The Winners and Finalists of the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards:
FICTION: (Judges are Charlson Ong, Celeste Flores-Coscolluela, Exie Abola)
1. Erscheinung – Michelangelo Samson (3rd Place)
2. Panopticon of El Hogar – Russel Stanley Geronimo
3. After The Body Displaces Water – Daryll Jane Delgado
4. When You See A Dog – Jenette Vizcocho (2nd Place)
5. Recuerdos de Patay – Caroline Hau (1st Place)
6. Sweet – Marguerite de Leon
7. Spawn – Popi Laudico
8. Desert Winds – Jean Gerald Anuddin
9. Numb – Jenette Vizcocho
10. A Study of Insects – Irene Carolina Sarmiento
11. Works Cited – U. Eliserio
12. Fade to Red – Twink Macaraig
POETRY: (Judges are Noelle Leslie de la Cruz, Marne Kilates, Gemino Abad)
1. Variations on the Expulsion from Eden – Eliza Victoria
2. The Painted Prince – Frank Penones Jr.
3. Duwende – Myrna Peña-Reyes
4. Love is How We Come Undone -Amado Bajarias
5. How to Kill a Whale Shark – Timi Siytangco (2nd Place)
6. Warrior’s Wife (After Li Po) – Ino Habana
7. Weight Without Gravity – Andrea Teran (3rd Place)
8. The Widow, Upon Learning That Her Old Lover Had Returned to the Island of San Antonio – Merlie Alunan
9. Zeno’s Paradox – Luisa A. Igloria (1st Place)
10. Weight of the World – Michellan Sarile-Alagao
Congrats to the winners!
This year’s event was held at the Club Cafe of the Makati Sports Club.
Getting ready. Our unit looks so neat in this picture. Notice the necklace. I ditched it minutes later and put on my glasses haha. Fashown.Swankeh hehe.
On that table (partly seen in the picture) sits National Artist F. Sionil Jose. I was too shy to take a picture of him.
With Noelle, one of the Poetry judgesWith Free Press Literary Editor Joel M. ToledoHi, Jaykie!Red wine! But I fell more in love with the white wine they served, because it was sweet. Yes, I'm one of those who like sweet wines. I'm an abomination.
While drinking wine and having a dinner of meat-and-asparagus rolls, lumpia, kani sandwich, penne pasta, and sweet fruit tarts (my approximation of the dishes served that night), I was able to talk to Noelle, Joel, Khavn (so sorry I didn’t recognize you at once eek I’m still embarrassed), Michelangelo Samson (congrats on the win!), Andrea Teran (congrats!) and Jenette Vizcocho. (She asked me what my category was before the announcement, and when I said Poetry, she said, “Ayos, friends tayo.” HAHA!) Tin’s cousin, Gian Lao, approached me and said lovely things about my poetry. “This is about meeting THE Eliza Victoria.” That’s too much! But thank you!
We were also able to share a table with Twink Macaraig and her husband.
With fellow Free Press nominee and journalist, Twink Macaraig
Badminton on Friday, where a long rally often ended up with me smashing the shuttlecock past the line. But I’ve stopped playing for points against J a long time ago. I just enjoy the game now. :) Went to Chocolate Kiss later and tried their elusive chicken kebabs with yogurt sauce.
Chicken Kebabs & Tzatziki Skewers of chicken fillet marinated in Mediterranean spices. Served with yogurt sauce, and turmeric rice or warm pita bread.
Highly recommended! For dinner we had seared chicken breasts and homemade slaw and the cake slices we weren’t able to finish at Cho Kiss. I should have taken pictures, J sears chicken perfectly.
Saturday, while J went off to UP, I went to Trinoma and ended up buying this:
I asked people online and most of my friends said Smart Bro is more reliable than Globe. What I didn’t like is that the free 125 hours of surfing the prepaid Power Plug-it offers can only be used for 5 days. Five days, are you kidding me? At least Globe makes its free hours available for 30 days. But then only Smart offers a one-year warranty for the dongle (heh dongle heh) and its interface shows your load balance. I haven’t tried it myself. I should be able to check it out when I go home for my father’s birthday next week. Oh my God, I hope it works well in Bulacan.
That’s all I really wanted to buy, but there was a sale at Artwork and there was this book in Powerbooks –
You know how it goes. Lunch was pasta with a shot of espresso from Seattle’s Best which, for some reason, did not help me stay awake at all.
Later that night, Kanin Club at Ayala Technohub for HGC’s sixth anniversary dinner. :) I’m not a member, but I’m all for geeks and food!
Deadly food, it appeared. The group ordered crispy pata and aligue rice.
Jaykie and I added pritong manok (fried chicken) and pad thai. I loved everything, but I liked Mango Tree Bistro’s pad thai better.
We went back to Jaykie’s place and into that black hole of a drinking game called “I have never”.
I have never played “I have never” (shot).
We were at Podium earlier today and only then realized that Delifrance is now Cafe France. Oh-kay. I had their dish for Sunday: one-half serving of spaghetti pomodoro and an egg sandwich. I’m craving for that spaghetti pomodoro now. I should have followed my heart (chos!) and bought take-out pasta for my dinner later.
In other news, I: am currently a walking vat of cholesterol.
I’ve set up an appointment for a passport application later this month. FINALLY!
I still don’t understand why, everytime I come to the dentist for oral prophylaxis, I leave with at least two permanent fillings and no money.
Received an email bearing beautiful, earth-shattering news that, if things go as planned, guarantees a crazy, exciting, crazyexciting 2012 for me. Squee! I’ll leave things cryptic and wait for things to become official.
I just realized that Twink Macaraig is nominated in the Fiction category of the FP Awards. Pupunta kaya siya sa Tuesday? Kate demands that I take a picture with her haha!
I want to buy me one of these:
Just prepaid, though. Hm.
Or the MyFi, since I have a wi-fi ready phone and I’m planning to buy a Galaxy Tab (in the far future) anyway. Hm. Thoughts? MyFi is, of course, more expensive than the simple dongle.
Or: why can’t I just have free wi-fi from a generous neighbor.
A move…that I’ll just tell you in August. ;) Good luck to meeeee.
Happy we were finally able to go home to Bulacan, despite the near knee-high flood submerging the subdivision. Happy, too, that Jaykie agreed to stay till Monday morning, and he was able to finally meet my sister and my lola. They were showing Pak Pak Dr. Kwak on the bus, and I laughed at times, to my utter horror. We arrived late Saturday and had my mother’s (famous!) caldereta, Reese’s ice cream, leftover sansrival cake, yema, and possible diabetes. My father insisted that Jaykie drink; isang shot lang daw, pero maya-maya ubos na ang laman ng bote. Also learned that he was going to have an air-con installed in the master bedroom, but every time he sets an appointment for the workers to come in, a storm enters Philippine territory. All of my siblings enjoyed Jaykie’s iPad, lured by Fruit Ninja. Discovered this new TV game show via my sister: R U Kidding Me? where host Vic Sotto (si Vic na naman, sinundan kami galing sa bus!) on Saturday night mistakenly said, “Magbabalik ang Who Wants To Be – ” Then we all got freaked out by this segment on Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho about people who eat raw meat. Kare-kare for lunch the next day, then spaghetti, then fish for dinner, then these banana cookies made by the creators of Boy Bawang (they’re yummy), then more sansrival, and the entire second season of Justified. On our way back to QC they were showing You To Me Are Everything on the bus, but I think I fell asleep.
PS I’ve sold a science fiction story called “The Mechanic” to Kaleidotrope. Hooray! Details to follow.
Brothers Gabriel Fá and Fábio Moon have received numerous praises for this ten-part masterpiece. I don’t have to be forced to add my own. The series dissects the life story of aspiring novelist and obituary writer Brás de Oliva Domingos, each chapter looking into an important day in different years of his life. He is 34, he is 11, he is 21, he is 76. Every chapter (except, quite fittingly, the last one; in my opinion, the series could have done away with the ninth issue and still be cohesive, but that’s a personal opinion) ends the same way. I was stunned by the first issue, and confused by the second, but by the third chapter I understood what the creators were doing and was impressed by their genius.
How else can the writers make us treasure a chronicled life, if not by dangling the constant specter of death? Suddenly, with this knowledge, our senses become knife-sharp, and we notice Brás’s shallowness and stupidities and mistakes, his irrelevant fears and useless obsessions.
We, like Brás, who do not know how or when our chapters will end, wake up each morning and believe we will live forever.
Eliza Victoria 