Filipino Language: Bababa ba?

*In an elevator in the Philippines*

Elevator operator: Bababa ba?

Filipino: Bababa.

Foreigner: What the hell is this language?

The humor of this joke relies on seemingly simple structure of the Filipino language, but what the foreigner in the joke didn’t understand is that those two sentences are more complex than he or she has perceived.

Wishing for a WordPress Only Stumble Upon

I really like Stumble Upon because with a click of a button you can get random cool articles. How I wish though that you can set it to search through one particular website, specifically WordPress, so you can just Stumble Upon the blog entries here.

Treading that Thin Line

Jasmine of All Trades

Jasmine of All Trades by Margaux Ortiz

When I was in grade seven, I received a call from The Philippine Daily Inquirer saying that I was nominated for kids’r'rrific, a section that features talented kids. At first, I thought it was a prank. I was going to slam the receiver when the person said I was nominated by Precious Basilonia and Anna Arcellana, who were coincidentally hanging out at my house along with the rest of my PJAM barkada. Forgetting that I had someone on the phone, I screamed at my friends, “Ninominate ninyo ako?“

3 Simple Happiness Boosters

No matter how trendy, deep, or powerful sadness is, I’ve always kept it out of my creative life. Unlike other artists who thrive under near-death depression or achieve cathartic release by ranting, I experience paralysis. I can’t write. I can’t think. I can only get creative when I am in a state of happiness–a condition that ranges from euphoria to peaceful contentment.

Now that I work as a writer, it has become more important to maintain my positive state of mind. That is why I’ve come up with three quick fixes to any bad mood:

1. Happy writing

As I said in I am a happy artist, writing about happy things gets me through sadness. It lets me shift my attention to something more positive, reminds me of all the good things I have in life, and eventually helps me to recover.

Learning Honesty: Feelings about Other People

Honesty has become an integral part of my identity and my writing journey, but I realized that being honest about what I feel for other people is something that I have yet to learn.

As you can see through my blog, I am not a fan of privacy. When it comes to my thoughts and feelings about my life, I can be as honest as hell, but when it comes to my thoughts and feelings about people, I often use euphemisms, evasion tactics, and I even resort to downright silence.

I am more bold when it comes to challenging other people’s beliefs, but I am mum when I need to tell them that I they hurt me, or simply irritated me.

Being honest doesn’t mean that I want to become red-faced-banshee-screaming honest. I’d rather be cool and collected, but I need to face painful issues that arise in my relationships.

Wishing for a Dictionary of Description Pegs from Literature

Now that I’m writing a lot of descriptions, sometimes I get stuck. I look at something, and I’m like, What kind of vocabulary do I need in order to describe this? At that moment, I’d wish for some sort of reference that I could leaf through like a dictionary, but instead of words, it has description pegs from literature. As in if you look up house, you’ll get a list of how writers like J.K. Rowling, to Edgar Allan Poe, etc. described different houses. Then, you can use them as your guide to create your own.