***

Hey Dennis,

Nice to hear from you again. Haha, I’m guilty of not revisiting you on the music marketing for your bar, I’ve been unreasonably busy. But when I talked to Rocky I actually appreciated some of his choices, and I’ve discovered something new from him too (which is something vintage i.e. 80’s German/Euro Electro-clash-pop). And speaking of Electro-clash-pop and depending genres, I’m really in to it since two or three years ago when I discovered my most favorite Swede-band, who was on the rise then (The Knife) along with them guys from LCD Soundsystem who released their first album in 2005. Plus there’s Thom Yorke, who finally (as expected) made an all electro-album. (a) By the way on Thom Yorke going electro, he just had to go out of control SOLO because people were starting to blame him for Radiohead’s inadvertent shift from their trademark electric guitar rock band to the synthetic but very bop not-everyone-buys-it sound, (b) Radiohead’s new album is a personal favorite because they noticeably LESSENED Thom Yorke’s electronic ambitions in their band by letting him vent it all out on his own & (c) Best part about it, they haven’t broken up. ANYWAY, you don’t want to hear me wax poetic about it but they’re my staple tips to people lately.

Last year, I had PJ Harvey on my playlist – 2007 was her most melancholic album among ALL her melancholic albums. Also listened to some Bjork (2007 – Volta) because I like how she makes an effort to be avante garde all the time, which is always good for innovation. New discoveries: this band called Spiritualized. They claim to be Space Rock but they basically sound like a mild version of Red Sparowes cross-bred with Film School’s deadpan vocals. You might like “Ladies and Gentlemen we’re floating in space”, or their collaboration with Yoko Ono, “Walking on thin ice”. The latter was once Ono’s electronic single which has Lennon legacy all over it. Sigur Ros released their album last year, very good…Wait, I’m giving you a really melancholic lineup. They’re all worth checking out anyway. What genre did you have in mind? If you like Rock, basic(ally), I liked Deerhunter’s new album, it’s very fresh and very Indie(gnified). The New Pornographers are getting more overrated by every album but they’re still worth a shot in small doses… If you listened to Sonic Youth at one point in your life, they released an album last 2006 which I still listen to. And according to a lot of hipsters (who probably heard of them just recently because of Juno), their old track Carpenters rendition of the song “Superstar” is a winner. If you haven’t heard of it, you’ll probably like it. I liked it at first, really, but my ears would bleed if I hear it one more time from some hipster who just watched the movie Juno and came back liking SY and then The Moldy Peaches. Also check out Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible, if you haven’t already and tell me what you think because I’m running a random poll about it.

Sorry I got carried away with the nerd talk there. One last thing: Last year was a great year for Kevin Drew of Broken Social Scene. He collaborated with the same bunch of guys for his solo project, “Spirit if…” Very charged rock and still the same Indie sentimentality you get when artists really want to be profound, lol. It’s scary, it’s been the goal of a lot of these artists lately that I don’t know what to make of it – whether or not it’s still as deviant as Indie. Or maybe I’m getting tired of it. This week, I’m listening to instrumental music again. Post-rock, i.e. Mogwai and The Album Leaf. I don’t know if you’ll be into that since you like Kings of Leon who are unpretentiously rock. I liked half of last year’s album because I haven’t gotten around to listening to everything since I’m in this sort of phase. So far, so good. No dramatic changes really. But for some reason, the Europeans really liked it. It’s one of those albums you listen to over and over again and never get tired.

Oh and yes! Keep me posted about the Cerveza Negra. As it is, there are only two places in Davao City who sell the local Dark Lager: that’s at MTS and this place called “Some place else” at Rizal. I’m really puzzled why not too many people have heard of it when it’s actually San Miguel’s best brew out there. Hola Espana, your bar’s competitor at Damosa, sells Guinness Stout and Murphy’s but they eat through people’s pockets. I seriously hope that people here would open up to the world of great tasting beer. Cerveza’s like a poor man’s alternative haha.

Ciao,
Kim

[photopress:DinerBlues.jpg,full,centered]

Davao Cuisine is an ambiguous idea. But when I began to listen to myself (and my gut), the first place I could think of was the eatery nearest to the hearts of a Davaoenyo’s POCKET. There’s a quaint little eatery somewhere between corner Anda (Now, F. Inigo) and Bonifacio Street, where I have my “starving artist” lunch times. Starving artists have starving pockets too! And there’s no place like “Faye’s eatery” to turn my world around to the happier side. Here’s my friend Chico who understands as well as I do what the feeling is like.

Here are my other entries for the Davao Cuisine photo contest:

Entry 2 – http://sickled-compass.livejournal.com
Entry 3 – http://coffeegurl.multiply.com
Entry 4 – http://blog.myspace.com/kofigurl

Happy eating!

Let’s just put that it’s not really easy getting around the city when we start asking ourselves, “Where do we eat?” Ordinarily, it’s hard enough answering the question as a meat-lusting individual with so many spots to choose from. But what happens when you not only know what place to choose, you consequently have not too many options to begin with?

My dilemma really is that I’m such a darling and I want to, as much as possible, keep my vegan dearest happy, since as she said more times than I can count that perhaps aside from yours truly, food makes her really, really happy.

But first before I start begging for specific advice about this, you might be asking yourselves what a vegan is? Or what veganism is per se.

I’m sure you got a clue from the “veg” part. Wikipedia tells us that it’s simply, “Strict vegetarianism” which therefore implies that veganism is a tad more intense than the former. Whereas vegetarianism picks up on itself by rejecting meat, veganism is the choice you make when you want nothing to do with eating animal by-products. You refuse to eat anything that used to have a pulse (like meat, fish, even clams) and dairy products (e.g. egg, dairy milk, cheese, etc.) I’m sure there are a lot more on that list. Some vegans would even go so far as rejecting to wear leather or any thing short of looking like animal hide. The principle behind veganism is that no animal should be maltreated or butchered (as in livestock manufacture culture, that lot) to please somone’s taste buds. Animal welfare and such.

Now the question is: where exactly do you look?

I mean, where can you get a decent vegetable course without having to deal with eggs on chopseuy or beef ingredients in gravy or what-have-you? It’s annoying, but I’m mostly bothered by how this city isn’t very friendly to people who want to forego a particular kind of food, for whatever reason they may have. It’d be a great deal of help if someone in the blogosphere could pitch some suggestions for places where they actually serve faux meat or just PURE vegetables. Vegan gourmet is hard to get by around these parts. Speaking of gourmet, I’ve checked out Evergreen at fast foods, but the place just isn’t doing it. Sorry to say, but it doesn’t take a vegan to tell great tasting food from not. Even my girlfriend agrees. I mean, looking into it myself, a lot of people argue that the reason why it’s “impractical” to not eat meat is because “You’re young and there’s a world of cuisine out there involving m-e-a-t” or stuff like, “M-e-a-t has a special taste! Vegetables are urgh and are not as tasty.” I’ll let Ms. Vegan herself do the talking at this point but check out this next pic and tell me it’s not possible for vegan stuff to be “tasty”.

“Chicken” Nuggets, made of extra firm tofu. Probably as yummy as nuggets but well, at least you don’t hurt animals! (Source: www.Compassion-Over-Killing.net)

I’ve said my bit. Know any restaurants or places where one can purchase vegan ingredients like different kinds of tofu, soy ice cream or…to be more ambitious, special vegan cheese?

Can you help?
***

And because this is a music blog, some stuff I’ve been checking out lately have been more on the rise of “intelligent” acts like Silversun Pickups and (surprise, surprise) Typecast. Okay on the latter, my indie snob friends will scratch me off their friends list for picking a local “emo”/emo-core/whatchamacallit act. But in my defense, I’ve got to say it’s really a head on with optimizing the recording techniques and equipments employed locally. I’m sure you hear a lot of people comment, “Hey this band is so good; They sound foreign!” when really it sounds more of an insult than a compliment. Truth of the matter is, local bands don’t sound foreign, at least insofar as their music is considered. (Who made the rules for what sounds foreign or not?) The reason for this is that there’s really difference between the “trends” on how local and foreign tracks are made. Therefore, the next time you hear anyone say any of those culturally insensitive comments, what they really mean to say is that the recording is downright superb as opposed to the other local tracks you hear. In the end, if you listen to an English track (made no less by a Filipino) with both a foreign and local quality, you’d think that the former sounds American just because most Americans use the techniques they use for recording. Promise me next time you hear a Filipino rock song, take it as it is and give it more credit when its due. Don’t just peg it down to how “foreign” sounding it is.

***

One last thing! Blogie of www.robilloblog.com tagged me for this blogger meme. So I ought to tell everyone reading this five revealing things about me… Okay, let’s get this over with.

1.) My face doesn’t get oily. Haha. Okay, this isn’t supposed to be the sort of thing you’d reveal about yourself but what the hell. And hey, (knocks on wood three times), it takes a lot for me to say this observation out loud, blame it on this freak accident four years back when my classmate complimented me on being pimple-free and got my FIRST EVER pimple the following day. It’s just funny because there was a time I started asking people how a face gets oily since someone mentioned that my face doesn’t get like that. I had to ask people because I wanted to avoid it! (Then I realized it’s a physiological thing. Some people have whacked oil glands.) I can name a handful who’d shell out for an oil film off the bat so I suppose being oil-free is a good thing. Makes me wonder though if I’m normal because I know a lot of people get oily. Come to think of it, I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t get oily… Well maybe because I can’t tell the difference, heh.

2.) The longest I haven’t slept is for five and a half days. I could go on, really, but this involved unhealthy doses of triple shot expressos everyday. This happened when I was in Manila and took summer classes at Diliman whence juggling a hectic social calendar. Hah!

3.) I wear dresses. And I LIKE wearing dresses. I’m really puzzled why people are surprised when they see me wear a dress for the first time. Just because I don’t wear dresses as much as my usual jeans, shirt and sneakers doesn’t make the possibility of my wearing a dress or other girly accessories inconceivable. Come to think of it, I get this general astonishment when people notice me opting to be girly on select occasions. I know some people (ahem) who pick on me for wearing make-up. Argh. What’s the deal? It came to a point that a friend coined, “Bukikay” which is a flux of “bugay” and “kikay”. No matter what, I refuse to be a dugyot, gutter-sitting-tambay without face moisturizer!

4.) I am absolutely obssesed with blank pages. I have bulks of empty notebooks in my bedroom just because I bought them in bookstores at random times whenever I have the urge to write on a notebook. I get that urge a lot. You know that feeling of buying a notebook and just dying to fill it out with specific content? Well I get like that. And what happens later is that I feel bad messing up the pages so I start ripping the written pages off until the notebooks have no writings on it. I like how they’re empty at the end of the day. And then the next thing you know I have a new notebook. Gah, I should be ashamed because I love trees and I know they cut down trees for paper. (Frown.) And that many children out there need notebooks also. Yes. Now, I am really guilty. Really, really, guilty. (Frooooooown.)

5.) I am a certified Jill of all trades, master of none. Trust me, this is revealing. What a lot of people know is that I am a Jill of all trades; The latter they rarely pay attention to. Someone once told me that when God made a rain out of a world of talents out there, I went swimming in the flood. Actually, I was just floating, glossing over the surface. The only reason why I can do this or do that (for example, I don’t know what’s so fascinating about being able to play the guitar, piano and sing) is because it comes naturally. I never really bother with theory. I’d choke just thinking of all the “techniques” out there. Once I got into web design and sort of decided not to pursue it because I got scared of Php and was too tired to learn Wikisource. And what about the other things I’m known for in a crowd? Writing? Please, let’s not go there. I know this and I know that, but I don’t know more than enough of this and that to be able to tell myself that I have a FORTE.

Phew. Now I tag five people to answer this meme.:

MicketyMoc of http://micketymoc.bluechronicles.net
Bam of http://www.bamthegreat.blogspot.com
Moslemen of http://bangsamoro.com
Eric of http://eric.zooco.com.ph
Andrew of http://www.alleba.com/blog

Tags: Meme, Restaurants, Silversun+pickups, Typecast, Vegan, Veganism