Merlie Alunan

A Sillimanian poet is set to receive her seventh Palanca win. Merlie Alunan won First Prize for Poetry in English for her collection entitled “Tales of the Spider Woman.”

Alunan, who received her M.A. in Creative Writing from Silliman University in 1975, is a professor at the University of the Philippines in Tacloban, where she resides. She has received numerous awards for her writing, including the Lillian Jerome Thornton Award for Nonfiction, Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas, and the Philippines Free Press Literary Awards. Her books of poetry include Hearthstone, Sacred Tree (Anvil, 1993) and Amina among the Angels (UP Press, 1997). Her other works also include Kabilin: 100 Years of Negros Oriental and the anthology Fern Garden: An Anthology of Women Writing in the South.

“My collections is a little too hard to describe,” Alunan says of her winning poetry. “’Tale of the Spider Woman’ is a weird love poem. [But I’m] feeling good about this win, because I had a mind that I’m not writing poetry that’s like the poetry coming out today, like a bit out of date. So it’s good to win.”

She will receive the prize on 1 September 2010 in ceremonies to honor this year’s roster of literary winners in Manila Peninsula Hotel in Makati.

The Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature is the Philippines’ most prestigious and longest-running literary award. Established in 1950, the prize has also been awarded to other Sillimanian writers, including National Artist for Literature Edith Tiempo, Edilberto Tiempo, Rowena Torrevillas, Leoncio Derriada, Marjorie Evasco, Anthony Tan, Jaime An Lim, Cesar Ruiz Aquino, Bobby Flores Villasis, Lakambini Sitoy, Timothy Montes, and Ian Rosales Casocot. (SUCAC) 

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE OF POEM WRITTEN BY: MERLIE ALUNAN

TALE OF THE SPIDERWOMAN

BY: MERLIE ALUNAN

Pyres of leaves burn away summer.

Cicada shells pile under the marsh grass,

still memorial of seasons past.

I’ve no words for these—

lean boys and slender girls pass by my window

drinking the sun on their golden skin.

Apple-breasted women with melons in their bellies

snitch sprigs of basil from my herb pots,

and curious-eyed strangers scan the veiled glass

for glimpses of my blurred face, but hurry off

with any stranger’s indifference.

How endless the mazes I inhabit,

layer on layer of silence shield me.

Odd monsters breed here, I warrant.

I myself daily grow smaller and smaller until

almost invisible. Fuzz on my skin, my eyes

multiply a hundredfold in this darkness

and split the light in thousand prisms—

and now I can see what’s before and after.

I become light as air, my sweetness distils

to fatal potency. I practice a patience

vaster than ten worlds. I wait.

`If, at last, the merest rumor of your scent

warms the air drifting to my door,

I shall shake my thin thighs loose.

My hair will grow back in the usual places,

my eyes regain their focus, my ears

will hear words and speeches again.

Cicadas will chirr live under the marsh grass.

Perhaps it would be June,

the green returning to the trees.

When your shadow crosses my door,

please enter without fear.

But remember not to ask where I’d been

or what had fed me in this empty room

curtained with fine webs of silk.

Ignore the seethe of all my memories.

Come, take my hand.

I am human at your touch.

SOURCES: 

• http://merliemalunan.blogspot.com/
• http://poieinkaiprattein.org/poetry/merlie-m-alunan/tale-of-the-spiderwoman---poems-by-merlie-m-alunan/

Cell phone use and texting cause lower levels of concentration and focus

  

Today’s cell phones are more than just phones, they are high-tech gadgets that also serve as a mini-computers. Today’s cell phones allow users to surf the web, conduct text chats with others, take photos, record video, download and listen to music, play games, update blogs, send instant text messages, keep a calendar and to-do list, and much more. For children and teenagers, they allow for anytime, anywhere communication especially with friends. With cell phones, children are always only a few buttons away, highly connected and instantaneously available. Parents who allow their children to have cell phones feel secure that they too can contact their sons and daughters at a moment’s notice.

Many parents also feel relieved to know that their children have easy access to them and to emergency personnel if needed. For instance, a cell phone is especially convenient for kids who participate in after school activities such as sports or clubs. If the activity ends early or late, or has been canceled, kids can call their parents to let them know about the changes. Kids can also call their parents to ask for permission should last-minute changes in their plans occur. Some parents even use their children’s cell phones as tracking devices that allow them to identify their child’s location at any time which would certainly come in handy in the event of a kidnapping or lost child. From a parent’s perspective, these are all good reasons to supply our children with cell phones. However, the convenience that cell phones offer us must be judged against the hazards they pose to all people and especially the cell phone user. The remainder of this chapter reviews the downsides of child cell phone use and provides recommendations for parents to consider.

Cellphones can be a really distractions for children like Time Away from Homework. Technology affords teens (and adults) a host of ways to do something other than what they are supposed to such as homework. In the adult world, it is a common experience that the lines between work and leisure have been blurred. Adults often work at home and play at work – e-mailing and text messaging friends and family, passing along jokes and family photos, shopping, viewing pornography, reading the news, and even gambling. Business owners are increasingly relying on stealth spying programs to snoop on their employees to make sure that their activities are both appropriate and work related. Their bottom lines are at stake. As parents, we too have the responsibility to help our children focus on their productivity. Their “bottom lines” are academic achievement and success.



SOURCES: 

• http://www.education.com/reference/article/cellphones-texting-cell-phone-distraction/
• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2739380/Students-addicted-mobile-phones-Some-spending-ten-hours-day-texting-emailing-social-media.html

Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Bulosan emigrated to the United States from his native Philippines in 1930. Like countless other young men who had been driven to the United States by the promise of better jobs, Bulosan found instead the crushing defeats of the worst economic depression in U.S. history. The story of his struggles during the 1930’s and early 1940’s, chronicled in the autobiographical America Is in the Heart (1946), had a profound impact on ethnic writing after it was republished by the University of Washington Press in 1973.

It is difficult to piece together Bulosan’s real life story, in part because his most important literary legacy is itself a creative mix of fact and fiction. Even the basic outline of his life is in some dispute: Scholars disagree about the date of his birth, the date and location of his death, and his age when he died. What is known is that he was born in the village of Mangusmana, near Binalonan (in Pangasinan province, on the island of Luzon) in the Philippines and was one of several children. Like many rural Filipino families at that time, his parents suffered economic hardship due in part to U.S. colonialism. He completed only three years of schooling and, drawn to the United States by the promises of wealth and education and the dream of becoming a writer, he followed two older brothers and purchased a steerage ticket to Seattle for seventy-five dollars, arriving on July 22, 1930, while still a teenager. He would never return to the Philippines, and he would never become an American citizen. He worked at a series of low-paying jobs in an Alaskan fish cannery and as a fruit and vegetable picker in Washington and California. Conditions in the early 1930’s were miserable for all migrant workers (as documented in John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath) but particularly for Filipinos (then called “Pinoys”) such as Bulosan, and he experienced racial discrimination and poverty. However, he slowly improved his English, befriended other immigrant laborers suffering similar conditions.

Here is an example of a poem by: Carlos Bulosan

Now That You Are Still
By Carlos Bulosan

The child of laughter. . . how often had he
Watched that disastrous fire creep upon the plain
Of home, that became, as the years rolled, a sea
Of truth, and loneliness, and pain.
How often had he caught the prodigal winds in his hands
To make a singing lyre of laughter, when you were gone,
Looking for the living sound of your voice in other lands,
Looking, under the lengthening shadow of a booming gun,
For the one I love, for the one I truly love.
How often had he sighted the spend drifts of swirling seas
Gazing heavenward, athwart the sun,
Making every nightfall a quiet memory of peace,
Making every boy a man of peace, every man a man,
For the one I love, for the one I truly love.

I am that child of laughter, Father
With the glorious laughter, my dear father
Who worked and lived and died in the country of big rains,
Sleep peacefully, for your labors are done, your pains
Are turned into tales and songs,
Your days are swept away by the tide of my songs.
You are the one I love, you are the one I truly love.

SOURCES:

• http://www.enotes.com/topics/carlos-bulosan
• http://www.oovrag.com/poems/poems2011c-bulosan1.shtml 

SOM week (SOAB week)

Before the SOAB or SOM week started we had a class first. Then we went down at 9am for the parade. As you can see in the picture there are some girls dancing at the front. The courses that are related to business are at the back. We walked from school and Lapu Lapu. It was very so hot, I even used my umbrella while we are walking. 

After the parade, we gathered at the parking lot. The APC DC danced and entertained us. They were interviewed and they are competing on November. Then after that there was a pageant and the candidates for Mr. and Mrs. SOAB was introduced.

The parade was finished around 11:30. After the parade my friends and I went to the gym to watch the basketball game of BM and MA. The MA was leading at the first quarter but the BM played better in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarter. My boyfriend is part of BM, i was cheering for him also. We are all cheering and rooting for BM to win. They played well, so they won the game :) They also compete with TM, it was really a close fight and again BM won. So their standing is 2-0 and also the AC. Thats why AC and BM were playing for the championship game. 

APC Non-Smoking Campaign

I don't really smoke, I haven't even tried smoking haha! And I don't even know anything about smoking but I know it can be a cause of your death. My dad and some of my friends, they smoke. Even though I told them not to do so and to stop it because it is bad for their health. They still chose to continue it. According to my grand father, to quit smoking is really hard. I dont exactly know why people smoke. They even know that it is bad for their health, yet they still do it.

We had a talk about this last Wednesday. The speaker is Mr. Ermer Rojas, he is a smoker and he survived from cancer, a throat cancer.

There are approximately 600 ingredients in cigarettes. When burned, they create more than 7,000 chemicals. At least 69 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and many are poisonous.

Many of these chemicals also are found in consumer products, but these products have warning labels. While the public is warned about the danger of the poisons in these products, there is no such warning for the toxins in tobacco smoke.

Here are a few of the chemicals in tobacco smoke and other places they are found:

Acetone – found in nail polish remover
Acetic Acid –  an ingredient in hair dye
Ammonia – a common household cleaner
Arsenic – used in rat poison
Benzene – found in rubber cement
Butane – used in lighter fluid
Cadmium – active component in battery acid
Carbon Monoxide – released in car exhaust fumes
Formaldehyde – embalming fluid
Hexamine – found in barbecue lighter fluid
Lead – used in batteries
Naphthalene – an ingredient in mothballs
Methanol – a main component in rocket fuel
Nicotine – used as insecticide
Tar – material for paving roads
Toluene - used to manufacture paint

Actually, if you quit smoking there is still a chance that you might have a complications in your heart and in your health. Smoking is really a big risk you'll do in your life. As soon as possible, you should avoid smoking. So help your family member, or friend to quit smoking because it is really bad for their health.

Movie: Turn Left Turn Right

Turn Left Turn Right is a HongKong movie. It is a romance and comedy. The director of the movie is Johnnie To Kei-Fung, Wai Ka-Fai. "Turn left turn right" is a movie about fate and the unpredictabel paths it takes. We get introduced to the lifes of the two main protagonists and they pretty soon already meet each other. Everything seems perfect, but after their rash seperation the two have nothing more than an unidentifiable phone number. It's here where the movie starts to get interesting.  despite some nice surprises and its cleverness, is nonetheless quite predictable. Of course, there has to be a Happy End and we never doubt that, but luckily the path until then is paved with good romance comedy stuff.

The characters are: 

• Takeshi Kaneshiro
• Gigi Leung
• Terri Kwan 
• Edmund Chen
• Lam Suet
• Shu Wei-Lum

John Liu (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is an excellent violinist. Unfortunately, his talent has yet to be discovered by someone. Liu is very popular with women because of his looks, but he is not only very shy, he also has a certain image of his ideal woman in his head.

Eve Choi (Gigi Leung) is a professional literature translator and has to translate the newest german horror-novel. Instead she so much more would like to translate polish love poems, but her boss doesn't give her the opportunity.

The life of John and Eve is empty and they are missing something. When one day they meet at a fountain by chance, they know what it is. Since their childhood, when John met Eve at a school trip, they were looking for each other. The two spend a nice day together, but a weather change forces them to depart in a hurry. They exchange phone numbers and go separate paths again. 

Unluckily, the rain smeared the phone numbers and the two don't even know the name of each other. Although there is a good chance to meet again in a city like Taipei, they don't come across each other by chance, another time. 

The two also don't know, that they are living in the exact same building and that they are only separated by a thin wall. It seems like destiny has a grudge against John and Eve, because every time John turns left, Eve turns right. 

Theatre Play

The play was fun and the characters are really amazing. They are so good in acting. They really entertained the audience well. They really know their roles and the play wasn't boring. It was very funny and entertaining. The play was a Tagalog play, some of my block mates didn't understand it because they don't understand Filipino language. The theatre play was exciting especially the last part. 

For me, this scene was the funniest part because the actor played as a gay. He/She really entertained the audience. He/She knows how to act well and made the audience laughed so hard.