June 27, 2008

CRAVING FOR RUBY

Craving for Ruby Tuesday for a week now and I don’t want to drive all the way to Trinoma in Quezon City but I have to!

I HAVE TO! Oh please….I’m salivating!

Awesome Food and Serious Salad Bar, renowned for its Salad Bar, Ruby Tuesday also offers Starvin' Stoppers, plentiful Platter, specialties, signature Dinners, bigger, Better Burgers & Sandwiches and a variety of dazzling desserts.

June 25, 2008

FACE YOUR POCKET PROJECT

Things that are living in the pockets of your bag, jeans or jacket: travel and pay checks, old cigarette pack that just looks interesting, sugar lumps and all the stuff that has found home in your pockets. They are all the treasures our project is looking for! The goal is not only bring all this objects into light but show the owner of them. http://www.faceyourpockets.com/
Author: Ram Lopez-Vito Bucoy
Occupation: Public Relations Executive
Description: Moleskine ,ATM card, mobile phone ,pen, Calling card, Ixus Camera, advil, Company ID, ID Sling, Pins, Indonesian Rupiah, Philippine Peso and an American Dollar Bill, card reader and usb

June 24, 2008

The mellow sound of birds chirping

(a re post from my old account)
I believe that being subversive doesn't necessarily mean being against everything. What is interesting is finding a fresh way of thinking within the system.

On being alone
Doing things on your own is good. Independence, confidence and self esteem are all benefits of doing things by yourself. It can even be bad for your mental health if you don't. If we are frightened of loneliness that we can't be by ourselves, then we are not very well developed. The capacity to be alone and the ability to spend time with oneself is part of the human experience.

You don't, of course, have to be single to be on your own. We may be lonely sometimes, but we may also unnecessarily define ourselves negatively as lonely because we take on board other peoples' perceptions of us as " poor thing". I rediscover what I like about myself when I am alone. Like when I am in a restaurant, my mind can freewheel without focusing on day-to-day responsibilities. It gives me the chance to reflect on my life in a positive way. I always take a journal with me to the table and jot things down about where I want to be in two years' time. I don't have time to do that at work as I'm too busy drowning myself in front of the computer.

It's nice to share things by yourself far out weight the disadvantages.

rewind
( May 2005 - reminiscing )
I had stupidly become immerse to fear. Having spent two months internship at ABS - CBN to pass my communications class ( Television scriptwriting and journalism ) and graduate. For the first time, I yearned for the mundane. For years, my life had been anything but. There was a time when I had to sleep at work for three days with a pre-packed bag beside the newsroom couch at MGB ( Magandang Gabi Bayan) video tapes, a recorder, a handy steno and a flashlight.

Standing right in front a dead kid after being stabbed 24 times by his dad at Philtranco bus station, bullets, witnessing some of the most brutal human rights violations on earth and post-traumatic stress disorder.

It's great to get out alive to tell the story, worse was the emotional toll. My own energy was being drained by everything I witnessed.

Present
11:43 pm
I have problems sleeping just about every night. I just finished reading five magazines I purchased early today, looking at myself in the mirror at the moment, I hate my racoon-like eye bags.

Mandela and our black little notepads

Two white South African guys seated beside me at EN07 literally laughed like "Hah-hah-hah-hah!" in tandem with one another and then end the Hah-chain with a big "Ohhhhhhhhhh." REPEATEDLY. Over my little black notebook.
South African Boy1 : sweet man, how much did you get it for?
Me : Huh? uhh which one? My bag?
South African Boy1: nope, your notebook.
Me: ohh hahaha around $20 USD, why?
South Africans (took their books out too from their pockets) We've got ours for like $12 USD
Me: What? TOTALLY CHEAP!
( we all started laughing )
South African boy2 : (Laughs) BTW, we're from Capetown. I'm James and he's Stephen....yup, moleskine addicts too.. and you are?
Me: ( Laughs) oh Ram here.
South African Boy2 : From Guam?
South African Boy1 : New Zealand? You Maori?
Me: huh? Nope ( smiles) uhh Manila - Welcome to the Philippines! ( Shows my gray EN07 ID)
( we all just started giggling)
You're guys are not distracting anyone with your solid pale blue poly/cotton top.

Some late doodles - why DOODLE?

Do you doodle? Many people love to scribble away absent-mindedly, and often these doodles can carry a great deal of meaning, and for the artist, can sometimes be the source of inspiration for serious artworks.

Often, its just boredom. People are not wired for doing nothing – with a long prehistory of precarious existence, people need to be constantly engaged in productive action. Laziness is a sure recipe for extinction. Neither are we wired for the purely cerebral activity that so man

y of us are now employed in – we are designed to work with our hands, to scan the horizon with our eyes, and walk long miles. So, we fidget, twitch, fiddle and doodle whenever we are forced to sit still and inactive for any period of time.

Doodling is also an outlet for frustrated artistic expression. The arts in our society have become ‘spectator sports’ reserved for the talented, while the rest of us are too embarrassed to sing (except in the shower), dance (except for some foot-tapping) or draw (except for doodling). These fundamental outlets for creative expression have been stymied by a combination of social pressure (fear of inadequacy) and lack of training (our overfull school curriculums leaving little room for the arts, combined with a flawed view of artistic development as innate and not to be ‘messed with’ by education).
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Doodles from my moleskine, Sept 2007 ( artwork by Raul Ramon Lopez-Vito Bucoy II)

June 23, 2008

PRIVATE SALE AT (...)

I just got this special sale invitation online from my good friend Carlo of Paul Smith and Ben Sherman Manila. Private Sale at dotdotdot begins today (Monday, 23rd of June)G/F Greenbelt 5 Ayala Center, Makati City.
Telephone +63 2 756.0726
Mobile +63 920.916.8906

(...) dotdotdot, a multi-brand enterprise bringing to Manila a constellation of cult fashion names denoting both impeccable taste and fashion forwardness. Dotdotdot, the new endeavor by the people behind Paul Smith, carries brands from the A-list of style hipdom: McQ-Alexander Queen, Gaspar Yurkievich, Whyred, S***R London, See by Chloe, Erotokritos, Eley Kishimoto, Opening Ceremony, b Store and Karine Arabian, directing our collective style radar into the finer reaches of fashion

June 21, 2008

IMELDA PROJECT

I love creating and hate the EMPTY FEELING WHEN IT IS DONE.

Happily, my New Diversion has begun! And, can I just affirm that there is seldom such a rush as getting myself a new pad of acid free art paper - big repositories just waiting to fill up. I thought the doodling all my stuff would be mostly la la work, but it has been something very different – something I really am enjoying so far.As I create Imelda, it really takes me back months, or years, to when I actually created an ugly Imelda, and some of the material feels really raw all over again. As I'm re creating them, I've been re-viewing things and if I think of something now that is so much more effective than when I originally created it. I know some artist think that kind of do-over is scandalous, as though the first draft is the purest form of artistic expression, but I've always thought that was crap. The emotion is purest in the first draft, but sometimes the emotion damages my ability to express it. So, I think there's a lot to be said for reflection some time later, and a willingne ss to fine-tune creation that may have suffered in the first go-round. Since I'mdoing this sort of re-creating, the process is taking longer than it would if I were simply churning them through my word processor. But, I think that's okay, since the end results are so much improved.

---
Artwork above by me
colored pencil on acid free paper
stuff you do when you're bored. Me, Meldie and my 10 year old Prismas

I IMAGINE green BAGS and NOSEBLEED

I get lots and lots of nosebleeds every time I see something FUN. When I was a kid, sometimes I would get a nosebleed while I was sleeping and only realize something awful had happened when I would wake up and find my hair glued to the pillow. As an adult, I've actually had to cover my nose with a cotton ball because I was experiencing endless nosebleed. Many people mark the first falling leaves as the indicator of autumn, but not I. It's my first nosebleed that always marks the turn of the seasons for me. So, get ready, folks---dry air and long-sleeves are imminent, so sayeth my sinuses.
(Ram after spoting someone carying a nice bag , where can I get one?)

WHO WEARS SHORT SHORTS?

WELL I DO! haha

After seeing things like pseudo zebra print shorts and graphic t-shirts, I'm surprised by barely anything anymore in thrift stores. But today, I spotted something that made me scramble for my camera phone one day. I stop by the mall when I'm feeling tired ("retail therapy," right?), and last Friday after work, I came upon this rack that had shorts calling my name. Epiphany baby! I was at Shang and boom, last 3 pairs of Ralph Lauren pink walking shorts. WHAT? EPIPHANY! Yes, I'm a complete fool for paying this much for a pair of pink shorts and I don't want to dwell on that.

anyway

I should take a walk around my area more often. Yesterday I recovered myself roaming around the heart of Salcedo Village and there my eyes were so pleased to see the people in all their frenzy pace. Everything was so garish, plushy and fancy. Once, I was passing by the entrance of Velasquez Park, a patch of green along Leviste and Tordesillas and I noticed THAT someone outside Coffee Bean and Tea leaf, resembled a known face. I walked back and I attempted to recognize the person with a quick look as discreet as I could. I was right, there she was. My friends yaya was sipping iced blended mocha from CBTL with my friends puppy. What the?

June 19, 2008

MANTEAU DE FAMILLE DE BUCOY DES BRAS

The French surname Bucoy is homonymic in origin. It belongs to the category of surnames which base their origin in the place of birth or origin of the person who first bared the name. As the society started to grow in the middle ages, people adopted a second descriptive name for better identification, sometimes a place of birth, their occupation or even their father’s name. The Surname Bucoy is variant of “Buc”, which is the name of a town located in Seine et Oise and Belfort, France and Northern Spain.
The surname is mainly found in Normandy, Northern France. Bucoy (Dubucq, Dubuque and Dubuquoy) listed amongst the nobility of Reitshop’s General Armory and French Aristocracy.

Origin: La Rochelle and Normandy, Northern France
Crest: Au-Flauer-de-lis
Source: The Historical Research Center

The family's ancestral residential properties in Zamboanga City are located in JD Cruz (Crispin Atilano Street) and Calle San Jose in Barrio San Jose, where several branches of the family still retain their main residences.

Here is the description of the Escudo (Coat of Arms) of the Bucoy Family used by the progenitors of the present day Zamboanga Bucoy based from old family archives.

White signifies peace and sincerity, blue denotes loyalty and truth. The bent symbolizes the shoulder belt of the armament worn about shoulder and arm and signifies defense and protection.


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Le nom de famille français Bucoy est homonymic d'origine. Il appartient à la catégorie des noms de famille qui basent leur origine au lieu de la naissance ou origine de la personne qui a découvert la première fois le nom. En tant que société a commencé à se développer dans les Moyens Âges, les gens a adopté un deuxième nom descriptif pour une meilleure identification, parfois un lieu de naissance, leur métier ou même nom de leur père. Le nom de famille Bucoy est variante de « Buc », qui est le nom d'une ville située dans Seine et Oise et Belfort, la France et l'Espagne nordique.
Le nom de famille est principalement trouvé en Normandie, France nordique. Bucoy (Dubucq, Dubuque et Dubuquoy) énuméré parmi la noblesse de l'arsenal général et de l'aristocratie française de Reitshop. Origine : La Rochelle et la Normandie, France nordique Crête : Au-Flauer-De-lis Source : Le centre historique de recherches Le family' ; des propriétés résidentielles héréditaires de s dans la ville de Zamboanga sont situées dans JD Cruz (rue de Crispin Atilano) et Calle San Jose en banlieue San Jose, où plusieurs branches du famille maintiennent toujours leurs résidences principales. Voici la description de l'escudo (manteau des bras) de la famille de Bucoy employée par les ancêtres de l'aujourd'hui Zamboanga Bucoy basé de vieilles archives de famille. Le blanc signifie la paix et la sincérité, bleu dénote la fidélité et la vérité. Le coudé symbolise la ceinture d'épaule de l'armement porté au sujet de l'épaule et du bras et signifie la défense et la protection.

June 18, 2008

UNTITLED WRITERS BLOCK ( I shouldn’t be posting this but I am now!)

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grow up I should be an artist cum writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

I was the middle child of three, but there was a gap of seven years on either side. For this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed disagreeable mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my high school days. I had the lonely child’s habit of holding conversations with imaginary people inside my room or was it my six sense acting up, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life. Nevertheless the volume of serious – i.e. seriously intended – writing which I produced all through my childhood and boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.

From time to time, when I was a bit older, I wrote bad and usually unfinished ‘happy peoms’. I also attempted a short story which was a ghastly failure. That was the total of the would-be serious work that I actually set down on paper during all those years.

However, throughout this time I did in a sense engage in literary activities. To begin with there was the made-to-order stuff which I produced quickly, easily and without much pleasure to myself. Apart from school work, I wrote semi-comic poems which I could turn out at what now seems to me astonishing speed – at fourteen I wrote a whole rhyming script I kept to myself.

But side by side with all this, for fifteen years or more, I was carrying out a literary exercise of a quite different kind: this was the making up of a continuous ’story’ about myself, a sort of diary existing only in the mind. I believe this is a common habit of children and adolescents. As a very small child I used to imagine that I was, say, a superhero, and picture myself as the hero of thrilling adventures, but quite soon my ’story’ ceased to be narcissistic in a crude way and became more and more a mere description of what I was doing and the things I saw. For minutes at a time this kind of thing would be running through my head: ‘He pushed the door open and entered the room. A yellow beam of sunlight, filtering through the muslin curtains, slanted on to the table, where a match-box, half-open, lay beside the inkpot. With his right hand in his pocket he moved across to the window. Down in the street a tortoiseshell cat was chasing a dead leaf,’ etc. etc. This habit continued until I was about twenty, right through my non-literary years. Although I had to search, and did search, for the right words, I seemed to be making this descriptive effort almost against my will, under a kind of compulsion from outside. The ’story’ must, I suppose, have reflected the styles of the various writers I admired at different ages, but so far as I remember it always had the same meticulous descriptive quality.
When I was about twelve I suddenly discovered the joy of mere words, i.e. the sounds and associations of words.

As for the need to describe things, I knew all about it already. So it is clear what I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write at that time. I wanted to write enormous naturalistic with unhappy endings, full of detailed descriptions and arresting similes, and also full of purple passages in which words were used partly for the sake of their own sound.

I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in – at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own – but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape. It is his job, no doubt, to discipline his temperament and avoid getting stuck at some immature stage, in some perverse mood; but if he escapes from his early influences altogether, he will have killed his impulse to write. Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

1. Sheer egoism.Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, to get your own back on the grown-ups who snubbed you in childhood, etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive, and a strong one. Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen – in short, with the whole top crust of humanity. The great mass of human beings are not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class. Serious writers, I should say, are on the whole more vain and self-centered than journalists, though less interested in money.

2. Aesthetic enthusiasm.Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed. The aesthetic motive is very feeble in a lot of writers, but even a pamphleteer or writer of textbooks will have pet words and phrases which appeal to him for non-utilitarian reasons; or he may feel strongly about typography, width of margins, etc. Above the level of a railway guide, no book is quite free from aesthetic considerations.

3. Historical impulse.Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.

4. Political purpose.– Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

It can be seen how these various impulses must war against one another, and how they must fluctuate from person to person and from time to time. By nature – taking your ‘nature’ to be the state you have attained when you are first adult – I am a person in whom the first three motives would outweigh the fourth.

I remember a little poem that I wrote at that date, expressing my dilemma:
What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make my writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.

It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness.

In Ateneo, my university professor, Rene Fernandez, a journalist whom I respect read me a lecture about it. ‘Why did you put in all that stuff?’ he said. ‘You’ve turned what might have been a good article into journalism.’ What he said was true, but I could not have done otherwise. I happened to know, what very few people in this country had been allowed to know, that innocent men were being falsely accused. If I had not been angry about that I should never have written the book.

In one form or another, this problem comes up again. The problem of language is subtler and would take too long to discuss. I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it. Darwin and Freud was the first poetry in which I tried, with full consciousness of what I was doing, to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one whole. I have not written anything serious for seven years, but I hope to write another fairly soon.

I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing poetry or a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some negativity whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that it is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless blogs and poetry and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

June 17, 2008

360 degree turn to contentment (Still Pushing)

I never thought I could be so happy with a bunch of incomplete stuff around me. Life is good ...

I can make these confessions of sloth and ineptitude because I feel no shame whatsoever! My previously pristine pad is now what I would describe as 'Almost Tidy' and, for the first time in ages (pun!)
I'm not overly concerned with my extra weight, the size of my thighs or the wrinkles (or are they laugh lines?) around my eyes.
I'm not overly concerned because (drum roll) I've got more important things to worry about! The things that used to seem vitally important to me are just not so important anymore. Maybe, this change in priorities seems like an obvious development to everyone else out there but, well, it's been a real 'Helen-Keller-hand-under-the-water-faucet' kind of awakening for me.

It's been an awesome and ferocious month and I suspect the next few months will be equally as dizzying and as bittersweet

I find myself really missing the South these days - and wishing I had my family around to share all this with.

June 06, 2008

DESTRUCTED BRAIN CELLS AND MY ACTIVE MIND


Mood: Destracted, annoyed, sad but trying my best to smile

All my life, I've honed a talent for being able to push through situations even while surrounded by multiple and varied distractions. I don't get easily thrown off course when I'm goal-forward, and I try to apply that skill to every day at work, and while doing projects at home, etc. However, I find that I am incredibly distracted by my playful imagination.

It's unbelievably bizarre, on the one hand, to think that I should push through my work day, undeterred, unaffected by the constant little reminders of this nearly supernatural thing that is happening inside of me. And, yet, I also know how unprofessional it is to let my thoughts wander off with each kick, or to constantly point out to co-workers the sensations I'm feeling. They don't really care---they smile gently, but are really pretty uninterested in the whole thing, as is natural since they're not the ones feeling what I'm feeling. So, throughout the day, I have to train myself to contain my joy, contain my wonder and continue through a professional work-day. It's so much more difficult to keep my happiness to myself when I’m out with friends, but I strive to do it there, too, to keep from becoming "The Annoying Self-Centered male b*tch who can't stop talking about his panic attacks." I was out with my friend just last week, and my mind was practically earning my minds blackbelt, and it took every bit of willpower within me to keep from slapping my hands on the table and shouting, "stop!

Instead, I vent all my glee to myself, scribbled every minute of the day with each kick I feel, and each new annoying revelation. him.
I struggle to pretend that all of this is really nothing, just commonplace, so totally ordinary, so not-worth-mentioning. But, my mind is sending such welcome, strong messages to me---constant reminders of such existence, annoying agendas, all of which are constant points of relief for my worried mind. With each persistent kick I hear, "All is well. All is well."

June 03, 2008

Spring Summer 2008 at dotdotdot

L-R: Pink blue spectacles by Sophia Kokosalaki for Linda Farrow, pleated black dress with bow detail by Eley Kishimoto, burgundy t-bar pumps by Karine Arabian. Collarless black jacket with yellow toggles by Gaspard Yurkievich, gray t-shirt by Whyred, black raw denims by b, black nylon canvas sneakers by Swear. Bold stripe dress by Eley Kishimoto, military green pumps by Opening Ceremony. Navy double-breasted shirt jacket by b, heather gray t-shirt with pockets by Gaspard Yurkievich, tan denims by Whyred, white leather sneakers with silver piping by Swear.

(dotdotdot) G/F Greenbelt 5 Ayala Center, Makati City Telephone +63 2 756.0726 Mobile +63 920.916.8906

FUCKED UP TUESDAY

Mood: pissed at 10 am

Fuck that! All you do is complain and make your balls grow bigger….. you expect me to work like shit and see you just sit and do your wiki! Fuck that man, fuck! I cant stand working with you no more…I wasn’t born to be your slave! Fuck that! Fuck! I aint your blue collared type!

Status check

June 01, 2008

PLAY SPECTRUM ( April 26 – May 31, 2008)


Fesca na aplaya
Oil on Canvass
by: Raul Ramon Lopez-Vito Bucoy II

I’ll spread out all my treasures, of fabric, cutouts, magazines, old books and photographs and see what pops out. Things call to be together and a story begin to emerge. As an artist, I combine the objects to suggest a storyline, make an outline but it is the viewer who makes the process complete. You come to the piece and complete the story, flesh out the meaning. There is a part of the collective unconscious at play here that makes these pieces sing. They are more than beautiful works of art. They are a secret whispered, a snippet of song long forgotten, an old joke that still makes you laugh, a line from a poem deeply loved.

Meaningful personal changes are often unrecognized in the moment in which they occur and aren’t recognized as such until much later. The image began as a collage from my sketches and photographs made for my own personal satisfaction and were done over a considerable time span. It is only by looking back at them recently that the change moments (transformational) became recognizable to me. What I see now is that my moleskine sketches and doodles are markers of change moments spiritual in nature.

Some of the images are given what is for me a new meaning by the way my sketches, photographs and collages are interpreted. What I saw in the camera’s viewfinder felt right intuitively. That was reason enough for me to make the photograph. Traditional, straight forward art don’t convey the sense of their meaning. The images have been reinterpreted to better represent what I feel happened in those moments.

There will be a few more paintings from this series coming in the next couple of months.
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It took me a month to work on this painting my friend Rafa commisioned me to do. Thanks!