Yawn, stretch

it's another rip-roaring weekend over here in my little sphere of existence. half the day lolling around in bed, then out to the grocery and book store, back home to munch on popcorn while re-reading bridget jones' diary and covering a couple of new books in plastic (which, in all seriousness, is something i've been dying to do for months).

the highlight of my day was probably finding the perfect afternoon tea party dress at a new ukay-ukay. it's a soft, drapey wrap dress with a deep v neck. it's not only light and summery, but it fits my most important tea party criteria: it must hide all signs of dessert bingeing. the drapey quality of the dress is perfect for that purpose. i love ukays.

oh, and my visit to national bookstore. i felt a sudden rush of nostalgia when i stepped into the bookstore we all grew up with/in and realized i haven't been in a national bookstore since college, when i had to buy school stuff.

i also ended up buying myself a new book (malcolm gladwell's the tipping point) within ten minutes, something i've found difficult to do lately at big bookstores like fully booked -- the selection is so overwhelmingly large (with so much bad mixed with the good) that all the back cover blurbs start to sound the same. (i say "overwhelmingly large" because i grew up with a bookstore where half the space was devoted to office and school supplies, and not books.)

really exciting stuff, huh? the perfect complement to all the hullabaloo that was going on in the city yesterday. yes, the city. not the nation. far as i'm concerned the "coup" was strictly a makati thing. inquirer columnist manuel l. quezon III calls the state of emergency "a state of panic." i'm inclined to agree.

Crap as it happens

it's time for our nation's annual exploitable holiday. we just never learn, do we?

before the above throng came down edsa (right under our noses), metro aides were spotted frantically rushing sweep the flyover clean, and a grand total of four policemen assigned to "block" the oncoming rush. heck, mas marami pa yung mga metro aide sa mga pulis. typical. well, good luck sa kanila.

contrary to reports on cnn, the president has not seized control of utilities and media. we're still here, toiling cheerily away. but i have a spare toothbrush, moisturizer and a change of underwear in my handbag, just in case.

my officemate leah is dressed for combat; my boss (in gray shirt), for protest.

warrantless arrests, state of emergency, and another colossal traffic jam. haaay ate glue, i sure hope the mao collar and gray suit doesn't mean what we all think it means.

How sweet it is

... to be invited to a tea party!

two of my favorite bloggers (dessert lover lori baltazar and 'streetwalker' carlos celdran) have cooked up the confection convention of the century... and i'm going to be part of it! all because i'm kapalmuks enough to email a total stranger for invites! haha! (well, not a total stranger -- my sister knows lori from college carpool.)

what tea party, you may ask? check it out here.

a parade of manila's best desserts, 59 new people to befriend, and an opportunity to meet the people behind two of my daily must-reads. all that and a raffle too! i simply can't believe my good fortune.

incidentally, it seems i'm on some kind of online winning streak. like a true jun-jun fanatic, i won a jun-jun shirt up for grabs on a US fan's blog. i would die before actually wearing the shirt to the office or an event though. i'll just be super kilig knowing that jun-jun and i have the same shirt!

but anyway.

a tea party! a tea party! whatever will i wear? and however will i keep from bursting out of it?

... to know that i can visit marlon on his birthday!

seismic shifts in the world of primetime television have suddenly, miraculously, created a vacuum in my summer workload. all the nail-biting and schedule-juggling i've been doing to get time off for my annual lah-lah land junket has now been rendered irrelevant.

i'm genuinely happy about this development because it's not just fabulous for my downtime, but also because i truly believe it's in the best interest of the show concerned -- as well as of the network as a whole.

but i'm especially happy because this also means i'm going to get to have a holy week vacay! which shall it be: desperate housewiving in singapore or tagging along on marlon's business trip to bombay?

lalalalalala!

Ate, huwag po, Ate

j, i actually don't have any shirtless pictures of jun-jun (and if i did i wouldn't share! mine mine mine!), but here's a funny wallpaper that charlie (my partner art director) made for me.

haay! ang kamandag nitong batang 'to!

Recovery

either i'm getting old or my job is really stressful, but lately i've actually found myself getting excited about spending saturdays like today and last. which is holed up in my bedroom, splayed out in bed doing absolutely nothing. or at least doing things that involve objects within arm's reach (laptop, phone, magazine, book).

today was exactly like that -- i can count on one hand the number of times i let myself out of my room. in comparison, last saturday seems quite active: i rolled up my sleeves and reorganized my bookshelf.

the second -- and i hope to high heavens, last -- phase of what was supposed to be a month-long consultancy gig is looking impatiently at me and tapping its foot, but i'm ignoring it for now.

--

speaking of getting older, i sat in on a photo shoot for my favorite account yesterday and got to making small talk with some of the kids (including, yes, my favorite jun-jun). anyway, i was sitting next to the boobsy youngest girl -- all of fifteen years old -- and the pilya tisay girl when boobsy started asking me about my camera (eyes already on the prize money, eh?).

boobsy: ate, magkano po yung bili n'yo diyan?
me: di ko alam eh, regalo lang kasi.
boobsy: wow, talaga? regalo?
me: yup.
boobsy: sino'ng nagbigay? boyfriend n'yo po?
me: yup.
boobsy: wow ate, may boyfriend na kayo?
tisay: (elbows boobsy) gaga, ano ka ba? siyempre may boyfriend na 'yan, matanda na siya no.
me: hoy ang kapal ng mukha mo. bata pa ako. (sirain ko kaya career mo. haha.)
tisay: may 25 ka na ba 'te?
me: wala pa. 24 pa lang.
tisay: (to boobsy) sabi sa 'yo eh, matanda na.

naknangteteng. malaos ka sana agad.

buti na lang i saw my jun-jun shirtless and in his boxers. (and doing handstands. go figure.) otherwise i would have spent the rest of the afternoon muttering like a grumpy old lady.

Boring today, copper tomorrow

warning: this is a kikay post. and since i’m really happy with my new hair, it’s going to be rather long.

my valentine salon date with rina was superfun. because aside from the fact that rina is superfun, the stylists at azta urban salon (owned by rina’s sister’s boyfriend) seemed rather thrilled to be coloring virgin hair.

one thing that tells me i’m going to stick to a hairstylist is if they don’t tell me to straighten and relax my hair. This is presumably because all the cuts they know how to do are for typical, stick-straight filipina hair. four years ago, a stylist at bench fix told me, “ayaw mo ba talagang ipa-relax ito? kasi kaya ko siyang gupitan, pero hindi magiging maganda.” i have never had my hair cut at a bench fix salon ever again.

i’ve also gotten similar comments from other salons, like “kahit anong gawin kong gupit, hindi magiging maganda sa ganitong buhok”. those godforsaken salons just totally lost my business, which may not have been much when i was a lowly student, but now that i’m earning actual money… nek nek nila!

i love jenny, my regular stylist at my favorite salon, profiles, because she has never ever had a problem with my wavy hair, and never once suggested that i have it relaxed. (and she gave me the bangs that first got marlon to notice me at blue roast.) which got her my faithful patronage for three straight years.

sheila (azta’s stylist, not my sister) gets my nod for choosing a cut and color to bring out the waves, plus encouraging me to grow my hair long because, she says, wavy hair looks great when it’s long. she also says i’m one of the lucky few who won’t ever have the icky, dry, processed s-bend curls that are the current rage among everyone and her mother.

sheila presented me with two options: a simple one-color dye job of copper gold, or a lighter base color with dark lowlights. i read all these girlie magazines, so i thought i knew exactly what the difference between highlights and lowlights are. but for some reason the thought of the second process had me terrified. so, copper gold it was – at least until i get used to living with colored hair.

so here it is. before and after.

before: wavy, almost all one length, boring brown-black
after: voila! still wavy (even more so, thanks to layers galore), warm copper gold

parlor gays salon divas

and because i'm extra vain i love you guys so much, i took a whole bunch of pictures at home so you can see more of the new color.

i took an especially long time to dress this morning, until i realized that i was following this subconscious impuse to DRESS TO MATCH MY HAiR. that’s exactly the kind of idiotic kapraningan a hair virgin like me would make. so i quit it.

i was also especially praning that my eyebrows are now too dark for my hair (again, this strong impulse to match everything, which i probably get from my mother), and that i wouldn’t look like myself. thankfully, my sister reassured me that my eyebrows look perfectly normal.

oh, and i must still be recognizable, since i saw my favorite jun-jun in the lobby this morning. and right before the elevator door closed, he peeked in and gave me the cutest, tiniest wink.

i love my new hair.

Milestones

milestone no. 1.

my valentine's day date is rina. in approximately an hour and a half, she and i will turn my virgin head of boring, between-brown-and-black hair into a glorious mass of chemically treated waves. at least, that's the intention, as i could very well end up with an overprocessed chunk of frizzies. but that's me. i live on the edge and flirt with danger! *snort*

that's right, folks. after months of dilly-dallying, i am taking the color plunge tonight. i have only the vaguest idea of what i want done with it (nothing this drastic though!), but i am just so fed up with this boring old mane that i will just plop into the stylist's chair and shriek, "do whatever the hell you want!"

wish me luck.

milestone no. 2.

it was on the five-year plan for my life that i made in high school. it's about six years too late, but i'm finally going to do it. i'm going to learn how to drive!

this is how the decision came about.

1. my sister bought herself a car. he's named max and he's an automatic.
2. and she's going on a three-week US vacay in may.
3. my mom can't -- or is it won't? -- drive an automatic. entonces, sayang ang kotse.
4. i got a consultancy gig that is a pain in the a** but can sufficiently cover driving lessons.
5. there is a driving school in front of our house.

voila! here's hoping i will be fit to drive to an actual place by may. then again, my office is right on edsa so all i have to worry about is driving straight up and down the highway, right? lalalalala!

oh, damn. that's right. buses. f*ck.

milestone no. 3.

one of my best friends from college just took that all-important step towards it, and it's so exciting, even if we all knew she was sooo heading for it anyway. and i can't help but want it. especially when you see people like g and c so happy in it.

so... we're talking about it.

and it's harder than i thought. and that's all i'm going to say about it. for now.

Valentines' day at the office

thank god that

a) i work with all these fun, festive, nutty people, and that
b) my sister brought home 2 kilos of strawberries from baguio

otherwise

a) valentine's day would have been a total dud, and
b) i had strawberries to share with my officemates so as to not seem totally bitter about not having a date today. (just minimally bitter. i didn't give strawberries to the girl who had rose petals strewn all over her desk.)

happy valentine's day from me and my art director!

Office musings

sayonara to the idyllic slow mornings of january. i've hit the ground running the past couple of days at work, and now i'm taking a deep breath before i plow into some more work.

--

there is nothing more nerve-wracking panic-inducing fun and exciting than coming to work and seeing, first thing in the morning, a loooong string of emails originating from the boss of all bosses, trickling through pretty much all of our clients and all of their flunkies, down to my boss, and finally coming to rest in my inbox to be implemented, like, now na.

or so i thought.

because my boss gave me a gigantic farking whopper of a surprise in the evening. it was such a shock that immediately afterwards, i repaired to mcdonald's to stuff myself with grease -- despite being on the home stretch of my two-week south beach diet.

i must say, chomping on twister fries does great things for one's anxiety.

the surprise? let's just say i'm going to be working extra hard, starting monday.

--

speaking of really, really bad days, a man tried to commit suicide near my office this morning. rather, he climbed up on the billboard scaffolding mounted to the top floor of the mrt station right outside my building.

thing is, the roof of the station is barely a storey below the scaffolding. so if he had jumped, he wouldn't have splattered all over edsa and died. he would have just had a really bad accident that he'd have to live with for the rest of his life -- assuming that he wouldn't try to end it again soon after.

many of us gathered round the picture windows calling "advice" to the beleaguered figure: "mapipilayan ka lang!" "hindi ka mamamatay niyan, ang baba-baba!" "akyat pa!" from a distance, it was almost comical.

but they showed him on the news tonight. he was a thin man in a red t-shirt and denim shorts, with salt-and-pepper hair and stringy calves. i didn't catch the news commentary, but i saw him coming down from the scaffolding, and then facing the cameras with his head in his hands, sobbing.

then all of a sudden it didn't seem funny anymore. i was suddenly glad he hadn't gone up any higher on the scaffolding, and that he had chosen not to die.

or maybe he had already made his choice not to die when he settled on the lower rungs of the scaffold. maybe he just needed his story to be told. we all need that, sometimes.