No Judgment Dinner Club

This is the NJDC. That's me, Jordan, Cam-B, and Cielly. We are the No Judgment Dinner Club. Because we dine with no judgment. Which I still insist should go both ways: there should be no judgment for the guy who stays away from the rice because he's on a strict high protein low carb diet. But apparently, that's not on the agenda.

Last Friday, it was Dampa in Libis again. We were deciding on whether Dampa or someplace in Makati, and Dampa won by luck of the draw. Seriously. Cam-b tore up little pieces of paper, and drew the name of the place.

I must admit, the buttered shrimp this time around is much tastier. Last time we were there, they came out bland and watery. The tempura was amazing as well. Damn, just remembering those make me hungry now.

Also, we go way back. Eating has always been our thing.

That's us, eating out in Binondo.

Coconut News Ngayon 2012

Meet up with my friends from grade school. I was an hour late, and in my defense, I really was working on something very important at the office. Anyway, we had dinner at the Mango Tree in Bonifacio High Street, then I brought them to one of our events, which was happening a couple of steps away, literally.

You might recognize Sanidine from the series of adverts she did for Neozep. You might recognize Daisy from the series of Youtube videos I posted of her throwing up on the street. You might recognize me as the guy who almost starred in Magic Mike, had Channing Tatum not slept his way to the project.

But, can you recognize these kids?

Yeah, that's the three of us back in grade school. We were doing a spoof news report for class. We wrote the jokes ourselves, and starred in our own sketches.

As you can see, there is a bit of a difference in how I look like then and how I look like now.

No wonder one of the girls from our batch didn't know who I was.

The girl on the right is Ian. She was the prettiest girl in school back when we were in 5th grade.

She happen to be at the same restaurant that night.

"OMG, you really should go and say HI to her, Malvar!" Daisy said, sounding like she would pee her pants anytime if I don't oblige.

"YES! You absolutely must!" added Sanidine. Apparently, in the hour that they were waiting for me to arrive, they've caught up with Ian over appetizers.

So, bullied by two lovely ladies in plunging dresses, I approached Ian--who, it bears repeating, was the prettiest girl in school when we were little.

"Hi!" I said. I like using hi as an opening. You can never go wrong with a simple opening.

"Yes?" she said.

"Ian! It's me! Malvar!"

"Oh..." she said. "And where do know each other...?"

And then it hit me. I was never in the same class with this girl. I transferred to our school in FIFTH GRADE, and she was gone after the SIXTH. And we never shared even ONE SUBJECT.

And she was the prettiest girl in school, while I looked like the boy who died of pneumonia and came back thanks to science.

"Uhm." I hate saying uhm. It's a weak closing. "We were... I mean... you were in school and I was there and... never mind."

I ran back inside the restaurant and stuffed my face with Thai food.

"Oh, what did she say? She's so nice, isn't she?" asked Daisy.

"She doesn't know who I was," I mumbled, in between sips of Tom Yum.

"Well, it's been years, you changed a lot..." said Sanidine.

"No," I told them. "She has no idea who I am!"

"That's impossible," said Daisy. "You're..."

"Oh my god," they chorused. Finally, they realized how insignificant I was in grade school.

"It's so embarassing!" I said. "She looked scared. I scared her! I scared Ian. Great job, guys."

We burst out laughing.

Stripped

My friend, the award winning Karl Castro, went to Hong Kong for an art thing, and came back with a gift for me. It's a new iPhone case, the design of which is Nyoman Masriadi's Sudah biasa di telanjangi, which translates to English as either "Thick Skinned" or "Used to Being Stripped".

I suspect the Filipino translation is closer to the intent: "Walang Hiya".

It depicts a very muscular brown man in handcufffs. He has a floral panty down to his ankles. It is the highest priced painting in the region, by the way.

My friend thinks this is the perfect image for me to carry around.

Sleep Fighter

 My brother Joboy is a hyperactive kid who we can barely made to stand still to tie his shoelaces. He is constantly in motion, running around, tinkering with things. Some kids are so restless that watching them sleep brings a moment of bliss to their parents. Kids so hyperactive that you cherish those short moments when they're unconscious and they resemble angels.

He is not one of those kids. What Joboy is, is a sleep fighter.

Every night, as soon as he enters a state of REM, my brother gets into fights. He would twitch, kick savagely, pull at whatever he could grasp, twist. Sleeping beside him has a high risk off getting a karate chop in the neck.

I don't know what wonderfully dark labyrinths he enters when he sleeps, but I am jealous. It's like he's always on adventures, and he's always fighting one monster after another. I wonder how many damsels and villages he has saved in his subconscious.

It sounds like the premise of an awesome comedy-martial arts movie. "Sleep Fighter Kid". Where a puny kid is bullied, until he learns to unlock the ancient fighting techniques passed on to him by his forefathers. So he sleeps to unleash the fighter inside his subconscious. Only when he has lost all consciousness does his body remembers how to fight, to strike without fear, to negotiate with the laws of physics and use his body to devastating results. This would entail humorous scenes of getting into fights, and getting beaten, and then getting knocked down unconscious, only to rise back quickly as a much vicious fighter. The challenge is how to get him to sleep on time.

Which has always been the struggle with Joboy in the first place.

Muay Tired

Trained for Muay Thai this morning with Coach Mel at Extreme. It felt awesome. I'm really into it, and I really am training seriously. Then, I went to the mall to see my friend the National Book Award and Adobo Design Award (among many) winning Karl Castro to buy some wraps and training shorts.

I went home, and fell asleep. Literally, I collapsed on my bed. I woke up in the middle of the night and my whole body is aching. This has got to be the most exhausted I've been in years.

I think I'll limit my training to twice a week, though. I don't think I can survive more than that.

Poem - The Talk

I would enjoy breaking up with you,
Softly focusing on background images
As you sit me down to talk,
Because we need to talk, it's just a talk,
Dreading what I already know you would say,
That it's not me but you,

I would enjoy that,
I would stretch time, and pay more attention
To how we fidget and smile,
with all the fight gone now,
Nothing but the clean up now,
So we talk, you talk, I listen, mostly,


I want that
I want that for us,
Not text messages coming farther in between,
Because I'd rather have the talk, than no talk at all
I earned that, we deserve one

I'd rather we throw things in the air to watch them break
And call each other names we dared use only in bed,
And in a much different, more appreciative context,

Not the growing silence of things we can't say,
And things we've already said and,
Forgetting me at times more frequently.

I would fight for you, and beg you back
Had I known I was breaking your heart.

Life is Unfair

Life is unfair.

God created Francisco Lachowski and Marlon Teixeira to make the rest of humanity feel our flaws, and appreciate His grandeur. Like why He created the Grand Canyon and the stars and The Himalayas and rainbows, so that we can marvel at their beauty and realize that for this design to have been actualized, there must be an Consciousness, a Being, so magnificently intelligent that perfection is attained.

I am short. It's a combination of my parents' bad genes, and the fact that they had me when they were so young, they couldn't afford to feed me the nutrients I need to grow properly.

Why, God, why wasn't I born tall, lanky, handsome, intelligent, and filthy rich? I could definitely be more productive if my energy is being used up by my insecurities. I'm short, dirt poor, of average physical appeal, and of modest intelligence. Why can't I be Francisco Lachowski? It's not fair. I'll trade anything for six more inches vertically. And a boatload of cash. Coz then, I'll have enough going for me that I can afford a decent nose job and some jaw enhancement.

I am so insecure.

Random nothing

Working on a presentation for work even on the weekends, so, to keep my sanity, I took a breather to take this random photo. Haha.

Hi, everyone! How's your Saturday so far?

Not Done at All

There's a snag in my weight loss program. I'm at the point where I'm ready to commit to cutting down my carbs intake, so I can consume more protein for muscle building and repair.

But I have a day job, and the food place where people go to for lunch is a carinderia that doesn't really cater to my needs. It's pretty OK for a carinderia, the food's OK, there's enough choices everyday. But they're mostly fried, or sauced up that they can only be eaten with lots of rice.

So, I'm forced to look for other places to eat. Like this inasal place nearby. Roast chicken is good, it's high in protein. It's also expensive to keep eating roast chicken for lunch. The other options for lunch are fast food (I work near Morato), which would hurt my budget and my diet plans WORSE.

Men's Health and other fitness experts recommend the same thing: For anyone dedicated enough to commit to a strict high protein low carbs diet, LEARN TO COOK.

My friend Neil cooks his own food, and that's why he looks like the Baby Hulk (which sounds like an amazing idea for a Marvel franchise). He steams chicken breasts everyday, seasoned with pepper and salt, and eaten with steamed camote (sweet potatoes).

Confession time. I know I may come off as perfect, and what with me being able to do basically everything, but I am not perfect. I can't cook.

Technically, I can learn to cook. There was a time when I saw myself experimenting in the kitchen, and by that, I don't mean sexually, with a stranger on the kitchen floor, but actually whipping up a dish.

But, really. I have a day job, I go to the gym, I'm working on two novels simultaneously, and I do my own laundry. I can't, by any sane amount of reason, squeeze in an extra hour in my life to prepare my own food. I can't invest in a steamer, do weekly grocery shopping for chicken breasts and fish fillet, wake an extra hour early (or stay an extra hour late) to prepare my food for the next day. That's where I'll draw the line. I can't do that, I won't do that, I refuse to prepare my own food.

Which sucks. So I'm stuck with eating what's easily bought. Ugh. I hate this.

Rereading Gatsby

It may not be apparent, but I used to read beyond my level. I blame it on the SRA system of segregating reading levels by color, and growing up in a household run by war veterans. I consumed and enjoyed stories for their telling, and much less for what was being told.

I read "The Pilgrim's Progress" in fifth grade, and did not process it as a Christian allegory. I thought it was a really dark Alice in Wonderland rip-off. I read the entire Lord of the Rings series (including the hobbit) in sixth grade, and thus, the politics and power play were lost on me, zipping over my head as I read distracted by all the awesome swordfights and dwarves and dragons.

Thus, a few weeks ago, as I was deciding on which of my books to give away and which ones to keep, I came across my copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I remember reading it in high school as one of those books that I would read in between the books I had to read. I knew it was an old favorite of mine, and that for a while, I fancied myself the titular character, but I could not exactly remember how or why. So, I decided to reread it.

Rereading a book years after one has encountered it for the first time is romantic in its own. Much like Jay Gatsby reintroducing himself to Daisy Buchanan, the act of opening the book to its first page is ripe with tension: would I love it as much as I did the first time, or would something have changed?

Rereading an old favorite after you've grown some years is like reading it for the first time. You've acquired new learnings since then, you've read other stories, you've seen more of the world than before. As I reread Gatsby, I realized I was discovering layers of meanings in the story that I have previously missed. I could relate to Gatsby more, I could understand where he was coming from. I was getting so much more from reading it the second time around.

I love The Great Gatsby. Jay Gatsby is easiest one of my favorite literary heroes. He's a social climbing romantic who had everything but the girl. It adds intrigue to his character that he acquired his wealth after being "the companion" of a wealthy old man who lived in a yacht, and that he holds court in swank restaurants with money lenders of dubious character. Of all his swag and glam, Jay Gatsby is a little boy in the presence of Daisy, the woman that has taken possession of his heart.

Thus, we fall in love with our old loves, in our reintroduction, in our replayed enchantment, because we see with eyes that have seen the world, and discover all new ways to appreciate the beauty that has captivated us in our naivete.

Perhaps, rereading books and revisiting old loves also have a common disadvantage: doing either doesn't change the ending. But what's so wrong with that? Sometimes, we reread stories knowing how they'll end-- in heartbreak, in objects thrown in the air to shatter against walls, in gunfights and gore. But that doesn't make rereading them less enjoyable. In fact, it is in this bittersweet knowledge that makes the experience richer, fuller.  Because we know it wouldn't end happily ever after, we turn each page delicately, savoring the irony of each happy paragraph, each hopeful scene, each time the story would seem to go on a high note, knowing it would all eventually crash.

That's why we couldn't stop opening that closed book, could we?

SMART: LIVE MORE presents KAMIKAZEE live at the DAGUPAN BANGUS FESTIVAL

One of the perks of my job is GETTING THE BEST SEAT IN THE HOUSE!

Check it out. It's KAMIKAZEE performing during one of our recent events, SMART: LIVE MORE at the BANGUS FESTIVAL in DAGUPAN!

Caged

It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was in a cage with eight other boys. It wasn't how I usually spend my Saturday afternoons. I fancy myself a member of the culturati, wandering and wondering alone, imagining myself a Parisian, with my Bohemian sensitivity to what is art and its negation, as I haunt cafes with my Penguin Modern Classic paperback, a stylish scarf in my bag for the probability of an afternoon drizzle.

But there I was, barefoot and dripping sweat, pushing my weight against Lyle. The look in his eyes told me I should be wary of Lyle. He looked like he could break my neck  if provoked, and would Instagram it afterwards.

So, how did I end up signing for this? Oh, yeah. Steve Patrick.

I met Steve Patrick in one of our events. He was our host for a series of shows in Dagupan. He speaks in a deep bass that sounds like it belong to a much older, more experienced gentleman. When I close my eyes listening to him do the voice overs, I could picture him with a full grown moustache, twirled at the edges, like Daniel Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood", except much younger. Together with his towering height of six feet, Steve Patrick's presence isn't one of subtle grace. He is a tank, and I am afraid of him.

He is also into mixed martial arts.

Friday afternoon, I got a text message from Trish. Trish works in Extreme, one of the three gyms that I go to. How I ended up going to three different gyms is another story altogether. Trish would send me messages about Extreme's promos. This week, they were holding a special "MMA BOOTCAMP", and the first session is FREE TO TRY. I immediately signed-up.

Come on. It was a free chance to get pounded on my sweaty strangers inside a cage. Can you blame me?

The Bootcamp was conducted by Coach Mel. He had us do drills to warm up. What accounts as "warm up" for Coach Mel was a series of exercises that almost killed me. It was a very humbling experience, and as The Siege Malvar, humbling experiences come very few and far between.

My favorite was The Bear Crawl. Basically, we crawled around the cage like a bear. If that sounds like fun, or easy, you should try it. It engages the core, the upper, and the lower body. It's a walk in the park. For bears. But as someone who makes a living writing flyers to sell dishwashing liquid, it was pretty challenging. He made us do several sets of Burpees, and Squat Jumps, and Wheelbarrows (to strenghten the wrist).

"Now for the first lesson," he began.

I was like, "YOU MEAN WE HAVEN'T STARTED YET?" Which was promptly ignored, considering what credibility I had, squeking like a mouse on the floor, barely able to hold myself up.

That afternoon, I learned how to shoot. Which is an attack move in wrestling. I also learned how to sprawl. A defensive move to avoid your opponent from grabbing your legs. I also learned how to get out of an underhook.

Before the session ended, he had us matched against each other. Fighter to get the opponent in a double underhook--or a bear hug-- for three seconds win.

I lost to Lyle. On hindsight, I should have fought harder. I faced him expecting to lose. It was my first time, and he had been training. I believed I would lose, and I did. But what if I didn't? What if I believed, from the core of my black heart, that I stood a chance? That if I blocked out all my insecurities, and my consciousness of people watching, that I really stood a chance?

I want to find out. I want to know just how hard I can fight. I want to experience not just the thrill of fighting, but of winning. I want to be good at it. Maybe not good enough to compete, or to save my life when it comes to an actual street fight. But I want to win a fight. Just one, little skirmish, I want to win a fight for a change.

So I'm coming back next week. I'll train again. I'll do what Coach Mel will tell me to do, and  I will believe that I can do it. Because I want to win. I want to know how it feels like to win.

Standing next to Steve Patrick is not fair.

Regular Dose of Siege Malvar

So yeah, im self absorbed, narcissistic, and i dont play well with others.

Can you blame me?

DJ Elmer Dado at the SMART Live More party during the Dagupan Bangus Festival 2012

One of the perks of my job is seeing amazing acts like thr internationally renowned DJ Elmer Dado performing live.

Talking Myself Out of Hunger

I know hunger is a serious world issue, and it's somehow a travesty that people like me submit ourselves to it as a way of attaining a superficial goal such as having prominent abdominal muscles, but this is my reality, and you know what, you can take your issues to Twitter for all I care.

Anyway, I'm being extra hard on myself by cutting down my food intake. Been avoiding rice altogether, along with carbs like bread and pasta.

So now I'm starving. I'm really starving. I can't keep my thoughts away from eating, from devouring, from going on an all consuming orgy where I stuff food down my face, and I wallow in tastes and textures dancing wonderful ballet in my mouth.

My boss Icel, who is just couple of pounds shy from her ideal weight after going on a Cohen diet, said talking about hunger pangs work. When you talk to someone about your hunger pangs, you release the stress somehow, and you deal with fasting easier. So that's what I'm doing now. I'm blogging away this feeling of hunger.

Hunger is a social construct. We anticipate the intake of food because society told us we need to eat three square meals. Our instincts tell us otherwise: that we eat because we're hungry. And hunger is a sensation created in the brain when various organs tell the nerves that they need to be nourished.

Also, for ages, fasting has been used by ascetics to get closer to God. There's something about the brain being deprived of nourishment that apparently opens itself to God, and other voices. So, in a way, when I skip lunch, I sort of clock it in as practicing my religion.

Ugh. But I'm really cranky right now. I think my hormones are working overtime to compensate for the lack of pleasure that I usually associate with the consumption of a full meal.

Hey, it does help! Ranting about my hunger pain somehow alleviated it. Comfort in imagined sympathy. Anyway, that's it for now, I need to go back to work. Kaya ko to.

BRING ME, The TV Series

SPEC SCRIPT:

Based on the intensely popular game "Bring Me" comes the most talked about reality-based TV competition...

BRING ME!

One object. Millions competing. ONE PREMIUM ITEM TO DIE FOR!

BRING ME!

From the damaged imagination of creative genius Siege Malvar comes the ultimate crossover gameshow that will get everyone running.

BRING ME!

Witness the drama of real people doing everything it takes to win The Grand Prize: A Premium Item to Die For!

Every week is a new challenge as the Game Master asks for a unique object that will send contestants on a quest to find it.

Watch the Pilot Episode as the coveted object is... "Bring Me... an Anthropology Graduate from UP with a Steady Income!"

WATCH the drama unfolds as people try to find this mystical creature!

"Parang wala. Gusto ko na mag-give up!" cries one contestant. "It's impossible! Walang anthropology graduate from UP ang nagkaroon ng matinong trabaho. EVER!"

Stay tuned as contestants look for... "A high resolution photo of Kimpoy Feliciano showing how he really looks like" and "The Girl Who Used the Cross as a Dancing Pole".

It's everyone's favorite and most hated game...

BRING ME!