amadbrownwoman

Colored Piss

2008-12-12T02:29:00.000-08:00

as the taxi was winding through edsa from the airport when i arrived and i saw the changes that bayani fernando and friends made, i imagined a dog pissing all over manila to mark his territory, in hues of pinks and blues. is bayani fernando thinking of running for presidency? and the answer to that as told me by a young woman i just met is yes you can. this is the island of the philippines. mabuhay!

first night out in philippines

2008-12-08T04:29:00.000-08:00

with don and lace

because you know, i am in the philippines right now.

thanks to my lara, see previous post, who told me there's a resurgence in cubao, i went to the former marikina shoe expo now called cubao expo comlex on my first night out since i got back. as she was showing me around, she explained it's like the new malate, to which i interjected, without the white men, and of course after a few seconds, there came the white man walking. there are bars there now and vintage shops and vintage books and free film showings and ahhh, it's my paradise!

and surprise, surprise, it was the launching of makiling's third album. (why oh why do i think of that woman who explored her sexuality in ways that i never could whenever i see makiling. why!)

a woman "disillusioned by democratic love affairs"*

2008-12-08T04:09:00.000-08:00

my bestfriend whose life has the makings of antonia's line. by that i mean she lives in ahouse with two other women, one is her mother and the other is her daughter. her mom is now asking her when she's having another child. if interested, by that i mean if you dare, read poem written by she who IS bitterness below, we need more baby daddys. please list qualifications in comments. for references, musical talents are preferred but reading foucault and baudrillard as you UNWIND is a plus.

1. A stain in the mind

You shit. You crowd out my own thoughts. Memories, sticky little suckers. Tell me, can I wash out the dirt in my mind? can I wring out my brain and hang it up to dry? No. It’s never gonna be like new. I’ve got a stain in my mind. Fuck you

2. Deliverance

Nothing but a myth. Sorry

3. Synchronicity

Who lost. Who won. No such synchronicity here. Get past your modernist delusions, there;re no more simple binary oppositions. In the continuum of space and time. Two, mayhaps even three or more, can meet and flirt and fuck and share a smoke. No need to judge. For god’s sake don’t meta analyze! There are no losers, only players in a game with no stakes

literary exercise, che!

*her words

the scent of green papaya:a review

2008-12-02T14:57:00.000-08:00

i just watched the scent of green papaya and i thought i might as well write a movie review. i know, i know, this movie was released a thousand years ago, not exactly recent, who cares i love it.

you know what will draw you in to watch this movie? it's a visual feast: lush colors, sensuous images, verdant foliage, flowing waters as the camera zooms in and zooms out, the slow pace which makes everything more intense, somehow more beautiful. pure visual orgasm! you know what will draw you not to watch this movie? lush colors, sensuous images, verdant foliage, flowing waters as the camera zooms it and zooms out, the slow pace which makes everything more intense somehow more beautiful. pure visual orgasm!

there comes a point when you just want to shout enough! i get it! it's a visually beautiful movie, each and every scene is painstakingly beautiful but i want to know more of the story, i want to know how it will end, now!

of course it would be great if the director is around just to suffer my verbal abuse but no such luck. in fact, while i was watching this movie, a never ending almost 24 hour construction was going on. it has been going on since i moved to this apartment, it has been going on years before i moved to this building and i have a reason to believe that it will go on for years and years after i get out of vietnam. it's a curse. it will never end. which is not the case of this movie. it ends just at that time when you start thinking the story is not advancing anymore. sigh of relief. at which time you'd be saying, more than an hour and a half was not wasted, that was an impressive movie. because it is. and its greatness rests on its cinematic style.

it is set during the french colonization of vietnam. the child mui arrives in saigon to work as a servant for a home which could not escape from its grief because of the death of the daughter. the father who has the habit of taking off with the family's money and jewelry was again away when the daughter died. which is why he blames himself for the death of the daughter. the mother grieves for her daughter and when mui arrives, she sees in mui her own daughter. which is why she treats mui as she would her own daughter. the two young boys deals with the grief of their parents in their own way. the grandmother spends her life in front of the family altar praying for the husband who died decades ago. and also there is one older son whose only role is to provide friendship to khuyen who will become an important character later on.

in contrast to this, mui settles in her domestic life as a servant and finds peace in the everyday routine, doing her chores, and in nature. cue shots of birds and leaves and plants and seeds. i have to say, the child actress is portrays this so well. she stares at the white seeds of young papaya, camera zoom in on the papaya seeds, camera zoom out and by god i gobble it up, i stare at her face and i could see it, that innocent happiness.

then ten years later. the father is now gone. the grandmother is gone. one of the son is away being a writer and the other is married. that older son in the story is now gone, but only because he's not relevant anymore. mui who is now a young woman with really great cheek bones remains at the house as the servant. due to financial difficulties, the mother is forced to let mui work at another house. she hands to mui the heirlooms she would have given to to her own daughter. the rest of the movie centers on the developing romance between mui and her new master khuyen, a young, wealthy piano composer. how he became wealthy being a piano composer i do not know. but that's how the story goes. mui still does that staring into everyday inanimate objects and finding happpines bit, however she just looks retarded when she does this.

it was at this point that i started wanting to paint my toes a fuck me red nail polish. yawn. mui with the great cheek bones is such a disappointment. in a movie which is almost silent, in which she has about one or two lines, the only facial expression i saw in is retardedness.

the director's earnestness to be politically neutral is naive. despite the setting being the time of the french colonization in vietnam, there is no criticism of the influences of france on local culture. the father who plays local music with his local house with its local accoutrements leaves the family with all the money and jewelry. on the other hand, khuyen who plays western music on his piano with his affluent house with all the right western touches is portrayed as mui's prince charming. it's these turns that makes me want to snarkily applaud, what a great colonial! (chao, monsieur regisseur!) there is also a feeling of nostalgia in its portrayal of saigon. in an effort to be neutral, the director was betrayed by his lenses.

the scent of green papaya (l'odeur de la papaye verte) 1993
mui At 20: tran nu yen-khe
mui At 10: lu man san
mother: truong thi loc
written and directed By tran anh hung

faustian tragedies

2008-11-23T08:08:00.000-08:00

faust, faustus, this name comes from latin and it means lucky, fortunate. in goethe's faust, he was a dissatisfied intellectual. he made an agreement the with mephistopheles, that mephistopheles would do everything faust wants in exchange for his soul. faust falls in love with gretchen. in the end, she dies. she is condemned of murdering her illegitimate child with faust. in ghost rider, he is johnny blaze who sells his soul for his father's life. who has cancer. who actually died after a few minutes in the movie but not of cancer.

in real life he is john lennon, who sold "his soul to the devil in exchange for worldly musical success with the beatles," whose 20-year pact with the devil came to its tragic conclusion when mark david chapman who was possesed by demons fulfilled the contract by murdering him outside of his apartment in new york.

there will be another big bang tomorrow if anyone who reads this blog will buy a copy of that book. it is part of my contract with the devil in exchange for, what else, worldly blogstardom. i will die in 20 years, some blog fan stalker will shoot me. at this point i invoke the faith that i never had, wag po lord.

my favorite tv show as a kid

2008-11-23T05:12:00.000-08:00

i don't even remember the plot when i saw this trailer. it is that long time ago. all i remember is astro boy, a robot-child who lives with humans and series upon series of battles involving astro and some berserk human-hating robots where in the end astro wins. the youtube video above is purported to be the trailer of the film version set to be released in 2009.

i digress: AGE! is inversely proportional to how much info you (by this i mean me) remember of your fave tv shows during childhood.

a novel written by nguyen dinh tu...

2008-11-21T22:55:00.000-08:00

...titled nhap (draft) which is about sexual obsession is causing a stir in the local literary scene.

A new novel released earlier this year by Nguyen Dinh Tu titled Nhap (Draft), tells of young disillusioned intellectuals who suffer inferiority complexes, seek redemption in sex, and ultimately fail to make peace with their problems.

“In Nhap, Tu doesn’t shy away from sex, which has long been considered a discomfiting issue in local literature but deals with it in quite a detailed way. His outspoken approach to sex, even when he describes homosexual sex, however, doesn’t arouse abhorrence among readers,” said distinguished author Chu Lai about Tu’s work.

“His sexual writing points to the fact that there are many people in society who suffer from obsessive inferiority complexes and don’t dare to live true to themselves,” Lai added.

“Like characters in other books who are obsessed with hunger and poverty, my characters are preoccupied with their sexuality,” Tu said, adding such obsessions are all equal in a writer’s eyes.

if only my tieng viet is not limited to hbo subtitles.

transcending taboos

for anyone who wants to do a bit of theater and charity

2008-11-21T22:41:00.000-08:00

An amateur theater club in Ho Chi Minh City has a welcome mat out for anyone who wants to get involved and do a bit for charity while they’re at it.

Saigon Players members come from all over the world and many of them have a strong theater background, but the whole idea of the club is to give anyone a chance to “tread the boards.” There’s a strong contingent from the UK, Vietnam, the US and Canada with Holland, Italy, France, Germany and Australia also represented. It also serves as a regular venue for a bit of nostalgia between the expats.

Charity is a core value of the group, as nobody gets paid and all the money raised from the box office goes to a worthy cause. It builds the members’ community awareness.
Club Nights are usually the first Wednesday of the month, from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. at District 1’s La Habana Club. These mini-workshops for members explore their theatrical skills and knowledge, with team warm-ups, theater games, group work, scene rehearsals and discussions on possible productions, but most importantly they serve as a forum for like-minded people to meet.

theater lovers wanted

so i spent one and a half hour watching khi dan ong co bau...

2008-11-17T21:31:00.000-08:00

what would i do without you, vietnam translators?

b movie par excellence. one reason i watch comedies even if low budget, in fact especially because it's a low budget is the honesty in showing what a particular culture deem entertaining.

the movie starts with about thirty minutes of ~~some of the most boring shit you've ever seen on films, although of course i'm used to philippine b movies so it is NOT the the case for me~~ how a woman falls in love with a guy, zzzzzzzzzzzzzz, who has nothing going for him except for the fact that he comes from a rich family, but of course in the movie since he's that, he's a catch, then woman got pregnant, guy wants her to get an abortion and so starts the comedy part. woman didn't want to get abortion so she ran away from the abortion clinic, guy runs after her, get into an accident and because of that accident, becomes bedridden for several months. while bedridden, he starts having dreams in which the gender roles of men and women switches all because the men are the ones getting pregnant. it was supposed to be funnny. i found it too simplistic to even be funny: gender roles does not happen because one is having the kids and not the other, even in heterosexual relationships without kids, married, not married, and in homosexual relationships, there exist taking on gender roles. so wtf.

so i said in previous post to not watch this film. that's the verdict, do. not. watch. there is a limit to my love of cheese. okay, if you just gotta, well then watch it if only for:

(1) the one scene that cracked me up, must you guess, it was sex or to be particular, the metaphor to sex: car keys will have a different meaning to me, now on. it was not supposed to be funny but since it's not supposed to be funny, it cracked me up. what the hell, that's me. i've been numbed by socially conscious philippine movies with its in your face f* it til you drop f*ing scenes which is why i found it ingenious.

(2) the abortion clinic with its imagery of a butcher shop. abortion was made to look so brutal in this movie. i swear this is what every woman in the whole world think of abortion. but just about anything that involves doctors and nurses and hospital assistants and the assistants to the assistants' poking and prodding in that region is so invasive it's brutal to me.

it's official...

2008-11-15T23:24:00.000-08:00

ennio morricone will write the music for quentin tarantino's inglorious basterds. tarantino has already used half a dozen of morricone's spaghetti western themes for the two kill bill, he however has never hired a composer to write original music for his films before.

this is from kill bill vol 2 and the music is ennio morricone's l'arena.

i am happily awaiting for inglorious basterds in the pirated dvd's of saigon square.

and for the i'm proud to be an azn goddess moment, ~~see facebook badge to the right, to the right, cue demonic laughter~~ maggie cheung will play the part of madame mimeux. and the movie i mentioned in status update in badge, don't. watch. it.

an update on matchmaking uproar

2008-11-15T22:44:00.000-08:00

A representative of the Vietnamese Embassy in Singapore has told Thanh Nien the embassy “is contemplating appropriate actions” in light of a recent newspaper article about a Vietnamese bride matchmaking service.

“We must look at the issue from multiple perspectives to respond in a correct way,” said Bui Tan Long, the first secretary in charge of community affairs at the embassy.

vietnam embassy ponders stance on matchmakinguproar in thanh nhien news

match maker, match maker, match maker, match!

2008-11-14T01:50:00.000-08:00

find me a find, catch me a catch!

Mr Mark Lin of Vietnam Brides International Matchmaker took out advertisements in the Chinese newspapers on Wednesday, offering the discount on the grounds that his business has been hit by the global financial crisis. Three Vietnamese women have been at his Orchard Plaza office in the last two months, waiting for prospective husbands.

Mr Lin is charging $4,000 as his matchmaking fee for each - half the fee he usually charges for flying them in and feeding and housing them. Over 20 men have inquired about the women this month, but he has yet to make a match.

(and some women, sitting in the high throne of stiff-necked priviledge often not only in class but also in race would again start the discourse of viet women oh wait, asian women are like prostitutes. oh yes, i've heard some white women in vietnam saying this....)

before yous start thinking of another slut-shaming vietnamese women are like these and that, tadadadadatado, oh so old arguments while sitting in a comfortable seat in a cafe where there are no locals around except for that cashier and the waiter who served the just divine coffee, ahhhh, you're sipping right now, stop your comments: we do not live outside of socialization, we are the product of it.

let's focus on the men: if you were a man who can easily afford it, would you? and if you were a woman, what do you think of men who would?

here is the whole story from the straits times: vietnam bride agencies cut fees

and here is the response of vietnam in thanh nhien news: story on vietnamese bride service draw cricticism. what killed me while reading this article is how desensitized the gov't official who was interviewed in this article was. "she was stunned to see such a respected newspaper running a very insensitive story on a very sensitive topic." she was concerned about the unblurred faces. she didn't exactly center on the practice of marriage brokerage in vietnam but how the straits times treated the issue. alas.

to you who's subscribe to the comments whoever you are

2008-11-09T09:05:00.000-08:00

this blog account was used for my friend's blog before. i helped that friend set it up but now she's using another account for that blog. so for those comments that seems totally not related to any posts here, i can only say, i don't know how to remove them.

quantum solace is out now, right? right?

2008-11-08T20:01:00.001-08:00

okay so i lied, this is not agent oo7, this is agent 00 Weng Weng.

Weng Weng (September 7, 1957 — August 29, 1992) was a Filipino actor and martial artist. He was born in Baclaran, in what is now Parañaque City.^[1] Only 2 foot, 9 inches (83 cm) tall, he is listed in the Guinness World Records as the shortest adult actor in a leading role.^[2] He played Secret Agent 00 in For Y’ur Height Only ^[3], The Impossible Kid ^[4]^[5]^[6] and "D’Wild Wild Weng".

In the late 1970's, he came to the attention of Hong Kong movie maker Raymond Jury who cast him in the role of Agent 00 in the James Bond style spoof "For Your Height Only". In the movie, the brilliant scientist Dr. Kohler is kidnapped by an evil organization headed by "Mr Giant". Secret Agent 00 is called to rescue the doctor, and 00 does so by using a combination of kicking people in the knees or the genitals, shooting with remarkable accuracy, and sliding across the floor firing his pistol as he goes. The film ends with Agent 00 locating the secret island that Mr. Giant uses for a hideout, dispensing with the red beret wearing guards, and meting out his special form of justice. The movie was a huge hit throughout the Philippines and Asia as well as countries as far apart as Iceland, Uganda, Tonga, Bolivia and Papua New Guinea.

the search for weng weng

2008-11-08T01:13:00.000-08:00

the director of the documentary is andrew leavold. he's the owner of a video cult store called trash video who turns into a film maker because of his obsession to find the movies of a filipino b movie actor in the 70's named weng weng.

i'm so gonna watch this!

searching, still searching for that video of me

2008-10-19T17:11:00.000-07:00

as of late i have been perusing vietnamese websites more and more. okay, just timnhanh and yume since theyre the only vietnamese websites i know that allows video uploading. i'm trying to find a video which the guard at tissot hcmc branch ( ______________ ! insert expletives) took without my consent some time ago. i find it flattering and creepy and creepy and creepy, having a complete stranger flash a camera in my face. since i'm super paranoid, i'm thinking it would be one of those videos labeled vietnamese woman cheap. or perhaps, filipino woman cheap. if only i could remove any sexual meaning from it. for what use exactly would a man take a video of a woman he doesnt know? but women are so othered, so sexualized.

my brother, the karate kid

2008-10-12T23:49:00.000-07:00

(the sight of that boy wearing headband, hollywood's idea of teenage boy's virility during the 80's, is just precious...)

i was watching tv a few days ago when i chanced upon karate kid, and of course i remembered my brother. because for me karate kid = my brother and my male cousins as teenagers (who were older than me). he's the reason i probably watched almost all the bond , bruce lee and jackie chan movies during that time. (drunken master anyone?) he's also the reason i knew about leprosy before i went to school.(watch ang panday) i also think he and my cousins were the reason i associate porn to a particular type of jazz, but that's another matter. it needs be mentioned that we watched these movies on betamax.

aside from having the same parents, love for movies is the only thing i have in common with my brother, then and now.

i can only wonder......

2008-10-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

...what series of dysfunctions, drugs, abuse, and mexican soaps they were subjected to in childhood?

nah, i love these two and this video is awesome!

hip hop and castration complex

2008-09-24T17:48:00.000-07:00

no one else but britney could dominate the mtv vma 2008 and not even have to perform, but i digress.

while watching the show rerun,i could not help but surmise that male hip hop artists are the least secure of their manhood. for why else would a man do a penile caress every twenty seconds? is it still there? is it still there? crispin? basilio?

and lil wayne, he tops them all. in his performance with leona lewis, it was at least twenty times. which begs the question: if lil wayne's not there anymore, lil wayne, what then?

(do i have to mention that there is an artist who was master of this move ?)

big. stupid. me.

2008-05-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

that's the reason i moved to a new blog. i always forget my old blog's password and account name.

recipe for a jungian dining

2008-05-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

because when i'm in restaurants i observe and observe and observe and psychoanalyze ....

to start, you need a forty plus year old vietnamese man, you know, the ones with money and more often than not, married and also more often than not, has no vestige of physical attractiveness whatsoever (but oh well, that's me). next is a beautiful young vietnamese woman, often not older than thirty, not necessarily not educated, not necessarily not employed and evidently not the wife. the third is the woman's friend. often there for ___________________________ (fill in the blank, if it's me, it's for approval, a symbol of how blase and accepted this is in vietnamese society, but then again that's me).

now for the power dynamics, the woman brings beauty and harmony. she divides the food, serves the friend and the man and herself, of course the man comes first. the friend brings joy and hapiness to the otherwise boring conversation that's to ensue , basically most of the conversation is between her and the woman. the man taking on the role of the father, he is condescendingly bored of the women's chatter so he takes no part, but he is the one to whom the waiter or waitress caters to, for after all he plays a most important role, he pays, for everything.

this emphasizes just how different vietnamese women's expectations are from mine.

love in a land of motorbikes

2008-04-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

(because i realized that a lot of views to this blog* are from people searching for amadbrownwoman)

when writing comments on ~~a space as mediocre as a vietnamese condom~~ blogs, it's inevitable to make mistakes. although i do make sassy comments like this on a daily basis, i make a conscious effort not to blog in this manner. the reason is simple: i don't want to be penalized for my sexuality or my being a filipino. because if a man blogs in this manner, it's fine and just dandy. and when it's a woman, it's not so. i also don't want some snide shitty condescending comments like "hang on to your wallets, she's a filipina". but when i commented on thirsty thong, i realized i couldn't take it back, so duoc, duoc, i am che, i am amadbrownwoman, shoot me.

famous quotes that i made yesterday

i dunno jimmy i see them lovers around the park near my house too,the park near the airport, vietnamese couples may not show affection in public but they sure can fuck in public. which leads me to this: no need for gymnastics in vietnam as flexibility is proven and the most important of all, no need for vibrators...

as my image of vietnamese couples is not the same as the picture of hanoian couples, saigon couples are in motorbikes (hence the flexibility and vibrator), the inevitable question, saigon or hanoi, to be or not to be.....

willed ignorance is bliss
as attested by d ( thanks!), there is not much PDA except on parks, and other recreation areas. and then there's more than PDA that goes on. i see it oftener and oftener and like the locals, i ignore it more and more.

If you're in Vietnam long enough, you quickly realize that there is not that much PDA, except that there is a special force field around any and all parks, recreation areas and banks of navigable waters or lakes.

This special force field allows all those within it to be invisible to others - magically, you're invisible to both those who are outside this field (i.e. pedestrians outside the park) and those who are inside (i.e. your fellow Cong Vien visitors).

Sadly, this invisibility powers only extends over those viewers who hold a Vietnamese passport. So every expat can see what you're doing.

... That's the only reason I can think of to explain what we've seen in the local parks in the middle of a sunny Sunday stroll in Hanoi...

i think though that the locals ignore it because it's culturally unacceptable and so if one acts and talks like it's not happening, then it must not be happening. (ang gulu gulo ever, keber!) willed ignorance is bliss, pun intended.

it is i think part of youth culture, their way of circumventing the rigidity of hierarchical, confucian relationship between man and woman in vietnamese society.

there is a political economy in which it is based. aside from the obvious influences of the media (britneyspears is just one tv button away), there are many small factories and businesses in and around the city which employs many young people from other provinces and cities and from ho chi minh city alike. after all, this is the economic center of vietnam. this is in addition to the many universities found here. (don't take my word for it though. i am not an expert on vietnamese society no matter how long i stay in vietnam.)

what i find interesting is that no one else has commented on them on blogs and in other forms of media. am i the only one who actually notices such happenings?

it was one of those unguarded moments when i wrote this comment. it was not to criticize. the "motorbike gymnastics was pointed out by a homosexual Vietnamese man as part of his criticism of "normal" heterosexual Vietnamese relationships. i do not share that sentiment: everyone is entitled to own their bodies.

on saigon and hanoi
well, i meant, which is hotter? saigon or hanoi? is it safe to assume that it saigon stands alone in this. if that's the only thing that's happening (as described by d) in hanoi, booring.

(and believe me, mother tried)

*this means my old blog