The wrath of Ketsana

Typhoons and monsoon rains are a normal occurrence in the Philippines around this time of year. I'm no stranger to this. It was something we've learned to live with, seeing trees get uprooted, roof covers blown away and entire cities knee-high underwater. I remember wading through a sea of water to get to the college campus at Intramuros and only the VW Beetles float and survived those floods. But that was nothing compared to the disaster typhoon Ketsana (locally named Ondoy) caused this Saturday.

Winds up to 65 mph and heavy downpour believed to have left twice as much rainfall as fell on Louisiana during hurricane Katrina, hit the area. Ketsana drenched major parts of the metropolitan Manila and wrought havoc that so many lives were lost and homes swept away in the deluge.

Rivers swell forcing dams to release water and consequently causing flash flooding in the low lying areas. As expected, the government authorities were blamed for the delay in the rescue efforts and the lack of preparedness. Among the many people marooned by the flash floods were my family members - the daughters of my brother Rene and the entire family of my sister Clarita, both own homes in the city of Marikina which literally drowned.

As the water quickly rose to the ceiling of their houses, my nieces and my sister had to climb up to the roofs to escape drowning. And then they clustered with 20 other people at their neighbor's roof deck for over 12 hours under the rain waiting to be rescued or for the water to recede. In the early morning they were able to move to safer grounds where they sought temporary residence until they will be able to return to their respective homes. That will not be for some time since none of their belongings can be salvaged and will most likely need to rebuild their houses. We are just so grateful that they are alive but what a traumatic experience that must be.

Entire families were displaced while some did not even make it. Questions are now asked, was it an act of God or failure of mankind? Global warming, clogged drainage systems, lack of disaster planning are named as only some of the causes of the devastation.

Signs that the climate has changed drastically are felt worldwide. We have experienced the coolest summer and the warmest winter ever in the US. Drought, wildfires and natural disasters have left catastrophic effects in many parts of the world and while enough has been said and written about environmental protection, forest preservation and the likes, what are we doing about it? Isn't it about time we do our part in order to save this planet?

Let's think about this and seriously. Before it's too late.

It ain't easy going green

Leave it to me to embark on a project with very little planning. My unstoppable urge to replace my wood floors with bamboo got me working like a hamster on a wheel for a few days. Prepping a.k.a. moving everything out of the way, was no easy feat for an old lady like me, but being on a poor man's budget, I convinced myself that I could manage. For three days, I was carting and hauling stuff into the garage. My bedroom looked like a dumpster filled with books and chairs. Except with the piano, I had little help lifting and gliding furniture from the living room, no surprise I ended up with a few scratches and black and blues.

It wasn't totally just my desire to do something good for the planet which drove me to this madness. For such a long time, I've thought of replacing my old worn out wood flooring (my mother will disagree with that), so I said why not go green while I'm at it.

After hearing so much about how bamboo floors look great, I requested a few samples from my contractor. Choosing between the vertical and horizontal cut, and picking the color of the unstained plank wasn't so easy. Remember I have to live with this hopefully for another couple of decades. My choice was the pale yellow vertical cut showing the nodes in their natural pattern.

It's a beautiful thing. It took three workers two days to install the floors - nailed-down, no glue and another couple of days to clean up. I feel like I have twice as much space as I had before, the place now looks like a piano studio, or a loft or a bowling alley. But I'm loving it! I like a lot of room.

Apart from being eco-friendly, it is easy to maintain. Aaahh.. walking barefoot indoors never felt so clean and good. Unless you are allergic to grass, since bamboo is actually hollow grass and not wood at all, bamboo is the way to go. It is considered one of the most renewable sources of timber as it grows very rapidly. After cutting the plant, it is able to regenerate and grow as fast as several feet a day which is the down side when growing the ornamental species in your backyard. Watch out, unless carefully contained, bamboo can be intrusive and will take over the entire yard in no time.

Just like Kermit who embraced his greenness, my story had a happy ending. I love Bein' Green.
"It's beautiful and it's what I want to be".

The last hurrah

To ease the pain of saying goodbye to the last warmer days of summer, this Labor Day weekend the grills were fired and the sails went up at the Meadow Lake once again. The nearby Billie Jean King National Tennis Center hosting the US Open is packed at this time, with Clijsters and Federer among the favorites. One can almost hear the crowd at the Arthur Ashe Stadium but with the prohibitive cost of tickets I'd rather be at the boathouse and watch a show for free.

Sailing is like a love affair for my dear friends who are crazed about the sport. Given their competetive nature, this may be their last chance to show off their nautical skills and beat the heck out of Herman or Sandy, the yeller. I watched from the deck sitting on a moist Adirondack chair and what a show it was. The course was outlined, the horn sounded and the red flag went up. But hey, where is everyone going? Where are they steering towards? No amount of waving could get them started at the right course, Herman was screaming on top of his lungs and ended up on a chase boat directing the sailors to the red or blue buoy. The scene came close to a bunch of babies on walkers rolling in all sorts of directions. Are they color blind or was it the wind or lack thereof to blame? It was hilarious but it didn't matter, the race was just for fun or so I thought. Who cares, everyone had a good time.

I ended up helping out fix lunch and watching Sandy pack boxes and boxes of TASCA belongings to get ready for the move. The boathouse which TASCA shares with the Hong Kong Dragon Racers was originally built for the 1939 World's Fair. It houses TASCA's small fleet of 14-foot sailboats. The brick building, one of two surviving structures of the 1939 fair, is set for major renovations, a much needed makeover since it is old and in disrepair. The building may reopen after two years.

So for now, goodbye to the wood-burning stove, the rickety dock, the murky lake , the squirrels and the cats. Goodbye to the "valley of the ashes".

Gag order

The whole discipline of philosophy/logic is alien to me. Give it to me straight. Is it right or left, black or white? Two plus two is not equal to five and my logic doesn't aim to prove that I'm the Pope either. I can be analytic but I can never engage in Socratic discussions. Maybe I'm lacking the brains for deductive reasoning or maybe I'm too old for anything that requires serious thinking. Proving theorems in plane trigonometry was about my caliber but that was a thing of the past. Heck if I remember anything about the subject now.

Where are we going with this?

On the evening of Inang's birthday August 5th, I watched a performance by the Buenos Aires Dance Troupe at the LPAC Little Theatre. It's a two-part contemporary program which was choreographed by Colombian-born Luis Garay. He combined, "gesture, text and live music" to explore concepts and transform them into dance.

Parto was accompanied by bouncy Latin-inspired music and danced by two young fellows hurling themselves into lifts, sometimes throwing themselves on the floor, talking out loud or leaping while a video plays in the background. Words unrelated were projected onto the stage walls. Text that did not make sense to me and images that carry no messages made the whole performance hard to understand. It was different but in no way am I suggesting that these were the easiest dance moves I've ever seen.

As difficult to grasp as philosophical concepts, is the second part of the program. Gag is an exploration of the definition of the word "gag" by the Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein. That being "something that can not be expressed or said". Whatever that means.

The brief research I did on Wittgenstein and his teachings left me more unsure, confused and feeling inadequate to handle this business called logic. A flat-chested young woman wearing nothing but short shorts and looking almost like a man, danced to the beat of live music. It was weird. There was no erotic element - just what appears to be unrehearsed moves - marching, walking and pacing all over the stage. I was so totally lost.

I'm sure Garay must belong to some group of elite choreographers and this was no easy task to produce but he did nothing for me. It was beyond my intellectual capacity for dance interpretation. The music was fabulous though.

Was that a gag? Did I gag? Was I gagged?

Let's just say at the end of the program, most people in the audience walked out of the Little Theatre speechless. That was it? Art form, you either appreciate it or not.

I say tomato

I don't know about places outside of New York City, but here the dermatologist's clinic seem to have become a one stop shopping center for skin rejuvenation, aesthetic skin care and a place for consultation for the usual dermatologic problems. Whatever happened to the 'traditional" physician dermatologist? In their posh waiting room in Manhattan, I found myself surrounded by women with tight-skin-can't-smile faces who obviously have had some cosmetic surgery of some sorts. The name reads Skin and Laser Center. Huh?

I didn't go there to have them shave a few years off my face or neck! My concerns are more real than that - white sunspots on my face. Well, thank goodness I got the advice and treatment from my dermatologist that I was hoping for and not a sales pitch about liposuction or some other procedures addressing the tell-tale signs of aging. They promise to even "customize" the procedure for the client. Noooo thanks.

Anyway, walking back home towards the subway station, I passed by the atrium of the former IBM building and what do I see inside? Some sculpture by local artists, ceiling high bamboo plants and a bar. It's the Obika Mozzarella bar. The name threw me off - Japanese mozzarella? Doesn't sound right. I found out that it is the spin-off of the popular mozzarella restaurant chain in Rome. The menu looked pretty impressive - organic salads, pastas and desserts but I didn't try. Birds (robins) were flying all over the atrium and I'm not too keen on having them around me and fighting over my precious mozz. I'm now assuming Obika's mozzarella is not the same as your regular deli stuff and must be pricey.

It seems like European chain eateries have taken the city by storm. There's the Belgian transplant Rouge Tomate on the East Side - I dare not look at the menu and their prices. They claim to promote healthy eating but I can do that by supporting my local producers through the Greenmarket. Or better yet grow my own - tomatoes.

I'm a traditionalist. I say tomato. And maybe I should also specify that I need a skin specialist and not a cosmetic surgeon.

Who put the bomp?

Back in the days when doo-wop was a national phenomenon, and you were probably still in diapers then, songwriters didn't need an Oxford dictionary to write lyrics for hit songs. There was an epidemic of repetitive word syndrome during that era but never a shortage of talented artists to translate the simple compositions into good sounding music.

What these older groups were noted for were their showmanship, the variations of made-up words for their back-ups, the ranges in their voices, the perfect vocal harmonizing, the baritone and the bass with the falsetto. It was amazing how they made beautiful music out of meaningless syllables such as sha na na, oop shoop, shang-a lang, aah-ooh-ooh, shoo bop, da dip dip.

There is the group called Larry Chance and the Earls whose big hit song Remember Then goes like:

Re-mem-mem, re-mem-mem-mem-ber, oop-shoop

followed by a series of whoa-ooh.

Then The Skyliners' song Since I Don't Have You which ends in the word You repeated twelve times. What about Barry Mann's Who Put the Bomp which runs like:

Who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?

Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong?

Who put the bop in the bop shoo bop shoo bop?

Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?

That sure opened up the world for The Beatles to use the same style of repetitiveness as in Love Me Do. And the rest of the music world followed suit.

So what's the picture of a mansion doing in this doo-wop entry you might ask? It certainly is not a venue fit for the Woodstock Revival but rather a backdrop for the Picnic at the Pops in Old Westbury Gardens. This is the Westbury House, former home of the Phipps family and now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Its 200-acre landscaped grounds makes it one of the finest English gardens in the US and the perfect setting for an evening under the stars with music by none other than Larry Chance and the Earls. Well, maybe minus the stars, but some other night there could be.

The lawn in front of the mansion was lined with blankets, lawn chairs, picnic tables, baskets of wine and cheese and boxed dinners, some elaborate and complete with candles, white linens and fine cutlery. Below the stage was a makeshift dance floor where every summer we watched this lovely couple in their late 70's lead the crowd of teens and seniors to the beat of the music. Good with the lindy, swing, fox trot and what have you, it was fun to watch them.

Until last night, this couple was unbeatable. The new kids on the block were a younger couple in their 50's that wowed the crowd. She was so elegant and graceful, and she wore the proper dancing outfit too - black leotards topped with a fire-engine red flare mini-skirt which exposed her shapely legs as she twirled and twisted. The couple was a hit.

I'm surprised that I recognized most of the songs sung by the Earls. Of course, Remember Then.

Shimmy, bump or rhumba? My father was generous enough to hire a dance instructor to teach me when I was in college, but nothing came of it. Singing? I get paid to not sing!

I wonder if that lady in the red skirt could break -dance.

Happy birthday Inang

Isn't she lovely?

Happy birthday Inang. She's 102.

This time it was a quiet celebration with the grandchildren. Chinese take out and mango cake and lots of bonding with the family.

Simple and the best celebration ever, as Ped said, just like Lola herself.

We love you Inang.