Basking in Reflected Glory

So many celebrations in Manila this week. And I cannot help but be swept away by all this "ecstatic news" (Chouliaraki 2006). Here's my way of being saling-pusa and doing my Pauladance through transnational mediaspace.

1. Just a while ago, a friend forwarded the Bar Exam top 10 list. And at number 3 it said Ivanah Maanak (Ateneo de Manila University). Hmm, sounds like someone we know, right? And so when we consulted one of the more reputable mainstream media publications The Philippine Star (hem, hem), they spelled it correctly: Yvanna Maalat! Our very own Yvanna Salty!

Aren't we proud of our gurl?! The three years that she spent ditching us in every party and coffee date proved ubersuccessful! I'm so proud of our Yvanna! She was part of my Filipino group, where we searched for hopia in Binondo and almost got peed on by a horse with a kalesa. And she was key to getting Joe de Venecia to appear in our Theology immersion video (if they only knew what really happened there...). And in graduation we marched side-by-side: Yvanna in the Humanities line and me in the SocSci line: two ditzy geeks trying to march perfectly in sync.

Congratulations, Yvanna! Well deserved!

2. My MAG students graduated yesterday! To Tin, Lesley, Kryng, Vicky, Ayee, Myka, Hub, RA, Marvin, Adrian, Kristine, Glaiza, Raymund, and Diane, congratulations! And congratulations to all the Comm students of this batch! So many great, controversial, fiery personalities! Living up to the Comm legacy! Ganda lang!

Stage ate moment: Remember what's important is not just what you do when you're engaging with the media, watching distant suffering, seeing the Other onscreen, being an Armchair Columbus; it's also what you do in between such moments. Being mediators, translators in everyday life. Welcome the stranger. Proper Distance. Infinite Hospitality. The mediapolis: to see and to believe, but to engage with and make present too!

To MAG people: I'm so inggit with the fotoWgraphy. We need to have studio photos when I come back in June! Haha!

3. My best friend Jason graduated with his MA on the same day. Seriously, I learn so much more from an hour chatting/gossiping/theorist-bashing with Jason than six months in Cambridge! Really, I owe him much of my being here: he taught me how to write clearly, how to do research properly, even how to tell corny jokes before presenting. Haha! Seriously, I can't wait where our "intellectual genealogy" takes us in the future.

Oh! And of course, no one can do nerd humor better than Jason. In our Vancouver trip, we were joking about how our host/s were supersupersupernice. Everyday, we'd have a host who'd want to take us out and spend time with us everywhere all the time. To the point that we didn't have gossip time for ourselves! So on one ride, I was saying, we'd have to think of a term to describe that twisted kind of hospitality, like in-your-face hospitality? Environmental hospitality where the guest/stranger cannot escape the host. And witty Jason of course comes up with the perfect term: Hospitalization. Heehee.

That said, Jason, I hope this is the year of routes over roots! And the right routes ha! What's all this talk of you joining Leloy in Melbourne or Law in Vancouver, and not even considering the UK?!? Too far? Too close? Improper distance! Always, always on your terms!

4. My brother Jeri graduated AB Psychology as well. He's the sweetest, most patient, most forgiving brother, methinks. The type who gives up the driver when his diva kuya cannot be bothered to find parking on a Friday night. But really, I kinda thought that my being away made us even better friends. We're brothers who never show affection without mediation. We never hug or put an arm around each other or even say "peace be with you" during Mass. Haha! But the symbolic power of new media actually enable us to put as much smileys and hugs and "We miss you" mush that we never, ever were able to express face-to-face.

Congratulations, Puhlar! Loves ya! Hug Coco for me too!

Ditzy Geek Performances

Vancouver was such a delight. It was a city of hospitality and diversity. Of good food and good people. I reunited with old friends and made lovely new ones. And one such friend is Prof Brenda Yeoh.

Prof Brenda Yeoh is head of NUS' (National University of Singapore) migration program in the Asia Research Institute. Jason and Lawrence had met her before in their stints at NUS, and they have hyped her as an exceedingly brilliant lecturer and researcher. And so, she was definitely one of the reasons I *had* to go to the Vancouver conference entitled Pacific Worlds in Motion (so it's not a dance troupe, Ayee). I had to travel and meet "the most powerful scholar in Asia" (Santiago 2008). See her mind-boggling bio HERE.

As Madianou (2005) has argued, identity is not an essence, it is a performance. This makes sense. But during my stay there, for some reason, all my performances to impress Brenda kinda fell flat on my face. In my many attempts to perform "cosmopolitan intellectual", my "essence" as ditzy geek just breaks through and ruptures through the (mis)representation.

Consider:
1) So Prof Yeoh delivered a brilliant lecture reviewing research on migration and proposing new directions for future research. She even had a fantastic review of cosmopolitanism from a geography/cities perspective.

Anywayz, right after her lecture we proceeded to the reception in the other room. We were sitting on a table chatting amongst ourselves when suddenly I see Brenda with her bouquet of flowers approaching me. "What could she possibly want?" I thought. Then she said, "Hi. Are you the Cambridge student? I saw a notebook with Cambridge on it in the room. You must have left it."

Impression: absent-minded

2) It was our panel on Philippine media and migration. It was also the closing panel of the entire conference. Lawrence, Jason and I were speaking, with Prof Nora Angeles (Pinay in UBC Urban Planning) as our discussant. Before we went on though, there was a nice coffee break. And they served the yummiest cookies I've had in a while--the type that's freshly baked with the chocolate all oozy. And I had one too many chocolate cookies... to the point that I got a huge chocolate stain on my white shirt. While I wanted to run to my room and get my stain remover, apparently we had no time for retouch. So I moved my nametag from my chest to my tummy. See below.

I thought it best to play it up though, lest Brenda's impression of me as absent-minded would be confirmed. So I opened with a reflexive performance: "Hi. I'm Jonathan (points to nametag in the bottom of shirt). I had too many cookies over the break so I had to patch it up. You see, I was trying to perform cosmopolitanism today. But as the previous speaker has pointed out, it's a fragile identity." In fairness, natawa sila. I didn't know I could pull self-deprecating jokes pala.

Impression: vain fashionista

3) The actual talk went really well. I didn't expect my karaoke project to be welcomed so warmly. I did find it curious though that they laughed in my conclusion. I said something like, "So here it's not just the serious media of news as implicated in issues of inclusion and exclusion, but it's also the flimsy, floopy stuff that media scholars are criticized for studying such as karaoke."

Impression: flimsy, floopy media person

Post-conference, some fellows and grad students came up to me saying that I was charismatic, relaxed, and entertaining. That sounds like a description of a talk show host, not a serious academic.

4) After the conference, UBC's infinite hospitality showed again as Prof Henry Yu took Brenda and several grad students, including myself, to a tour of downtown. And here was my chance then to redeem myself in Brenda's eyes.

Prof Yu was soooo nice that he even treated us to ice cream, where I caught Brenda staring when Jason took this photo:

But the kicker was the dinner. We had dinner in an Indian-run Chinese restaurant called Green Lettuce. It was seriously one of the best Chinese food I've ever had. They substituted Indian spices for 'traditional' Chinese dishes, and it was soooo good. Brenda, Henry, and two students sat on one table, while me and my cohort sat on another. Brenda kept passing the dishes to our side of the table though, and she remarked, "You guys are obviously hungry." By the end of the night, this was their side of their table:

And this was ours:

So embarrassing!

Impression: bottomless pit

5) Then Brenda, to my mind, gave me chances to redeem myself. Having studied geography in Cambridge, she asked me about Cambridge life. Apparently she was at Emmanuel College, which is the 'smart' college. And then she asked me why I chose Corpus Christi College. And I said, "Oh, it's superstition really. My mother's last name is Corpus. So I thought Corpus Christi for luck." She was laughing so hard and remarked, "Oh. I've never heard THAT before!"

Then, in the ride back, she hollered from the front seat, "Jonathan, why did you decide to study in the UK?" And I went, "Ummm... actually... it's just... funding!" Again she laughed so hard. As we were nearing UBC, I attempted to save myself by saying, "Oh! And because UK media schools are qualitative and US media schools are quantitative. But by this time, I think the impression most firmly is: DITZ.

FINAL IMPRESSION: DITZ

Disastrous Binibining Pilipinas Q&A

Everyone's been making fun of the delegate who would end up winning the Ms Philippines-World title. But I think our attention should also be with the audience. Not only were they active, they were also quite mean! Heckling and cheering midway through, they at least got Janina to reflexively go "Oh my God" after she pronounces family as pamily.

Sonia Livingstone has hailed fans as the most active of audiences before. But she needs to meet gay Pinoy pageant audiences!

Random 'Bits and Pieces'

This is my attempt at writing a half-decent blog entry after weeks of being silent. It's just that I've been sparkly and bouncy the past weeks that I haven't been able to find anything to write (or rant) about. Browsing through my blog entries from last winter, when I got bitten by the homesick bug, it seems that I just self-represent better when I'm sad rather than when I'm happy. Isn't that sad? I don't wanna be sad to be able to write. And since I have my research proposal deadline in about a month, I don't wanna be sad.

Reflexive moment. Gosh, I sound floopy right now. So I'll just give up all pretense in getting this entry to make any sense, and just list five fun random things.

1) Hummingbird Cupcakes

A day after my birthday, Ana and I decided we still haven't had enough sweets and trooped to Hummingbird South Kensington. One divine Red Velvet cupcake costs 1.85pounds (around Php 160). Next time I vow to buy the whole Red Velvet cake. Because when I got home, I wolfed down two cupcakes in around six quick bites. What good is a treat if it doesn't stand the test of longevity?

2) Anderson Cooper

So my man Anderson is part of my everyday life. Watching AC360 every morning makes me participate in imagined communities of news junkies, responsible media critics, and white hair-fetishists. And from time to time, 'Andy' makes a comment that gets me all giggly. There was the time he said he was shy to do karaoke (memories of my dissertation!). Then there was the New Year episode where they listed the top 10 YouTube videos, with the dancing Pinoy prisonmates at No. 2. His response was a truly enthusiastic "I love it I love it I love it!" Last week he aired yet another video of the Pinoy prisonmates, and he even remarked that it's a shame that they couldn't take the show on the road. Then there's the recent episode where he watches clips of streakers getting tackled on the field. And he awkwardly refers to a streaker's genitals as "bits and pieces." (See a clip from Gawker HERE but I obviously recommend subscribing to the podcast so you can join in the media ritual.)

I know I'm always critical of journalists. After all, according to Daniel Dayan, they "have to be priests... superhuman." But yes, Anderson lives up to the impossible challenge. He's a media god.

3) Lost Season 4: "The Constant"

Lost's new season has delivered brilliant after brilliant episode. But last week's Desmond-centric "The Constant" is one of the most amazing hours of television. Ever. Not only did it bring the show's sci-fi roots out in the open with its unique take on time travel, but it masterfully played with the against-all-odds love story of Desmond and Penelope. You can read the show in so many ways: a faith-reason tuggle between Jack and Locke, a meditation on otherness (of human and nonhuman varieties, even on the otherness of reality, fate, and the future), or a tale of the castaways' spiritual redemption. But you can choose to read it as I do: Lost is about Desmond and Penelope, pawns in a game played by fate and "course correction" and by evil Daddy Widmore and Dharma. Credit also goes to the new character: Oxford scientist Daniel Faraday, who ups the geek ante and gives obsessed fans like me some representation in the show.

4) Spirit Searching Spirit
According to Richard Rogers' (2004) analysis of the political economy of search engines, Google employs systematic 'back-end politics' that favor big companies over the little people. Page rankings are not results of 'objective' or 'natural' computer algorithms; rather, they are products of people working with the specific intention to increase profit. This should explain why mmmPop, for instance, doesn't turn up on page one when searching 'pop culture'.

However, as my friends know, I've never fully trusted political economy's bleak outlook in life. I mean, it's just so depressing! I'd rather find tactics of resistance and audience creativity. That's why Jason's discovery is just absolutely amazing. Try searching my supervisor's name "Mirca Madianou" in Google Images. You get a picture of Mirca as the first image on Page 1. Then scroll to the bottom and you see pictures of Roger Silverstone and MYSELF one after another. That's no back-end politics, that's a symbolic AND real connection to the great prophet of media studies.

5) Departures/Arrivals
I'm quite sad that I won't be in Manila end March. There's Mavie's bridal shower (complete with stripper) and grand wedding, and then there's my brother's and my students' graduation a few days later. But I'm looking forward to my trips to Vancouver, Montreal, and Athens in the next two months. I'm excited to see friends I haven't seen in three years (Lawrence), nine months (Sharon), and three months (Nenita, Jason--if he gets his visa, crossing fingers!).

And I also can't wait to practice my hospitality--the constitutive virtue of the mediapolis--when friends come to visit me in the next months! Aprez vous!