Switch on the “rise” button

Let’s get the celebrity spottings out of the way first. Yesterday at the NBC Tent, we spotted Rico Blanco, Chiqui Roa and Mike Grape (of Kala). Admittedly, for one person who’s more than surprised to actually get invites to the xFM launch party, it’s a starstruck event.

But let me clarify – I wasn’t there for the celebrity spottings. Sure, it was a media launch, and I managed to get a pair of invites courtesy of Loi Landicho. It felt weird, actually, when I finally got my invites and saw the label. Niko Batallones. Blogger. Just to add to the sense of surprise, the reception desk asked me about my company affiliation. “I just wrote a blog entry about the station,” I said. They did let me in.

Appropriately, the party was called Rise. If you’ve been tuned in for most of xFM’s month and a half, you’ve probably gotten used to hearing the liner “a culture on the rise” play in between the songs. True enough, my access card had a moon in front. But for one person who’s basically never been in a party all his life, and is even more surprised to realize he deserves this invite, it’s about the radio station more than anything.

Music I might buy: release one

And again, the record stores are oozing with stuff I’d actually want to listen to. Not that everything else out there is crap, for everything eventually boils down to a matter of personal taste, but then again, whenever I pass by some record store down the nearest mall, only rarely does a CD on display in the new releases rack excite me. And since I’m currently inclined towards indie rock and anything else that passes for indie – as you can see here – that explains my first three choices.

This afternoon, I test-listened three new releases from three foreign performers. British band Arctic Monkeys have received accolades for their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not – and deservingly so: with their spunky beats combined with boy-round-the-corner views on stuff, no wonder they have attracted quite a lot of listeners. Brett Anderson, former frontman for Britpop icons Suede – better known for giving me one of my most favorite tracks, Beautiful Ones – has released his self-titled solo offing. And, on a probably more obscure side, Broken Social Scene vocalist Leslie Feist – known as Feist to most of us – has released her fourth solo album, The Reminder.

Somehow they have excited me to the extent of making me dream of them at night. Well, that’s an exaggeration – and that wasn’t funny – so, before I descend into utter chaos, a preview of what I might buy soon. Hopefully, at least.

Republished: A good provider is one who leaves

Shale is reprinting yet another (hopefully) relevant article, this time from a recent issue of The New York Times Magazine. Jason DeParle talks to the Comodas family, which has seen many of its members – across generations – work abroad to bring a better life for those who preferred to stay at home. And again it’s never hit closer to home – the Philippine economy relies on overseas Filipino workers, and their remittances every year, which amounts to around $14 billion dollars as of 2006. Again, the New York Times website requires registration, but the article page has relevant photos and other information.

On June 25, 1980 (a date he would remember), a good-natured Filipino pool-maintenance man gathered his wife and five children for an upsetting ride to the Manila airport. At 36, Emmet Comodas had lived a hard life without growing hardened, which was a mixed blessing given the indignities of his poverty. Orphaned at 8, raised on the Manila streets where he hawked cigarettes, he had hustled a job at a government sports complex and held it for nearly two decades. On the spectrum of Filipino poverty, that alone marked him as a man of modest fortune. But a monthly salary of $50 did not keep his family fed.

Home was a one-room, scrap-wood shanty in a warren of alleys and stinking canals, hidden by the whitewashed walls of an Imelda Marcos beautification campaign. He had borrowed money at usurious rates to start a tiny store, which a thief had plundered. His greatest fears centered on his 11-year-old daughter, Rowena, who had a congenital heart defect that turned her lips blue and fingernails black and who needed care he could not afford. After years of worrying over her frail physique, Emmet dropped to his moldering floor and asked God for a decision: take her or let him have her.