workaway, getaway!

back from outta town!

ang gandang pa-birthday ni lord. came from a five-day-stay in iba, zambales for an interesting "racket": directing two live shows for the people at the provincial hall--a bikini open competition (woohoo!) and a beauty pageant. i'd been wishing for a project like this since the start of summer--work out-of-town, near the beach, with not-so-bad pay.



an answered prayer. first time kong makapunta ng iba (all the while i'd thought that we were going to do the show in subic!). hardly had time to soak myself in the swimmer-friendly sea (the waters are always calm...kahit lowtide!), pero oks na rin...at least i've had my beach fix for this summer.

ito na siguro ang magiging first and only summer beach adventure ko for this year, kaya ide-detalye ko na. i'm just bursting with it!

april 24, tuesday. we left manila on the eve of my 27th birthday (got a cute little gift to take with me to zambales: girlie earrings and a year's supply of hankies with my name embroidered on them. cutie!) the staff and the bikini open candidates were all stuffed inside one huge bus (field trip ito, ika nga ng isang staff member).

the trip to iba, the provincial capital, took four hours. we were exhausted when we arrived there at 5 am.

april 25, wednesday. my 27th birthday. spent all day typing away on my laptop. bigla kong nagkaroon ng de ja vu. two years ago i celebrated the birthday in front of my laptop as well, chasing a deadline for the kilig tv show back then. i was better off this year because the view of the seaside was much more spectacular than that of the walls of my room. and i have two dozen new hankies this year. haha!

ang dumi ng laptop keyboard ko, parang dinaanan ng ashfall!

there wasn't much time to prepare. i'd worked for this group before, last november. maybe it's the province thing, maybe it's me, but "urgency" doesn't seem to be in their vocabulary, which sometimes frustrates eternally-on-adik-mode me. the final rehearsal was supposed to be at 12 midnight that night and the initial script was only approved at around 8 pm. oh well.

di sa rehearsal marami pa ring revisions. on the spot. it was jarring, because the rehearsals were being cut short with every comment from the gods-up-there pero syempre mega-adjust kaming lahat. ganun talaga. i'm stubborn by nature but i'd like to think that experience has taught me the mechanism of flexibility.

we finished the stage/technical rehearsal by 4 am. the models were tired, and the staff was even worse. that was to be our first and final rehearsal before the show the next day. the way it went, i wasn't confident. they said they would supply headsets for the staff during the show. i knew we were going to depend greatly on that. we got through last november's bikini open because my staff and i were exchanging hand-to-mouth instructions via those headsets.

april 26, thursday. surprise, surprise--five minutes before we were to start the show i was told that there would be no headsets, but two-way radios instead. okay. kumusta naman! sa ingay ng crowd sa labas at sa ingay ng amplifier sa stage good luck kung magkarinigan kami ng staffers.

earlier that day we'd slept til lunch and i'd spent more quality time with the laptop, revising the script as per the on-stage comments from the night before. the place where we were staying had the entire beach in its backyard and the view was plain dang gorgeous. the breeze, the glittering sea, the perfectly-textured sand--it was that view that had kept me off tension-mode.

the models were just dallying around the beach in their teeny-weenies. almost all of them are gorgeous pero mas napapansin ko pa yung dagat. hmm. di ko alam kung bakit, pero pag may label na ang isang tao na "model" sya, given na sa utak kong maganda o guwapo sya kaya hindi na ko napapanganga. i'd probably be more awestruck by a beautiful "normal" person than by the typical model. kasi nga, "model"; kaya expected nang beautiful. the expectations go with the label.

erm. i don't know if it's just me. kasi yung mga kasama ko sa staff na iba, nagpiyesta talaga ang mga mata. (wink wink)

so that night, with only the two-way radios as my means of communication with the stage manager backstage and the technical director at the booth, i was at my wits' end at the frontstage. the host was not in his element; he kept screwing his spiels.



during the introduction the models appeared onstage after about fifteen seconds of an awkward empty spotlight. show went on, not without the usual glitches that an event with time-deprived preproduction would normally go through. in the end, though, the surprising (or unsurprising?) consensus of the bossings and the locals was that it was a good show. at least one tita from the provincial hall even went so far as saying that it was "the best they'd had in years". haha. ain't that kewl.
if this were a network production they would only see the blots on the paper. compliments? never mind. there's never any time to boost staff morale, there's still the next show to prepare. and for the next show, buster, you'd better make sure to keep that paper clean and blot-free, or else.
weeha. who wouldn't love this town!

we ended the night at 5 am. not in celebratory mode yet, for there was still another show to mount in 48 hours.

april 27, friday. we slept til late morning, as usual. but preprod for the Binibining Zambales show started for me as soon as i woke up. getting close-and-comfy with my laptop again for the entire morning, while feasting on the view of the beach.

after a quick lunch a meeting with the bossings was in order at the provincial hall. because of the time constraints, my most realistic goal was to deliver a show that was simple but smooth-flowing. glitch-free. easy to mount, but well-done.

after the meeting it was laptop time again. all afternoon. some of the staffers were missing home. i was missing home, too, even if i had my hands full. after three days of having been in the same setup, we were starting to feel a li'l like the hausmates in Koya's Haus. even if i wanted to wallow in my bittersweet (!) homesickness, i only had all afternoon to finish the script. the first-and-final stage/technical rehearsal had been scheduled late, late that night.


....was feelin' a little like this

at 1am we trooped to the show venue for the rehearsals and i had a happy discovery: this show's batch of bodies-to-block was much better at taking instructions than the models of the previous show. probably because: 1) the candidates treated the competition seriously (unlike the models, na inimporta lang from manila and saw the bikini competition as a modelling "racket"), 2) the girls were bright and on their toes all the time (between models and beauty queens, i suppose beauty queens generally have more gray matter. kaya nga may Question and Answer portion noh), and 3) my blocking was simple. result was a smooth-flowing rehearsal that saw me smiling on the way home. weehoo. ilang oras na lang and it's gonna be purely BEAAACH DAY!

april 28, saturday. on the morning of the pageant, i woke up happy. chirping "good mornings" all over the place. by this time the staff has somekinda gelled together in a way that neutral strangers would inevitably do, after two somekinda-grueling common experiences; even i could already trade banters with the boys like i'd known them forever. haha. feeling close!

we were confident that we were already prepared for that night's show, so all afternoon was no-work day--we checked out of the resort and transferred to a new one (mas maganda! mas malaki! mas bongga ang room! kaso di nagfa-flush ang toilet). we hired a banca and swam in the laot at sunset (i couldn't tread deep waters so i ended up flapping around with a life jacket. ha loser!).


























we were only in the water for round thirty minutes but it was one of the highlights of zambales trip. the mere thought that the worrying part was over made the leisurely moments doubly pleasurable.


when darkness fell the staff was back in work mode again. The stage manager, cl1nt, had taken over the selection of music for every show segment (I was glad for that; the music used in the bikini open was monotonous and poorly-designed) and the bossing loved his selections. final run-throughs, final briefings.


I was still my usual tensed-up self during the show but thank god it flowed just as I had hoped it would (…except for one or two minor blocking mistakes by the candidates). The two female hosts handled the show as gracefully as the candidates had handled themselves.












By the end of the night, I was happy. happy, happy. Because the work was over! Weehoo!

After the show the skeleton crew celebrated over a few drinks at a nearby bar. It was closing time and we were the last remaining customers there, but no one seemed to care; the bossing was an influential personage in town, or he seemed, at least.

He’s quite a character, the bossing. Gay, moneyed, known in his territory, but during those five days i think i saw a side to him that was different from the “bossing” who has everyone around him eager to lick his a$$. When he lets his hair down (pardon the, erm, allusion) and starts cracking jokes, he can actually be funny. Hilarious, like most colorful badings that I know. I hope I can get to work with him again next year. Or even sooner!

April 29, sunday. It was home time. We left Zambales at 2 in the afternoon and arrived in Manila at around 6 pm. As the bus was zooming past the NLEX tollgate and moving towards Munoz I kept my eyes alert for any sign of a certain landmark. I know someone who lives in those parts, the same person who’d given me the hankies. I wanted to see the landmark so that i could wave hello. haha. grabe na ito!

In Manila the staff started dispersing. It had been a somewhat fun group. Except for the bossing, all of us were in our twenties, and it was actually cool being the only girl in an all-male team, for two reasons: 1), by rule of nature, boys tend to “coddle” the only girl in the group (so ang haba ng hair ko, hehe), and 2), living in the midst of all that testosterone kinda makes you feel like you have balls, too. Wapak! Girl-with-balls ang drama! The gals at Gabriela would most probably approve!

But one thing I don’t like about being around boys is that you're bound to have a lot of bad air around you. literally, cause they fart too much. minsan magpapaalam pa—“Uutot lang ako ah”—pero hindi naman lalayo. tapos maiiba na lang bigla ang amoy ng hangin. Putcha! Mabuti kung open air, but no! dun talaga sa lugar na kulob at may aircon. Kumusta naman yun!

Arrived home at 9 pm. Spent the entire day in transit. Tired, but happy. and thinking of the next several days ahead.

* * *
Rest, rest. Less than a week to unwind, to attend to things i didn't have time to do when i was out there. In a way I like it, in a way I don’t. But at the end of the day, I know I'd still choose to live the whirlwind life.

So I'm a labor prostitute. Have movie? Will work for you. Doesn't matter who you are, so long as I can stand you. haha. sana lang in the near future hindi ko na kelangang mag-absent sa kahit saang shoot. Pero poproblemahin ko na lang yun pag andyan na. :-P

i love summers!