Max and me

a relatively new addition to our family, max has become the "man" in my sister's life since she got him in december. when she announced plans for a three-week u.s. vacation this year, it became evident that someone had to be able to drive max while she was out of the country. since my mom was hesitant to apply her rusty manual driving skills to 'matic max, the task of driving fell upon my eager shoulders. thus, lessons and the license.

pimp my (vintage) ride. this is not max by the way.

just goofing around with some props at a shoot i had for work.

My boyf, my copilot

and so marlon flew home for the weekend (not expressly, but mostly) to be my copilot -- a far calmer one than my mom, who i'd taken on two short trips to makati thus far. (i swear. she gets severely unhinged just watching me back out of the garage -- which, truth be told, is the most arduous part of taking max out for a ride.)

i felt incredibly lucky to have marlon by my side as i drove on edsa for the very first time. he was the navigator on my practice drive to the office, and proudly took snaps after i successfully parked max for the first time. (my practice park with mom doesn't count -- she insisted that i park in a space with no cars around me.)

tadaaah! max's inaugural park at the fort

marlon flew back to lah-lah land on sunday morning, leaving max and i to fend for ourselves. although i tend to be over-cautious on turns and on the highway (my 92 year-old grandmother can probably drive faster than i do), i must say i'm doing pretty well...

Buwaya encounter

... except for my very first buwaya encounter yesterday. well, it wasn't even really my fault (yeah lady, that's what they all say). the huge intersection under the shaw boulevard mrt station is a notorious hunting ground for our fine, upstanding reptiles-in-uniform. like true hunters, they have an excellent nose for prey -- a new car, or a new or female driver.

in fact, my mom told me that my sister was pulled over for the very same bogus violation (reckless driving) at that intersection on the first day that she took out max (maybe caution tips them off). these guys are something else -- they are conspicuously absent when traffic goes haywire, but pop out at the faintest whiff of a chance to have merienda on your tab.

you can actually tell when they're just trying to get you to slip them a ninoy. i've seen enough of these things to know the script:

1. they don't tell you the violation right away
2. when they do figure out what to slap on you, they make the consequences of your violation sound really major (seminars, heavy fees, mountains of paperwork, impounding, the coming of the seven signs, a plague upon your children and your children's children, etc etc)
3. dumadami sila
4. they ask where you live or ask to see your license for the address (gathering data for computing the amount they will attempt to squeeze out of you)
5. they ask where you work (more data for their computations)

just when i thought i'd have to turn on the charm, and probably just when they thought they had me, item number five on their kotong script saved me.

Anting-anting

won't go into details, but suffice it to say i'm glad i was wearing my, er... anting-anting around my neck, the mere sight of which struck fear into their black little buwaya hearts. i'm not kidding, natakot talaga sila. just goes to show what a racket the whole pulling-over was -- if there was any truth to it, they would have stood their ground, anting-anting or no.

belat. and so max and i went on our merry way... verrry cautiously. and we've done so ever since. though i know the buwayas can't make a daily catch out of me, ika nga ni ate vi.... you can never can tell.

It took two

your license, mamsir

1) two student permits (apparently you can't get a license if you don't have the official receipt for your student permit, which i naturally lost a couple of weeks ago. so i actually had to go and get myself a second student permit just so i could present an official receipt. philippine bureaucracy -- don't you just love it?)

2) two fuzzy digital photos (for the aforementioned two student permits)

3) two hundred pesos for the license fee alone (not to mention what i paid my driving school for their "assistance")

4) two skipped meals (lunch yesterday and breakfast today)

5) two trips to the lto, over the course of

6) two days, all because of

7) two mixed-up photos (the driving school guy claimed my license yesterday afternoon only to find that it sported some anonymous guy's photo!!!! hello?!?!? does the "paul" on the license negate the "catherine"?)

...to finally get my very own driver's license!

weird. now that i have my license, i find myself longing to cower behind the security blanket that was my student permit. my student-driver foibles are no longer excusable!

Breaking it gently

poor kid.

it must be hair-tearingly tough to grow up and discover one day that opinions can actually be different from each other. (cue horrified gasps.)

wonder if anyone ever tried to tell her that. ah, well. it sucks, but someone's gotta tell her sooner or later. so i did. believe me, kid. this will be for the best. you'll see.

(and if it's any consolation, i really liked the zoo.)

Would you lookit that

it's been twelve hours from my last post, and i'm still at the office. whoop-de-doo.

i'm thinking of hitting the mall after work just to give today some semblance of a saturday. but i'm afraid of what wild purchases might result from this feeling of deprivation.

Burying reality

i'm helping put our network's primetime reality show to its final, blessed rest (sumalangit nawa) after its celebrated, many times controversial, seven-year run. i should be filmed while doing it. it's worthy of an episode or two of the show. i'm thinking backbreaking work, i'm thinking advanced carpal tunnel syndrome, i'm thinking "luwa-mata challenge" here.

sigh. six tapes viewed, twenty-four more to go. while other people are partying, boinking, getting smashed -- and, yes, sleeping -- to celebrate the end of the workweek, here i am trapped in a vicious tangle of magnetic ribbon.

perhaps i should rethink this post's title -- it's beginning to look more like buried in reality from where i am right now.

friday night (oops, saturday morning) at the network. you gotta love it.

Fly Dumbo fly!

the weight of his giddy riders made takeoff quite a challenge for dumbo

after nearly three years of vacillating, procrastinating, and squelching feelings of "we're too old for the zoo", marlon and i finally made it to the singapore zoo. we spent a muggy sunday afternoon thanking the heavens that it was nothing like sentosa, as well as indulging our inner children.

our inner children, of course, kicked and begged and shrieked to be let on the above elephant. we were notably the only adults without kids that day who lined up, asquirm with excitement, for elephant rides.

the blubber-soft, cute-and-cuddly dumbo imagery of my youth was tossed out the window the second i set my butt upon our noble steed's padded tarpaulin "saddle". you almost think you're sitting on a massive, ancient block of stone -- until it heaves into a swaying, almost graceful motion.

marlon and i also spent some time before an elephant show sketching the animals (mostly their butts). man you gotta give walt disney major props for stamping the idea that elephants are round and soft into our heads. they actually have a very solid, square shape -- ideal for all the heavy lifting, battering, and bulldozing they are made to do in quite a number of cultures.

you have to sit absolutely straight while astride the elephant, which should lend any elephant-rider some of his transport's noble air. with my head erect and back ramrod-straight, it was easy to imagine myself moving regally through the jungle in some queenly, exotic garment.

my most vivid takeaway from the entire ride though was our elephant's ears -- bristly, heavy sheets of canvas, or very rough leather, slap-slap-slapping against my calves.

not bad for something that we put off for nearly three years. :-P

Calm before the... yadda yadda

labor day weekend came just in time. i'll keep the litany of work-related stress to myself, but it is of note that i woke up momentarily disoriented on friday morning and nearly erupted in tears upon realizing that it was, indeed, friday and not yet saturday.

i've been so happy to have the past three days off that i don't even feel bad about having put in a couple of hours at the office on saturday. the frosty halls of the network were a welcome escape from the heat, and i managed to get quite a few ideas down on paper.

charlie and i also did a brainstorm over the phone, for a long-running account that we're putting to bed. it was so productive that we're considering putting in a request for a special brainstorm booth akin to the ones that inmates use to talk to their visitors (you know, two phones separated by glass).

i got to do a couple of things i've been itching to do, like go over my pieces for acs, vocalize (my voice needs all the help it can to hold up against the ravages of stress), buy speakers for my office desktop (i need music to survive the next couple of weeks at work), and do a lengthy, brain-numbing ps2 marathon. i had marlon's ps2 repaired and am using it to turn my brains to mush (some of my clients seem to prefer mushy-brain ideas) over god of war.

also took a little drive to rockwell to practice my road skills. this is a first on so many levels, so it deserves a separate post.

all in all, the weekend was a well-timed and much-savored refueling. let's hope the juice goes far -- the month ahead does not look pretty.

--

from toni.

My ex seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth. thank goodness.

Maybe I should stop snacking at the office.

I love spending rainy days in bed.

I don’t understand why clients can't consolidate their revisions.

I lose hair ties and pens with alarming regularity.

Love is what makes life worthwhile.

Somewhere, someone going to bed feeling apprehensive about the workweek.

Forever is real.

I never want to grow old alone.

When I wake up I roll over and hit "snooze" at least thrice.

My past is past. For better or for worse.

I get annoyed when someone lean on the entire length of an MRT pole when the train is crowded.

Parties are fun when they're intimate.

Kisses are the best way to brighten me up.

I really want to eat something cooked by Marlon.

I have low tolerance for people who are ditzy.

Tomorrow will be tough. And so will the days that follow. But I'll ram through the tough days, and laugh when it's all over.