The B and I started this list of world cuisines we have to try. They have to be a little more authentic than let’s say “Tokyo Tokyo” for Japanese. Or “Burger King” for American. So far we’ve crossed the ff off:

• Korean (Kaya Korean Restaurant, Ginzadon)
• Japanese (Seryna, Izakaya Kikufuji, Ginzadon)
• Greek (Manos Greek Taverna, Cyma)
• Chinese (King’s Chef, Mann Hann, David’s Tea House, and more)
• Italian (A Veneto, Does Sbarro count?) –but we think we can still narrow down “Italian”
• French (Aubergine)
• American (Friday’s?)

We haven’t finished drafting the list, so once we’re done, I’ll post the complete list. He wants to document our culinary adventure with a blog of its own, so let’s see if it’ll happen. To foooood! *clink*

No McDonald’s until December 2011.

That’s 7 months, and we shall see how long I could last without having some of those enticing yet unhealthy fries.

How long will I last?

Random thought:

They should have opened “Thor” on a Thursday around the world as a tribute to the god of thunder himself. “Thor” coming out on Thor’s day. Glorious.

1. My English prof is encouraging us to read and write more to improve our English proficiency, and that sounds like a very good idea.

2. There are a lot of interesting things I could write about, but I’m becoming too lazy to keep a journal. (I still have one though, for traveling purposes.) Don’t suggest Twitter, because I don’t like how Twitter limits the numbers of characters you can use. MEH.

And maybe–just maybe, there are a few people who are bored enough to check out what I have to say?

Just like any other Catholic/Christian Filipino family, I (or my entire family) celebrated Christmas by hearing the Christmas Mass (anticipated one) and stayed up all night from Christmas Eve until midnight of Christmas Day. We had our “Noche Buena” and like any other year since I can remember, mother’s side of the family on Christmas Eve and father’s side of the family on Christmas Day dinner.

If we didn’t have that annual tradition (which I love, don’t get me wrong), I probably would’ve gone around Metro Manila (or maybe even further!) to check out how other people celebrate their Christmas. I wonder how they did in the prisons, in the Malacañang Palace, in hospitals (specifically the maternity ward), in Mapayao, in worthless politicians’ homes, in Childhope centers, and many other places. I’m just really curious.

Also, I think it’s funny how Christmas gives everyone the license to be cheesy and emotional. It’s just like how in Halloween, we all have a reason to pretend and not be ourselves with those silly costumes.

On a realistic light, Christmas is over. The magic is about to die down and we’ll all be back to our non-Christmas-y lives. Hurrah!

So it’s gonna be produced and directed by THE M. Night Shyamalan (Yes, Sixth Sense, Lady in the Water, yaddayadda) and the screenplay and story was written by him and Bryan Konietzko. There are only two pictures posted under that movie, and these two are of Aang and Zuko.

Zuko and Aang in the cartoon series

Here is Movie Aang’s photo, played by this guy named Noah Ringer.

Aang, played by Noah Ringer (Pic from IMDB)

Here’s the other photo available in IMDB, Zuko! And he’s played by Dev Patel, “Jamal” from Slumdog Millionaire.

Zuko, played by Dev Patel (Pic from IMDB)

So there. I’ve always had this idea that in real life, if the characters of Avatar would be portrayed by real people, the firebenders would be caucasians, Aang should be Chinese-y and Katara should be Filipino (Hahahaha) or Malaysian or Indonesian. My friends would know what I’m talking about. Haha.

I absolutely love the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” being shown in Nickelodeon and I have mixed feelings about this. I hope M. Night gives justice!

Edit: You may check THIS out. It says there that ““The Last Airbender” is slated for release on July 2, 2010.”

Edit Again: Shaun Toub is playing Uncle Iroh But I liked the stout Uncle Iroh in the cartoons! Boo.

Like today, when my dad picked my brother and I up from school, I ask him out of nowhere, “Dad, is okay if magpa-tattoo ako?” He laughs loudly. I go, “Why, what’s so funny? I’m serious!” He laughs again. Then I ask him again “Daaaad, is it okay if I get a tattoo?” This time he didn’t laugh. He said “Ah akala ko ‘magpapatotoo’ ka, as in convert to Iglesia ni Kristo.” I laughed and said, “No, dad. T-A-T-T-O-O. Can I get one?” With a very straight face, he instantly said, “No.” I asked why, and told him that I’m not getting it now and that I’m just asking for future purposes. He replied with, “Only if you’ll have it on your butt. Pwede.” Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat. I just wanted to share that.

On a not-so-crazy note, I’m officially an Anthropology major and it makes me happy

What’s so different about it?

It was an inter-tribal wedding. The groom was an Ifugao, and the bride, Kalanguya. They couldn’t understand each other with their 1st languages since the groom couldn’t speak Kalanguya and the bride vice-versa. They spoke to each other in Ilocano and Tagalog though. They got married in Mapayao, on the top of the mountain, just like the other residents there.

Ifugao-Kalanguya Wedding in Mapayao

The view from where the wedding was held was so beautiful! The picture in my previous entry about my fieldwork, the one where you could see the rice terraces was taken from the wedding.

Anyway, before I go into detail about the actual wedding, the wedding preparations were something too! The day before the wedding, everyone in the community could be found there at the venue helping out! From cooking the food for the guests, setting up the pallapala or the tent, putting up the decorations, etc! It was a barangay event. The concept of BAYANIHAN at its finest.

Chopping of the Pig Parts

Pansit Cooking

Stewing the Pork

(I only have pictures of the food preparations since I haven’t gotten the rest of the pictures from my groupmate. Will edit this once I get them.)

We attempted to help out but the people there didn’t want us to because they treated us like guests in the community. They did, however, teach us how to make this cute birds out of palm leaves.

So anyway, that eve of the wedding, there was also dancing and dining to celebrate the arrival of the groom’s party. It lasted until very early morning of the next day, I believe?

On the wedding itself, as we got there around 9:00am, everyone was quite busy. The Mapayao folks who prepared the food were packing them, and the entourage was being prepped up.

What’s amusing about this wedding is the fusion of Christianity and their native beliefs. In the early times before American missionaries came to their area, a wedding or timbal was like this: The soon-to-be-married couple would be seated in front of the community elders, as the elders or apo would give them advice like what a married life is like, what they should or should not do. Once this advice-giving or pagbibigay-payo is over, the couple is pronounced married. It would then be followed by the eating of watwat or pig parts and other food, and dancing of the tayaw. Some weddings would have the ba-liw wherein old women would be singing or chanting the prayers the people in the wedding would voluntarily cry out. It may be similar to a pasyon.

So anyway, this “contemporary” tribal wedding we attended was a Christian one. Like typical Christian weddings, their wedding consisted of principal sponsors or ninongs and ninangs, a pastor to preside, an entourage, the veil, cord and candle parts of the ceremony, the kissing part, etc. Even the attire of the bride was white gown, unlike before, a good dress would do like one of my informants told me.

The similarity of the contemporary to old custom was that even though there was a pastor, what he basically did was to give advice too, just like the community elders did in the older days. Also, when the wedding ceremony ended, eating of the watwat was still observed but now added with food like pansit and rice. They served the food in plastic bags, and the guests had to fall in line to claim their food. The first ones to be given were the kids, followed by the old folks, then everyone else.

Food in Plastic Bags

We didn’t get to eat ours from the plastic bag though. Since we were treated as  “special guests” being linguists/anthropologists, we were asked to dine on plates and to get our food from this special buffet, alongside the Vice-Governor of Nueva Vizcaya, a few Councilors of Kayapa, some Barangay Officials and the married couple’s families.

After most of the people have eaten, it was shortly followed by dancing the tayaw musically accompanied with the gangha/gangsa a 4-piece gong set that elders played.

Gangha

We got to dance the tayaw ourselves, since the Vice-Governor of Nueva Vizcaya requested us to do so. Some of us also got to play the gangha and the elders taught us how to play. One of the gangha-players told us this:

Hindi mo lang dapat pinipitik ‘yan (gangha). Dapat tuwing tutugtugin mo, nararamdaman mong yumuyugyog yung katawan mo. Dapat nararamdaman mong masarap.

So he told us to try to play it right, and while playing he would say “Dapat yung naririnig mo sa kalooban mo.” and after we’d play a repetitive rhythm, he’d go “Anong nararamdaman mo? Magaan ba? Parang masarap?” Yes. It was very therapeutic to play these gongs if you ask me.

Going back to the actual wedding…

So there were plenty of dancing. Dancing the tayaw is by request, and you may also request to which song a particular group would dance to. You could choose the gangha or Yoyoy Villame’s Magellan, Philippine Geography or this other song I didn’t catch as accompaniment.

Because the dancing seemed endless and it was already around 4:00pm, our group decided to head home already.

Yeyyyyy XD

N’s Mom: Hindi mo ko binati ngayon.
N: Hindi talaga ako bumabati ng Happy Mothers’ Day eh.
N’s Mom: . . . Hindi mo na ako mahal.
N: Kelangan mo pa ng reassurance?
N’s Mom: @_@
. . .
N’s Aunt: Taga-UP kasi yan kaya ganyan.
N: @_@

Funny how some attribute being weird to being a UP student. Haha. And I posted this just because I think it’s a cute scenario between a mother and his son. Haha.

However, even if I think holidays like these are too commercialized, it wouldn’t hurt to let your mom know how much you appreciate her on this day, or any day rather.

What did I do there?

For our Lingustics 125 class, which is actually Fieldwork in Linguistics, we had to study and analyze an endangered language and come up with a grammar sketch, a specific topic anthropological output and some survey results.

Our group of 11 was assigned the KALANGUYA language, which its speakers are found mostly concentrated in Kayapa, Nueva Vizcaya. We stayed for a week in Barangay Mapayao in Kayapa, and its on the mountains!

Mapayao

Notice the rice terraces? Payao or peyew literally means bukid or “rice terraces” in Kalanguya, thus the barangay’s name “Mapayao”. It’s great there! For me, it’s colder than Baguio. We froze there. We stayed in a house of a married couple with a five-year-old girl. They were a really hospitable and nice foster family. I love them

Besides that, we were fortunate enough to attend an Ifugao-Kalanguya Wedding (yep, inter-tribal!) at Mapayao. We even got to dance their native ritualistic dance, the tayaw. I have a video to prove it! I’ll make a separate post about that wedding later on.

What else.. Hmm. We stayed in Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya, at the CFM Dorm. CFM means Christian Fellowship Ministry, If I’m not mistaken? We were lucky enough to be staying at a Kalanguya institution! The other languages the other groups were assigned to were: Bugkalot, Iwak, Isinai, Ibaloi, and Gaddang. In the end of the whole 2-week thing, we presented our findings and an overview of our final paper in front of a panel of scholars and representatives of the various groups. Yehey.

Made new friends. Gained new experiences. Learned plenty. XD

To my Kalanguya groupmates: Congratulations to a job well done! Thanks for great company.

—-

And oh, I welcome myself to Anthropology. Goodbye Political Science! Weee!

Yey.