over the edge of the world

je viens de finir le livre qui je lisais ces derniers jours. il raconte le voyage de magellan où il a fait le tour du monde au début du XVIe siècle (1521-ish). au fait, j'ai acheté ce livre d'un booksale pour seulement 100 PHP.

we are all familiar with the story of the portuguese, under the flag of spain, who for the first time had successfully circumnavigated the world and as a consequence discovered a water route to the spice islands across the "ocean sea" west of the new world.

magellan's encounters with fascinating natives and their customs including our own cebuans (to which i descend from) and the proud mactanese, betray european bigoted and self serving attitudes. they also betray our own weaknesses providing brief insight of why we continue to be divided even to this day.

pigafetta is i think as important as magellan himself for it was him who chronicled the entire voyage reminiscent of captain picard doing his log aboard the enterprise. besides being a representative of the pope, he also served as the ship's linguist and anthropologist. he (attempted to) put into writing the local languages and their sexual practices. this to me was a kind of expected. he was a man of the cloth and like many others, there was a kind of obsession with sex (just as it does today) and he means to impose his beliefs on to the natives. sans respect to their own beliefs.

most of the native chieftains who converted did so, mostly because they feared the armada de moluccas. magellan was all to happy to demonstrate their superiority. their weapons admittedly surpassed the bamboo javelins, bows, and poisoned arrows of the natives. and local politics paved the way for some of the chieftains to ally themselves with magellan thinking it would give them advantage over rival kingdoms.

i am surprised why his story had not yet made it on hollywood. it had the familiar elements of drama, political intrique, adventure, vicious villains, and noble heroes. vital ingredients that make up an epic adventure non fictional story.

rating 4 out of 5
an interesting and easy read

les bureaux de dieu

A social commentary that revolves around a family planning center, it's social workers, and the people mostly women, they take the time to listen and give advice to.

all the cases tackled by the social workers make the case for sexual education, women's rights, contraception, and abortion giving emphasis on having a personal and well informed choice on their respective matters as a crucial ingredient in making important decisions. we hear of cases where it is the total opposite when women don't have the choice at all.

this is in strike contrast to what we have today in the philippines where people are mostly ignorant and sans access to health services. it couldn't be more obvious why this is so when certain prominent religious institutions who have a hand on state policies (imposing their religious beliefs onto the rest of us) continue to halt progress on civil liberties and women's rights.

I find the movie socially relevant and mature especially on how the social workers sympathized with their (patients?). but not very entertaining for it lacked the hollywood formula much like a crutch or an addiction that we have grown accustomed to.

For french language lovers, it is a treat. but for the same reason, when a language is presented as english subtitles (and not entirely translated might i add) could fail to convey the actual emotion accross the language barrier, which could possibly lead non french speaking audiences unable to relate ..

Rating 3 out of 5 ***
women power!

Diosa

A local legend recounts the tale of a nature goddess who had an affinity with humans. Her name was Luciérnaga. One day, her father found out about her dealings with them, it made her father furious. He slapped her senseless breaking her crown of gems into pieces. Each piece transformed into a firefly. The entire mountain was swarmed by them to which the town was named after. Bayan ng Alitaptap (Firefly town).

Another legend spoke of her unearthly beauty wearing nothing but gem stones to cover herself up. During the spanish era, Luciérnaga fell in love with a spanish soldier. She made love to him but woke up with all her jewels gone. The soldier stole them and since then fireflies have disappeared from the town. And all male descendants of the spanish soldier had been plagued by a curse. Each of them die horrible deaths. This intruiging tale is the backdrop of the story.

teddy allegre is played by lloyd samartino
jaime allegre jr is played by alfie anido
luz is played by lorna tolentino
katrina is played lorna tolentino

Rating 4 out of 5 ****
Not bad for a pinoy fantasy