The La Union Surfing Break had a successful reprise last year after its launching in 2006. It is conceptualized to educate and expose surfing to the general public through proper teaching methods. Timed during semestral break, the target market of the event was students from Manila, Baguio and other Northern Luzon cities. Among the three other well-known surf sites in the Philippines — Siargao in Surigao del Norte, Baler in Aurora and Daet in Camarines Sur — La Union is the most accessible for those coming from Mega Manila. The event turned the beach cove of Urbiztondo, San Juan, La Union into the likes of one hot summer getaway in Boracay.

The LA UNION SURFING BREAK proved very successful in the past 2 years. It has positioned La Union as the Surfing and Active Lifestyle Holiday Destination of the Philippines. With the help of the media, both broadcast and print, the activity has become popular throughout the country.

Surf Clinics

Day 2: Maximum of 12 teams, mixed, male and female. Whole day competitions. Teams will be seeded upon registration to form 2 groups of 6. Each group will compete to arrive with top 4 teams per group.

Day 3: The top 4 teams per group will enter into a quarterfinal round, semi final and final round to come out with the Champion, 1st Runner Up and 2nd Runner Up.
 
Team Speed Climbing and Bouldering

Maximizing on the presence of the climbing wall, we can set up a professional Bouldering Competition apart from the team Speed Climbing Competition.

Day 1: Whole day clinic with hired instructors, arrival of competitors, invitation of locals to form teams or join existing teams, practice sessions on the speed climbing wall

Day 2: Whole day Bouldering Competition, approximately 50 participants male and female. Climbers are given 2 rounds of boulders to score. The top 16 male and top 8 female competitors advance into the next day’s rounds. Team speed seeding rounds happen at 4pm.

Day 3: Quarter final, Semi final and Final Rounds for Team Speed Climbing and Bouldering Competitions to result in Champion, 1st Runner Up and 2nd Runner Up in Men’s Bouldering, Women’s Bouldering and Team Speed Climbing.
 
Beach Volleyball
 
This is the classic beach game which cannot go missed. Teams will travel to compete, or can be formed together by interactive game marshals monitoring interested individuals wanting to play. After 3 days, interested teams will get competitive and compete for the LUSB Beach Volley International Trophy.

Day 1: Seeding, free games, forming of teams for those that don’t have teams, arrival of teams, registration

Day 2: Registration, maximum of 12 teams of 4, mixed with at least 1 female. Whole day competitions. Teams will be seeded upon registration to form 2 groups of 6. Each group will compete to arrive with top 4 teams per group.

Day 3: The top 4 teams per group will enter into a quarterfinal round, semi final and final round to come out with the Champion, 1st Runner Up and 2nd Runner Up.

The Ultimate Beach Break Party & Oktoberfest
 
News of the beach party which took place last year was spread like fire through campuses and schools when the students went back to school. This event definitely made its impact in the students’ social scene. This year aims to have more bands and more people attending the party concert. The party happens on Day 1 and Day2 of the event.

Search for La Union Surfing Bodies 2008
 
The La Union Surfing Bodies 2008 is a personality and modelling search for young boys and girls that aims to discover the most beautiful and most refreshing face that has the best potential to penetrate the industry of advertising and fashion and eventually crossover to be the next teen idol.
 
La Union Amazing Race Challenge
 
It is a race against time with a competitive team element. The race consists of a series of clues to get from one checkpoint /pit stop to another. Route Markers which will either contain a Road Block or Detour shall be in place to each checkpoint where the team or one of their members must complete a given task before going on to the next pit stop/checkpoint. Route Markers mark the location of additional route information; Road Blocks on the other hand, shall outline a specific task to one member which one must complete to be able to proceed while detour gives a choice of two tasks the whole team must complete before moving on. The first team to reach the final pit stop/checkpoint shall be the winner of the race.

In the bigger picture, the La Union Surfing Break is a real nudge to La Union’s over-all tourism industry as well as other business ventures. With the expected influx of people coming over, the goal in the end is to ensure the event leaves a trail of small business start ups, idea transfers, and enough momentum to promote La Union as a sports and adventure destination as well as the premier surfing destination in North Luzon, prepared and ready to take on an influx of tourists.

-Provincial Information and Tourism Office

(For interested dudes and dudettes, you can direct room reservation inquiries to me. Just leave a comment with contact details.)

          In literature, especially fiction, dialogue is manipulated not to simply recreate human interaction in real life but to intensify the underlying dynamics of structure, meaning, and context. Dialogue entails from the reader an approximation of the character psyche in order to follow the pattern and undertones of the interaction. At the same time, the context also affects the psyche and interaction.

          The Blue Skull and the Dark Palms by NVM Gonzalez is an example of what Pratt calls a mutual determination of context and subject. A pragmatic stylistics analysis of the speech acts in The Blue Skull would be incomplete if the larger context of the story is not considered.

          Analysis of Ms. Inocencio’s language in the speech acts at the beginning of the story reveals an overuse of the politeness indicator “sir” which she uses after almost every utterance. This indicates her desire to please Mr. Vidal, the School Inspector, and not simply to be polite. This also emphasizes how she sees herself as subordinate, and even inferior, to him. Later on, in their first encounter at the school, she moves from short phatic utterances to more illustrative illocutionary acts like explaining her plans for the garden, the illocutionary force being to make a good impression.

          Mr. Vidal, on the other hand, begins with a series of compliments to Ms. Inocencio. He also addresses her as Ms. Inocencio only once, and the rest is direct “you” address. This reveals his desire not to seem imposing and to establish a less formal and more familiar interaction with Ms. Inocencio.

          The disparity in the disposition of the two is revealed in the dialogue they have after Ms. Inocencio mentioned the war. Her illocutionary act describes the school during and after the war, hoping to make a point about the school’s condition. The perlocution on Mr. Vidal instead is to discuss an intimate topic, the death of Pepito, Ms. Inocencio’s lover. He does this using an illocutionary act of clarifying a fact. He asks Ms. Inocencio, “Did you know him?” not to clarify but perhaps to get her to talk more. She, in turn, rejects and replies with an indirect illocution, “Pepito Malabanan, sir?” Mr. Vidal persists, “Do you think it’s ever possible…his being alive, his ever coming home?” And Ms. Inocencio answers, “I can’t say, sir.” The polite address at the end reveals she does not want to discuss the intimate connection she has with the man in question. Obviously, though, with his questions, Mr. Vidal is aware of it.

          The aforementioned explains a hidden illocutionary force in Mr. Vidal’s being generous with compliments at the start. He wants a more personal relationship with Ms. Inocencio, and perhaps even to court her. Several breakdowns or turning points in their dialogues apart from the one above show this. When they were talking about Ms. Inocencio’s plans for the garden, he commends her then implies the possibility of the school getting closed, and how he can do a part in that. That has a perlocutionary effect on Ms. Inocencio of recognizing his influence and power even more. Also, when she leaves to join the praying, after the skull is discovered, he suggests subscribing to teacher journals, in one of which he has a contribution. The illocutionary intent is to impress her. Ms. Inocencio is not completely clueless to the advances, nor is she impervious. After their first conversation, she wonders if Mr. Vidal has a family.

          On the night of the padasal for the skull, Mr. Vidal greets Ms. Inocencio with, “Do you think it would be possible to identify the skull?”—an obviously familiar rather than formal illocutionary act. She reveals, “I don’t know what to do, sir,” referring to both skull and her situation as Pepito’s beloved. Mr. Vidal then explains in detail what he has instructed and done about the skull, the perlocution on Ms. Inocencio being her seeing him as a chivalric man, a savior. When two women pass them to attend the padasal, she is reminded of her purpose and obligation and she says, “Don’t you think I should join them?” It is an indirect illocutionary act saying she should join them. It also suggests she considers Mr. Vidal’s opinion on whether she is obligated to go.

          After she decides to leave the padasal, a liberation from her obligations tied to the hope of Pepito’s return, she goes to Mr. Vidal. All her utterances at that point onwards lose the polite address “sir,” a sign of change in the psyche. However, the shortness and fewness of her utterances in that scene show she has not completely yielded to Mr. Vidal. He, on the other hand, dominates the dialogue with directives, the perlocutionary act being to convince Ms. Inocencio to leave the barrio and become his protégée. She recognizes this, and allows him to draw her to him and put his arm on her shoulder. Her silence, however, signals that she is not totally free. In the end, she tells him the generic utterance, “It’s very kind of you,” and makes the issue final with “I must stay…”

          Why were Mr. Vidal’s perlocutionary acts unsuccessful in the end despite Ms. Inocencio’s decision to be free at the padasal? The last sentence of the story, “The dark palms were staring at her,” serve as the clue. On her way to Mr. Vidal, she sees the palms waving as if to celebrate her freedom. But then she wonders if it was too easily won. The change in the personification of the palms, “waving” to “staring” shows that for Ms. Inocencio, the barrio residents are watching her. This is reminiscent of the concept of panopticon, wherein people think and feel they’re actions are being watched even if they are alone. This hinders them from doing forbidden acts by the community. This panopticon can be religion, tradition and culture, ideologies. For Ms. Inocencio, the barrio folk have been watching her every step ever since Pepito did not come back, and they continue to do so after the skull’s discovery. Even if she leaves for the capital, the people will talk about her and how she abandoned her betrothal. This underlying reason is shown in how she had said her last utterances: “as if someone were making decisions on her behalf.” “There—her tongue had uttered them!” emphasizes she does not claim it as an utterance from her but that her tongue had merely produced them.

          Going back to Pratt, Ms. Inocencio’s case shows that the subject is not a fixed element. The subject builds the context of a speech act, or acts within a given one, and changes the context while she herself and her speech acts are shaped by a greater context entrenched in cultures, standards, and ideologies.

Philippine literature and publishing will once more display its best at the 29th Manila International Book Fair which will be held from september 12-16, 2008 at the SMX Convention Center at SM Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City. Promising to be more than a showcase of books and literary practices, the organizers have planned out a variety of activities for those who will attend including Cosplay Seminars and Storytelling Sessions. Informative talks on Library and Classroom Innovations will benefit educators while conversations with renowned Filipino writers and publishing advice will surely help starting-out writers. Books at the exhibition will include hard-to-find ones and popular titles, mostly at discounted prices. For more information, visit www.manilabookfair.com.

Analysis

          The descriptions of the mother and Vicente are contrastive not only against each other but also against stereotypes of their genders. The story opens with Vicente being described as “so gentle, so kind,” a phrase usually used for women. Vicente is a dark “little” man whose “voice [was] soft [and] manner slow.” On the other hand, the mother is a “gloating” mother whose “eyes [held] pride.” She is barely described at the start, as absent as the father except for short delivered lines, which are also in a tone not in sync with stereotype mothers. Only later is the mother completely revealed: a “tall woman” who spoke in a voice “very low, very heavy” and with an “awful timbre.” The contrast emphasizes the darkness of Vicente and the mother’s magnificence.

          This contrast is also displayed in the metaphor of light or illumination. At the start, Vicente was described as slowly advancing into the circle of light. During the crucial moment, the mother is “transfigured [by a] glow” (note the connotation of Jesus/God, images of magnificence). She had been “in the shadow” literally, and figuratively, about Vicente’s “queerness” that “crouched” inside him. In her anger, she “advance[s] into the glare of light” and reveals her magnificent self. Vicente is then forced “out of the circle of light” and “into the shadows that ate him up.”

The mother’s sense of control with Vicente is set against her inner disposition once with her daughter. Her touch is “heavy…kneading”, eyes with “angered fire”, her actions “almost frantic.”

The reversal of gender assignments is not only incidental. The story is not just about one magnificent woman but of all women and mothers who have been in shadows but “raise [their] hand[s]” against male abuse. This is shown in how throughout the story the mother is referred to as “mother” but at the moment she was punishing Vicente, she is called “woman.”

When she gets back to her daughter, she is seen as “mother” again, but in exploring her disposition and rage she is again “woman.” Finally, upon calming down, she becomes “mother” and tucks her child in.

Temptation

the opulent moon

sits low and tempting

on the night sky line

the elm trees deceived

reach out their branches

towards the unattainable

i gaze at the ripening fruit

no need of serpents

to taunt and tease us

to take the first sinful step

into the vastness unknown

i watch you bask

in the moonlight’s glow

feeling the aching

of branches reaching out

while a serpent sleeps

around my feet

After four years of doing nothing but paperwork, reporting and test-taking, I found myself once more assigned a group performance task.

We had studied a poem called “Tarantella” (by Hilaire Belloc) in my Stylistics class, and since the poem was rich in sonic devices it was only fitting that our teacher, Professor Tess Isidro, ask us to perform the poem in class. The task was reminiscent of high school speech choir and apparently, we had all buried enthusiasm for such activities as we became more “scholarly.” Ma’am spared us the embarrassment by mentioning the embarrassment we might feel and shrugging it off.

Shrugging it off was the perfect attitude, I guess. Working on the delivery entailed scholarly interpretations of the poem, but when we got to deciding on the actions and gestures, the fun part began, and soon my groupmates and I were laughing at each other’s suggestions. Just like in high school. It was difficult at first to let go of one’s inhibitions, but goofing around really felt so much better than acting prudish and diplomatic.

Each of the groups brought in something different during the presentation in class and the atmosphere was vivifying as a rain shower in summer.  Afterwards, Ma’am Tess revealed to us that she chose the task to inspire in us once more the quality of being childlike. She, herself, was an image of a woman free of inhibitions; her childlike attitude towards life and her passionate disposition have given her a youthful aura despite her age. Her blushed cheeks and crinkling eyes and laugh lines give her beauty that no amount of Botox injections can give others. Her candor makes the class more at ease with discussing all sorts of things, from writing to mountain climbing to sex and lovemaking.  As her chosen word that meeting implies, “libog,” make love with life.

Speaking of childlikeness in terms of libog and lovemaking sounds so promiscuous. But being childlike is pretty much being free of fear and self-consciousness. If lovers felt any of the two and submitted, I’m sure none of us would be here.

Being childlike is being so certain of one’s passions and loves and not caring what other people might think. Like a little girl who remains loyal to her tattered dolls (from “Bringing the Dolls”), we must be ready to stand up for and enjoy our raison d’être in life, whether it be dancing or cosplaying.

Another attitude of children is that of awe and wonder. The most mundane objects become the centers of their worlds: a small stone, a flower, a slipper or shoe. Science has produced so many wonders for us adults and materialism has seeped so much into our psyches that the beauty of a full moon does not catch our fancy anymore. We strive so much to attain the lucre that will afford us Jaguars and trips to Tokyo or the US that we grow blind to the miracle of a stranger’s smile.

College trains us to become diplomatic and formal, curt and business-like. We are prepared to live in a world of rules and bureaucracies wherein each action and gesture is planned out in a system of already-identified patterns and meanings.  We calculate our moves and words, fearful of the Panopticon.

My favorite people in the world are childlike. I grew up too early, and was already thirty years old when I was in high school. By surrounding myself with childlike people in college I was able to stay sane while trying to find what really mattered to me. Because of these people, I got in touch with the child in me again, and now I’m enjoying life and all the consequences of decisions I’ve made.

It’s true that as future professionals, we need to learn how to be prim and proper, what euphemisms to use in particular situations. But to truly enjoy life, we need to learn as well how to let our hair down and loosen our neckties and scarves. Whoever said we had to wear them all the time after all?

One of the best things about UP Diliman—and there are A LOT, trust me—is the possibility that at some point in your stay in the academe, you will meet one of your idols, heroes, heroines, icons, and most loved personalities. In fact, s/he might just be your teacher in one of your subjects; or one of the joggers around the campus; or the person sitting beside the driver in the jeep; or even, the one buying a plateful of fishballs or a cupful of isaw sticks at the cart you passed.

(These fortuitous instances increase in probability as you approach MRR.)

A privilege I seize whenever I can is the abundance of lectures, seminars and fora by the Philippines’ best academics, critics, writers, performers, you name it. These are usually free and sponsored by an organization, and if you’re lucky, there just might be free refreshments. If I’m not ogling books at the book sales and book stalls in UP, I probably am ogling teasers and flyers to see what lecture I can attend in my free time. (What a geek!)

—-

While I was browsing magazines in one of the book sales in Eduk, a friend asked me to join her in a lecture by Neferti Tadiar that afternoon. Neferti Tadiar is a US-based Filipina academic who authored “Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order,” which won the Philippine National Book Award in 2005. Among her interests are postcolonial theory, transnational and third world feminisms, and literary and social theory. The idea of meeting the author of a book I have never read but have always read about and heard of in discussions of feminism and the Philippine milieu excited me. Then and there I decided to absent myself in my last class for the day. (It’s not a major!) The other lecture for that day was a UP Centennial Lecture by none other than former president Fidel V. Ramos. The choice was beyond obvious.

 The lecture was entitled “Theoretical Notes on Life, Labor and Value” and was sponsored by CONTEND (Congress of Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy) and the All UP Academic Employees Union. It was held at the Plaridel Hall in Mass Com.

The lecture’s title was a warning. The lecture was VERY theoretical, and I had difficulty following Tadiar’s discussion of women’s labor and how the global capitalist system has usurped the rest of women’s lives, and everyone else’s for that matter. However, I was able to unravel two threads from the theoretical tapestry.

First, she mentioned the concept of “immaterial labor” or labor that does not generate material products. This includes labor from care and service industries (e.g. nursing, domestic work), and “affective and cognitive labor for multinationals” (e.g. research work, technical support industry). The Philippines is a country reliant on such a form of labor to keep its economy stable and provide jobs to its citizens (e.g. OFW remittances, call center employment).  Feminists contend, however, that to call this form of labor as “immaterial” neglects the fact that the generation of these kinds of labor still has “corporeal costs and consequences.” The acts of caring and smiling and being helpful and hospitable do expend energy especially if done the whole day, and this leads to tiredness. Worse, some kinds of this form of labor, like domestic work, do not just physically and emotionally tire out the worker but also pose physical and emotional violence from employers or clients.

In this sense, then, we are all LABORERS exploited by the capitalist system, whether we be factory workers, students or academics, salesladies, band guitarists, or fast food mascots.

This discussion reminded me of a column piece by a socialite I read maybe a year ago. This socialite narrated an incident she had at a UCC coffee house wherein one of the waitresses grumbled and acted unenthusiastic in serving coffee to the socialite and her kumares. The socialite went on to say that people should smile and be happy in performing their jobs because that’s the sign of a fulfilled and professional worker.

To the untrained reader, that would sound like good advice, even profound. But coming from a socialite, it’s like putting a slave in her rightful place. You’re paid to serve clients and instructed to do it with a smile, so do it. You don’t have the right to grumble and scowl because we pay a hundred bucks for a cup of coffee just to have the ambiance of being served.

We encounter one of these waitresses every day. Sometimes she is a vendor, a driver, a guard, a secretary. We meet people who ruin our days just because they hate their jobs or are sick and tired of what they do. But they have no choice. We pay so that we can be served with a smile, even in a mere fast food chain. But smiling can take its toll on workers who have done it 24/7 while watching customers eat food they themselves cannot afford. They want a job which will allow them to be the ones waited on and served, the ones who will pay for smiling and caring attendants. But they have no choice.

Ever since reading that article, whenever I start complaining about such a waitress or such a guard, I feel a tinge of regret that I snapped at or raised my voice at her. It’s hard to hold our tongue and thoughts do because we all have our triggers and bad days, but it’s something we should all think about before judging the professionalism of these workers.

The second concept is a bit more complex, to the point of sounding metaphysical. Tadiar, drawing from theories by other social scientists, raised the idea of “life times.” From what I gleaned, “life times” refer to the times within which we function throughout our lives. The temporality of the workplace is different from that of the home. This calls to mind Einstein’s theory of relativity and conception of time. Time perception is not characterized by the perceived speed of time’s passing, however, but by the nature and quality of events and experiences within a given time. The temporality of the workplace, then, e.g. in a factory, is perceived negatively; the temporality of the home, where recreation may be experienced, is valued positively. Labor time, capitalist time, is valued positively only in lieu of its economic value.

I’m not sure if I comprehended the concept the way Tadiar conjectured. Her discussion of labor in terms of “life times” was clear and simple enough, though, for me to be affected. According to her, workers experience a “vanishing time for reproduction.” That is, the more workers spend in the temporality of the workplace, the less they spend in the temporalities that are for self-production. Instead of having time for leisure and self-improvement, workers allot most of their time in servicing others. Thus, they also serve as “producers of time” which employers and capitalists consume. In turn, the latter gain or sustain time for self-production.

A concrete manifestation of this concept, which my Sociology teacher gave for another topic, applies to students. For students to be able to manage their time well in studying, they need workers like laundrywomen, cooks, vendors, and photocopier operators to do particular tasks and save them time. In order to have sufficient time to construct ourselves into knowledgeable and skilled professionals—so that we can have more comfortable lives—we take away other people’s time for themselves. This is unwitting, of course, precisely because these workers sell their time in the form of services, or “immaterial labor”.

The fullness of life, then, is founded on balancing and maximizing temporalities, the prime given to time for self-production. A lifetime must have many “life times.” If the “life time” of labor dominates one’s life, the experience of life becomes alienating. This calls to mind Marx’s view of how capitalism alienates humans from themselves and the products of their work. Humans initially worked and created because it was in their nature to do so; creation was a means of self-production. Thus, life in the early centuries was characterized by temporalities that served to improve the lives and dispositions of humans. Capitalism and greed exploited this human nature to work and create, compensating “life times” lost with only a meager sum of a few pesos.

This is my first serious attempt at blogging (imagine that!) and I hope you visitors will be moved, thrilled, irked, provoked, comforted, and what-have-you.