Ain’t dried up in the sun

“Son I come from five generations of people who’re slaves and share-croppers but there ain’t nobody in my family tha’ never took no pay from nobody that was a way of tellin’ us we wouldn’t fit to walk the earth.

They never been that poor… they never been that dead inside.”

Based on a broadway play of the same title by Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun [2008] tells of a colored family’s life in Chicago. Dealing with racial prejudice and other struggles of the African-American, what makes it stand out from other motion pictures of the same theme is that it goes on to identify itself as a movie that focuses more on the universal human aspiration to acknowledge the individual in all of us—that one, in a search for worth, must first find truth in the innate fact that self-actualization is not solely established in everybody else’s respect but that one must also have a deeper kind of that respect, sometimes even almost pride-like, in one’s self. It focuses more on that, than on the pigmentation of the skin.

Good cast, simple plot, real. And a beautiful message, that’s A Raisin in the Sun.

Watch it here.

Wet cravings

They planned it, and it was to be flawless. The three of them acted as if it’s the greatest boatride they’d ever have with me. And I believed every part of it—until we reached that spot of all crystal, dark-blue cold waters, a mirror dancing with a piercing, swirling, intoxicating peace of the bluest spectra. It was deep. And then they jumped out, the two of them, disturbing the already patternless sways and glides of the mirror’s dance. I struggled to keep balance, but the boat seemed to go against my will. The one left behind me, having a foot in the water, another in the now tyrannical boat, pushed me from the back and so silently dived into the un-peace that was the sea. When I was in it too, all hell broke loose.

But that’s how I learned to swim.

After accepting reassurance by the three of them, my three most adorable cousins, that I’m still part of the physical world, and after realizing that indeed I am living (barely, that time), I summoned everything left of the life in me and planned to kill them (as if the summoning didn’t use most of what’s left). But kids as we were, I ended up eating dinner with them and enjoying our popsicles after. All thoughts of spilt blood and broken necks forgotten.

But right now I so crave to swim. It’s a beautiful feeling to finally know that I’ve always loved swimming. I mean, I’ve always known I liked it (well after doing it the first time), but now I feel that it’s bigger, and I’m most drawn to it’s hugeness now more than ever to make me understand that I love it. It expands me somehow, yes, that’s what it does.

There’s this kind of freedom in swimming. When I swim I usually think of nothing. No, it’s not escapism, it’s resting, detaching the wires but knowing that I’ll soon have to attach them again. And in that moment of detachment, I regain optimal* connection with myself, and to my freedom.

originally uploaded by Djúli, www.flickr.com

But sometimes I still think of punishing my three cousins, not for making me learn how to swim by trying to kill me, but for making me want to stay in there as long as I can.

____________

*Right now I wouldn’t say full connection—it’s too limiting. And unfair to my growth.

ROR

Raffinggu-outta-rawdu (ror). That’s laughing out loud (lol) in Japanese. Okay, so let’s ROR. Watch this:

Helpful vocab:

Ojiisan-old man

Nemui-sleepy

Nomimono-drink

Even if you’ve seen this before, I bet you’re still lol-ing right now, or yeah, “ror-ing”.

Growing up, Ramen, and Dumaguete

…are the things my mind’s busy about lately. I’ve been in Canada House (CH, my dorm) for eight months or so, and given the more than enough time I have (only enrolled in a 6-unit Japanese Language subject for my last school term here in JP), I get to hang out with my dorm mates a lot, dine out with them sometimes, and again, think about things. This is going to be long, I warn you.

The whacky sleepover. A couple of nights ago Sou, my freshman roommate invited his friend Ko (wait, the rhyming’s nice, lol), for a sleepover. Sleepovers are “popular” in our dorm, even if it’s actually prohibited by the university. You see it’s an all-male dormitory, the usual one, but you’re wrong if you think only boys come for sleepovers. Most of the time, the invitees are girls.

But I won’t be talking about a girl’s sleepover here, as Ko is a he. I won’t even be talking about Ko, instead, I’ll talk about the sleepover itself. So yeah, when Ko got in our room with his blanket and sleeping mat, Yuuta and Aki, two other freshman dormers were behind him, and seconds later Shuhei, whom the freshies call せんぱい:senpai (senior), joined the group too. That was when all the fun started. As all memorable things seem to be, the fun we had was unexpected, more so non-premeditated, if there’s such a word. You see, Ko from Global House just wanted to help prepare the breakfast for our dorm’s soccer players the next day so he got in for a sleepover. We actually ended up not in a sleepover but in an all-nighter.

1st pic L-R: Yuuta, Ko, Aki and Shuhei. Sou joins in the 2nd pic.

Talking about the freshman girls they like to that chick whom Yuuta thinks is a player, there was no chance to visit dreamland at all. Shuhei-せんぱい ransacked Sou’s cabinets and threw out his boxers and sleeping shorts to a　  “やばい:disgusting!”-shouting Ko and a giggling Aki. To make things wackier, the せんぱい:senpai asked if somebody got a camera, and I said I have one; getting them their pics was an easy job, but keeping their laughters and voices down after I counted “ichi, ni, san (one, two, three)”, and adding “sex-u” (replacing the traditional Japanese “cheez-u”) is another story. That was when I realized I’ve become quite different from the person who entered CH one late summer afternoon eight months ago. While snapping shots of this hilarious bunch with me, all laughters, giggles and sometimes nasty jokes, I kept on referring to them in my head as, “oh, these young boys, so playful. Kani jung mga bata-a (oh these kids).” To think that we’re even of the same age!

The freshies. 1st pic: Yuuta and Aki. 2nd pic: Sou and Ko (oh, the rhyme!haha).

I’ve been growing up while in CH, but it also did a good job keeping the young one in me.

大山屋. That’s the name of the Ramen shop Xiao and I went to a week ago. Xiao’s a Chinese dormmate from the U.S., and is a self-confessed Ramen addict (to those who don’t have any clue to what Ramen is—what, you honestly don’t know Ramen? Lolz, click here). “Welcome to 大山屋:Ooyama-Ya, the Ramen temple“, Xiao greeted me after we’d parked our bicycles in front of the resto. Not that there’s such a real thing as a Ramen temple, but all those Ramen patrons agree that this shop serves the best-tasting Ramen in town. And so without further ado, let me present to you the yummiest Ramen I’ve tasted yet!

That’s Xiao with the chopsticks, backgrounding my bowl of Ramen—————>

I think what makes 大山屋’s Ramen different from the other shops’ is its noodles. Dunno why,  but the noodles just tasted differently, and even the texture’s special. I had Ramen with egg, Xiao had it with Nori.

It was a good night to eat Ramen. Drizzling the whole day, and so it was cold. Nothing beats eating Ramen in a cold drizzly Japan night. And I thought, “I’m gonna miss this“.

Going back home. Booked my flight; all I need to do is wait for the payment details and the voucher to be sent by my agent. I’m happy I’m done. Or not really. Well, there’s always this I’m-gonna-miss-everything-and-everyone emo mode, but there’s also this kind of anticipation in going back home. Especially if that home is Dumaguete. Of course I’m going to miss Japanese weather (summertime’s heat not included ;p), and Ramen, and the friendships I’ve made in Japan, and all the things too many to include in this already long and boring post—but I guess the feeling’s just normal. But really, I’m looking forward to be home. I’ve missed my flip-flops walk on the boulevard, the reading and chatting with friends under Silliman’s century-old acacias (rain trees), and monggong may baboy (thick mung bean soup with pork), and bulad (dried fish), and ginamos (fish paste), and, and…the list goes on and on.

Rizal Boulevard, Dumaguete City (larkphotography.com).

I’ve always told my friends in the Philippines I’m going to eat this or that when I return, but I haven’t  yet told them I’m going to eat everything with my family first. That’ll make the monggo soup, the bulad, the ginamos and everything else extra-tasty.

Controlled

Saw this and had a really good laugh. No offense intended, purely humor—and some truth? Haha.