s issue of PDI, hazard to guess why Mr. Neri refuses to talk about the NBN deal: it’s because Mr. Neri is a man with nothing to gain, and everything to lose, if he speaks out against the President.  Mr. Neri’s silence over the issue is something I could understand: had he done things like his friend Jun Lozada, he would have faced the very grim possibility of being kicked out of Administration circles, effectively losing his job in the process.

While Sen. Alan Cayetano could get away with his rather showbiz-zy ad-libbing in the NBN-ZTE hearings, Mr. Neri cannot: without a job, without political clout, and his name being dragged along the proverbial septic tank of corruption, saying anything at all about the NBN-ZTE deal will probably spell doom.  John Nery is right: among many Malacañang insiders, Mr. Neri is considered the “weakest link.”  Silence, right now, is golden.

But if Mr. Neri rises up to say something – anything at all – to clarify the NBN-ZTE issue, then he should do so the soonest.  I can’t say I will support whatever he says, but right now, that’s one thing we all need.

Evil triumphs if people – in this case Romulo Neri – do nothing.

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