Jose Mari Chan pitches touring 'Going Home to Christmas' musical

 Jose Mari Chan pitches touring 'Going Home to Christmas' musical

Kristofer Purnell - Philstar.com

November 30, 2024 | 5:23pm

MANILA, Philippines — Singer-songwriter Jose Mari Chan suggested that Repertory Philippines should stage its newest production, "Going Home to Christmas," around the country. 

Repertory Philippines held the gala premiere of "Going Home to Christmas" last November 29 at Makati's Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium in RCBC Plaza with the entire Chan family present.

The production revolves around several strangers on Christmas Eve at the airport and their personal associations with Christmas.

Ahead of the gala, the theater company's president Mindy Perez-Rubio recalled the musical was five to six years in the making. Artistic director Jeremy Domingo added that its conception was proposed by the iconic musician himself. 

Domingo, who is making his directorial debut, called up "the great Jose Mari Chan" onstage during the premiere to share a few words.

"Not great, just a humble singer-songwriter," Chan simply said. 

"It's always been my dream since I was a young boy, as a singer-songwriter, to write a full-length musical in the tradition of Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, and Oscar Hammerstein II," Chan said." Thanks to Repertory Philippines for giving me a boost in fulfilling that dream."

Chan went on to thank Perez-Rubio, Domingo, musical director Ejay Yatco, and writers Robbie Guevara, Luna Grino-Inocian, and Joel Trinidad.

After the show, Chan returned onstage to shake hands with each individual member of the "Going Home to Christmas" cast.

"You gave wings to my songs. I hope that maybe this show can be brought to different parts of the Philippines — not only to Cebu, also Bohol, Dipolog, Cagayan de Oro, Iloilo," Chan suggested.

One cast member suggested Vancouver — a reference to the musical's events — which earned laughs from the crowds.

"I'm speechless, the whole show, there were tears in my eyes, you've brought light to my songs," Chan ended.

(N0T) NECESSARY EXCUSES

I used to be bothered when people, at the last minute usually, would ask me to go do something and all I wanted was to go home.

On the one hand, if I turned them down, I feared they wouldn't ask again and I'd end up being isolated. On the other hand, if I gave in and went out, I'd inevitably not have fun and, in the long run, ended up hating myself for lacking the guts to say no.

I discussed this with a friend who happened to be a counselor. Her advice is simple, but invaluable.

Just say I'd love to go out, but I already have made plans. A lie? Shading the truth? Absolutely not. I do have plans, with myself. The plan might be to just go home and veg out. But it was a plan.

In the end, this gave me the freedom to say yes when I wanted to go out, or no, if I didn't. As a side benefit, my friends learned to ask a few days in advance, instead of at the last minute.

Am I shading the truth? Perhaps a bit. But no one gets hurt and I'm not seen as a nay-sayer who never goes out, and in turn is never asked. ? Well, I have plans.

I could go on and on, but I have to run. I have plans for the rest of the night.

Life doesn't only consist of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Life has ups and downs and everyone tries to survive in his own clock-shell surrounded by a dangerous  ocean. Life is stuffed with plenty of excuses, and we are sometimes unable to apologize and say a meaningful "sorry" at the right moment.

Excuses don't know the question of age. I still have two significant examples to share:

The church was crowded. confirmation. A woman came too late. Traffic jams. In need of help, the woman looked to the left and then to the right. It looked like a young man liked to help her. He murmured, "Show up a bit, the LOLA likes to sit down". The situation looked problem-free at that moment. But after taking a deep breath, the LOLA realized the young man's comment. She was just 38 years "young"! With uneasiness she looked at the youngster, who started smiling at her. How old could he be? 14 or 15? A very big difference already to her age. Then suddenly, the young man realized his inappropriate remark and stuttered, "Sorry Madam, please excuse me!"

Choked with emotions, I also listened to the story of my former editor colleague in Germany several years ago. Her mother had expelled her from life. Only while laying on her deathbed, her mother did offer a plea in extenuation because of her lifelong fault.

Excuses because one is embarrassed or with a simple alibi can be  found at every corner. Did you, my dear reader, count already, how many times you used the term "IF"?

Just to mention this example: If I could pass my German language exam with distinction, my partner would be very proud of me!" Sure, not only he, but also me, as your German language professor in USEP - University of Southeastern Philippines, Institute of Languages.

"If there would be a God, there wouldn't be so much misery, poverty, and war on earth!"

"If there wouldn't be the little world IF, how could we still have our not necessary excuses?

Maybe, you still remember Elton John's song from 1976: "Sorry (in the right moments!) seems to be the hardest word" ... .

That depends!

Why does the German language have 3 genders?

 

David Maximilian Müller

Linguist, piper, conculturer, gamer, programmer, writer

2,069 followers

255 following

I’m a German in his early thirties and also

• a linguist: well, at least I have a master’s degree. While I have never done any serious research or fieldwork, I know enough about linguistics that I guess I still somehow deserve the title. My languages of interest lie primarily with the Balto-Finnic and Celtic languages; I speak Finnish and Irish in addition to my mother tongue, and, well, English. There’s also some Old Irish and Japanese left. Learning Italian at the moment, which is kind of underwhelming.
• a piper: I play the uilleann pipes, a type of bagpipe native to Ireland, and have been active in Irish traditional music for some years. You can find me in sessions in the Munich area, usually in a corner and with a scowl on my face because people are playing in a key my instrument can’t handle. Damn fiddles.
• a conculturer: I create languages, scripts and the associated cultures as a hobby, which somewhat relates to my linguistic background and will probably forever be the only thing where I actually apply the things I’ve learned. Got a blog about my conlanging efforts here on Quora: The Conblog. I set my works in the world of Final Fantasy VII, which brings us to the next item…
• a gamer: Really hesitate to call myself this. I play video games, infrequently these days, but still. I still own a Super Nintendo and a Nintendo 64 with most of the classic titles of a bygone age; on the PC, I’m all for Europa Universalis and Final Fantasy (VII, VIII, IX, X).
• a programmer: It’s my job. I do web development. Got a CS degree and everything, but really don’t ask me stuff about it. I can find my way in JS, Java and Scala - good enough for me.
• a writer: of fanfiction. Not comparing myself to Tolkien here, but I write for a similar reason that he did - to give life to my languages and cultures. It’s all in German and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

I seem to answer mostly questions about Germany, the German language as well as linguistics and language in general. Like many others, I forward the interested reader to Oscar Tay, who puts in way more effort in answering questions on the last topic than I ever could.

Oh, and that’s an otter over there. Found him on Google. Otters are awesome.

Thanks for the A2A. Martin Smith has the historical reasons - the genders were part of the older stages of all Indo-European languages, but many of them lost some distinctions later.

Romance and Celtic have for the most part lost the neuter, Continental North Germanic has folded masculine and feminine into a common gender, as has Dutch. English is one of the descendant languages that has lost gender distinctions entirely; others are Persian, Armenian and Bengali, but in Europe, English is the only Indo-European language with total loss.

German has kept all three, together with most (all?) Slavic languages, Albanian, Greek, and Icelandic. The Indo-European languages of India seem to either have three genders of lose the neuter, if they haven’t given up gender completely. Here’s a map for Europe:

Red - masculine/feminine

Yellow - common/neuter

Dark blue - masculine/feminine/neuter,

Light blue - no gender

Green - animate/inanimate (this is Basque, which isn’t Indo-European)

I’d also like to mention that one could analyse German as actually having four genders because the gender difference collapses in the plural - you’d effectively treat the plural as another class nouns can belong to. “Gender” is a rather shaky term anyway - it’s a largely arbitrary classification category for nouns and has little to nothing to do with biological gender. Girls are neuter in German and masculine in Irish, and in Sicilian, the penis is feminine, while the vagina is masculine (got no source for that, just read it somewhere - but Latin mentula “penis” is also feminine).

Why did the definitive replacement of the letter ß by Ss not require a referendum by the German people?

Volker Eichener

German is not spoken in Germany only, it is also spoken in other countries.

First, “ß” is definitly not replaced by “ss”. “ß” is still used in many words. Only if you write in CAPITAL LETTERS, instead of “ß” which does not exist as a capital letter we write “SS”. Also, if a typewriter or computer does not have the “ß”.

Second, there is more than one nation where German is an official language. Besides Germany, it is Austria, Switzerland and Belgium. So, any orthography reform has to be an international agreement.

Third, language is not defined by law. Language is spoken by the people, and language evolves. Orthographic rules and dictionaries try to follow the natural developments of the language. Therefore, not governments are in charge, but international committees of linguists.

The first ideas for an orthography reform at the end of the 20th century were discussed in 1980 by the International Working Group for Orthography, with linguists from East Germany, West Germany, Austria, and Switzerland taking part. In 1992, the International Working Group published a proposed global reform to German spelling. The next year, an expert hearing was organized with 43 invited groups and asscociations who rejected some of the Working Group’s proposals. In 1994, there was a third international conference in Vienna which agreed on a final version of an orthography reform.

In Germany, the states (Länder) are in charge of education. The conference of education ministers decided that schools should teach German language according to the new rules. Also, government bodies had been forced to use the reformed orthography. Privately, you can write as you wish. Several important newspapers, magazines and publishers rejected the reform and used the traditional orthography.

Since 2004, we have the Council for German Orthography, with members from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Italy - all countries, where German is spoken as a native language.