"Saturday" by Karen Bordador (2011)

Karen Bordador posing for FHM calendar (image from www.clubsnap.com)

(Note: Too bad Karen Bordador's "Saturday" is nowhere to be found on YouTube, so here's just a sexy picture of her.)

Karen Bordador: The beauty and the memory

I really don't like to pry into other people's private lives. And I assure you that by writing this posting, I am not making bad light out of people who are going through an ordeal. I do not intend to mock them. On the contrary, I feel sorry for them. The subject of this post is a certain celebrity by the name of Karen Bordador, who is a radio DJ and one of the former vixens of a popular condom brand.

Memory is a ghost that returns to remind me about a few things. With Miss Karen, memories from the year Rebecca Black was slaying the Internet with her viral hit “Friday”. Memories come from the year I started exposing myself to Jpop, particularly AKB48 and fripSide. Memories from a battlefield – a culture war, the exact term.

It has yet to establish whether Bordador is into drugs. Hope she was into a different kind of drugs - coffee. (image from www.imgrum.net)

I would also like to admit that because she was an ace of a condom brand, I used to Google her pictures on the Internet. She was bootylicious, that’s all. I don’t know if she is still bootylicious until the time of her arrest. I admit that I looked at her pictures again after I learned of her arrest. I want to know if she has recent pictures of her beauty, but I cannot seem to find any. The only recent picture I can find is her mug shot - and she did not look good in it.

Bordador with her fellow vixens (image from http://intimatemanila.com/)

Miss Karen was one of the original vixens of the condom brand, but she was not the queen. She was slimmer that the queen, but the queen was fairer and more bootylicious. I don’t know what happen to them after their run as condom vixens, but one of them figured in a sex scandal with a basketball executive and in a number of memes that resulted from it.

I think I should start praying for the former condom vixens, Miss Karen included.

What's that song?

I did YouTube her ‘Saturday” song. It was torture. It was one of the worst songs I have ever heard. The accompanying music video was one of the worst too. No point going back over that. It was a lame attempt to ride on with the popularity of the original. Conan O’Brien did better with his “Thursday”.

Should you listen to "Saturday"?

No. Because the song is already non-existent. Believe me, I tried my best to find the music video to the song, but it has already been lost. Don't know if her radio station still keep a audio of the song but it is not worth my time asking them. But if you are curious, let me check.

Right now please pray that you favorite celebrity keeps away from drugs or any other illegal activities.

"Sotsugyoushiki no Wasuremono" by SKE48 (2011)

SKE48 song evokes memories of graduation

Love a song in a language that is foreign to yours? Then it pays to read and understand its lyrics in your language. As in the case of this coupling song from AKB48's sister group, I browsed through its English translation in the Stage48 website – and one word makes certain things “coming back to me now”.

CD+DVD Type-A (Regular Edition) cover of Banzai Venus by SKE48 

Graduation Ceremony's Forgotten Things. That's the English title of SKE48's “Sotsugyoushiki no Wasuremono”, a coupling song from their 2011 maxi single “Banzai Venus”. This was released a few years after my graduation, and the keyword “graduation” in the title struck a chord in my memory.

SKE48 ace Jurina Matsui attempts to place a note in someone's shoe locker. Sweet!

Recalling college graduation

Graduation. I forgot to enjoy the days leading to my graduation because I was preoccupied with “helping” my classmates graduate. I was done with my research paper during the previous semester, and I should be relaxing on my last months at school, but no.

Matsui tearfully looks to heaven

I got dragged into my classmates' problem regarding their overdue research paper. Well, mine was overdue too, but I worked on it and completed it weeks before graduation semester. While I spent my summer vacation interpreting and encoding data, my classmates were enjoying theirs, going to places and hanging out with friends. Unfair!

Matsui and company dance to the music

I got dragged because the research instructor told me to help them because if they don't graduate, I don't graduate too. More salt into my wounds as some classmates even “blackmailed” me. I was at a disadvantage, but I don't want trouble. They should be thankful that The Purge movies were not in theaters that time. I could have brought them to meet their Creator.

Friends share a smile

Graduation. Other than that research paper matter, I was preoccupied with wooing a classmate, who didn't graduate that semester. I even helped her research paper group just to get close to her, but to no avail. Five semesters of spurned love, and I can't move forward post-graduation with an emotional baggage, so I decided to stop pursuing. Decision hour was just less than two weeks before graduation day.

Rushing to play tennis

Graduation. I failed to have a graduation portrait taken. I don't have the money.

The pain of recalling due to just one word in a title of a pop song. "Sotsugyoushiki no Wasuremono" is my current LSS. I listen to it with the hope that my counterpart in an alternate reality is enjoying or had enjoyed his/her last days at college. I listen to the hope that I can pierce my classmates' shins with a pitch fork even just in my dreams.

I listen to this song with the hope that I can date SKE48's ace Jurina Matsui one day.

Meeting of friends after school

"If I Let You Go" by Westlife (1999)

Westlife: lasting memories

I may have heard the song "Fool Again" by Westlife way back in 2000, during the summer afternoons, everytime I boiled hot water for next morning's milk. I thought the title of the song was "Born Again".

Late that year, everyone at (high) school was singing "My Love", another song of theirs. I didn't care much about popular music then. I was heavy into trading cards and toys: I collected Dragon Ball Z, Digimon, and Pokemon cards from my classmates, and also bought a set of tiny Digimon toys from my history teacher.

After the Yuletide break, a classmate brought his Christmas purchase, the first album of the record-breaking Irish vocal group. I would buy that cassette months later, after I bought a bootlegged copy of British group A1's third album "Learn To Fly".

At the school's Valentine's Day program, some bloke from the sophomores performed a solo rendition of "If I Let You Go". I don't know what hit me or took hold of me, but the song instantly became my last song syndrom (LSS). It would eventually land in my top 100 favorite songs.

Image from mahkarani.blogspot.com

Westlife's 2nd UK chart-topper off the first album was my ultimate LSS in the first quarter of 2001. In what was one of my favorite summers, their rendition of the Billy Joel classic "Uptown Girl" took over as LSS.

14 years has passed, but "If I Let You Go" remains my most favorite Westlife song, my most favorite pop song. It was the catalyst for my great interest in music, one that fueled my attraction to Britney Spears, Linkin Park, My Chemical Romance, AKB48, and Nogizaka46.

Like every other song that I like, "If I Let You Go" brings back certain memories. While writing this post, I suddenly remember my former crush (a sophomore) and another schoolmate (a classmate's boyfriend) who always played the song (on his guitar) at my request. May God bless them wherever they are now.

And how could I forget when four other classmates and I sang the song ala-Westlife during the convocation program, when my class hosted the event? Days later we would sing "Flying Without Wings" at another school program.

Too bad I can never turn back time to relive those memories. At least, I can enjoy those moments in my memory, with the song playing in the background.

"Senpuuki" by Nogizaka46 (2013)

For the music video, please click here.
For the English lyrics to the song, please click here.

About Nogizaka46

To date, this is the only "new" song featured here in this blog. So why am I writing about this song? What do I remember about the past that I am relating to this Japanese pop (Jpop) song?

But first, some introduction:

• Nogizaka46 was created as an "official rival" group to the world's biggest female group AKB48, which also has the same founder.
• Nogizaka46 debuted in 2012, the same year AKB48's "queen" "graduated", in other words, departed from the group.
• "Senpuuki" is Japanese for electric fan. The word sounds cute, right?

The keyword for this post is electric fan.

Member Saito Asuka "speaking" to an electric fan. She is the center of the "Senpuuki" music video

The past involving an electric fan or two

The ceiling fan was the kind of fan that I grew up with, as far as I can remember of my childhood. Every time I went to sleep or took a nap, I would stare at it, watched it turn its blades around. I used to have a fear that it would come off the ceiling and fall on me, either wounding me or killing me.

Ceiling fan

The time came when my family decided to own our own house. We moved to the province and stayed for a while at a house owned by one of my mother's relatives. My father thought about buying the house and its lot because he liked the idea of living closer to the beach.

The house had no ceiling fans, so a relative lent to us her standing fan. A standing fan? It was the first time I ever saw such type of fan. As someone who was accustomed to ceiling fans, I found the invention strange. I can't remember if we returned it to our relative after we bought our own electric fans and moved to a permanent home.

So at our permanent home, we moved on with life. We went to school, our parents took up some farming and fishing, and two years later, my mother went to the capital for work. Her employers sought her out, persuaded her to work for them again. She was allowed vacation. At times, she brought new electric fans home.

Standing electric fans

Electric costs: the suffering

Like every other family, we struggled with rising electric costs and broken electric fans. My father managed to fix them, so we would not have to pay a repairman or buy new ones. But we were powerless against rising electric costs.

I don't know but I seemed to be the most affected about electric costs than anyone in my family. The situation (or perhaps fear or worry) got hold of me, pushing me to make sacrifices. I was forced to forgo the electric fan. It wasn't easy at first for me to live life, sleep, or do things under the sweltering heat. I urged or appealed to my siblings to forgo the electric fan too, but they weren't ready to make such a sacrifice. My insistence led to quarrels.

Desk fan

I felt that my sacrifices would be for naught. We did see some decrease in the electric bill but my sacrifice weren't worth it, especially that my family did not support me much. But the best thing was that it helped me endure the heat, get along with the warm weather. I am now used to hot nights.

I am now used to life without electric fans. Family and friends would ask if I use one at my place. They even tell me to buy a portable fan, the types sold at stores that sell China-made goods. But why buy when I have a hand fan (the one given away by politicians during elections)?

Oh yeah, the portable fan. A classmate once donated a portable fan to my class as our classroom was the only one without an electric fan. Speaking of donations too, the parents of one schoolmate donated a big electric to their sons' class and even got a recognition for it at the closing and recognition program 13 years ago.

Think about everyday household items that bring back the memories.

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