A lot a lot of names

Two weeks ago, I held open the door leading to the back stage area for the adults in the FAMILII organization. Having finished my finals, I was able to accompany my dad for his performance, which took place at the Wang Center at Stony Brook University. He and his group were going to sing, “God Bless America” as a symbol of not only patriotism to America, but to the Filipino culture, as it mixes in American culture. The ladies of the group were going to do a Filipino dance as well.

You can say that I just tagged along, but I was determined to be of some use! When it came time for the ladies to perform, I offered to hold one of their purses. Relieved, she handed it over to me. It was a bit heavy, but nothing I couldn’t handle – if she can carry it around all day, then of course I can (no offense). But then other ladies caught on with the idea of my holding their purses and glasses and cameras and what not. About ten minutes later, waiting back stage for them to finish their performance, I found myself holding seven purses, two cameras and one pair glasses (which hung around my collar).

“Thank you, Bernadette!” said one of them afterwards.

“Thanks, Bedette!” said another,

“Thank you, Bernie” and another.

Then another Tita said, “Thank you Stephanie.”

Already used to the rhythm of thank you’s as I handed them back their purses and personal belongings while they filed away from the closing curtains, I instinctively started, “You’re welcome.” But something was off. “Wait, I’m Bernadette, not Steph! She’s not even here!”

“Ayaya, sorry Badette"

So that was their first performance. The dance itself seemed perfect to me and I acquired a new name – purse girl.

Speaking of names, I want to take the time to discuss my name – or should I say names? Yes, I have quite a few, although not as many as a friend of mine has. Nicknames, I’m talking about. My full first name, as many of you know, is Bernadette. I’m called that in school by professors and by fairly recent new friends or friends who never caught on with one of my nicknames.

Then there are the twins: Badette and Bedette. They’re almost the same, but not quite. While most may not hear the difference assuredly, I’ve come to hear it very distinctively. The a and e sound very different in my ears. Not only that, they each have accents on different vowels. Badette is usually, Badétte (accent on the second syllable) and Bedette is usually, Bédette (accent on the first syllable).

And then I have the nickname, Bernie, which a fourth grade friend of mine made up. I never thought of that as a girl’s name because of Bernie Williams, but it grew on me, a jolly ten year-old back then. My dad always wanted to spell it Berney, because he said that was the girl version of it. But I remember thinking in fourth grade how I didn’t like how the y messed up the alignment of the name by going under the line if you were to write it on loose leaf paper. And also, ie looked nicer to me than ey did, simply put. I didn’t care if it was the boy or girl version I had. Wait, wait a second. How about a girl’s name Jackie? But then there’s Jackie Chan too. In any case, I’d say that this nickname came on like a fad. First my friend started saying it, then my fourth grade teacher, then a couple of my family members and then some relatives.

As time naturally rolled on, some reverted back to the classic Bern, which has always been around, sort of like in the back alleys. I like to think that it comes naturally out of your mouth and it’s so easy to say because it’s just one syllable. And it’s the name I use for my signature: Bern C. Tinio. Not accustomed to writing in script, I write fairly slowly in cursive. So I try to make the signature short. In fact, it’s not only short; it’s both in print and in script.

Then there are the crazy names that only a privilege few have decided to call me:
Bernstar (instead of Rockstar)
Burn my pwet (rhymes with Bernadette)
Bermise Tiger
Bern Bunny

And I mustn’t forget the “Bern Series”:
Bern Baby Bern
Bern, "The Burn," Tinio
Side Bern
Heart Bern
Bernt toast
Sun Bern
Rug Bern
Bernadooo
Bern a derrnnnn

So when people ask which do I prefer, I tell them to pick one or make one up or sometimes I mysteriously and purposely don’t answer that question and see which name they develop for me after meeting with me a couple more times. I want to see what name I look like in their minds; what name of mine do you wear in your breath when you call for my attention? That's basically what I'd like to know.

And what happens is that I get used to certain people calling me by a certain nickname. When they call me by a name that they don't usually use, I get freaked out a little. Ok, I may be exaggerating just a tad, but I do, initially, get a little disconcerted, but in a good way because I know that they're actually thinking of me as they choose a different name, which is kind of considerate, no? Or, depending on the situation, I get scared. I'm sure many people are familiar with parents calling them by their full name if they're in trouble. One time Ate Sherry called me by my full first name and I thought, immediately, of a teacher who was calling me to participate on the spot when I didn't even raise my hand. It was that kind of feeling.

Also what happens is that, if I'm not sure who said something to me, I'd remember which name they called me and from that I can deduce who was talking to me. Sort of like when you're taking a multiple choice test and you cross out answers you know are wrong and that makes your number of choices smaller.

Needless to say, there are many benefits of having multiple nicknames and it's fun too!

Road-trip Playlist

If I were to go on a road trip, I would go from my hometown, Commack, to somewhere in the southwest, like New Mexico or something. A desert area with mountains in the background and open regions where all I could see on a day blessed with rain is that shower coming out of a dark gray rectangle of nimbus cloud, a rainbow struggling (and succeeding) to get some attention for itself. I would drive and have some pretty interesting pit stops and humble, happy places to eat, with live rock music outside (where the tables and the grill would be). At one point we would have karaoke night. Our motel? Our car in parking space of a store that’s way too poor to be noticed by nosey police. In the middle of the night, I would start up the car and begin driving again so that I would be awake to see the sunrise over the great southern plains.

If I were to go on a road-trip, these would be on my super-duper road trip playlist of songs (They’re not in order. You’ll find that my playlist comprises mostly The Killers and Jason Mraz, a bit of Keane and some random stuff):

The Killers
-Ballad of Michael Valentine
-Show You How
-Sweet Talk
-Mr. Brightside
-Jenny Was a Friend of Mine
-Read My Mind
-For Reasons Unknown
-Bones
-Andy You’re a Star
-On Top
-All the Things That I’ve Done
-Joy Ride
-Somebody Told Me
-Neon Tiger
-Dustland Fairytale
-Spaceman
-Human
-Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll
-Tranquilize
-Enterlude
-Exitlude
-When You Were Young
-Sam's Town
-Bling
-This River is Wild
-Dont' Shoot Me Santa (it's a Christmas song, but I don't care; I love it)

Jason Mraz
-Make It Mine
-Zero Percent
-Dreamlife of Rand McNally
-The Remedy
-Curbside Prophet
-Beautiful Mess
-I’ll Do Anything
-Who Needs Shelter?
-Absolutely Zero
-No Stopping Us
-Tonight, Not Again
-Did You Get My Message (acoustic and cd)
-Older Lover Undercover
-Rocket Man
-Plane
-Geek in the Pink
-I’m Yours
-Dynamo of Volition
-Live High
-Love for a Child
-If it Kills Me
-Warming Up
-Gypsy mc (song version)

Keane
-Somewhere Only We Know
-Snowed Under
-Bedshaped
-Frog Prince
-This Is the Last Time
-Bend and Break
-We Might As Well Be Strangers
-Everybody's Changing
-Your Eyes Open
-She Has No Time
-Can't Stop Now
-Sunshine
-Untitled
-Is it Any Wonder
-Bad Dream
-Crystal Ball

Random
-Telephone (Lady Gaga)
-Tik Tok (Kesha – only with the drum cover of Cobus, yes I like the drum part of the song only).
-Careful (Paramore – again, I like the drum part only)
-Love Today (Mika)
-Stuck in the Middle (Mika)
-My Interpretation (Mika)
-Big Girl (Mika)
-More than a Feeling (Boston)
-Male Prima Donna (The Office)
-Use somebody (Kings of Leon)
-Landed (Ben Folds)
-Brick (Ben Folds)
-Still Fighting It (Ben Folds)
-High and Dry (Radiohead)
-Sugar We're Going Down (Fall Out Boy)

The Fray
-She Is
-Over My Head (Cable Car)
-How to Save a Life
-All At Once
-Fall Away
-Heaven Forbid
-Look After You
-Hundred
-Vienna
-Dead Wrong
-Little House
-Trust Me

What I just realized, after writing this list, is that, basically, I just told you my favorite songs. But who wouldn't want to listen to their favorite songs with the wind blowing in and out of a car joyriding across the country, carrying the fun spirit among the people in it?

. . .The woosh of time . . .

I just finished my junior year in college and as usual, at the end of a semester, I can’t help but think about time. And how it runs so fast. And how I don’t like it flowing with blurry feet. Nights that seemed as if they were going one after another – sleepless or not – now seemed like they were actually groups of them taking leaps at a time, in the darkness and on sneaky, fast tippy-toes (as a squirrel might soundlessly leap across a lawn carrying a nut that’s filled with countless dreams left in the hands of obscurity and wonderment). And the events of the day were things on the to-do list, being checked off. And new additions in life are added on a timeline. January 3, 2010, I got a drum set, two months after my search for it had started. In late February, I watched Shutter Island with my family in a crowded theater – so crowded that we had to separate. Some time at the end of March, my sisters and I went on a dentist spree, hoping to get all our dentist appointments in during spring break. That was also the same time I got a new pair of shorts from Joyce Leslie and a new pair of sneakers from Sports Authority. April 20, 2010, Steph turned twenty; we are all in our twenties now – 20, 21, 22 and 28 years old.

It’s impossible, it seems, to catch a snap shot of time because it’s always in motion. Unless you have a digital camera, which can really focus. But no, life is natural and it’s healthy that way. It keeps coursing through the measures of time, whether that be the days on a calendar or the bowls of cereal I ate each morning for breakfast (we had a rotation system between different cereals from Costco. The most recent one? Chocolate Cheerios – yeah, we were surprised they have that now), or the minutes on my watch, which are actually four minutes in advance to make sure I’m not late for anything, or the countless times I get mad at teachers for grading papers subjectively and at times (it seems to me) arbitrarily, or the number of times I take courses with the same teachers because they’re so entertaining to watch and learn from – I never get tired of watching them gaze, not into a room full of students, but in the world of the text we’re reading, their eyes filled with enthusiasm and passion. And I would just sit there trying to write everything coming out of their mouths, as if I were recording the words of a person possessed, in a séance.

If time were to embody a car, I’d sit in the back seat, always at the tail end of things because I like to be able to see the immediate future, but stay in full view of the past. Yes, I am a person who lingers on the last day of school.

This is me being nostalgic.

Happy Mother's Day!

It’s astonishing, the fact that God gave us Mother Nature (our Earth) for us to make mistakes and learn from. What’s equally astonishing is the fact that he also gave us Mother Nature in human form – all the Mom’s in the world, which comprise natural birth mothers, mothers of adopted kids, female guardians (yes, sometimes sisters may play the role of a mother).

God must have put a lot of thought into how he was going to get us humans to reproduce. First comes friendship, then love and sexual arousal, then babies, with marriage thrown in there to make it formal. God truly is our creator. He planned our human race so well, almost like a best-selling novel – the best; in fact, it is a legacy of his. He made it so that we would have a tendency to need others for help and to fulfill, gratify, satisfy our needs. And he knew, too, that some time or another, some of us would fall for another of us, and that love would spark a place on our bodies specifically designed to gear us toward family-making. And all this, he created. He is so artful with his clay models.

My mother is a mom of four kids – three girls and one boy. She works hard everyday, literally – seven days a week. During her times at home she is a cleaning maniac, although I think most mothers are, at least at one point in their motherhood. My mom is selfless for, in fact, I have to tell her to take a rest for herself because if she doesn’t, she’ll clean and clean and clean. My dad takes her out on joyrides to Port Jefferson because he knows that if she’s sitting in the passenger seat, she’s not cleaning and she could actually sit and enjoy the youthful sites of night life there.

I have the best mom, but that’s just my opinion. And my opinion is as connected to me as I am to my mom – be it through the umbilical cord (when I was just born), breast feeding (when I was little), or through the meals she makes, both Filipino and American ones. I am not only thankful for the food and nourishment she provides me – whether I take that literally or figuratively (with emotional, social lenses). I am thankful for my mom because she loves me and I willingly, blindly and sincerely love her (not to mention unconditionally).

I'm sure every mom is an awesome mom who loves her family and who works hard to keep smiles on their children's/child's face. Kudos to all your hard work. For those moms who are veterans, good job for raising awesome kids, cousins of mine and nephews/nieces of mine. For all those newbies, (several people I know have become mothers or are mother's to be soon - so excited for them!) I hope you enjoy your new lifestyle/journey and I'm sure your new bundle of joy will be one of the best things you've ever had, or perhaps even the best thing!

Happy Mother’s day to all the mothers of the world!

A brief tour of new features

If you are a somewhat frequent reader of this blog, you’ll notice a couple of changes on this page.

Let your eyes wander to the right and you’ll catch a glimpse of computerized nature. Little fishies! Originally there were six fish, all black except one green one. That symbolized my family: I have six members in my family; the black ones were they and the green one was I. But then Ate Sherry wanted her fishie to be red, so I made the change. So that was the first modification on this page.

As I looked for more to add, to make the visit to my blog more exciting, if my words need back-up singers, I remembered how I used to have a word-of-the-day calendar. It occurred to me that I should put up something similar. Boom: health tip of the day. I figured, with obesity on the rise (the most in the United States), why not try to help the elimination and prevention of this epidemic through this feature. Inspired by Jason Mraz with his tendency to help the world, I instantly picked this tip of the day over many others.

If you are like me, you like to listen to music while surfing the web for reasons, not purely academic. In the words of Nacho Libre, “Es for fun.” With that being said, I installed a youtube feature so that you can listen to music while reading the blogs. Or, if I suggest a cool youtube video or any other interesting bit of information in a blog, you can use the youtube feature to look it up right away. In that sense, the feature serves as easy access to my references. Or, if my blog bores you – God forbid – then I’ll humbly step down and let you run off to that feature. Like Cobus Potgietier (check out his drum covers on youtube (wink, wink); they’re the awesomest and it’s from him that I get new drum ideas) said, and probably someone else before him, “I aim to please.” It’s the least I could do.

If you’re not into fake, natural fish, or youtube, I figured I’d show you the kind of music that I like by also putting up a feature that plays alternative rock songs. I don’t know how this relates to the previous features mentioned, i.e. the kind of music I like, but it’s just fun to have (can I be a little bit selfish?). But, I don’t like all alternative rock songs, though I must say that the songs of that type of music are the ones that are most pleasant to have in my head. I kind of also like acoustic, but only if it’s Jason Mraz acoustic; I think he is one of the best performers and entertainers (it’s a personality/soothing voice type of thing). If it’s acoustic and someone else, most likely, I’ll be turned off.

So, in this blog, I’m just giving you a brief tour of the new and improved site. I hope you all enjoy it. Eh, it might change again in the future.

Literary Movie Review: Encounters at the End of the World

This documentary, like most documentaries I’ve seen, or rather experienced (I always imagined experiencing what the people in them are doing, vicariously) pulled me in through tubes of not quite zealous fascination, but fascination nonetheless - fascination that’s well worth writing about.

This film, while it may be particular, in that it takes place in one region of the Earth – Antarctica – has a tangible feel of universality through the queer (in a positive and at times comical way) characters of dedicated individuals who all migrated to that “southern comfort”, shall we say, as if they all had an inherent magnetic pull to go there, to fulfill something inside, be it a banker’s need to see a world higher than money or a linguist’s need to understand the extinction of languages through the extinction of species (or the discovering of species) or a film maker’s need to film something other than penguins.

The universal void in everyone needs to be filled and Antarctica, whether the people in the documentary stumbled upon it or made a marked effort to be there, may be the perfect place for a select few individuals. In this light, the universality becomes particular or rather has a particular aspect in it, for, while not everyone who feel as if they are missing something in life would go to Antarctica in search for answers, there still is that itching void or latent spark of deep interest or desire that just might be the lit match on gun powder that ends in the filling of a void, a reality.

Another universal theme is what I like to call “cultural bonding” or cultural fusion as my ninth grade global history teacher taught me (though that implies an exchange of cultural influences, whereas I am talking about the coming together of different cultures). People from many different cultures unite in Antartica (the ones that stand out in my mind includes the shy Russian with his pre-prepared bag of saftey and the man with Aztec roots (with proof in the shape of his fingers and other visceral pieces of evidence).

And it's interesting too that you don’t just go to Antarctica. You go there with a purpose, whichever purpose your void is. I often found myself looking at the bottom right of the screen and seeing two professions that quite don’t match. For example, I remember distinctly, “(name) Banker, forklifter.” Yes, most of the people there have a goal in mind, whether that be embedded in scientific research of species, adorable seals who made research easy on the probing researchers, or glaciers (the glacialogist’s part of the documentary ,by the way, was very well imaginatively articulate, I thought as I took in his words) or whether that be in a desire to achieve more in life, like the banker who decided to turn to another road in his career and be a “globe’s man” and who, after mastering a language of a rare tribe of people and helping them, found himself in Antarctica helping those scientists.

Kudos to all those participants in the documentary.

Just as I am a mild enthusiast of early American history, I am also a mild enthusiast of subjects relating to Earth science, including the arctic, weather and just recently (after I took my Search for Life in the Universe class, in which I learned about the ever fascinating extremofiles who live in deep sea vents) some marine life. I recommend this film to those who love nature and eccentric stories of the lives of seemingly random people (I say seemingly because, on a larger scale, the people in the documentary are not random if you consider the perspective that they inevitably would unite in Antarctica, thanks to fate). That combination makes a captivating two hour sit worthwhile.