Proposal presentations

Most of today was spent with a couple of colleagues at one of our lecture halls listening to students present proposals for their final projects. The main purpose of these presentations held at the beginning of each school term is for us to assess whether each student's proposed project is worth implementing as a final project.

As there are around a hundred students enrolled in our undergraduate degree program in each year and only a handful of instructors who can serve as project supervisors, this is a long and tedious process. We instructors are practically forced to sit nearly all day scanning written proposals for their main points and watching slide presentations while listening to the students explain what they plan to do.

The presentations provide one of a few opportunities for me to pick out students whom we might tap to join the teaching staff when they graduate. I'm usually pleasantly surprised to find some students who can prepare good slide presentations and explain concepts clearly in straight Filipino or English--a rarity these days when most people use a shockingly ridiculous mix of both languages.

On the other hand, I'm appalled that most are still unable to make a decent presentation. Instead of including just key words or phrases in their slides, they write entire paragraphs--often verbatim from their written proposals!--which they tend to read off the slide rather than expound on using their own words. (There was one student who did have phrases only on her slides but read right off her written proposal.) I sometimes wonder if they were ever taught the proper way to present a seminar in the required undergraduate seminar course which they were supposed to have taken last school term.

This disappointment together with the fact that listening to proposal presentations hours on end can be very wearying--we had lunch almost an hour late today--is what I don't like about this part of being a project supervisor in particular.

Nevertheless I find the exercise very enlightening and gratifying at the same time especially when students surprise me by coming up very much on their own with unique and unusual topics that I most probably would never have thought of.

Grand Tour 2007: Bringing art to the people

I was sort of bored yesterday: there was nothing that new to read on my Google Reader and I was pretty much done re-organizing my stuff here in my room. So I thought I'd check the television for a change and switched through channels yesterday in search of something interesting to watch.

That's when I saw something being shown on BBC that I found odd: a framed painting by Monet--or at least a full-scale facsimile of it--hanging not in a museum but on the outside wall of a building. And then came another, this time a portrait of Spain's King Philip IV by Velasquez hanging on some street corner apparently somewhere in London. A third was a magnificent painting of a famous horse named Whistlejacket by a painter named George Stubbs. Still another was a self-portrait by Rembrandt. Every time a new painting--each hanging on some wall out of doors--was shown a reporter came along to comment on it.

By this time, I was intrigued and couldn't resist looking up the Whistlejacket painting on the Internet (which is a habit of mine whenever I want to find out about something). That's when I learned about the National Gallery's (in London) Grand Tour 2007.

A press release by the Gallery about the special "exhibition" reads:

For twelve weeks, the streets of London are being turned into a Gallery - as around 30 full size recreations of National Gallery paintings are hung on the walls, in the most unexpected and unusual of places.

Masterpieces from Caravaggio to Constable will be vying for position among the bustling streets from Soho to Seven Dials. Celebrating the richness, diversity and stories of the National Gallery's permanent collection, the Grand Tour aims to encourage people to make the short journey to visit the genuine works, and many more, for free.

Each picture will be in a replica frame, and have an information plaque next to it - just as it has in the real Gallery. The plaques will also include a phone number, which people can call to access a specially recorded audio guide to that particular painting, and its artist.

Isn't that an wonderful concept? Although it's some sort of advertisement for the National Gallery's impressive art collection, it's an innovative way of introducing and educating the public about these masterpieces.

I wish they could do something similar here in this country to at least help familiarize our people with our local (professional) artists or even about classical music in general.

I've heard of the likes of Juan Luna, Felix Resurrecion Hidalgo and Fernando Amorsolo and have seen a few their paintings mainly in pictures in books or postcards and, in a few exceptional cases, in special art exhibits. But that's it. I think nearly the rest of their works are hidden in some expensive museum or remain unseen by the public in someone's private collection--which is a pity to say the least.

Plus I'm sure there are a lot more Filipino artists from the Spanish times whose body of work has been sadly lost or at best is virtually unrecognized nowadays. (I should know: My family's got a few intricately painted portraits whose creators are little known painters in the 1800's.)

Such art should be more accessible to the general public for it to be better appreciated as well as for the people to be more familiar with the long history of Filipino art.

Actually, I must be an old soul: I am partial to the neoclassic--not sure if that's the right term as I'm no art expert--works of Luna, et al., to that of the modern ones like those of Manansala, Baldemor or Sanso or those that I see on the covers of PLDT phone directories. And I think the younger generation is getting too much into the Japanese anime type of artwork, though I admire the style myself.

Anyway, I for one would love to see more of Hidalgo's paintings. I saw one of his portraits, that of an old friar, at the Bangko Sentral museum a couple of years ago and my jaw dropped at the sight. I never realized what a talented painter he was until then. In fact, after seeing that painting and a few more others at the same museum, I now prefer his style to Luna's.

A bright morning and lost in time

Just a couple of thoughts. (Ha ha. I suppose it's obvious I have a lot of time in my hands nowadays.)

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First, I woke up this morning to find my bedroom bathed in sunlight filtering through the white curtains on my bedroom windows which were facing southeast. It was a wonderful sight. Such a thing happens only during this time of the year when the sun is low and angled to shine right through my windows in the morning.

I'm really glad that I decided to switch to white curtains after having boring peach-colored ones for more than a decade. Having white curtains definitely brightens up the room.

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These breaks between school terms are a very welcome respite from the drudgery of teaching day in and day out. The only trouble is that I tend to lose track of time or what day of the week it is.

With Monday earlier this week being a holiday for instance, I was momentarily confused about what day it was yesterday when I reported to work. The different classes I would have each day of the week obviously served as some sort of time markers during the school term.

And this morning, I was slightly depressed to realize that today was already Thursday and that practically most of the week had gone by. I also began to wonder what I had done with all that time only to recall with some relief that at least I had spent it cleaning up my room and meeting with my numerous students at work. Thank God not everything had gone to waste!

At the hair salon

I decided to have my hair trimmed today and went to our usual hair salon early this afternoon, work being half day only today in anticipation of tomorrow's holiday (All Saint's Day).

It was about time to get my hair cut as I was starting to find it a bother to constantly put it up everyday now that wearing it in a ponytail didn't look that neat anymore. Plus, the increasing number of white hairs on my head--oh, horror of horrors!--would show all the more when I have my hair in a ponytail.

A typical visit at the hair salon usually begins with me being shown a chair and being asked how I want my hair done. After saying that I simply want it trimmed to just about shoulder-length (it extended to about eight inches below my shoulders today), I am made to walk over to the sink to have my hair shampooed.

Then it's back to the chair in front of the mirror where my hair gets cut. This takes about fifteen minutes followed by another fifteen minutes of drying my hair with a hair dryer.

The latter is what I least like about going to a hair salon here in this country because the people at the salon always insist on using a hot dryer (hello, damaged hair) and pull at my hair in an attempt to get rid of my natural curls.

I'm not really sure what it is about curly hair that people here have against. I suppose it's because straight hair usually looks neat and shiny, judging from the shampoo commercials that are produced here.

But then I wish that people at hair salons would refrain from constantly suggesting that I have my hair straightened. When I used to go to hair salons in the US, I was delighted to find that the ladies there would envy me my curly hair and never suggested that I have it straightened.

Besides, I actually find straight hair too boring and common for my taste.

I love my naturally curly hair so why can't the hair salon people here work with that instead of trying to change it?

Catholic book center revisited

Remember the little Catholic book center I visited about a month ago?

I dropped by again two weeks after that first visit to browse through a few more books and in particular read a little more of Celine Martin's My Sister, Saint Therese.

Soon after that second visit, I checked the Internet again to see if the books for sale on line were still available and was delighted to see that My Sister, Saint Therese and a few other new books had just been put up for sale. It was then that I decided to purchase the book myself so that I could read it at my leisure.

Given my hectic schedule at work in the past few weeks, I only got to drop by today around 4pm to inquire if I could order the book directly rather than online. Naturally, I was happy when the young fellow there informed me that it was possible and handed me an order form to fill up.

Then he mentioned that tomorrow would be the last day that the center would be open and that the center would be operating exclusively online from then on.

I was stunned. I had long feared that that would happen, seeing that hardly anybody visited the place. At the same time, I realized that it was a good thing that I had decided to drop by today to place my order instead of next week.

Anyway, while filling up the order form, I glanced at the bookshelves at the back of the shop and told him that it was pity because there were a lot of books there that I wanted to read. To my surprise, he said that the center might reopen, that it was closing only because there was no one available to keep watch since he couldn't be around because he was returning to the seminary.

I was slightly relieved upon learning this but just the same the thought that the shop would not be there whenever I felt like dropping by to read was depressing.

But at least I have the books I ordered--I also decided to order Saint Therese: Her Last Conversations--to look forward to. I was told that I would be contacted via email once the books were ready for pick-up. Now I simply can't wait for that day to come.

Cleaning, getting organized and taking stock

We're having another unusually long weekend: today was declared a holiday to allow people to go and vote during the barangay elections. Having no lecture notes or slides to prepare or review, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally clear some things from my shelves here in my room and organize whatever is left.

I have a large open bookshelf here in my room that's filled with books, mainly books that I use for my work and books that I read for pleasure like novels, reference books and books on the Catholic faith. Although these were more or less organized, there were many books that I no longer referred to or read and thought should go into archive, i.e., stored in cabinets in the basement. Likewise, there were some books downstairs that I felt like reading again or else thought I would be referring to in the near future for my work. So with several trips up and down the spiral staircase (which I began doing yesterday evening), down went the old and useless books and up came the books I wanted to read. Several other books that I kept in another but smaller shelf in my room got moved up to the big one as well. I also managed to dust the shelves and clean out the accumulated dust with my trusty chamois cloth before putting the books back on the shelf.

There were also a few other articles that I happened to dump on the shelf because it was convenient to do so then. Deciding that I had finally to get rid of those--they were just collecting dust anyway--I dug up an old box and place all the bric-a-brac into the box and stashed the box away in one of the cabinets downstairs.

Now that I've moved and organized my books, I've just realized how many books I actually own. (Here, that is. I actually have more books that I left with my sister abroad plus I haven't considered the other books around that house that I could include in my collection.) By my estimate, if I stood all my books together in a single row, they would form a line more than twenty feet long. Considering that I also have my huge collection of CDs and a sizeable library of music books and sheet music, I don't think I can live in one of those tiny Tumbleweed houses anymore. Else, if I manage to do so, I'd need a separate shed for my books and CDs alone. So much for my hopes of living small!

A bit of crazy weather

This is the time of the year were we expect to get hit by a couple of powerful typhoons. We had one supertyphoon last year (Milenyo) followed by another pretty strong one (Reming). But as there seems to be some kind of a cycle where we get lots of strong typhoons in one year and hardly any the next, we're having some crazy weather this year as a substitute for those typhoons.

Most of last week was unusually cool and rainy or else gloomy at best. Just the perfect weather that makes you want to stay in bed longer and not get up for work. In fact, I would even find our pet cats--and that stray male cat on the front door mat --sleeping in late whenever I leave for work whereas they used to be up and impatient to go outside to see me off. People at the office took to parking their cars near the building rather than at the far end of the parking lot where there are lots of trees to provide shade.

Then suddenly on Friday, the sun came out. Cars were parked under the trees once again at the office. I had to turn on the electric fan here in my room to keep cool in the evening and was considering turning on my air-conditioning as well.

When Saturday came round, the morning was sunny but the rain came pouring down again in the late afternoon. By evening, the temperatures had dropped sufficiently for me not to use my electric fan again. My poor father started getting the sniffles, a common ailment when the body is unable to cope whenever the weather turns crazy like this. (I usually get the sniffles too but I suppose my immune system is up and running on high gear nowadays given that I'm no longer suffering from as much stress during this term break.)

The cool weather continued through the whole of Sunday but gave way a to another sunny warm spell this morning. Then again that was short lived when it became cloudy this afternoon (lucky for the man we hired to mow our lawn today) and it began to rain again early this evening.

This capricious type of weather is highly unusual here where in the past, it has remained hot, or else rainy but still balmy and humid, or else cool, always for weeks at a time. Instead it's like being abroad in the temperate countries like the US or in Europe where the large variations in temperatures day to day leave you guessing what the weather will be like the next day.

This now makes me wonder what kind of weather tomorrow will bring.