New look

i’ve been dying to do something new to my hair.


haaay. wish ko lang. I posted this on my friendster profile and got a shocked but totally raving message within hours from nash, my childhood best friend who moved away to australia. i can’t bring myself to tell her that it’s not real.

yep. it’s not real. it’s from one of my sister’s better online finds – makeover-o-matic (kabaduyan!), an online makeover tool from ivillage. you have to be a member to indulge your vanity, but login is free, so if you’re bored enough go ahead and give it a whirl.

both of us have been growing eyebags over this thing – trying on hairdos, contacts, glasses, makeup and that don’t look like they’ve been pasted on. plus it displays the color and brand of what you’re trying on so you can go out and buy it – resulting in my hankering for blue-gray contact lenses, wild winterberry lipstick from elizabeth arden, and slammin’ blush from mac. aargh.

so back to the look. it isn’t real, but i’m really starting to wish it was. (so the part about me dying to do something new to my hair is true.) damn. but just thinking of the chemical processes my hair has to go through to get to that look is making my scalp (and my wallet) ache. for one thing, it’ll take industrial-strength relaxing to take the curl out of my hair. and i’m still in the middle of achieving my hair goal of long, wavy tresses by december. (okay, it’s a dull hair goal, but I’m working with what i’ve got here.)

to take my mind off the sheer impossibility of this look, i tried on a couple of others.

1) guest appearance on “lifestyles of the color-treated and totally butch”.

2) professor snape meets janeane garofalo. can you believe this is supposed to be jennifer aniston’s hairdo?
3) check out the ‘fro – macy gray or foxy cleopatra.
4) “so ya fellas want fries with that steak?”
5) sinong lola mo?
6) i got serious and put together a look that i actually like. i’m thisclose to having my hair dyed burgundy and buying gray contacts.
7) nancy drew, girl detective.
8) this is me on the run from the law. it looks like i’m hiding in australia.

Let me catch my breath

...for a minute. i've been dying to blog at length but i can't seem to find the time.

as they say, when it rains, it pours. this cliche has become a truism for me this week, as my rampant self-pimpage of my freelance skills finally seems to be paying off.

by the time this week is done, i will have written 16 articles -- one feature for candy and 15 short features as per my content plan for a sydney-based client. at the end of the month, i will have written 42 articles for this client, and have become an expert on everything to do with norwegian cruise lines. they'd better make good on their dolyares, because 42 articles in three weeks is no joke. (medyo hindi lang ako bilib sa content plan nila. sobrang daming text ata nun for a website. oh well, it's their money.)

next week i'll be writing two press releases for the manila chamber singers, for which, thank goodness, i will be paid. (i just find it weird that they actually want to hire someone to write for them, whereas it's easy to get one of the choir members to do it for free. acs and glee club do it all the time.)

and pretty soon, i should hopefully be working for pia, retouching digital photos of her company's merchandise (check it out here). i figured since i spend so much time erasing my pimples on photoshop i might transfer my skills to something that will net me a little extra cash as well. diba pia? hire me, hire me!

all that and a day job too! nothing definite, but... "sabi sa sarili, hinding, hinding-hindi na, ngunit eto na naman ako... sana ay ikaw na nga." kabaduyan! inisipan pa talaga ng theme song!

ok. yay. i did get to blog a bit. but i still have to blog about my encounters with Meta-Gay and Meta-Matrona (or as marlon says -- metrona)!

shoot. maybe next time.

Warmth

the past few days have been cold, rainy and tiring. but there have been pockets of warmth, for which i've been glad.

two very tempting job offers in as many days. yay, people want me! this must be what parents expect to happen after they fork over hefty sums for an ateneo college education. such a relief after months of running after jobs. one is a shockingly impressive offer (or maybe it's just shocking after the postively puritanical package the factory tossed at me a year ago). the other... well, just makes sense. antabayanan.

discovering a big, soft gray sweatshirt of marlon's in the closet. it was the only thing that seemed perfect for how cold it was last night.

a roll of giant-sized bubble wrap from mimoy + an invitation from maggie to come over and partake of the stash of dark chocolate at her house. i really get tickled when friends remember these odd little things i like. (like when friends save ketchup packets from mcdonald's to give to me.)

music, music, music. i finally downloaded limewire while at marlon's, and now i can indulge my musical appetite for such disparate artists as lauryn hill (anything and everything she's done live), the king's singers (without fail, i let out a chortle at short people and a sniffle at and so it goes), aaliyah (as gp said, sana si brandy nalang ang namatay), sting (i have a newfound respect for how clearly he enunciates his lyrics), annie lennox (doesn't seventeen just make you want to run out into the street and cry?), and... whew, just so many of them. best with rain and a warm blanket.

a new spin on being apart. this time around, appreciation seemed to rush into the little void opened up by our goodbyes. suddenly i found that i actually had time to digest the things marlon did that made me so happy while we were together. things i was too busy living and enjoying and prolonging to really absorb while they were happening. (shoot me, i'm in love.)

pms as an excuse to eat, eat, eat. and eat some more. a mcdo lunch, big plate of happy birthday spaghetti at dada's, good ol' greasy chinese food at mimoy's, and spanish bread from some bakery along kamuning. screw the diet. the almighty cycle has me at the moment.

--

i just have to share this -- it's the kind of hair i've always wanted but know i'll never ever ever have. the wig is loi's -- he bought it for a costume party, and for a synthetic wig from sm it's really quite nice.

Bara-bara couple in Indonesia

my first trip to bintan was sometime around july last year. i was in singapore, marlon had a a couple of days off, and while trying not to die of boredom in singapore we discovered that we had very little aptitude in planning vacations together.

thus the epithet "bara-bara couple" was coined to refer to our sorry asses -- asses that had chose a place less than 24 hours before setting off to it, asses that begged to be let on the ferry (other people had actually booked tickets online), and asses (ok, just mine) that had a nearly-expired passport and had to allow the immigration man to seek whatever indonesia's equivalent is of tong, and receive it, just to be on their merry way.

anyway.

bintan is in indonesia, as i mentioned, less than an hour away from singapore's tanah merah ferry terminal. standard immigration procedures are enforced to perpetuate this illusion of being in indonesia, but it's almost like being in a little pocket of singapore within indonesia. it's singapore's little playground, the pricier swings and monkey bars exclusively for the lion city's teeming population of expats.

but for the bara-bara couple, there was only mana mana beach club. drawn there rates significantly lower than those of its neighbors, marlon and i were soon thoroughly hooked on mana mana's specialty -- fabulous, floury, piping hot thin-crust pizzas with names like the blues (blue cheese, walnuts, capers) and kiss-me-not (garlic, anchovies, capers). too, there was its homey, open lounge deck with big teakwood chairs and stacked bookshelf, its colorful and comfy cabanas, and its fluffy, cheery yellow beach towels that proved just too easy to pilfer.

and so a year later, with a one-day weekend left to squander before we both flew off (me back home, marlon to guangzhou), we made the trip again.


the beach itself is no great shakes, especially when you've been spoiled by philippine beaches. in fact, the first time i saw it, i thought it was downright ugly. might have been largely because of the bad weather at the time, which also made a snorkeling trip murky, frustrating and pitchy to the point of near-barfing (yes, me, the certified water baby and beach bunny.)

but this time around, with the sun in abundance, it was quite perfect. sunny, clean, quiet. one of the staff made some amiable chit-chat with us, and told us that bali (where he was from) was noisy and insane by comparison. that made me feel a lot better, since i felt that the frazzled boyf needed the relaxation more than he needed cirque de soleil.

speaking of staff, the service at mana mana is like manna from heaven (no pun intended) after the dour faces and rude barks that you get in singapore (with the exception, marlon and i noticed, of indian restaurants or restos with indian servers). staff smile! make friends! offer to do things for you! let you take your time! coo at babies! it's like stepping out from a freezer into a warm kitchen, where maybe thin-crust pizza is baking in the oven.

for the first time, all the alleluias foreigners have sung to filipinos for being warm and hospitable meant something to me. suddenly, i knew how important a little warmth was to someone away from home.


we just stayed a day, and went home utterly exhausted but it was more than enough. looks like bintan has grown on me.

i booked the room and ferry tickets online, in advance, this time. but the bara-bara couple would not be spared. i had mistakenly booked the return ticket for sunday evening -- and we both had flights out first thing sunday morning! murphy's law, naturally, reared its ugly head in the form of a system glitch that would not allow the ferry office to check if we had indeed paid for the return ferry. and we were almost out of cash.

after lots of frantic running around, we finally managed to scrounge up barely enough to buy a second set of one-way tickets back to lah-lah land. marlon totally freaked out, but later he said he fancied himself a contestant on the amazing race.

i presume i would be the useless partner that all the viewers think is pathetic and should die. and i felt like it too. but all's well that ends well. especially if it ends with a gorgeous tan.

--

i'm in ateneo, making lampaso the campus' wlan access at a glorious 54 Mbps. incidentally, i'm sitting right outside the classroom where marlon and i first met. (faura 117, doreen's merit english class). how things have changed since then.

Goodbye kiss

tee hee. this was taken at the merlion park near the esplanade, on friday -- effectively my last day in singapore.

(that's 'cause i spent saturday in indonesia. but more on that when i'm done editing the photos. for a one-day shebang, there sure are a lot of them.)

and today i'm here. home. which is always good, and made better this time around by two things:

extremely clear weather on our descent to manila. seeing turquoise waters spotted with the darker imprints of reefs, islands rimmed with stark white, mountains covered with trees, and the mosaic of a million rooftops growing denser and crazier as we hovered closer to the metro. all i could think of was -- how can you not love it? (cynics not allowed to reply.)

that, and walking into our compound to resounding shrieks of victory. god bless manny pacquiao.

On location

if my personal version of desperate housewives here in lah-lah land was a real show, it would probably get abysmal ratings. wisteria lane would be pemimpin drive -- a very ugly street name that i think sounds like "pimple drive".

instead of a bunch of sexy, intrigue-filled characters, you'd just have three -- me, marlon, and the bungi old guard who patrols the poolside. he's started talking to me lately. apparently i hang out at the pool so much that he notices my absences. i've tried to tell him that i don't live here, but he seems to have it in his head that i come home and swim a lot every time i'm on holiday from school (go figure). it's really weird to have a singaporean stranger -- a security guard at that -- be friendly to me. i keep waiting for him to tell me off for bringing food to the poolside.

anyway. let me show you around the set.


this is what i see when i stick my head out marlon's 11th-floor window to check for optimal tanning conditions. well, i don't really stick my head out the window, but you get the drift.


along with my phone and the house key, this is what i cart down to the deck every single afternoon. the sugar fix varies -- one time it was an apple, and today it will be a pack of oreos. or sometimes i'll have this illusion of pursuing fitness and will just content myself with water. as for the reading matter, marlon has a handy subscription to the economist, so this is when i educate myself on worldly matters outside hollywood gossip and fashion.


aforementioned self-education and snacking ensues in relative peace for about an hour or two. the late afternoon brings with it a spate of little singaporeans, clad in their little short-sleeved wetsuits (it's really weird -- for some reason, parents here don't seem to believe in normal bathing suits).

on any given day, there will be a surprising number of young dads around tossing their toddlers around the pool and whatnot -- ten points for equality between the sexes. some afternoons feature swimming lessons, with young, tan and semi-buff instructors who might be considered cute if i bothered to put on my glasses.


very little actual exercise is done at the pool. the main purpose of my daily pilgrimages to the poolside is to acquire a short-term sun-kissed glow and give myself skin cancer someday.

Where in the world is Currystrumpet?

big surprise, huh? :-P

yup, i arrived here last friday evening. we spent my first weekend here doing the usual -- a welcome dinner of crab and cereal prawns at jumbo on clarke quay, lazing around at home, and slumming around orchard in search of coffee and cds.

bright lights, big city

while i'm happy to be with marlon again, i'm a little miffed that things aren't working out as we planned. i was supposed to come over so i could tag along on a business trip of marlon's to kuala lumpur, which is about forty minutes away by plane. we both fly out monday morning -- me back home and him to guangzhou, china for another business trip.

anyway, due to some big project of his at work, the KL trip got cancelled. so instead we decided to spend the weekend at bintan, which is the nearest decent beach (singapore's own beaches are a joke). but then the same project suddenly demands that he move up his flight out to guangzhou to sunday instead of monday to attend some meeting on monday morning. which nixes the beach weekend and leaves me to haul my sorry ass + luggage to the airport all by myself on monday.

haaay. i tried not to be a brat about it (i've learned that when it comes to work, you just have to kind of bite your lip and live with it), but i couldn't help letting a little brattiness escape when i first heard the news. we patched things up pretty quickly though (nothing a little indian food can't fix), and will try to salvage what we can of our (effectively) one-day weekend.

meanwhile, i hear the cirque is in town.