Anyway, I’m going a bit more serious–seriously crazier with my entries, possibly more interesting and less intermittent.

However, that is not a promise. Just try to visit my new site more often as it is more fun.

Goodbye Lelelulu. Say hello to Botikpetra.

Last weekend, though, we had celebrated my good friend Jason’s birthday over some cocktails and gourmet food care of our chef-in-training  friend, Raf. (Who, by the way, lives along Milkyway Drive, so that explains the title a bit. And of course, it goes without saying I like The Church as well.)

Incidentally, birthday boy Jason and nostalgia nut Paco were wearing a total upgrade from t-shirts and tsinelas. While dancing to The Whitest Boy Alive, we thought, hey the lighting’s nice and we’re wearing pretty clothes so let’s take snaps! Forget our lousy poses and pardon the washcloths in the background. We won’t always be in our twenties and there won’t always be bright lights.

Anyway, quick game too: guess whose artists’ body parts covered my face. Anybody who guesses at least two answers correctly gets a prize from me!

]]> http://lelelulu.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/quick-collage/feed/ 0 lelelulu hellolelelulu2 http://lelelulu.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/i-want-a-beast-and-its-name-is-vandercook/ http://lelelulu.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/i-want-a-beast-and-its-name-is-vandercook/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:10:10 +0000 botikpetra http://lelelulu.com/?p=170 ]]>

Ye beautiful machine

Obsessions. What are yours?

Mine include printing processes, and the printers themselves. I have talked about the cute Gocco a while back, and this time it’s about the “Cadillac of letterpress”–Vandercook! Apparently, it celebrates its 100th birthday this year, and people are making tributes to the grand beast!

Vandercook print via blackeiffel.blogspot.com

Digital printing is literally flat and often lifeless, but it’s the easiest and hassle-free way to make palpable visuals. But there’s something very regal about embossed prints and in the process in which they were born. With these lovely art prints, the eye is rewarded and the touch is titillated, in a non-sexual way. Maybe for some, it can be.

Haha.  It is said that there are only a few of these monsters alive–2,000 to say the least. However, some would keep Vandercook alive, keeping it from dying by way of the lochness monster. Solution? Portable Vandercooks!

How cute is it?

Great invention by Baltimore Print Studios. Some of us may never get to work with the real thing, but at least its spirit will always be with us.

Make your own! Print it out! Download the pattern from here and have fun with your mini beasts!

Provident Village: rage, rage against the dying of light

Music and musings after almost losing one’s family to Ondoy

“Kiss me goodbye
Pushing out before I sleep
Can’t you see, I try
Swimming the same deep water as you is hard”

What apt words. I don’t know if I should call this a tragedy. Is it a tragedy? It is tragic, but not quite a tragedy. Is there a difference?
I may have not experienced the trauma of being 60 feet above flood water, but worrying about your family stuck there is another story. It is a story I claim.

“The shallow drowned lose less than we”

Saturday, 10 a.m.–I, along with my editor, came from an sleep-deprived overnighter to close a magazine issue. On the way home, we got stuck for hours nearby Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City, as the said street was already submerged in waist-high water. Puzzling, since I don’t remember heavy rains during the night before. But in my gut I knew something was going wrong, especially back home. Proof came in when my father sent out these text messages:
“Pls. call Meralco para putulin ang kuryente. Baha na dito.”
“SOS. Nasa bubong na kami ng bahay. Joe Tayawa, 11 St. Rita St, Provident Village, Marikina.”

After a few frantic phone calls, I’ve been informed that everyone in the family was stranded inside the house, except for my brother, Jeffrey, who went to school earlier that day. While immobile, I never felt my heart beat so loudly, so strongly, that when my chest is pressed against a table, the table shakes as if in an earthquake. My heart makes little earthquakes at the thought of losing my family. When that happens, it would definitely stop beating. Everything would have been rubble.

“You breathe the strangest twist upon your lips
and we shall be together”

Saturday, 10 p.m.–I, along with my brother, Jeffrey, was staying at our Auntie Emy’s house in Barangka, Marikina. Almost everyone in my extended family was already calling NDCC, but no results came. We were losing sleep and sanity (almost), to the rubber boats that never came to our house’s street. We were constantly in contact with one of my my stranded brothers, Kuya Jon, whose voice was proportional to the battery life of my cellphone. He never failed to ask me about the rescue team, and I never failed to tell him that it was on its way. At the time, they, along with twenty other neighbors, were camping on our house’s rooftop for 12 raining hours. I was losing sleep over the thought of our rooftop, a sanctuary for people, being endangered by benevolent waters. Over hypothermia. Over the faint crying in the background. The last thing I learned before my battery finally failed, it only took a meter before it flooded at the third floor. I fell asleep at about 3 a.m. to the AM radio’s cacophony of SOS’s and to the sirens outside. The sounds of helplessness.

Rescue from the government never came. Jeffrey instead risked his life at 5 a.m. to tread the flood, which had subsided, and to collect the stranded before things got any worse.

Waiting is always the hardest part. It was almost 8 in the morning the next day when my aunt’s neighbors were talking about the dead. Bodies being fished out in nets from the Marikina River, many of them, children. I could only stare in shock. Instead of eating breakfast, I only removed dust from my eyes.

“Forever on nights like this I will kiss you
I will kiss you and we shall be together”

But my family is alive! Papa, Mama, Kuya Jon, Jason, and Jay Anne–they’re all safe.

Everything else ceases to matter when your see your father, mother, brothers, and sister, all drenched in mud, faces drowning in a mix of disbelief, relief, and confusion. Those faces– whose emotions I could not paint, that are variations of my own face–I wouldn’t have had the chance of seeing alive again. Those faces whose bodies would have been swimming/floating directionless in deep water. I could not imagine that day.

When I gave them the Thank Heavens You’re Alive embrace, they don’t know how much my eyes were flooded, but could not spill any tears. My head hurt in the process. I handed out the tuna sandwiches I made…

***

The aftermath

It’s been almost a week. Until now, I haven’t properly processed this tragic event that claimed hundreds of lives and homes. In Marikina, flood had totally subsided, but we still have to deal with sludge, the heaps of useless, muddied belongings (and insurance policies without “Acts of God” ticked, included.)

All I think is, which my father also echoes, the river is claiming what is rightfully hers. She’s probably saying, “You, people, are just renting out Marikina’s waterways, and the contract is overdue. What good riverbed will a former residential subdivision will now make.”

As for me, I’ve retrieved only a few things from my former room. Inventory: a suitcase, a mountaineering backpack, four pairs of footwear, and some CDs (The Velvet Underground’s Legend, The Cure’s Bloodflowers, Cocteau Twins Four Calendar Cafe, and Barbie’s Cradle’s free VCD.) Everything I have had ceased to matter. Clothes, old journals since high school, photos, artworks, books, and magazines–all a waste.

Sludge and trash in front of our house

(Tangent. I’m contributing to the garbage problem. Think about it: when we all die, all our stuff turn into trash. So from now on, I will live out of my suitcase and backpack. It’s an exercise in simplicity and sustainability.)

A friend told me, you’ll learn how easy it is to let go of things. It’s true. I’ve learned to let go of them all. I’m left with my family–my backbone– which props me to stand up and walk forward. And/or probably help me swim, which reminds me to finally take up lessons.

*Song written and performed by The Cure, a band that helps me through bad times.
** I would like to take this chance to thank everyone who have supported me and my family during this challenging time. All your prayers, morale boosters, and financial help are very much appreciated. When it rains, it’s four nga. Let’s continue helping victims of Ondoy.

I love you all. Salamat. Being alive never felt this good.

On Aids/ Ho Chi Minh

Last Known Photos at S-21/Tuol Sleng Genocide Center, Phnom Penh

Skewed Perspectives/ Bangkok

These photos aren’t representative of my recent semi-Indochine backpacking trip. They’re not just the tourist photos I was planning to take. Though, somehow, they keep sparking the memory plug that by default, forgets.

At Vocas a.k.a Oh My Gulay

In my college mountaineering days, Baguio was the gateway to places further north, like Mt. Pulag, Sagada, etc.  It served as our supplies central: food and emergency clothes for layer (ukay). Going back to the food: It’s always the food back in Baguio, after a three-day hike up the highest mountain in the region, that makes the whole travail rewarding!

Later on in life have I appreciated it being a hub of art and culture, with artists their works rooted in spirituality (which are not necessarily Christian.), deep sense of being Filipino, or both.

Anyway, I just miss being there now. More on this later.

Rubbercut art by Leonard Aguinaldo

Cafe By The Ruins. All alone for my rainy morning breakfast.

2. If you have two versions of a photo, the wrong one will make its way to the printer.

3. The less time you have the more useless your computer will become.

4. Promises made by the sales staff have no basis in reality.

5. The sales staff will promise anything.

6. If the text consists of two words, one will be misspelled.

7. Speed. Quality. Affordability. Pick any two.

8. If the run is wrong, it’s never the press operator’s fault.

9. Spell checkers don’t.

10. Grammar checkers don’t, either.

11. Proof raeders are useless.

12. Global search-and-replaces aren’t.

13. The index entry you leave out will be the first one the client looks under.

14. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is good comedy.

15. If three designs are shown to a client, your least favorite will be chosen or any combination of worst components of each.

16. If two designs are shown, a third will be requested. If provided, then one of the first two will be chosen.

17. If you ask for more copy it will be sent as a .jpg. If you ask for images they will send powerpoint presentations.

18. Clients don’t have their company logo in a usable print ready format so don’t bother asking.

19. Blue line proofs reveal previously invisible errors.

20. The best designs never survive contact with the client.

21. You will misspell the name of the client’s spouse.

22. Your best idea is already copyrighted.

23. The best way to find errors in your code is to show a client “a new feature”.

24. There is no stock photo ever made that matches the image you have in your head.

25. Creative inspiration flows in inverse proportion to the distance from the studio.

26. Time allowed to complete work is inversely proportional to time taken by client to work out what to complain about.

27. Doctors, astronauts, and plumbers need training to do their jobs, but anyone with a computer is a graphic designer.

28. No matter how detailed the tech support FAQ is, nobody has ever heard of your problem.

29. The number of colors in a client’s design will equal the number of colors in the original bid specs, plus two.

30. The client’s disk won’t run on your equipment & when it does will contain unusable copyrighted images.

31. If you purchase new equipment to read your client’s disk, it will be the last disk of that type you will ever receive.

32. Your client will often not like your design but not quite know why.

33. Computer crashes always happen exactly 30 seconds before saving.

34. A client who knows exactly what he wants is worse than one that has no idea.

35. Clients who do not provide content upfront will complain about the use of Lorem Ipsum.

36. Everything has to be done immediately, deadlines are incredibly important unless client has to provide materials or approve your work.

37. The customer is always right . And an idiot.

Thank you Adland.tv

Type History

Fonts do not surface from sheer, frigid air. Some surface out of a creative brief. Case in point, Gotham. According to idsgn.org, GQ Magazine commisioned type foundry Hoefler & Frere-Jones to create a typeface that’s masculine, fresh and new.

This news is very last year, as with Obama’s marketing materials, with a hopeful Gotham:

I have a particular fondness for Gotham–it makes for a cool upgrade from the ubiquitous Helvetica and Futura. Nota bene: you’ve probably heard of people being sick of Helvetica. But hear this: there’s even a group called “Art Directors Against Futura Bold Condensed“. Futura bold condensed, for the uninitiated, is often seen during drinking sessions:

Honestly, I have nothing against Futura bold condensed. Perhaps American advertising and design had been ultra-saturated with it, but not here in this third world country. Maybe I’ll protest against the proliferation of Arial, but what the heck.

The moral we get may be this: Designers should be wary from laziness of choosing fonts for projects. For designers on a budget, there’s always the convenience of the Mac/Adobe defaults. For those who can afford to shell out $ for a sparkly new font, there are the pretty ones from the aforementioned HF-J, FF, and other independent type designers. Idsgn.org puts it succinctly: “There will always be a place for classic type in contemporary design, and it’s safe and easy to rely on the same old standards, but using type that is underused is often the best way to stand out in an increasingly crowded and homogeneous design landscape.”

The task is simple: choose wisely. Choose wisely, and you shall be rewarded.

The next installment shall have the spotlight on type designers, Japanese design, and the universe according to Stephen Hawking.

Gocco Printing Machine!

I’d probably never gonna own a Heidelberg, but this Riso baby is begging to be mine! Imagine the crafts I can make with these, waaaah! I’d probably even craft my own zines. Come take a look at the lovely samples from the Gocco Flickr group. This one’s my favorite so far:

cutey craft!

My heart is bursting with joy! Isn’t this the best thing ever?

P.S. Heartbreaking news: Riso ceased production of Gocco on December 2008. But I’m decided to hunt for this now-elusive machine. You shall be mine, Gocco! There is no other way. We shall have a future.

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