Briathrail // Albert 2MNG

I just sent home a box full of my stuff. For the second time in two years.

As a kid who has relatives residing in the USA, I was already used to seeing them regularly send over a couple of big-ass boxes back home to us in the PH. We called them “balikbayan” boxes. They were always painfully bulging at the sides and heavily wrapped in packaging tape. And opening them were always a treat. Lots of items inside – candies, chocolates, used clothes of varying degrees of usability, handbags, toys, canned goods. They send a lot, and I’ve never seen a box that weren’t crammed full of stuff close to bursting. My mom always looked forward to the handbags and used hand-me-down dresses. Me, there was only one thing I loved most – the corned beef cans, and always they sent us Libby’s. Those shit were delicious, provided they be prepared and cooked well with lots of shallots, garlic and pepper. They need helper flavors as they’re bland and fatty out of the can.

As such, I grew up with many of my clothes being hand-me-downs from either my well-off cousins in Hawaii or my mom’s relatives in Cali and Rhode Island. I liked that the boxes always were thoughtful and well-partitioned by its packers – all items were marked with who it is supposed to be for, either by an attached tape or by a crude marker writing on the outside of the item. I was happy when an item was explicitly named for me, as I knew it was an item I had full rights to. I don’t know why but I often had my name on most of the big bags of sweets and chocolate. Firstborn popularity, perhaps. Mom sometimes tried to rig it by discreetly ripping out the tapes with my name on it before I got to have a look at the box (sometimes those arrived while me and my siblings were at school at weekdays) and claiming they were for “all of us” but I often found the tapes with my name on it crumpled in the garbage pile. Sad but understandable. No kid wants diabetes at an early age anyway.

And now that I myself am an OFW, I had to honor the long-standing tradition of many heroes and patriots who came before me… and send my own “balikbayan” box full of stuff back home. I did that last year near end of November. And well… mixed bag. I opted for the “Small” shipping box from LBC. I estimated I didn’t have a crazy amount of stuff I want to send back home. And I didn’t really pack it for the people back home, I packed it largely for myself. I stuffed it full of books, used clothes, my V1 of the Nintendo Switch, empty game cart boxes, shoes, and various bits and bobs. The only “for others” I packed in were the juice boxes, kaya spread, coffee and cookie jars. More like 70% for me only. The actual “pasalubong” was in my luggage I brought with me in the airport. The goal then was to bring home enough clothes to fill my closet there so that whenever I go home for vacation, I can just either pack light or fill the luggage with other stuff instead of clothes.

This time around, I decided to tilt the contents towards more… food. Snacks and stuff. I still booked to get a “Small” box from LBC on Saturday a week ago to be picked up on thr weekend after. But the prep work did happen well ahead of time. As I detailed in a previous weeklies blog, I already amassed a container box full of the stuff I wanted to send back home. And by end October, I estimated it’ll fill at most half of the balikbayan box. Largely it’ll be the rabbit decor from my boss and the big mooncake box from a fancy hotel that my boss also gave me. I’ll just have to fill the rest.

So I went to my local Sheng Siong grocery and spent around SGD60-ish worth of stuffs. Juice boxes. But this time, two big 6-pack grape juiceboxes and one 6-pack Milo choco milk box. I learned from my previous mistake of trying to introduce iced jasmine and chrysanthemum teas to my folks back home, I ended up drinking them myself. My niece absolutely liked the Kiyo grape juice though, so that I repeated. And no kid dislikes Milo anyway. Then I bought two coffee 3-in-1s, one small bag of basmati rice, one small jar of pickled chili peppers (for my dad), some snacks for my niece, and a few stuff as well for me. Then the next Monday, I went to the Scarlett grocery to buy some exotic stuff. Like that Oreo cookie with cola flavoring. I also bought mala peanuts, wasabi almonds, cookies and sweets, some White Rabbit, candies, and other stuff. I did avoid the other highly spicy stuff I liked, as I knew I’d end up eating them myself anyway – I have a high spice tolerance – and I don’t want to spend hours with a spicy butthole on the loo during the holidays.

I didn’t really plan on how much I’d buy, but after bringing both grocery bags home and refitting the box to contain everything, I ended up almost filling the box. Somehow I bought just the right amounts. I finished it by including two freebie stuff I got from online shopping – one duffel bag and one collapsible reuse cup. The box was full to the brim but at least it wasn’t bulging at the sides. I was able to close the box at the top normally, tape it down the middle, round and at the sides, and soon after the box was completely sealed.

I filled some of the box’s gaps with old t-shirts and some unused socks I got as a gift last year. For the mooncake container, I filled the drawers with the smaller items I wanted to send home, like hotel pens and keychains. I also wrapped the fancy rabbit display box in a couple layers of bubble wrap and pray to God that it survives the trip home in at least a displayable manner. The box definitely felt hefty after I finally closed and sealed it with packing tape.

After sending it off with the LBC pickup guy a few days ago, I breathed a sigh of relief. My room is now a bit lighter. I folded up the container I used to temporarily store some of the items, and it went back under my bed’s storage space. And then I looked at my two big luggages. I have booked a Philippine Airlines flight back home for Christmas, and I have 30kg to fill for the check-in baggage.

I got one more hefty thing to fill. Probably more old clothes and a few more snacks won’t hurt.

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My boss booked us one of our regular company-wide dinner-and-movie night last Friday. We just usually go to Paya Lebar, book Swensen’s for dinner and go to any moviehouse in the area for a good movie. This time, it was for Gladiator 2.

And yeah, for dinner I had ribeye steak, medium rare, with mash and vegetables, and mint choco ice cream for dessert. I had to skip breakfast and limit my lunch calories to fit in that shit. But fortunately, it’s on the company tab so I was more than happy to eat steak.

As for my impression of Gladiator 2…

First off, I think Ridley Scott is an uncompromising director in an increasingly rare breed of filmmakers. He knows what movies he want to make, he knows what he likes in his movies, and he damn well makes sure his movies has an unmistakable prestige feel to it. Like Tarantino, Villeneuve, Nolan and Spielberg, he’s the type of director whose films truly bear his brand of filmmaking. You get a Ridley Scott film, for better or for worse. You get a lot of directors nowadays whose films felt like either the producer or distributor meddled with the filmmaking, or the writers were green potatoes and the director had to compensate, and you end up with movies that felt like a mishmash of ideas that just happened to be a movie. Think of Joss Whedon’s Justice League movie, along those lines. Gladiator 2 definitely felt like a Ridley Scott film. Gritty, beautiful, picturesque. Set pieces felt alive, deft touches with key story points, and the story flows into a lot of valleys that pay off in the end.

As for the movie on its own – I definitely felt it owed far too much of its weight towards the first movie. I felt it first during the title sequence where the audience was given a slightly artsy brush-painting style tour of the crucial moments of the first Gladiator movie. I thought it set the tone right away that this film will be more enjoyed by people who watched the first film, and people who never did might feel lost at times in the story. I did watch the first film on the moviehouse with my dad when it came out, and it was a full experience of a film. I still have an original DVD collector copy – not a bootleg – of Gladiator somewhere in my cabinet back home in the Philippines. This sequel clearly gave up on any dreams of trying to equal or surpass the original right from the opening sequence. So there’s that.

The story, I’d argue, had a lot of moments where it equalled the original. And some new characters could’ve been in the original too. For example, Denzel Washington’s conniving character, the ex-slave Macrinus, maneuvered like a deft politician on trying to divide the co-emperors, quick to pick up on subtle hints and accurately moving in when things can go in his favor. He almost overshadowed the entire movie if not for screentime. Pedro Pascal’s noble character, General Acacius, was also nicely written as a whole. Basically was the “noble captain” trope. But unfortunately for the movie as a sequel, they could not shake off the weight of the past. The main character literally had to adorn the armor of the past.

The movie had more negatives than positives, in my opinion. Gladiator 2 has a good cast. Macrinus, Acacius, Geta, Caracalla and Ravi were extremely well-cast. The roles went to exactly the right actors. Some of the set pieces were impressive. The army battle in Numidia, the mock naval battle inside the Colosseum, they were very good highlights. Ridley Scott did as well as he could with the movie. The movie never made me cringe or facepalm even once. The movie was overall a well-directed one.

But it pained me to admit that the main role was largely forgettable. At times in the movie, it felt like he was just a tool to get the story moving along. The overall story and plot, while structurally sensible, never delivered in the same way that the original did. At times plodding, at times groaning under expectation, at times makes you wonder when they will get to the good stuff. To be fair, it’s fine that a sequel’s story never lives up to the original. But it’s a shame if the attempt was half-assed. To me, failure’s not a death sentence, but hey, at least make a valiant attempt. There’s honor in a healthy pursuit. The movie’s story, I felt, barely did. The main role was a dud. The plot didn’t do justice to what it could be even with the backing of the original. When the main character Lucius dons the old Maximus armor, I was like, man, there’s like a good portion of film left and they’re already given up on making the movie stand on its own legs.

All in all, I don’t regret the minutes I spent that night watching the movie. It’s paid for by the company after all. I had nothing better to do that night as well. It’s a fine film as it is. But Gladiator 2 is not a movie that I’d care to watch again even on streaming.