All Amateur Advice on an Array of Angles

This blogger has written before how dining is a total experience 'cause it taps all five senses. Well, folks, I don't really know much about it, so I related it with Powerpoint presentations. (Hu da loser?) Now, observe some restaurateurs enhance that already rich experience by making us not only dine and wine to satisfaction but marvel at the ambiance as well.

My colleague Beth at Cafe Juanita, posing for this camera.

My friends and I didn't need to look far for such as place, 'cause we found it right there, a few blocks away from ze work crib -- Cafe Juanita. It's relatively pricey (prepare around Php 450 pax), but heck, we were celebrating and rarely.

We tried five desserts and the house's best dishes such as the aligue (crab egg) pasta, which was so good that it made me forget the names of other delightful plates we ordered. At least I remembered they were delightful. Okay.

The place's interiors are visually overwhelming. Every corner is adorned with pieces and trinkets from different corners of the globe. Exotic, mismatched chandeliers hang above the diners while the walls are draped with contrasting textiles looking like they came from Baz Luhrmann's elaborate turn-of-the-century concept film sets. (Geez, of course I only have at most a pop culture reference, not a genuine histori-cultural one. Amateur indeed.)

The photos below could be better. I made them too warm. But if you accept an excuse, that was because I was enjoying the food too much that I didn't anymore care about camera settings and composition.

Cafe Juanita.

The cafe was eclectic and Bohemian through and through. It isn't some spot one person would just frequent for refuge and creative inspiration, but a place to enjoy with friends for conversation. The interiors are too loud and glam, but they do speak of a boho lifestyle characteristic of "marginalized and impoverished artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and actors in major European cities" (source) in the 19th century.

Photo from Moillusions. Source: http://bit.ly/lZiM5z

"Remember your first love—how much you enjoyed creating as a child. If you ever lose that sense of joy, you will need to reflect on why you lost that spark. Of course, the craft of expression takes much “dying to self” and much discipline." --Makoto Fujimura's letter to young artists

"Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece." --Pope John Paul II's Letter to Artists

 "Take your work seriously, take the business of your craft seriously, but don’t take yourself seriously. People who do are laughed at." --#The50 Things  Every Creative Should Know

It's actually spelled "Brasses-sion." With several musical accomplishments under each of their belts, the five-some from the Philippine Philharmonic Orchestra's brass section set themselves out one auspicious night to play in Ortigas where I happen to work. So I pitched the idea to ze editor and won my free coverage. Livin' la vida!

Brassession. All photos by Camille Diola. Please cite Creative Commons license for use.

Their concert served as a musical journey through time and genre with brass instruments, having a repertoire that ranged from Mozart's Eine Kleine Nacht Musik to Filipino classics like Manuel Velez/Levi Celerio's Sa Kabukiran and ragtime The Entertainer up till Broadway's Overture to Annie by Strouse and Charnin and Rodgers-Hammertsein's Edelweiss.

A young audience even with no musical background, much less exposure to the canons, burst into applause at the enchanting numbers and laughed at the right time at the quintet's antics. They cheered the performances and even demanded three encores. It was a night that cut across musical tastes.

Glober Calambro on 1st trumpet

Who says that kind of crowd could only endure listening to Gagas and Biebers and, well, the roster of American Idols?

Glober Calambro who joined the Orchestra in 2007 at the ripe old age of 24 played 1st trumpet while Bulakeño Edwin Matias on 2nd trumpet eased his veteran way through the concert. The youngest of them (and looked like it), Jay-Ar Mesa, played the French horn--an instrument where he is also principal at the Manila Symphony Orchestra. Alejandro Fernandez shone brighter than his trombone, while seasoned Benedicto dela Peret, Jr. was the most entertaining, giving more personality to the tuba than is inherent to it.

Since I've never seen a brass quintet play live before, I marveled at the idea of how individuals are called to very specific professions. For dela Peret, it was the tuba--an instrument he majored in college at the UP College of Music. Mesa, who's my age, was an Outstanding Student of the Year at our alma mater (I'm betting he got outstanding unos)  where he took up a bachelor's degree in--you guessed it--French Horn!

Heck, those of us who took up the practical arts tried not to heed veterans' warnings of a life of poverty. Then many of us still ended up pursuing more structured worlds, escaping from our genuine artistic interests for days of (relative material) plenty.

Brassesion's Alejandro Fernandez on trombone

But these musicians have dedicated themselves to a pure art form, and are absolutely happy with it, showing us that it's worth going after beauty. I remember having interviewed a struggling sculptor from Paete before who told me, "Masaya ang buhay ng artist. May gutom, pero masaya." And how many of us business sellouts can say that? #

All photos by Camille Diola, unless otherwise stated. Please cite Creative Commons license for use.

Now that The Lorax, a family flick with a go-green message, just hit the theaters, let's head north and see the greens of the uptown valleys of Baguio. But when we did, this is the green we saw.

HAPPY EASTER, every one! Since I'm preparing for a more substantial blog post in a day or two, let me just share this video related with the post "A world that can't stop talking." In the embedded TED Talk below, sound expert Julian Treasure teaches us five ways to listen better, because we waste much of the 60 percent we spend listening in communication, he said.

The problems caused by a (non-physical) defect in listening can even lead to cultural and political conflict. One party doesn't just understand the pleas of another, and the other thinks it honorable to keep the barriers in place. There is then the agreement to disagree, which really doesn't solve anything.

Julian Treasure. Photo from TED.com

That is why Mr. Treasure urges us to genuinely listen starting in our everyday affairs, to give someone our full attention without our fingers getting busy with the mobile device. And well, my Gen-Y friends, that's hard, right?

But I believe that every human being needs to listen consciously in order to live fully -- connected in space and in time to the physical world around us, connected in understanding to each other, not to mention spiritually connected, because every spiritual path I know of has listening and contemplation at its heart. --Treasure

Sherry Turkle, a connectivity guru, agrees with Treasure on this. She identifies the main glitch in our wired relationships, and points out our habits as non-listeners to be a cause. "The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ make us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us,” she said.

Turkle also believes it's the next generation "who will chart the path between isolation and connectivity." #