This is a view of the
Circular Quay where most of our activity centered on this day,
but that's going ahead of the story. Today saw one of the best and most fun filled days of our tour here in Australia. I didn't immediately go to sleep last night after coming from the internet rental here in the neighborhood of our hotel. After watching the TV, I closed all the lights and watched the scene from the window. We had one of the best deals having been billeted here in the center of Sydney's night life. You could meet some of the most colorful characters here! I spent some minutes looking out the window and thinking what other stories could each of them have if they ever had the chance.
The breakfast we ate this morning was free and I had a couple of steamed sliced tomatoes, scrambled eggs, a mix of ham & bacon, rice, some fruits, orange juice, and my mom's unfinished yoghurt. After going back to the room to brush our teeth we rushed out to the subway to catch the time of our bay cruise. We ran and ran through many streets while the rain drizzled on our heads and the biting cold wind blew constantly on our faces. Our poor Mom had a very hard time trying to catch up with us and inspite of all the panic that we did, we still missed the boat. Fortunately the cruise ship returns every hour to pick up more passengers so we hung around a small cafe right beside the dock. I took out my big journal and started drawing the view from where we sat. Time flew fast and I almost didn't have enough time to finish the details of the drawing when the boat returned.
We got down at the Circular Quay and started the first of a series of long walks towards the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Along the way we already took some spectacular views of the bridge and the Opera House in the distance. Though the rains stopped every once in a while, it would also start and pour hard down on us. We also stopped by a souvenir shop and bought some presents for Daddy. After some more walks and photo ops we encountered a fat tri-colored cat who was friendly enough to let itself be patted on the head. ore long walks toward the bridge, and another one up the view point in the
Sydney Harbour Bridge Pylon Museum & Lookout. They did a brilliant job in their museum with their artifacts, stories of its construction, photographs of the workers, a documentary of the whole thing being constructed. More photo ops at the top and while we were busy taking pictures and enjoying the view, our mom sat back inside the make-shift benches and started massaging her sore legs.
It was nearly lunch when we got down from the bridge and started walking towards the
Opera House. It was another long walkgoing around the roads we took and back to the other side where the landmark was located. We talked about the mixture of buildings nearby which were down in the style of turn of the century architecture, the Mod 50's or 60's, and modern style. About halfway towards the Opera House, our Mom was already complaining about all that walk that we took without long pauses. Our brother carried on, trying to encourage us that we could settle down easily when we get there.
Ah phooey! I took the initiative to sit down on a bench near the place and started sketching a view of the bridge from the other side. I also could have done the Opera House if it didn't start raining again. Anyway, after the rains, we looked around and I sent another text message to my friend Xavier who's in Melbourne. Then we tarried along back to the harbor, I guess some of us wouldn't have complained if we knew where my brother wanted us to stop and take a short rest.
We waited for the boat after a some minutes of walking down the pier to the place where we originally got off. There were some street performers taking advantage of the holiday crowd
(compared back home in the Philippines, Good Friday here in Sydney's happily busy with some establishments open for business). We boarded the boat that went around the bay and this time we got down to see the native animals in
Taronga Zoo.
Btw, the tour guide in charge of the cruise around the harbor told some interesting stories about the places that we passed including the top floor of a hotel that Russel Crowe purchased for $14M. Back to the zoo, the entrance fee was a hefty $23 but I guess it was all worth it since we all enjoyed our time there. After a quick lunch of sodas and sandwiches, we went around to look for the native animals of Australia, starting with the sleepy Koala bear, then the Tasmanian Devil with its unfinished bunny meal scattered around it while it took a snooze, the white dingo that wouldn't look our way, the night rodents, the chubby echidna that amused us with its innocent walk around its habitat, the small platypuses that just swam around, and the wallabies that let us pet it without worry. After all that our last stop, predictably enough, was the souvenir shop. I bought a panda stuff toy
(made in the Philippines to boot!) and the others bought various gifts for Daddy and for my brother's "special someone." We took another boat ride that took us back to the Circular Quay activity center, bought a chocolate shake in McDonald's
(I swear it's one of the best I've ever tasted!), picked up some maple leaves around the bus stop while my Mom and sis went to use the toilet and my brother figured out which bus to ride. This was around 6 pm and it was very good of my brother to suggest that we take the bus since we also enjoyed a lot of the views of the city
(at least I did). The one thing I didn't appreciate about the bus ride was seeing the depressed neighborhoods with it's dilapidated apartments.
Don't ask me why, I'm just here trying to heal and forget the reason. We went down after a while and walked to the next bus stop, we passed by, among others, the Starbucks café and I saw one guy that reminded me of one of the characters that I made. Hmmm... but there was a real interesting thing about that park beside the bus stop where we waited. It was the welcome presence of bats in a lighted tree right beside the road. They were big noisy bats that flew in and out the foliage of the tree that hung in. Thanks to the flood lights we could very much discern where they were. To the untrained ear they could have sounded like a flock of birds that wouldn't go to sleep.
We didn't wait long before the bus came, thoughts came one after the other while journey back home continued. We were pleasantly surprised to find out that the bus stop we were going off to was just across the hotel we were staying. We stopped by a DVD and CD shop on the way, which btw, had a X-Men 1.5 DVD. This DVD I read in a paper later on is part of the intended give-away package at the movie premiere next week. I'll get that DVD tomorrow along with the 3 Stooges if the budget allows for it. We stopped by the hotel to rest a bit before going out again to
Bondi Beach. We walked halfway through the establishments before settling down to eat at a Thai restaurant that served excellent dishes. The rains poured down again obstructing the view of the full moon over the waters. But that didn't stop us from going down to the shore and taking some pictures and some sand. There was also a scary moment there when the downpour was particularly hard and we were seeking shelter behind a building next to the beach. There was a guy, his hood obstructed his face, sucking on his cigarette at the other end. Since the place was quite deserted, my Mom felt uneasy and so did I. My brother objected at first that we couldn't run through the rain and to just let the guy be. But after a while he also felt uneasy and he changed his mind. We ran through the rain and got some ice cream at my suggestion. Then we waited for the bus that would take us to the subway station near the hotel.
After arriving at the hotel and resting once more, me, my brother and sister decided to go out one last time to see the harbour bridge at night and this time from the other side. Our Mom didn't go with us this time, prefering to spend her time watching TV in her room. We took two subway trains
(one station had a giant sized poster of X-Men 2 and we talked about the merits and demerits of the first movie and the actors). When we got to the place, we walked up a bit towards the bridge and just took a couple of shots. Then it's off to the subway once again to wait for the train that would take us back home. I dunno about the security of the trains and deserted places but after that incident at Bondi beach I just felt uneasy around lone strangers in the trains we took. Most especially if there aren't that much people in the carriage with us.
I hope this goes away.But all in all, I really liked Sydney and like what I told my sister earlier in the ferry boat coming from the zoo,
"For me, Sydney is the new San Francisco." Indeed it was, if there ever was another place that I felt really at home far away from home, it would be this place with it's old charm, friendly, colorful, laid-back people and homey ambience.
I hate it whenever I'm in a creative straitjacket. When anything that requires thinking becomes a struggle. I probably didn't help with me being in front of the computer surfing the net from morning till night with the radio on plus the TV showing the most boring movie I've ever watched. I got a bit of a cold that ended with a mild headache that made thinking even more of a struggle. I was researching something on how the armor of a roman soldier works and something on the subject of fear that will be discussed before two different groups. Good thing the meeting for tomorrow was cancelled so that leaves me enough room to research for the artists' group. The load's not that heavy given the time I have to work on. I think that maybe thinking too much at the same time contributed to my burn out. Funny thing too, when my friend Azrael from the Artists' Den invited me to eat out with him in a nearby mall he told me that he's also experiencing a burn out. Good thing he invited me out, I needed a time out at the time. I managed to eat something through that headache, not much to eat but it did the trick. We went back to the shop and waited till it closed before going home. Tomorrow's my birthday and just when you're expecting everyone to be there at home watching TV or reading the papers, they're asleep. *Sigh*
We still had a very good celebration of Mother's Day for this year. It's a bit amusing and heartwarming when everybody thinks that their mothers are the best. Over all the years of tutoring us in school and bearing with all our shortcomings it's only fitting that we show her how much we love her. Pastor Steve had a good message about the faith of mothers in our morning service, then it's off to the music store to buy the Linkin Park CD (got me a free magazine and bottled ice tea too). I browsed through some titles and listened to Aaliyah's song again. I really liked her song "I Miss You", I could also use the story she used in that song for my strip too. Passed by Powerbooks and the former Tower Records before walking back to the MRT. On the way home I thought of buying some flowers for my mom, I withdrew P200 and looked at the two available concessionaires but it was way over my set budget. Then I thought of buying a cake but the selection was too small and it didn't feel right buying them. I sent a SMS asking if she'd rather watch the new X-men movie later. On the way out I passed by Art Cakes and bought a ready made cake that fits my budget to a tee. Good looking cake too with nice balance of colors and small silver balls scattered around its surface. Wonder if it's edible.
Now that the exciting phase of planning is over the most important thing to ask oneself now is: Now what? We already announced the plans for the return of the workhops in the artists' support group, divided the crowd into smaller groups, and scheduled them accordingly. I'm looking at the two topics we have to dissect and expand in time for next week's meeting and my mind's blanking out. There's going to be a lot of research involved here and I'm going to need all the help I can get. I just have to get my act in order before anything else.
It's been close to three years ever since we established an artist's support group and it's almost a year since we last met together doing activities that fostered creativity bonding different artist together. Back then I was one of those who helped thought of those activities I wasn't a facilitator. I'm an introvert, I don't talk to people much. Now that the group's meeting again for weeks minus my friends and co-founders I'm forced to take charge of the group. At first I was in denial, I couldn't and wouldn't take the job vacated by my friends. I was willing to attend the meetings, become an observer and that's it. I was afraid of making a mess of things so I took the easy way out. But you just can't leave these people without doing anything. If you're given the opportunity to lead would you give it up? Turning one's back on something he's meant to do will be like, as one prophet said in the past, "
Is the barber considered an artist or a craftsman? We, three friends who founded an artists' support group, discussed about the difference between a craftsman and an artist. A craftsman is someone who by undergoing apprenticeship under a master artist got the hang of replicating the same work of art over and over again almost never deviating from the same format. If ever the craftsman deviates from it, there’s not much of a difference from the original. While the artist creates something material starting out from an abstract idea. The work comes alive as he/she pours out his heart and soul into the art. Now given the different "canvasses" barbers are given to work on their stuff, can they be regarded as artists or craftsmen? They’re bound to adapt the haircut depending on the shape of the head, so this makes them more of a craftsman? Are all hairstylists artists? But there are barbers who undergo extensive training for them to be more proficient in their job. After they graduate from these schools, are they now called artists? Hmmm… prolly depends on how inventive they can be with new techniques as they go on.
Today's Cartoonist Day in the U.S.! Hooray! I just learned about it when one of the regulars of the 
I finally submitted two weeks worth of comic strips to 
There's something really awesome when you see an old friend after all these years. There's still that unspoken bond between two individuals that remain unbroken even after some years of no contact between them. It's like what I said to one of our high school pals on his despedida party: "The friendship will always be there and it will never be broken. Just think of it as being put on suspended animation to be revived again when the opportunity comes." This exact thing happened between me and my high school friend Mark. Funny how I only got to know him through my friends on our second year high school and how we turned out to be that much closer to each other in comparison to the others in our group. Even after all these years his appearance never changed much, he still has that almost round face, stooped chubby figure, brown hair, and bawdy attitude. We talked about his wife, kids, job, plans for the future, and the things he experienced in the United States. He's leaving again on Friday and I do hope that we and the others in our group could go out have an early birthday dinner before that. I also pray that we could have some more time to talk and catch up with each other before he goes.
I finally got to watch the X-Men movie last night! All I can say is it's all worth the expensive movie ticket paid for in Rockwell mall. The story set the stage for the appearance of the all powerful Phoenix in the third installment. Wolverine's character stands out again along with Mystique, who thankfully makes a comeback this time. Another unforgettable scene invloves Nightcrawler's fight scene teleporting in and out, socking and bopping out the secret service agents (the explosive sound his teleporting creates never sounded that good). Lady Deathstrike's character could have been a lot better and the same goes for Pyro. Other mutants who made a cameon in movie are Colossus, Siryn (?), Kitty Pryde, Gambit, and Hank McCoy.
I got an unexpected SMS message late this afternoon from one of the administrators of 
Should I or shouldn't I get the Meteora album by Linkin Park? Why? Well first of all the CD comes with a neat behind the scenes look at the creation of the album (a steal at P500), I'm impressed with their work ethic towards the creating the best possible music they could offer, and I wanna have a goatee like Rob does. Hehehe... Ok the last point is moot. I'm also reading through the lyrics of the album's songs right now. After the first couple of songs that talk about independence from the regrets of the past, the other songs now begin to speak of pain, regret, anger, confusion. Now that's really scary. The last song speaks of wrapping oneself in a shell to keep out all the pain, the sadness and the hurt. So scratch the album. I won't try to listen to it but how about the VCD? Is the VCD worth five hundred smackers? Can I just buy the whole thing, sell the album and keep video to myself? Now why would I like the video? What's it worth to me? This requires a lot more thought. Later.
On my way to Greenhills this morning I saw an ad for Ricky Reyes' beauty parlor on the side of a bus. As my mind started to wander I thought of how Ricky Reyes would delegate his staff to work on "lesser" mortals but he would take great care of prominent personalities as a testimony of his work. This thought led to how most artists would only work on the best and finest materials to do their magnum opus and use other materials with lesser qualities to do their lesser work. In contrast God worked on lesser quality materials to create his masterpiece: you.
Another birthday's coming up and I sent a round of invitations to friends from high school, college, and whatever group I feel like inviting out at the moment. I don't subscribe to having a big noisy bash when I started this tradition back in high school. Celebrating my birthday for me is an excuse to call up my friends, demand they drop everything they're doing and eat out with me. It's that time of the year that I look forward to since a lot of them don't celebrate theirs. And that's something I don't understand and probably never will. Each birthday is a milestone that one should be glad to have reached. You just don't let it pass by without gathering your friends to celebrate the occasion. Oh well... Next thing I have to do is decide where to hold each of those celebrations.
Comic Compilation Update: I had a talk with an old high school classmate who's now running a graphic design studio regarding the specs of the planned CD-ROMIX™. I showed him the flash animation comics of 
In my opinion, 
"How do you know exactly when you find your true love?" This was my first question to my friend 
I finally got to attend Sunday service at 
Mark was the one I'm closest to in our group during our high school years in 
Speaking of settling down, one of my friends called and told me she got married yesterday. I'm surprised it didn't surprise me. The guy's a Filipino, around seven years older than her, he lives in Fremont, California and he's quite spontaneous just like my friend. She half expected me to, maybe, get mad at her for going into something really big without informing us. Well, me particularly, since I was one of those few people she confided in times of trouble. She came to me countless times crying her eyes out because she's having some guy problems. Be it an old boyfriend she almost married, a friend of ours who just didn't know how to react to the fact that she was already falling for him or a guy she met on a chat room that was suffocating from their online relationship. How many times did she come to me for advice asking if something was wrong with her, to help her ask God for answers to her questions, or to just share with me some facts she read from the 
"Will I be capable of the same heartless acts as the others were in the time of war?" This question among others are the things I pondered on after watching 
Comic Compilation Update: Someone in the mailing list asked me to consider sticking to the traditional print format since the masses are as yet unfamiliar with my work. The letter sender has a point but I don't think I'm even aiming at the masses with the book (the material and humor of the strips doesn't even reach out to these folks). I replied with the following reasons why I'm leaning more in favor of this new and experimental medium:
I'm watching my all time favorite anime 
Walt Disney's 
They say that you don't really value things until you lose them. This isn't always accurate. I lost a lot of valuable things I made and collected over a period of three years yesterday. All along I thought the PC technician would be careful enough to back up the files in the computers in this shop, all along I thought that my shop assistants would inform the technicians that they need to be careful about erasing the files that might be important, and all along I thought the files themselves would be untouchable since they're located on a different hard drive. I only found about this last night, I was about to work on a new strip I'm going to submit to Philippine News when I looked for the folder that contained the archive of the strips I've worked on. At first I thought that there was a glitch in the networking since it didn't show all the folders contained in the particular drive so I walked over to where the unit was located and checked again. Sure enough about half the folders I created to hold the files collected were all gone! 
Another fanscinating thing about the film is the background of the actress who played the old grandmother and how she was discovered: "
This is a view of the Queen Victoria Building along the corner intersection of Druitt, Park, and George Street in downtown Sydney. I'm a bit sad today since this is the last day of our vacation in Australia. I didn't notice that I finished my surfing the net at past two in the morning. Did you all know that things get wilder in this neighborhood during that time? Yeah! People became really boisterous, couples displayed affection to each other without a care in the world, people came in and out of the 24-hour shops, the hawkers of porn joints are still working hard to get more customers, etc. I didn't want to go sleep when I got to the room, my immediate instinct was to take a peek outside the window and watch the world go by. 
About 60% of the whole thing consisted of old comic books and dinky cartoon merchandise. I got lucky enough to get a Frank Cho collection titled "Eden." Then I caught up with my companions eating at Hungry Jacks at the opposite street. Most of the people out here consisted mainly of Asians: young Japanese, Chinese, and Korean people, and some entire families of Indians. I think it's cool and I figured that that's what makes the whole place so comfy. Plus of course the charm of the Old World that's very evident in this place. 
G'day and cheers from the land down undah! That's right, I'm now writing this piece from Sydney, Australia. I'm still a bit nauseous from that last part of the flight going down here (take my advice, never, ever eat sticky rice that tastes like mushrooms before landing. Not only does it lead to vertigo, the taste also stays in your mouth throughout the day resulting in... Mushroom trauma! *insert Psycho soundtrack here: "ching-ching-ching-ching-ching!" *). We flew in earlier this morning after a brief stopover in Singapore. Right before we boarding the service bus that would take us to the hotel, me and my brother rented SIM cards that would enable us to send text messages and make phonecalls back home. This didn't bade well for our mom who was already at her wit's end in fear that the bus would leave us. We properly apologized to her and told her that this would never happen again. 
I often find myself staring into space whenever fear strikes me. I freeze and myriad thoughts race through my mind trying to make sense of what it is I'm scared of at that moment. I'm scared of being alone right now. A friend left for another country and I keep thinking that it happened again. It always happens whenever I get close to a person, they would just up and leave me alone. I've taken stock of the situation and I figured that's why I'm afraid of getting close to anyone, that early on the defense mechanism kicks out any human candidate that dares to breach the wall. The only one that hasn't disappointed me so far is God. I've been through a lot and I always find him quietly sitting right beside me. He doesn't need to ask what's wrong for I voluntarily pour out everything to him. He knows who I am much more than I do. 
). On top of that my assistant got a really nasty rash all over his body so he didn't report to work and I didn't get to go to our weekly artists' den meeting.
