weekend gigs, pacquiao, love transfusion, ciudad

hello friends of angbandangshirley!

incredible labor day weekend gigs! we had a fun set at glorietta 5 also featuring the live debut of selena's song love transfusion. atc was also a blast, lotsa new friends (hi maan, mary, arlene & elle!) and hello to the other people who weren't able to say hi but got to watch us perform. incredible fun, but i learned my lesson to never stand in front of a very loud amp again, by mid-set i was already feeling joe's fuzz factory melting my brain haha.

in other news, congratulations to ciudad for their magnificent video for my emptiness. the launch last night of the video and the meiday bar tour was a lot of fun, with the whole of magnet high street decked out in pacquiao stuff. very good match this am, short and sweet. i enjoyed it, and i'm glad i didn't pay to watch it haha. minus points for martin nievera's national anthem.

catch us next saturday at bigsky for the second installment of meiday meiday this month! random update haha

-owel

in the zone

Hello everyone, it's Kathy!

Sorry for the late updates but i'm making up for it by being scanner happy! haha. Check out the photos section! I just uploaded some of the our magazine appearances (sosi haha) including the recent one which was a review of "Themesongs" in Pulp magazine aka Pulp Times - March 2009 issue! Nakakalambot ng cheeks (haha iz my newly acquired phrase from Los-udd!) to be compared with Arcade Fire's Funeral and Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism (whoa) --- I'm too lazy to write it here so i scanned it instead haha! Thanks Mr. Jason Caballa for the kind, kind words :)

And oh! in the spirit of me being in the zone of updating: I also uploaded (in the music section) our fun-filled-sando-day Brewrats guesting 2 weeks ago. Enjoy!

p.s. just wanted to greet my co-arian race bandmates haha: belated happy birthday, Selena! and advance happy birthday Joe and Zig!

Scanner Happy

nakita kita... sa isang magazine...haha

top chef

arrested development left me on the cusp of age 29 without having learned to cook. thus, i took the opportunity this sabbatical in Kuala Lumpur has provided to finally face my culinary fears. kailangan din eh. i'm from ang bandang shirley, and food is important to all of us.

armed with a photocopy of a nora daza cookbook, stock knowledge from all those food network shows on basic techniques, and almost zero knowledge about how to work my friend's stove, i decided to learn to cook one dish at a time.

 

first dish ever cooked: pork sinigang (tom yumerntz)

this is my favorite dish ever, and i was quite overwhelmed that it was the first one i pulled off -- and very deliciously, if i do say so myself. what made this particularly challenging was the lack of a sinigang mix in KL (no way am i going to even try figuring out how a tamarind "works" haha) and kangkong as well. i improvised by using tom yam mix and just okra and sitaw. the sauce was a bit thick with the many tomatoes i used, but still very yummy. my OFW friend was very pleased with this reminder of home.

second dish: pork with tomatoes and rosemary

 

i had to work with the available ingredients at home as well as consider what techniques were accessible to my limited understanding of how to handle food. i found this recipe on one of those food channel websites, only the original called for capers, which i replaced with olives. it turned out ok, though presentation left much to be desired. my friend said it tasted like a foreign version of adobo. hmmm. the jury is still out on whether that's a good thing or not.

 

third dish: chinese asado

 

this almost became a failed experiment because i still wasn't used to guesstimating proportions. i followed a recipe that called for a kilo of pork, and then only realized that i only had about 350g of meat when the entire thing was happily simmering away. i had to throw away most of the sauce (which tasted really good, though, because i used maple syrup in the absence of brown sugar) and the meat was still very black -- but really tender and tasty! it was one of those dishes that went well with a LOT of rice.

 

fourth attempt: bacon and sunnyside up eggs

 

so you'd think this'd be a no brainer. wrong! hahaha i realized that making sunnyside up eggs entailed more than just dumping them in the pan and hoping the yolks won't break. i broke my egg (which is fine, since i actually prefer them scrambled) so i tried my best to do the other one without breaking it. i succeeded, but then realized that i didn't have enough oil to cook the yolk on top of the white. lest i give my friend e. coli, i just sort of folded the white over the yolk and flipped the entire thing to cook it.

fifth "meal": goatherd's delight (or heidi wants to lose weight)

 

because i'd rather not cook if it's just for myself, i usually prepare something dummy-friendly for lunch. in an attempt to be healthy, i put together a green salad with a simple vinaigrette, white bread and cheddar cheese (nothing fancy), and an apple and two cookies to cap it off. it's kind of what i imagined peter the goatherd in heidi would eat in the mountains for lunch. haha, nothing like a little child's play to spice up a tamaderntz meal.

sixth meal: malaysian pansit

JOKE LANG hehehe. hindi ko kayang magluto ng ganito, no. this is what we had when we went to an island getaway last weekend. it tasted good: like pansit, but with more exotic spices and seafood. but it was the only yummy local thing we ate during that outing.


(real) sixth dish: beef with broccoli




awww, the pic is blurred :( even if it's really simple, i'm proud of this one because i got the proportions and flavor right, plus i added a dash of orange juice to take the edge off the saltiness a little. next time, i'll make this with less beef and more broccoli.


yay, so i can cook now. that's all.

love,
selena

brewrats!

many many thanks to all the new contacts of the ang bandang shirley multiply! i cannot begin to express the gratitude welling up inside my heart for all of you, and especially to dj tado, dj angel, and dj ramon bautista of the fantastic radio talk show brewrats for helping make ang bandang shirley famous (haha)


non-chronological kwento in bullet points

- energizing walk from the boni mrt station to the paragon plaza building because of ricoa chocolate factory smells
- girlie kathy
- baby owel
- mahinhin joe
- "conflict kagad"
- "how many of your fans are jumping jologs?"
- novaliches -> baluarte of jumping jologs
- "sinong banda ang gusto nyong makaaway?"
- "papasikatin namin kayo; gusto nyo bang mag double platinum?"
- kathy learned how to use lights at a photoshoot
- owel learned basic use of macromedia flash
- joe learned to keep right near the manila city hall if you want to go to qc and not to sta. cruz
- "guangzhou!"
- "it's a lovely song" (pero hindi naman shirley haha)
- tado reminiscing about viva hot babe myles' "pagkababae" haha
- the jacq ruefner visit ("ikaw na yung pusher namin a")
- "idealistic ako e"
- the engineering connection.
- silent sanctuary and the right of reply
- "para kayong shoegaze na eraserheads"


haha baka may nakalimutan pa ako. next time ulet!
 

a lesson in geography (a not so musical post) [by jing]

ever since i was young, i've always enjoyed looking at maps -- painstakingly deciphering them and imagining myself navigating through not-so-imagined territory ("not-so-imagined" because i know those places exist although i've never been to such places). i enjoyed reading road maps even more than i enjoyed reading telephone directories (yes, very peculiar reading fare, i know hahaha). one of my treasured books then was this dog-eared copy of "ins and outs of metro manila" which i found in my late grandfather's library. eventually my copy of "ins and outs" turned outside-in and fell to the insatiable mercies of termites and silverfish.

nevertheless, my likewise insatiable quest for the road obtained its wish fulfillment when i finally learned how to drive. finally, no more imagined navigating, i thought to myself. to further equip myself, i got myself a new road map book of metro manila (see first photo). this book also proved very useful when i had hearings and consultations to attend in places like caloocan, malabon, and navotas.

when i joined shirley in early 2006 (or was it late 2005? it escapes me), i found myself blessed with such diverse bandmates -- diverse not only in the musical-personality sense, but also in geographical terms. in getting to know people, the question i'm most wont to ask is "where do you live?" or "where are you from?" i guess asking such questions stemmed from my childhood love for reading road maps. whenever i'd hear people answer my questions with "i live at so-and-so...", my mind immediately visualizes the maps i've read and i ask rejoinder questions like, "so is that near this-and-that street?". most times they'd answer yes, not knowing that i've never actually been to those places -- only theoretically.

so when i discovered that my shirleymates lived kilometers apart from each other, i got excited to say the least. in the second picture i posted, i plotted the respective locations of each shirley member and traced the distances that set us apart. glancing at the map, you can say we practically span metro manila in its entirety. despite this jaw-dropping realization, i can proudly say that i've travelled to each and every shirley point plotted on this map. much more so, i'm also quite proud to say that the kilometers which set us apart only bring us much closer to each other. i told you this was a not so musical post.

recording diary 3/13/09

photographic evidence of the band's latest recording sessions at love one another studios