Tonight is my last night in Manila in my apartment. Tomorrow I pack up and go back home to San Pablo. I came into this thing many months ago to do a couple of specific things and I expected no more when I left. But the thing is, I am coming home with something more than I had ever expected. It was a great experience living on my own in Manila, working for myself, paying my own way in the big city. That in itself is an enriching experience. But I also come away with some great friendships that will endure for a long time. For the latter most of all, I'm really grateful.

But tonight I guess I can't help but feel just a little depressed. I don't want to leave the friendships I've forged and the place I had grown accustomed to. I've been living in Malate for seven months and the fact that its the #1 hang-out/gimmick place in Manila has totally slipped my mind. Aside from a small get together with some friends a couple months back, I really haven't gone out and just loosen up. I guess I will do just that tonight. I wanna get DRUNK. I wanna go CRAZY! I wanna go PARTY! But I'm all by myself so that can get a little uh...boring I guess. I'll go anyway and see just what happens.

I felt strange all day. It was a nice night last night but I woke up with a headache. I spent part of the morning in bed and part of it out. After lunch I headed over to Megamal to meet with Leinil for some Superman pages. He said that I shouldn't ink the Clark Kent faces yet because they need to be changed or something. Ok then. He's off to Boracay tomorrow. Man, I'd love to go to Boracay. In fact, I should be in DAVAO RIGHT NOW.



And why am I not in Davao right now? Because of old women. Yes, OLD WOMEN. People here in the Philippines put GREAT stock in what really old women say, superstitions that have been handed down through generations. And one such superstition is that I shouldn't go travelling to far off places immediately before I get married. Because well, something COULD HAPPEN. Jeez. What a crock of shit. I was supposed to attend the United Architects of the Philippines (UAP) Conference in Davao roundabout this time. My fiancee said I shouldn't go. My folks said I shouldn't go. Because OLD WOMEN says so. I don't normally stand for such superstition because in my 34 years I have come to learn to QUESTION things before accepting them blindly. But when the president of the UAP told me not to go as well, then what more could I do? I kid you not. OLD WOMEN is a force to be reckoned with. They ought to be characters in a comic book. They can kick serious ass.

Thanks to Hai, I was able to get these screen shots of the PIPOL thing a while back....




There you go, that's my room right there.he.he. Not for long since I'm moving out in a month or so. 2 months to go before the big day and things are starting to get hectic. I need to take care of a lot of things while at the same time trying to get some work done. I'm still trying to figure out how to continue shooting the movie, ink Superman, move house, and prepare for the big day. One thing at a time, I guess.

Stuff I get in the mail. Unbelievable. Look at this:





Amazing, if it's true. I got it from a friend of mine.

PIPOL, ABS-CBN Channel 2, October 22, 11:00pm



If you wanna see what I look like tune in to that program, channel and time listed above. :) They were just here a while ago and they interviewed me about comics. If they make it back to Manila alive that is. That puto we ate tasted horrible. I think it was the butter we put on it or something. I just might have killed Ces Drilon's entire reportorial and camera team in one fell swoop. Already my head hurts and I'm dizzy.

Backtracking, the entire night last night I spent just cleaning my room/studio. It was a terrible mess. And by around midnight my room was reasonably neat and arranged. I was wiped out. I talked with a friend on the phone and I fell quickly asleep. The next morning I waited for the Pipol team to arrive in front of Canossa College, the place I had asked them to meet me so it will be easier for them to find my place. They arrived a little after 9 and we proceeded back to my place.

Up in my room they set up the camera and I took a lot of comic art out to display. Basically, they asked me why I was into comics, and how I got in. They also shot some pics of me with Whilce and Nil and Ed etc. They also shot some comics and comic art I did and newspaper articles I had appeared in. They had wanted to shoot me watching some cartoons. Apparently, they thought that interest in comics and cartoons go hand in hand. Well, I really don't get it. I liked animation when I was younger, but I just don't enjoy it much now. That's strange huh?

PIPOL: Hey, it would be cool to show you watching some cartoons!
ME: I don't watch cartoons.
PIPOL: Oh.

After half an hour....

PIPOL: Come on, HUMOR us, watch some CARTOONS!!!
ME: Uh...OK.

I pop in my Beauty and the Beast DVD. They shoot the DVD as it slides into the machine. After the shoot wrapped, we watched some porn. eh.eh.

Then the puto with the bad butter. I feel dizzy still. They must be zigzagging across the highway now. I hope they don't get hurt too bad.

A good friend of mine got really hurt last night. All because some fucking idiots who are too fucking lazy to do some decent work go and take other people's hard earned money away. I can't describe how I felt last night when I was told. The Eric in me wanted to kill them all fucking lazy bastards and bash their fucking pea brained heads into a phone booth. But me, I just want to go see her today to maybe just be there and tell her everything is going to be all right. I've cleared all the stuff I have to do today just to go and see her. Apologies to Noel Lim because I can't shoot today, apologies to my brother's sister because I won't be able to meet her today, and apologies to Nil because I wasn't able to do what I was supposed to.

It's all well and good to hope for peace and an end to war and violence. I'd be an IDIOT not to want it. But I'll be more of an IDIOT if I let people who want war, who want violence, who don't want peace to trample over me and the ones I care about. I'd be an IDIOT if I let them come into my house massacre my family and I lie there and take it because I don't believe in violence.

Fuck that. If you hurt me and mine I swear to God, you'll get more than what you gave.

Strangely, I suddenly feel sad knowing that I'll be leaving my apartment in just a little over 15 days. I have been living there since what....March? April? It's been months ago and yet it feels like an instant. It seems like only the other day that I was statying in a hotel in Pedro Gil looking for an apartment and calling all these people up.

From March 3, 2002:

Starting a week or so from now, I'll be moving to Manila for a couple of months. Maybe more. I'll be taking an apartment somewhere so I could be near where our little movie WASTED is being shot. It will just be an apartment with a bed and a drawing table. I won't be bringing my computer or my TV and DVDs. Maybe just a CD player for music. I'll be in Manila on weekdays and I will go home on the weekends.

Wow, seven months flew by so very damned fast. Even though I stayed there only for so long, I got sort of used to the place and got comfortable in it. It almost felt like home. I got close to some people in Manila, people I never thought I'd get close to. And I'll miss them really bad. I wish I could stay, but I have to go. December comes a huge change in my life, the biggest one so far. I admit it's a little scary doing what I'm about to do, but at the end I know it will all be worth it.

Although I did stay in Manila so I can more easily be where Wasted is being shot, it just didn't work out that way. In the end, I was able to give Noel Lim and the movie a couple of days a week, on rare occasions 3 or 4 days, and that was it. Sometimes it was the inking job, sometimes it was for personal reasons. With Superman now starting and will be in full swing soon, and with me moving back to San Pablo, shooting now becomes a little more difficult. When that time finally comes around, I guess I'll just have to schedule my time more carefully. I'll go to Manila when I can and hope we can make the best of the time I'm there.

Moving Again

I've been spending the past few days going over our neighborhood here in San Pablo looking for a house for me to move in. An apartment would be nice, but I've always wanted to have my own yard so I can have grass and plants and space for dogs and cats. I'm not really looking for a big place. Just big enough for me and Ilyn. I'll be moving in before we get married so I can fix the place up and make it livable.

Finding the place wasn't as bloody as finding my apartment in Manila. It was relatively easy, comparatively. I just walked around the neighborhood, found the place, called up the owner who turns out to be a friend of my mom's and gave me the place for less than it normally would.

It's not too far from the house where I live in now, actually. Which is perfect because it's near the school where Ilyn used to teach. She's been wanting to teach again so she won't have to go far. I'll start moving in first thing November. The place doesn't have a phone yet so I just might still continue using the computer here at home.

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I've seen want ads in newspapers, flyers, magazines and online, where female applicants are almost always required to be SINGLE. That kind of thing always irritates me. What the fuck difference does it make if the girl is married or not? Is she somehow less of a person, is she somehow suddenly unqualified, for jobs that have nothing to do with being single or married?

I think I've got the answer. All the bosses in these companies want single women. Why? Because they're all fucking married but HORNY bastards who want hot young sweet things to bang on the side. That's ALL there is to it.

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That said, I'm signing the Marriage License today. And start on Superman tomorrow. It's about time!!

Today I was one of three judges in a local district on the spot poster making contest here in San Pablo. I do this regularly once in a while because they seem to think I'm qualified to do it. It was pretty tough to judge because there were lots of entries that were really good. But inspite of that, I saw only ONE that could possibly be the winner.

And my #1 choice didn't even make the top three of the other 2 judges. I was flabbergasted. This entry was quite impressive in many ways. Number one, it fulfilled the theme of the competition very well. Admittedly, the entry was quite depressing, but it was a depressing theme. And I thought that this, of all entries, made the theme very immediate in the eyes of the viewers. Number two, the artistry was very impressive for a high school student. The colors were admittedly somber, but it was the perfect color scheme to fit the concept of the piece. The entry that eventually won had colors that were very strong and so very attractive to the eye, but it had a very uneven composition and it exhibited some structural errors in the human figures. The one I wanted had excellent composition and exhibited a very professional rendering of color and layout of human faces and figures.

Oh well, I guess that's why they have 3 judges to even everything out. Still, this kid deserved something because the work was very, very good in my eyes. I expect to see this artist do something great one day.

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I was able to buy a new edition of Anne Frank's diary. Of course, I had read this book many many years ago and I love it to death. For those not familiar with it, it's an actual diary of a young Jewish girl during World War 2. It tells of her life before and during the time they hid from Hitler's nazi Germany. It's a very moving diary specially in the light of it being absolutely true. She of course, didn't survive the concentration camps. She died along with the rest of her family, with the exception of her father Otto.

Otto had the diary of her daughter published, but held back certain chapters because they were perhaps too volatile and critical of her parents and other people. This version of the diary which I got, which is being called "The Definitive Version", brings back those chapters and they total nearly 30% of the diary now. The reading is quite fascinating because the omissions that were brought back paints a rounder and more human picture of Anne and it makes her story even more moving as a result. Read it if you haven't.