Our friendly office cat

This morning I found one of the stray cats living at the back of our office building relaxing along our hallway--which, by the way, is normally off limits to all stray cats there. I stopped to greet it before walking toward my office. To my surprise, it started following me and even sidled up to the door of my office when I inserted my key into the lock. When a colleague passing by saw this, he told me that this very same cat had entered his office earlier and refused to leave. I had to wait until the cat got tired waiting and started walking away before I opened the door and quickly slipped into my office.

New choir loft

Among the many renovations planned this year on our parish church was the addition of a choir loft at the rear of the church. Today, our church choir finally got to use it for the first time when we sang during the 5:30pm mass. Being up there above everybody was certainly different and gave us an unobstructed view of the altar even if it meant having to suffer from the heat radiating down from the roof and carrying up all our paraphernalia.

A short story made long

This morning's meeting on curricular proposals was supposed to be short since there was only one curricular proposal to be taken up--and it was a simple proposal to abolish an outdated course. As the proponent of said proposal which was actually tabled by the committee a year ago, I hoped that things would go without a hitch this time around. Boy, was I completely wrong: More issues were raised in the ensuing (heated) discussion that lasted nearly an hour! In the end the proposal was tabled one more time and although I admittedly learned something about certain university academic rules, I came out of that meeting pretty much battered and shell-shocked after the unexpected battle.

Historical decision

I missed an opportunity to be part of history this morning when I showed up on time 7am) for a pictorial--the results of which would be published in a coffee table book to commemorate a special occasion in our university--but had to leave because of my 8am lecture class before things even got started, thanks to so-called "Filipino time". Darn! The others there were actually urging me not to hold my class; but having already missed a class due to last week's holiday, I couldn't afford to let my class fall further behind and at the same time push back the schedule of lab exercises by another week, could I?

Stung

Late this afternoon, I was shocked to received a text message from my mother that she and my father were at the hospital emergency room because my father had been stung by a wasp. He had gone outside to feed our cat and water plants the plants near our back porch when he was attacked by a wasp that descended on him from the wasp's nest hanging near our porch. The wasp stung him on the back of the head and then again on the hand when he swatted the insect away. At the hospital, he was injected with a dose of antihistamine and is now back home and resting. (In the meantime, I made sure I wore a hat when I myself went out to the garden to cautiously retrieve a t-shirt that I had laundered this morning and hung out to dry.)

Withdrawal symptoms?

I could hardly sleep a wink last night and consequently got just a couple hours of sleep. I'm not sure what the cause of this sudden insomnia is. Could it be because of the exhilaration of finally getting a song together at last night's music seminar? Or could it be due to the prospect of not having any more meetings in the coming Mondays?

Last meeting

Like I mentioned last time, tonight's seminar was the last in the series. With it came not only feelings of relief that it was finally all over but also of sadness because it meant that I will no longer be receiving my weekly dose of music--although I can of course always practice my piano on weekends, but that's entirely a different thing. Our seminar speaker, who himself admitted that he had always looked forward to these meetings, however assured us that this might not be the last as he was planning on giving another music seminar series but this time on Gregorian chant. Now that is certainly something to look forward to!

Sweet music

Tonight's seminar workshop on the elements of music was the last in the series. The lectures having ended last week, the participants spent the session applying what they were taught in the past eight weeks to learn a new choral piece. The seminar speaker went off to teach the men the tenor and bass parts while I was given the responsibility to teach the ladies the soprano and alto parts. When we all sang together (with me providing accompaniment with my keyboard) after about three quarters of an hour of practice , I felt once again the thrill and a proud sense of accomplishment that comes when one finally tackles a piece of music and hears the result of all the hard work put into it.

Meeting at a meeting

I ran into our church choir group's cantor--who happens to also be teaching but at another department--at this morning's meeting and we decided to sit together. When we had a good laugh over yesterday's choir mix-up he quite rightly said, "At least there's only person to blame for the whole thing and it's T!" Then when an elderly colleague requested to change a student's grade that he had erroneously copied from his record book to the grade sheet, the poor fellow had a hard time reading his own letter which was being shown using an overhead projector. But because we could read the letter quite well from where we sat--and we were seated farther away--our cantor whispered to me, "Now we know why he made a mistake!"

Musical mix-up

The church choir I belonged to had long understood that we were singing for this today's afternoon mass--that is, until our coordinator suddenly sent a text message last night (Saturday) that he had just instructed another choir that very same evening to sing in our place since we would be singing next week instead. Knowing that the other choir had precisely requested that somebody else sing during this Sunday's mass because of a conflict in schedule, I was shocked and puzzled by this sudden change--but I didn't protest or complain because I thought the coordinator knew what he was doing. When today finally rolled around however and I attended the afternoon mass, to my horror I saw that there was no choir! Oh, well.

Reverse graffiti

Now here's a cool way of creating art from dirt literally: the Reverse Graffiti Project, which involves incorporating designs while cleaning soot off grimy walls. That way one doesn't even have to clean the entire wall and yet still beautify the place. Maybe my father could do the same thing the next time he cleans the moss and dirt from our driveway using our high pressure washer.

Birthday celebrants

Today we celebrate the birthday of our national hero, Jose Rizal (José Protacio Mercado Rizal Alonso y Realonda). It was therefore with great pride as a Filipino to see that this Great Malayan was the featured birthday celebrant over at the Free Dictionary considering that so many other prominent personalities were also born on this day such as James I of England, the great mathematician Blaise Pascal, Wallis Simpson the Duchess of Windsor, Lou Gehrig, Guy Lombardo, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, writer Salman Rushdie ... and ooh, look! the young British actor Hugh Dancy.

Full lecture hall and full moon

• Our department held an orientation for our freshman students this afternoon and we were happy to see them fill our brand new 200-seater lecture hall. I was just as delighted to see them respond to my questions as I introduced them to the curriculum that they would be following because it meant that they were listening and understood my explanations.
  
• We had a full moon tonight and I just loved the sight of moonlight streaming through my open bedroom windows and casting shadows of my window's crossbars onto my bed.

Daddy = husband?

I've just realized that when the little girl yesterday asked whether the seminar speaker was my "daddy", she probably meant "husband". I suppose kids at that age aren't likely to have "husband", "wife" or "spouse" yet in their limited vocabulary--although they would understand in a sense that daddy was married to mommy--and would probably substitute the words "daddy" or "mommy" instead. So now, because she was told by the seminar speaker that I was "his mommy", I wonder if she took that to be a "yes" to her original question.

Another sermon

Once again, tonight's lecture about music in the liturgy turned into another sermon for us participants: our speaker complained among other things about how parents were negligent in instructing their children how to behave properly during mass and that some even failed to correct their children's bad behavior during mass. But this time around, I didn't feel as ashamed as I did before. And although the other participants appeared dumbfounded by our speaker's remarks, I found myself totally agreeing with him because my parents did insist that we children behave during mass even when we were little--I was the one who meekly obeyed but my more headstrong and lively sister was a bit more of a problem--and I now would also get irritated by unruly children who are allowed to wander around the church, talk loudly and, horrors! even eat and drink while the mass was going on.

Cute question

The coordinator for our parish's music seminar series brought along her four-year-old daughter to this evening's session and left her to amuse herself and mingle with the other people there as they waited for the seminar to start. The seminar speaker was busy setting up his laptop and the LCD projector while I was occupied with setting up my keyboard and other paraphernalia. After observing us for a while, the little girl came over to me and to my infinite amusement asked, "Daddy mo ba siya? (Is he your daddy?)", indicating the seminar speaker. Since the seminar speaker is actually younger than I am, I laughed at the thought and called over to him, "Joel, are you my daddy daw?" He too laughed, then thought for a moment before telling the little girl while giving me a wicked look, "No, she's my mommy!"

Memories of the great flood

I've been anxiously following news about the recent floods in the US Midwest mainly because they remind me of my own experiences with another flood: the so-called Great Flood of 1993. I remember that one scary stormy evening when my sister and I had to seek refuge in our downstairs neighbor's apartment when the tornado warnings went off and the winds picked up alarmingly. And then there was the most unforgettable sight, when we woke up the next morning, of the golf course across the street looking virtually like a lake: the creek nearby had jumped its banks during the night and spilled over into the golf course and our residential area. Luckily for us, our apartment building was on much higher ground and was spared from the rising flood waters.

Annual office clean-up

Another beautiful sight for sore eyes--for me at least--was that of my clean office. I spent most of this afternoon dusting, sorting and filing away papers, and rearranging a few things. Although I must have been a strange sight wearing a mask to protect my sensitive nose from all the dust my cleaning sent flying about--some of my colleagues thought I was wary of contracting rabies after yesterday's scare--it was a relief to see my office afterwards finally free of all a year's worth of clutter and piles of old exam papers.

Noontime bath

The sun was beating down and the air stifling hot as I walked down to have lunch in one of the eateries outside campus around 1pm. It made me envy the two little maya birds who were enjoying a bath in one of the sidewalk puddles of rainwater leftover from yesterday's rains.

Father #2

Just late this afternoon one of our administrative staff passed away from, of all things, rabies. This naturally came as a shock for all of us at work. While we knew that he had been confined at the hospital for the past few days, we thought he was out of danger because he was discharged the other day. But he started acting strangely back at home and had to be brought back this morning. That was when he was diagnosed with rabies. What was even more shocking was that he allegedly got bitten by a dog ten years ago but refused to have anti-rabies shots due to his phobia for injections. Sadly, this negligence cost him dearly and he left behind a wife and three children, including a two-year-old.

Father #1

One of our students is struggling to finish his thesis and ended up having to request to have his residency extended in order to graduate. His explanation for his lapse was that he and his family recently found out that their father has a second family. And because the father's betrayal, the poor student lost all motivation to work on his thesis. What a terrible thing to do to a son.

Game, set, You-Know-Who

There's an ongoing tennis match at the Stella Artois Championships in Queen's between somebody from Thailand and a young fellow from Bosnia and Herzegovina. The name of the former is so typically Thai: Kittipong Wachiramanowong. Pity the poor chair umpire who has to pronounce that tongue twister for every game the Thai wins and likewise for every advantage point by the Thai! (And the opening set has just been decided by a tie-break.)

The long and short of it

A sports channel on cable is currently showing a series of Wimbledon documentaries highlighting classic tennis rallies and famous doubles teams. As I watched old footage of men's matches from the early eighties, it struck me how fortunate we are that long athletic shorts are the current fashion. Make no mistake about it: Federer would probably still look good in those short shorts. But imagine how ridiculous Nadal would look in them!

Extended thesis talks

Today there was a constant stream of students coming to my office consulting me about possible thesis topics. Consequently, I practically spent all day talking with potential advisees, explaining my ideas as well as brainstorming with them for a good topic. While I'm satisfied with the results of these discussions, my poor throat has come up in the losing end. I have had to drink some ginger tea and suck on lozenges in an effort to sooth my tired throat since I definitely don't want to come down with a sore throat at this time. Otherwise, how am I going to help out teaching song parts to choir members at the ongoing music seminar series at our parish?

The "chosen" one

I have just been informed that I have been appointed chair of one of our college's working committees. I'm by no means the oldest among the members of the committee. It just so happens that I have been appointed by our director to serve as representative of the institute in the committee all these years while the heads of the other departments have chosen different representatives nearly every year. Peg it down to my so-called experience, in other words. Besides, there are so few of us faculty members in our institute that I suppose our director hasn't had much of a choice. In fact most of us here are doing double duty by serving as members in various committees both within and outside our institute.

Sacred choral music online

I'm having this current craze for traditional sacred choral music--and by that I'm referring not to contemporary Christian music by the likes of Marty Haugen and David Hass but rather to Gregorian chant and works mainly by the Renaissance and Baroque masters like di Lasso and Palestrina. I've found listening to that kind of music very soothing and relaxing. As I mentioned before, I have resorted to bringing CDs of this kind of music (from my own audio CD collection) with me to work. But today I believe I hit a gold mine: a channel on Live 365 broadcasting "sacred choral music centered on the Catholic tradition."

For national unity

As I watched the news clip of Hillary Clinton announcing that she was ending her bid for the US presidency and endorsing Barack Obama, I couldn't help contrast this with how election candidates here react to their own losses. Instead of stepping down graciously and supporting the other candidate for the sake of unity, they refuse to admit defeat and tend to channel their bitterness toward doing their best to thwart the winner's own efforts to put their plans to work when they do assume office. It's no wonder this country isn't making any progress no matter who wins the elections.

Internet channel surfing

I had a comically entertaining experience while watching live streaming video of the tennis matches last night. As the Federer-Monfils match was coming to a close, the video suddenly froze, puzzling many in the chat room. When it became clear that this particular channel had really stopped broadcasting, many started asking for another link to another live streaming channel. In the meantime I looked up the live channel directory and jumped to another channel broadcasting the same match. There I was highly amused to see the same people in the chat room of the previous channel pop up and announce themselves to the current chat crowd by saying "Hello. We're here from the Spanish broadcast." Then a few minutes later, the broadcast stopped inexplicably as well. Complaints once again abounded on the chat window including "Somebody give me another link!" We all finally ended up in yet a third channel where the quality was rather bad--but of course that was better than nothing and nobody left apparently until the match was over.

Cool moustache

I spotted this really hilarious but cool description of the walrus moustache sported by a past champion of Jeopardy: "a moustache that lives in its own time zone".

Fastfood fatigue again

It's past 12:30pm and although my stomach has already started to grumble for something to digest I can't seem to budge from my seat here in front of my PC. The main reason is I don't feel like eating lunch in any of the fastfood restaurants outside campus and am wondering where else could I eat. But as it is boiling hot outside, it is unlikely that I will go anywhere else and will have to settle for something that will seem least revolting to me at the moment. Sigh. Eeny meeny miny mo ...

Bleep!

There are many swear words in Filipino which I thought all the while were unique to our language (although I am aware that many words in Filipino are derived from the Spanish). I was therefore surprised when I thought I saw Nadal mouth one when his smash shot went long during his match against Federer in the 2006 Wimbledon men's singles final. I finally got confirmation tonight while watching the Federer-Gonzalez match via streaming video here on my laptop: When Gonzalez made a costly error one of the Spanish-speaking people participating on the online chat room and evidently rooting for the Chilean gave vent to his feelings by typing out "putaaaaa".

For "mature" audiences only

I was shocked this morning to see that the MTCRB had decided to award an R-13 (Restricted to ages 13 and up) rating for the movie "Sex and the City" instead of a more suitable R-18 (Restricted to ages 18 and up). (In the US, the movie was rated R, under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.) Although it is possible that the more objectionable scenes had been edited out here, do the members of the board really think that it is appropriate to expose our thirteen year olds--and without an adult to accompany them--to the overall theme presented by the movie?

Her "diet"

While I was chatting with the secretary of our department, our former director came in with--not surprisingly--a big tub of caramel popcorn. This she opened and good-naturely offered some to me and to the secretary. After each of us got more than handful, our former director who has long been trying to reduce weight explained to us that "kaunti lang ang calories nito (this has very little calories)" then disappeared into her office with the rest of the popcorn. I suppose she was referring to the number of calories per serving. But since it is apparent she would be consuming the rest of the popcorn all by herself, her point became virtually moot.

Now playing

Since I've been charged with providing keyboard accompaniment during the music seminar series I have been attending, I had to figure out the harmony for the songs that were emailed to me last Saturday. It so happens that one of the songs had really strange phrasing in one of its verses and consequently I had to play the piece over and over before I could come up with a chord progression that sounded satisfactory enough. The only trouble now is the refrain of that song now keeps playing over and over in my head!

Reproached

Tonight's lecture on the role of music in the liturgy and the role of musicians during the mass virtually turned into a homily of sorts. During the long discussion that ensued, the speaker lamented how Catholics in general made little effort in truly understanding the Word of God and took the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass rather lightly. With that I suddenly became painfully conscious of my shortcomings as a Catholic and, despite being a regular church goer, how far I was from being the devout Catholic I thought I was.

Looking forward

Late last night I received through email from our cantor the sheet music of the church songs that we are going to sing during tomorrow's seminar as examples of different time signatures. What's more is that the cantor said in his email that he enjoyed the jamming session we had last week and hoped we could do so more often. That cheered me up because I myself had not done any jamming for several years and miss it terribly. Generally, I'm really enjoying this seminar series even if I am familiar with the basics of music notation and look forward to the rest of the sessions we'll be having in the next few weeks.