Today, Archie showed me his Nikon FM2 (loaded with a Fuji Velvia and geared up for a weekend at the beach) and his Nikon F4 – a huge and heavy camera!  If there was anything I was looking forward to in the TM team building, it would have been photography with Archie’s manuals, and Edsel’s DSLRs (he recently bought a Nikon D700 that I have yet to see!).  Sadly, I really am not just up to a weekend with new friends (not A and E surely, but the other TMs).  My colds have been on and off and well, yesterday they decided to come on again.  I consulted with the company physician and he prescribed antibiotics and something for allergic rhinitis too.  I just don’t feel like jetting off somewhere because the meds are supposed to make me sleepy.  Added to the mix is my tummy, well let’s just say that bowel movement hasn’t been quite normal. Ugh.

So there, a weekend of photo opps missed. But I still have tomorrow and Monday to make myself a fun weekend

Unrelated stuff…

Digital Candy has a $1 Sweet Sensations sale and I am tempted to buy this colorful kit, oh and this one too. Hmm… It’s only a dollar each after all…

Everyone who lived through the 80s and the 90s probably have their own memories of the Master Rapper. I remember seeing him perform live and in person at an Eat Bulaga! show. They were still at ABS-CBN then, and he was a guest. It was on our grade 3 (or was it grade 4) field trip and EB was one of our stops. I don’t remember what song he performed that day, probably Mga Kababayan because that was the year it was released, but I could be wrong. Teka, was he really there or am I just associating another memory with it? Basta, that’s how I remember.

I was in highschool when Kaleidoscope World came out. I remember having a friend write down the lyrics on a page in my binder, uso sa ‘min yun nun eh, we really had the lyrics of our favorite songs in our binders right along with our school notes. Tapos pa-bonggahan ng lettering for the titles. 

After shift on Friday at around 12 noon, my team went out for a few rounds of drinks and videoke at this bar along Mother Ignacia.  As soon as we were ushered into the room, of course I took the remote control for the videoke. Haha. I randomly punched a number and guess what came out? FrancisM’s version of SuperProxy. I am not kidding. We didn’t know that he had died already. We started receiving messages about the news only about two and a half hours later. The boyfriend was the first person I SMSd about it, he hadn’t heard, and he replied back that that wasn’t a very good joke. He’s a fan, you see. As our own tribute, we looked through the song book for Kaleidoscope World and all sang together.

Some time ago, I had read somewhere that he was into photography. I searched online for his photos and that was the first time I landed on his Multiply page. Today was the only other time I checked it out and I spent the last hour or so going through his posts. He lived a full life, that much I can see. And he enabled others to do so too. He wasn’t just passionate about his music, he had the same dedication for his photography, and also for his clothing line (which is a mere reflection of his love for his country). Last night, walking away from the MOA concert grounds, the boyfriend and I were talking about how much the Man from Manila has accomplished in his 44 years of life.

Until around Christmas last year, we didn’t know that the three stars and a sun shirts were FrancisM labels. Seriously. We’ve all seen them around and am sure everyone wants one. Then while shopping for gifts at Greenhills, we saw a guy wearing a shirt and I don’t know how we knew, but it was from FrancisM Clothing Company! We searched through Greenhills for a store where we could buy from the original brand – we didn’t find it. Now I know where the stores are. I’ll be looking for the Cancer shirt (both the Philippine Cancer one and the Leukemia one) because that holds significance for us too. Alfred wants the one with FM’s silhouette, the one with the mic.

FM. I remember when I decided to name my Frankie after FrancisM. He was a good photographer, a good storyteller. I hope to tell more stories through my photos too, be it with Frankie’s help (I have neglected her so much) or with another camera.

He leaves behind his wife, and their 8 children, many many friends and millions of fans.

Rest in Peace FrancisM, Master Rapper, the Man from Manila.

I just went in there to check, and yeah, the directory looks incorrect. So here’s testing if it works properly now..

Okay, the first attempt was unsuccessful. The directory I specified was wrong… Let’s change it again and see what happens…

Okay, that took about three or four tries but I finally figured it out! It was a problem with the path. 

I took this photo using Frankie. This was where my mom’s family lived for years. I’m not sure how many years exactly but when I was born until I was around 7 years old, this to me was my grandparent’s home. This was the house we first referred to as sa baba or roughly translated – downstairs, down south, or just down. We called it that way because the house we lived in was located in the same community, but geographically ‘higher.’ The St. Andrew’s Seminary Compound has a geography that I’d call rolling hills, so you’d literally go up and down. Hehe. So Papa and Lola’s place was somewhere lower than ours.

Anyway, the house still stands and a priest who teaches at the Seminary and his family lives there now. The front door was moved to the side, and the pig pens are no longer out back. Aha, I just remembered, I should have shot the avocado tree too, if it’s still there…                                              

I mean, all I was really doing was make sure the meter’s at the right place, and then shoot. Sometimes I didn’t care where it was. Imagine if I really pay attention to details. Imagine what I can do if I finally understand how the settings of my SLR affect the turnout of a photo. 

Alfred’s encouraged too.

Anyhoo I;m having issues getting a photo up here. Scoot on over to Frankie’s first album.

Not surprising since:

1. I’ve been busy (with nothing specific!)
2. My PC had OS issues since Sunday and Alfred only found time to work on it this afternoon.
3. My ISP has been soooo slow.

Saturdays are tight in the office, and our management team has decided to tweak TM schedules so that there are more of us available to support our agents during the weekends. I’ve had Fridays and Saturdays off since I joined the account and it really is the RDs I prefer. But my boss asked for volunteers for weekdays off, and since Alfred and I have not shared the same offs in a long time… I volunteered for the Tue-Wed rest days. It’s supposed to start next week but since they’d already be needing help this Saturday, I agreed to be there. I took tonight off so  I could catch up on sleep I didn’t get yesterday. I’d be back at work Thursday night though, then off again for Friday. Crazy, ain’t it? My choice though.

Frankie’s down again

I seem to have broken Frankie. I used up the 36-shot roll while at the Fiesta on Saturday and was going to rewind and reload with a fresh roll. But it wouldn’t wind properly. Then suddenly, the winder broke. 

Frankie’s taking a trip back to her doctor tomorrow. 

I seriously feel like it was my error that caused it to break. I feel so dumb sometimes. I’ve had Frankie for two weeks but I still haven’t seen any results – something always goes wrong with the film!

Fiesta. Greenhills. Twilight. etc.

Fiesta day was a fun day, clouded only by the Frankie incident. I have thoughts about fiesta, and the YAM festivities that I’d very much love to share. I’ll dedicate a whole post for that though. 

We went to the Seminary in the afternoon, but Alfred didn’t find the basketball games particularly interesting. There were no games for the kids, so there wasn’t really much else for us to do – specially since Frankie was not up to shooting anymore. We decided to head to Greenhills and finally see Twilight. 

Alfred had to work that night though, so we had very limited options in terms of which showing we could see. It so happened that the one we needed, was already sold out. Bummer. We ended up doing a bit of shoppping.

Greenhills at night at December, is still a nightmare when it comes to hailing a cab to get you home. It takes forever. We made good time though, Alfred was able to take a shower before heading to the office. I took a ride back to the Seminary with my brother and his girlfriend, for the YAM night.

These are just snippets of stuff I would have written about had I been online in the past three days. I’ll be back in a few hours with more!

The frame counter got stuck at 24.

I thought it was just because of the multiple exposure toggle, but it wasn’t. We could keep on cocking the lever, and it felt like the film was advancing, but the counter just wouldn’t budge.

Did I do something wrong? Did I feed the film incorrectly? Were we ripped off with that cheap film? Did it actually have just 24 shots? 

That was our initial conclusion. So I rewound the film, took it out, and fed Frankie a new one.

Yesterday, at frame 24, it stopped again. After trying and trying and shooting and shooting, it budget to 25. After several strokes and shots, moved on to 26. But I knew it was really broken.

There are a lot of resources on the Web (thank God) and I found one where somebody posted a similar problem.  The advice was to take it to a professional, but that it was a simple problem. So tomorrow, Frankie will be going back to her doctor. 

On Sunday, I took her with me to work. Proudly showed her to Archie, who knew how to admire her. He commented on the specks on the viewfinder and said that I should have had it cleaned. To be honest, I didn’t notice them while at the shop – it was bright then. Hehe. He says I got a good camera, and don’t I know it?

So Zune doesn’t get sick too…

A few weeks ago, we noticed a drop in Zune’s appetite. His nose was constantly wet too, and he had been sneezing. We decided to give him vitamin C and religiously give him multi-vitamins again. He just wasn’t eating because he probably couldn’t taste the food so much because of the sniffles.

In no time, he got better.  

But the experience taught us not to be remiss in giving him his vitamins. Ever.

So I should remind Alfred to replenish our stocks of pet supplements before we even run out. Or I’ll go get them myself.

Delayed Gratification

In this digital age, everyone’s so used to seeing instant results. Same goes for taking photos.

We took both rolls of film of my test shots for processing this morning. We asked them to print negative to CD. I have to wait until tomorrow to get it though. And they charged 160 per roll. That is not cheap!

Still, I can’t wait to see how they turn out. I know they will probably suck, but who cares? I’m learning!

Me: “Should we call her Makoy?” (After Ferdinand Marcos)

Alfred: “What about Ferdie?”

Me: “I don’t really want to name her after Marcos. What about Kiko for Francis Magalona? Or Frankie?”

Alfred: “How very Sharon Cuneta.”

Chuckles from both of us.

Alfred and I finally took the trip to Hidalgo this afternoon, with the rain and all. The FM2s turned out to be much pricier than we thought but we found this small stall (Shurdin) where the body was priced closer to what we thought. With the lens though, we still had to pay more than we initially thought, but more on the range of what I was willing to spend on a toy camera. So I still think it was a bargain!

Frankie is an FM, not an FM2. The stall had two FM2s, a solid black, and one with chrome, but manong couldn’t install new batteries on the black one, it wouldn’t budge! The chromed one’s metering wouldn’t light up, even with the new batteries. So though I really wanted the faster speeds on the FM2 (upto 4x higher than FM), I settled for the FM which had a better looking body hands down (less worn out look).

I’ve already been firing test shots but I don’t know how exactly they’ll turn out. I’m not even sure I loaded the film properly! I’m reading up on the FM, since of course, it didn’t come with an owner’s manual. And I will be taking her with me to the office so Archie could teach me how to get more out of her.

So this has definitely lifted my mood more. I will not think about leaving my job for the time being, and I will hopefully learn to enjoy my new work family more. I’ve met my agents over the course of the week and they seem like a rowdy bunch. Real nice boys and girls that I can totally work with. This week I’ll get to know them even more. I guess that means I wouldn’t have to update my resume to be like those hard ass Manhattan resumes after all, this girl is not going job hunting anytime soon. Hehe

Anyhoo, I’m not sure if I’ll be getting any scrapping done tonight as I am really pre-occupied with thoughts of Frankie. We’ll see.