Silliman Workshop Day 15

Director's Dinner

Lechon

Sweet & Sour Fish

Salad

Fried Pork thingy

Pancit Canton

Creeeeeaaaammmy Mango-Jelly thingy

Four Seasons to wash it all down


A hillock of a stomach

Burp!

(Photo-op with Mom, Edith Tiempo)

 

Photo c/o Oscar Serquiña

Silliman Workshop Day 13: Siquijor

Oh my goodness, I've just begun writing about this day when I realized how serendipitous it is that this is the day my co-fellows and I went to Siquijor!

13

Wow, that's pretty...cool (creepy), isn't it?

I've heard lots of stories about Siquijor. Aside from being told that going to this island is an age-old tradition of the Silliman Writers Workshop, I've heard that this is where the mangkukulam reside--their headquarters. If Harry Potter has Hogwarts, Juan Dela Cruz has Siquijor. Yes, and the tuition is probably much, much lower since it is in pesos, though I'm not sure if they use the same currency. For all I care, they may prefer babies and human liver. :)

Of course, Juan is much cooler, since he practices both the dark and "white" arts. There are said to be mambabarang in the island, a type of mangkukulam that utilizes insects  (barang) to perform magic. I've heard stories about people dying from strange diseases, and when their relatives look at their corpses, they see insects--wasps, ants, centipedes (you get the picture)--coming out of the victim's mouth.

Another story I heard is from my co-fellow, Gel, who told me about what happened to her friend. Apparently, once you get to the island, you're supposed to bite the tip of your little finger. Otherwise, the witches and fiends can easily put a curse on you. Gel's friend forgot to bite her finger, and what happened was that she (or was it "he") fell really sick. That person was brought to an albularyo, a practitioner of (mostly) the white arts. The albularyo held out a water-filled glass over the body of the victim, just letting the glass hover around in circles, and within minutes, the glass was brimming with insects.

See? Is Hogwarts all that cool?

I meant to just blog about a normal day. About me leaping from a cliff in Salandoong Beach and nearly cracking my pelvic bone against the water's surface. About the oldest Balete Tree in the Island. About the fields of brush, coconut, and bananas. About the oldest convent in the Philippines (Can't quite remember the name).

But as I run out of time in this internet shop, I guess maybe I'll just google it later and add pictures and edit this darned entry. I hope the internet back in Writers Village has been revived, cuz really, I can't even facebook properly with that thing. The cicadas are sending far stronger signals than the Smart Bro. Haha.

SiIliman Workshop Day 9

Time sure flies. Hopefully I haven't gained too much weight, what with all the chocolate cake and coffee and vodka/gin (The Bar) and pulutan... so much for my healthy lifestyle, which has now turned into a DISTANT memory. haha :D

Been doin' some running, though, despite the crazy terrain of this mountain. The paths are inclined at quite an unhealthy angle. I'm trying to maintain my running fitness, which I'd previously honed for a marathon, but with Dumaguete, I'm having too much fun karaoke-ing and eating to worry as much as I used to about my body!

Well, I guess it's somehow a relief. A change. It ain't good to be obsessed about anything. Including writing.

Today I picked out a few things that caught my eye. Funny, cuz it was a fly on a plate, an image that caught my mind's eye's attention during our morning critique session.

I noted down the first words/phrases that I can, probably, later turn into a poem or some interesting insight that can be good content for a story. As Mom Edith Tiempo said, "Content is content!"

Here are the words/phrases that first came to mind:

The fly, vultures swooping, circling, mound of rice, spoon on one side with a leftover grain, fork facing the spoon, plate with the ragged edges lined with silver, oil pooled in globules at the edge

Post-Iyas Creative Writing Workshop: Balay Kalinungan Thriller

Poster c/o Jordan Carnice

I've been in the mountains--Valencia, Dumaguete--for the past few days, and internet has become quite a rare commodity, like drugs you'd get only from black markets...or your neighborhood druggie. Now I have a chance to blog about my last workshop. Later on, I will blog about Dumaguete, haha, if I'm not lazy.

It's been some five or so days since I attended the 10th Iyas workshop in Bacolod. I am beginning to miss the scrumptious food of Balay Kalinungan, the two-bed room with the white lady that hovered over my head, and of course, the people--my co-fellows and the panelists that left us with all sorts of quotable quotes.

There, I was able to re-bond with my highschool friend, Alyza. It's funny how it felt like deja vu. It's as if nothing has changed and we're still doin' our artsy stuff, talking about boys like a bunch of giggly girls (alright, delete giggly).

I've met a bunch of great people, writers in the regional language--Jess, Elsed, Paul, Glenn, Sim... It was such an eye-opening experience to get a glimpse of the sensibilities of those from different areas of the Philippines. I tended to have quite a myopic view of Philippine lit, but now I'm amazed at the plethora of material available to us, only we don't get the chance to explore them. It made me wish I could speak and write at least one more Filipino language aside from my rather poor tagalog.

I'll never forget my tangential encounter with a ghost. I was quite lucky to be knocked out with booze, since I didn't get to see the "white lady", whatever the hell that is (spirit, elemental, some levitating buddha, who cares; it's freaky). It was really like being in a thriller movie. I think it was in Day 2 when, after closing the lights and rolling in for sleep, suddenly something falls, and we hear a clatter in the room. My roommate and I ask each other "was that you?" And of course none of us had moved. I opened the table lamp, and it flickers, along with an electrical buzzing.

The lamp died, plunging the room in darkness.

Alyza and I were screaming like birds (chickens?) until we got that goddamed light to open again. We then found out that a cup had fallen to the floor. Problem is, from its position on the table, it couldn't have fallen. Nope. It just couldn't. Anyhow, that must have been the spirit's paramdam already.

The next day, that's when it happened. That's when the frickin white lady hovered over my head. The freakiest part is that my roommate thought I was reading manuscripts in the dark. She saw the "entity" moving from side to side, like how a little girl does when waiting for her cotton candy. The lady was wearing this translucent, billowing white cloth, eerily radiant in the moonlight. Moonlight that shouldn't have been there since we kept our curtains closed, yet found them open upon opening the table lamp. A number of other things were out of place in our room--the cabinet was open, some things were misplaced...

Well that's one experience I really felt like writing about. About the critiques I got for "Doble Kara" my long short story, basically I need to improve the dialogues, the flow of the plot (the panelists said it's pretty flat), characterization, setting, umm the others are in my notebook. Haha.

Anyhow that's probably it for this post. It was great. The piaya was great. And wow that was random.

P.S. Here's a pic of everyone, c/o vernan jagunap: