Destination Unknown

Ever since Meteor Garden,
Chinese, Korean, and now Japanese sitcoms are seeing widespread popularity
among the Filipino masses. In fact, you can pretty much ask anyone on the fly
if they have seen at least one entire Chinese/Korean sitcom (Or Chinovela, the
newly coined moniker for Chinese sitcoms). Chances are, they’d smile and nod.

Currently, Le Robe, a Taiwan
sitcom, airs during weekdays 6:00-6:30 PM. Since most of the time I’m inside
buses with television during these half-hours, I pretty much catch up with most
of the latest episode of Le Robe…

…much to my chagrin!

You see, I don’t have
problems with Taiwan sitcoms seeing widespread popularity. It actually gives
the country where I am citizen some publicity, regardless of whether it’s good
or bad. What comes with that are endless conversations initiated by the
inquisitives regarding what our country’s people are like and whether the
culture the Chinovela is promoting is accurate or not. Honestly, I’m not the
right person to ask, because I’m as unconventional as they come, but this I can
tell you: I’d be severely disappointed if everyone in Taiwan is less than twice
as smart as Francine, one Le Robe’s protagonists.

Please take my opinion of
this sitcom with a grain of salt, because I don’t care what the hell the
company scandals prevalent in the plot is all about. I don’t follow what the
manipulative antagonist’s ulterior motives really are. I don’t know how
important those shady characters involvement to the plot are. If anything, I only
know that Le Robe’s protagonists are a lot of embarrassment to watch!

Let’s start with Katrina.
This girl is actually one of the most watch-able, not merely because she’s
beautiful (though that helps), but because she’s the least idiotic of all the casts.
The opening credits introduce Katrina as one fashion model but honestly, I
don’t understand why then she goes through all the trouble of getting involved
with people from Chinese mafia (ugh! This name reminds me of the band of people
from my most hated college classmate). Not that I actually care. Heh! In fact,
Katrina is as lacking in personality as they come that I’m quite positive the
hurricane of the same name actually had more spunk and a more compelling
character. It doesn’t help too that Katrina is naïve, which adds dumb points to
the ensemble of dumb characters joining Le Robe. Her acting is terrible too,
but so is everyone’s.

Next, we have Harold. He’s
the “bad boy” among the protagonists, though the only reason why I’m convinced
of that is due to the leather jacket getup. Lame, because I get the sneaking
suspicion that that only serves as an obnoxious attempt at adding to his “cool”
factor. He’s not. He’s kewl. Cool? Pishtosh! In fact, Harold is one among the
long line of bad-boys-with-good-heart archetypes used nth times in sitcoms,
mangas and even movies since, well, probably the inception Chinese movies. Not
only that, but he has the tendency to act like a jerk when his
love/crush/girl-of-mutual-understanding/buddy/date-mate/who-knows-what-else is
around. Characters such as these have the following modus operandi: Act like a
jerk until a girl falls in love with you. Idiot girls, that is. Possibly
daughters of George W. Bush. Sorry, couldn’t resist. The cold hard fact is,
strip away the good looks of people like Harold, and they’d be an outcast and a
total loser, not that they aren’t already the latter.

Aaron is the intelligent
rich guy with also a small touch of stupidity since he also fell for an idiot.
(See where this sitcom is leading to?) I watch, or more like, try to not watch
but end up hearing anyway, the Tagalog dub of this show (let’s get back to that
later) Aaron is actually one of the most embarrassing characters to ever grace
Le Robe, though I’d imagine there are a lot more worse characters in other
Chinovelas. Yeah, he’s kindhearted. He’s a “man-of-honor”. He also has no
personality, save spewing out a few pseudo-romantic poetries/monologues, employed by what I call the thought-bubble narration techniques, delivered in lame English, no less, every so
often! What did I do wrong? Why do I fall in love? Why am I forced to endure
this sitcom?

Lastly, there’s Francine.
Take note (okay, forget about that), there are a lot more characters in the show, but the four I
introduced here are the ones whose name appear on the opening credits. They’re
also the characters whose name I actually struggled to remember. The rest of
the cast just flew over my mind. Frankly, Francine is the character that’s
least worth knowing, not the least because you’d be seeing her all the time
being that she’s the gist of the story, but also because Francine is high in
the list of girls I don’t want to have as a girlfriend. Honestly, she’s only a
little more intelligent than Bush, like maybe she sports an IQ of 40? But,
well, we’ve seen great movies about dumb people with good intentions. Francine
does not have one. In fact, I doubt she’s got any intentions at all other than
to stall at the TiVo doing dumber things every minute. She’s not even pretty.
All she does is break Aaron’s heart, therefore giving Aaron more reason to spew
out “poetics”. Francine is the evolution of multiple species: she’s got the
brain of a log, the attitude of a bitch, the fickleness of the weather, the
fastidiousness of a cat, and the maturity of a monkey. Charles Darwin please
take note: not all people are predominantly simian. Some are donkeys.

Sure, there are ways to
enjoy youth. One only truly becomes old in stopping to learn and excluding fun in one’s existence. It
is prolonging the joys of youth to go out skiing. It is kindergarten
retardation to throw dolls with Harold in a trip to the department store. It is
excruciating stupidity to take a baseball bat and trying to hit Harold’s friends
thinking this is some sort of “entertainment”. Francine is dumb, dumb, and
dumb.

I really can’t bear watching
Le Robe. In fact, I find it so liberating when I take the bus not telecasting
this stupid “entertainment”. Loath as I may to admit it, I’d rather endure Love
Radio than Le Robe. At least you only expose your ears to retardation. Le Robe
harms both the eyes and the ears of idiocy. In fact, I actually watch Le Robe
with my ears. The scenes are too ridiculous, preposterous, that I blush in
embarrassment whenever any of these four characters do something stupid, which
is pretty much all the time.

To add fuel to the fire, the cinematography is lame too. I’m amazed at how popular freezing the time while moving
the camera to different perspectives has become since The Matrix. Is there ever
a palpable reason to use slow-motion, multiple angle view and time-freezing, complete with accelerating-car sound effect (VROOM!), in
love stories? No. But Le Robe is too stupid to understand that. Note to directors: Where’s the
creativity?!?!?!

I don’t have anything
against love stories. In fact, I loved 50 First Dates because despite mental
incapacities of certain characters of the movie, they don’t act immature,
embarrassing, and gosh, they actually resonate with my heart, something LOVE
STORIES MUST DO! Le Robe doesn’t. It vaults across the borderline of how much
immaturity I can tolerate. What makes it even sadder is: this is a Taiwan
sitcom. I sure don’t hope this is the kind of culture we’re promoting, but
there’s a disturbing trend that a lot of Chinese girls have started to act like
donkeys (not dissimilar to Francine). If this is any indication of what to
expect from other Chinese sitcoms, COUNT ME OUT, I’d rather spend my time doing
something far more productive, like making paperclip chains, licking envelopes,
or collecting mouse pads.

One last thing worthy to
cavil (though I’m not sure if I’m just pointing out petty flaws): What’s with
the Tagalog dub? I’ve actually caught episode of the actual Chinese dub while
channel surfing one weekend. The character’s name doesn’t even come close to
their English name. What’s this supposed to be: westernizing the Asian casts?
But there’s more: what’s up with making bilingual Chinese sitcoms such as the
posh/rich characters have to speak in English? And what’s up with inserting a
by-the-numbers love ballad sung by a (frustrated) Starstruck teen idol in the
opening credits?

Update: I just confirmed that the actress playing Francine is Jolin Tsai. Now that just appends to the reason why I hate this show. I absolutely dislike Jolin Tsai’s music and thought her acting are horrible. I truly think what Taiwan need is a salvation to the music industry oversaturated with ballads containing no ethnic Asian flavor whatsoever!

I had to find ways to alleviate boredom due to my lack of tasks for the time being. So in doing so, I found a pretty interesting entry from one of my friend’s blog.

So here’s what it’s about, in a nutshell.

While inside a coffee shop, the blogger witnessed a pretty normal guy, probably from India, whose English accent is being laughed at by two girls. The blogger got pretty annoyed since she can’t find anything wrong with this guy and yet the girls didn’t do a good job in restraining their laughter on things (accents) they’re not accustomed to.

Here’s what I think of the issue:

Sure, a lot of us tend to think that to learn English, it is pretty much mandatory that we learn to speak in an American accent, or for better dose of sexiness, in European intonation. I do think the most correct way to learn the language is by learning to pronounce the word the way it’s supposed to. But, Americans don’t necessary follow this rule all the time! In fact, I can pretty much testify that even the people in America have bad grammars and wrong pronunciation of words! Do these "elite Pinoys" even know that their English pronunciation is not exactly perfectly American as well? In what position are we to beg others to speak English the American way when they (and even we) have been accustomed to twisting their tongues in the way their alphabets, and not the American alphabets, require them to? What do you prefer: people who speak in an "eccentric" accent but with right grammar or people with the right accent but the wrong grammar? "I gots me some book in Barnes and Noble and I ain’t got no satisfaction in dissing you! Fo’ shizzle!" :rollseyes:

Sociologically, how does this affect people in the Philippines who, as most usually the case, are dichotomized between people who can’t be bothered to right their English, and people who try so hard to sound American by instilling the faux pas Harvard accent? Discrimination’s the word. The latter group looks down on the former group with a lot of disdain. It’s the elite looking down on the proletariats! This is not to say that the former group was correct in not having enough discipline to speak English rightly. There’s everything wrong when you use the elevator and ask the operator to please press to the "sikandplor!". But the "Harvardian" group have to cut the everyday-not-so-accessible-to-the-Western-people some slack! Meanwhile, those who speak English with a Harvard accent sounds even more annoying by speaking something among the lines of "I’m so full na eh!", unaware that they have twice as many wrong grammars as the everyday Filipinos. Something about the way they plug in some Tagalog words to an otherwise straight English conversation just reeks of elitism. And, boy, you’re asking for trouble if you ever get my Elit-o-tron 3000 Xtreme to start buzzing!

Lastly, remember too, America is NOT the paradise Filipinos are deluded into thinking. Just because you have gone there don’t make you cool! Just because you live in US and speak "Harvardian" doesn’t make you a multi-millionaire! Just because one of your friends is Fil-Am doesn’t make you one as well! Just because a person is an American who speaks English with his country’s accent doesn’t make him exemplary! And just because GMA supports Bush doesn’t mean everything about American government is "Freedom in its utopian state". In fact, there are tons of problems in America that Filipinos are too lazy to start caring about (and giving donations to). How about Hurricane Katrina? How about Bush’s totalitarian regime? How about Dick Cheney? How about the fact that they house tons of nuclear weapons? Or how about racism, conservativism, and capitalism? If you ever think that Hurricane Katrina’s problem has been dealt with, you might want to see my sister and have a friendly chat. She’s just returned from New Orleans.

Besides, how do you account for Americans speaking Tagalog in such a thick accent? Case in point: Steven Seagal’s "I found gold in the Philippines, Tanduay Gold!" (Of course, I’m also puzzled as how one only has to be white to be "hit"!)

I’m not against finding humor in everyday situation. In fact, that’s the philosophy I live by. But sometimes, one has to examine the situation first before taking a chuckle. If you go into fits of laughter in expense of other people, that’s not humor. That’s tactlessness and insensitivity.

For the moment, I’m too tired to think up of something new to write, so I just decided to post a survey for now, and give answers in length instead of merely making it a checklist.

Things I did in Lasalle:
get caught by the DO
if you count eating at the wrong places, then yes. But it didn’t give me a minor offense, just a warning, so all’s clean (probably except the table where I had my lunch).

wear inappropriate attire
nope

watch a UAAP la salle vs ateneo game live in araneta
Sadly, no. By the time i started really getting into UAAP, La Salle and Ateneo game were no longer as exciting as La Salle and FEU’s. You can pretty much guess why :grins:.

eat at AGNO
There’s not much I can eat there, but I love their corns

smoke at AGNO
Nope

hangout at AGNO
only for a short while, though

hangout at a friend’s condo
see above

sing the alma mater
only during UAAP matches

swim at the olympic size swimming pool
yes, and I could hardly make one round without stopping. I need to practice more.

have class in all the buildings(Miguel, LS, SJ, Yuchengco, Velasco, Gokongwei, Mutien Marie,
STRC, Sports Complex)
No. Those people who have classes in Yuchengco don’t even know what Mutien Marie is. Those lucky bastards!

use the football field
I never had a reason to use it.

hang out in ampitheater
not so often

watch something during the u-break in the ampitheater
that’s how I discovered sugarfree.

cross enroll
nope

be a 1st honors dean’s lister
unfortunately no

be a 2nd honors dean’s lister
yes.

get a 0.0
I did lose sleep, and my eyes did look as big as that when added with eyebugs, but thankfully I never failed a subject.

get a 4.0 (except P.E and NSTP)
Yes. Yay!

eat in mcdonalds
I’m not really a fan, but yes.

eat in UM
Only some snacks

eat somewhere outside near the campus (not fastfood)
yellow cab probably doesn’t count. i don’t think so.

borrow/reserve something in the IMS
an engineer would be doing that a lot of times during the tribulations of thesis

get a major or minor offense
no

go out with 5 or more blockmates during freshmen
those were the days.

walk around the campus with 4 or more blockmates after freshmen
yes

cut a class together with blockmates
Hey, I may not be an exemplary student, but I’m definitely not a bad influence to others. No. Haha!

beg for a higher grade during course card distribution
Yes. Because somehow, I was cheated!

adjust
I truly despise the queue.

be active in an organization
yes

be a member of TAPAT or SANTUGON
hmm… what I don’t like about being a member of either is that if you were not active then and you try to be active now, people will think you’re running for campaigns.

be stereotyped by others according to your college (CBE, COE, COS, CLA, CCS, cED)
yes, and I hated it

get an alarm sound when you scan your id
VERY OFTEN! if there’s one thing I absolutely will tell every bad things about, it’s the school’s registrar’s!

talk to your LAMB aside from LPEP
what’s that?

be deceived by the false names of professors in the on-line enrollment
i dunno. probably, but i didn’t care that much

pay surcharge
hah! if it’s about pay, DLSU never falters!

go to the chapel
yes

hear mass
ditto

visit the museum
twice. Someone asked me to go with her, but unfortunately on that day the museum was closed. Oh well…

know a xerox lady
only by face

sleep in the library
YES! NOW THIS IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!

get to know mang jack
I greet him when I pass him by, but I won’t pretend to know anything about him at all.

get to know jenny
i don’t even know who she is

got/given something to someone during the valentines week
given. ha-ha… (cold sweat)

have a class after 6:00 pm
I swear that was so dreaded!

talk about someone passing by while on a bench in SJ walk
what the hell kind of question is this? is there anyone who never did this?

example:
Me: Oh my goodness! That girl is hot!

study in conservatory
i kinda am more productive when inside the library, but conservatory’s also my study area of some sort (and I never fell asleep at conservatory, unlike in the library)

print somewhere near outside the campus
yes

type somewhere near outside the campus
yes

cram
Have you heard of the joke about how many college students it takes to change the lightbulb? The answer goes: 1, but s/he would wait for the last minute to do it.

do a last minute paper
PLEASE SEE ABOVE!

date a lasallian
i dunno if that qualifies as a date, but it was pretty much a one on one outing.

have a crush on your blockmate
that’s my problem. I’m always looking too far away (somewhere in College of Science, i guess. Haha!) No. But Kady was quite a hottie though…

have a crush on your classmate
geez, what’s the difference?

have a crush on your schoolmate
lots of them, none of them from COE, except maybe IE… (I said, maybe)

have a crush on your professor
i had my share (really?) of good looking professors, but none of which I have a crush on.

attend a seminar outside lasalle
it’s more like "Snooze-o-rama". But yes.

talk to a lasallian celebrity
you know the etc host?  Before when she was even appearing on the papers, I already got to know her. But I bet she doesn’t remember my name. Oh well.

Oh, and there’s also this promil child who… nevermind, that’s a long story. I’d rather not talk about it for now.

sleep in a class
yes. haha! Blame Sir Cruz for his perfunctory textbook teaching!

have a lasallian girlfriend/boyfriend
nope

be in a conflict with a professor
it was short lived, but yes. with a loquacious professor who accused me of falling asleep in his class.

witness ptpc inside the campus
what’s that?

use a computer in the computer laboratories
what kind of question will you ask next? used the toilet inside the campus?

be drunk somewhere near outside the campus
nope

forget your ID at home
haha!

get exempted from finals
pretty much when everyone else is also exempted

stay at school till 10:00 or later
i was rooting for my friend Vivian but someone else won Miss Eng! Geez, I had to stay all the way to 10 just to see this?!

actually read a whole article in The Lasallian
Yes! I (almost) read it from cover to cover

actually read a whole article in Plaridel
It’s supposed to be much well written than The Lasallian, but I don’t read Plaridel as often because my Filipino is not so good. But yes, I did read a whole article of Plaridel. Will someone ask if I ever contributed to school papers? :grins:

took time to look at the ‘Proudly Lasallian’ stands in the campus
Those "achievement emblems" realy don’t do much to me. No.

thought that yuchengco restrooms are the best restrooms
oh, you’re not looking deep enough. Have you ever tried the restrooms at 4th floor of St. Joseph’s? Clean, and nearly empty!

shifted / planned to shift
planned but didn’t push through

read a whole book borrowed at the library
Three, actually. It nearly reached four, but I had to return the last one because I no longer had the time.

eat inside the classroom
Yes

get a txt or call with your cellphone not in silent mode during class
Not only! I answered a call during class, and when people here me speak, they asked: "What kind of Chinese is that?" I answered: "Oh, the not-so-everyday accent of Chinese you people from CHina are accustomed to. If British accent is sexy English, then Taiwanese accent is elegant Chinese!" :grins:

spend money for 1X1 ID pictures
grr! it’s one of the things I least like to do!

break something in the laboratory
the test tube.

ask the library for an endorsement
nope

entered the thesis room in the library
you mean the archive section? yes, but only very shortly.

searched a professor in the DLSU website
We needed his picture. Yes

park in the beach
nope

park in Sports Complex
nope

eat siomai (inside or outside near the school)
nope

tasked to photocopy for a bunch of people
probably not. I don’t remember

enter a job fair in campus
yes

buy a raffle ticket, donate something, sign a signature campaign inside the campus
yes

sell raffle tickets, ask for donations, made people sign signature campaigns inside the campus
yes! this is getting boring!

watch something at night in the yuchengco theater
no

make a video for a class project
yes!

make a powerpoint presentation
i’m the guru!

give a very low evaluation to a professor
you know how ruthless I can be of people taking credits they don’t deserve

eat inside the java cafe
yes, and didn’t like it

be pissed with a guard
not with a guard. More like with the entire registrar’s staff!

go to the clinic
yes. everyone has!

nearly reached / reached excess absences
hahaha! yes! And you know what? The professor actually liked me!

pick a popular professor (infamous, cool, generous, cute) for a subject
Infamous only

be the one to make the ‘mass overload sound’ in an elevator
nope

Last weekend (which was until yesterday) I was out of town again. I went to Angeles to paint the town red and soak everyone with my awesomeness. Okay, so that may not entirely be the reason why I’m there, but I’m just trying to cover in a less specific words what I did there particularly.

Anyway, it’s funny because I was just at the same place almost exactly the same time last year, to do almost exactly the same thing. It’s like running through an old script one year after, with slight modifications of characters, themes, plot progression, etc. It’s like the title of Led Zeppelin’s "The Song Remains the Same", one year later.

However, what I wasn’t aware of is that I met again people whom I didn’t think I’ll see another time after the identical three day activity of last year. Suddenly, while I was inside this, "sanctuary", attending different, shall we say, "goings-on", memories of their name surges back to my brain. Throughout the entire year of not going to Angeles, I didn’t ever had any contact with any of the people whom I was around with back when I was in Angeles. Suddenly, I remember what everyone’s called, without even asking all over again what their name is.

There might be some scientific explanation as how our minds assign the appropriate names and remembers them to the people who own them. My guess is that somehow there’s a complex mechanism in our synapses that connects things we have heard before to the things we see. Or maybe there’s some connection to the visual to the mind. But until I have enough time to study neurology (which is something I’m only half-interested in), there’s only one conclusion I can make from my memory:

I guess I’m not yet that old. :grins:

Ever since my college days, I’ve always believed that I’m a nocturnal person, always at the optimum during the not so bright hours of 8-11 PM. This is the reason why I’ve slept late so many times and woke up at around 7AM feeling I can’t do anything for the morning, and ending up sleeping again at 8-10 AM.

Lately, all that have changed. Because I start work at 9:00AM (Mandatory) and go home at around 6:00 PM, I don’t have a choice of sleeping at the morning to rejuvenate lost energy from the lack of sleep at the night. And especially since I don’t have so much energy left when I reach home (believe me, sitting in front of a computer 8 hours a day really amplifies draining of mental energy. I’m not kidding), I end up almost always sleeping too early. It’s not unusual for me to retire at 8:00 PM, which is too early by my standards.

Unfortunately, I don’t like being the kind of person who has no life outside work. I want to learn other things besides the one required by my office. I want to learn how to program in different language, how to speak in different language, how to draw, how to layout creatively, how to expand my diction, how to play the piano, among other possible hobbies ad infinitum. And then, I want to watch movies, or play videogames, or surf the net, so I can unwind. How is having only 1 hour of awake time at home going to get me anywhere in acquiring new skills?

Two days ago, I’ve decided to change my sleep and wake time. Yes, I shut my eyes somewhere around 8-9 PM. It’s a little out there to expect me to wake up at 10 PM feeling replenished (and I’ve tried that, and it didn’t work). Instead, I wake up at around 3-4 AM, with my stamina almost fully recovered. That’s the time I start doing my kind of work, not the one required at my office.

And guess what? It worked like charm! So if the next time you receive a new blog notification from me and have  noticed just how early I post, you can smile and say: That Jou/Kris/Ati/Shun/whatever-name-you-call-me, always the nocturnal, now the diurnal, one.