Pr0tHiaDeN aDvEnTuRe

Running

2012-01-17T18:00:00.001+08:00

(screenshots from the video posted on Google)

And if I only could,
I'd make a deal with God,
And I'd get him to swap our places,
Be running up that road,
Be running up that hill,
With no problems.

-Kate Bush

People do stupid things sometimes. Sometimes people do the same stupid thing over and over. Perhaps it's not about cognitive ability, but the instinctive reaction that keeps a person returning to one's comfort zone.

Take for instance the person who does not mind being given extra responsibility at work but repeatedly does not proactively ask for it, yet continually finds boredom and frustration in the lack of direction; or the person who says he dreads facing yet another day at home, refusing to accept time and time again the importance of social contact and the benefits of a regimented work environment; or the people who toil day in and day out living off independently but find themselves prey to the financial consequences of their sympathy, to rid themselves of the guilt; or the people whose best kept secret is that they believe they keep it well.

To each his/her own theme song. In my mind I'm simply happy that I'm listening to Kate instead of Sarah, to Adele instead of Aimee. My insides roil with that feeling that I'm not where I'm supposed to be. I can't keep still at night, I don't hear my alarm clock in the morning. I am hoping maybe this nervous energy be channeled into something more quantifiable.

A few moments ago the office smelled like fresh rain.

Living Life Meaningfully

2011-12-07T17:11:00.005+08:00

terra coitus warriors

Just 3 hours ago, Mussolini posted this link on her profile and it got me thinking how I'd like to live life more meaningfully. To be honest, I feel like a zombie everyday I go to the office. I don't particularly like where I am right now, but I feel trapped in a repetitive cycle with no way out. Truthfully, I would love to have the time to study the recipes in the numerous cookbooks I have. I would love to start a small business or maybe foray into online business like Mussolini (if only I knew how). I would love to have the time to watch all the movies gathering dust in my cabinets, to listen to all the CDs I haven't listened to in years (because I just don't have the time to convert them to iPod files before getting rid of them).

I would love to have sex and read through all the books I have about it.

I would love to have the time to travel and STAY more than 4 days in one place to really enjoy it. I would love to be in a job that engages all of me. I would love to be able to use my ideas in fashion whenever I get inspired listening to music (because it's such a waste of ideas)

I would love to smoke and not worry about cancer.

And while I dream of these things, I have 2 business articles due tomorrow and I can't quite find the focus. If Elizabeth Gilbert can Eat.Pray.Love. I would like to Cook.Eat.Travel.Smoke.Blog.F*ck.

Relics

2011-11-14T12:39:00.003+08:00

As the year comes to a close, I cannot help but look back on 2011 and examine my friendships. Just recently 2 friendships ended, coincidentally occuring from 2 return flights. The first one happened when I got back from Hong Kong. We still had a chat before my trip and for reason, when I got back we were both online most of the time but we weren't talking to each other anymore. Perhaps in a way, it's therapeutic on both our ends because as a friend, I felt I wasn't able to help anymore. As a friend, I felt I failed to be totally honest about what I thought of the situation because I didnt want my friend to get hurt or to think I'm not listening. Alas, the silence is way past awkward.

The other friendship sorta ended when I got back from my Vietnam-Singapore trip. I went Ho Chi Minh to visit, but it turned out my friend would be spending the weekend in Singapore to watch F1. When we got to Singapore, my friend got into the usual mood swing at the end of the first day, and so for the rest of the trip we didn't really talk much anymore. We missed our return flight and had to book a new one. I couldn't say my first trip to Singapore was a total bust because I got see the terra cotta warriors exhibit, which somehow reminded me friendships. Some crumble like ceramic through the test of time, others stay firm and remain standing.

Hearth

2011-10-10T09:35:00.002+08:00

I don't know how I feel about this right now. It's like it was there but it wasn't, or it wasn't there but I just couldn't accept it. Try denial. How does one distinguish between love over deep affection? Maybe I just can't let go, or maybe I'm just too afraid to deal with it. It seems I keep postponing it -- after the trip, after this weekend, etc.

I'm sorry my love, I've run out of excuses.

Hit the ground running

2011-08-20T22:19:00.002+08:00

In a few hours, I will be embarking on my very first 10-Kilometer run. Since I started using the treadmill in February, I've never actually run on pavement. If I finish it in less than 1 hour and 15 minutes, then that'd be great. I haven't been able to run since last week so I don't know, let's see how I (thorough) fare. ☺

2011-08-17T10:39:00.004+08:00

By accident, while using a YouTube video downloader I was able to view a 30 minute clip of 50 famous influential thinkers and began to watch with gusto what I thought was a compilation of affirmations to the existence of God. To my shock, it was the opposite. I was hearing Nobel laureates, philosophers, anthropologists, chemists, physicists and mathematicians explain why their atheism. It made sense of course because I tend to partial toward empirical evidence. There were two instances in the video that caught my attention: David Attenborough's comment that the same god that created the earth (of which he so vividly describes in the Planet Earth series for the BBC) and the worm that was eating up the eyes of this child in Africa who was just waiting for imminent blindness; and this physicist's simple answer when asked if he believed that when we die there is no life after death, he simply said no.

It haunted me the whole weekend what this all meant and how knowing it could potentially change my life. It made me question everything I know about my faith, having been Catholic since birth, how early on in grade school I became lax with the ceremonies because I found them unrelatable and useless. I began thinking that perhaps the reason why I think my prayers are not being heard is because there's really no one that would hear me. It made more sense that the world came about because of random incidences and to some degree, luck; that in life you are either favored by the universe or you're not. Some people just have it and some don't. Success as the result of your own decisions and the right timing. It led me to think that the only thing that mattered is your happiness now, not guilt, not heaven, not hell.

It made me look back on all the significant moments of my life. Was there really a time when I felt the presence of the Lord, not a faith borne of fear or tradition?

Avoidance

2011-04-17T20:51:00.003+08:00

Yes I have been avoiding you for many good reasons. I really want to help you but it seems no amount of advice will ever get past your ears. You hear what I'm saying and yet it's like you're not listening at all. I'm reaching a point where I'm getting exhausted trying to reason out to you without offending you, and during the times that I think I may have crossed the line towards being appropriately honest, somehow you keep coming back with the same opening line ... "I feel like crap."

I'm sorry I'm left with no choice but to keep our contact minimal, mostly on a social network level whenever possible. Sometimes the mere effort to "like" something you posted seems to be a total waste of a mouse click. You say you are old and yet you think like a petulant child. The universe owes you nothing. The people you hate will not die because you said so. You get into trouble because you feel you are obliged special treatment.

I will keep contact to a minimum. You are a dear friend to me and you have stuck by me when I was depressed ... but if you don't listen to what I say and keeping getting yourself in the same predicament, there is nothing much I can do but to give you the space you need. It'a never too late to accept reality my friend. Let's move forward.

2,922 meters above sea level

2011-02-27T22:18:00.005+08:00

There are certain journeys that you take wishing it would be worth it, and they fall flat of your expectations. Then there are journeys where you expect the least from, and they impact your view of the world in unexpected ways. Just this weekend, I've been to the summit of the 106th highest mountain in the world. At that particular moment climbing up amidst the zero-degree temperature and the dark night, it didn't seem much. I got caught up in the race to out-hike the rest of the campers and at times walked alone in the dark. But I found out it wasn't so bad, I found out I didn't really have to be afraid of myself. And it gave me a certain satisfaction to know that in all 4 hikes, despite my lack of physical conditioning, I could keep up with the best and the fastest; that despite the fact I couldn't feel my legs anymore, I could keep myself going. Reaching the summit was not the reward, the fact that I came from a 6 hour hike in 2 days with little sleep and little food, unscathed, was reward in itself. I believe that the destination is only 2nd to the journey itself.

Of course, dealing with the call of nature was uncomfortable yet memorable (as always, really) and given the chance, I could fondly recount all those hilarious momets in a novel. Haha I questioned whether or not I could deal with being out of my comfort zone, not just with the climb but with life in general, and I realized that that I could. I realized I am fine being by myself. Of course it ain't fun being alone and the hike was all the better with my closest. That kind of warmth you get from familiarity is hard to find and it helps to recreate comfort and cope with harsh environments. It helps also to prepare well too, to always have an extra garbage bag handy. ☺

Would I have lasted another night in the freezing cold, without food and almost no water left? I guess I could. Would I do it again? Umm, maybe. Hahaha

This arduous trip to Mt. Pulag helped me recognize why I still believe in myself.

Notes from the past ...

2011-02-24T11:35:00.005+08:00

maybe you understand things in a much more serious manner

and maybe we can never always grasp what you mean

but we will never, ever mistake the joy you exude

through your smiles and the beauty of your heart

... we are extremely grateful.

from the girls.

All-in-1 Flight

2011-02-07T12:53:00.004+08:00

“All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.” – Paul Fussell

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” –Robert Louis Stevenson

It is with great disdain that I realize why I have traveled so much in the past 3 years. Aside from more affordable fares to neighboring Asian countries that do not require a tourist visa, it is my means of satisfying my soul that yearns to live in foreign lands. For so long I have always wanted to explore history, to explore human behavior, in the different places that I have visited. And as each travel comes to a close, I feel more and more that there is not enough time for me to connect with that country or to find my closure. It used to be that a 3-day weekend was enough an escape; now it seems not even 5 can suffice. Cheap travel has become a torrid affair, a means for me to cheat my rut, the resignation to my deplorable fate. I have become a philanderer to my own country because I am dissatisfied with the way it is managed. I am my Motherland's black sheep, tired of believing things would improve. Not that other countries I've visited are better off (perhaps a couple or so) to put contrast into perspective, but rather my own exercise of caution and restraint to moving itself, to getting out of my comfort zone in a place that surrounds me by family and familiarity. The restraint that pressures me to kill my creative ideas and leave but one -- the idea of making money. As my sense would put it, if I make money, I would be able to travel more and I would be excused from feeling sorry for myself (and for fooling myself that the end of the world is near).

So perhaps I've run out of countries to explore. Perhaps I have run out of money for my flights of fancy. Nay, I have run out of excuses to deal with the real issue -- the discontentment I feel about myself and my current state of affairs.

Until such time that things are better off for me, I fear I will continue to soar the skies and imagine the clouds lifting my worries to other places, for the sun to burn my guilt, for the flight attendant to usher me out into the new world. I will continue til I have but coins left in my pocket, I will reach for them with rabid enthusiasm for one last joyride ...

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G. K. Chesterton

Outgrown

2010-10-31T03:27:00.003+08:00

(Photo taken from flickr.com/photos/aldoaldoz)

There are some things that come to us naturally and without much effort like our God-given talents, or a good cleaning lady. These things we are taught to consider as blessings and we are taught to pray all the time to have more blessings. As a Catholic person, the perpetual guilt feelings that complement pleasure cannot be avoided. So the trick is to make the guild feeling pleasurable.

I've always believed that certain things cannot be forced -- like quitting smoking or genuinely giving advice to someone who doesn't wanna hear it. But something to think about on those darned ambivalence-riddled days -- which is easier for you, to get it going or to get it stopping? Perhaps it's a case to case basis. For me though it's mostly the result of outgrowing something. I get it started when I get something else to stop.

I've been smoking since I started in sophomore year of college, and since then I've always thought I would not be able to quit. I've heard people say they can quit if they want to, but up to now they're still smoking. It is very difficult to quit because 1) the addiction is chemically-induced, and 2) it is a social activity associated to having a good time as well as having to deal with a bad one. After 12 years of smoking, I just gradually smoked less and less, and discovered one night that I didn't really need to smoke anymore. And for a year I came clean. To celebrate my success, I smoked a few cigarettes in Hong Kong last August on a trip with my former officemates. After that weekend not one stick and no cravings. My smoking stopped, but appetite went full speed ahead. So my plan now is to lessen eating and start exercising again. I don't wanna force because I feel I'm getting there.

So, I'm thinking perhaps, just maybe, that I've somehow outgrown my need to tolerate my father's moody episodes. I mean, it happens all the time he's here and I probably just got tired of it. Last night I quietly slid off my dining chair and waited for them to finish arguing about their schedules while I fixed my clothes, then returned quietly back to the table when things simmered down. He keeps saying the same thing, so I'll keep doing what I need to do to stay sane.

Outgrowing habits in the digital age, like engaging hours on a social networking site where everyone's got their profiles on private mode even when they are listed as your friends, becomes pointless why they even consider you a friend in the first place. I keep my list to a minimum and sometimes weed out those I no longer wish to keep in touch with. I only keep my membership on the site because 1) it keeps me entertained during work hours, and 2) it's fun to post comments gratuitously.

For a fleeting moment I grew short a few centimeters and saw my world differently. Perhaps like a cell phone, you could always choose upgrade to a better model while keeping your sim card intact. It's funny sometimes when the things you hold on to the most suddenly become irrelevant.

left hanging

2010-10-26T22:41:00.004+08:00

(photo borrowed from f0blow.blogspot.com)

already i was caught in between deep breaths trying to keep away the thoughts, of 5 years coming to a close. i just said i was tired, not in my predictable, angry sort of way. his eyes pierced through me, not of guilt, but of concern -- will he make it on his own? my friend was right, he was clueless of what was happening. i asked him then how i always ask him why he was so silent. "i am hurting." his eyes did not well up like mine, like a pestle to peeled onions, a request for a second chance. after all, there wasn't anyone yet. if there was one legacy of my father's i believe to have inherited, it would be of fidelity. covered lies or truth would not matter but my own version of reality. i tucked my soiled clothes into a plastic bag, a habit i have so grown accustomed to doing almost every weekend. the sun pierced through the jalousies and he asked me why, why on a beautiful Sunday morning. i had no words, excepts reverberating echoes of repressed longing and a thoughts set on affirming growing in different directions. i did not foresee the vines. there were many memories in that garden, memorabilia far too precious and all too fleeting. i zipped up my knapsack and started to tie my shoelaces, ready to go, ready to call on friends for an emergency meeting. my hands were shaking and i couldn't find anyone i would want to disturb on a beautiful Sunday morning. i leaned closer to kiss him goodbye. and then i broke down.

Christ complex and the worried well

2010-10-14T23:27:00.002+08:00

It used to be so predictable, my attraction to problematic people and their infinite sadness. i thought it was empathy, my gray area decision making that made me feel drawn to the ambivalent tendencies, but i was led to believe it was a Christ complex, a way to feel better by surrounding myself with those who seemed worse off. i realized i had a lengthening abyss mining its way through my soul, an endless search for the diamond in the rough. i was not wise enough to know when to stop digging.

somewhere along the way, i felt confident enough to rebel, to walk the opposite way. i thought it was a good thing taking risks, but i was led to believe i wanted an escape. and i believed. i worried well enough to resign myself to staying rooted to the ground and clipping my wings with workload that got me nowhere. i was given a chance to fly, with artificial wings and at the apex of my ascent, i just wanted to jump off. it was a disappearing act that lost its magic.

a friend had said, after a tragedy we are at our best. i stood up, took off my fake wings (at a price), and walked my way to new places. i thought i was growing, but i was led to believe it was merely a compromise. a dormancy to contentment. i found happiness. i found love and it was unconditional.

but my insides keep on mining, digging a deeper hole for which to jump into. could it be diamonds or shards of glass? could it be a way to the other side?

if the voice inside could not be silenced, should it be heard?

pride

2010-10-01T22:03:00.002+08:00

where have you gone? i miss you more than i care to admit. i can die now in your embrace and everything would be all right.

interlude

2010-08-04T21:54:00.004+08:00

oh what i would do be madly, eloquently possessed again. the time when my fingers would just click on the keyboard and beautiful words would come out like the lingering scent of coffee, the time when i would churn out 2 or 3 poems a day, and languor in my own autistic world. now that i am part of the workforce, now that i am utterly in denial of love, now that i do what i have to do ...

... i don't know how to let go. it is torment, a sweet, dependable kind. like the beauty of a placid body of water reflecting my face. i can't help but look, can't help wanting to jump in. to just close my eyes and feel my breath on my face. closing in on the water. a slow, calm possession.

Learning Curves

2010-07-01T23:15:00.004+08:00

"I'll say it once, I'll say it twice ... I LOVE my damask wall paper!"

Looking back, there were many things I would change if I had the chance: I would've asked for a bigger allowance. I would've spent more thought on my college application. I would've chosen another college. I would NOT have started out in the customer service industry. However, looking back, I was so immature in many ways that even if I appeared to my younger, more rebellious self, I would not have changed anything. So, there would really be no other option but to not regret the regrettable, and to take everything as it comes, take it like a man (whatever that means anyway. Pfft!) Maybe by learning to let go, I would be set free from my obsessive envy. Maybe, by learning curves, I would be lead directly to my goals -- a plus-size paycheck or a fatty deposit account in a Suisse bank.

I'd like to think the path to my success is straight, that everything would be linear: a promise made would be a promise kept, a credit card bill would be paid in full. But of course, I'd be disappointed that life, for me, isn't so; and perhaps it would be better that way because the path I want is the exception: the bend on a straight path, the pleasant drop-off before the next house-hop, the requisite detour after a funeral.

I'm like a scallop taken out of its shell. A car with missing spare parts. I want to be so many things, I don't know where to start. Maybe my starter has a problem. Maybe I need a tune up.

Getting ready for the big day

2010-04-30T02:26:00.002+08:00

.... i am not, frankly speaking. i just find that i need to create an entry for me to remember that in a few short days i will be starting work and thus effectively ending my "bumitude". it was so much fun while it lasted, but now i have to get focused again because i'll be taking on bigger responsibilities and have only 1 person to answer to. it scares me a bit because i haven't been busy in a while and although this is all college-related work, i haven't done college-related work in a very long time (or so i think).

i was supposed to start on Monday but the current administration has decided to move Labor Day to that date instead. lucky me. i still have to accomplish a few more requirements - chest xray, 2 recommendation letters (holy crap!), a copy of my diploma -- and still have to follow-up on my clearance from my former company and straighten out why my Pag-Ibig contributions do not register under my name. i need to exercise patience one last time, and then i'm totally free of that company and its incompetent nincompoops. good riddance!!!

i'm posting this now because my computer tends to hang every 10 minutes. i don't know what the eff is wrong with it.

Untitled

2010-02-25T15:03:00.002+08:00

022510

big loops, big circles -
nothing really changes.
they rave over accomplishments
adorn your trademark choices;
and claiming theirs to reap young benefits.
all the while everything is a-stir -
the waves cling to rocks
the clouds skirmish with each other
where the heat or cold
should pester the applauding world.
if perhaps greater risk applies to all
and to what end should an end of the world be?
then what should become of you
and rain on a sunny day for me
a marriage of thought and habit
a creation that begs not to differ.
when astonishment should present
some opportune moments for threat,
and threats should comfort change
the cycle of age goes on
in big loops, big circles
death on a rope.

The death of blogging?

2009-12-27T19:41:00.007+08:00

With new social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, it seems the trend of communication nowadays is much patterned to text messaging -- succint and timely. It's not like people who log-in have important things to say, the idea is that everyone keeps in touch whatever time of day and whatever it is that they're doing. Since my last post in July, several important events in my life have not been itemized on this blog and I fear, for myself at least, that going into the nitty-gritty of discussing these remarkable moments would be futile. Somehow I feel I've already lost my fluency, and perhaps lost as well, the audience who would prefer to read paragraphs over short status updates. Everything has become very business-like, even in casual environments. So for the sake of a memorable quasi-exit, at least until I find yet another wave of literal inspiration, here are a few notables:

July 2009 - lucky 9 of us lose the battle of economic sustainability

August 2009 - another visit to Bangkok, still lovely the second time around

September 2009 - almost waist deep in flood water, had to evacuate to a neighbor's second floor for the duration. i learned to appreciate having an irregular bowel.

October 2009 - a very stressful last minute trip to California before my Visa expiry. las vegas was so much fun and the grand canyon was breathtaking. i remember again why i love long airline flights -- the feeling of movement, of finally going somewhere.

November 2009 - all the shitty backlash of forgetting to return my departure card, woes of my visa renewal, deficits, being faced with going into another trip whilst unemployed.

December 2009 - one of my dream travels, Siem Reap. so far, the BEST trip i've had with my friends -- seeing the Petronas again at night, eating insects, cam-whoring in Angkor Wat, getting stranded in Kuala Lumpur on the way back, traveling business class ... wouldn't mind at all doing it over again :)

So yeah, i guess you could say 2009 was pretty awesome for me. I hope 2010 would be just as spontaneous, as crazy -- but hopefully with more cash on hand. Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to everyone!!

And to my friends -- I wouldn't trade you guys for food. Hehehe ☺

If nobody calls your bluff, does that mean it didn't exist?

2009-07-31T01:51:00.001+08:00

Because of its infinite reproductions, the Mona Lisa hanging in The Louvre was said to be fake. But whichever way you wish to go about it, the allure lies in her smile, not her authenticity.

Dinner was wonderful and the iced coffee, more so. I had my favorite french toast at UCC for free, courtesy of Illyria's mortal birthday. Like clockwork, conversation flowed continuously as everyone whipped out his/her arsenal of sarcastic retorts. We talked about the inevitability of old age, the insatiable appeal of money, high salaries and high costs of living, Dubai the impossible city, the 12-21-2012 apocalypse as predicted by the Mayans, Helvetica, The Virgin, our nurse friend in Wellington, New Zealand hippies living on solar energy, Jacko's propofol addiction, celebrities faking their deaths, Facebook, Illyria's newly acquired living space, her parents, our parents, and everything else that had been imperfect since Y2k.

As we downed glass after glass of lemon water, Barrycade was finally able to consume his fugly-looking coffee concoction. It was right then that I realized all my friends had been frauds.

It was a shock. Somewhere in the background, I heard the sound of crickets making noise outside to mask the scandal that had been. So while everyone became busy admitting themselves to this fiasco of a shrink session I now call Worrywarts Anonymous, I decided to pour the syrup over the francais-ed pieces of toasted bread. Concerns about my own fraudulence sashayed their way around the plate in between the slices of cinnamon bread. And on another rainy night like tonight, I realized we unraveled yet another faux pas.

We worry about money too much and too often. I thought I was alone, to be honest. I thought I had the most reason to panic about not having money than the rest of them because I'm the oldest and I've been the most occupationally vacant, the most emotionally unstable, the one without insurance or pension, the one without the property or tangible output; that while they've all been earning ginormous sums and building up their careers and resumes, I've been busy trying to be busy.

It is a breakthrough to find out that this is the one true thing that we all have in common. It makes so much sense now why lunch in the mall 10 years ago, meant having to reach a consensus in the classroom first. It's like the word "budget" is a mantra chanted only in the mind and wealth is the halo everyone stressed they saw each other have, yet nothing that anyone ever admitted to having.

Tonight's discussion gave me renewed fuel to the fire, a new excuse to act impulsively and abandon all arms. I want to get a new mobile phone against my better judgment. For real, I can't afford it but my 3-year old cellular is giving up on me already. I plan to test the theory of equilirium and Murphy's Law both at the same time and see if I'll soar to new heights or crash and burn, thereby effectively exposing my greatest scam: that if nobody calls my bluff, I exist.

Maybe I am a fraud, the type who can't really write, so I make up for it by poring over this entry like my future depended on it. Sacre bleu! If my experiment proves to be successful, I'd have something to smile about. But if it fails Les-miserably, then I'm toast. French toast. ☺

Monkeying Around

2009-06-08T15:59:00.003+08:00

i miss writing. i still have inspired moments but nothing poetic anymore. i get caught up with work issues or texting or going home to learn about my cholesterol that i forget about being inspired and retreat to passing the time waiting for everyone to go to bed so i can have the space all to myself. i miss my space. i miss not having to close the doors when i don't feel like talking to anyone. i miss watching dvds after a crappy "meal" and a few smokes to relieve myself of feeling full. i miss my privacy.

i find that i'm revisiting my teenage angst again now that i'm back home -- why i started hating going to mass, why i've kept comparing my parentage to that of tv sitcom families ... why i even bother.

i have to admit, it's affecting my attitude towards work too. why do i even bother?

with a friend's advice, i've started writing down my thoughts about my career and what i'd like to do in the future. she told me to come up with a comprehensive matrix to help me decide which path to take. i think i just have commitment issues with work. i don't know what i need to break out of this enduring rut.

Homecoming

2009-04-22T13:51:00.002+08:00

(photo taken from apartmenttherapy.com)

I bade farewell to my apartment of more than 3 years in Makati last Sunday night. I wasn't teary eyed as I expected because there was literally no time for reminiscing. After a relaxing weekend just lounging around the house, I came back to the flat and hit the ground running. The movers were already waiting outside for me and I quickly segregated all the things that were supposed to be brought down from the 2nd floor. My flatmate had already moved out a few hours before me so the whole place was almost empty and really messy. They took my couch, they took my folding bed, took the plastic tables and chairs and everything else I laid out in the living room. I took a few photos using my phone. I wasn't even able to say goodbye to the landlord or his accommodating mother Emma. We were just in such a hurry ...

I actually wanted to post the pictures here but I misplaced my bluetooth dongle somewhere in the mosaic of my stuff now frescoing the motherhome. Now, I make sure my belongings complement the mid-50's Filipiniana surroundings -- in the morning before I go to work I get my sachets of Splenda and spritz on Provence from my "dresser", a 4-layer drawer made of plastic in periwinkle. It blends well on the landing fronting the mirror leading towards the 2nd floor. My microwave and computer look perfect beside the antique piano near the dining, and a bucket of cleaning equipment rests on the post-war art deco-inspired tiles.

My Mom bids us to join her for breakfast -- fried bangus and sunny side-up. I am home.

for year-long winters

2009-03-12T02:03:00.008+08:00

you twinkle light, you twinkle bright

a glowering gas ball of infinite might!

the cusp of clarity caves, the crispness

curves tonight.

you cup me and swallow me,

you tickle me with delight. i thought i saw

(i thought you said)

today is not the end.

i toil with you, i toy with you

for no particular reason i remain

as if tomorrow proves, it breeds into

a herd of oxen in your domain.

(i thought i said)

your heart would, your heart would not

meld with metal like a stroke of luck.

as ridicule, as minuscule,

a decant of my sorrow, would breed not.

where my love is placed,

save me! i say, may the goat pass your way.

these are the middle struggles

for my earth-borne summers

as there are parapets and amulets

for year-long winters.

Paradise...

2009-03-04T22:57:00.003+08:00

Up till now, I've been playing The Beach soundtrack hits in my head. Coron island in Palawan is just beyond magical. It is so beautiful there it's frightening because of its seeming perfection. Nothing compares, except maybe El Nido which I've yet to see, also located in Palawan. I wanna retire here. At the age of 30.

My officemates asked me how come I didn't bring them any souvenirs when I got back to Manila. I couldn't explain to them -- there's really nothing to bring back from Palawan except beautiful pictures and a mental imprint of almost being touched by eden. I couldn't bring them the experience of snorkeling through deep water with the current going opposite directions and "trofical pish" nipping at pieces of bread, the fear of being blown astray while on a rickety bamboo raft, or how one can exfoliate using polished coral and shell sand that feels like powder on one's feet. I couldn't give them the kind of water, so clear you can see the bottom even when it's 20-30 feet deep. I could not bring them the the stories we talked about, the laughter we shared while eating kilawing tanigue, the exhaustion of walking 700 steps to reach a cross-bearing summit, or the nudging we did inside the van on the way back to the airport.

I only have beautiful pictures, beautiful friends in those pictures ... and this blog entry.

Unwritten

2009-02-27T03:57:00.003+08:00

Sigh ...
I miss the days when I would write prolifically and everything was inspiring.
I miss writing my poems.
Sigh.

Bento Boxed-Up

2009-02-18T16:18:00.002+08:00

No, this is not an article about Japanese-Brazilian models. Although I would consider hiring one to help me organize my life. I'd like to start this post by telling you a short story about an orphan -- my friend's brother's girlfriend. Let's call her Harajuku.

Harajuku grew up in the US and she lived with her parents and a much younger sibling. Her mother had cancer but was in remission for a number of years. Her father was manic depressive and suicidal, although through the patience and care of her mother, her father had lived a normal life when they met and got married. Harajuku was the first born and she went to school in the US, like any other normal little girl. One day, she found out that her mother 's cancer had come back and that made her father very sad. Really, really sad.

So one afternoon when Harajuku came back from school, she found her father and mother having an argument and it was a rather violent episode. In front of her very eyes, her father shot her mother in the head, shot her sister, then her, and then proceeded to kill himself.

Harajuku, luckily (or not), survived.

(Segue to the present)

Harajuku is my friend's brother's girlfriend. She now lives with her relatives and is working in a mutli-national company here in the Philippines. She's pretty and likes to collect bento boxes. An obsession really because she would buy many different kinds, of different colors and sizes, with complicated designs and partitions, depths and inner crevices. She never uses them, but keeps them all boxed-up in their respective shelves, each collecting dust, then cleaned, then collecting dust again year after year. She buys them in shops, in bargain outlets, novelty stores, and mostly, have them delivered through the internet. I'm talking prices in the thousands. Some women buy Balenciagas, she buys Bentos.

My friend says she quite normal and seems happy, but there are times when she says she feels there's something "odd" about her, and she says her relatives say she used to be suicidal when she was younger, a Harajuku committing harakiri.

I told my friends that perhaps those bento boxes help her deal with her trauma. It's her way of compartmentalizing the pain, the guilt, the helplessness, all those thoughts that can never be answered even with time.

My friend says, "yeah you're right."

"But my brother will never marry her."

A frog prince simmering in boiling water ...

2009-02-03T11:24:00.004+08:00

"Ahaha you've run out of lives! "

I just want to rant today since it was my birthday and all.

I just found out that my blood glucose level is 105, which is borderline bad for someone with a genetic predisposition to diabetes. My hemoglobin is 126 over 140, which is low -- I am anemic. My Mom says it's because I sleep late all the time. And my cholesterol is 329 over 200 -- waaaayyyy over the borderline!

I am dying and it pisses me off because I walk every work day from the metro to my office under the sweltering heat, I eat raw and often soggy lettuce with sardines (which is grosssss), a bowl of muesli with cinnamon every morning for breakfast when I can just eat fried pork chops with fried egg and oily fried rice.

It's fucking annoying. Shit. Fuck. Cunt. Puta.

From Predisposed to Predisposing

2008-11-19T18:38:00.010+08:00

Think: Procrastinating the urge to procrastinate. Think of a paradox that can take organization to a higher level, like Einstein to nuclear physics or Martin Margiela to deconstruction techniques.

As I write this, I have a million jobs pending on my list, however since I am but a gopher and required to delegate my tasks to other people, I have no choice but to wait for them to finish whatever it is they're finishing up on. I've already made 3 separate to-do lists and thrown the old ones. Reminisced about my Kuala Lumpur trip and typed it in the egroup too. My mind's numbing a bit but I tell myself to enjoy these downtimes amidst the stress of deadlines.

And it is here that I've come to a realization -- I am not in control of my life. My desk appears neat, but it's really just a bunch of organized mess.

There are a lot of things I can make do without -- unanswered crossword cutouts from old newspapers, empty folders labeled "Other Files," unlabeled envelopes containing scratch papers that came from the "Other Files" folder, and stuff like that, stuff that don't matter now.

But why do I hold on to them? I guess it's probably because they're not mine to throw away.

And so to the things that I can, I've come to formulate my new New Year's resolution :

Pre-dispose.

Dispose of the garbage I don't need and deal with the stuff that I have before they become "garbage" -- my new percolator, my new shoes, my new clothes, troublesome friends, bad habits, weight gained, recurring dreams; to pre-dispose of what would possibly need disposing.

Am I making any sense?

I need to go through my life and make an inventory, to choose which things I would no longer need 6 months from now. Throw them away before they ever need to be thrown out.

But then again, who could be as future-oriented? In a time of crisis, everyone's keeping a tight grip. Would it be suicidal to let go? Would facing the pain now make it easier to accept the eventual decay of the world?

Perhaps those chain-smoking anorexic models had it right all along : lighter is better.

A Creepy Halloween Indeed

2008-11-11T00:31:00.004+08:00

I know this post is kinda late but I've been greeted by deadlines as soon as I got back to the office. Also, I spent my weekends going home to visit my relatives who'll be going back to the States in a few days.

Moving forward, it was rather unfortunate that November 1 and 2 fell on a Saturday and Sunday, respectively, as I've been hoping to get a 4-day vacation from work (or the lack thereof). My father dropped by from Baguio to celebrate his birthday here in Manila. Consequently, it was also my aunt's birthday. (so he had no choice but to come. Hehe) Anyway, his close friends insisted that our family join them at Fontana Resort in Clark Airbase with the lure of free roundtrip transport. We had to wake up really early to avoid traffic and were in Pampanga by lunch. One of his old friends hadn't seen me since I was like, 10, and quickly remarked how much I've grown and if I'm gonna get married soon. *cringe*

In a very spaceous living room (of a 2 bedroom cottage) we had a sumptuous lunch -- grilled pork barbecue, tenderloin steak, seasoned milk fish, sinigang na sugpo, quiquiam, and pancit Malabon. I was so full!! They had cable TV there but the host's family was watching local shows, i.e. Wowowee. I took a tour of the cottage -- 1 big bathroom, a quaint kitchen, a yard in the back, a garage, maid's quarters, centralized airconditioning -- not bad considering the cottage was being rented out at around P18 thou a night I think (for non-members). Besides, there were 3 families occupying the space so it was pretty reasonable (for them).

With us was Tita Doris and her husbad Tito William, Tito Richard and his friend, whom I forget. Let's call him Silas. Me and Silas were schoolmates, though he graduated 2 decades before me. He was being "chummy" and asking stuff like if I still know how to speak Mandarin, or if I still kept in touch with my batchmates, or if I go to the Xavier reunions and sh*t every year. U-g-h. I know he was trying to be friendly but honestly, highschool and marriage are 2 things I never talk about with strangers. Plus he kept calling me by my real name, which was annoying. Everyone knows my name is Sassy. Hehehe

Tita Doris, my Mom, my sisters and I went to the duty free shops around the vicinity (shopping!!). There was really nothing nice to buy, except maybe imported stuff you won't normally find in groceries. All I bought was a roach spray, 2 bags of dark chocolate Snickers, and gas relief tablets. My sisters bought lotsa junkfood and Tita Doris bought xmas giveaways for her employees. The rest stayed behind with the hosts and their family. We went to the clubhouse to have a look around. Going to the poolside, you had to pass by the locker rooms and sauna. As such, the 4 women went through the ladies' room and I through the men's room. Needless to say, I was shocked when 2 naked Koreans went walking around the lockers. Yeah that was pretty shocking because they were semi-obese.

On a side note, that day at Fontana we weren't able to see the Ms. Earth contestants. They were supposed to have been poolside for their swimsuit competition. Ho-hum ...

We got back around 6pm and already it was dinner time. The group decided to eat at the clubhouse where we were greeted by spastic waiters and 3 lounge singers who sang in Mandarin. The 2 ladies were Filipino but you would only notice that because they didn't look Chinese. Our dinner took a while to serve and some of us didn't have spoons or forks, not even chopsticks. It was crazy. The food was expensive, and I'd say I've had better.

After the hosts took the bill (to Tito Richard's dismay), we went to the pool area to grab some air. Silas commented to my Mom something like, "Magandang lalaki ang anak mo," which means something like, "I'm an old married man with kids but I like your son because he's a beautiful boy."

I noticed him inching his way towards me at the pool so I deliberately walked really fast, skewing away from him and his evil plot.

The night was cool and refreshing and I sauntered around the pool to avoid opening a window for conversation. Aside from the big olympic-size pool on the ground floor, there were 2 kiddie pools on the upper level (because the complex was like a man-made crater lake) and a pool with a bar. There was a pond on the nether-end beside the road with a sculpted backdrop made of rough cement. It kinda looked like a batcave.

We went back to the cottage where the host's family was. We said our thank you's and our goodbyes and went on our way. This time, I made sure I sat at the back beside my sisters. My Dad was the unfortunate victim of the night and had to sit beside Silas. They talked in Fuquien so I couldn't make out what they were talking about. I fell asleep parts of the way. I was imagining Clark at night was like me back in gay Bangkok.

My sister nudged gigglingly at me and pointed at my Dad (who was already asleep then) and it was funny because Silas was sitting so close to him when he had almost the whole seat to himself. After the trip, my sister commented on this to my Dad, and my Dad said,

"Oo, may pagka-silahis nga ata yun eh."

(Yes my child, he came from an all-boys school.)

3 Month Notice

2008-10-29T17:33:00.006+08:00

An eerie stolen shot of Kalidasa playing the sitar...

Last night my half-Indian-Filipino, half-Chinese flatmate and I had a serious conversation about the apartment. He had just come home from celebrating Diwali at a nearby Hindu temple and was paying the price for eating too much spicy food. Being lactose-intolerant, he was coming in and out of the toilet every so often, so our talk wasn't necessarily coherent.

After I ate dinner, we both watched Brothers and Sisters and Ugly Betty on tv and he started telling me how he had a phone call from this company called Agilys and that they were accepting his posted salary range on a job search website. He told me the company's situated in Libis and that it would be too inconvenient to take public transport from our place everyday. He offered me 3 options:

1. He would give me a 3-month notice as soon as Monday and I can choose to go back home to Manila or to go find myself another apartment (or room mate).

2. I can join him in his search for a new place in Cainta (a ride away from where crumpet lives) but definitely somewhere far from his BFF's reach. This segued into a long story about his girl friend who says he's been keeping job opportunities from her, etc. etc.

3. He would most probably move back to their "mansion" in Kawilihan Village where his aunt and 2 cousins lives. It's a sprawling 5-bedroom house with a big garage, a garden, 3 toilets, and nice Indian and European neighbors. He said he'll get the 2-bedroom space in the basement which has a separate entrance from the outside. He said I'd be welcome to live there and can even have crumpet visit often. He'd give me cheaper rent that would include the utilities, a connection to cable tv and might get a helper (courtesy of his Mom). He said he liked that in the 3 years we've lived under the same roof, we rarely got in each other's way. The only downside would be that the mansion isn't as commuter friendly as our current location, and that there would be times when his Mom and/or sister would be staying a few days (perhaps in the upper floors).

I can't decide just yet because I also like to get a clearer picture of where I'd like to be 3 to 5 years from now. Whereas the last 3 years I set aside to cure myself of depression and get myself a crumpet (with much success and gratitude), I want the next 3 years to be focused on keeping what I have and starting out a small business. For some reason I always get stuck when I think about my future. Sometimes it's the despair and hopelessness, sometimes it's the perceived difficulties and financial challenges. I am crippled by fear but inspired by human achievement in spite of it.

Sometimes I just need a hand to hold, a voice to reassure me and say, "Ennui, it's ok if you fuck up. We won't laugh at your humiliation."

China Crisis

2008-09-30T14:38:00.005+08:00

No this is not an 80's pop music group. And no, it's not in reference to the latest Melamine scandal either. It's not even about Mussolini not getting her visa for Beijing fall 2008.

This is about my own crisis with Chinabank and the 1st company I've ever worked for, PeopleSupport, Inc. You see, when I left that company in 2003, I returned all the necessary training materials and confidential chuva with the HR. I retained my ATM card and kept using it during my whole stint as an unemployed and disgruntled, deeply depressed and overweight pre-nursing student. I've held on to that ATM card even after I quit nursing school and started working for another company in 2005. Somewhere during that time, I stopped withdrawing or depositing money in it so it came as a suprise when, around August 2008, I discovered my account had been disabled. I called up and feigned fever one day just to visit the main branch and have my account cut off once and for all.

China was pretty busy with the olympics back then and so I guess there wasn't any room for accommodating me. The accounts clerk was nice and had arranged all the necessary papers for me to sign. I surrendered my tattered ATM card and waited for them to give me my money. The finance people from PeopleSupport had told them I didn't finish my clearance and that my no longer have my records. It was fine really coz I'm a very patient person.

I went to PeopleSupport the same day and tried to have them find my records. I saw a handful of people I remember working with, but didn't bother saying hello. (Haller, we weren't close then!) The receptionist had me use the lobby phone to contact the finance department. The phone just kept ringing and ringing for about 30 minutes, and I'd call again and look for different people to call from that department (they had an electronic listing) until someone had answered.

The finance person told me to wait for the HR manager for clearance because he couldn't find my records there. After all, I resigned in 2003 when they were still in PhilamLife Tower. Now they have their own building. But really, nothing's changed. I had to wait for the HR manager to come in at 10:00pm to talk to her.

FoBlogger and I ate dinner at Jollibee and then hung out at Coffee Bean, took some pictures and just talked. At 10pm, we went back to PeopleSupport. I talked to the HR person and she told me she couldn't find any records either and that she would refer my case to the finance department again. I asked her to email or contact me.

A week had passed so I decided to email her. Another passed and I spammed her with my inquiry. It appears she had an emergency CTO so, ok I understand. She told me I would really need to contact finance because they're the only ones with hard copies of all financial records. I called finance again and got transferred to Admin because Admin takes care of Chinabank account applications and such. The Admin gay told me they don't handle that but that I should go visit their corporate finance office in another building so that they'd be able to find my records.

Frustrated, (and busy with other stuff too because I have a life) I tried calling Chinabank to ask if I can just get my atm back and withdraw the money that's left (which isn't much, however I desperately need the cash) and the snotty b*tch told me they can't do anything and that it's impossible for finance not to have a copy of my records and that I should definitely clear things up with PeopleSupport first. The runaround.

My past comes to haunt me; an old ghost with a strip of paper posted on its forehead that states,

"Over my dead body!"

Heart Attack

2008-09-26T18:59:00.003+08:00

I was doing a run through of ads for November and found I double-booked the same ad with different names. I almost had a heart attack. Thank god I was still allowed to have it cancelled at the last minute.

My life flashed before my eyes -- in full-color, double page spread.

Phantom Burns

2008-09-25T09:42:00.006+08:00

"All things in life are temporary. If they're going well, enjoy them. They won't last forever. If they go wrong, don't worry. They can't last long either! What's nice about life is that each day is never like the other. Life is beautiful, so bask in it!"

-- the forwarded message my father sent me just now

I had a good night's sleep yesterday nestled in love's embrace and sung to sleep by the sound of rain. And deep in my subconscious recesses, my mind managed to work up another dream, two dreams in fact, to which I'd been left baffled yet again not knowing what the message would've meant.

All I can remember is that the gas tank had caught fire -- a constant, glowing yellow-blue flame. I told crumpet about it so we tried to exhume it (recalling in my mind, the horror story about their uncle(†) whose face and body got severely burned one stormy night when the floods invaded their home and the gas tank floated and caught fire. He successfully turned the knob off with a wet towel but had to sacrifice himself to do so) and hoped crumpet wouldn't suffer the same fate as their uncle.

Crumpet's shirt caught fire. I was horrified, but somehow, we were able to blow out the nasty flames and everything was ok.

The weirdest thing, our cleaning lady was there too. Aling Diling's shirt and shorts caught fire too and she went into a frenzy trying to dowse off something that could've killed her. I think I was able to throw water on her, and everything was all right again. But what does it mean for the two of them to get burned? What is my mind trying to tell me?

░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓░▒▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░▓▒░▓▒

The next dream I had when I woke up at 4am looking for my blanket. The wind was chilly and the electric fan had been blowing on my face. After I found my blanket, I fell asleep again ...

Crumpet and I were in another Asian country, which resembled Kuala Lumpur a lot, and we were sightseeing and doing all the touristy stuff. I don't remember much of it, except that we stopped to stare at one of the ongoing developments there. It was a huge construction site with steamrollers and tractors digging earth and displacing everything en-site. They said it was going to be the biggest mall complex ever -- mall with a sprawling hectare of greens, a luxurious spa, an olympic-size swimming pool with jacuzzis, and a shopping center that would outdo anything we'd seen so far. Imagine: Buckingham Palace Shopping Center or Le Palais Commerciale de Versailles or Beijing Bird's Nest Olympic Commemorative Commercial Complex.

And when I woke up, it was time to go to work.

Fish out of water

2008-09-18T18:34:00.004+08:00

Sometimes you feel it's on the palm of your hand and sometimes you don't. And sometimes you feel like a fish out of water, a total misfit who will forever not know why a bunch of percentages marqueeing across the screen are so interesting or why a crash should not cause panic or why without the necessary knowledge about grown-up stuff, you would be the kid your parents set aside in an adult conversation. You are confused with the paradoxes that surround aging and youthfulness, the need for survival, the need to be acknowledged ...

Perhaps you can only talk about trees and the sound of the breeze. Perhaps you can only talk about music and things that pertain to art and drawings. When the magazine spreads it's pages, you check out the ads for gross airbrushing, editorial typos, products that are just beyond affordability. You can't comprehend this.

Perhaps you can only talk about yourself, your experiences with other friends, your secrets and enchantments, your neuroses. Because the moment you so much as whine, you become the child your parents set aside. And so they ask you to draw in one corner. You keep drawing and drawing and drawing -- different colors and shapes appear, the brilliance of its vast emptiness becomes transparent only to you, and you call it inspiration while others ignore it. You keep drawing lines that divide chapters into acts, lines that divide the world into meridians, lines that make up people watching out for the next discovery. You draw out the oceans and lands and mountains. You draw out water, you draw out blood.

You can't follow the story anymore. You draw the heavens and the people who no longer fly in it.

Buttered or Jammed?

2008-09-16T17:15:00.004+08:00

I couldn't sleep last night. I dunno why. What I do know is that I'm addicted to procrastination. I wait for the deadlines, I wait for the last minutes, I wait for food to rot, I wait just long enough to lose something.

Would I lose ... my mind?

I dreamt this morning that I was back in my hometown in Baguio and I was a kid again. I was walking through the garden and I saw a large green lizard, the size of a common street dog. It actually looked more like a giant gecko than anything else. For some reason, I found that I was disguised in leaves, and that particularly attracted the lizard to follow me. It felt uncomfortable so I began to run toward our bungalow. I was able to lock the doors just in time before the gecko sprung on the window to try to catch up with me. In my fear, I ran inside the bedroom to hide, locked the door adjacent to the living room. From the inside, I then heard the lizard broke the window and tore down the thin screen.

Then I woke up.

How does a flour pot fit into a mold? Cookie-cutters everywhere, tis the season for gingerbread men; can't seem to go rolling with the pin. How does one make dough rise without yeast, will a baguette grow long without shortening? What does one do with egg whites when there's no "yoke," can there be too much icing on a cake if you can't put candy flowers?

A watched pot never boils, kneaded dough become dinner rolls.

I don't wanna end up toast.

Migration

2008-08-28T11:32:00.003+08:00

It's not new to be hearing about Filipinos going to other countries for better opportunities. It's not new to be reminded how progressively difficult the living conditions have become in the Philippines. But it's the same happening all over the world, I try to convince myself, people are all experiencing the economic slump caused by the wars and the sudden increase in fuel prices.

I am convinced though that there are more opportunities abroad and that in order for my life to gain impetus, I would need to leave my home country and try it out somewhere else.

I'm afraid that ship has sailed. At 29 going 30, I still have not accumulated enough work experience to get me a good job past being a call center agent or a waiter in another country. I know it's not too late and all that shit, it's just that I'm more afraid to start over now that I'm older than when I first graduated from college. I had all this angst, this rage of nervous energy willing to be propelled into the shores of America. Now, I only have learned to tone down. A small business here in the country would suffice.

Only 2 days since I arrived from my vacation in Bangkok, I'm already thinking of migration. I know it would be different if I were to live there. I miss the sweet fruits, the shopping districts, the hawker stalls and the people. The whole city is so alive!

But really, you already know the reason for this sadness because I've been ranting about it months now.

I need money! I want to lay on a bed of blank checks and crisp sheets of 500s! I want coin fountains on my foyer, my own accountant, a swiss bank account, royalty and royalties, my own country!!! I want so much of it I'd get bored not knowing where to spend my money on. I want that to be my problem, not where my career is going.

Sigh ...

Quo vadis Ennui??

Grin and bare it

2008-08-18T03:09:00.001+08:00

To mention it might upset the sex, and the danger. I dreamt I had murdered someone and would be going to prison for it. I got upset that I didn't do a clean enough job with it, not serial killer precision work. I don't know who I killed because that part of me, left in reality, would not accept the immorality, the danger. And it wasn't a crime of passion. If anything, the characteristic of that dream was that it had no hint of emotion. There was no love.

I found myself awake that morning, disturbed that I had to go to work. Deciphering my dream's message was far more important to me and it upset the sex. Not that I was having any, I just found it a psychological thing to correlate murder with distress. Wanting to "kill" a persistent problem, a recurring comparison to something or the lack thereof, a never-ending quest to self-discovery revealed without judgment. No remorse. Amorphous. No weapon. Totally anonymous.

Yet somehow I got caught. And that kinda pissed me off.

Kuala Lumpur: City of Scents (Day 2)

2008-07-24T18:22:00.000+08:00

The morning was very cold and mist partly shaded the Kuala Lumpur skyline. There were 3 little turrets jutting out of the Petronas Towers tips where 2 long wires or ropes hung from the opposing turret points. We pondered what these were for while chewing on peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwich around 7:30 AM local time. Perhaps they were bunjee jump cables, they opined. I suggested they were cables that supported the scaffolding where the maintenance staff hung on while cleaning the building windows. Just the other day, Barry and I saw them industriously brushing and wiping the glass walls just beside the bridgeway. For me it all made sense how the city looked so new, as if all the buildings had decided to just sprout out from the ground on the same day. It had always been tedious maintenance! The skyscrapers had to be squeaky clean all the time, the island plots had to have flowers all year round, the waterways and sewege should never have any trash clogs or floating algae. Kuala Lumpur is the city for obsessive-compulsive people!

Two Gardenia bread sandwiches later and a warm shower, Janice had already fled the room to attend the convention. The 3 remaining giddy travelers began planning the day ahead. Next stop: the Hop-on/Hop-off city tour.

The hotel concierge (who had neatly cut fingernails and a very professional demeanor) had given us directions and discount vouchers for the Hop-on/Hop-off bus stop. We started walking toward the Kompleks Kraf, which was the city's gift shop for tourists. We sorta lost our way and had asked for directions from cartographers (I think) who were measuring the roads and stuff. The bus stop was right inside the Crafts Complex with the sign facing the building entrance. All this time we were looking for it outside along the streets. We waited on the carved wooden benches while looking at the other travelers who were waiting for their private tour buses. On the side of their buses read Bas Persiaran. I don't really know if this meant "Persian Bus" or "Bus Pasyalan" in Tagalog.

After about 30 minutes, the bus finally arrived. We paid MYR35.00 each (a MYR3.00 discount) and hurried to the 2nd floor of the double decker tourist bus. The aircon was very cool and everything looked new. The conductress told us there were around 6 buses in operation (which explained why we had to wait 30-minute intervals per station). Our first stop was Bukit Bintang (Bintang Walk). We decided not to go down because it was near the hotel and we decided we'd eat dinner there with Janice later in the evening. We had our pictures taken by the conductress before the bus started filling up with people. We passed by China Town, the Central Market, and then the National Palace. We were given 5 minutes to take pictures so we quickly went down the bus and had our pictures taken in front of the bus. Hehe Agong's Palace, this time, had lots of tourists, some had color-coded shirts (of course they were Chinese!). We had our pictures taken with the guards again because this time they were mounted on horses. After that, we rode the bus again and passed by KL Sentral and then were dropped off at the National Museum. There were old trains outside, kinda like Tutuban Center. We took some pictures with the cars -- I found out then that Malaysia manufactures its own brand of cars, Proton, and the Saga was the first to come out in 1981, if I recall correctly. There was a Chinese woman who pretended she was pulling the horse cart and moaning "Oh! Oh! Oh!" T'was hilarious. I regret not having filmed it.

Ingrid was starving by this time so she ran toward a small stall that sold steamed corn. We were supposed to use the tandas but it would've cost us MYR0.20. (Yes super cheapskates that we were. I calculated that amount and it's far cheaper than paying P20.00 at Shangri-La mall) The entrance fee was a measly MYR2.00 and we hung out the souvenir shop first where I bought myself a stainless steel ring at MYR9.90 I think. Outside the shop, a stairs led to a beautiful receiving hall split by a nice wooden staircase with marble steps going both directions. To the left was the Modern Malaysia museum and to the right was the Old Malaysia exhibit. We went to the right.

The museum, unfortunately, was rather empty. We were a bit disappointed because we were expecting a lot of archaeological artifacts or historic memorabilia. We believed these were hidden somewhere else. Our own national museum has more stuff in it.

We quickly went back to the Hop-on/off stop and passed by the Parliament Building, the Lake Garden (we weren't really interested to see orchidia), and the Bird Park (not into birds too). Our next stop was the National Mosque. It had a very slim bell tower beside it (as all mosques do) and the roof had a turquoise-blue color and folded somewhat like origami. We had to take our shoes off and leave them on a shelf. Women and children were required to wear a lavender robe, complete with hoodie, before going up the stairs. Ingrid refused to do so because she thought it was sexist. Barry and I went upstairs to see the vast hallway. There was a rectangular fountain pool that housed the bell tower. To the right, there was a huge open area lined by thin columns and to the northeast was the prayer hall itself.

The prayer hall was huge! The floor was carpeted all throughout, the walls were heavily embellished with prints, the upper deck was made of wood carvings and above that was a very intricately patterned stained glass window of blue and yellow that stretched horizontally across the dome. Above that was a clock with Arabic numerals and a triangle window, also of stained glass. We had our picturetaking from outside the velvet rope because tourists weren't allowed inside. Before the entrance to the chamber, there were 2 stairways labeled "Perempuan." The women had separate entrances to the wood-lined chamber.

We took some more pictures and went downstairs where Ingrid had already been waiting on the bench under a huge tree. The bus was due anytime now. Unfortunately, we weren't able to visit the Muslim art museum or the old railway because it was already lunch time and we were hungry. But before that, we decided to check out Titiwangsa Lake where the Eye of Malaysia was just to take pictures. It was very hot already, but the view of the lake was very refreshing. We took the cab going back to KLCC Suria for lunch.

I swear, KL taxis are the worst! During our stay there, we only got to use the taxi meter once. Everything else had to be bargained for. The minimum charge is MYR10.00. And here I thought Manila cabs were pretty bad...

I had Sarawak Laksa for lunch. At MYR15.65, it came with a local pink-colored tea drink that had gelatin strands. The laksa was spicy but delicious and the drink had a weird, medicinal taste to it at first, but after a few more sips it was ok. We had Ingrid try the super delicious Daily Express brewed coffee. If you order take away, they use a bigger paper cup and you'll have more coffee to savor!

We took the cab to KL Sentral and rode the LRT going to the Putra Terminal, which was the last station to the left (if you look at the list of stations. I dunno if that's north or what). The train was a bit crowded (it was a Tuesday after all) and I fell asleep after the first few terminals. I realize now why they didn't build subways -- Mahathir probably wanted to showcase Malaysia. And who wouldn't? All the tall residential condominiums were situated outside the country. This greatly reduced traffic in the city. During our taxi trip going to the Batu Caves, Ingrid saw on an ad that a unit costs around 12 million Ringgit. Pretty expensive. One teksi eksekyutif driver we spoke to said the typical salary is MYR2,000, where Malaysians living within Kuala Lumpur usually get MYR3,000. He said it would be difficult to live on less because the rent is very expensive there. I would imagine. Maintaining the city probably cost the government a lot of money so everyone's milking out the tourists who bring the money in. Perhaps we should do that here too (or aren't we arleady?)

It was drizzling a bit when we arrived at the Batu Caves. The facade was gorgeous! It had a golden buddha standing near the entrance where more than a hundred steps paved the way to the 3 huge caves inside the limestone mountain. There was an elementary school to the left, a parking space, and the entrance to the water falls, which had a hefty entrance fee. We didn't bother. To the right were a few shops and eateries. Further front was the entrance to the caves.

Going up the steps wasn't easy. Our hamstrings began to hurt and we had to stop a few times under the drizzle just to rest. It was a magnificent view of the city on the horizon, one of those rare places where a natural heritage site is right beside a sprawling residential complex.

I urged my companions to try the Dark caves tour because I felt they would enjoy the type of adventure I experienced with the Tabon Caves and the Underground River. The entrance fee was MYR35.00 for the tour guide and helmet with headlights. It was actually closing time already but Yan, our tour guide, agreed to show us the cave 1 more time. I sprayed on our unscented Off lotion pray, on my arms, my nape, behind the ears -- any place a mosquito might dare to bite.

The City of Scents also found its way outside of the city. The cave reeked with the smell of guano (bat droppings) but it wasn't as bad as with the Underground River in Palawan. There were only a few fruit bats left in the cave. There were tiny white snails on the ground and where there was guano, there was an entire community of cockroaches on the cave floor. Yan was joking how he loved scaring prissy tourists each time he waved his flashlight toward the cucuarachas. Of course he and his assistant already figured out we were Filipino by our accent. At one point, Yan's assistant came calling him from the entrance. He left us there and told us he'd come back for us in a few minutes. I didn't like surprises so I told the gang to stand back-to-back and check our surroundings for any hiding pranksters. It was a bit of a long wait and Yan came back like he promised. No tricks. He said there was an Arab family wanting to take the tour also but backed out at the last minute. Hence we continued.

The cave was very humid despite the cold weather outside. We were shown the basic stuff -- stalactites and stalagmites, columns -- and eventually reached a spot where cool air blew form some part of the cave (I think all cave complexes have this) and it was very refreshing to stand there with the wind blowing agianst my moist shirt. I couldn't help thinking though where the wind came from or if it was blowing guano debris unto my face.

We were permitted to take some photos at one point and then we went back to the cave entrance. At this point, the 3 of us were giggling -- if for me Kuala Lumpur is a city of scents, Yan would be it's king by the force of his uttered words alone. Hehe

My hair was wet with sweat but we we were happy we took that tour. By this time the rain was stronger. Ingrid and Barry wanted to go down already but I convinced them we're already near the top, might as well go visit the main Batu temples. There were Indians at the entrance and a group of Chinese men. The temple was huge! It was beautiful. The 2 were tired though so we didn't bother exploring any further.

Downstairs, we saw that the whole walkway entrance was flooded to our horror! I wasn't wearing waterproof shoes, and had I wet them, I wouldn't have any shoes to wear for the next day. Barry said we should start going down the steps already. For sure the water would go down by the time we reached the ground floor. It didn't so we waited by the shed and watched an Indian man fill his bucket with water and throw the water toward the drain. Didn't help much. After a few more minutes, the water was significantly lower so we decided to walk at the side. Barry took pictures of this tragic uncomfortable incident and I posed well of course! Hehe

It was difficult getting a cab that would bring us back to the Putra Terminal. It was already traffic at that time and Indian school children were being fetched by their parents at the side of the gate. A pubilc bus came by. The conductor was shouting "China Town! China Town!" We asked if it would pass by Putra Terminal, the man said no. We chose to ride anyway because going down at China Town was certainly better than being stuck there.

The fare cost MYR2.00. The bus was dirty, Del Carmen dirty, but it was more spaceous. There were other Indian men riding in the front and a Chinese couple who followed us. The trip was quick because there was no traffic on our side of the road, and the conductor was right, we wouldn't be passing through any LRT station along the way. We ate our junk food along the way. I wonder why we didn't take any pictures. Haha

We went to Central Market afterwards to look at stuff to bring home. I bought some taro chips (sliced really long and deep fried to a crisp, dipped in sweet n' sour sauce). Didn't really find anything though the shops were loaded with nifty souvenirs. I bought a magazine out of curiosity, being an account executive bombarding local magazines with cosmetics ads. Yes, my clients were indeed global and had a budget for spending. I texted Janice to meet us there after her convention. She came by after an hour or so. We took the cab to Titiwangsa Lake and rode the Eye of Malaysia for MYR15.00. There were more people now and the ferris wheel was colorfully lit. Inside the air-conditioned ferris wheel car, Janice began squirming and laughing. I didn't know she was afraid of heights! We all started laughing and shaking the car and taking videos and talking about our day without her. I had to delete some pictures because my camera memory went full at the last movie clip.

After watching the light and water show (there were 2 mist-makers and projectors on both sides of the lake), we rode the cab going back to KLCC. We decided to eat at Tajine, a Lebanese restaurant. There were 2 Pinoy waiters there, one had a Transformers belt buckle (give-away Pinoy if you ask me) and the other was half-Malaysian. We ordered so much -- mixed grilled beef and chicken with onion-garlic sauce and chapatti, mutton with carrot and garbanzo couscous, a seafood platter, and another viand I forget. I'm generally fond of Mediterranean food however this one we ate was too dry. Each of us paid MYR36.50 plus tip. On the way home, Janice, Barry and I wanted to walk going back to the hotel since it was rather close to where we were. Ingrid wanted to take a cab so she took one. The 3 of us walked right beside the Pavillion mall and reached Prince Hotel in no time. At room 2808, Ingrid opened the door and was asking us where we went. Apparently, she didn't see us continue walking when she got herself a cab. She said she texted us frantically. Haha

For the rest of this entry and for Day 3, you readers should know that I'm basing my thorough account of this vacation on budget accounting notes I made at the end of the day. The next entry written says "Coffee Bean" but I'm totally confused now if we went out again after dinner to go to Coffee Bean, or was it yesterday when Janice treated us to gelato at Bukit Bintang. Yeah, I think we went to out for coffee tonight because I remeber we went back to the hotel around 11 or 12 pm already. Tama ba guys?? I'm so confused.

We slept past midnight already because I remember the lights to Petronas were already shut off and we were all tired. The housekeeping moved the beds a bit. We moved the 2 twin beds to the left beside the window and Ingrid's rollaway bed was on the right beside the closet space.

It was a good night's sleep. Ü

The Prince Hotel: Also fit for Princesses

Kuala Lumpur: The City of Scents (Day 1)

2008-07-24T02:48:00.000+08:00

It was around 12:40 midnight when my college buddy and I arrived at LCC terminal (I assume LCC meant Low-Cost Commercial) roughly 3 and a half hours from leaving NAIA 1. The flight was rather smooth and on time, one of the reasons why red-eye flights are an option for me, besides the fact that they're oftentimes more affordable. The downside, of course, was that we had to wait till around 5 or 6 AM before boarding the bus going to the city (for obvious security reasons).

The arrival terminal was very small. It was weird seeing veiled women on the immigration counters taking our passports and asking us questions like, "Where do you work?", "What's your job?", "Who are you travelling with?", and "Where are you staying?" Outside, we were pointed to the nearest currency exchange outlet, which was located inside the departure terminal. I got a little worried that the veiled lady refused to convert my $100 bill. She said they don't take anything older than 2003. With my $50 worth of local Malaysian currency, Barry and I went to McDonald's to order dinner. In a way it was very comforting to see a familiar establishment in a city where people looked Filipino yet spoke a different language. At the counter, I ordered a spicy beef foldover meal which was really just a large beef patty sandwiched into 1 soft taco shell and garnished with coleslaw veggies and sweet n' spicy sauce. With a medium fries and medium coke, that meal quickly cost me MYR11.75, which is around 165 pesos). Barry got himself a double cheeseburger meal at MYR10.25 I think. Nothing different in terms of serving size really.

(To the next few paragraphs, readers beware because I'll tell it the way I perceive it.)

We were quick to observe that the "darker" Indians and Malaysians had blue-collar jobs. They were mostly at the counter or sweeping the airport floors, taxi and bus drivers, etc. Seated, we had the chance to talk to 2 Filipina travelers who were eager to discuss the local showbiz scene. Perhaps it had been to their favor that my job now expects me to be partly knowledgeable about these things. We were sipping MYR2.70 brewed coffee while talking about KC Concepcion and her father Gabby, new TV shows (thank god I went to the ABS-CBN launch) and of course, Pinoy politics and the weather. Susan is a teacher in Laos and Mercy works in a factory that makes fishing baits. They both worked in China but were in Malaysia for a vacation. The 4 of us had nothing to do but wait till 6AM, so it was just great that we the hours passed us by rather quickly, especially since I thought I'd be sleeping in the coffee shop as I had roughly less than 2 hours of sleep on the plane. Susan thought Barry was Malaysian and said I looked Filipino. Strike 1 for Barry. Hehe

At 5:30, we were already saying our goodbyes. Our 2 friends gave us their email addresses and promised to keep in touch next time we'd decide to visit China. During the conversation, we had learned that they were teachers working for CCF in St. Francis Square. It had been their vocation for 7 years to spread the word in China, a very big secret for a noble cause that could possibly cost them their lives. Barry and I had nothing but respect for what they do.

At around 6AM, we rode the AeroBus (aka Sky Bus on various blogs) going to KL Sentral, Kuala Lumpur's main hub of public transportation. The journey cost MYR8.00 and took about an hour, and already I saw how beautiful and neatly planned out the city was. The expressways were all well-lighted, there were tall condominiums on both sides of the road,

ongoing development projects on the hillsides, palm tree forests covering the Malaysian wetlands, and a view of the Petronas towers and KL tower on the horizon. Travelling at dawn was very relaxing and Barry and I couldn't help but wonder why our cities aren't as well-planned as this.

The KL Sentral bus and light railway station was like a larger, cleaner version of our local Star Mall. There were food and little tiangge stalls near the entrance. Large tarpaulins of people's faces with a blue background hung over the center, advertising a local cellular network. Light passed through the sun roofs and illuminated the walkways toward the ticket stations. Barry and I asked for directions to the Petronas Towers and each bought a MYR1.60 ticket on the LRT to KLCC (Kuala Lumpur City Central). Armed with my rolling luggage, we rode the train with 2 Chinese guys who also looked like tourists. We were quick to consider them our Mandarin-speaking Singaporean co-competitors to the Amazing Race Malaysian leg. The train station names were hardly understandable though I quickly learned that Jalan meant "road," Masjid meant "mosque," Awas meant "caution," Jaya probably meant "city," Lelaki meant "male" as with local dialect, while Perempuan meant "female," Lintas meant "walk," teksi meant "taxi," bas meant "bus," ais meant "cold," tarik meant "hot," masok meant "entrance," kuelar meant "exit," tarima kasi meant "thank you," and selamat meant "good" and not "thanks" as it would in Tagalog. I also learned, through a free booklet I got from the airport, that it is customary to point using the thumb with other fingers closed and not with the forefinger. It took me quite a while to get used to that.

The train station was connected to the mall, which was also connected to the Petronas Twin towers. There were no people yet as it had been 8AM on a Sunday. We asked directions and finally found the queue for the free tickets after a while. The line was very long already but more and more people kept coming in. They had me sit down while Barry kept the line for more than an hour. It was here where I truly experienced Kuala Lumpur as the City of Scents. There were Caucasian families and couples, wealthy-looking arabs, medium to light-skinned Indians, a few Japanese, many Chinese tourists, 2 groups of Filipinos, and 1 group of latinos. The waiting area had become crowded and it would've been impossible not to share my side of the marble stairs with someone else. The Indians smelled like Indians (a massala of curry and cumin). The male arabs smelled slightly of perspiration while the female arabs wore very heavy perfume like Chanel No 5 or White Linen mixed with a very distinct, almost cardamom-like, spicyness. The whites, especially the elder ones, really reeked of damp sweat. The same went with the darker locals. The Asians didn't smell like anything.

On the topic of scents and the possibility of being heard talking about racial preconceptions, Barry and I decided to come up with aliases for each group just so that we may talk about them more openly and less filtered:

The Pinoys - "KC" - because Pinoys are so into KC Concepcion nowadays
The Sino-Asians and Koreans - "Kim Chiu" - because they are everywhere and because Kim Chiu sounds like Kimchi
The local Kuala Lumpurian - "Echo" - because our very own Jericho "Echo" Rosales is a big hit with the local tv scene
The Indians - "Melanie Marquez" - because some of them "sMell-anie" so bad

We had about 45 minutes before touring the Petronas bridgeway so we were let in by the ushers into the mini theater where we watched a film with 3D glasses. Here I realized why Malaysia is so rich -- they had petrol! The museum area was ok. There was a cool tesla coil that electrocuted the Petronas scale model every 10 minutes. With enough time, I went to the restroom first (known as tandas). It was here that I discovered how Malaysian toilets had those hole-in-the-ground terns. There was a faucet knob that opened the bidet and on opposite sides, there were "ridges" where people stepped on to squat and do their business. Of course I took pictures! Hahaha

The bridgeway was magnificent. From the top, you could see the KL landscape -- misty mountaintops on the background and tall Petronas-like buildings in the foreground. Everything looked clean and precise. There were a few old low-rise buildings and a few cars roaming the streets at 9:45 in the morning. Barry and I took pictures and videos and waited for the others to finish. While waiting for the elevator, we asked for directions going to Genting Highlands from the usher who looked like Christian Siriano's long lost Malaysian twin. (I swear!)

It was still very early so we walked around the posh mall that housed the necessary brands like Chanel, Gucci, Hermes, Prada, Ermengildo Zegna, VJC (Versace Jeans Couture), Burberry, to name a few. On the top floor were restorans that had remarkable interiors and a skyview of the bridgeway, also the entrance to Petrosains, which is a science discovery activity center that we didn't bother to go into. The only CD/DVD shop they had was Video Ezy which is like their version of Astrovision. It had nothing in it, except maybe licensed dvd copies of "Got 2 Believe" featuring Rico Yan and Claudine Barretto or the whole series of "Pangako Sa'yo" featuring Kristine Hermosa and Jericho Rosales.

We ate lunch at the "Signatures" Food Court where we ate at Mixed Rice. I had fried rice, chicken with sauce (which tasted nothing like Adobo), oily eggplant (that tasted like kamoteng kahoy) and what looked like half a slice of kikiam (that was stale). Everything cost MYR10.00. Pretty affordable and nearly the same price as Pinoy food. What was amazing was that most of the food on display looked freshly-cooked with fresh ingredients unlike the type we see in food courts at the mall. Even in the afternoon or evening, the food looked really fresh. After lunch, Barry and I had a cup of MYR3.30 coffee at Daily Express. It was orgasmic. My dad would've stayed there all day, everyday had he gone to Malaysia with us. The coffee had a smooth blend but still strong and a bit roasted. It was freshly brewed and came with condensed milk (Vietnamese style). It was so delicious, I ordered another one when we transferred seats. It was here, near the window showcasing the vast Suria Mall fountainscape, that I fell asleep. I was just so exhausted and at 12:30, it had been way, way past my bedtime.

Also, you must remember that since we left the airport, we had our luggage with us through the bus, the KL Sentral, the LRT, the queue, going through the mall shops, and into the food court. It was so "touristy" I swear.

After my "power nap," Barry and I had gelato while walking through the convention center. I've never had gelato here in the Philippines and in KL I've had around 3, this one at MYR6.90. We went downstairs to the food court and entrance to Aquaria, their local counterpart for Ocean Park. We paid MYR38.00 for that. It was underwhelming and in my opinion, a bit of a tourist trap. The animals were unremarkable, typical. It would've been better if they had animals from the Sarawak/Borneo region or something.

Our 2 other companions for the trip arrived while we were still in the museum so right after, we walked all the way to Prince Hotel to checked ourselves in. (Yes, I was still dragging my luggage with me through the jalans and menaras of Kuala Lumpur!)

The Prince was a charming business hotel so I expected our room to be very clean and sophisticated. Janice had a convention to attend to so our room was for free. The best thing about the accommodations was that our windows faced the Petronas so at night, the fully-lighted twin towers bejewelled our cityscape. We decided to make the most out of the afternoon by first taking the teksi eksekyutif going to Agong's Palace. We just took pictures at the gate because nobody was allowed to go inside. It was already drizzling a bit so we had to hurry our picture taking. The taxi then brought us to Merdeka Square which has the tallest flagpole in the country to signifying Malaysia's birth of independence. Picture-picture and then transferred to St. Mary's Church which is a small Evangelical church built in 1894. Barry was supposed to bring home a rosary for his Mom because that's what he bought her for every trip. Unfortunately, we didn't see any catholic church throughout our stay, although I did see a Chinese church during one of our train rides. From there, we asked directions going to Puduraya bus station in order to take the bus to Kampong Kantuan to eat dinner at the lake with the fireflies. It was a very long walk through the streets which reminded me of Morayta because it had the LRT going through the avenue. The Indian was nearby and we'd stop by a convenience store for drinks. Puduraya is somewhat the "Baclaran" of Malaysia -- it had the major commuter buses going outside the city. That part of town was very crowded and more polluted than the rest. We were there in the middle of all the traffic waiting for the bus that went to Kantuan. The bus was old, dirty, and downright nasty (kinda like the Del Carmen buses we have along Edsa). Naturally, Ingrid (our other college buddy) didn't wanna ride that crap so we asked for alternative ways to go to Firefly lake. There was none. It was the only way there so we decided to go somewhere else. In retrospect, it probably was a good decision because the trip would've taken us around 2 hours, by that time it would've been very dark (because we were after seeing the fireflies glowing after all ...) and we still had to take a cab from the bus station to the lake. More importantly, we'd have to take another cab ride back to the bus station (assuming it's still open past dinner time) and go back to Puduraya. I see now how that would've been pretty dangerous.

Exhausted and sticky with sweat and grime, we decided to eat dinner at a nearby Chinatown place. The tables and chairs were extended far beyond the sidewalk where cars could only use 1 lane. We bought some dried squid (3 packs for MYR10.00) to bring home. We ordered spicy bull frog (that I didn't try because I don't like frogs), oyster omelette (which sucked), a delicious shitake and beef soup bowl, and I forget the other stuff. Haha The best part was the small coconut Ingrid and I ordered. The water was so sweet and refreshing! The meal was fairly priced at MYR33.00 each considering we ordered a lot.

After that we took a cab going back to the hotel and freshened up. It wasn't long till we prepared for bed, after all the flying, napping, eating, walking, talking, and dragging, it had indeed been a very long day. The twin towers were still lighted from a distance and the tv gabbed on and on until we all fell asleep.

(Barry snored so loud though. There were a couple of times Janice had to wake him up just so he'd stop. Haha)

Inside our hotel room, Kuala Lumpur is a city of lights.

Labor Day

2008-05-05T02:50:00.000+08:00

It was officially Labor Day last May 1, and for me, officially 1 month since I started working in my new company. I don't know, I still have mixed feelings about the whole thing. The job is super exciting, definitely more challenging than my last stint as a typist/reader for the deaf. I don't know. Perhaps my apprehensions stem from the fact that a) I've realized I can't pretend to be uber enthusiastic about local showbiz chismis even if my life depended on it, and b) I've found myself running low on funds several days before the next paycheck arrives and that is something that's never happened to me the last 5 years! I guess I've been pretty spoiled with having a higher-than-average paying job for doing something so menial, and now that I've gotten myself a real career opportunity in advertising, I'm forced to ponder on things like "budget" or "free burger steak" or "OT meal and transport".

I find that I can't complain like I want because in a month's time, I've found I can write a bunch of stuff on my resume far more than what I had been able to write down on my resume the past 3 years I've been takin' it easy. So there ... being in the working class sucks. Well, not like I haven't spoken with clients who have regular desk jobs, who are rich beyond my wildest dreams; clients who own, like, the whole of Cavite or Batangas yet are stuck emailing PR revisions or treating their account managers to lunch before rushing off to do more important stuff other than going to the beach or shopping. Believe me, the "real" rich ones are more down-to-earth than their noveaus.

But I digress. Although I do feel so much at home in the office already, a part of me still feels like I'm not quite comfortable yet.

Perhaps I desperately need a summer vacation from my labor days.

Homecoming

2008-04-03T02:04:00.000+08:00

I miss blogging on this site. I've done much of it on Friendster but I find that nobody's commenting on it. So, as of today, I'm making a highly informed decision to go back to my roots and try to reconnect with my literary self once again. I'm working in a new company now and it's kinda busy so I'll try to key-in whatevers and whatnot when I have the time. Ciao!

5 Minutes of Fame

2007-11-29T04:25:00.000+08:00

I don't know what made today so different. As you all should know, I wasn't promoted and I'm still in the same company I work for. I've come to terms with the rage (the rage!!!!) that I wasn't good enough for them and have come to accept that I can't blame office politics for the failure that I've been. I actually don't know what keeps me going because last month, oh last month, was sort of a disaster. i've been absent and late and sleeping on the job. It's difficult waking up when you have nothing much to look forward to except an easy job and wonderful friends.

So, back to the original question. What made today so different? I'm not quite sure. It all started when they got me to help post the updates on each console. Normally, it's a nice reprieve from sitting down taking calls all night. The task was to staple clearbook plastic pages onto the corkboard wall of each cubicle so that update photocopies could be placed in them. Pretty easy but very tedious. And did I mention brainless?

I dunno. I was there with the supervisors and they were talking stuff about other agents, which of course became hush because I WAS THERE. It just made me sad knowing that had I been promoted, I'd be in this new clique having a different angle on a conversation as compared to what I've been having the past 3 years in the office. It's still fun but it's kinda losing its luster for me. I want something else. I want something more. I don't wanna spend the next year sitting on my ass seeing my life pass me by. I wanna show them they made a big mistake of not promoting me! I want my 5 minutes of fame multiplied by a thousand and they'd get no where near it!

So there ... a whole year's rant since the last time I posted something on this dwindling adventure. For the first time in 2 years, I'm actually deciding of spending the holidays at home. Last year I spent New Year's alone standing in the middle of the road admiring the fireworks display at Makati Avenue. It didn't feel sad then, but now that I think about it, I remember how I wanted to go home that night but there were no cabs passing through our apartment street. And I recall how I got pissed off with my Mom about it. Sigh.

I can't go on blaming my Mother for my loserly-ness and I can't blame college for my forked-up career. And I can't blame high school for my Catholic upbringing. Overall, I'm happy to be in this world and regardless of all the whiny stuff that I write down, I 'm still optimistic that I'll be able to make progress this coming year, especially since I'm learning how to take control of my life more. It's just hard when you don't exactly know what you want. It wastes up a lot of energy and time.

Please Lord, give me more than 5 minutes.

At long last ...

2007-02-06T23:50:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
Now I've finally come to face the screen and actually typed something in. Been a while since I've been unsettled enough to gather my thoughts again and place them in order. It's annoying really (and sorry if I'm in a ranting mood right now) how I wasn't able to write about my exhilarating trip to Palawan, nor my memorable December vacation to Davao, my having a sucky New Year's, my nearing 1st year anniversary with my crumpet, and all those new year's resolutions of finding a new job. Many, many things ... and as I sit here now in the cafe, I cry at how stale and moribund my career has been and how I have to stop this incessant whining and begin being more patient with myself. After all, I have already plan to put into motion a series of events that may hopefully aid me in getting what I want.
.
.
Work has been a drag the past few days. I haven't been absent nor late, have been doing my job well, have been taking my break scheds on time, been working quietly in my little corner beside the column with the hand sanitizer. I can't take it!!! It's just too darn CLEAN!!! I wanna be absent just because! I wanna go to work then log-off when I want to, faking my illnesses and getting paid for it, enjoying the afternoon sunset scanning across the metro while I sip my instant coffee from the vending machine, watching the workers destroy the old International School building a mile away from sight. But no. All I am is trapped. I need my bonuses, my stable salary, my stress-free environment, my clean console and spill-proof mug. I need to take on my responsibilities.
.
.
Everything else has been swell. I enjoyed celebrating my birthday with the people who are most important in my life -- my college friends, my crumpet, my grade school friends, my family, a couple of officemates -- just my way of showing appreciation for not having left me for dead even in my direst, most pathetic plight. Thank god I'm able to blog about it now.
.
.
As for everything else, there are more important stuff to whine about Ü
.
.
.

Damn Hole!!!

2006-11-30T00:26:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
There's a hole in my heart that keeps leaking forsaken thoughts. There's a hole in my being that wants to discover its cure. There's an insatiable frustration I have that stems from my work, my life, and my regrettable choices. It pains me that you have to use expletives to prove your point. Fucking fun?? Where did that come from? There must be more ways to stroke an ego without me having to apologize everytime I chaffe its vascular shaft. There must be an easier way to die of aneurysm without having to pass through the white light at the end of the tunnel. It gives birth to more misunderstanding. Damn hole. We all came out from it, only I, am less appreciative of maternity than is socially acceptable behavior manifested by a catholic boy. O pious callousness! O devine metaphoric! Can I be spared of this fumbling drama?
.
.
Alas, moments ago I resolved never to ask questions I already know the answers to. It's so girly of me; to resolve when I hate following resolutions. The iamb need not speak, lest it queaffes toward menstruation. O, the blood of my leaking heart, my forsaken thoughts, clotting to a scab, healing to revelation.
.
.
.

double happiness

2006-11-28T01:12:00.000+08:00

.
.
.

.
i'm held back. by fear. if i end this all now, i end the waiting. and yet, if i end this all now, i know new pain will begin. i can't keep waiting. for you. for the time i would leave you. i can't keep up convincing myself that i am content with what we have. because when i think about it, i only have your reassurance. what else? i have your text messages. i have your pictures saved on my phone, even have them backed-up in my computer. i have memories. i have your faithfulness. still, i am plagued by the distance, by our inability to completely connect even after 9 months of trying really hard. perhaps i've lost my mood for love, and what we've become is a sequel to a feel-good movie that will never be shown. i am losing you, losing my fondness to be fond of you. however, even when my mind wanders off to the possibilities of others, i will never deceive you that way. because you have my faithfulness. the same way you have my hand-written letters, my pictures saved on your phone, my tears pushed far back into memory. you still have my heart. and that's why you will never hear of these words and you will never read of this. i will hold back. by fear. because although i am weak, i will need my strength. but i will never be the first to go the distance.
.
.
.

Another month in passing

2006-10-25T01:27:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
I met up with my college cohorts last Friday to catch up on old times. It has been about 8 months since I've last seen them, on the account of being busy every weekend spending the little amount of time I have with my crumpet. I guess I fell silent because there was so much to talk about that I didn't know where to start, and they were well acquainted with each other that I felt left out in a way. They're still the same people -- fun, eloquent, in-your-face, endearing -- whereas I, I've become rather reticent assuming a life without melodrama or much complication. They seem so out of reach with their kickass careers, their transient lovers, their psycho stalkers and branded loafers. I guess you can say there was a little bit of envy, for as much as I'd like to keep myself in this quietude, my Aquarian-ness reminds me there's so much to reinvent or discover. Indeed, life awaits and mine should move forward with a new career plan.
.
.
Boredom sets in once again but thank Diwali it's not a self-destructive type of ennui. It's one that seeks a change from the true-form routine of being in a 2pm-11:30pm job. I don't fret going to work yet when I'm there this incredible dullness creeps in through my socks and reminds me to follow my break schedule, to come to work early, to do my work because I'm paid to do so, to get through the day ready for the next 4. In truth I am content but not "happy" happy, if you know what I mean.
.
.
But seriously, should there be a difference?
.
.
.

Pinky Swear

2006-09-27T00:17:00.000+08:00

I sincerely apologize for not having been able to post anything for awhile. It's just so difficult to find time to log-in and organize my thoughts creatively enough after deleting spam and responding to other important email. What can I say? Life has been good to me -- I recently came back from a much-needed vacation, I haven't been absent nor late for the past 6 months, almost everyone I know is alive and well, and I have a crumpet who's kept me sane for 7 months officially. I can say everything is well. However, knowing the sarcastic way life can treat us sometimes, I never take these things for granted.

Work has become quite predictable. I'm bored to tears each time I yawn and wait for the next task to come in. Like how it is everyday, I sit in the same corner with my things, away from the direct sight of the hawks. I have a whole collection of unsolved crossword puzzles cut out from the dailies, a pair of scissors to cut those puzzles with, a couple of foreign tabloid magazines that attempt to keep me awake with their The Good, The Bad, and the Totally Unexplainable fashion critique spreads, a bunch of to-do lists I keep updating each time there's something new to do, and application forms for credit cards and mobile phone lines. I look at my hobo bag and I cry to tears at how queer and geeky I've become. A makeover should definitely be in order soon!

Last Friday, I met up with my good friend Nurse Betty (not her real name) and we spent the evening with Eileen (her name real but the spelling isn't accurate) watching the multi-awarded local indie flick The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, which unfortunately, didn't make it to my top 10 list of favorite local films. I appreciated the movie a lot but it was just too depressing analyzing it in the end. The cast was a dream and the story simple yet endearing; I do hope it inspires more filmmakers to hop on this indie trend and perhaps revive our dead movie industry. Anyway, after the blossoming and after Eileen left, Nurse Betty and I started our discussion at this nearby fastfood joint that serves overcooked lauriat meals.

Nurse Betty prescribed a lot of things. She told me to start applying for writing jobs. She told me how frustrating it was for her to see me waste my talent in the wrong industry. She told me everything I already knew about myself. On the other hand, I told her we're practically the same, but on different fields. I told her she should start dating. I told her if she wanted to be in a relationship she should take the risk of possibly getting hurt and exposed. I told her everything she already knew about herself. After all, we were no strangers to each other's so-so sob stories. So after we bit each other's heads and recounted our shortcomings, Nurse Betty persuaded me to "pinky swear" with her. I couldn't help but laugh, we were queer as folk. She said that by the time she starts dating, I should've already updated my resume; that by the time she finds herself in a serious relationship, I should've already started work seriously as a writer.

I told her I felt paralyzed with the thought of having to peddle myself to these companies, to convince them (without a handful of published articles) how I'm a good writer, to lose my sufficient salary (and quite possibly my liberties) all because of a pinky swear we plan to keep. She was silent too, for all the possibilities, for all the future woes. Whoever thought the tiniest finger could defile this illusion of calloused contentment we've created for ourselves, yet with as much force, just as effectively paint a new picture of things that could be. I plan to keep my promise because I always do. But to where my words bring me, my fingers are crossed.

The Stars Are Blind

2006-08-16T01:01:00.000+08:00

"Dear World: I am leaving because I am bored. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool."

.
.

-- George Sanders, suicide victim

Amidst the stars twinkling on my wallpaper, I've decided to update my blogger profile. Not like it's been a habit of mine to update it every now and then; I guess I feel it's time for another change. The main highlight is that I've been drawn to rediscovering pop culture. I mean, whatever happened to that precocious pre-teen who used to listen to Debbie Gibson or sing "Hold On" by Wilson Philips; the kid who bought his first cassette tape: Francis Magalona's Mga Kababayan (My Fellow Countrymen); who obsessed on making mix tapes from deejay-murdered dance hits on the radio, staying up all night during the weekends hoping to record a complete static-free radio quality copy of Kalapana's The Hurt, Tropical Dance Mix version or Funkstar de Luxe's How Gee Triple Extended Mix.

Yes, those were the days of humiliation. The early 90's. I was never fully conscious of anything in the 80's so I can't really say I felt mortified having been born then. Besides, the 80's was a blur, from playing G.I. Joe and Barbie dolls, to riding the bike, to almost completing the first-ever version of Super Mario Brothers, to watching Small Wonder in the afternoon. It all went by so fast. And like the stupid haircuts then, never left anything for me to miss. I never considered my early predilection for New Wave hits an embarrassment. Tears for Fears used to "rock my world" and it still does. But the 90's?? Geez ... Trapper Keepers, Reebok Pumps, Windbreakers, Bulldog shoes, war games, marvel cards, Versace's rock n' roll fashion, Beverly Hills 90210 ... *cringes*

All those memories would not serve me well anymore, except perhaps for purposes of humor on days when I feel like I'm older than everyone else in the office. Harhar. I've come to a healthy and informed decision to get back in touch with the world -- listening to pop music, watching local movies, reading the dailies and magazines off the counter, conversing with people ... Cliché but applicable to me right now, I'm 27 going 13. My sister and I practically have the same interests now. Toys. ; )

(Okay, enough of this foolishness)

I open the radio and realize Paris Hilton can't sing a damn note. Indeed, the stars are blind, but I figure it can't get any worse; and maybe what George Sanders failed to see is that the world seems boring only because we close our eyes to the things we think aren't interesting.

Before and After

2006-08-01T01:11:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
Okay so I went through a bit of an image overhaul the past year and my life has changed for the better. The theory that changing the way you look changes the way you feel about yourself does hold some bearing. But of course, it doesn't solve everything, and deep down I know that although I've underwent from XL to M, there are still some things about me that have remained the same size. I can't really go into detail right now because a lot of it is what others observe of me and hence with this new adventure, I'm limited to what other people perceive and my awareness or denial of its existence in my life.
.
.
Just recently, my crumpet asked me why I'm so pessimistic. I don't really know. I used to be this bubbly (pun intended) guy who always looked at the bright side of everything, who knew he could take on any challenge and rise to the occasion. I don't know where that guy went. Perhaps the loss of wishy-washy idealism left him only soap suds of hopes and dreams, in his mind, a before and after snapshot that only causes him to get more depressed the more time passes him by.
.
.
I'm not depressed, but I do feel some sort of urgency, a need to hurry up and leave the excess baggage behind. After all, travel should be lighter losing all that weight, the foreign immigration would agree. But somehow, I'm still holding on to my past, fearing the new future that has opened up. I'm 27 nearing 30 and still working rank and file, earning enough to get me through rent and the bills. No credit card, no checking account or time deposit or insurance or pension plans.
.
.
But I do have my life, my freedom, my options, my health (for now), and someone who loves me for who I am (or who I've become) ... most of the things I've aimed at achieving the past year. I have taken on the challenges and came through. Maybe I am optimistic, just need to believe it again ...
.
.
.

I second the name

2006-07-28T04:10:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
Finally today, after a couple weeks of postponing, I was able to go to the bank with my money in hopes of opening a dollar account. I brought with me a 1x1 picture as was required and 2 forms of identification. I brought my driver's license (something I never use because I don't drive) and my passport with a picture of me having a fat lip. The fat lip came because of an allergic reaction I had to using an expired lip balm. I would've cared to peel off the laminate and exchange it with a new picture if only that were legal. Anyway, after partially filling out the form with my name and other such pertinents as permanent address and gender, the lady behind the marble counter top told me her supervisor advised her that I couldn't push through with the application. It seems that on my 2nd name does not appear on my passport, whereas it does on my driver's license. That was the cause of the stir. It's gotten me into a bit of confusion before, but I had never been turned down because of it.
.
.
"Lady, I'm here with my dollars. I am NOT a Chinese smuggler or drug lord. If I were, do you think I'd even be going to this obscure bank with an amount that wouldn't even buy me Gucci loafers." I ended up buying 3 collared tees and a pair of slacks just to make myself feel better. They were on sale and I got 4 50-buck coupons for use on my next purchase! Fair trade.
.
.
Now that I contemplate the events in my peanut butter & oatmeal happy brain, had Edgar Allan Poe not have Allan in his name, he could've been any other writer and The Raven could have been written by some other famous noir writer in a parallel universe. Come to think of it, if I keep writing only my first and last name on every identifying document I have, I would always be plagued by people asking if this so-and-so criminal is my father or uncle.
.
.
It's gettin' old. The joke, not me. ;)
.
.
.

Memories

2006-07-05T02:02:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
Settling for. I remember not so long ago a close friend of mine disclosed that he thought I was settling for a relationship with anyone, specifically, the one I'm with right now. He said that I complained too much about what the differences I had with my crumpet and that if I'm so unhappy I should move on. I remember also, just the other week, how a close colleague told me that maybe I'm just afraid of being single again and going through my very first break up. I remember also during my conversation with Ninjato that I can't get myself into a relationship looking for another me; a clone of my neurotic self who knows exactly what goes on in my mind and reacts in the same way as I do and would react accordingly to all my needs the moment the mood permits. They may all be correct. Maybe I am settling for any decent partner that comes my way. But I don't think I'm settling. I know the treasure I found and I intend to keep it.
.
.
Settling with. Perhaps it's love. Perhaps it's the high of being in a prolonged emotional experience with another person. Perhaps it's the years of neurosis caused by a perceived parental deficiency. Even if I can be needy and extremely self-conscious sometimes, it doesn't mean I would lose my head over it. I know how much I love my crumpet and I know, a few months ago, that I fell in love. I still am but it is less urgent, less obsessive now. I know there's a difference between love and falling in love, the latter being more fleeting.

Settling out. Once in a full moon (or more accurately once every week) my lack of sleep, lack of attention, lack of mental stimulation, and a periodic lack of sex make my hormones and proteins act up, which predictably gets me in a whiny mode. And it doesn't help that the future of our relationship rests on the triteness and timeliness of text messages. This I have to settle out. Then again, we've become so acquainted with the constant miscommunication that it's become weird if we don't have one every now and then.
.
.
Settling on. A bigger phone bill. More vacation leaves. Eating on the same side. Holding hands in the movies. Stealing kisses when no one's looking. Writing emails. Texting emoticons. Holding back the longing. There's only room for a mature commitment.
.
.
Settling down. Not in the near future. Not when every week thoughts of breaking up run amock when I'm breaking down. Not when I feel joy and pain in the same yet opposing intensity. Not when I'd settle for memories when I can still create more of them.
.
.
.

My Night Life Nowadays

2006-06-26T00:49:00.000+08:00

I'm in a computer shop right now, spending much on the unforgiving hour just to access my email and squeeze in a few words here. After this, I'll be riding the jeep going home. Around 1:30 am perhaps, and then go walk the street where only the left side of the road is lighted up in yellow. Who cares about the right side, right?

The other week I was walking home from work. It was maybe 2:30 am if I'm not mistaken. And everyday, I see this bleached blonde haired tranny waiting amongst the parked pedicabs for her next dose of blood. Well, on that particular day while walking home, I found two, forgive the term -- squatter, teenagers in the dark with her. One guy was keeping watch while the other lad looked like he was sucking on albino teat. I was kinda shocked with what I saw. Who wouldn't?

Last weekend I was to a shower party. My very first, and the wedding's not even for any of my friends. To make the long story short, the stripper guy danced through three songs (sappy love songs) and went all the way with his undies.

I swear it was the thickest, most venular Pinoy longganisa I ever saw!!! Holy weiners Batman! That thing was HUGE! We were all open-mouthed while we each got a turn to stroke his salami.

Anyway, I got drunk that night, downing 8 shots of tequila in less than 20 minutes. I wanted some attention and wanted an alibi for my retarded behavior. I got home safe and didn't puke or anything. I made sure to drink aspirin before going to bed and in the morning before going to work. I was fine. A work of art.

It's still summer after all ...

2006-06-13T02:21:00.000+08:00

Finally, I've been getting some sleep. Finally, I can wiggle my toes in the heat of the morning, happy to wake up after a good 6 or 7 hours rest. And perhaps reading off the first 3 or 4 forwarded text messages from my father and a good morning message from my love, my friends ... more than makes up for that wretched 1 month in the graveyard shift.

Yes, I do love that silly thing now. That which occupies my mind 24-7 for the past 6 months we've been together. Numbers, numbers. It's still summer after all and I'm allowed to count the drops of rain that fall, however few they are.

Thank you Rain for making me aware of the unexpurgated cynicism I throw upon myself.

I am optimistic that even when the heavy rains come pouring in the next few months, I will be sleeping soundly in my bed. And if I'm lucky, I won't be sleeping single.

Toiling Water

2006-06-02T02:32:00.000+08:00

I'm doing this for my own good. I'm blogging once again and possibly going to talk about all the things I've never wanted to talk about, to graze every inch of my unshaven skin with a didactic razor, hoping to find a means to solve my seemingly perpetual need to overanalyze, in which case this exercise deems itself redundant, running on and merely feeding my fancy for wordiness.

All is well, believe it or not, it really is. It's just my universe waiting for me to admit it. But here I am, stubborn little me, always having to make everything difficult for myself and not believing the water is hot even when I boiled the pot myself.

He bathes in it, that one whom I've called mine, but he seems to have a separate tub, a separate robe, a kind of togetherness without me in the same room. I hardly get to see him and rely on the terseness of technology to bridge the obvious gap. I don't even think I'm being demanding, but what do I really know about relationships when all I keep doing is bring the kettle to a boil?

I'm scalding in my attempt to be silent.

Falling or Fallen?

2006-04-07T01:26:00.000+08:00

It's barely 2 months and the same issues still come up every now and then. I do admit I've been very moody lately. It's like I have an irregular ovulation cycle where I can't quite assume when to bring a tampon or not. But just this week, I realized exactly what brings about my mood swings. Contentment, or the lack thereof.

Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for everything I have right now. It's just that, like say with work, my gratitude is slowly wearing out its welcome. It's getting more routine everyday and my brain tries to compensate for the inactivity by planning other things. It shortfuses sometimes, depending on the number of hours I've failed to recharge it, like when I spend the night before drinking and smoking with my officemates and supervisors. I try to assuage my boredom by answering 2-3 "Fun N' Easy" crossword puzzles in one sitting. And occasionally when I get hold of the rundown spreadsheet from the morning shift, I quickly browse through my horoscope (Aquarius), chuckle through the Dilbert comic strip and immediately try solving the newsday crossword. I tell ya, that thing's a b*tch. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes the clues are totally cryptic. But that's the challenge of it right?

I don't lack contentment with the apartment I have right now, but my FLATMATE does. He, yes the guru, wants me to clean the common areas every week. It may be sweeping the floors, cleaning the water filter, dusting the jalousies, dusting the cupboards, scrubbing the mildew stains in the toilet, brushing off the stool dregs from the toilet slope, mopping the floors, and other whatnots. I understand the need to clean regularly but my god ... how clean is CLEAN?? I have to mop the floors with soap first, dry the floor, wash the mop (which is simply A PAIN IN THE *SS!!!), mop the floors with water, let 'em dry, then wash the mop again. Does it have to be this obsessive-compulsive??? Oh my god ... I can't breathe.

And finally, with my crumpet ... I love the creature to bits, but I can't say I'm in love already. It's not that it's too early (nearly 2 months), but more so because I still don't get the general behavior. We don't get to talk often enough. Text messaging is hardly a substitute, though I am thankful I can unlimitxt fire away. It's just too ... calm. I'm starting to crave passion.

But I try to be careful with what I wish for. I don't think I can handle it yet.

2006-03-28T00:46:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
"Love is not the drama; its the comfort. When I realise that for myself,
I will be an adult."
.
.
-- Quoted from a chat friend
.
.
.
.
I told my closest closest friend long ago how I believe a person is at his most vulnerable state when he's asleep; that without his awareness, he renders himself in a seemingly defenseless state. Being the tease that she was and still is, of course she disagreed and commenced with her interpolations. Sadly, I don't remember those arguments anymore.
.
.
Last weekend, I met up with my "crumpet" three times -- one on Thursday along with two scorpios, on Friday where we went to meet the parents for a second time, and on Saturday when I came out from work past midnight. Friday night was very special and it made me rethink my Sleepless & Defenseless Theory over again.
.
.
After meeting up in Galleria, we ate dinner at their house in Cainta. For those of you who know me, I am not a fan of long distance travel but last Friday, I found myself aboard public transport with my crumpet, braving the side glances of those who should know better. Dinner was modest -- friend noodles and chicken in coconut milk. School of Rock was on HBO so we decided to watch and be entertained. I swear, the Korean piano prodigy reminded me so much of my elementary days ...
.
.
At around 10 pm, he decided we should go to Antipolo. Whoa ... I don't remember the last time I went there, probably when I was still this Jesuit schoolboy learning to play the piano and going there for a religious retreat. We rode 3 jeepneys going there and the wind was strong on a night where the streets weren't loaded with people and distractions. Riding through the hillside at night and with the cool breeze blowing through my skin reminded me so much of Baguio City. We landed at Eagle's Nest restaurant and settled on a little hut down the slope.
.
.
The view of the metropolis was breathtaking.
.
.
We sat side-by-side after a hefty meal, a couple of beers, and a bag of Doritos, and my crumpet felt sleepy. I offered my lap as a pillow and after talking a bit more, Toper fell asleep. So tired, so calm ... so vulnerable. But he was safe with me that night even as the mosquitoes commenced dinner on our sweaty selves.
.
.
But I was mistaken. The more I looked at that tired sleepy calm, I was the one who became vulnerable. The gusts of wind, the sweat rolling down my forehead, the flickering lights of the city on a denouement made me aware that I was sitting on a slope, that at any time, I can slip and lose myself in the dark unknown.
.
.
I was falling and it felt right. I wasn't asleep, but I was still vulnerable.
.
.
.

Periods and Paroxysms

2006-03-14T01:25:00.000+08:00

I have been very busy the past few days. In fact, it's been a whole month since my last entry and although I've come to be online everynow and then, I never felt the urge nor the focus to zone in to writing even just a unremarkable piece about the remarkable events that have been happening in my life right now. However, just as I begin writing this as if it would become longwinded and satisfactorily thorough, I am reminded once more that my priorities have already changed and that wherever this takes me, I'd like to coerce myself to sit back and enjoy the ride.

How and where do I start? Seems to always be the challenge for me ...

After exactly two months of going on meaningful dates every Friday or Saturday night, we've finally decided to formalize our friendship into a relationship last February 19. For the most part, I don't exactly know how to describe what I feel at the moment. It's not an ecstatic high that I've first thought I'd experience. I mean, it's not like I got engaged or anything. It was very quiet, very mature. We just thought it was time.

We've had a couple of disagreements, the second one kinda got me scared because I felt I was ruining everything by being paranoid and overanalytical. I thought at first it was a seasonal thing. That the full moon was out to sabotage me. I thought it was the longing, of not being able to meet up more often than once a week due to our weird schedules. But then I realized how my worries were caused by fear. Perhaps I didn't want to admit that I'm slowly falling for this person. That I'm entering a new territory ... that of reciprocated affection.

Is this what love is? How come it's not mushy or nauseatingly cheesy like I expected?

I guess I'm always different. We entered into a relationship without having said "I love you," perhaps secure (or reckless) enough to think we would follow through.

It's only five days to go before our third month together, a whole month since we confirmed our commitment, and I can finally sleep with a smile because I know someone out there is thinking about me in the same way.

Angels

2006-02-10T16:10:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
020906
.
.
.
.
I hear of talk
about angels sent from the lot of stars.
I hear of talk
about stars
falling from the lot of skies, landing on the earth
where human beings are born.
.
.
I hear of talk
about a place where angels speak of affection
and the silence after the rain
heaves further a distance
from my breath and the clouds.
.
.
Perhaps it's not people
that make up short stories or their situations.
.
.
I hear of long explanations.
I listen to the kingdom of god
reveal itself infinitely like mild dew.
.
.
.

The Birthday Weekend

2006-02-07T01:16:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
In short it was simply wonderful. I've never felt more content with what I have and the never needing to discuss how it all went, simply means I'm happy right now and extremely grateful.
.
.
.

Horse

2006-01-31T01:10:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
012805
.
.
.

And in this way I grasp the ropes

that secure the gentle thoroughbred,

an error acted on my part

for it hadn't been running away.

My fear of loss, I fear

had spurned the need for gain.

So to this I ask curiously,

"How does one communicate

with something that isn't blind

or alters itself inconspicuously

as if it were a bad vice?

How does one tame a beast

whose heart had been hurt

yet for all those chains and turns

continues to seek its tamer?"

With this I withdraw my straddling

and I ask not without opportunity.

After all, I have yet to learn the ropes

of fair game and hurtful rules,

this race so futile and so ghastly,

its play of emotions, its charms none the luckier.

Everyone counts on their chance bets,

their shining victory that walks on losses:

A dream knight mare appearing in their faded sleep,

sweeping them off their jaded feet.

.
.
.

Forewarned

2006-01-22T03:26:00.000+08:00

.
.
.

It has been rather weird since the full moon on the 13th of Friday and I must say the residual effects of its afterglow still linger to haunt the dazed.

I did a bad thing by overanalyzing my situation with Toper and worrying how I don't have anything concrete to call how we are or what we share, I badgered him with a few confrontational messages and wanted a reply or at least some comfort in knowing that if we choose to let go, it wouldn't hurt as much. I don't know why I had to ruin our meeting the next day but somehow, I'm kinda glad it happened -- my neurotic ways -- because I got it out of my system and I at least got an honest and concrete answer from him. It was our 7th meeting yesterday and although things are still blurry as where things are going, I've been taking advice from people to just enjoy the moment and appreciate what I have than worry about what I don't. I just find it difficult to do because I definitely enjoy the simple things, but when it comes to dealing with emotions and the need to be serious in certain situations, I need to know what I invest in won't be put to waste. That's just how I am, I can't enjoy something if I know it won't amount to anything enjoyable in the end. Weird ... All I can say is, I'm in no shape to handle any personal tragedies right now. I don't know how I'll take it and what kind of drastic changes I'll be going through in my life again.

Today I learned that my dear friends in another department had been laid off from work. What I hear is that it's because of the new management under Verizon and they're cutting down on redundancy. It's just unfair how they were only told yesterday and just like that, they were asked to pack their bags and go home at that moment. Talk about job security ...

Which got me thinking about my own job. I woke up late today and had to apply for a halfday sick leave because I wanted to save up on my sick leaves. I totally FORGOT that today's a critical work day since it's payday Friday yesterday and we're prohibited from being absent on the Sat-Sun-Mon following. So there, in the coming days I shall be getting my first Focus Alert for being absent on a critical workday, this on my employment anniversary and just 10 days shy of my 27th birthday.

The truth is, after a fun weekend, I've been brought back to reality so abruptly and the need to be more focused. While reviewing my current status on the job, I discovered that after being absent for half a day last week, I only have just half a day sick leave credit available today. Had I chose not to go to work the whole day, I would've gotten myself 2 Focus Alerts instead of just 1, and that would bring me a step closer to termination!

So there ... a fair warning for me. Try to enjoy what I have even if I perceive it to be pointless, yet be cautious that my point of view won't stray too far from the ground (or look into myself too deeply).

Songs for the Sleepy Hollow

2006-01-18T02:38:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
010306
.
.
There in the corner of my eye
was the quivering silhouette of my mother.
She had been staring out the window
combing her hair to an incorrigible groom.
She'd pluck her eyebrows like feathers to a dove
till all that's left was a half-naked stare.
.
.
I often wondered where she'd gone
she used to sing me to sleep
and tap my legs like burning light
falling off the tip of a cigarette.
She never smoked and never knew how
so I learned it for her.
.
.
It used to be just the two of us
but now there's everything in between:
she and her work
me and my sisters
her affection and old age.
I couldn't decide which carried more weight,
but I knew I chose to carry hers.
.
.
I can't reconcile the silhouette from the shadow,
the duties from the affection, me from my sisters.
It was as if we were all strands of unruly hair
all caught up in an impossible tangle.
.
.
By now she had been looking elsewhere,
outside the window with her naked stare.
I see her from afar, in the corner of my eye:
her tired arms, her wrinkled expression,
her weighted womb.
.
.
I had to crawl back under the sheets
to tap my own legs and hope to fall back to sleep.
On other nights unsucceeding, I'd steal a smoke
and think of my past,
the memories burning like the tip of my stick
reconciling the smoke with the scent of her dyed hair.
.
.
.
.
011606
.
.
If I close my eyes
I dare not see
the slit of your eyes
like a bleeding wrist.
And how if I pry them open
they would gush out like tears.
.
.
I dare not feel for you
and I remind myself to stay awake
while I hear you call my name
thin like a blade passing over my skin.
.
.
This must be sacrilege, my ignorant singing,
the consequence of an impalpable desperation
tuning itself like an instrument of pain.
It comes back to haunt me, your blood,
flooding through the floors of my house.
.
.
The pain ignites the dormant fires in it,
it burns aned wants to be seen.
Everybody wants to be a witness.
Everybody wants an unobstructed view.
.
.
If I close my eyes now
I dare not see, not ever,
the warmth taking shape in a grail,
the saint burning on an altar of my distractions.
.
.
.

Breakthroughs

2006-01-10T02:01:00.000+08:00

I don't have resolutions consciously drafted out for this year. I'm not even in the mood to write out a bullet-point presentation of all the major events that have happened to me in 2005 as a recap to the year I'll always consider the most exciting, the most memorable. It's like going through puberty once again hehehe

I'll just have to remember that it all started with a little toast on a night at the beach with a friend, to friendship, to career, to life, to love ... slowly these things are coming together. I haven't been toasting to new dreams and aspirations for 2006. I'd much prefer to feel the alcohol swirl through my blood stream first, get that slightly drowsy feeling but get all warm and fuzzy inside before I decide to take in another drink.

However as it is, I've come a long way and it's been a wonderful ride. Ü

New Couch, New Shoes

2005-12-31T03:42:00.000+08:00

The couch I bought finally arrived last Dec. 29. I bought it at the last minute, at the height of the christmas shopping rush (and the relentless nagging of my "housewife" roommate ex-guru). Compared to the tangerine-apricot color he was telling me to get just so we'd have a couch to sit on, I got an off-white one which fit the color scheme better. Yes it's a color that would get dirty easily, but hey, I'd rather that than mint green or green blue, or some other weird color that doesn't sell well. I was supposed to get a brown quasi-corduroy type of couch that had a matching mini ottoman and 2 throw pillows at 500 bucks less the price of the fake leather one, but my good friend advised me that cloth would be harder to clean and would accumulate more dust. So there, I bought the off-white couch and 2 separate box-looking ottoman in beige. They had it delivered a week after because of consumer traffic. So on the morning of Dec 29, the landlord woke me up saying there was a delivery. They had to unscrew the locks and the door knob just to get the couch through the door. I gave a large tip since it was christmas and all (to which I kinda regret).

Ninjato dropped by after I took out the plastics and prepared my breakfast at 1:30pm. It was his birthday the day before and Dec 29's my sister's birthday so I texted her and asked her what she wanted for present. The ninja dude and I talked for more than an hour, he, enjoying the couch that just came in minutes before. The electricity went off and at an awful time when I needed to use the restroom. I took out a candle and did my thing. Of course, like with all things, the universe again demonstrated to me its knack for mockery and timing. As I had predicted, my roommte came out because he couldn't sleep and he met my friend. Not that there was anything wrong with it, I just hate it that I wasn't physically present to introduce them to each other. Blame the pineapple slices I heartily ate the other day. For the past 3 days I've been seriously loading up on my veggies and fruits. I had to use the restroom 4 times that day ... sheesh ...

Anyway, my roomie said something like, "Thank God you already got the furniture!!! I was beginning to think you were never gonna get them!!!" and then proceeded with, "Ok so now just buy the screws for the table and then maybe 4 small stools around this height (demonstrates the measure from his lowered palm toward the floor). They're not that expensive."

When will the hurting stop??

Ninjato and I then left for the mall, not because I wanted to avoid my nagging roommate, but because I wanted to get myself a new pair of shoes by donating my old ones. The place was jampacked and everyone was shopping like crazy! I got myself a new pair of black-brown shoes which I plan to wear for the New Year's celebration, along with a new pair of jeans I bought on sale today and a new long sleeve shirt that'll keep me warm in the office. (Can't wait to party tomorrow!!!)

It was already around 8pm when I finally caught up with Toper. We ate at Kentucky's. I had a 2-piece hot n' crispy chicken meal while he had a 1-piece chicken meal with mashed potato and extra rice. It was nice and I wasn't too conscious if I had his legs clasped unto mine. We walked around a bit afterwards because I felt bloated. It was nice. He would put his arm on my shoulder or pinch my lanky arm when he felt like it. We sit down on the comfy couches of Starbucks in Shangri-la mall while I sip on my Christmas blend coffee, and he, his Tazo mint. We were like kids really, mocking each other while making me realize even more how special this person is and why I think my search is nearing its conclusion. He asked me why I was so self-conscious, why I didn't bring my cigarettes. He just wanted me to be myself and it felt amazing.

He had to leave early, having to join his family to go to the province. I was there on the couch, half-asleep but half-smiling. I slipped my little note on his back pocket on his way out. My home never looked so new Ü

Faerie Tales

2005-12-22T07:09:00.000+08:00

The Wolves

A pack of wolves, they had said
affronting the demise of attractiveness.
She pursued, determined and deaf
to the advice she didn't seek to find
that beyond the sulking forest life
hid the death of her curious ills.
She had nothing to protect herself with
except her nagging persistence,
a red riding hood that made her
invisible to her own wounds.

With each little step, the forest grew darker,
the bark and skins became hardened amber,
the leaves became green and jaded.
There was a frightening howl from the inside
she heard this from across the path
like ghosts circumventing the heart of graveyards.
Her way forked into not just two paths, but four,
each way representing the call to elements --
life, money, career, and love --
split before her like four suits to a deck of cards,
where, to pick one card would mean
to deal with the whole pack.

And on this nook she had been
affronted by a pack of wolves.
They had said too much
to the ill demise of her naivete.

The Rabbits

There the rabbit went thru the rabbit hole again
running off with the time, running off from her.
Alice thought to follow him, to squeeze herself
into a shrine she thought would mean a way out.
Instead, she found herself with other rabbits,
all running away, their clocks ticking in circles,
their feet thumping like small fickle hearts.

With her slender legs, she walked purposefully
inquiring, drinking through parties, meeting
strange friends and dancing with flowers.
Hardly had she eaten, she already grew so tall
but the little girl inside had no breasts
and her hair and body spoke of frustration.
Inside her womb was a child that'll never be born,
hiding its love and kicking slightly on the walls
as if to wake their mother up into a dash.

She had been running from herself, her soul
crumbling like dried cake, "eat me" it said.
The rabbits started to question her but she
hadn't the time to answer. She was lost again.

It was always time to go somewhere, not much
of the day left behind. She would crawl her way
to hide from monsters: a queen that held her head,
a smile from a headless animal, her home
on the other side of the looking glass.
In this hole, the trees would extend their roots
and grapple on her hands the way she held time

like a missing father.

Soon, the flowers and cards would riddle her name
Alice, in separate syllables, like animals that feed on
her scalp; she, like a tiny human with claws,

clutching onto a strand of hair before it gets cut.

In a room without stars ...

2005-12-09T11:14:00.000+08:00

Originally written August 15, 2005

In a room without stars, without

the time telling us when to go ...

this had become my home.

I had no right to stay, never

knowing when to say farewell

to the clothes of our agreement.

Perhaps it had been easier for you

to wear yourself out with my attention.

I remember grazing naked over the plains,

the landscape slender like your abdomen, with

a hint of shrubbery where the seeds

had been sown before daylight.

I remember hearing the hoeing of rain

outside in the distant hallway, where

the sun kept thrusting its torpid rays

inside the throes of a dense calm.

Not here, not where I thought

the void had been filled with stars,

the memory of your scent rubbing off

with the pretense of your breathing.

I remember myself without guilt,

enthralled by the death of my egregiousness.

Don't you miss this thing of beauty,

a heart beating without a chest?

A body walking without a head?

I could not find any other purpose

as mild as an untamed beast, yet milder

than its incorrigible tamer.

I once had your arms to house me,

the foundations of a room without stars.

Or had they been my own arms,

desperately holding onto the gutters

of the roof I had built over myself?

The first and the last, the compromises,

took two days too easy to forget.

I continued to walk the road alone

still trapped inside your room, or me,

trapped in my own disillusionment.

Would I have had the right to leave, when
now that I'm in my own room,
I realize I hadn't been guided accordingly?

I lit the sky with a perfect match

and pretended forgetting I miss it so badly.

I faked being intimate with the stars

and I don't feel shame for having done it.

Words for Wisdom

2005-12-07T02:19:00.000+08:00

.
.
.

Said one Born-again Christian to a Nigerian mail-order bride scammer ...
.
.
"Work is a reflection of who we are -- going through life walking in and out of jobs -- this is a reflection of our failure to commit to anything."
.
"Failure is the true essence of things not seen or heard but a reflection of the heart. If we say something and yet there are no works, we have no faith."
.
.
To which the bride-wannabe replied ...
.
"Honey pls send me the money now my love."
.
.
.
.
Said one woman to another:
.
.
"Don't let the fear of striking out stop you from playing the game."
.
... and continued:
.
"Happiness is a choice. I must not let it be in the hands of other people because for as long as it is in mine, happiness will always be within my reach."
.
.
.

Strange How Things Come In Place

2005-11-26T01:57:00.000+08:00

I woke up late for work last Wednesday. Well, not really THAT late, I had enough time to get out of the house fully-clothed and dignified enough to go to the office. I grab my keys and rushed the stairs toward the door and tried to open the lock. The key wouldn't work! I twisted and turned the damn thing and still it wouldn't work. I twisted and twisted until finally, the key broke and the tip got stuck inside the keyhole. Swell ...

I call my direct supervisor to tell him I got locked in the apartment and couldn't get out, that I would probably have to destroy the lock just to get out. He told me since I only have half a day's worth of sick leave, I should take an emergency leave credit provided I submit to him a medical certificate of a family member being rushed to a hospital or something to that degree. It helps to be nice to your supervisors. So I called my Mom to tell her her son is held in custody by an indoor lock that couldn't be opened from the outside. By lunch time, everything began to normalize. In a strange way, things happened as if I wasn't meant to leave the house that morning. My Mom was able to arrange something with my uncle who's a doctor, to get a medical certificate. I was able to open the lock with the CORRECT key, after talking to the landlord from behind closed doors, and I was meeting up with a friend for dinner after several attempts at finalizing an appointment. It was ironic that the key I was looking for had been dangling right below the lock itself. Such an accurate metaphor about my current state of affairs.

I feel like there's something I'm not seeing. It's dangling in front of me but I just don't see it. I'm hoping the Saturday tarot reading my roomie and his friend are doing would help enlighten me a bit.

Dinner was okay and my friend wanted to see the apartment. So while we were there, I called in an officemate to join us because I missed her company. We talked, smoked a few cigs, and laughed ourselves through stories of love and relationship preferences up until around 4 in the morning. It was fun indeed and I plan to invite more people when my room mate's not around! Hahahahahaha

How strange though that my officemate lives in the same area down south as my friend. It was like I was meant to invite them both that night not just because they live in the same area, but more so because they're sooo alike.

.... So today officially marks 1 whole week of staying in the apartment. How has it been? It's been wonderful. My savings hurts, but it's worth it. I'm starving like an Überwaif, but it's been worth losing weight over. If freedom had lips to eat me with, I'd have 3 hickey marks on my neck: 1 near my left collarbone and 2 on my nape. Strange how things get into place.

Elements That Make A House

2005-11-22T01:20:00.000+08:00

I've officially moved out last Saturday, November 19. The sound of it still resonates in my mind with much finality, stark and powerful like a last sentence. It's only been 3 days and 2 nights and I feel like a stranger in a new land. Nevermind that most of my material belongings already crossed over from the other side. In the silence of my new room, I begin yet another exodus in the desert of my thoughts.

The room had been cleaned up and painfully waxed, the cabinets and walls meticulously purified with scented bleach and water, the folding bed steadily erect and ready to sleep with its new owner; the owner, lost in his own thoughts trying to decipher when to start unloading his burden and where he'll shelve new memories. Like always, the room itself had no unsolicited advice, no recreative words of comfort for a traveller who has settled into a new abode. Soul food would and always be scarce from now on.

I hardly remember the first night I spent sleeping on the floor. Christmas had invaded the house with its bells and snowflakes, the dark like a silent Santa secretly combing the naughty and the nice. I had been naughty that night and chose to spend it somewhere else. Again I am filled with ambivalence. Regret and exhilaration make an awful prancing pair, a dance of equals on a conflicted mind. I hardly remember the first night I spent sleeping on the floor, for it had been daybreak the time I had set the alarms for work.

Last night was different. I came home with my roommate still awake. He had been painting the eyes of Shiva with a saucerful of orange sandalwood paste. The plastic table bore witness to pagan accessories. I forget their names. In my mind, I'd always be a Christian however non-affiliated I claim to be. It takes much to believe in God, much more to believe in oneself.

We started by him asking me why I had been avoiding him. I told him I hadn't been however truthful I claimed to be. After cleaning his brass lamps and incense burners, he started to tune his sitar. He told me sek-tar literally meant "3 strings" but the musical instrument he cradled on his shoulder had 21.

It was a painful process tuning it. By the time I had closed my eyes in the middle of a classical Indian sonnet, he cut his finger with one of the tweaked wires. He said, "a sitar player is not allowed to lift his finger from the strings." He then asked me what instrument I played, to which I replied the piano. The lost pieces flooded my mind yet again. Feelings of regret, songs of exhilaration, listening to intuition, sound advice and all the other things I felt I wasn't patiently hearing. He cut his finger, then he proceeded to play again, as if the pain of starting over after 3 months meant nothing to him. A true musician is determined to perfect his art. My thoughts were lost in the dim yellow of the room. At least that's how I remember it.

I got to finish my coffee and decided I've had enough cigarettes for the day. Daybreak had arrived and the tide of elements -- thoughts, music, coffee, stories -- that had come to make the house that night, quietly drifted with me to sleep.

The Dance of Equals

2005-11-12T15:57:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
The days when my feet would swell
and my tenderness entwines with the air
are over.
We would dance like equals high on abandonment
amused by the languor of desires
spoken fluently by warm bodies.
.
.
I tiptoe gently and with grace to avoid your sidesteps,
backpedalling, retracing regret like crumbs to a trail.
My shoes are earth that grow grass and grapes
each finger pressing for wine, red and sour and aromatic,
both hands drawn like age to a relic
kneading soil and crumbs with acceding passion.
.
.
Not once would a side glance
come my way from you, as if I'd ignore the vines
growing on your arms like veins in this tight embrace.
Not once would a sampling of breath
caress the neediness on my cheek, as if I'd ignore the collar
of sweat gliding handsomely on your neck,
our angst like bees sinfully attracted to sweetness,
attracted to this force, this denudity.
.
.
The days pass and a dry spell later,
the dance of equals simmers,
foot upon foot of unweighted desire tumbling each other over
on the ground beneath my feet.
I keep myself awake
for the leaves, not the cold nor intimacy,
dowses the water on my skin, impersonates
the strolling of clouds or the swift breeze
that flagellates on my cheek like the pain of your passing.
.
.
There is hope in the yellow morning
a death embraced by the light,
a darkness that beleaguers the dance of equals,
the sunrise that evokes
a slow and torturous eroticism.
.
.
.

I had a twin brother for a night

2005-10-28T15:02:00.000+08:00

It had rained all day but I didn't have to drag my proletariat ass to work because I had a party thing planned out for the night. I decided to go "geeky" for the night because we can't wear jeans to work and because "geeky" is what I sometimes am. My good friend had invited me for the launch of their magazine at Embassy so I wanted to support him and his new job as Business Manager, at the same time, perhaps find a way to mingle with all those people I don't know but see very often on the internet or on the papers. Fine ... "geeky" is what I am all the time.

The party was a great! The music was enticing and danceable, the bar was open till around 11 so I had myself a light beer and some rum coke. Joeboy came in early and he introduced me to some of his friends, one of them was Twin. I felt consciouss when he asked me what I do for a living, I mean, in some ways it still hits me how under-achieverly my work is and how I have this need to keep justifying what I do. (Blame my middle child complex.) But he was nice about it and didn't seem to be judgmental. It's all my head I guess, the way I make a fuss over what I do with my life. So under the disco balls and pink-purple sequin strands hanging from the ceiling, there I was with Joeboy, Twin, and other friends enjoying a nice drink, conversing wittily, and shivering our asses off because the aircon was at full blast and blowing against my semi-fit dark magenta shirt. The last few things I remember him telling me was that he knows most of the people there and that he has a very high tolerance for alcohol. Although I was thoroughly enjoying the conversation, had I stayed there any longer, I would've caused myself a grand mal seizure. I needed more oxygen in my brain and being there felt like being caught in a high society gathering in the tundra.

From the entrance, I watched as the club filled up with people, some celebrities, and title holders of the Miss Earth beauty pageant ( L-O-L) At this point, I was beside one of the tarpaulins thawing off my hands and butt with the heat coming from the spotlights. (L-O-L) After the toast, some pictures, and a few more drinks, we found one of Joeboy's friends already feeling nauseous so they decided to bring him home and left me there in the club. It was uncomfortable because not only did I not know anyone there, I felt a bit socially retarded for not knowing how to know anyone there.

In a few minutes, I received a call from Joeboy telling me that Twin wasn't feeling well too and that it would be a huge favor if I can check up on him. It was 2 am already and they turned the lights on in the club. The party's officially over. I found him sitting down alone on the front steps, wasted alright and with a bottle of water in his hands. I sat beside him on the faux grass mat that covered the steps (just imagine how much water seeped through that and how much water seeped through my tree-trunk brown pants). To say the least, it was uncomfortable. But, I had a job to do and Twin was apologizing profusely for having lost his control over alcohol. He rested his head on my shoulder. I kept a soft slouch so that his head wouldn't fall off. It was still raining and we were getting wet. I had him lie on my lap because he was slowly slipping away. My arms cradled and patted his maroon sweater; he was already passed out by then. The rain gradually painted my glasses with its transparent droplets and I had the sense to bring out the hand napkins I kept in my pocket to cover his face. All we needed then was a faint Tango rhythm in the background and the mellow scene would've been perfect for a movie like Wong Kar-Wai's Happy Together or something.

I swear, I'm such a sucker for poetic scenes. I didn't even notice how scarcely the people left in the area. After a few minutes, my friends arrive and they find me with a guy's face nestled on my lap. They smile teasingly and tell me we look good together. Matching shirts, matching pants, matching shoes, matching skin color. It was hilarious in a way. The editor-in-cheif accompanied Twin to a cab afterwards. We went our own separate way to Buendia.

We were the last people to leave earth last night and these are my ruminations of fraternity.

Japanese Cherry & Sushi

2005-10-25T00:20:00.000+08:00

Last Sunday I met up with my college friends for a bit of tea & sashimi. We had our own stories to tell, something new to talk about like someone's gorgeous new Prada bag or someone's boyfriend doing stuff behind her back or someone's views on marriage and pregnancy or someone's brush with irresponsibility, but the bottomline was that we all lingered on the subject of SEX. So, for those who weren't able to cum dine with us while we ate each others' sushi, too bad ... you missed a lot.

Anyway, after each of us cried over our wasabi sauce and the staff's over-zealousness to serve, someone got to ask the question, "Are you happy?" to everyone. Well, everyone except me.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not offended or feeling left out and I'm not writing this down to make anyone feel guilty for not having asked me. It doesn't really matter, though I dared asked myself the same in hopes of gauging if I've changed my mind about my status quo.

For me, the non-bitter me that is, I believe true happiness is balance. Like one friend said, you can't be happy ALL THE TIME. That would mean there's something wrong with you, that you are experiencing a manic episode or something. I should know, my blog past September was all splattered with the glint of mania. Not that I don't believe anyone can be happy all the time, it's just that I feel it's all a matter of perspective. A person may be having problems with his/her life but he/she can choose to look at the bright side and remain happy in spite of that. This is different from say, someone who has problems but denies their existence and lives in the delusion that everything is perfect. Hence in my case, I guess I can say I am "happy"with work, "happy" with my friends and officemates, "happy" with the changes in my life. But i can also say I am "unhappy"with some other aspects of my existence like my career, my love life, and my plans for the future. My happiness stems from the fact that I am grateful for the good things I've got going for me and my unhappiness stems from the insatiable nature of humans to strive for the best. Perhaps it is true then what people say that simple people find happiness with more facility.

I'm not simple and I refuse to be. So there ... my gift and my curse. However, had I been asked if I am happy, I would've answered, "I try to find balance and that is better."

2005-10-15T17:37:00.000+08:00

... sometimes we know too much for our own good ...

For Algernon

2005-10-15T17:13:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
"Charlie, you amaze me. In some ways you're so advanced, and yet when it comes to making a decision, you're still a child. I can't decide for you, Charlie. The answer can't be found in books -- or be solved by bringing it to other people. Not unless you want to remain a child all your life. You've got to find the answer inside you -- feel the right thing to do. Charlie, you've got to learn to trust yourself."
.
excerpt from Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
.
.
.
The past few weeks had been crazy so I apologize for the silence. I had been avoiding going online and checking email and all the good stuff because somehow, besides being super busy looking for a place every weekend, I had found it quite pointless to exhaust myself over a virtual world when I could've been channeling that constructive thoroughness into my real world. After failed attempts at establishing connections with people trying to dig deeper into possible relationships, my guru had advised me to enter a brief moment of reflection outside the realm of telephone wires and stratospheric message sending. He even lent me a buddhist meditation booklet for people on the go and on the side, I read Charlie's "progris riports" on how to be smart in the novel Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. So there, after a couple of days' abstinence from cybernetwork contact, I fell into a sudden and unexpected state of despair and self-pity. HAHAHAHAHA!!! As if I didn't expect that wouldn't happen, and I mean, not that what I had felt were baseless neuroses from perceived infantile abandonment upon the birth my my younger sister (and then my youngest sister) during my toddler and adolescent years respectively, but the realizations came in heaving fire like demons from limbo, to the point where I had convinced myself that I needed therapy or exorcising(!) ASAP. I'm ok now. It had come after I talked to an officemate about movies and stuff. The brief encounter helped me snap out of the feelings of defeatism caused by the repressed desire for intimacy; the challenges of racing against the dynamic currents while traveling in a comfortably buoyant ship.
.
.
We were supposed to pay the landlord last Sunday and finally be able to move stuff in by this Saturday. But alas, beautiful things have their ugly challenges. The landlord refused to accept post-dated checks that weren't under our names as signatories for the 2-bedroom unit. Why don't we have checking accounts yet you may ask. Well, let's see: My guru and I work 10am to 7:30pm everyday Monday to Friday. Unfortunately, the bank that holds our savings isn't open on Saturdays and their minimum maintaining balance is quite high. With this we had to let go of the offer. Forutnately, we had been nice to our broker (who talked to the agent who talked to the owner through sms.) She's offered to refer us to other units available if and when she sees some. Now that's something; It does help to be nice and polite sometimes.
.
.
I do hope we find a place soon. I'm so excited at the prospect of being dirt poor whilst enjoying the privacy and personal space I've been craving for, especially now that I'm more serious in working up a sweat with the pieces of advice my guru has prescribed for me. Until that point where we can find our new home, it's gonna be a stiff rat race between my team and those other groups who're also looking for 2-bedroom units in the metropolis.
.
.
With each turn of the maze, each whiff of the bait, I learn more about doing things on my own. It won't be soon when I beat the other rats in the race. Till then, I'll lay like flowers for Algernon.
.
.

Jesus to a Child

2005-09-25T01:10:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
I fall again on the third attempt
The third always hardest to recover from
My knees bleed out of failure
out of the ability to resist holding the weight
.
.
It seems forever carrying the cross alone
walking through, the dirt drying up on my sole
.
.
Mary cries the tears I shed as a child on her feet
she, preoccupied with the shroud of her grief
the cloth stained by the blood and sweat of abandonment.
She'd hang this on the walls, proud of the pain and sorrow
of the child she bore, already buried and dead
.
.
I have a father who hath forsaken me, a carpenter of promises
He walks the skies with his clouded feet and furtive responsibilities
.
.
Till my death, I hang on the cross like clothes left out to dry
I am the insignia of leviticus unexplored, not yet a king, not yet the son
.
.
The sins of mankind get laid before me open like a resounding verse
evangelizing the sufferings of mankind to the last two thousand years
.
.
Will it be forever that the savior keep feigning his forgiveness?
.
.
.

Inductee's Step Forward

2005-09-18T05:18:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
I've just concluded half a day's worth of apartment hunting with my officemate-slash-guru. It was sooo exhausting! It's a good thing the weather was very cooperative today and it had been slightly overcast the whole afternoon with just a dash of rain. We still sweat it out though and I'd consider this aerobic activity to be my cardio for the whole week; v'been sluggish lately.
.
The apartments that we saw in the Makati vicinity were decent, though some were a bit over our price range. Ideally, we were both looking for a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom place because I'm gonna be living with a self-confessed neat freak, where I consider myself "decent," we'd prefer separate rooms and bathrooms for us to keep our designated areas the way we want them without getting on each other's dirt. I've been hearing a lot of stories about Guru's current roommate whom, in the heat of argument, he called a spoiled obese pig who likes living in filth. No joke, he really said that.
.
Hmmm ... makes me think how careful I should be with my master's living habits. Not that I'm a slob, it's just that sometimes, the chaotic state of my room is the result of poor time management and lack of prioritization. I don't exactly ENJOY living in the midst of mess, but if I find that by the next morning I can still walk the floor without stepping on anything else except my slippers, then I'd fine and can survive the remains of the day. However, since I'll be living with a stranger-slash-master, I'll be sure to be more mindful of the force, the force of habit that is. I do believe I'm ready for drastic change and although moving out may seem to be a huge step toward my inevitable acceptance of adulthood, the prospect of private space just beckons me to completely abandon my marsupiality. Of course I'm terrified. TERRIFIED. I simply try to reassure myself that I'm doing the right moves and not rushing myself; to reassure myself that I know what I'm getting into and how to get out of it, to know I'm ready to lose it, go with the flow, the rhythm, the bliss of buoyancy. The day I finally move out (possibly only a few weeks more and counting) is the day I say goodbye to shopping on impulse, unlimited surfing with a phone line, 4 out of 7 day night outs, fully-prepared meals and washed dishes, unshared taxi rides and foregoing the monthly bonus just because of an absence; the induction to adulthood as we know it.
.
Like I said earlier, we were both exhausted. He had been more exhausted than I was, having done this hustling every Saturday for 3 months now and beset with a looming deadline to move out completely by Oct. 15. Lately though, we've been seeing nicer places within reach of our budget, a very good thing bcz we wouldn't be digging deep into our savings. It means we're already searching the right places and are probably a few steps closer to hitting oil.
.
Hopefully it's oil we hit and not the sewer. That would be shitty indeed.
.
.
.

How do I fare?

2005-09-12T00:12:00.000+08:00

I've been very quiet the past few weeks and only wrote stuff when I felt like it. Sorry for the poems. I know they're very cryptic because they're kinda private. And like I've said, I'm trying to make everything I write more concise, dealing only with those things I deem significant to write about. So here's an update of what I have been doing the past few weeks:

1. I've been set on a new road to self-discovery. Everything's fresh and there's still a lot to learn but I'm up for the challenge. There are major setbacks for me right now, but I thank god I've a marvelous friend who's more than happy to help me out and teach me stuff about life and relationships that would probably take me years to learn. Overall, it's been a fun ride and I've been meeting up with new people trying to establish friendships, gain new insights and experiences, and taking steps toward a new adventure. Unfortunately, I'm not too comfortable writing them down here because they might involve people who'll be reading this blog in the future. I'm not censoring myself or anything like that, it's just that I don't getting the heat about my blog when people start reading about themselves. For the most part, this blog has to be about me and not anybody else. Perhaps there would be a few exceptions to the rule, but overall, as much as possible, I'd like to hog the entries with my conciseness.

2. Work was terrible last month. I had 1 absence (due to unforseen circumstances that happened on a Thursday night) and 1 instance of tardiness. I was also cautioned about not taking my break schedule on time. As a result, I lost all hope of a bonus for August (oh what a loss that is!). Not just that, my quality scores have suffered a lot because everyone's been very strict in preparation for the company transition. Bullox. September's a new month and I will throw my self at the feet of punctuality for sake of professionalism.

PS - The temporary OIC likes me. The other supervisors tell me I'm her favorite so I appear to be under her scrutiny all the time. Oh well, if it gets me promoted and get that higher salary that'll keep me afloat with my own place, I'd gladly take that opportunity despite company politix. At this point, I'd prefer to be buoyant than to have that sinking feeling of hopelessness (and old age).

3. Been looking for my own place. I decided to join my officemate with his apartment hunting around the Makati area. So far with our minuscule budget, the search has been a bit futile. There were places that were decent and close enough to our office, unfortunately, those great finds were easily lost. Just last Friday, my officemate was talking to this man leasing a 2-floor apartment somewhere past JP Rizal for P5,500, the very next day when he was supposed to go inspect it, the guy says it's already been taken by a couple, complete with 11 post-dated checks and appropriate deposits. Sheeet. Two-bedroom apartment for P5,500!!! That was a steal!!! We're not giving up hope though. This coming Saturday we're looking at a 2-bedroom condo unit near Kalayaan Ave. Hope it ends our search for a place. I need to start trying to be more independent.

4. This same friend is part Filipino, part Chinese, part Hispanic, part Indian and he's practically lived around the world. He was born in Iran, grew up in Greece, Texas, Baguio City, and Kenya, and his parents are retired engineers in Mallora in Spain. He's more Hindu than anything and it was totally refreshing to be conversing with someone who knows so much about the world and who has such a different view about religion compared to the Catholicism that (rarely) practice now. Absolutely enlightening. He's taught me about the adaptability of guilt, the different types of people he's come across with, how he can travel the world without spending so much, Indian food, relationships, love, betrayal, sex, and yes, a bit of tantra. He's informally taken me in as his tantric apprentice (hahaha) and we've just begun our lessons, but already, it's beginning to change my perceptions about a lot of things. I have yet to put them to practice though ... ;)

PS - People in the office have begun noticing how we always sit together in the office. They haven't even heard how we plan to move into the same apartment! How hysterical that would be when rumors start spreading about us being an item! HAHAHAHA O god the hilarity ...

So there, a semi-detailed update about my life so far. Oh yeah, I also bought new pants yesterday.

2005-09-05T01:15:00.000+08:00

"I've lost my mojo!!!" (photo inset features Austin Powers and Ivana Humpalot)

Bunch of Lunch

2005-09-05T00:14:00.000+08:00

It's probably like eating in Shakey's Pizza place. The smell of baking pies greases up the ol' appetite for a family size Manager's Choice, the green bell peppers cooked perfectly to compliment the brown sausage bits resting on a bed of tomato paste and mozzarella cheese. You sit down on one of those dark red leather seats for couples and you patiently wait for the waiter to take your order. The Friday didn't mark a payday weekend so you're off to getting one of those meals for the budget-conscious. Bunch of Lunch. It's always safe when you don't know what else to order.

So there you are, with your date, your plate a disarray of fast food. The anaemic spaghetti convoluted like your decision-making, the slice of triangular bread with ham and a sprinkle of cheese -- this they call a single pizza slice. Still single, like you. Shreads of stale lettuce, corn bits like yellow droppings, a slice of tomato that looks like a broken wheel -- a thousand excuses to bail out like generic dressing made of catsup and mayonnaise. An overfried chicken drumstick that's probably remains of the day before.

But hey ... where're the MOJOS??? I can't find my mojo!!!

Perhaps my date has them hidden, somewhere under the table from where we've been playing footsie in the dark.

everyone's been quiet ...

2005-08-31T00:39:00.001+08:00

The cigarette smoke was like praise

a musty offering of incense from my lungs.

Its scent, inextricably bound to my origins

growing out like braided hair to the scalp.

The roots were the erected foundations of a house

where I live my days like an offering

to a congregation of silent enlistments.

The holy water was what I drank

thirsty like a heretic on the verge of believing;

I made believe it cleansed me of my cleanliness,

having denounced my longing to the scent of egregiousness.

The scent, I thought, coming from an erected strand of incese.

This was a new religion to explore

the pungent smoke leaking the breath of lighted ends,

a praise for the gods, a seething of wisdom

buried under a bed of prayers and burdens;

their advice that went past the theory of solutions.

Unfortunately, I am unmistakably deterministic

a man without a philosophy on his adventures.

my hands are tied

2005-08-25T01:05:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
I'm busy playing hide and seek. Shoo!!!
.
.
.

Hide and Seek

2005-08-17T00:55:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
Would it spell danger to travel
the land of young trees?
A child without its teeth
gnawing on the virile branches rich with sap;
Her little chest barely covering
the carvings of names on a peeling bark.
She would never know her name
nor the extent of her generosity.
Her hands would grasp the end of the branch
like the hollow opening on a conch,
her eyes would close, full of curiosity
enamored by the scent of grass and seas.
.
.
Beyond the grasslands are the plains,
a place where the wind had sown her impurities.
It reminds her of a young boy,
the earth as flat and as smooth as his own abdomen.
Not so much as a tongue can distinguish its graininess,

nor the creatures that come out in the evenings
once the heat of the soils lose their intimacy.
.
.
Something had grown here once before.
An ocean perhaps, with creatures as silent and frisky
as the children who played hide and seek
far beyond the shadow of the growing trees.
She used to love and used to get hurt, playing and losing
and finding each other in the wilderness of water.
Their names had been etched by other lost children

on the shores sifted by the anxious tides.
.
.
Each game is playing and losing and finding each other.

At the time the boy becomes a young man,

he discovers something that grows within himself

the need to hide and seek for the young woman.

And at the time the girl becomes a young woman,
she discovers something that grows within herself
a gnawing distaste for awareness.

.
.
.

The Future's Overrated

2005-08-08T23:43:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
like in a prophecy the day before
the future had been revealed on a Sunday evening.
where the church had been silent
the bells toll, ringing into my deafness
an explicit tongue borne without words.
my words spread like tapered fire
across the emaciated body of sacred literature.
i read it well with all those years of learning
doing me good like a young messenger's sermon.
.
.
the parsonage had dealt with famine
there were no people, the hallways were dark.
the candlelight escaped the corners
where on its walls crawled the earthly creatures.
.
one of them was me.
.
i had banished myself from yearning
and my punishment? the future.
the future had been revealed to me
and i thought i could not deal well.
what had i to do with the knowledge
of the world's destruction? the many souls
that would heave in purgatory?
the prophecy of my own death?
.
.
i kept what i knew, deep in my lungs
for speech would do no good.
everyone would be sensitive,
everyone would deny the consequence
of god's amusement with wrath:
the ignorance, the guilt, the pleasures.
.
.
the future was overrated.
the past had existed, the present exists.
the future will forever be a concept.
.
.
in silence, i awaited the second coming
my arms draped around the messenger's words.
but here i found myself to be in control.
i was not afraid of my own death
nor the death of the present.
i held the truth in my own hands
and silently repeated the last 7 words.
.
.
.

Prophecy Fulfilled

2005-08-07T23:27:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
According to Holiday Mathis ...
.
.
.
August 7 (Sunday)
.
You're in the mood for lots of diversity, and you'll find what you seek. You'll be enticed by intellectually challenging and artistically daring company. Casual conversations lead to romance.
.
.
August 9 (Tuesday)
.
It's easy to get caught up in the superficiality of a person, and it takes a view from the distance to really understand who you are dealing with. So put some space and time between you and the object of your infatuation.
.
.
.

If we don't stand for something, we'll fall for anything

2005-08-04T01:44:00.000+08:00

Perhaps I was deaf in my former life, a silent traveler and chronicler who endured the noiseless journey by focusing attention to visual details. A traveler who found allure in seeing new places and encountering people from different walks of life, not knowing the variations in their voices, male or female, child or adult, angry or happy, sincere or selling a pitch. Perhaps I never knew music except those thoughts I'd conjured imagining more of the air that comes out of mouths as having more than just the scent of a previous meal. No wonder now that I surround myself with melodies, recordings, lyrics, conversations, accents ... all those things I never got to hear before.

Perhaps I was deaf in my former life, with the me having no such interest in television or reality, unless they reminded me of things I'd long forgotten across many deaths, past many relationships and accidents. Perhaps only had I been a husband, a wife, a son or daughter, an illegitimate sibling; maybe I had been a house or scenes in my life then that had been buried in monticules or underscored like errors in a manuscript.

Perhaps I had been deaf before, my eloquence only surfacing in the written language where I refused to speak up and defend my opinions. I speak in symbols, in metaphors that only a few understand, for where I grew up in silence, I had been accustomed to knowing that there was never a need to be heard even if I held the truth at the tip of my tongue. It should be a discovery free of passion or bias.

And now that I have been reborn with the ability to hear arguments, decipher inflections and pauses, or contribute to these misunderstandings with my own voice, I'm afraid I'm not used to it yet. I'm gradually adjusting to the misgivings and taunts, for a first-timer, having to suffer my own judgments and/or insecurities where these were once measures of beating.

Perhaps now is the time to be heard. The illusion of longevity or youth I hastily recast through a new medium.

2005-07-31T02:18:00.000+08:00

I haven't slept in a year ...

The Machinist

2005-07-31T01:36:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
“I guess I’ll have to slay the monster with my mouth ...”
.
.
.
.
Last Friday, I watched The Machinist (featuring Christian Bale at 119 pounds) with a friend. Christian Bale was skinnier than a waif model. He put the starving people in Somalia to shame with his boniness.
.
I’m sorta like that now. My upper body’s really skinny. My collarbones are visible. Even with a shirt on, I can see my acromion processes jutting out from my shoulders like a hanger. I can see my ribs even when I breathe in air. I don’t know if it’s a cause for worry. I mean, I’ve been maintaining the same weight, so it’s weird seeing my body change like this.
.
I have become a machinist and I am operating myself.
.
It’s funny how life imitates art. Just today, I went to the mall with my family. We had a nice buffet dinner. I ate a lot of course -- dinuguan, laing, sinigang, lotsa veggies, 2 pieces of boiled fish head, a couple of spring rolls, and 4 servings of mango sherbet. It was perfect because it was only after dinner that we roamed the mall. By the time we were done window shopping, I didn’t have that feeling of fullness anymore.
.
Home, on our driveway, I picked my stuff up and went out of the car. I closed the door and unintentionally jammed my dad’s knuckles from where he held on to the doorframe to get out. It happened so fast and I opened the door as quickly as I could. He didn’t seem to hurt that bad though. He wasn’t screaming or anything. It probably would’ve hurt more if it had been his fingertips that got caught. Anyway, the whole scene reminded me of that part in the movie where the machinist’s co-worker lost a hand and 3 fingers when Christian Bale’s character accidentally pressed the activating button and was unable to shut the machine off. I was just stunned.
.
.
I guess it’s never gonna be fixed, my relationship with my family. It’s not sad; it’s just something I have to live with I suppose.
.
.
I wasn’t always like this. I dunno what happened; what I do know is that something happened along the way during college and I feel I’ve never fully recovered from that experience. I used to be angsty, now it’s all sadness. It’s like, my default disposition. Of course, it stinks to be sad all the time but I’m not like that in person. I’m not like my blog, always serious and basking in metaphors, always longing for that adventure without ever reaching the first step on the moon. I am fun to be with and I can get carried away sometimes. I don’t even know why I’m qualifying myself.
.
Not so long ago I had a heart-to-heart talk with a college friend over Chinese food. We had observed how there are certain people who may never truly experience melancholy, who may never really know how it is to be depressed. Perhaps they’re lucky, perhaps they never had that mental incapacitance gene in their body to be more than just sad. I say good for them; we should all be so lucky.
.
.
And perhaps the only reason I can propose right now to explain why I’m like this is that somewhere along the way, somewhere in college or after that, I’ve begun to become comfortable with melancholy. That even if everything’s going right and doing well, had I been given the chance to end it all without having to kill myself, I’d probably take that chance without regret.
.
.
.

Excuse the boredom

2005-07-25T01:59:00.000+08:00

For my namesake, other stuff i got from webpages ...

PS - yes transience, i'll get into the meat of things with your interview questions asap. these things are just so much easier to answer though. i couldn't fight the temptation of superficiality hehehe

1.Complete this phrase: "I couldbe...."* traveling. The world awaits …

2.WHAT IS THE WALLPAPER ON YOURCELLPHONE?* sony ericsson BLUB wallpaper. so generic …

3.DID YOU GET ENOUGH SLEEP LAST NIGHT?* sorta. I slept for 2 hours while listening to Valse d’ Amelie on my cd player, woke up at 7am then fell asleep again till 2pm. That’s about 8 hours total.

4.FIRST THING YOU THOUGHT ABOUT THISMORNING WHEN YOU WOKE UP?* why was the blue beetle stinging me in the face? Why was I running around the old house? Why was I running around the building? It wasn’t a good night’s rest that’s why I woke up at 7.

5.WHAT DO YOU HAVE HANDY AT YOURBEDSIDE?* a big glass of water, lip balm on cold nights and the lamp switch at arm’s reach

6. EVER TRIED TO SKIP BATHING FOR MORE THAN 3 DAYS?* once during an immersion program in the province. The water in the well had chunks of algae in it. How was it supposed to make me any cleaner?

7. GRILLED OR FRIED?* Steamed. It’s so bad it’s good.

8. WHAT MAKES YOU UNIQUE from OTHERS?* That I think the idea of uniqueness or the concept of individuality is a conspiracy perpetrated by the 1st World countries to mask the reality of a socialist society and the collectively conscious thought process of the masses. The Chinese exacerbate this with mass production.

9. ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK?* only when I can’t feel my legs

10. FAVORITE HANGOUT?* anywhere air-conditioned where smoking is allowed11. PEOPLE YOU CAN LIVE WITHOUT?* noisy kids, gossiping bitches and bastards, and oh yes, stupid drivers

12. FIRST THING YOU WILL BUY IF GIVEN 1THOUSAND DOLLARS?* either I’d keep it in the bank or use it to pay for rent. I want to move out asap!
13. FAVORITE SONG WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPY?* if I want to fall asleep, I’d listen to Maurice Ravel’s Bolero or Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie.

14. WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF? ...* The evil that men do.

15. ARE YOU A GIVER OR TAKER? ...* I’m a caretaker.

16. WHAT ARE YOUR NICKNAMES?* ennui, sparks, trainspotter, operator, …

17. WHAT IS YOUR DAD'S MIDDLE NAME?* Vanderbilt

18. MOST RECENT MOVIE THAT YOUWATCHED?* Fantastic 4 a couple of hours ago.

19. INVISIBLE FOR A DAY, WHAT WOULD YOUDO?* scare the shit out of people – pull their hair, throw water at them, kick their ass … the works!

20. STUCK ON A DESERT ISLAND & COULDHAVE ONLY ONE KIND OF FOOD FOR THEREST OF YOUR LIFE, WHAT WOULDIT BE?* Assuming that I’m gonna die in that island anyway knowing how I don’t have any survival skills, I’d have to say wendy’s triple patty hamburger with fries and rootbear, supersized. Indulge then die.

21. FAVORITE TV COMMERCIAL?* Pagoda cold wave lotion.

22. IF YOU'LL DIE TOMORROW, WHATWILL YOU DO?* Gather up what’s left of my savings, and spend it all on my family and friends.

23. FIRST THING YOU'LL SAVE IN A FIRE? ..* my poems.

24. BOOK YOU’RE CURRENTLY READING?* About Adam, this sci-fi evolution book I borrowed. Bored with it. I plan to start reading Atwood’s The Blind Assassin.

25. WHAT ARE THE THINGS YOU ALWAYSBRING?* my melancholy

26. WHAT DID YOU WANNA BE WHEN YOUWERE A KID?* a grown up

27. WHAT DO YOU USUALLY DO WHEN THECLOCK TURNS 7 AM?* go back to sleep for another 30 minutes.

28. THE COLOR OF YOUR BEDSHEET?* red polka dot stars and dark blue stars and stripes. Trés Americain.

29. WHO YOU WANT TO MEET?* My grandfather and his real parents

30. HOW'S LIFE TODAY?* the same as yesterday but with the looming thought of work tomorrow

Got this from a webpage

2005-07-24T02:41:00.000+08:00

Which literature classic are you?

.
Virginia Woolf: Orlando.

You are a challenge, for
outer events, the outside world, the time etc.
play no importance to you. Your focus is in
writing, in gender issues, and inside your own
head. Self-analysis and exploration of yourself
as well as the outer world hold great
importance to you.
.

Which Hellenistic School of Philosophy Would You Belong To?

.
You are a Stoic.

Stoicism is a school of philosophy commonly
associated with such Greek philosophers as Zeno
of Citium, Cleanthes, or Chrysippus and with
such later Romans as Cicero, Seneca, Marcus
Aurelius, and Epictetus. Organized at Athens in
310 BC by Zeno of Citium and Chrysippus, the
Stoics provided a unified account of the world
that comprised formal logic, materialistic
physics, and naturalistic ethics. Later Roman
Stoics emphasized more exclusively the
development of recommendations for living in
harmony with a natural world over which one has
no direct control. Their group would meet upon
the porch of the market at Athens, the stoa
poecile. The name stoicism derives from the
Greek stoa, meaning porch.
.
The Stoic philosophy developed from that of the
Cynics whose founder, Antisthenes, had been a
disciple of Socrates. The Stoics emphasized
ethics as the main field of knowledge, but they
also developed theories of logic and natural
science to support their ethical doctrines.
Holding a somewhat materialistic conception of
nature they followed Heraclitus in believing
the primary substance to be fire. They also
embraced his concept of Logos which they
identified with the energy, law, reason, and
providence found throughout nature.
They held Logos to be the animating or 'active
principle' of all reality. The Logos was
conceived as a rational divine power that
orders and directs the universe; it was
identified with God, nature, and fate. Human
reason and the human soul were both considered
part of the divine Logos, and therefore
immortal.
.
The foundation of Stoic ethics is the principle,
proclaimed earlier by the Cynics, that good
lies in the state of the soul itself, in wisdom
and restraint. Stoic ethics stressed the rule
"Follow where Reason leads"; one must
therefore strive to be free of the
passionslove, hate, fear, pain, and pleasure.
Living according to nature or reason, they held, is
living in conformity with the divine order of
the universe. The four cardinal virtues of the
Stoic philosophy are wisdom, courage, justice,
and temperance, a classification derived from
the teachings of Plato.
.
A distinctive feature of Stoicism is its
cosmopolitanism. All people are manifestations
of the one universal spirit and should,
according to the Stoics, live in brotherly love
and readily help one another. They held that
external differences such as rank and wealth
are of no importance in social relationships.
Thus, before the rise of Christianity, Stoics
recognized and advocated the brotherhood of
humanity and the natural equality of all human
beings. Stoicism became the most influential
school of the Greco-Roman world and produced a
number of remarkable writers and personalities.
.
.
.

2005-07-21T03:15:00.000+08:00

"And the woman the woman turns her tangerine lips from his one hand like the head of a dead swan draped down over his heavy neck the fingers strangely crimped tightly together"
-- exceprt from Laurence Ferlinghetti's Short Story On a Painting of Gustav Klimt

precipice

2005-07-21T02:52:00.000+08:00

.
.
.
today i sat beside the window gazing out through the rain-drenched main roads and people walking under their umbrellas. i sat beside the window like always, clipped to my headphones trying hard to fall asleep. i had been avoiding a phone call with no apparent reason, the waltz of the swans filling in on what was supposed to be a pleasant ringtone being answered.
.
someone sat beside me the way i wanted someone to sit beside me, with the kind of closeness defying the anonymity encircling my personal space. i knew i was being observed so i arched my neck to the left like an ugly duckling coming to terms with its age. someone sat beside me close enough that i pretended to fall asleep.
.
the ride had taken an hour, but it was enough. the distance i had traveled had only been a few inches from where i sat alone. from a watcher’s point of view, it would’ve seemed we were passing through together. perhaps we had in another life, had that lifetime become today, and today being the tomorrow i had thought about.
.
the rain seeped through the windows and spilt water on my clothes. i did not mind. i had imagined my hands holding on to someone else’s but …
.
.
today was a different day. i sat in my chair, my usual eloquence spilling through the assortment of messages. i did not realize I had been talking too much. i did not even bother reading through the reply. then I did. and for the first time, i fell silent not of my own will. i fell silent not because i became afraid. it’s funny how a few simple words could disarm me without my knowing. and here i thought i had improved my vocabulary so much already. here i thought i had picked up on the rules of literacy and paying for bus fares when i could’ve easily walked the steady pace.
.
the glass was about to break but it felt comforting, knowing someone would help me pick up the pieces, the closeness defying the anonymity of my personal space. after a long time of wanting to be detached, i am reminded of how it is to miss someone again. to fall silent for all the right reasons. i had no headphones, no music filling in the background; just me sitting on a chair, gazing through an imaginary glass-guarded precipice of open words.
.
.
for once perhaps, i’d let myself unfurl and not pretend to be dying.
.
.
.