Photos from Western Visayas

Nanay is on a two-week tour of Western Visayas with her friends. Her phone is connected to my Flickr account. All her photos get uploaded to a private storage, a concept she has not fully grasped yet, because she always reacts with surprise when I know where she had gone. Nanay is not the most talented photographer, as you can see in this photo of her best friend and soul-sister, Auntie Cecil posing in front of Kabankalan City Hall. 

These are the better ones. I don't know where these were taken exactly, but Flickr has a geolocation feature, so I can make an intelligence guess. 

Somewhere in Kabakalan, where they enjoyed sea food. 

Somewhere in Matabang, Talisay—maybe a corner in the Ruins? Here's a typewriter. 



This is somewhere in Boracay, perhaps? 

They're enjoying the trip. Praise God!

Prayer and piano, gold and New Zealand

 Quick updates: 

1. Read Timothy Keller's Prayer. I imagine that I would go back to this yearly to remind my soul of the privilege of coming to God as one would to his own loving father. 

2. Reading The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. Gold digging, a murder mystery, and New Zealand! Excellent writing, too. Catton is the youngest winner of the Booker Prize. She won when she was 28. 

3. Still on prayer books. Reading The Collects of Thomas Cranmer. The more I read the writers from the past—Augustine, Calvin, Luther, Owen, Edwards, and the Puritans—the more I realize their breadth of wisdom. It seems to me like no idea or philosophy can truly be called original. They can be challenging to read, but the effort of putting in the work is well worth it. Consider this prayer of Cranmer, which distills doctrines from Romans and the Gospel: 

Almighty God, give us grace, that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, (in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility;) that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the holy ghost now and ever. Amen.

4. Learning to play the piano. Our teacher is Ma'am Deborah, wife of Pastor Richard, who visits our church for missions. My recital piece is 'Tis So Sweet To Trust in Jesus. Reading music is a lot like learning how to read letters again. My goal, and my brother's (who also takes similar piano lessons), is to be able to play the hymnal. I'm looking for an upright piano. I have my mother's blessing that I can install it in the living room. Any leads? 

Pandemic stories

I'm honored to edit the special edition of The Filipino Internist of the Philippine College of Physicians. The issue is called "Pandemic Stories," the second half of the Going Out narratives. In the collection's prose and poetry pieces, internists write about their experiences with the end of the COVID-19 restrictions.

In the introduction, I wrote: 

In this second of two parts of the Going Out issue, we share 11 pieces of poetry and prose written by Filipino internists from all over the country during the slow, painful, and joyous transition to a changed world. These submissions offer catharsis and evoke familiar, relatable memories. They take us to an era so immediate yet so remote, a time when life was more uncertain and the world, with all its strivings and ambitions, was forced to keep still. That was only three years ago.

Download the entire issue here.  

Typecast 9: Lives of Others

 Rewatched The Lives of Others. Wrote about it in 2010. I loved it then, and I love it so much more now. 

Discovered Notes from a Typewriter

David Sax's newsletter, Notes from a Typewriter, has a similar methodology to my typecasts. Write with a typewriter and post the printed page in the blog. His entry, My Laptop Has No Smell, resonates deeply with me.

The thing that strikes me each Monday, when I pull this typewriter out of her case to bang out this thing I’m doing is the smell. It is a distinct aroma of machine oil, slightly sour and sweet, with a top note of carbon from the ribbon. There’s also something metallic there, though I doubt I can smell the keys.

Grandmothers

My annual Bible reading plan takes me to 1 Timothy. The apostle Paul exhorts and encourages young Timothy in the epistle. Paul remembers Timothy's grandmother, Lois, in the opening verses (1 Tim. 1:5). Here's a lovely portrait of Timothy and his grandmother by Rembrandt. I remember by grandmothers, Lola Glo and Ugol, with whom I shared fond memories.

Typecast 8: Erika!

Like I said, I'm finding myself falling, intentionally, into a rabbit hole. The Erike Weinrich typewriter, a gorgeous machine from Germany, arrived, greeting me as soon as I had arrived from Manila. (I had a quick meeting in Mandaluyong last Friday night.)

The key arrangement is different. Instead of the usual QWERTY, what this machine has is QWERTZ, likely because it's German-made. Sadly, the Adler Junior, which also arrived yesterday, had some defects and the carriage wouldn't move. The damage must have happened during transport. I spoke with Sir Gerald, the wonderful Quiapo-based craftsman, who offered to repair it.

I tried it out right away, and here's the first page.