noel alanguilan

i was wondering how fireworks would look like in black and white.

i do not think i have much time to spare. i try to spend my days being with people dear to me and on things i enjoy doing. i cannot give any more time because i do not have any to give.

if by chance our paths will cross again please be kind. i will remember and afford myself the luxury of looking at past memories for a moment but i will be silent.

grandson & grandfather
23rd december 2009
mall of asia, pasay city

its a picture of my son and my father

the start of the year was “traditional” enough—we welcomed it at midnight with festive lights and noise often with a meal and maybe with wine or ale. then maybe before going to sleep we think of what we want to change or do or where we’re heading off to in the coming days. old habits.

2010. its a fresh year and fresh new decade and it comes with its own handful of old and new resolutions as well as tired and fresh targets. it’s cliché but everyone seeks change for better fortunes and easier paths.

i have my own plans, aims and hopes for the coming days and most of them are not really for public consumption. but i can list down the one that i consider “safe”.

loose 1½ stone. you calculate. jog. ride my bike more. ss. endeavor not to take anything too seriously. this is more for my sake than anyone else’s. give more time and effort to creative projects. play soccer. learn each day. take no more crap from anyone. take better photos. run. get up that mountain. grow grass. spend more time out of the metro. go see more sunsets. spend less. not that i have any money. slim down. its not the same as loosing weight. spend less time online. its not as hard as you think. say what’s on my mind. when asked.

life is anything but predictable. let’s see.

kikay 04
dumudungaw
(looking out the window)
bisikleta series

if you have stumbled here for one reason or another, i bid you welcome and wish you a happy holiday season. peace.

kikay 03
hub
bisikleta series

yosi
slang for cigARETTE
san miguel, manila

i used to smoke. i stopped about 19 months ago. sometimes i miss it. sometimes i miss the slow drag, the deep breath after and the ensuing temporary haze of dizziness. its a deceptive vice. deathly simple. but time and money would be well spent on something else.

part of the lost rolls

hintayan
waiting place
sampaloc, manila

part of the lost rolls

this was a window in the first floor of an old house in sampaloc where i was living in during the mid-90s. all i can think of when i saw the scene was that someone may have been waiting here for someone to get home, anxiously taking an occassional peek through the window.

i used to wait a lot for things to happen. i got tired of waiting.

the chamber
fort santiago, intramuros, manila

this was one of the chambers which used to store powder magazine but was later converted to prison cells for hundreds civilians and guerillas arrested during the second world war. their remains were found  after the battle of manila.

this photo is part of a folder of black and white film that i misplaced more than a decade ago. i recently found the film and had them digitized. i think a lot of the shots are worth showing off so i’m starting a series called the lost rolls where i will post most of the photos here. with the exception of my name and resizing the the scans to fit the blog, the photos were not altered in any way.

so, a few hours after posting that i will leave facebook for at least three weeks, and i’m already wondering what pictures this friend posted or what that friend wrote as his/her status. terrible really.

i do get e-mail updates from facebook whenever someone sent me facebook mail directly; if someone made a comment about my status or any of my pictures or if someone added or confirmed me as a friend. but that’s about it.

i got to see one of my facebook friends the day after i started this experiment and she made the one-eyebrow-is-higher-than-the-other look asking, “why?!?” and i said, “nothing. trip lang (a whim). its an experiment of mine.” insert devilish grin here.

its been ten days and so far i found out that i use facebook to keep track of my friends and what they are up to–at least what they want to share to their friends–in one place. facebook makes it easy to keep in touch with friends. this is especially true for the ones that live beyond the bounds of metro manila. i don’t have to go to several other sites just to see how donnie or cherry are.

i don’t even play the games anymore. maybe i just don’t find them interesting enough or if they’re my cup of java or not; or maybe i’m just getting old. one in every while i just want to go out into the real world and take photos.

i also recognize fact that maybe more than half of the people i know are not even in facebook but for those that are it is a good venue for global friends to get together and tell everyone else who’d care to read that we’re fine. or not. never mind what the critics say about privacy. we always have the choice of what to put in there or leave out so if you want to keep it private then leave it out and don’t digitize it. we also have a choice on who can see what we put in.

i also learned, strange as it seems, that i find it more satisfying to give friends a call and hear their voices on the other end of the line or send a quick e-mail directly to the person. personal preferred. one can say that you can always use skype but not all of anyone’s friends is skype savvy as lola techie. it is always, always a happy occasion to get snail mail from this friend of mine. not everything digital is fun. its just more convenient. yeah, old school.

and i did find more time to spend on this blog which is a good thing. i have this tendency to neglect it.

ultimately, facebook is just another way of getting in touch with friends. its just done differently.

so now i’m calling the experiment and i’m happy with the results that i got.