Belated happy father's day

a recent conversation over ym with my sister, the manghuhula addict.

Ate: siguro 3 ppl na may psychic ability nagsabi magkakajowa na ako this year to early next year
Ate: sana nga!
Ate: yung isa dun yung friend ko na nakakita ng multo
deepsydoodle: ngee
Ate: yung girl na nag point out sa akin na mali spelling pangalan ni daddy sa puntod
Ate: kahit di nya alam ang pangalan
Ate: o ha!
deepsydoodle: talaga?
deepsydoodle: wrong spelling?
deepsydoodle: i never noticed
Ate: it now sez Amilatha Paul
Ate: duh

(my dad's name is amitabha)

deepsydoodle: what??????????????
Ate: korek
deepsydoodle: why??????
Ate: bagong repaint di na siguro nila naintindihan
deepsydoodle: hmph
deepsydoodle: HMPH
deepsydoodle: but the old name was on marble
deepsydoodle: it was engraved
deepsydoodle: didn't need to be repainted
Ate: ewan ko nga eh
Ate: sabi ni marj sa kin pinapoint out siguro kasi ayaw nya yun
Ate: so its my next project to fix that
deepsydoodle: wow
deepsydoodle: grabe na

my dad died of a heart attack when i was three and my sister about eight. he's buried in my mom's hometown in laguna, which my sister visited with friends recently.

i always brush off the "i'm sorrys" i get from other people when they learn this about me. i sometimes say, "oh don't be, it wasn't your fault" which throws people off, that i can be so offhand about it. but really, most of the time i don't feel that i've lost anything. i never found it sad or weird that i just had one parent. to me, it was --and is-- utterly normal. i only really started thinking about it in college, by which time i figure i was too old be screwed up by my dad's death.

during one of our dinners out on this trip, marlon (who idolizes his father) asked me what it was like growing up without a dad. i had a very long and pensive answer, which i won't go into here (maybe in a future post). but what meant most to me about that conversation was that he asked. nobody's ever asked me anything like that before. i guess they feel it's too touchy a topic. and when i mentioned it to him, he simply said, "i want to know you more." hearing that, after two years, is wonderful.

anyway, moving on before i get too serious. fortunately, neither my sister nor i have ever had any overt ghostly experiences with my dad (my mom is a different story). i remember making a really morbid joke about his ghost in high school. some of my classmates and i were lobbying for a prom and were thinking of getting our parents to put in a good word for us with the school administration. i joked, "what if i got my dad to talk to them? that would really get them to listen!" needless to say, my classmates just stared at me, horrified.

so there it is, the first "sign" we've gotten from my dad for a really, really long time. of course it's not scary (duh, it's my dad) and not sad. but still.

belated happy father's day, daddy. i know you're happy where you are. and that you're still looking out for me. i miss you. and i'll try to go visit you soon.

Island getaway = Island: Get away!

hehe. just a little creative punctuation inspired by eats shoots and leaves, introduced by mel during one of the last few funny email strings from my days at the factory.

but really. that's what i felt on my first (and god willing, only) trip to sentosa, singapore's very own island getaway.

erm. well.

marlon and i decided to finally end the mystery and go touristy with a saturday afternoon trip to sentosa. clad in jeans and armed with just a little woven handbag (no bathing suit, no towel, no salbabida), we took the mrt down to harbourfront, where we boarded the bus to sentosa. upon seeing all the excited singaporeans decked out in their you-can't-out-hip-me beach finery (complete with beach volleyball, ipod and cooler), i briefly wondered whether i should have dressed up for the beach, and why i, a certified sun worshipper, wasn't the least bit excited about this as i usually am about other beach trips.

after the bus went down one road, turned a corner, crossed a 250-meter bridge, and i saw a sign welcoming me to sentosa, singapore's very own island paradise, i figured my instincts had just warned me that dressing up for this place wouldn't be worth it. i mean, hot damn, i could have walked to said island paradise. me, the nutella-snacking poolside potato who doesn't get out of the house until late afternoon.

maybe i'm just a manila girl – i usually expect paradise to come after two hours of city traffic, a three-hour ride on a bus with either a rooster or a cavan of rice on board, fending off a dozen feisty vendors of various local delicacies, and at least three bouts of furious haggling (give or take a bumpy tricycle ride). so if paradise is only a fifteen-minute mrt ride and a two-minute bus ride away, how paradisial can it possibly be?

at its best, sentosa is a miniaturized distillation of its parent island – safe, convenient, not particularly unattractive, manicured to the point of artifice, and full of very thin people wearing scanty expensive clothing. at its worst, IMHO, it's a godawful place to go if you want a relaxing beach weekend.

ang dami dami dami dami daming tao. i can barely count the number of times i nearly got trampled by hordes of indian families and japanese tourists. even the beach is super crowded, because nobody seems to want to go into the water, which is reminiscent of manila bay breakwater in its lack of ocean appeal. and the queue for the buses (three bus lines take you to various attractions around the island) is rather what i imagine lining up at a soup kitchen during the great depression must have been like.

much to the delight of my nerdy boyfriend, we only had time to visit underwater world, which was at least fun and can take up a whole afternoon. the best part of the visit was the glass tunnel, where we watched sharks and stingray swooping all around us and feeding. such swift and lethal creatures – they left me awestruck.

marlon, lost in fishie heaven

currystrumpet meets giant arrowana

animal, mineral or vegetable?

fish, driftwood or turd? (pardon my french)

dugong = my future, if i don't give up my nutella habit

before and after: currystrumpet gives her stingray dinner a loving pat

From Slovenia with love

caught the stroj at the boon lay open field. industrial drumming act: think stomp, but from slovenia, more angst-filled, and without dancing. plus they have this one super, super buff girl na talagang nakakatibo.

now, where was i, before i was so rudely interrupted by my iffy wifi connection?

ah yes. yung babaeng nakakatibo.

grabe. pounding industrial steel seems to be quite the workout. nakakainggit.

i was so enraptured by this girl's back that marlon and i hung around after the show trying to take a picture of it. in the process, i overheard this funny exchange between an old chinese man (ocm) and one of the slovenian roadies/managers (srm).

ocm: where you from?
srm: we're from slovenia.
ocm smiles and nods vaguely.
srm (trying to be friendly): do you know where slovenia is?
ocm frowns and shakes his head.
srm: we were part of the former yugoslavia.
ocm (brightening): ah! czech?
srm: no, yugoslavia.
ocm: czech. czechoslovakia.
srm: yugoslavia.
ocm: czech.

they continue in this maddening roundabout fashion for a couple of minutes. srm begins to get red in the face, but exerts superhuman effort to stay calm and cheery. he decides to give up on the idea of the former yugoslavia.

srm: we're beside germany and austria.
ocm: ah!
srm (smiling): yes! You know austria?
ocm (nodding happily): czechoslovakia.

i could so relate to this poor roadie. i came from a never-heard tiny high school and have endured years and years of similar exchanges and vague nods when asked where i went to high school. i felt like taking the poor roadie aside, patting him on the arm and telling him i knew where his country was. i could have also said that i know what his currency is called (tolar), what the slovenian word for sale is (ugodno) and how to pronounce the name of his capital, ljubljana (use a 'y' sound for the 'j's). maybe that would have made him feel better.

why do i know these little factoids, you may wonder? slovenia holds a special place in my memory as being the location of my very first international choral competition (which we swept, nya ha ha) on my very first european trip with the glee club. a beautiful place with lots of fun recollections –

buses on the street slowing down to gawk at us black-haired, brown-skinned people; partying in a centuries-old wine cellar; appearing on slovenian national tv; getting twenty dollars of my pocket money changed into tolar and feeling like a bazillionaire; crossing the drava river to go shopping in downtown maribor and happily realizing that a shop with "super ugodno” plastered all over it was definitely somewhere i wanted to be.

sorry. attack of nostalgia there. back to the show.

marlon and i only got to catch up with the second half of the stroj's performance, because it took us so goddamn long to get to the open field beside the boon lay mrt station. (long by singapore standards anyway; by metro manila standards, getting across the city in one hour by bus is a miracle.) as far as singapore is concerned, boon lay is at the end of freaking nowhere.

which meant that, with the exception of a few rocker teens and art-starved stragglers like me and the boyf, the stroj's audience was mostly the indian laborers, old people, children and families living in the surrounding hdbs (government flats). who for the most part sat primly in their neat rows of white monobloc seats while the stroj was bashing their hearts out into their self-soldered industrial behemoth of a setup.

which was a shame, because the performance was pretty awesome. they deserved a better audience for their talent, passion and grit. there is something tribal in their live music that hits a nerve in you – whatever nerve is responsible for those times in your life when you fling yourself out into a crowd and dance with wild abandon. i really wished they had played in manila. all the jologs would have been trashing the monobloc chairs, or all the hot tattooed girls in dangerously low-cut jeans dancing on top of those chairs, by the middle of their second number. in boon lay, there was nary a foot-tapper in sight.

there were some very pinoy moments though. one of the stroj's numbers had a firebreather (yes, you read right) belching flames rhythmically, in concert with the rest of the instruments. each fiery spurt was met by a round of applause and a chorus of “woh lah!”s. I'm guessing in filipino, “woh lah!” would translate to something like “walastik! bumubuga siya ng apoy!” it was all very tanghalan ng kampeon or other such noontime singing contest, where the singer shifts to a higher key, veins popping, and the audience bursts into dutiful applause.

and naturally, the audience rose out of its catatonia when the stroj ended its show with fireworks. i personally didn't think they needed to end with a bang (literally), but maybe it was a local audience thing that their local handlers decided to do. we used to do those kinds of endings in high school variety shows.

what the stroj does seems like a lot of fun, although after reading through their website, i realize that it's all much harder than it looks. one of their numbers ends with two guys using steel drums (as in dram na lalagyan ng tubig) as instruments, bashing at them rhythmically with sledgehammers. it looked like tons of fun, like something everyone should get to do on a really bad day. which made me wonder: do they bash their instruments better on a bad day? do they invoke the day's resentments during that portion of the show?

BAMMMM!!! this is for the dead singaporean audience!!
BAMMM!!!! this is for that pig's brain soup we had for lunch!!!!
BAMMMMM!!! this is for sticking us out here in the boonies!!!
BAMMMM!!!! why are we playing for geriatrics?!?!?!
BAMMM!!! where are the hot half-naked tattooed babes??!?!?
BAMMM!!!! why the f#%$&! aren't we playing in manila?!?!??!
BAMMMM!!! hey waitaminit, that's my favorite drum you're bashing!!!!
BAMMM!!!! why is the only girl in this group buffer than i am??!?!?!

i guess only the stroj will ever know for sure.

--

to make our lengthly sojourn worthwhile, marlon and i stuck around after the show and discovered something extremely interesting: a dry goods market at the boon lay mrt station/bus interchange. major diligence is required to sift through the assortment of cheap goods. good thing i'm a diligent shopper.

our cheap booty: for marlon, copies of empire of the sun and batman (guess what recent release we're totally hung up on). plus the world's largest, greasiest chicken wing for a dollar. for me, an embroidered 100% cotton kurtah from nepal. i was so taken with a whole rack of the shirts that i spent twenty minutes hemming and hawing over what color to get.

screen test: you can probably figure out by the background which version i decided to take.

we hung around and browsed for a long while, long enough to necessitate a mad dash for the last train back to civilization. from slovenia to nepal all in one evening -- downtown singapore suddenly seemed so dull after the adventure.

The Kitchen God's Wife(y)

meet marlon, the kitchen god. in this picture, he is expertly deveining prawns for our second-year anniversary dinner (nearly two weeks ago!). since i flew in pretty late on our anniv itself, we hied off to jumbo for a cop-out comfort dinner of black pepper crab. the next evening, though, we decided to make our own little feast culled from superfast foods by michael van straten and barbara griggs.

(about this cookbook: i don't know if you can still find it on shelves, because my mom bought it a long time ago. the earliest i can remember seeing this around the house was sixth or seventh grade. and every single time i see it, i just have to pick it up and read it. it has a whole section on foods that are good for people in a certain age group: toddlers, students, working singles, supermoms and dads, middle-aged, etc. its main selling point is that it's full of yummy recipes that take 20 minutes or less to prepare. kind of like jamie oliver's shows, it's meant to give people confidence about cooking -- that it doesn't have to be complicated and that anyone can do it.)

this is what we did with the prawns.

scallops and prawns provencale

preparation time: 10 minutes
cooking time: 10 minutes

6 scallops, 250g fresh prawns, 1 tbs lemon juice, rock salt and freshly ground black pepper, flour for dusting, 2 tbs olive oil, 1 tbs butter, 2 cloves of garlic (chopped), 2 tbs of finely chopped parsley

wash the scallops and slice into three or four pieces. wash and blot dry the prawns. sprinkle them with lemon juice and dust very lightly with flour (or you can dust right before you toss them into the pan). heat oil and butter, add scallops and allow them to take color. add prawns and fry. add garlic and parsley, toss together and serve. yummy with brown rice. :-)

of course for the kitchen god, this was barely cooking -- it was just tossing things together. as for me, it was pretty new, considering that i hardly do any cooking at home. my sister and i can basically fry stuff and cook anything instant or out of a can. haha. so, to build confidence, i first stuck to brainless things like dusting the prawns and chopping whatever needed to be chopped.

currystrumpet's little area of responsibility.

i picked out the cute mini grater at the grocery. one dollah only la.

the cheese, shiitake mushrooms, ripe tomatoes and sundried tomatoes (above) were for another dish we decided to do: sundried tomato risotto! i won't put down the recipe here, but suffice it to say it was more complicated and took much longer to cook than the scallops and prawns. that was mainly because we did it the hard way and actually boiled the brown rice in vegetable stock. the kitchen god later said we could have cheated and precooked the rice.

playing wifey: the kitchen god's lowly student gives the risotto a helpful stir

sitting down to our self-cooked anniv feast. happily, both dishes turned out quite well.

superfast foods got another whirl a couple of days later, with a recipe i'd been eyeing for a while. it just looked so yummy and easy.

pepper-crusted fish in a warm lime and coriander vinaigrette

preparation time: 10 minutes
cooking time: 8 minutes

1 heaped tbs mixed peppercorns (coarsely crushed), 2 fresh or frozen white fish fillets (we used salmon), 1 tbs olive oil

for the vinaigrette: 1 clove garlic (peeled), 2 level tsp coarse-grain mustard (wholegrain or dijon should be ok), grated rind and juice of two limes (just one is enough), 4 tbs olive oil, rock salt and freshly ground black pepper (the more the merrier), fresh coriander leaves, chopped (dried is ok too)

coat the fish with the peppercorns, pressing them well into both sides. set aside.

prepare the vinaigrette. crush garlic in a bowl, then stir in the mustard, lime rind and juice, 4 tbs olive oil, salt, pepper and coriander.

heat 1 tbs of olive oil in a large frying pan. fry fish for about 3 minutes until crisp and golden. keeping the heat high, pour the vinaigrette over and around the fish. maintain heat for a couple of minutes to reduce liquid.

masterpiece in progress: salmon in lime and coriander vinaigrette

this was exquisitely simple (eee! cooking show lingo!), except that it was a freaking bitch trying to grate lime rind on that tiny cutesy grater.

BUT. OMG. it was like the best tasting dish i've ever had a part in making. it smelled absolutely wonderful while it was cooking. i usually associate lime with chemical scents such as dishwashing liquid and car air freshener, but real actual lime cooking just has such a heavenly scent.

it smelled so good i had visions of dinner parties dancing in my head. you know the type, when you dress up in a dress and heels and invite friends over for wine and some impossibly easy-to-cook but gourmet-type dish that will make them look at you differently.

i've never hosted such a party in my life, but such was the aroma of this dish (this VINAIGRETTE! that I MADE!) that i could easily imagine a lifetime of me hosting these kinds of things, never running out of things to wear and impressing the bejeezus out of anyone. *cue tinkling, silvery peal of laughter while effortlessly flipping over salmon*

and it wasn't just the aroma ha. the dish tasted...

...

basta. it was extremely good. shockingly good. i think part of my shock came from the fact that i actually participated in it without screwing it up. the kitchen god was so proud of me.

also tried this dish using tilapia instead of salmon and lemon instead of lime. the kitchen god had the brilliant idea of pre-steaming the fish over the brown rice before frying it. he also stuffed it with garlic and sprinkled it with chopped mint. the lemon makes a much more subtle and sweet vinaigrette than the lime, which can kind of shock with its tangy flavor since we don't get to eat a lot of lime back home.

so that's the kitchen god and me, kitchen goddess in training. don't worry, i haven't gone completely domestic yet. ;-)

--

a couple of words on my previous entry: i do know that i'm really lucky being here and still having a lot of options out there. i guess i just chose to indulge my wounded pride. i usually pick myself up rather quickly after these things. so thanks for all the supportive and sweet comments i received from you guys. as jayme says, itaas ang bandila! :-)

Domesticity disturbed

"When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation."

-- Truman Capote

ok God. the whip is being put to good use. i'm still waiting for the gift.

--

i didn't make it to mediacorp. that was ok. i figure if i don't get a job here, it's for a good reason. i was ready to take it as a sign that i'm really meant to go back home and concentrate on what i first set out to do. and i've expressed several times to several people that i'm not ready to live here yet.

so i told marlon that i was actually fine with it. i told him something like mediacorp wouldn't depress me. what would depress me, i added, was if all my prospects at home fizzled into thin air. call it overconfidence, but i had a couple of things that i figured i would be a shoo-in for.

one is a behemoth of a company that takes ages to move, and in which i have a wonderful close friend who's been pimping me like crazy. for all his frenetic pimping, however, he has yet to prod the slow-moving behemoth to life. there are a lot of places for me to apply in that company, so its also a matter of finding the right opening at the right time.

it's just moving really slowly. like a rhino on massive doses of prozac, carrying an elephant on its back to boot. at least i hope that's it. i don't think the behemoth is lost to me forever, or has scampered away from me without my knowledge. or maybe i don't want to face the fact that it has. i don't know.

the second has built up my hopes and dashed them several times before. they've done it again. i seem to be such a cookie-cutter fit for them, but somehow the doors are always shut to me for one reason or another. if i'm not too pushy, i'm not pushy enough. if i'm not frothing at the mouth with desire, i'm too eager-beaver. if i'm not too ditzy, i'm not ditzy enough. things like that which sometimes seem arbitrary to me.

this particular company's rebuffs take a toll on my pride because i see people getting in, whom i know and perceive myself to be equal if not superior to in capability. (yes, mayabang ako. but i know what how competent i can be in a work setting and what i'm capable of.) so i don't know what this particular company is looking for. at this moment, its simply something i am not. i have to live with that. and i will.

i haven't played all my cards yet, so i'm not completely devoid of prospects. i am yet to meet up with someone here who might be able to swing something for me. and i knew i was getting back into this game, setting myself up for this, when i left my job. i left behind some things that i'm utterly glad i don't have to deal with anymore. i just exchanged those things for another set of i'd-rather-not-deal-with-its.

it's just that... i see things fizzling and it's knocked a good deal of wind out of my sails. i just want to burrow into the covers and not do anything, although doing so will inevitably let in questions like "what's wrong with me?" -- which i know i don't deserve.

i'm lucky to be here with marlon and enjoying the comfortable trappings of life here. at home dealing with this would be so much worse. here are a dozen mind-numbing things i could do, all expenses paid to boot. here is a pool and gym and wifi and sundeck and jacuzzi and video games. here are newspapers with no headlines as upsetting as the political crap we have to deal with at home. here is a man who loves me and showers me with affection.

so i guess being here is the gift, in a way. it just makes me feel better to hope that maybe, just maybe there is a bigger one on the way for me.

--

to jayred, and whoever else was looking forward to hearing about my newfound domestic goddess-hood: i'll get back on track with my kitchen exploits. promise. :-)

Gimme summa that

actual food item on offer in one stall at lau pa sat festival market, where marlon and i go for our stingray and satay fix. sorry to disappoint you all, but i did not try it. my engagement with this dish only went as far as taking a picture of it on the menu. gawd. you can see the actual brain. *barf*

my culinary adventures on this trip have been rather unadventurous so far in terms of restos. we've stuck to well-loved favorites -- dessert at bakerzin, indian food at samarkand in boat quay, drinks at indochine, crab at jumbo. just about the only new thing i experienced with stingray was being able to pet one befor actually having one for dinner, thanks to a saturday afternoon trip to underwater world at sentosa (more on this in another post).

however, the real adventures have been in marlon's kitchen, where, led by my dyed-in-the-wool houseband of a boyfriend and armed with a fabulous cookbook of my mom's called superfast food, i've begun to conquer my fear of cooking.

an example: left to my own devices, too lazy to scrub pans and cook brown rice, my lunch for today was a mixed green salad (out of a bag, haha) and a french dressing that i whipped up myself from scratch. i just tossed together the following odds and ends scavenged from marlon's cupboard: extra virgin olive oil, lots of freshly ground pepper, rock salt, a pinch of parsley and basil, white vinegar and wholegrain mustard (the closest i could find to a nice coarse dijon). stirred them into a paste (which, in retrospect, should probably have been less pasty) and voila! a yummy five-minute lunch! and no tutong to scrape out of the rice cooker!

to follow: currystrumpet in her own version of "the kitchen god's wife." haha! stay tuned.

Christening

in honor of the first and only playstation 2/rpg that i have ever completed, i dub my new baby

Lulu

final fantasy x (ffx) has been an integral part of my desperate housewiving here in singapore. i started it on my first visit to marlon over a year ago, and have played intermittently on my succeeding three visits. i actually took only a few hours longer than marlon to finish it, and with his coaching, ended up with characters more powerful than his. also helps that marlon plays it whenever he wakes up early (he's a morning person, i'm not.). by the time i roll out of bed, my characters have found themselves some cool new abilities.

the game has been a total blast to play, and has made me a statistic -- one more fan drooling in anticipation of final fantasy xii.

so why lulu?

1. >i've always thought she was the most kick-ass female character in ffx (there's a whole cult of yuna fans, but i'm not one of them). i wouldn't have finished the game if not for her doublecast. plus, she's quite hot.
3. >the colors of her outfit match my laptop.
5. >i think mages are cooler than warriors (boys welcome to disagree)
7. >i love alliteration -- i.e., lulu the laptop
9. >it's kikay (and depending on the stressed syllable, can take on a schoolmarm-in-flowered-duster flavor)
11. >it's not a mouthful
13. >it doesn't remind me of anyone i detest -- the only lulu i've ever met was a rather harmless, smiley but spunky nun with a quasi australian-bisaya accent
15. >the double syllable matches the name of my bonsai, gogo (named after another kick-ass femme in kill bill vol. 1).

>it's a reminder of something that only marlon could have gotten me to like.

>dorky as it sounds, the boyf and i really bond over ffx. we spent most of last weekend curled up in his 300-thread-count comforter sniffing out subquests, finishing the game. i guess it's a mark of how much we enjoy our time together, no matter how we choose to spend it. :-)

more on lulu here. to all who made suggestions, thank you! i'll reserve them for future toys. hehe.

Book nerd

yay mika for tagging everyone!

Total Number of Books Owned:

ugh. i used to own tons when i was younger, but we lost almost everything moving around. i was also a pretty irresponsible lender (or were other people irresponsible borrowers?). now i'm pegging my collection at about 50.

Last Book I Bought:

from loren to marimar: the philippine media in the 1990s. it's an anthology of reports by the pcij. we had to read something from this book for a class in sophomore year. saw it recently at mag:net and decided i had to have it. it's a really good buy.

Last Book I Read:

i started the taking by dean koontz before i left, but he's been really nakakawalang-gana to read.

Currently Reading:

from loren to marimar.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me that I Really Like:

a swiftly tilting planet by madeleine l'engle -- bought to enlarge the unicorn collection i had when i was a kid, only because it had a unicorn in it. now one of my most loved books.

indian style, edited by angelika taschen -- actually not a novel. it's full of pictures of art, architecture and interiors of india. i regularly thumb through it for inspiration on various things. i xeroxed a picture of a window onto acetate for one of the collages i made for marlon, and my color of my deep pink bedroom wall was based on the book's cover.

over europe by jan morris -- a huge, huge book of bird's eye-view photos of europe. i go through it when i feel senti. marlon bought it for me.

twisted -- the series. cheating, i know. i read a lot of jessica zafra in late high school. i think my early writing style was influenced by her -- opinionated, a tad acerbic (but not full-fledged bitchy) and slanted towards non-fiction. i migrated away from being a zafra clone as the twisted series progressed. i think both she and i mellowed and grew up. a note from doreen on one of my second sem, freshman year papers -- "you don't try as hard anymore."

the giver by lois lowry -- a serendipitous buy that has become one of my all-time favorite books. went into my philo orals armed with this book for pogi points -- doc garcia liked it when people quoted from books other than the assigned material. it presumably meant that you were seeing philosophy everywhere.

special mentions: the art of travel by alain de botton and the griffin and sabine trilogy by nick bantock. the first for its truth and the second for its unceasing ability to drive me to the sketch pad.

Tag five of your friends:

hmmm. i think i'll share the love equally. this is up for grabs, everyone.

---

i'm sorry. i'm being boring. actually, i'm being lazy. the past few days have been really great and i'm not blogging about them. i will soon -- i have to before they drift away into oblivion.

Day 2 as a desperate housewife

well, not really desperate. i just feel so housewifely sitting around doing nothing all day except have meals with your beloved. i lounged around by the poolside for most of the morning, cramming for my mediacorp test. felt extra housewifely as i was the only person in sight. not even the other housewives were by the poolside.

the big event of the day was the mediacorp test, after lunch with marlon. cabbed to the mediacorp hq on andrew road, which is surrounded by a singapore oddity: a whole stretch of houses. really big houses. maybe that's where mediacorp sticks all its 'artistes.' (they actually call them that by the way. the 'e' bugs me no end. so pretentious. can you imagine being asked what you do for a living, and replying 'oh, i'm an artiste', with no compunctions at all?)

after weaving through the maze that was mediacorp, i sat down and took my test. glad i did that last-minute cramming--the bulk of the test was about stuff that i read just this morning. and i think i actually took the exact same test as someone i know. there was a whole identification part that reminded me of the acronyms test at global sources, which i totally botched up. thankfully, i was better prepared for this one. missed three out of ten -- i had absolutely no idea what the anti-secession law, donald tsang and H2N1 were.

the other parts of the test were current events and writing tv news reports. i think i did fairly well, i mean i knew the issues they were asking about and i know how to construct a news report. but i can't help but think i could have been more articulate. (i often feel this way about myself after i go through something that's a big deal for me.) am i just being too harsh on myself? guess i'll have to wait out the week and see if mediacorp proves me wrong.

The kikay machine

the still-unnamed laptop is helping me get back to my rakets. just accepted an essay writing gig from my regular raket supplier... due tomorrow at 7am. while i feel slightly guilty at the thought of tap-tap-tapping away while the boyf is happily snoring, i couldn't pass up the work. after all, that's why he got me this thing at the first place.

i haven't made any headway in naming my new baby, although marlon already calls it the kikay machine. i'm inclined to name it after a character in a favorite prepubescent work of fiction. there are already some contenders. i was toying with elizabeth after the good wakefield twin, or ned after nancy drew's faithful boyfriend. (cons: elizabeth is a bit of a mouthful, and while i've always wanted to be nancy drew, ned should technically be marlon.) someone from return to oz perhaps: ozma (beautiful and good?) or mombi (beautiful and bad)? i've actually looked in a baby name book. the best i could come up with was mahalia, which means powerful and also connotes expensive.

stumped. suggestions are welcome.

I'm typing this post on my

brand






new






laptop.

marlon and i had actually already agreed on this anniv gift for me, but i was still so bowled over by it, i actually let him take my picture in this gnarly early morning hairdo.

i think my past year working for a computer magazine prepared me for this moment. i actually got teary-eyed when i saw the little intel centrino sticker and the one that said Intel Pentium M 740 1.73GHz, 15.4-inch WXGA wide LCD, 60GB HDD, DVD-Dual, FireWire, 256MB DDR, 802.11b/g WLAN, Bluetooth and PCI Express.

no joke, my eyes got misty. i turned to him and hugged him, saying, "wow. you really love me."

---

i'm in singapore now living my pseudo desperate housewives existence. (before anyone freaks out, this is not permanent ok? just here until next wednesday.) surfing around a bit before i go to meet marlon for lunch. just surfing--i have absolutely zero software installed on this thing and have to wait till i get back home to pirate-friendly manila.

i plan to take a stack of time and economist magazines down to the pool this afternoon in preparation for my test tomorrow at mediacorp's channel newsasia. i am so excited about that, and am trying to stay normal (i.e. not excited) so i won't botch it up. wish me luck.

---

the past weekend was long and tiring, but very fulfilling.

i said goodbye to the factory. but hopefully not to the friends i made there.

marlon and i celebrated two years together. and hopefully more.

more on those later. meanwhile, i have to figure out a name for my new baby.

=)

This is it

wow. i'm really leaving.

Meet my sister

now that her spanking new template is up, there's somebody i'd like you to meet -- my one and only sister, sheila.

yup, it's just the two of us girls. she is five years older than me and is the quintessential firstborn -- sensible (most of the time, except i think when it comes to guys), capable, responsible, and an almighty terror when she needs the phone. lest you think she is a stick in the mud, she is also the quintessential koboy party girl.

as you can see from her blog, she is -- as i am -- inflicted with wanderlust, a lover of the beach and of europe. must be some shared childhood thing. we spent an indecent amount of our childhoods at the beach, thanks to a self-employed mother who had steady stream of visiting foreign clients and friends (always a good excuse to hit the beach).

my sister is also half of the reason why my officemates think i own a ton of bags and accessories. (my mom is the other half. nako, 'yon ang marami talagang abubut.)

and yes, that is her eye. it is indeed green. my sister is the family abnormality.

---

yesterday was her birthday (so if you do stop by her blog, greet her! as an extended birthday gift i will share my readership with her). i was out of the country during her birthday last year, so i stopped by her beer-and-videoke gathering at parasol, an open-air patio on the 6th floor of her office building.

it was fun. her staff (yes, boss na siya) is a real riot. spent some time with my sister's best friends tricia and gorgeous gigi, who gave me the big butterfly earrings right off her earlobes. siyempre my sister was screaming from the rooftops (literally) that i sing with a globetrotting choir, so i had to take the mic. pero fun naman. my usual videoke repertoire -- time after time by tuck and patti, strong enough by sheryl crow, secret by madonna. parang hindi ako soprano, ano?


it was my first time to hear my sister sing. rocker pala siya. kumanta ba naman ng sweet child of mine, todo performance level. in some ways, she's like an axl rose version of my mom (who is herself an folksy version of vilma santos. haha do we analyze.) hindi ko kinaya. i felt like such a manang. especially when i started yawning at 11pm.

Wish ko lang talaga

You Belong in Rome You're a big city girl with a small town heart Which is why you're attracted to the romance of Rome Strolling down picture perfect streets, cappuccino in hand And gorgeous Italian men - could life get any better? What City Do You Belong in? Take This Quiz :-) Find the Love of Your Life (and More Love Quizzes) at Your New Romance.

---

had my teeth cleaned yesterday by a dentist friend. i must say sitting in the dentist's chair and not being able to say a word in reply to anything was highly educational. while blasting away my tea stains, mama rosa (dentist) talked my ear revealed to me that gums are alive (they move away from irritants), horizontal brushing is a major no-no, and that in forty years, i may find myself married to a toothless man. (the boyf grinds them in his sleep--they can actually erode away to nothingness. scary.) plus she taught me how to floss properly (it's ok to get a little vicious).

my teeth are now considerably whiter without being horrifyingly picket-fence white, which is nice. but it feels really, really weird to run the tip of my tongue behind my lower front teeth and feel the gaps between them. (yes, you're supposed to. if you don't, then its time to visit your dentist.)

i was aghast to learn i may have to wear braces. i have third molars, which are not actually supposed to be there. apparently, they may crowd my lower teeth and cause my slightly crooked front ones to become hopelessly crooked. (the current sungki level can still pass for cute and quirky.)

NOOOOO braces. i'd rather have all four molars pulled out. my bank account fervently agrees.

mama rosa's factoid about third molars: our stone-age hunter-gatherer ancestors used to have them. they needed more teeth in order to bite and chew raw chunks of meat, flesh, fruit and whatnot. third molars disappeared as man evolved, as utensils and processed food increasingly did away with the need for excessive chompers.

salamat ha. napag-iwanan pala ako ng ebolusyon.

Quick empowerment for fag hags

1. Wear makeup. Not lots of it, because you don't people to recognize you as a fag hag from 40 meters away. Just make sure your skin tone is even, your eyebags are sufficiently de-puffed, and that you have a nice healthy glow.
2. Eat sugar. The rush should give you a little adrenaline to get started with your daunting task. (This morning's dose was imported from Cebu -- butterscotch, ronquillos and pinasugbo.)
3. Wear pink. I mean fighting-form, strong pink. None of this sweet pastel claptrap. Remember, you are a bright, articulate fag hag! Not a pansy! Plus points if you can combine color with texture. A cotton-Lycra blend does not radiate power.
4. Bring on the black pointy heels. This will call up your inner witch, and mystically invoke outer ones if you are not the inner-witch type. Yes, I know round toes/espadrilles/wedges are the shoes du jour, but you are an empowered fag hag -- you don't play by the rules. Besides, an ass will hurt more when kicked by a pointy heel than by a rounded blunt shape bound in abaca. They don't call 'em killer heels for nothing.
5. Play your fighting soundtrack. The playlist really depends on you, but Kylie, Spice Girls and Wilson Philips are a must. (For the latter, I prefer the moody anthem of illicit love, Go Your Own Way. Their earlier stuff can be a little too people-pleasing for empowerment purposes.) My personal preferences run a bit earthy, such as Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Santa Esmeralda from the Kill Bill Vol. 1 soundtrack, as well as anything fast by Melissa Etheridge (yes, gay icon). After I Take You With Me, I felt like donning a fringed jacket and doing a weird, peppy kind of Navajo Indian jig as I entered the office. Beats clutching my swipe card nervously and shuffling in. I also like Battle Without Honor and Humanity, also from the Kill Bill soundtrack. This for a touch of masculinity tempered with camp.
6. And remember -- he may be a foot taller than you, but you're essentially two of a kind.

wish me luck.

update: i think i was a bit optimistic going in with an agenda when it was really going to be his show all along. it helped to focus my thoughts though, and helped me remember valuable points.

i spoke, and i faltered a couple of times. he listened, but i'm not entirely sure he heard. a few strokes of ink on a sheet of paper -- reason to feel optimistic? i did agree with him on some things he said, and recognized others for what they were.

(akala ba niya hindi ko mage-gets ang mga little slivers of daot? baka hindi niya nalalaman! ako si biba fag hag! kublihan mo man ng accent, daot pa rin yan!)

oprah/dr phil ang drama niya. kate hudson/jennifer connelly ang akin. therefore, mas wagi ako.

exit fag hag.

Dorkspree

i am now the proud owner of a flash mp3 player. an iPod it ain't, but it serves my basic needs for a flash drive (to transport my personal files and mp3s out of my office pc) and voice recorder (to monitor the progress of voice lessons). this is the very first gadget i've ever bought myself since i started working.

my boyfriend, meanwhile, is now the proud owner of a portable hard disk, mp3 player/4MP digital camera/digital camcorder, printer/copier/scanner and battery-free wireless mouse. with the exception of his second-hand playstation 2, these are the first gadgets he's bought himself since he started working. (as you can probably tell, his job pays infinitely better than mine.)

all in the span of one weekend, the nerdgasm in g's corner of the world must be catching.

--

in other news: another pinay designer makes waves in vogue. kewl. are her wares really this year's must-have? judge for yourself here.

the past two weekends' reads: audrey niffenegger's the time traveller's wife is highly original, luminous and wonderful. had me in sniffles from beginning to end. as you can probably tell from the title alone, claire naylor's love: a user's guide is an unwieldy pile of poop that hopes to ride the wave of bridget jones and berdorf blondes. (major peeve: it isn't even written as a user's guide, which would have been decidedly cuter.)

my sister turns twenty-... er, sweet sixteen on wednesday. i thought her birthday was today and gave her her gift already. dumdum. at least she liked the gift.

first day of classes today. can't relate. how sad.

Unwinding

what a week it has been. our acting boss was out of the country for a trade show, and our most senior team member was knocked down by an acute respiratory tract infection -- for the whole frigging week. so i had to shunt most of my job-hunting appointments to after office hours, resulting in a LOT of shuttling back and forth during rush hour.

thankfully, though i've been busy this week, i haven't been stressed. yes, i am officially on exit mode. still acting honorably though, much to my own puzzlement. when my alarm rings at 6am, i often find myself wondering why on earth i'm still making the effort to haul my ass to the office by 730am. and when having the overtime slip signed, i ask myself why i still care about putting our copy out on time, or putting it out clean.

but the fact is, i do. i get the itchies when i get my hands on dirty copy. pasalamat sila oc-oc ako.

meanwhile, i believe i have a date with a large, bald man on monday.

---

my room is a colossal mess. i'm making my second-anniversary gift for marlon, which is basically a series of collages. that's about as much as i'm willing to say about it, for now.

i'm doing something creative, which is making me quite happy. i'm doing something for marlon, which has made me very teary-eyed at least twice in the five hours i've been working on it. the weather is cooperating -- i hear rain and feel a cool breeze wafting in from outside my window.

it's a good saturday.

---

i just had the pictures from our one-year anniversary developed (we spent it in singapore together).

i would like to issue a public apology to anyone and everyone i ignored, snapped at, fought, and was generally nasty to for calling me fat at that point in my life.

you were right. i concede. i was indeed very, very, very fat.

*shudders*

i am so glad i don't look like that anymore. maybe the south beach diet wasn't that much of a failure.

on a lighter note, the fact that marlon and i have changed body types and hairstyles since those pictures were taken is a happy symptom of how long we've been together.

(ok so maybe we haven't exactly changed body types yet. we're just... a little less the gourmands we were last year. but getting there. hee hee.)

I will never know

• cutie lawyer’s name, if he is an atenean as i suspected, why he got a really deep tan, and why he suddenly seems to be balding
• whether singaporeans make good bosses (we have a new one coming in on my last week)
• whether the curse of the vanishing CP VM will hold claim yet another victim… moooahahaha
• who in f*ck’s name decides on the editorial deadlines and why they’re so ill-timed (sundays? good friday? christmas eve?)
• when erstwhile office crush strawberry will decide to take that stick out of his ass
• whether i really was supposed to be promoted in the second half of the year
• whether certain officemates who are long overdue for promotions will finally get them
• whether certain soul-searching officemates will find what they’re looking for
• whether certain underperformers will continue to get away with murder
• where on earth that hunky, well-mannered, broad-shouldered banker from the 2nd floor disappeared to
• who steals the toilet paper from my locker in the ladies’ room
• what makes zuma's favorite daughter so godawful self-righteous
• the full extent of ISD’s snooping powers
• whether the supposed “personal productivity tool” will ever serve its nebulous purpose, or whether it can be converted into a tool of rebellion as my boyfriend suggests it can
• why bowing and scraping/excessive honorifics seem to be de rigeur office lingo (why can't we just all talk straightforwardly to each other?)
• when HR will get a clue
• what exactly i should say when someone asks what this company does
• whether there is really a mumu in the ladies’ room
• whether there really is a hidden surveillance camera in the ladies room, and if so, who is enjoying the view and breaking the law
• who the mystery ladies' room foot-flusher is
• who the next EBU loveteam will be (if any)
• who the new EIC will be (nosferatu?)
• if the purported "bright future" in this company that so many people are dangling at me would really be that

well, as they say: ignorance is bliss. i ’d rather scamper away not knowing than stick around to find out.

but…

I will miss

• my friends. soooo many things about my friends. makes me sad just to think of it.
• the stability of a regular paycheck – i am addicted to making budgets, although i throw them out the window from time to time
• the security of knowing that i work at something i am competent at
• working with extremely talented and intelligent editors
• office parties that spontaneously arise at the drop of a hat
• conference room surprises
• my 2.6GHz processor, which has spoiled me for life. much to marlon’s consternation, i can’t imagine ever settling for anything lower than 1.8GHz
• my internet connection
• my roomy workstation
• working in 24/7 siberia (a particular relief this past summer)
• lunch at the citibank tower cafeteria – decent value for money, since i don’t eat a lot anyway. will especially miss the leche flan, sandwich bar, grilled tanigue and plump, sweet mangoes
• expat spotting
• the view of tower one at dusk when i round the corner to paseo from my office
• the thrilling possibility of bumping into JAZA in a paseo de roxas underpass
• model-hunting and chortling over the precious hearts titles at 7-11
• saturday lunches at the parket (term i coined to denote the market at velasquez park )
• paseo center, where i procure my monthly magazine fix, plain cotton tees and various tiangge finds, and drool over get happy’s gorgeous trinkets (reminder to self: buy From Loren to Marimar at Mag:Net before i go
• the quick, happy stroll from the office to manila pen and old swiss inn
• stolen lunches – to record VOs, to hie off to glorietta, to have lunch with mae and various makati denizens
• the cute, clean-cut banker DILF at citibank tower
• the ease of intra-company stalking on Exchange
• the cheerful, deep-voiced pin-your-ID man who does his job with such gusto
• monthly avalanches of toilet paper
• comic relief from china

I saw the sign

"...and it opened up my eyes
and i am happy now living without you
i've left you, oh
i saw the sign"

tee hee. couldn't help the retro reference. which reminds me... whatever happened to ace of base?

but. this is for reasons that i've rehashed with various listeners over and over. and for reasons that the people who work with me know all too well. maybe more on this later. or maybe not.

UPDATE:

gosh darn. that there was the cheeriest string of comments i ever did see.

wonder what that says about... never mind.