ang balita ko

as you can see from the title, i've been teaching myself a new language. Filipino, or to be more exact, the Tagalog dialect. i'm using a lot of different resources to learn and i'm getting a little better. i guess it's all the lessons that i've learned from previous stopping and starting sessions of learning that i've developed a game-plan for achieving this goal. and having a solid deadline to learn as much as i can helps - november 2008. when i return back to the homeland :)

so, i'm using internet sites, dictionaries (online at aklat), using tatlong podcasts, watching tfc and gma, and have even started another blog where i post up new words and just somewhere i could practice writing Tagalog, despite being still bad right now. secret url though. extra bonus points if you can find it! oh, i also have a "pen-pal", who hasn't written back in a couple of days! but i'm not counting... 4 :(

but yeah... i've also been busy with acting class. i'm learning SO MUCH not only about acting, but about writing and directing, and about myself as a person as well as a performer. i've acted before, and have taken class, but the facilitator of this workshop put on by Bindlestiff, Allan Manalo, is really making me, and everyone else, work at just getting better. I have such a long way to go, but i at least know where and what it feels like when i get there. it's the point when you get totally lost in a character. when you're on stage and you forget that you're there. this type of experience is followed by the feeling of not knowing where you are after an act... really trippy. and let me say that this is just me. i don't know how other's reach this place, but for me, i know when i come out of it and wonder where i went. i've openly talked about the time when i sang a song for a production i was in, and i was so into the character and, well the history behind the song, that to this day, i don't even remember being on stage performing it. it's like a dream. there was also another time when i was on stage talking to someone, and it just felt like the most natural thing. i became the character and i no longer was speaking memorized lines, i was saying stuff that felt natural and real, like it was the first time i was speaking them. i guess it's like a drug, not that i have ever taken any, truth - to scared to do so - but it's that magical feeling that sometimes feels so fleeting that i want that back. just to get lost in a character/performance that you know that it's you who did it, but don't really remember that you did it. a total out-of-body-experience i guess you can say.

what else, i've been thinking about (re)working some of my written pieces. as i said "thinking" about because i'm just not motivated right now. i don't know why. oh, my play, the gift, will be produced and on stage in late july, early august. i'm stoked that i have a director in place, who'll do awesome with it and we have both agreed that work needs to be done to the script to make it KICK ASS!!! so, i've been working on fleshing out the main character and the supporting characters to make the scene pop. it's only 10 minutes long, but i don't want it any longer! my challenge is to keep it that short, have conflict, and have resolution, yet have a cliff-hanger. not giving too much away, the story line is kinda from my FAVORITE TV show which will hopefully come back to tv soon!!!! but not soon enough! YATA!!! but as i said above, the lessons that i learned from the acting workshop is helping flesh out the characters for this play.

i haven't been up to Sac for a long time it feels. in a way, i kinda need a getaway from there, because in some retrospect, it reminds me of past failures. maybe that's why i disappeared for many years after '95. i don't plan on disappearing again for that long a period. it's still considered my second home. first being marina. second, 916. it's wierd to not list where i'm currently at on that list, but something is telling me that this whole time here is just a stop. i got ideas of where's my next stop going to be, but can't talk about that yet.

busy next couple of days... tonight, gonna watch a play that one of the co-writers for the debut is in; tomorrow, comedy with awesome pinoy comedians; saturday, either bronze lit or seeing some friends do stand-up in jtown for the asian heritage street fair; and sunday, watching grace nono @ bayanihan! whew! hope it won't be too hot!

paalam!

p.s. Congratulations to the newly engaged couple!!! (like they'll read this, but congrats nonetheless)