Wala Lang

What the hell am I doing? I had promised to a good friend of mine to abandon this blog and concentrate on my other one.  But what can I do? It seems that this blog has more readers than the other one.  Although not a lot of comments are posted here, I get emails, phonecalls, and chismis about the things I’ve written here.  For example—my gentle cousin Hannah was inspired to read up on the Khmer Rouge regime because of my last post.  Also, I heard from the grapevine that one of the people in my list of friends reacted violently to one of my posts (Ang Puso ng Iskolar ng Bayan) and even wrote a strong reaction on her own blog.  I didn’t even know about this until months after the said post! And what do I have to say? Sa nasuya lang. He he he. Thanks though to Jed and Butch who liked that post.  Jed even reproduced the post on his own blog.

So why is Ogie Alcasid on the title for this post? The last time I encountered Ogie Alcasid in person was when I was in first year college in UP.  I think he was already a senior then.  We were having a stand-off as to who gets to use the copy machine first.  We both arrived there at the same time and handed our papers to the Manang also at the same time.  I guess the Manang figured that since I just had about less than 5 sheets of paper to be copied, I get to go first.  I don’t think Ogie Alcasid will ever remember this, but for me…well, I got chosen over Ogie Alcasid! Wow…even if it was only for the xerox machine! Well, small triumphs…he he he.

I am listening to his songs right now and I figured that he could be one of the best and most prolific songwriters in Filipino.  The words are so poetic and the melody…beautiful.  My favorite right now is Kung Mawawala Ka.  These are the type of songs that need to be in my life right now.  I need to remember how beautiful Filipino songs can be. 

Sometimes, it can be quite a struggle to be proud of where I come from.

Ta Mok a.k.a. "The Butcher" died last Friday.  I couldn’t help but be dismayed at this news. He can no longer face trial for his crimes during the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia.  It is really frustrating how people like him can cheat justice by just dying.  I wanted to see him before the Tribunal, listening to the suffering and death he inflicted upon millions of people.  And I wanted him to hear the word "guilty".

Impunity is the key word here.  It disgusts me that some people can actually commit a crime and get away with it.  Just a sample of Ta Mok’s handiwork:

<a href="http://emgil.blogs.friendster.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/tuol_sleng.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href, ‘_blank’, ‘width=800,height=379,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0′); return false"><img alt="Tuol_sleng" title="Tuol_sleng" src="http://emgil.blogs.friendster.com/wala_lang/images/tuol_sleng.jpg" width="100" height="47" border="0" style="float: left; margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;" /></a>