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a few good pictures to remember 2024 by (and some notes from susan sontag)

the techbillionaires have officially ruined instagram format, and i have no idea where to dump the pictures i keep taking, so maybe this blog will serve as a dumpsite of sorts. taking pictures has been a hobby since college, when i was first gifted with my own digicam (i remeber it's a sony cybershot) and soon enough, i was firing shots from film cameras as well (i stopped because film rolls are now priced at P600 upwards per roll). imagine my delight when i was able to get my hands on susan sontag's on photography (thanks, lunti!)--essays about a hobby i never thought twice about. here are some favorite passages from sontag's essays:

"People robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad (p. 10)."

"A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence (p. 16)."

"But the aestheticizing tendency of photography is such that the medium which conveys distress ends by neutralizing it. Cameras miniaturize experience, transform history into spectacle. As much as they create sympathy, photographs cut sympathy, distance the emotions. Photography's realism creates a confusion about the real which is (in the long run) analgesic morally as well as (both in the long run and in the short run) sensorially stimulating. Hence, it clears our eyes. This is the fresh vision everyone has been talking about (p. 110)."

and probably my most favorite:

"It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph--only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones (p. 141)."

sontag's essays helped me put into perspective a mundane hobby i've carried on for more than a decade. i dream of a house filled with framed pictures on display--family portraits, pictures of pets (alive or not), or even objects that are no longer in place. my office cubicle is decorated with pictures i have taken of places and people i want to remember. when sontag wrote early on in the book, "to collect photographs is to collect the world"--perhaps this old hobby is as simple as that.

#blog #photography #susan sontag #2024 #tinyapartments #memory keeping

of dead dogs and dignity

who knew that grief would be the reason i am filling in this blog again.

on april 16 of this year, i had to euthanize the first dog i ever had. he lived for nine years (i had been begging him--on nights that i still got to sleep beside him--to make it past ten). the days that followed his death were a blur--i kept on asking myself why i am so affected by the death of a dog. it's just a dog, why am i so sad? i'd ask lunti on nights that i would randomly burst into tears.

i got kwago in 2016. he was my first pet at twenty-five. my family has never been big on pets. my brother brought home a tortoise once, but my mother believed it only brought bad luck. she was relieved to find out one day that it had escaped and would never come back. kwago is a male cross between a shih tzu and a boston terrier. i got him from an old high school friend. i paid for his initial shots, and took him home one october afternoon. he was my quarter-life gift to myself, a sort of if-not-now-it's-going-to-be-never kind of decision.

i had always dreamed of owning a dog. when i was much younger, i had a book about dog breeds and their personalities, which i read almost every month. kwago was never one of the top choices. i wanted a cocker spaniel or a golden retriever (a girl can dream). i had devoured a good amount of dog training videos in preparation for kwago's arrival, but nothing prepared me for a young shit-eater. i had succesfully taught him how to sit, how to shake paws (which my mother complimented: ang galing mo pa lang teacher). but it was the shit-eating that took the longest to unlearn.

i took kwago in during the last year of my thesis/study leave in the university, and by that time, my mother still worked a full-time job. kwago developed anxiety from being left alone and escalated into mange. in 2017, my mother gifted me with a female black labrador. we fetched her in bataan from a family of labrador breeders. kasper's company slowly healed kwago, but we would soon discover that kasper had worse anxiety than kwago ever did (perhaps a story for a different time).

kwago was a spunky dog. he barked at cats, birds, and small toddlers and rarely ever cried. he ran as if he was competing in an agility show--he knew how to jump across humps, slopes, and uneven patches of roads. he slept on my bed not because he wanted my smell or wanted to be near me but simply because he wanted the bed. once, he found a litter of kittens in our plant box and killed off one because he played with it. he would do the same to birds that he was able to catch. my mother once found him trying to play with a baby snake that got lost in our kitchen. kwago behaved like he was five times his size. the only thing that kwago had little courage for were thunder and firecrackers.

my mother retired during the pandemic, and it was probably the happiest times of kwago's and kasper's lives--to have us both at home all the time. when i went back to the university for face-to-face set up, they became my mother's dogs as much as mine. it was my mother who rushed him to the vet in morning of april 16 because he had been weak and experiencing seizures since early that morning. we had been treating him for ehrlichiosis since september last year, and while he took a turn for the worse in february, we both thought he was on his way to a full recovery. i dropped everything that day, and lunti volunteered to drive me home. we went straight to the vet, and i saw kwago drooling into his oxygen mask. i knew that i had to make a difficult decision that day. what tripled the devastation was that, when lunti and i went home to my mother for lunch, she thought kwago would still be able to come home and fully recover. i had to break it to her that it would be impossible for kwago to come home. i kept it together as my mother broke down in my arms.

that afternoon, i went back to the vet to bid kwago goodbye. i thanked him for the nine years that he had made both me and my mother happy and for fighting as much and as long as he did to stay with us. i told him that he will never be forgotten, that i have zero regrets in taking him in and having him as our first dog. i was prepared to change my mind and retract my decision should i see any significant changes in his state and disposition, but when i saw him quiet and barely breathing on the surgery table, i knew i had to let him go. it was one of the hardest decisions i had to make in my three decades of living.

i think about kwago and how diginified of a dog he was. he most often approached people he did not know as if to say: we should be friends. he was never shy about expressing what he wanted--he said no to treats that he did not enjoy and was rather resolute about it. he waited--but never begged--for food. kwago can sit on our dining table while we ate and he would just watch. if you open a bag of chips, he will wait and see if you would gesture to give him something. he will not bother to get up if you didn't and would just go back to sleep. he huffs and complains when the bed is too crowded--it's you who has to adjust as he loves lying down in the middle of the bed. kwago knew how to get what he wanted, and i admired him for that.

kwago's remains were delivered at home on the 30th of april. apart from the memorabilia that were part of the cremation package i availed, i cannot seem to let go of the april 16 vet receipt that says "euthasia." i am still in awe of just how much a tiny life can break full-grown adult hearts. thank you for being my best friend and lola's best boy for nine years, kwago. you will never be forgotten nor replaced.

#blog #tinyapartments #2026 #death #grief #pets #dogs

hanash lately: shoulders, syllabi, slowing down, and other shenanigans from the last two months!

luntian had raved a few times about her boss's memory: "she remembers everything. you know why? she journals every day."

i told her: we should do the same.

but here i am failing miserably at keeping this blog updated. i had intended to write about our trip to baguio during the tail end of may, my 33rd birthday in lucban, our anniversary spent watching plays and a stand-up act, and my mundane teacher's leave. however, as i type this, another semester has opened and details for the past two and a half months are almost slipping away!

when we got back from japan, i had to prepare for a conference in baguio where my colleagues (who are also close friends) would present our current research. luntian took a leave and tagged along. we dined at oh my gulay! and she took me to bencab museum: it was my first time. i was happy to see works by santi bose and antipas delotavo in the flesh.

in june, i celebrated my birthday by having dinner at a taiwanese restaurant in quezon city with luntian and my closest friends, rogelio and faith. the celebration continued when we spent a full weekend in lucban. one of my best friends, june (not to be confused with jeane), had an airbnb there and her entire family was happy enough to host us. my mother and luntian's family went as well. we were well-fed for almost three whole days. we visited my dad's grave. i introduced luntian for the first time. she and i ran on saturday morning and discovered that lucban's uneven streets were not kind to our feet. on sunday, my mother, luntian, and her mom went to mass before heading back home. my jesus year could not have started any better.

the highlight of july was our first anniversary, which we spent at ace water spa for free (for free!). luntian was heading a paralegal training for work and had free accommodations (buffets included!) at the water spa's hotel. for that saturday we watched sir vlad's back-to-back theater plays (prinsipe bahaghari left us in tears and puting gunaw left us haunted) as well as atsuko okatsuka's full grown tour in manila. on sunday, we woke up early for an almost nine-kilometer run around up diliman campus punctuated by a well-deserved breakfast buffet at the university hotel. what a weekend!

and soon enough my most awaited teacher's leave began. i went home to cavite to spend time with my dogs and my mother. i started watching sex and the city. i tried finishing an ongoing research i'm writing on queer coming-of-age films, but it's still in my drafts folder. i ate my mom's baked goods. and in a blink, it's august again.

august had a disorienting start. though i was able to tick off most of the errands on my to-do list during our leave, i suffered two shoulder dislocations in the first two weeks of the month. luckily, i managed to pop them back in less than an hour for both incidents, but healing and rehabbing them will take a considerable amount of time. i guess that means no pickleball for a while.

i've had this injury since i was nine: i got hit by a speeding tricycle (probably a faulty assessment of a highway at my age as well) and broke my right clavicle. even though it healed as young bones have a pretty good recovery rate, it dealt a permanent blow on my right shoulder. it would dislocate for a few seconds if i twisted my arm on a weird angle or when i kicked too hard in high school soccer. i'd be immobilized for no more than five minutes, but it would pop back like nothing happened. i didn't understand what a shoulder dislocation meant then and just called it "spasms."

throughout my adulthood, i would endure three severe shoulder dislocations (i'd call it severe because i can't put it back on my own) where i'd end up at the hospital. the most recent incident was just last year. the doctor told me that my best resort is surgery (which i can't afford right now!). the consecutive dislocations just this month were frightening because it happened in my sleep.

while rushing to curate readings to update my syllabi in time for the school opening, i'd alternate tabs on researching about my condition. once you've had a shoulder dislocation, relapse is about 90% certain. it's called shoulder instability. some heal properly through physical therapy (i've done this after my second hospitalization), but the best hope is surgery. coach aivi, who happens to have the same condition as mine, but had the surgery told me that building muscles on your shoulders is also a big help. while this is comforting as i do enjoy physical activity, it would have to wait until my shoulder is stable enough to at least lift a decently weighted dumbbell. i hope i'm patient enough to wait for that.

the first week of school opening is also the first week of getting used to wearing my shoulder braces daily (i use different ones for daily wear, sleeping, and sports) and applying cold packs every night and morning. all these additions to my daily routine are unexpected and quite frankly irritating as they slow me down (especially in the morning!), but perhaps it IS a necessary reminder to indeed slow down.

slow down and wait for my shoulder to heal. slow down while i save up for surgery. slow down and take time to write more every day (to remember more about every day!). slow down to bounce back better and stronger. slow down, slow down, slow down. if i'm patient enough to rehaul my syllabi (i cannot wait for my students to read john cheever and doris lessing though!) then maybe i could be patient enough to wait for and work on my recovery.

slow down, slow down, slow down.

#tinyapartments #shoulder instability #shoulder dislocation #slowing down #memory keeping

notes from our first trip to japan

luntian and i booked this trip very late because we had to make sure we were fully covered—she was awaiting the bar results and looking for a job as a new lawyer when we decided that we were going to japan to witness her dear friend’s wedding. given that it was both our first time visiting the land of the rising sun, there were expected back and forths on flights, airbnb bookings, and visa applications, but i knew we were both stoked to go.

japan in springtime is chilly, our friends who had been there warned us enough times. and this was what i was afraid of as someone who does not do well in the cold. the only preparation that i personally did for this trip was to stuff my packing cubes with uniqlo heattech, which i will only wear half for half the duration of the trip. i was happy to experience the springtime chill in japan without feeling like i will keel over to my death.

march 29, our flight left at 2pm and we arrived in narita at almost 8pm. a late admission if you will, but i had relinquished all the navigating to luntian since she is so much better at it than i am, and so i was quite surprised to realize that narita was still an hour or so train ride to tokyo. i was hungry (we both were), and since it was my first time traveling abroad after the pandemic, japan’s airport confused the hell out of me. what was i expecting? that the people would speak english to accommodate my poor bilingual ass? my years of watching anime rendered me useless when we were figuring out where to get our pre-booked skyliner tickets to ueno.

the train station was an entirely different hurdle: japan’s railway system will eat you whole. as i stood in the middle of ueno station in front of the gigantic rail pass map all i could think of was demon slayer’s mugen train arc and how the train itself was alive and ate almost all the passengers. i thought to myself: we are never getting out of here. i wish i could chalk up the exaggeration to simply hunger and exhaustion that night, but during our week-long trip, i never got the hang of the train station. and that’s just in tokyo.

for our first meal in japan, we went to mcdonald’s. tired from lugging our bags, navigating (this was mostly luntian), and arguing (because i was practically useless haha), we gave up and ate at the first thing we saw when we got off at ogikubo station. the design of the fast-food joint was fascinating but unsurprising given japan’s culture: the tables are arranged for solo diners. people would come in, order up, and eat their food alone while watching videos on their phones. it is quite lonely living in japan.

march 30, for our first morning and the rest of all the mornings we will spend in tokyo, we had breakfast at convenience stores (we actually had our first breakfast at lawson, and they had this decadent matcha pudding that i could not find in family mart, much to my disappointment). when we were still planning this trip, luntian and i already agreed that we would scrimp up on our food budget. it was quite a surprise to me that not only was convenience store food delicious, but it was also comforting. i looked forward to the mornings we spent walking toward family mart and planning ahead on what to get. but as creatures of habit, our breakfasts mostly consisted of the usual items: an onigiri of any kind, hot coffees, berocca (may baon kami!), seaweed soup, and a vanilla pudding for me. sometimes we’d share a melonpan or a chickenball skewer, but most of the time we ate the same thing every morning and none of us complained. i would do the same thing again when i come back.

rhea and ryo’s wedding was one for the books. the ceremony was at the infamous meiji jingu shrine. we lined up behind the bride and groom and walked around the public square (tourists were taking pictures of us, fellow tourists! haha) to get to the small temple where the wedding rites would take place. the ceremony was short, formal, and nothing less than cathartic. i could not understand a single word that the minister was saying, but the silence and the uniform gestures as well as the rituals (drinking sake and clapping to a beat) that even we as guests had to participate in was unforgettable. the reception was at meiji kinenkan hotel where we gorged ourselves on an eight or ten-course meal. i will never allow myself to forget about the lobster thermidor.

after the wedding, luntian and her friends had planned to meet in shibuya at night time. i was excited to cross the popular shibuya crossing. to my extreme horror, shibuya was swarmed with people. shibuya was teeming, filled to the brim, however you want to call it. you could probably stop walking in the middle of the road, and the sheer force and volume of people passing through would still carry you across. my probinsyana ass was not prepared for it, but i embraced it anyhow. we bought cheese pancakes from a hole-in-the-wall shop manned by a turkish guy. i greeted him with a most likely mispronounced marhaba (i only got to module 2 of turkish in duolingo), and he asked how to say how are you in my language. we had late dinner with amie at a small ramen diner where we had to google if it were rude to share your bowl with someone else. google said it depends. before heading home, our group had managed to take a shot at hachiko’s statue which was packed when we arrived.

march 31, this was probably one of my favorite days in our trip. we had a late start since the previous day was packed and we were recovering our spirits from how busy and crowded shibuya was. luntian and i agreed to never go back there for the rest of our trip. we went to the nearby mall and shopped at uniqlo (mostly items we will still need for our trip and some pasalubong for our parents). in the afternoon, we went to yoyogi park to participate in hanami—the activity of hanging out at a park by the cherry blossoms. we were disappointed, however, as the cherry blossom trees in yoyogi park weren’t in full bloom yet when we got there. we walked around the park, enamored by its enormity, while we waited for jake’s response on where exactly to meet up. jake, luntian’s friend from way back, is a graphic designer who had been living in japan for five years or so. he invited us to come over to his house which he and his partner, zach, had just recently built.

he finally spotted us while we sat on one of the benches at a nearby dog park within the park (it’s a really huge park). we took the bus to their house, which was also in the ogikubo area. their house sat in a very quiet and suburban area (which is how the entirety of ogikubo looked like, i suppose). it was the only house with a dark façade in an entire neighborhood of white japanese houses. on their fence was an embossed lettering in bronze metal (or was it gold? hard to tell in the night): zach and jake. i raved almost endlessly about this detail like i was the longtime friend he hasn’t seen in a while. inside was a cozy house with the kitchen counter overlooking the open dining and living area. jake baked and cooked as a hobby apart from his dayjob as a graphic designer. there we were greeted by their three adopted cats: snuffy, luca and oreo. jake fed our hungry stomachs with roasted chicken and tomato pasta—a simple but hearty dish akin to a mother’s cooking. while eating, i noticed his small collection of filipiniana books. i promised him i’ll send him more filipiniana books when i come home (i’m working on it!).

april 1, following jake’s recommendations, we went to kichijoji after another round of convenience store breakfast. it was just two stops from ogikubo and i must say that kichijoji was one of my favorite places that i went to in tokyo. not only is it much less crowded than other districts, but if personal and pasalubong shopping plus a gastronomic trip were the goals, kichijoji will never disappoint. from dry goods to dessert trucks to stationery stores, kichijoji got ur back. we were happy to find loft in there as our friends back home had pasabuy requests. i went crazy at the stationery portion in loft, needless to say. we had late lunch at yoshinoya since it was the nearest and possibly cheapest restaurant around. we had to make it to ueno by 7pm for a group dinner with rhea and ryo.

rhea and ryo booked an izakaya for our dinner. it was there that i learned izakaya were after-work restaurants that were usually for drinking and decompressing. essentially, what elbi square was to us in college. after that, they took us for a nighttime walk to ueno park where cherry blossoms were almost in full bloom and lanterns also dotted the trees. after walking the entire stretch of ueno park, the group decided to walk to akihabara and go to the gacha games. the walk to akihabara wasn’t short, but as someone who went to college in up los banos, it was fairly tolerable. our group of 15 charged toward akihabara, and it were only luntian and i who didn’t win at any gacha/claw games. she quietly threw a tantrum for the rest of the night.

april 2, we went to disneysea! we actually had not planned on going prior to our flight, and just made a last-minute decision on this. we had already passed up a day tour of mt. fuji as we weren’t sure of the odds of the mountain appearing (we should have gone because luntian’s friends saw mt. fuji), so we didn’t want to miss going to another cliché tourist destination in japan. i have been to two different disneyland parks in my lifetime, but luntian is a disney parks virgin. on the discussion of waiting for the light show at the end of the night or going home early to beat the swarm of park-goers on their way home, it was a no-brainer: we’ll watch the light show. it was a good decision nonetheless because luntian bawled to pieces when moana showed up at the performance.

we actually shared this disneysea trip with mac, one of luntian's friends, whom we accompanied to tokyo, tokyo (didn't know there was such a place! now the fast-food joint in pinas makes more sense!) before going to disneysea to hunt for onitsuka sneakers. we enjoyed the entire disney trip like a proper throuple (kimmy). after the amusement park, we shared a table with fran and ysa (more of luntian's friends) at isomaru in shinjuku. we talked about how fran and i are similar while ysa and luntian shared the same peculiarities.

april 3, with our return flight the next day and the question of what the hell to do with our luggage, we decided to take this day slow: we went to a self-laundry and washed all our clothes, packed our luggage more mindfully (instead of just buying another suitcase—essentially my idea because i give up too easily haha), and check in to a hotel in ueno where the skyliner station to narita is at. scrimping on food has left us with enough money for taxi fare to ueno (we didn’t want to lug our stuff from train to train anymore) and a one-night hotel check-in, thank god.

for dinner, we went to ichiran ramen house. the toll of walking long stretches, socializing with friends, and navigating a new city for almost a week was starting to catch up on our thirty-year-old bodies, and we wanted some good old broth to resuscitate what’s left of our energy. ichiran succeeded our expectations: a rich and hearty broth, starchy al dente noodles, and a serving of tender chashu pork were all we could ever need at that moment in time. and i was happy to discover that it isn’t expensive as well (clearly, i did not do any iota of research before this trip). we went back to ueno park to see the cherry blossoms once again and were pleasantly surprised to see that the small fair had started, and we were successful in the search for tanghulu!

april 4, we had quite a bit of time since our flight leaves at past 7pm, so luntian and i were happy to finally do something we’ve prioritized but didn’t have time to do on the early days of this trip: visit museums! it was a good thing that the tokyo met was just inside ueno park. we went there and looked at the free exhibits but again, we made another surprise discovery: the worcester art museum happened to be touring and they brought the original water lilies by claude monet. at first we brushed it off because it was a paid entrance, and we just roamed around the free calligraphy exhibit. but after a while, we were convinced that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see a monet painting in the flesh. what were the odds that they toured during our trip, too! so we threw caution to the wind and raced to the ticket booth. not only did we catch water lilies by monet, but we also saw original pieces by cezanne, metcalf, and pissarro. i felt as pretentious and as genuine of an art hoe all at once.

the walk back to the hotel was accompanied by the view of cherry blossoms during daytime. i think it was the first time in our trip to have come close to cherry blossoms in full bloom during the day, something that i probably need to have more appreciation of. it’s actually luntian who keeps on looking for parks where they are in full bloom to take pictures of whereas i would be happy enough to just sit on a bench and read a book. we walked around ameyoko in ueno as the last destination for our trip. it was the only place we were able to find souvenir magnets. everything else was expensive in ameyoko though, so we didn’t buy anything else than the magnets that our friends and parents wanted.

the trip back home went without a fuss except for the long line at the check-in counters. i must note that only the philippine flight was not allowed self check-ins in at the airport, so the wait was really a long one. i left luntian for a bit to continue a personal traveling tradition—buying books at airports/other country’s bookstores. i bought sayaka murata’s life ceremony, which, little did i know, happened to be what luntian was reading on her kindle. we were equally surprised by this serendipitous turn of events.

we knew we were home because the first thing that greeted us was the april heat in manila. the moment we landed, we took our jackets off while promising ourselves we would keep coming back to japan (hopefully with our families next time!).