Tisay « Victor Villanueva

Posts tagged with Tisay

February 24, 2009

Hailey from Belgium

Hailey, the baby girl we fostered for a few months before she was taken by her Belgian adopters almost five years ago, was back in the Philippines last weekend with her Belgian family. We treated their family to lunch at SM Mall of Asia. It’s pretty cool that her Belgian parents are open to introducing Hailey to her roots in the Philippines. Her parents have also, by the way, just adopted another Filipino child. Looks like Hailey has indeed been blessed with a loving and caring family.

Tisay and Hailey clicked quite well, too, even if neither of them spoke the same language. Seeing them screaming, giggling and laughing together was quite cool. Speaking of Tisay, she’s now back in school. I bring her to her kindergarten within UP every once in a while during my lunch break. It’s quite cute how excited she is every single day for school.

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November 4, 2008

Less time at the cemeteries

We went to Amadeo, Cavite for our departed paternal grandparents and other relatives last October 31, then to Sta. Maria, Bulacan for our maternal ones last November 1. We didn’t do much at the cemetery. It would seem to me that we’ve been spending less time at the cemeteries the past few years. It’s not like the way it used to when aunts, cousins and relatives from all over spend an entire afternoon together at the family mausoleums for Undas.

The atmosphere around the cemetery, especially in Sta. Maria, is as festive as usual. Undas always feels like one big fiesta at the cemeteries, with food stalls and marching bands roving around playing religious fares.

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October 9, 2008

Perennially distracted

I can’t seem to fulfill my plan to isolate myself and become a law school monk. Every once in a while I can’t help but turn the TV on and watch some entertainment or some shows off CNN. I would sigh at how pathetic some news commentators, short of sounding like capitalist paid hacks, spin the news of the global capitalist crisis into something barely positive. Every morsel of positive detail is being used to salvage the perception of capitalism’s inevitable collapse. It’s like everyone’s in denial. This was bound to happen because of this system’s inherent characteristic. France, Iceland, Singapore, Japan, even the USA is on recession. Those who speak of free market policies have suddenly now shut up and allowed state intervention to bail out greedy private financial institutions. What happened?

Okay. So even if I turn the TV off and go back to studying, I still end up losing my focus. Every half an hour or so I would get up from my study table and walk around the house trying to do something else. More often that not, I’d end up just playing with Tisay and watching cartoons with her.

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October 2, 2008

Manila Ocean Park

It was Tisay’s third birthday last weekend. My parents decided to bring the family to Manila Ocean Park for the day. It was everyone’s first time at the aquarium, apparently the first and the largest aquarium facility in the country, owned by some Singaporean company.

The only other large-scale aquarium facility in the Philippines, I think, is Ocean Adventure in Subic.

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September 14, 2008

Nightmares & Child-Acting

A few days ago, some of my orgmates in UP Cinema Arts Society asked me if Tisay could act for one of our orgmate’s thesis short film production. I was hesitant at first, since Tisay was just two years old, and I was doubting if she could deliver lines or any acting of that sort. Plus, she could be a brat. And I sort of have an idea how coaching a child to act can be a headache. Despite that, I said yes, and for that they even gave me the role of his father, too. Anyhow, it was a largely cameo role.

True enough, however, Tisay was such a brat during the shoot. She was okay at first, but since shoots are always vulnerable to delays, and delayed the shoot was, Tisay got pretty bored and tired before we got to shoot the sequence she was in. By the time it was our turn, she was on tantrums.

Indeed, directing or coaching a child to act can prove to be one of the most difficult aspects of directing. She couldn’t quite grasp what acting was and how pretending is different from what is real and apparent. She got pretty confused when I kept telling her that for a while I would pretend to be our dad. Kunwari ako si papa, ganyan. She couldn’t get it. Ha ha. Oh well, dinaan na lang sa impromptu script-revisions to allow her tantrums and crying to be part of the sequence.

Anyhow, I’ve been having bad dreams every night the past week. Apocalypse, death of loved ones, and even myself, tragedies, etcetera. It has become regular, it’s scary. It has come to a point that I don’t want to sleep anymore. Gabi-gabi bangungot na lang palagi. Well, it’s not as if I can avoid sleep altogether. I think I should re-learn to pray before sleeping at night.

So there goes some random blurbs.

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August 30, 2008

Tisay and her cut

Tisay fell from the kitchen countertop last weekend. I got scared when I saw her head bleeding after the fall. I felt quite distressed when the doctors were stitching her cut. She was screaming on top of her lungs. Ako nga hindi pa ‘ko nasi-stitches (considering I have a greater propensity of having such a cut since parati akong nasa rally and I’m a fratman).

Anyway, amusingly, right now it’s as if nothing happened. Though she’s obviously traumatized by the experience. She cries when she hears the word ‘doctor’ or ‘hospital’.

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March 25, 2008

Two days in Lian & Calatagan

March 21-22, 2008. The family spent two days in Batangas for the Good Friday and Black Saturday holidays. We dropped by Matabungkay Beach in Lian in the morning of Friday before proceeding to Golden Sunset Resort in Calatagan, where we spent the rest of the short getaway.

We left Quezon City at around four in the morning and arrived in Tagaytay just before six. We had fastfood breakfast in Tagaytay before proceeding to Batangas. Since I barely had any sleep because I spent the entire night till early morning editing my thesis short film, I slept the entire time. We eventually arrived in Matabungkay in Lian, Batangas a little past eight in the morning.

Even if my parents prodded me to take a dip in the salty water to, apparently, help heal my fungal infections, I refused. There was also quite a crowd on the beach and in the waters. Too many rafts, too. Didn’t want to swim at all. I contented myself with taking stolen photographs of Tisay and other people.

Because it was getting pretty boring, we decided to proceed to Golden Sunset Village Resort & Spa in Calatagan where we had a reservation. Didn’t have much fun since I wasn’t really in the vacation-mood at all because of thesis-worries and other such leftover academic concerns. Plus I didn’t feel comfortable swimming with the dark fungal infections I had in some parts of my body. I again just contented myself taking photographs of Tisay, my nieces, and other things around the resort, including the golden sunset from where the place borrows its name.