reinvention

Early on the morning of 8th February 1986, I was going through Immigration at Sydney airport, sleepy from an overnight flight from Manila. The Immigration officer said to me something to the effect that “oh, you’re in trouble now!”, which of course alarmed me — I was indeed in trouble in Marcos’s Philippines, which was why I was in Sydney, running from that trouble. I asked, with a fake smile, “what do you mean?”, and he said, also with a smile, something like “you forgot to vote, didn’t you?”. The presidential election in the Philippines was indeed held on 7 February 1986, and I had indeed not voted. The Immigration officer was teasing me; he did not know that just two weeks before I was being tortured in a safe house somewhere near Manila, and that soon after my release, my father had arranged for me to cool off with my godfather in Sydney. Two weeks after I got to Sydney, Marcos was ousted. I didn’t want to return to Manila just yet as there may have been a change in Presidents but the system in place during Marcos’ rule was basically the same, and the men who abducted me would probably still be around, attending to their business as usual. Its been 24 years since I came to Sydney to cool off for a while. Time flies.

Today’s Mama’s birthday, the first since she died in June this year. She had two: 12th December and 31st January. The story is that her birth certificate was submitted 31st January and somehow they celebrated that as her birthday; then they checked her birth certificate sometime later and saw that her date of birth was 12 December. We celebrated both birthdays equally anyway. Happy Birthday, Mama.

Only a few days ago (probably on Saturday, 28 November) did the distinction between art and design become clearer to me, courtesy of Tom Igoe, in an interview with him in the book “Programming Interactivity” (O’Reilly, 2009). He was describing the distinction in relation to device interaction:

“Recognising that all device interaction is a conversation, it’s an iterative loop of thinking and speaking. So often, artists, more so than designers, get really good at the speaking side of the conversation and don’t develop the listening skills. This is the area where I find the great difference between people who are attempting to make interactive design. The distinction comes in that art is primarily an act of self-expression, whereas design is primarily an act of facilitating communication. Artists have to make things that do something or say something. This is one of the reasons interactive art is a kind of fallacy. I always tell students, look, it doesn’t matter which side of the divide between art and design you fall on, but be clear on the distinction, and when you make your choices, be clear on which of the two is governing your choices.”

Tom Igoe wrote “Making Things Talk”, a book on physical computing and related things.

Posted originally at: http://www.frontlinemedia.org.au/node/24

30 November 2009

Happy Birthday, Andres (Andy) Miranda Ramilo.
Happy Birthday, Maria Christina Andrea (Ling) Quisumbing Ramilo.

Songs from my album “May Panahon”, which I released in 1998, are available from the Songs from “May Panahon” page of this blog. It has taken me more than ten years to digitise the songs and post them on the Net, but I have done it at last. The songs are in MP3 format and can be downloaded. I digitised from the original master tape so I hope these versions are clearer than the MP3s of these I have been encountering on the Web (those versions would’ve been digitised from the casette album which I released in 1998). I hope to release the songs on a CD also, which I hope to do in less than ten years.

Its been two years since Papa died, and two years since I posted anything on this blog. Many things have happened in the last two years. I had planned to uproot Diday and the kids to Manila to stay with Papa and Mama and to work as a geek for two Australian Internet businesses; we had packed up some of our things and actually sent some over to Manila, I was looking into schooling for the kids, where we would stay, etc. That didn’t happen; Papa died before we could finalise the move so the main reason for moving to Manila went away. Also, one Internet business I was to work for decided they don’t want me Manila-based after all, which made the move financially non-viable. So we’re still in Darwin. I work for a community arts organisation now; I started as Executive Officer of Brown’s Mart Community Arts in December 2006, and I’m still there. Moving back to community arts was deliberate; I was looking for more meaningful work and found this. Its very stressful and it is part of the millieu that I tried to get away from (”the arts” in Darwin) when I decided to work as a geek full-time in 2002, but it is more meaningful than my previous job. A problem is that the stress of work creates stress at home, so I am forever tired and grumpy and the kids and Diday don’t enjoy that. I think more and more these days that I should prioritise family more and more, that maybe work that is meaningful but that makes me too tired and grumpy to be a good father is not meaningful after all. I think of Papa often and I wish I had been a better son to him. I don’t know if he was that good a father or not, but he was a good father to me. I never doubted he loved me. If only my children can say that of me when I’m gone. I miss Papa so much.