How music transcends the whole nine yards

The other day, a friend was talking about how she thinks mediocrity transcends language barriers as she recalls having watched an awful musical at Stadthalle. It was a version of the "Phantom of the Opera" in German, which extremely disappointed her and she felt like she was robbed of her EUR 60. Well, for one, Vienna is home to a number of opera houses so I can't blame her for the major letdown.

Anyway, moving on...I was wandering through a 3-meter long Bulletin Board in the university full of posts, from Spanish tutorials to flats for rent, when I came across a poster that caught my attention because of the line that says "Latin, African, Asian". Then I realized that it's a special event at a Sunday Church service. No biggie, I wrote down the details of the event on my calendar and went to their Sunday service.

Road to the Kephas Church...

There I realized how (gospel) music transcends language barriers. It's amusing and amazing at the same time. The worship team was a set of mostly LatAms and the praise and worship songs were all sung in Spanish. I recognized the melody of the first song to be that of "Take It All" by Hillsong. The other song was unfamiliar. But towards the end of the song, with the repeating lyrics "Con mi fe te exaltare, con mi amor te exaltare, con mi ser te exaltare", I found myself singing as well (of course they had the lyrics projected on the screen). The thing with Gospel songs, it’s easy to get a hold of the tune not only because they’re catchy, but also because of the fact that they keep singing the lyrics of a song, most often the chorus, over and over.

The song is actually "Me Viniste a Rescatar" (English title: Came to my Rescue) by Hillsong.

Talking about how music transcends language barriers, I remember being glued to that performance of Siyaya, an African street-performing group. Listening and watching them on YouTube while reminiscing that moment still gives me goose bumps every time. Imagine me standing on the streets of Cambridge with other engrossed tourists watching these guys perform real awesome music (in an African language). It’s a totally different experience to actually see them perform live! Their music exudes free spirit and vivacity. They are phenomenal, I must say.

Here's a Youtube clip of the group performing at the exact same spot where we saw them last year in Cambridge. This was in 2010.

Music transcends anxiety. I remember back in college, it was my final exam in swimming and it was my first class that day. I was sooooo nervous (you can’t imagine how nervous!!) about the treading part of the exam because I wasn’t able to do it properly during our final practice, so much so that if that was the actual exam, I would have failed. So what I did was I set my mp3 player on loop, playing “Meet With Me”, a gospel song, from when I left my dorm until before I plunged into the pool for the “final judgement”. And I guess the music was a hell lotta help because I passed!

Most of the time, music transcends my indolence. Music is often the key to perk me up, to motivate and to inspire me. It’s my energy bar. Whenever I feel like couch potato-ing (for the second day in a row) at home, I know it’s time to play my perky playlist to get me moving. Even if it’s just tidying my room as long as I’m being productive. Don’t get me wrong, I love couch potato-ing! Who doesn’t?!? It’s heaven! But if I know that I’ve been doing it long enough that I can already feel it’s getting harder to get up on an heavy ass (literally), then that’s already dreadful

Music transcends many other things – fear, conflict, and barriers, be it age, sex, culture or language. And music influences people either negatively or positively. But I’d like to believe that it’s positive for most people, just as how music influences my way of life – living life to the fullest.

They always remind me of you

Sabi nga ni pareng Charles Dickens, "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times".

And these things will always remind me of my MS thesis days, or haunt me if they must.

Ang all-access sa institute at labs 24/7...

...to spend sleepless nights in the cozy lounge of the institute...

...doing more and more experiments (or maybe just camwhoring ;)) in the middle of the night...

Ang pagmamatakaw...

...and all-day subway dahil yun lang ang pinakamalapit sa uni...

At hindi matitinag ang matibay naming samahan ni Nescafe Ice...

It was a painfully long journey. So painful that I don't even have the energy to celebrate my triumph. But I'm just glad it's all over.

That's it!

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I don't say goodbye

Animation: Ryan Woodward

Song: The World Spins Madly On (The Weepies)

I let the day go by

I always say goodbye

I watch the stars from my window sill

The whole world is moving

and I'm standing still

What drives me to social pariah-ness

This.

This.

These crystals are driving me mad! Not that I've already done a lot. In fact, I'm still 14,500 words short of my write-up 21 days to the deadline. Seems like I've still got a lot of time in my hands. Sure. Problem is, I often find myself spacing out in the middle of attempts to try to figure out how to interpret my ridiculously-looking, all messed up results. And I mean that literally...

like THIS!!! ---------------------->

To be honest, I've spent more time thinking and worrying about what to do than actually doing something. So now instead of merely staring at my monitor, I choose to just write a dorky blogpost.

I'm sometimes socially awkward, alright. But please don't turn me into a total social pariah, like most serious science people are. Harhar. I just can't wait for all these to be over and done with and me to move forward already.

Moving on...or just out?

After my landlord broke the news that he's shooing me out of the house, I've been worrying about finding a place to stay for next month, which is also my last month here in the land of Her Royal Highness. My contract actually ended last June, so in principle he had already been considerate enough to let me stay until this month. But why?? Well he said because new students will start to flood over the city in September, he naturally would want to rent out the rooms to people who will potentially stay for at least a year. Fair enough, business mogul.

I've been asking some friends (and some random people, for what it's worth) about it for a while now and finally I'm seeing some light at the end of the tunnel! I'm not quite there yet, but I'm getting there, fingers crossed. A good friend, Kayo, brought some good news today! It's great coz the last thing I want to worry about is having no place to stay a week before my dissertation deadline. That would be madness. So anyway, Kayo said that her friend's place has a guest room where I can stay for a month. And what's better news is that I could possibly even stay for free! Universe, pretty please let it be...

Somehow, I'll miss my room when I move out...a kind of moving on.

End it the Greek way

It was a memorable journey with the gang and I've grown to love the happy-go lucky Cappie as the show progressed. But Rusty (aka Spitter), the resident polymer science geek, has been (and still is) my favorite since the pilot ep. And I'm so glad that he and Ashley ended up together. Ash had Spitter at "I don't date roommates". Yay.

It ended with a blast and you wouldn't really expect it to be full of so much emotions, making you realize that it's not just another college-themed series, but a story about relationships, family, and meaningful friendships. The finale was a total tearjerker! Or maybe I have been so attached to it that I just got carried away. Not to mention, the finale OST was perfect.

• Jack's Mannequin - "Spinning"
• William Fitzsimmons - "After Afterall"
• The Weepies - "Living In Twilight"
• The Courteeners - "Take Over The World"
• Andrew Belle - "My Oldest Friend"
• Youth Group - "Forever Young"

Plus, I discovered my newest duo to love: The Weepies!

Yesterday when you were young
Everything you needed done was done for you
Now you do it on your own
But you find you're all alone, what can you do?

You and me walk on, walk on, walk on
'Cause you can't go back now

Some things are just meant to end....like Greek. But life goes on.

TheLazySong-inspired

Ironically, the funky tune that says "...today I don't feel like doing anything *whistle whistle*..." makes me wanna do otherwise.

. :

Ergo, I was pepped up by this song to do a bit of tidying up in my topsy-turvy room. :)

From time to time, my maliit na room would look something like this - a complete disaster, à la Payatas.

I just need to open up my curtains, see the light (by light, I don't necessarily mean the bright shining sun in England...if you know what I mean), and listen to the right song to keep me from lazing around. After-cleaning pics next time. ;)

The good, the bad, and the ugly

How did I end up having two notebooks and one monitor??? Thanks to my good friend, Alex, who wanted to save a summer's worth of rent. Because he had to spend the summer back home in Lithuania, I was kind enough to adopt some of his stuff and in return I held his monitor, speakers, and woofers hostage. Bad-ass, huh? ;)

The other notebook was from my thesis adviser. Because I needed a software that doesn't function well in my vista-operated notebook, he didn't want me to go through all the trouble of installing a virtual xp machine on my notebook. The quickest way he could think of was to lend me a notebook, which was not bad at all.

I now label my three screens as the "good" (entertainment portal), the "bad" (all other web-related stuff), and the "ugly" (dorky matters). Now I get to multi-task even more! Wicked, init?!

Magda-drive ako hanggang...

…Paris! Sabi yan ni Ate Budz oder? :)

I never would have thought that I’d finally pass my driving exam on my second take, aber zum Glück habe ich es ja geschafft! Woohoo! Real luck! I’ve only done 6 hours of driving lessons before my first exam last April and 4 hours before my second exam last June. I haven’t practised driving since September last year and I’ve only been driving since January of last year, so I wasn’t positive about it. Luckily, the police examiner was so nice to us two girls who took the exam. (You bet, yes, it was our charm!) No seriously, they were all nice — my teacher, the examiner, and the other girl whom I did the driving exam with. They sort of worked together to let me pass the exam. To my dearest future riders, don’t freak out, though. I am not that bad in driving. It’s just the loads of street signs in Vienna that I unconsciously ignore sometimes (well yeah, that’s quite dangerous, eh?), which is the most important part of the driving exam. I failed my first one because I entered a one-way street from the opposite side. I mean, I know the signs, but for some reason I just don’t notice them sometimes. Also because the examiner at that time asked me to turn right in an apparently one-way street going to my left. Busted.

My Q&As were about the car tires.

Q: How would I know if it is a summer or a winter tire?

A: A winter tire would have the letters M/S on the tire suface.

Q: How would I know if I need to change the tire?

A: If it has deep cuts or if the tire depth is less than 1.6mm and 4.0mm in summer and in winter, respectively. Measure the tire depth with the tire depth gauge or check the tire depth indicator.

Q: What risk should I be careful of when there is road flooding? What should I do in this situation?

A: Aquaplaning. Hold on tightly to the stirring wheel. DO NOT BREAK!

Some mistakes during the actual 30-minute driving exam:

- watch out when driving in narrow streets with bicycle lanes

- failure to do oscillating glances in one of the intersections with a priority sign

- use of clutch

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The next day, we went to Therme Wien for R&R and to test my driving skills. Here’s Mom riding shotgun, with Wynn, Kuya Carlo, and baby CW in the backseat of Dad’s car. (Photo courtesy of Wynn)

Namatayan ako ng makina mga tatlong beses (yikes, fail) at naligaw konti dahil nag-inarte si TomTom Nav pero still…we survived!

Song of the moment: Wide Open Spaces - by Dixie Chicks

Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed

[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes

As her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leaving my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know

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I first heard this song back in college (final year), basically the same time when I first discovered Dixie Chicks. Whenever I play my Dixie Chicks playlist, it always brings me back to my thesis days. Their songs kind of inspired me and made me keep going, along with the Japanese dramas (‘Orange Days’ and ‘Honey and Clover’, among others) that I was watching in between experiment and thesis writing days.

I haven’t internalized the lyrics of this song until now…

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces

Growing up with my grandparents, I felt like I have always been sheltered from the “cruel” world. I remember how my grandma wouldn’t let us go out most of the time when we were kids because she’s so scared that we’d bruise our knees, so I’m almost always just playing at home with my brother (which was a good thing in a way). I even remember playing guns with my brother and later on, WWE and Mortal Kombat on playstation. And when I started high school, that’s when I stopped playing (and being a child), I guess. I’ve grown to be that nice, boring person until I finish college. Now I realize that I regret the fact that I haven’t done so much when I was an undergraduate. I was all focused on my academics (not really focused, but that was all that I was worrying about). I haven’t even gotten myself into any shenanigan of any sort.

After the board exam, I decided to move to Europe. It was a big leap and I’ve passed up a couple of job opportunities because of this. But moving with my family turned out to be good…for a while. But then I wasn’t growing as a person and everything was always the same and felt like being inside a box with boundaries. I believe that the world should be borderless in all aspects. So after a year, I was convinced to take the slot at a university in England, one of my spontaneities where I didn’t know a thing about the place and didn’t even had an accommodation prior to my arrival. Now I know that it’s a crappy place up here, but as a friend said, it’s not about the shittiness of this place but how you make the most of your stay. We should not dwell on its flaws. Instead, we should use every opportunity to meet and learn from people, which I did and am still doing. The good thing about this place, especially the university, is its being multicultural. The university prides itself in having students from over 100 countries, mainly because of its Peace Studies programme. You’ll occasionally meet people from Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, America, Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, China, S. Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines, even people from Nepal and Ethiopia (I’ve never met anyone from these countries before), and a looot more!

If it’s a good thing or not in general, I don’t really know, but I always want/need new faces and a new environment every time. You really learn a lot from people and places. I can’t say I’m a changed person, maybe a slightly improved one.

Fish and chips and by the sea

June 15, 2011

Because we’ve got nothing better to do, we went on a 9-hour long road trip along the British East Coast (North Sea, Yorkshire and the Humber), stopping by four small towns — Whitby, Scarborough, Filey, and Bridlington — to eat, take pictures, and just get a breath of fresh (sea)air.

First stop: Whitby. You can’t say you’ve been to the UK if you’ve never tried Fish and Chips! Typically, a Briton would argue that “chips” is not “French fries”. It IS chips. Period. There’s even racism in food! Well, “chips” are technically thicker strips of French fries. They also have straw fries, the less popular one, which are thinner strips of French fries. Although this wasn’t my first Fish and Chips, I figured it was still worth taking a picture. This is me impatiently waiting for my cod and chips with mushy peas at Quayside, the top Fish and Chips shop in Yorkshire in 2008. And when our plates arrived, whoah were they massive! But gluttons that we are, we managed to finish them all. No sweat.

The main attraction in Whitby is the Whitby Abbey in ruins. An abbey, by definition, is a Catholic monastery led by an Abbot or an Abbess. Whitby, including this abbey, is said to have inspired Bram Stoker in writing Dracula.

More pictures at the port of Whitby, showing one of the two lighthouses of Whitby’s twin piers.

An exhausting walk to the top of the lighthouse, scaring ourselves to death.

And who rule the (seashore) world?? Seagulls! They’re everywhere — from Whitby to second stop: Scarborough.

At Scarborough and third stop: Filey.

Fourth and final stop: at a closed fair in Bridlington.

Lucky for us, it was not a bad day (like it always is in England). It was alright, nice and sunny, but not too warm. If you fancy the seaside, these places would be awesome to go to, especially during a proper summer. Not as lovely as the beaches back home, though.

Donauinselfest 2011

Literally the Danube Island Festival, it is Vienna’s annual summer (music) festival. I’ve never been to this event before so I decided to just take a peek last Saturday. It wasn’t that heaving (at least not as I expected it to be) probably because it was still too early and the weather wasn’t that good.

There were a lot of activities for families and for kids like wall climbing and beach volleyball, among other things. Definitely loads of food stalls AND beer stalls couldn’t be missed. Some of the popular foods in Austrian fairs and festivals are Wurst (here, Grillwurst or sausage BBQ) and Langos, a deep fried flat bread made of a dough with flour, yeast, salt, and water (more like a massive flat doughnut).

Feeling pathetic being by myself, I treated myself to a pint of Ottakringer and spent the rest of the time watching a game at ÖBB’s (Austria’s national train company) booth. I would have joined the game because the price is a summer train ticket throughout Austria all summer long!! But before you can actually play the game, you have to play the air guitar first for a good 30 seconds or so. For me to do that, I’d need to take 3 pints, I guess. :) So anyway, the game’s quite straightforward. You just need to NOT answer any question with a “yes” or a “no” within 1 minute of the host’s questioning. Maybe it’s harder than it sounds because not many people won the game.

I enjoyed it, but it could have been better if I weren’t on my own. LOL, lesson learned re festivals.

Singing big

I haven’t been to the choir since Manami left and that was 3 weeks ago. I’m kind of missing it. Since joining the choir November of last year, we’ve been attending practices almost every week and sang at their Christmas concert two weeks after joining the choir. The choir is called the Jubilee Gospel Choir, which is organized by a Christian church but is basically a community choir in Bradford. This is a picture of us singing at last year’s Christmas concert. It was a black/red-themed concert, so we had to wear something black with a splash of red.

Here’s Maria, our lovely choir coach and conductor from Liverpool. :)

And this is me, passionately singing a song. :)

Imagine how we had to learn and memorize the lyrics of more than 10 songs in two weeks, considering that the choir was the least of my priorities back then since it was just a form of relaxation for us to channel academic stress into something productive. Obviously, we weren’t able to learn all the songs so we just hummed, smiled, and pretended we were singing in some parts. :) That’s one good thing about singing in a choir, moreso in a laid-back one like our choir. Mostly it’s just about having fun singing in a group. At 9-ish in the evening, we always walk home with big smiles on our faces after the practice.

Travel Light

This is the third time I’m flying home since I came to Britain. If not for my cheapskate-ness, I would have travelled more comfortably every time. Hell I always had to take the coach (7-hour long drive!) to London Gatwick airport. Considering that it only takes me, what, 2 hours from London to Vienna. I just never get to find flights at a reasonable price from Leeds-Bradford airport to Vienna. And whenever I do, it’d be a 14-hour long flight with 2 stopovers. Sick!

Watching “Up in the Air” a few days ago did me good. George Clooney’s character in the movie referred to Asians as light and efficient packers (though this might not be true for most Pinoys). Ergo, I’m out to prove him damn right. It wasn’t easy. I woke up 5-ish this morning to pack up all the things that I thought I could fit into my backpack. Make no mistake, they didn’t fit alright. It was the “survival of the fittest” as I start to take the only pair of jeans I wanted to bring, my shoulder pouch, my flip-flops, and my humongous wallet out of the bag. Ok so who survived? Basically my laptop, chargers, lunch box (with grapes!!), lecture notes, and a few items of clothing did survive. Then off I went to the coach station.

Today’s itinerary:

7:10 – 12:25 (Bradford to London Victoria, coach)

13:00 – 14:25 (London Victoria to London Gatwick, coach)

16:55 (London Gatwick to Vienna, plane)

I’m always right on schedule, but there were 2 things I failed to anticipate this time: the heavy downpour that started an hour before we even reach Victoria and the traffic jam (it’s either due to the rain or it’s just normal London city traffic). We were 30 minutes off schedule and I almost missed my coach to the airport. I got on the coach barely 2 minutes before 13:00. Not bad. The best thing was that I didn’t need to check-in any luggage and I’ve already printed out my boarding pass in advance. And the coolest thing in airports now is that you just need to scan the barcode of the boarding pass to get in to the departure area. No more queue hassles.

My ideal “travel light” would be me travelling with just my phone and Visa card. :p

Taste of Cambridge

June 1-2, 2011

Definitely a long day’s walk. I wonder why we didn’t bother to rent bikes in this city of bikes.

Cambridge, being a student city, has that youthful and peaceful atmosphere. But it took me overnight to appreciate Cambridge. It was a warm, sunny Thursday, enough reason for the city centre to be quite packed. First attraction of the day was a group of African street performers — a taste of Africa in England.

Here’s Manami buying the CD. :) Their live performance made us buy their album for 10 quid (the cheapskate that I am, I normally wouldn’t spend my 10 quid for a thing like that). They’re street performers, but apparently they have an album! They just looked sooooo genuinely happy with all the singing, dancing, and instrument playing. Even if I didn’t understand what their songs were all about, watching them made me wanna do something meaningful in my life, like make a difference, contribute to world peace or just be a better person.

Ruta then showed us the pub where, according to some legend, Watson and Crick discovered (or announced their discovery of) the form of the DNA. This is the The Eagle pub. Ah, the British drinking disease — definitely contagious!

As pseudo-students of Peace Studies doing the peace sign at the Fort St. George pub near Midsummer Common park, having drinks with Ruta’s friends.

The streets in the city centre are typical narrow, pedestrians/cyclists-only zone European streets. They look like the streets in York. Cambridge is a small city, but it has quite a number of large green areas/parks. From our hostel to the pub, we passed by 4 relatively massive parks. And under the sole dried out tree at a park called Jesus Green we had our picnic lunch. Cambridge is also basically all about churches and colleges of the University of Cambridge. The upper right photo is the Great Court of Trinity College, considered the most aristocratic of all the Cambridge colleges. The lower right photo shows the back view of St. John’s College, where some of the Harry Potter scenes were filmed. I don’t really watch HP, but oh well. The building’s all engulfed in greens. The colleges were closed for visitors on this day because of exams.

To call it a day (and the whole trip to Cambridge as well) barely 2 hours before my train trip back to Braddie, we went punting on the River Cam (Thus, the name CAMbridge). Here you can see our gorgeous punter, Sam. :p This reminded me of the gondola rides in Venice. It was just a 45-hour ride to see some of the colleges. We saw some random students having drinks and fun after exams. :) I can imagine how AWESOME and uber COOL it is to be studying at Cambridge Uni! How I wish I were a smart ass and/or filthy rich!

Here’s Manami on the punt with King’s College on the background, Noris and Ruta (the happy couple) on the punt, me with the always-smiling Manami by the River Cam, me with goofing-around Ruta by the River Cam, and Ruta with King’s College on the background.

The most convenient thing ever on this trip was using my phone’s crappy camera. I didn’t bother bringing my humongous dslr. It’s all about the fun, anyway.

After this trip, I would absolutely have to work my ass off both at uni and at work! But Manami chose to spend her last days in England with me and Ruta, so it’s all worth it. “So cuuuute” (Manami Goto, 2011). I will definitely miss my travel buddy, Manami!

Sadyang gar'ne pag Batangenya

Mojito's Tale

27 May 2011

I’ll do the storytelling next time ;)

Mahlzeit! Having brunch, devouring this arroz caldo from Tita Wendy straight from Wales! Manami spent the weekend at Marie’s place in Wales. As I was supposed to work on a Sunday, I couldn’t make it. So sweet of Tita Wendy to send me some lovin. I miss their suppah lovin family. I definitely have to go there before I leave. (Taken with Instagram at Home @ braddie)

Loooooong day. Felt great doing a lot, though. Shitty weather (tired of sayin this, but still), you can’t just get me on lockdown, you know. It’s not like it’s really productive, but at least I didn’t spend the day just staying in my room. (Taken with instagram)