Movie Review on Praybeyt Benjamin

So my girlfriend asked me to watch a comedy movie with her at Robinson's Place Dumaguete. The movie's main star was one of Philippine's sarcastic yet funny gay comedian, Vice Ganda. So we both finally watched the movie together yesterday with my younger sister.

Here is the movie's synopsis:
Vice Ganda takes up the role of Benjamin Santos XIII whose lineage has a long tradition of serving the Philippine military. The movie's surprising opening goes back to the Santos's service in the military, from the time of the great Visayan hero, Lapu-lapu, and the Katipunan, up to the present times. The conflict begins when Benjamin XI, Vice's grandfather which was acted out by Mr. Eddie Garcia, finds out that his grandson cannot continue the tradition because he is gay. But when the grandfather is subdued by terrorists, Benjamin XIII enters the military service, in place of his father, and gathers all of his manly strength to save his dear grandfather.

Basically, the movie depicts the outcasts of society (a gay man, a coward, a lesbian, an idiot, a nerd, an obese, a crazy person, and a nobody) and shows us, in the movie, that even such a person can be a hero.

The movie was mostly funny, but in my opinion, the funny parts did not come out naturally. The plot was also simple and followed the usual Filipino mainstream comedy. It was also very Mulan-like (e.g. Benjamin joined the army in place of his father, a scene where he tries to cut his long hair, etc.). What I did not like about the movie were the weird and illogical scenes (e.g. the scene where he saved his grandfather by getting in the way of a speeding bullet but he somehow lived even without medical attention because one of his
colleagues tried to do CPR on him instead of their hotshot Captain).
It also has a little bit of drama where Benjamin was discovered in the military training that he was gay and people began to discriminate him, but pretty much that's it.

This is the movie's poster:

All in all, this is my rating: 1.9 out of 5 stars.

The Holy Week and Bais City

I spent my entire holy week at my mother’s province, Bais City (for those who do not know where it is, it is located in Negros Oriental, Philippines). For a city, it doesn’t really feel like a city like New York, Sydney, Manila, or even Cebu, it feels more like a town to me. If you are wondering why it’s called a city, my cousin who took up Political Science explained to me that in order for a place to become a city, they must generate a minimum income of 100 million pesos (this is the latest minimum according to the Philippine law). Since I’m already talking about my 'hometown', might as well talk about its must-sees and must-visits.

What I really like about my hometown is its simplicity, a good way to rest your mind from the 'real' city life. The city does not have malls, yes you heard me, we don’t have malls like other cities. We only have two central plazas, our tiangge or public market (the new public market is almost complete by the way and the design is pleasing actually),our public basket ball court, our local Catholic church, a public school, a private school, and our city hall which are all in walking distance. One of the fun things you should also try is riding a ‘pot-pot’ or a bike side-car taxi with a honk which is very cheap, although I rarely ride them because I feel sorry for the drivers carrying your weight. If I do ride the pot-pot, I make sure that I pay them more than the riding fee.

Bais is widely known in the Negros Province for its dolphin watching and the white sand bar beach (a large stretch of sand occurring only during low tides), although the sand bar is not actually part of the city but belongs to the next town, Manjuyod, it is still strongly affiliated with the local tourism. To let you see what my second hometown looks like, here is a link:

tourism

Even if I am a local, I never had the chance to visit these two main attractions. Although I almost had the chance to visit Sand Bar for the first time last Easter Sunday, it was cancelled because our ‘pumboat’ or a motor-run rowboat was too small to travel a long distance, plus the sea was ‘wavey’. The last thing I don’t want happening to me is to die drowning; especially that I have a case of acute asthma attacks, so stamina will be a really big problem when I’m trying to swim back to shore…. Shudder…. So me and my cousins just settled with Lag-it, a very popular and free ‘beach’ in barangay Okiot (actually, we don’t call Lag-it beach because it is actually a fisherman’s area).

So Holy Week was pretty much not so exciting for me in Bais City, other than going to the beach, since I was just reading a book and watching Discovery or NatGeo the whole time, but I had a great time altogether. Although I think my cat, Cookies, might have more exciting experience than me since he can’t stop exploring the neighborhood and meeting new animal buddies

I miss Cookies

I had two cats in my life, although both passed away and both are he's, but my buddiest of the both is Cookies. He's a white cat with black spots. He's such a bossy cat, or maybe cats are just always like that. But here's a list of things what I miss about him:
1. He sleeps beside me. Always.
2. He plays basketball with cockroaches. Yep, he uses them as balls.
3. He plays with mice, like rolling them with his paws, before he massacres them. Morbid I know.
4. He only eats sardines. He was only forced to eat cat food.
5. He has a shy cat best friend , which I both hate and like. We named him Blacknose. It's obvious why.
6. I miss hugging him.
7. I miss playing wrestling with him.
8. I miss calling him Cookies in my weird voice.
9. I miss it when he calls me when he sees me come home, and he bounds towards me in joy.

That's my boy Cookies. The reason we named him that because he looks like the color of Cookies & Cream, although that is his real name, it's kinda long so we shortened it to Cookies. I miss you bro.

13 Weird/Funny/Bad Things That Happened ON Friday 13th

1. Had 5 hours of sleep because I slept at 3am studying Abstract Algebra.

2. Wasn’t able to wake up on time because my sister ‘accidentally turned my alarm clock off. :/

3. Woke up with allergy and hard sneezing and a heavy head.

4. Predicted that the day will be cold, so I wore long sleeves. Guess what, it didn’t happen… I was sweating the whole time. :|

5. Rushed to school to find out that the exam is actualy on Monday. :/

6. Later knew that I have no class whole morning and afternoon (Some of you will ask why is that bad? Because I don’t have anything to do. It’s boring…)

7. Went to my sister’s college to ask some money. After, I rode my bike when I noticed that my bike was very heavy and dragging. My rear tire was flat. :(

8. Went home and decided to clean the whole house by myself with so much optimism. :) (Seriously, this is weird because I’m mostly lazy.)

9. Weeded the front yard and suddenly had blisters, and it popped! My skin burned like hell… :/

10. When I was throwing the weeds away, my favorite and only flip-flops broke. Beyond repair. :(

11. When I took my Physics exam last 5pm. The things I’ve studied didn’t show up. :/

12. I almost crashed head-on with a motorbike. :o

13. I accidentally lost my favorite wallet. With all my pictures and keys. :(