Rough Groove

New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve and I was working for 12 straight hours from 0600H to 1800H and it was quite hectic and lots of preparations being done for the flood of wireless mobile traffic that will be surging when the year’s coming to a close.

After turning over the activities to the next shift, I hurriedly left the office and went to Colon St., the oldest street in the Philippines, to take photos of people doing last minute shopping at the side streets, usually:

FOOD - for the media noche

FRUITS - for a traditional ritual that is being practiced by many households. Originally, there should be 13 kinds, preferrably round fruits but due to uncertain times and the difficulty of obtaining the 13 varieties, considering that this is December (well, some vendors even sell these, unripe) 7 will do. This is said to ensure abundance for the coming year. On the downside, you’ll have to contend with opportunistic vendors who price their wares quite high

FIRECRACKERS - a Chinese tradition, to ward off evil spirits and bad luck

Care to help?

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami

The SEA-EAT blog for short. News and information about resources, aid, donations and volunteer efforts.

Some minor changes

From the Kubrick FAQ, I made the following updates:

- showing the calendar
- made the whole header image a hyperlink (its now working even in Microsoft Internet Explorer)

As for the problems encountered in IE, got me thinking to include a line in the sidebar that reads:

“Best viewed with Firefox”

Some problems with IE

I’m in a cafe using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and just found out that some features of my blog that can be experienced in the Firefox browser just doesn’t work in the former. Like:

- the hyperlink in the header image doesn’t work
- there is a line at the top of the header image
- the sidebar has another color that just showed the two images two posts from this one is off margin

Argghhhh… So its really true that not all CSS implementations work well with this browser. Got to edit the blog again.

Panaghoy sa Suba - Cesar Montano

“Marika ra! Marika! Dali!” (Come here! Come! Faster!) Nang Lahi (Caridad Sanchez) calls her niece, Iset (Juliana Palermo) voice raised, admonishing, over Iset’s riding the boat of Duroy (Cesar Montano). The elderly aunt knows that the boatman is courting the lass but she’s not really fond of him.

Panaghoy sa Suba (Call of the River) directed by Cesar Montano, a Boholano, is probably the first Cebuano film that has been produced and screened since Cebuano films had its heyday a few decades ago. It tells of the love story between Iset and Duroy during the Japanese occupation in Central Visayas, particularly Bohol and the struggles of the occupied people in overcoming their conquerors. And thus, Cebuano, my dialect, my mother tongue, was spoken fluently in this rather ground breaking film that is part of the Metro Manila Film Festival being screened in SM City here in Cebu. Its the first time that I’ve seen a full lenght film in this dialect, not as just providing comic relief and being delivered by Inday, the typical provincial house maid, that makes her appearance in most Tagalog melodramatic or slapstic comedy movies.

While the film is not perfect: some shots are blurred, sometimes, the scene is tight and the story needs to be enhanced, it does provide hope of reviving the Cebuano film industry. I’ve read that from 1938 - 1969, Cebuano films were being filmed and screened but after that, died a natural death having been overshadowed by those from Manila.

Note: The 1st Cebuano Film Festival will be held next month, 8 - 12 January 05 in time for the Sinulog Festivities.