hello again!

my boss started another business and everyone at the office got busy with the preparations and everything that goes with it,, me including, and i miss my favorite blogs. i browsed and realized just how much i missed. so i still have a lot to visiting and reading to do.

i don't want to leave blogland...so last night, i was thinking of possible topics to post but i was too tired and fell asleep and woke up to the sound of Epol's laughter outside my door... my morning started nicely...

we're not that busy now and though there are still a lot of things and chores to do, I can at least have time to blog already...

and as to what topics, i still have to think about it.

even the photo "sounds" good enough

I was browsing for free photos and this is what I got.

I know I've posted about jazz before but listening to beautiful jazz rendition made me nostalgic.

i am walking through a silver morning
and i feel the music inside me
what can i say if it makes me feel this way
gonna bring it home to you

from kenny rankin's song silver morning

to cheer you up...

i love you jazz the way you are

My cousin Wet introduced me to jazz, and big bands. Before that, I never heard of Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker or Joe Sample and his contemporaries. Then I fell in love with Manhattan Transfer, Chuck Mangione, the Crusaders, Noel Pointer, George Benson, to mention just a few. Listening to their music makes me feel alive... gives me a reason to be, sort of.

We also have jazz singers and performers here in the Philippines.. but I haven't heard of their renditions anymore, live or on radio. Many of the Filipinos are just not into it. I feel a little sad that talented Filipino jazz artists like Jacqui Magno stopped having concerts because there's just too little demand for her musical forte. Lately, however, there's a good number of local talents like Sitti, Richard Poon and Nina who dared to be different. Sitti's samba sounds good and Richard Poon's I'll Take Care of You sounds romantic. Nina's stylized rendition of classics is fresh and scintillating.

I am not saying that jazz performers don't have a following here. They do have a good number from the A and B crowd..those who have "the" taste for it and at the same time can afford a 4-digit tickets. So for the rest of us who may have the taste but don't have a grand or two for the ticket will just have to wait for 2 weeks or maybe a month for the televised version. Fair enough, I think.

But then, we can always download. Right?


Photo of Chuck Mangione from www.starpulse.com

classic kalachuchi

We have one kalachuchi tree on our front yard and it's blooming. The flowers are white and smells sweet-too sweet actually that sniffing it makes me want to puke...no, just kidding. But I'm not as to its sweet smell.

The flowers often drop the day after they open but the smell stays. Epoy really loves to pick them up. I saw one that he missed and it looked just like this one.

time wasted?

After a few days of making reports and beating deadlines, I felt like I've had enough of it. All I wanted was to do nothing. Then yesterday, the hard disk of the desktop that I'm using at the office was reformatted and I found myself "jobless" for a day...which was fine...for a few minutes. Then the hours after that seemed to drag on. Doing nothing, I found out, is a hard thing to do.

There's a saying that says The time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time. But what exactly is wasted time? It's a question that asked for a subjective answer. And yesterday at the office is one good example of wasted time.

When I was a teenager, I've spent so much time with my friends. We spent hours talking, telling jokes, inventing ghost stories and go home with smiles on our faces. At other times, we spent afternoons beach combing (I had a collection of cowries and driftwoods which I made into a lamp shade) and inevitably, watching the sun as it sinks into the darkening blue horizon, hushed and everyone strangely deep into his own thoughts.