parties

       Before I start to rant any further, please take a minute and a half to watch this awesome Fiamma Fresh Fridays trailer made by the awesome production team of Loyola Film Circle using "over 4,500 shots" (I'm assuming that they're talking about "shots" as in, pictures). Go watch.

Fiamma Fresh Fridays Teaser from miguel gutierrez on Vimeo.

       I love the video. I love the soundtrack. I especially love the editing. The video alone is awesome. The hardcore party lifestyle that it shows, however, I'm not too fond of.

       Okay, okay, I know some of you are reading this and going AWW MAN, THIS AIMEE PERSON SUCKS. SHE BE HATIN', and that's perfectly fine with me, BECAUSE I REALLY AM HATIN'!!!! PARTYING SUCKS!!! Kidding. If you like partying then by all means, go party.

       Anyway, the point of showing you the video was to illustrate what most people outside Manila (well, my friends and family at least) think what the inside of Manila looks like. A big party. And I don't mean party as in a salu-salo, or the Buwan ng Wika sort of party with the banderitas and lechon and people doing the Tinikling. I'm talking about dark, crowded spaces, with bright, laser lights shooting all across the room and music so loud that you have to speak ten decibels higher to even come across as a whisper. I'm talking about parties with dancing and drinking and people making out everywhere you look. From a probinsyana point of view, this is what one would typically call "a Manila party."

       Now, in the weeks building up to the day I moved out of Cagayan de Oro, my friends and family had, in varying degrees, been lecturing me on some of the things I should stay clear of in the enteriety of my stay: Alcohol. Creepy boys. Boys in general. Dark alleys. Creepy girls. Drugs. Organ harvesters. Cigarettes. Bird flu. Sex dens. (Whoops. I mean s** dens.) But the one thing that everyone, and I mean everyone, warned me about was - did you guess it? - PARTIES, because according to them, parties are where everything I listed above thrive in, like mosquito larva in stagnant water.

       Anyway, when I came here at first, I thought that was what Manila was like as well - drugs, drinks, organ harvesters. I expected all my non-probinsyano blockmates to be drinkers and all my probinsyano blockmates to be non-drinkers. Of course that wasn't the case, as I soon found out. When I had spent enough time in Manila with my organs unharvested and my drinks unspiked, I began to relax and think that all Manila parties were like the usual ones I went to - with the party hats and the mascots and all.

       KIDDING! What WERE the parties I went to? Compared to Fiamma Fresh Fridays (above), there might as well have been party hats and mascots, and let's throw in a pabitin as well, because in my entire stay in Manila I've never actually been to a Manila party. I've only been going to school things (Health Sci Night), and I always assumed that school things are relatively tame. When I say relatively tame, I mean that there was no public making out, or drinks that will make you lose consciousness after a two sips, or smoking. (If I had gone to PMSA'S Pulse maybe wouldn't be saying this.) I don't even know if the parties I've been to can be counted as parties. And if they can be counted, let's just say that the fingers on one hand will suffice.

       Anyway you get my point: that I'm a party n00b. I am the cardboard cylinder that the inhibitants of the lowest echelons of the party hierarchy resort to when the tissue paper has all run out. But I'm ranting aain. Back to my point.

       Just recently, at a certain friend's event's meal at a certain place, a good friend of mine from outside Manila told me that she had actually been to a Manila party, and that some stranger guys there actually did offer to buy her a drink. She told me how in every direction you turned, people were making out. And there were other horrible things too.

       I was pretty naive for thinking that Manila, or any place for that matter, could be so... not awful. And the open parties I heard about like UP's  Ad Hoc or AJMA'S Whateveritistheycallit still counted as school things, so in my mind, they were harmless as newly-sprouted daisies. The worst you can ever get is a small rash. 

       I've been using the words "horrible" and "awful" to describe the events that transpire during a Manila party, but when I say something is bad, I'm really just saying that it's something I would never want to do. Because I've warmed up to the thought that no absolute good and evil exists, i.e.what is evil for one may be good for another. Adolf Hitler, for example, thought that he was doing the world justice through genocide. But anyway that's for another blog post.

       Now I would like to placate all the parents of future dormers/college kids out there by telling them that parties are harmless and that all the bad things we've heard about parties just aren't true. Unfortunately I am definitely not the right person to ask about the Manila party scene. I am not going with my org to Fiamma this Friday.

       It's not a principle thing. It's just not my scene.

. . .

TAGALOG PHRASES THAT DON'T REALLY MEAN ANYTHING AND THEIR ROUGH EQUIVALENTS IN BISAYA:

1. "Ikaw/sorry na." ~ "Char lang." (Although we also say "Ikaw/sorry na.")
2. "Naks naman!" ~ "Atik wruh!"
3. "May gano'n?" ~ "Ana diay?"
4. "Sus." = "Sus."
5. "yung ano" = "katong unsa" / "katong kuan"
6. "Alam na." ~ "Istoryahe!"
7. "Ganyan eh" ~ "Ana gyud"