Out of my mind

The 2017 MMFF is officially over although one or two films continue to be screened in some theatres.  We went to Glorietta today and noted that Siargao was still showing, although it only had two screenings, sharing a theatre with a cartoon movie. I refused to write about the 2017 MMFF; didn't even make a reference to it in my FB account because I honestly believed - and I still do now - that the whole exercise has lost relevance.  I don't really know if the festival made money this year; I had this nagging feeling that it didn't because there was the noticeable absence of the usual drumbeating that the major studious used to make to entice more people to patronize their trashy (and usually more popular) entries. As usual, and as expected, the better films (Larawan, Siargao, etc) didn't make a killing at the tills.  In fact, there was this hullabaloo about the pullout of Ang Larawan in some theatres because it wasn't making as much money as expected.  Of cours...

Choosing a planner is a major annual undertaking for me.   Yes, I own an ipad and an android phone, both of which - I am told – offer more effective ways of helping me document and track my appointments and activities.   But habits are very hard to break.   I have always used a planner since I started working (and I need not tell you how long ago that has been) and has been dependent on those “reengineered notebooks” since then.   It’s just a little more satisfying to physically write down your thoughts and see them materialize on paper.   So thanks for the many suggestions about new apps that could “change my life” – but it’s still the old-fashioned planner for me. I will admit that there were two years in a row when I jumped into the bandwagon and drank a lot of designer coffee just so I can brag about having that overrated designer planner from that overrated but oh so indispensable coffee chain.   But those planners are not really meant for –...

A new year is always opportune time to start all over again.  A new year always offers a fresh chance - even if it is a chance to embark on yet another journey that is difficult to accomplish or finish. But then again, "try" has always been my middle name. It's been almost two years since I stopped writing my column for that daily newspaper.  I don't exactly miss writing for that paper - after almost ten years of slaving to meet deadlines in between three jobs, there were days when writing seemed like a chore, like simply filling up a page with words - some of them almost meaningless.  A large part had to do with the fact that there were political considerations that had to be "complied" with, which got tiring after a while. When do we know enough is enough?  When we stop. But I have had no regrets.  Writing that column helped speed up my maturity process, even if there were times when I wondered if all that was worth being bullied, insulted, mocked, r...