Today is Wednesday, Janurary 7th, 2009 and it is now 11:30 AM here in the Philippines.
Music wise I have been listening to one of the first white rappers to make it big. Long before Marshall Mathers hit it big and got hooked on Vicodin, this young man was ripping shit up in Dirty Jerzey (sic). Raised in the PJs (public housing projects) in Perth Amboy, NJ, right across the river from NYC's Staten Island, he came to the attention of the East Orange/Newark rap group Naughty By Nature (who cannot remember their mega-hot "OPP"?) whose lead rapper, Treach, produced the following song. Who is this rapper? Milkbone (who also tried to call Eminem out in a feud but that is another story). Anyone who guessed "Snow" or worse yet either "Marky Mark" or "Vanilla Ice" will have their Offical Hip Hop ID Card revoked pending a hearing on your sanity):"Keep it Real"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8VNrhEUs5s
The second song is by the R&B diva "Kelis." Perhaps better known as the rapper Nas' main squeeze, or maybe not anymore since I am stuck in the bush of Mindanao, she first came to notice with the following song, which was also one of the first hits produced by the duo "Neptunes."
Neptunes by the way, consist of Pharell who is now producing solo, as well as his Filipino-American partner whose name escapes me. The song? "Caught Out There." This song is niiiiice.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoYXzFblq6g
The book I am currently reading is ,"Isaac Bashevis Singer: The Magician of West 86th Street" which as the title suggests, is a biography of the great fictional author Isaac Bashevis Singer (duh). It is written by Paul Kresh and I just started it. I am in the intro, so my opinion of it will have to wait.
In between I have also been reading more out of print works by local historical societies like "Bakbakan International," "Filipiniana Book Guild" and "Cacho Hermanos." Great Philippine non-fiction on the People, the culture, the history, flora and fauna and so on.
Rizza is sick, has a fever but she is of course on Cebu and I cannot care for her. Her nanny is taking care of her and giving me hourly updates. Nothing serious but in this country you never know. Dengue, Cholera, dysentary, you name it
We had another earthquake yesterday. We get a 6 or 7 every couple of weeks if you can imagine.The safest place to be in an earthquake is under a door frame. I would think it would be outside a dweeling/building but they say, in an earthquake you should stand in a doorway, it is the safest place... and believe me I HAVE researched it.
I was talking with Mom about it and found out something that even I did not know. In 1976 in the Sulu Sea which is on the south west coast of our island (Mindanao), there was a 7.9/8 earthquake. The US Pacific Warning Center in Hawaii gave a Tsunami warning for places north of the Philippines but then cancelled even that a few minutes later.
So...when a 15 foot high Tsunami sweapt the west coast of our island noone knew what had hit them, not that a warning would have mattered. Not even today is it possible to warn people since electricity is rare here, let alone TVs and radios.
Officially 9,000 people died which means it was at least 36,000, Entire villages were erased. Life is so cheap here. I hate to use that phrase because it sounds denigrating but it is very apt. Death is so commonplace. Disease, hunger, warfare, feuds, vigilantism, crime, earthquakes, Tsunamis, tornadoes (only on Zamboanga thank G-D at least one thing less to think about here.
Good news today. Yesterday 2nd Lt Cammayo, the Special Forces officer being held POW by the NPA was released to an NGO and transferred to the Red Cross. They released him just over the mountain in back of my house, on the border of Loreto, the next small village , in the bush south of us, and the village of La'an which straddles Comval (Compostela Valley) the newly created province created one village south.
Loreto is deep in the bush, a few kilometers from the nearest paved road and so they had to hike out but I bet he did not give a flying fuck after thinking he would be executed for Crimes Against the People. Actually, they usually do release POWs , to garner the propaganda points as well as get their comrades released from the govt (although that is rarely if ever discussed in the press of course).
He was taken I believe on 11/07, in an engagement on National Hiway in the village of Monkayo, 3 villages south of us. I forget how many died in that one, I know his squad was wiped out and I believe 2 guerillas as well.
A couple of days later they snatched a Police Officer (police are deployed as counter warfare forces as well on this island in military formations). That POW, Tumol, was released faster because the mayor of Davao arranged to trade 2 guerillas sitting in his jail for that man. Cammayo was schedualed to have been released this past Sunday but the 10th Infantry had iniated operations in Comval and pissed the NPA off.
That had steadily said that they would release Cammayo IF the govt. ceased operations in the interim and the govt. could not even get THAT right. I bet he and his pregnant wife were pissed beyond words but at least they are in each others arms today.
Because of the character count I will continue shortly...