The stage is starting to grow on us. The backdrops complement the dances. Great touch!
Nigel kicked things off announcing that Fox and Dick Clark Productions agreed that Billy Bell could return next season and go straight to Vegas while Filipino Brandon Dumlao can reapply. I’m pretty sure Julliard student Billy will make it into the Esteemed 20. As for Brandon, he has time to grow as a dancer who will hopefully be a force to reckon with.
I felt like such a grown up yesterday morning last week. I went to a Chamber of Commerce breakfast to catch Southwest Airlines’ Manager of Emerging Media, Paula Berg, talk about. . . emerging media, and how Southwest has successfully been flying through cyberspace.
At the Hilton Garden Inn Vanderbilt
Posted in nashville, social media | Tags: nashville chamber of commerce, paula berg, southwest
The new stage and audio level tonight on So You Think You Can Dance was a bit disconcerting — larger stage, cavernous acoustics, spread out audience. It’ll probably take a couple of weeks to get used to. My first reaction was that it lacks the intimacy of the previous studio setting. Maybe because it was the first episode of the competition proper in the new venue, the acoustics sounded a bit off. Either they were corrected within the first few commercial breaks or I just adjusted and didn’t notice the difference, either way, the new SYTYCD new venue felt. . . different.
So one of the stronger dancers, Billy Bell, had to leave the competition because of doctor’s orders. Sadness! He was strong and had the potential to make it all the way. I remember how Adam Shankman was moved to tears by his final solo in Vegas! I hope he goes straight into the Esteemed 20 next season.
You’d think that with all the typhoons that brought death and destruction to the Philippines, sending love overseas to America would be the last thing on a Filipino’s mind.
Not in our case. Two very important people in our lives sent us some things we miss from Manila.
That’s how Filipinos love.
Sent from my Ozone on Verizon Wireless
We started watching So You Think You Can Dance when it was in its third season. The one where Sabra won. We’ve been hooked ever since. We cheered Joshua on in season 4 and were a bit disappointed Brandon lost to Janine in season 5. We’re dance fans for another reason of course, but I digress.
So of course we watched the auditions for season 6 and were just as nervous about the Choosing of the 20 as the contestants were. Okay, maybe not as nervous. I’m always trying to find Filipino faces on TV and am generally happy to see Asians. So last night, I think I spied one who didn’t make it into the esteemed 20—a guy with the last name “Dumlao”— and I think one who did.
There’s nothin’ like hangin’ out with fellow Filipinos to bring out our real selves.
We were mostly strangers at this birthday party–the celebrator and her roommate being our common denominator–but when you put a group of Filipinos together, we manage to be a cacophony of chatter and laughter, like long lost family or friends, regardless of introductions.
Filipino food buffet at a birthday
Posted in diaspora, filipino | Tags: proclivities
(Re-posted from Exits & Entrances’ The Beauty of Silence)
It’s our final thirteen days in Orlando, Florida. Thirteen days. My head is still spinning when I think about this and I must admit that it hasn’t fully sunken in that we are driving north to Nashville, Tennessee to restart life anew.
I can’t count the times I thought that we would be stuck here – me in my job as a club concierge at a fancy hotel and K as a receptionist at an eye clinic – or how many times I gave up all hope of ever working in a job that would maximize all of my gifts and abilities; a job that would not feel like a job but would feel like a perfect fit, a glove of my former career.
It was well into my third month at the first hotel I worked at (which is the sister property of where I work now) that I plummeted to the depths of self-pity. There I was, in the first job I could get in the US (not counting my three week stint as a housekeeper) after looking for four months and sending out close to 100 resumes, busing tables, replenishing drinks, making gallons of coffee and preparing buffet presentations for high-paying hotel guests, every day. My fingers would sometimes get smeared with leftover food, my muscles would strain from lifting cases of soda and beer, my mind, seemingly slowed from lack of stimulation.
Posted in faith | Tags: god, rey corpuz, self-pity
Since coming home to the U.S. two years ago, I’ve been diligent to not stick out like I’m Fresh Off the Boat (FOB). Call it a matter of pride since I did spend the first eleven years of my life in America. Since coming back, the U.S. has of course grown in leaps and bounds in immigrants, many of which naturally carry their cultural habits with them, and as a result, are sometimes ridiculed or reviled for let’s say things like driving, and not picking up after themselves when eating at a fast food place. And because I have brown skin, it’s easy to automatically assume that I’m a “porainer”.
Is there anything wrong with being FOB? No. Is there anything wrong with my pride in possibly being identified as FOB? Yes.
Truth be told, I’ve had to jump quite a few cultural hurdles. It’s not easy returning to a place you knew as a child only to find it different from how you remember it. There weren’t as many cereal flavors in 1980! Nor were there row upon row of Coca-Cola variations! And bank cards? Whoah. I hardly ever carry cash.
Either these things were around and I just didn’t know about them because I was eleven and lived in Portland—very not cosmopolitan compared to let’s say, New York— or they really weren’t. Read More…
Posted in diaspora | Tags: cool springs, mcdougal's, third culture
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