Merienda at Tiffany's

on my most recent weekend jaunt to singapore, marlon looked me in the eyes, took a deep breath and popped a question.

"would it be totally unromantic if i asked you to go to a jewelry store with me so i can finally find out what your ring size is?"

(bestill your beating hearts -- it's a question, not the question. but this tells me that the question will be hurtling my way very soon.)

so saturday morning before hieing off to sentosa, we dropped by one of singapore's ubiquitous lee hwa jewelry stores.

how in-your-face jewelry stores are was one of the things that first struck me as bizarre about singapore. the same two or three jewelry stores that are practically on every corner of every mall also paper the city with ads, promos and big screaming "sale" signs. they even do tv commercials, which tells me that singaporean tv is just swimming in what is probably relatively cheap airtime. but i could be wrong.

anyway, the ring size question was quickly taken care of (i'm an 8), and we proceeded to peruse the rocks. it was really quite sweet to see how marlon has transformed into something of a walking diamond encyclopedia -- he did most of the talking while the store personnel just stood there and served us tea. he could even name the color grade and carat before the salesperson turned over the little tags attached to each ring. nerds -- you gotta love them. :-)

we also stopped by the window display of larry jewelry, which sounds like it sells puwit ng baso but is actually a swanky hong kong jeweler which deals in nothing but major ice. obviously, hanggang store window lang talaga kami.

engagement ring mecca

then, after a long humid afternoon in sentosa, marlon indulged my curiosity about the mecca of engagement rings -- tiffany's. i expected to feel awed as we made our way up the plush carpeted steps of tiffany's at takashimaya, but instead i just felt very young and scruffy.

i was also subconsciously bracing for some sort of discrimination, since marlon and i obviously don't look like your typical tiffany's customer (make that young, scruffy and filipino), but i was pleasantly surprised. the young, spike-haired sales representative gave us the smiliest and most gracious service i've ever had from a singaporean as he brought out ring after ring for me to try.

i must say, them tiffany rings seem to be worth every pretty penny. one of my hugest fears is that clumsy me will knock the diamond out somehow (especially when i think of those rings where the diamond sticks out from your finger). but tiffany has these settings that are not only gorgeous but feel almost industrial in their security.

size doesn't matter

okay, i know carat size is the name of the game, but as a edsa-plying pinay urbanite trying on diamonds for the first time, i realized something important. i don't want to wear anything that will get my throat slit or my finger slashed off when i'm commuting home from work. so marlon is lucky to have a girlfriend who is literally deathly terrified of anything over 0.7 carats -- and even 0.7 is walking the edge.

but the rings were lovely. so much so that in spite of all my jewelry-related hangups (knocking out the diamond, getting mugged) i couldn't help sighing as i slipped on the tiffany legacy ring (pictured above). "ang ganda," i marveled.

our young sales rep brightened. "yes," he nodded, "maganda!" and i felt, even as i stood in my ukay-ukay top, free levi's (yes, i won them at an event) and landmark slippers in one of singapore's plushest stores, that i was young and girlish and, yes, maganda -- and on the brink of something as delicious and sparkling as tiffany's finest ice.

"bye-bye! salamat!" he called with a cheery wave as marlon and i walked out the glass doors.

i can't wait.

Rrrarr

random procrastination from jeline, to fill the space while i'm off wrestling with work.

got lots to write about, lots of new pictures, but even more to do at the office. gotta tiptoe around everyone's sensitivities while attempting to blow them away. ah, the travails of putting another long-running show to eternal rest.

rrrrar.

Big dad Wolff

you'll never guess who emailed me about my cellulite display.

August 3

Thank you for another insight into my son's lifestyle.

My son is not a lalaki talaga... just a boy... only recently twenty-one and Keena is old enough to be his mother but I can assure you she is not!! I have a little more
taste and am not so keen on silicon in my sandwich.

My son left a top university here in the UK to be with *one of his exes*, after he met her on his gap year so I am not amused by my son's current career. He has a fine brain and it is being wasted in Manila.

Thanks for the amusing tale.

*Big Dad* Wolff (UK and Cebu)

grabe mga mare, nawindang ako doon. pero sumagot pa rin ako.

August 3

Dear *Big Dad*,

Gee. Is it really you?

If it is, I'm happy to have entertained you. How many fathers nowadays Google their kids? I'm slightly embarrassed though -- I may have been a bit too candid in my
appraisal of your son's fine... brains. But then such are the hazards of blogging.

So he's cute and smart, but as you say, a little addlepated in the decision-making department? I guess God is fair. LOL. Or chalk it up to youth.

At any rate, thanks for your email! It was a little bit out of the Twilight Zone to get an email from someone's father, but it was very nice of you to have written. It's good to know though that we non-siliconed women have our share of champions as well.

Be a good dad now.

*Currystrumpet*

o diba ang saya? big dad sent me a way longer and chattier reply which i won't print here. but now i think i know more about andrew wolff now than i ever did. i can now write a tell-all brochure. (wala pa sa level ng tell-all book.)

i say, if you can't make friends with a hunk, chat up his parents instead. haha.

thanks for your emails, big dad wolff! they were nice. surreal, but nice. keep on reading. :-)

'Tis the season

ano ba?!?!??!?! bakit ba ang dami-daming SALE? kung kelan pa nagtitipid ako! mango, zara, debenhams, terranova and powerbooks!

i've been making a sisyphean effort to watch my spending lately. it's only a little over two months (and six paychecks) to europe, and scrimping for pocket money starts now. with sales beckoning left and right, though, it's so easy to spend on things that i "need" for the trip, like a roomy messenger bag, low-heeled boots, sweaters and a warm hat. (the other things are not quite so exciting to shop for: thermal undies and a rechargeable battery for my camera.)

but i try to remind myself that every early-evening cab or late-afternoon snack over here will cost me a museum ticket in paris or a fabulous pair of shoes in barcelona.

haay. tipidity na ito!

Boy meets thigh

i was my butt was my thighs were the cellulite on the back of my thighs was introduced to andrew wolff at the gym awhile ago.

it was one of the more, shall we say, undignified introductions i have ever had the misfortune to experience. to keep the mortification at bay, i shall force myself to think of it as that all-purpose palliative -- a learning experience.

so this is what i learned.

lesson # 1: shorts from the '80s should remain in the '80s.

two straight weeks of no sunshine = no laundry out to dry

no laundry = dwindling pool of clothes (gym clothes dwindle particularly quickly)

no more gym clothes = mom's pink nike pekpek shorts from the '80s

and when i say pekpek, i mean pekpek. i was actually extra fidgety wearing them around the boxing trainers, but i pek-peked pooh-poohed my discomfort away by reasoning that i'd worn them at least once before, and who cares about scruffy old ex-boxers anyway?

so i thought (almost) nothing of agreeing to a pre-workout stretching session with my trainer, jeff. i love getting stretched -- you just lie there like a log while they do all this physical therapy stuff. i was lying on my belly, face flat on the floor, shorts riding up my (thunder) thighs when one of the other trainers exclaimed, "oy! si andrew wolff!" the other trainers chorused, "pare! andrew! kamusta na?" as a very, very large shadow slowly loomed over me.

crap.

at least, i reasoned as male chitchat ensued, jeff will have the good sense not to introduce me while i'm lying here like a tub of giniling.

lesson # 2: men are dense.

i gave all the non-verbal clues i could in such a position. i kept my face turned away. i clipped my arms tightly to my sides. i clamped my thighs to prevent further riding up of said shorts. i may even have given a warning wiggle or fidget. all to no avail.

"siya nga pala, andrew, papakilala ko sa 'yo si deepa. tiga-gma din siya. deepa, si andrew."

he could have just said, "siya nga pala andrew, hita ni deepa."

i have never taken so long to turn my head in my life. i would rather he have met my toes (they're nice and slim) or my split ends (i have none).

but there was no escaping it. i turned my head. with what dignity i could muster with my face purple and pressed to the floor and my thighs staring him in the face, i smiled and said hi.

lesson # 3: when in doubt, hide.

quicker than you can say "cellulite cream", i whipped my head back and away from him, and cringed. i mean, i'm not a fan, but i didn't want a fine specimen like him to associate my face with those thighs, resplendent with niknik bites and bedimpled with cellulite. (come to think of it, i literally dimpled at him.)

god forbid i ever, ever bump into him again, and my face be replaced in a split second in his memory by quivering, white, jiggly thighs. as we took our places in the ring, i worked extra hard to make my punches as strong as humanly possible, so that he could at least have something else to associate with me. "you're the girl with the kick-ass punches" sounds way better than "you're the girl with the, uh, ass."

lesson # 4: when able, ogle.
(or, select types of men are entitled to as much silicone as they please)

as i said, i'm not a fan. after seeing him in person, i find him a bit of a calamari (as defined by j). but you don't have to be a fan of someone to ogle, right? you can just be a fan of the male species in general? because, as i also said earlier, he is quite a fine specimen. one that boxes shirtless, and wears the biggest size glove, at that.

jeff and i made chismis while said specimen was off crunching granola. "ang laki ng katawan ano? naging girlfriend n'yan si ethel, tapos si gwen," jeff said conspiratorially. "ngayon naman si keanna. dala n'ya nga dito kahapon eh."

hmm. the man does like his silicone, innit? but then, i figured as i ogled all through his ab workout, any man who can bounce a medicine ball off his abs (even the obliques!) can have as much silicone as he damn well pleases.

see? i am so much smarter now.

One

one ring to rule them all

yep, the header is new. and it's still part of my green and pink sari theme. the ring was one of the many components of the outfit that inspired the (not so) new look of this blog.

i love this ring -- more so since it's usually so hard for me to find one that's small enough for my fingers. now if only i could remember where i put it...

one hour... just one

aside from the usual idle hankerings for clothes, shoes, books (money, power, fame) and whatnot, i've found myself wishing for just one extra hour each day. i don't know how it would work (would it be a 25-hour day for everyone or just for me? could i stick the extra hour wherever i wanted? do i just want the extra hour to apply on workdays?), but it's been a nice fantasy.

if i had an extra hour a day, i would...

do yoga. uncle sujit gave me a slim volume about yoga, and i've been bumbling my way through it on and off since january. i just about gave it up since i started boxing, which i am beginning to believe was the beginning of the end of what little flexibility i'd previously achieved. i managed to call it an early worknight on monday, and it felt great to do a full forty-five minutes of yoga when i got home. wish i could do it more often.

box more often (or longer). i don't have the time to box every day (three times a week at most, and never consecutively), and i often have to dash back to work. i find myself wishing for that extra hour when i'm trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that fit me only days ago.

be more conscientious with singing. vocalize more often, and practice more pieces for acs' imminent takeover of europe (sana). more often than i'm happy about, i have to content myself with putting on my study mp3s as background music while i work, and hope that i learn them by osmosis.

write. not for tv. tv can stuff it. that one extra hour would be for me, and me alone.

sleep more. i intentionally set my alarm earlier than necessary just so i enjoy the exquisite pleasure of hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep. my idea of bliss is getting to hit "snooze" at least five times and not have to wildly rampage through the rest of my morning rituals just to make up for it. this cold snap is making me crave that extra hour of sleep even more.

what would you do with an extra hour in your day?

More threes

from toni. because it’s a monday, it’s rainy outside, and i feel like procrastinating. (i’m editing out the ones that are giving me meme-vu.)

three people who make me laugh: my corny boyfriend. chris ong. rufa mae.

three things i love: sleeping. dark chocolate. ukay-ukay.

three things i hate: people who can’t keep their voices down in small, enclosed public spaces (like buses and elevators). bopis. food with fatty textures, like lychee and yes, fat.

three things on my desk (at work): “spunk & bite: a writer’s guide to punchier, more 'engaging language & style.” a marilyn monroe mug someone gave me in fifth grade. matrioshka dolls from prague.

three things i’m doing right now: procrastinating. typing. blinking.

three things i want to do before i die: go to a really fancy dress-up event and be gawked at and photographed. own a diamond and south sea pearls. learn to cook.

three things i can do: write. sing. pick up things with my toes.

three ways to describe my personality: game. suplada. multifaceted (haha, cop-out).

three things people might not know about me: i always pick something by madonna on videoke nights. i cut my eyelashes as a kid. i once wanted to be a fashion designer.

three things i think you should listen to: the ateneo chamber singers. (shameless plug). the amazing rina. apocalyptica.

three things i don’t think you should listen to ever: people who tell who you just how you should dress. and those who tell you that you can't do something (ala lavinia of bituing walang ningning fame -- "you'll ne-he-vehrrr make it..."). oh, and sleazebags who say things like "don't worry, i won't put it in." haha.

three of my absolute favorite foods: godiva truffles/ritter sport praline (make that chocolate, period). microwave-melted queso de bola, as introduced to me by justine in college. spam with ketchup and rice.

three things i’d like to learn: thai and indian cooking. how to get a job at discovery. photography.

three beverages i drink regularly: water. coffee. c2 apple iced tea.

three shows i watched when i was a child: perfect strangers. the charmings. silverhawks.

three people i tag to do this meme: you, you, and you. both of you!

Parents at the gym

parent no. 1: a tall man whom the trainers simply call “doc”. he brought his son to box with him last saturday. father and son did everything alongside each other – from warming up to a couple of rounds in the gym. a couple of times while i was working out, i would catch a glimpse of doc teaching his son how to do his crunches properly, or overseeing how the trainer put on the kid’s hand wraps.

they didn’t say much to each other or to other people in the gym, but i noticed both a certain radiance about the boy. i imagined that being allowed to share such a “grown-up” pursuit with his dad made him feel so special. one could see it in in how quiet and careful he was, where a little boy would normally be exuberant and noisy and all over the place.

parent no. 2: kathleen, a young, fresh-faced mom with three mestizo, super-adorable kids aged nine, seven and six. she usually brings her eldest son, tommy, to box – with his chubby, rosy cheeks and surprising stamina, he’s the default darling of the ring. kathleen and i got to chat for the first time in the locker room, and i commented on it being my first time to see her daughter, ashleigh, at the gym that day.

“ay, dinadala ko talaga ‘ yan minsan,” she replied cheerily. “para pag mag-away sila ng kuya niya, may chance naman siyang lumaban.” she chattered on about how ashleigh simply didn’t have time to box anymore – what with figure skating, tennis, ballet, piano and go-karting.

“go-karting?!” i blurted. gosh. times, they are a-changing. in my day *pats hair primly*, all little girls had to suffer through ballet and piano to fulfill the ilusyon of the perfect, well-rounded little girl held by an entire generation of middle-class moms. i did tennis, too, and painting and summer acting workshops at the all-but-dead rep. but never anything half as cool as go-karting.

parent no. 3: winnie, a producer for two of the shows that i handle. close to her forties (i’m guessing), her ease to work with and abundant dry wit has made her one of my favorite clients. she usually goes to the gym her husband, nestor, and with another client, redgynn, who was alone that day.

“o, wala ata ang gym buddy mo,” i remarked to redgynn in the locker room.

“ang gym buddy ko? preggy!” exclaimed redgynn. “diba, humabol pa? all this time na nagwo-work out kami, two months na pala siyang buntis! just goes to show,” she continued, “pag physically fit ka, mas mabilis kang makakabuo!”

“so dapat ba tayong mag-ingat?” i joked.

“immaculate conception?” she retorted. “ibang level na ng physical fitness ‘yon!”

parent no. 4: one of the daddy types i usually see at the gym. while i was dressing up, i overheard an exchange between him and the male locker room attendant.

“bye sir!” chimed the attendant amiably. “direcho uwi na po ah, wag nang kakaliwa!”

daddy fell silent for a beat, then laughed awkwardly: “ah, eh, may konting detour lang sandali.”
then it was the locker room attendant’s turn to fall silent. i guess he didn’t expect his joke to actually hit a mark.

nakakagalit, actually. i can’t help but wish that his kind of parent dies out with his generation. and so i try to think of doc, kathleen and winnie, and hope things will be better.

Grayness

this fugly grayness! when will it end?

normally i love really gloomy weather -- leo and i get to pretend that we’re in the u.k. (“reminds me of ahhhrland”, as we like to say). plus it was a convenient excuse to put off boxing for an entire week (“kasi naman, kakatamad ang panahon”, i said to myself almost helplessly). but it’s stretching on a bit too long. affected na ako!

most of last week was sluggish – i was practically falling asleep at my desk by 7pm. depriving myself of endorphins was most definitely not a good idea, as i found out yesterday when i finally slunk back to the gym. whereas seven rounds in the ring gave me nothing more than a “healthy glow” on my last session, yesterday’s four measly rounds were enough to reduce me into a purple-faced, wheezing, pudding-like creature. must get back on track.

the weekend was surprisingly gloomy as well. i usually enjoy going to the mall to window shop or run non-essential errands by myself (it gives me a sense of normalcy to counter the all-nighters and late hours). but i just found myself getting – well, lonely. i wanted to try cyma at shangri-la, but it didn’t seem like much fun to try a new (and supposedly good) restaurant all by myself. so i went for comfort food (bibingka with salted duck egg) at via mare – and, since i was the only person eating alone and there’s not much people-watching at shang, still felt lonely. haay.

then there was sunday’s conversation with marlon. lately, talking about wanting to be with each other invariably leads to difficult questions. you know those old-school questions that parents are supposed to thunder at young couples who want to get married? “saan kayo titira?” “paano kayo mabubuhay?” yeah, those.

i guess when we started out, we thought we could breeze through those matters armed with mobility and financial stability and all those things young couples are supposed to try to achieve (well, not that we have, but we seem to be on the right track). it’s rather ironic that those very questions would end up staring us in the face anyway.

i don’t know why asking those questions can be so difficult when, for all intents and purposes, we are quite blessed, and our futures should be brimming with promise. this just seems to be one of those inescapable moments when the future just looks more like a soup of decisions than a shimmer of possibilities.

it’s – well, hazy. kind of like the view from my office window.

Productive weekend

• shrink new jeans (scalding soak + very hot tumble-dry)
• watch season 2 of lost on dvd
• buy rechargeable batteries for digital camera
• mass-download new mp3s

my acs friends like to joke that marlon and i treat singapore-manila junkets like trips to quiapo or alabang. i think i believe them now. especially when my to-do list for a weekend in a foreign country begins to look like one for any old weekend at home. naturally, it's a given that at the top of the list is "spend much-needed quality time with the boyf." :-)

the number of photos we have at jumbo is insane

i won a great new pair of levi's from a "fashion lab" event at the ramp at crossings (part of an entire fabulous outfit!), and i picked out a size that was too big for me. as it was quickly wonking into a pair of butt-crack jeans, i read up on denim shrinkage methods and decided i needed marlon's ultra-hot shower and his dryer. i had great jeans all throughout my sentosa saturday (didn't have to hitch them up once!) but they went right back to butt-crack mode when i tried to shrink them a second time.

lost was great and gave us major eyestrain, as usual. iyak na naman ako ng iyak sa mga koreans. i'm finally starting to like sawyer, and i'm glad they offed michelle rodriguez's character. her involuntary sneer at the end of her every line was beginning to annoy me.

i got the rechargeable batteries, and a whole bunch of music from people i just read about and have not heard. unfortunately, i hit some weird button when i was renaming the files and now i have about thirty mp3s all named "corinne bailey rae - call me when you get this".

Rain again

i love, love, love this weather. (unfortunate incident with bedroom ceiling notwithstanding.)

some of my favorite rain memories -

1. being picked up by the driver from grade school on rainy days, and watching rain trickle down the window. sometimes i would have the whole backseat to myself, so i would lie down and watch raindrops upside down. or i would sit with my head against the window and try to predict the path a raindrop would take, and the other raindrops it would run into and take along with it. i particularly liked it when the raindrops gathered and made fat pools on the window, quivering with the effort of resisting gravity.


2. walking home after school one afternoon in the rain. i must have been in fifth or sixth grade (we were still living in bel-air, about a ten-minute walk from my school). i was walking with a friend, but i can’t remember who it was. i do remember getting scolded by my yaya and shooed immediately into a hot bath. but that was worth the fun of splashing around in squeaky black leather school shoes and the satisfaction of finally peeling off my dripping uniform.


3. the numerous brownouts induced by stormy weather. the most memorable one was when we had just moved into the mercedes street house in bel-air and we hadn’t unpacked anything yet. my sister and i tried to heat takeout from hossein’s persian kebab in a frying pan over candle.


4. the blissful, confusing, gray and rainy afternoon with frank in lindenholzhausen. i wrote about it here, and here.


5. getting up for my 7:30 a.m. classes in college and making endless calls to ateneo in the hopes of hearing that classes got called off. paunahan ‘yon with all the mothers of the grade school and high school boys who were, of course, fighting to get on the line at the exact same time. often, i would hear the female recording on the ateneo trunkline (which had this weird clackety-clack background noise) say “classes are suspended for grade school and high school levels only), which was my signal to sigh and get out of bed. but i lived for the recording that went “classes are suspended for all levels.”


6. marlon picking me up from leo’s “tea and strumpets” despedida at aui’s house. i texted him, expressing my dismay at the rain. his reply: “rain is our friend, my strumpet >:-)”


7. well, it’s not exactly a favorite memory, but it certainly was memorable: getting stranded on the mrt, and having to walk on the tracks in the rain one day before my birthday last year.
8. hiking in mcritchie reservoir with marlon and kissing in the rain among the treetops. haay. i miss marlon.
9. the heng keng junket, when ocean park was one big puddle.
10. oh and speaking of puddles, how can i forget? the glee club kiddies (me, pia, maggie, jett, leo, joshua, tor, jonel and gideon) sang for a wedding at caleruega, and it rained really hard on the way home. josh was driving his fx, with all of us crammed inside.

tor: "watch out for that poodle!"

josh, swerving to avoid the poor pup: "what poodle? where?!"

when we realized tor meant "puddle", we all collapsed into "poodles" of laughter.

The Palawan show

boat
Originally uploaded by currystrumpet.

whew! i'm finally done resizing and uploading all my palawan photos to flickr. so sit back, relax, and let this nifty little slideshow take you away from it all :-)

i'll let the photos speak for themselves, but i'll share the morbid little thought i had while boarding my first ever domestic flight.

if i ever wanted to die in a plane crash (and God forbid that i do anytime soon), i would probably have chosen that flight, with the three most important people in my life -- mom, ate, the boyf -- sitting right along with me. (told you it was a morbid thought.)

obviously, and thankfully, it was not my time. thus here i am, healthy, alive (if a little itchy) and able to share my wonderful weekend with you all.

it looks a lot better in pictures, by the way -- the camera didn't capture any of those blasted sandmites that are giving me hell right now.

Ulan

i woke up to the sound of raindrops on my bed. outside, it sounded like the skies had just burst and apparently, my bedroom ceiling was itching to follow suit.

and so i spent the last few hours before daybreak dodging drips -- intermittently getting up, shoving my bed a couple of inches left or up or down to a dry spot, and getting back into an increasingly damp cocoon. by 6 in the morning, i was clinging to the very edge of my bed, desperate to take advantage of the perfect sleeping conditions brought about by the rain and wind.

i finally gave up half an hour before my alarm rang, when, without any provocation, aegis's ulan began to play full blast in my head.

eto ako-ho-ho
basang-basa sa ula-aaan
walang masisilunga-aaan
sana may luha pa
akong mailuluha-aaa

(there. that's the only part of the song i know, and it was on endless loop.)

you know it's going to be a loooong day when you wake up in the middle of a pond, and the first thing that pops into your head in the morning is aegis.

Recouping

just got back from palawan, and wondering how....

1. ... i'm going to keep my heart from exploding tomorrow at the boxing gym, after four straight days of absolutely no exercise, too much inihaw, and one too many servings of garlic rice
2. ... to dress to show off my hard-earned tan while hiding the 48,000 sand-mite bites (in local parlance, niknik) on my arms and legs
3. ... long the aforementioned mite-bites (mbites?) will take to heal. i have to show off this tan, geddemmit!
   
4. ... penniless i'll actually be after i pay my sister back for the my share of the airfare and accommodations. everything was discounted since it was off-peak, but it was so not in my budget (ah hell. what is?)
5. ... on earth i'm going to wake up and get to the office on time, since my phone died and my charger is in the office -- and i am so exhausted
   
6. ... i'm going to feign work at the office but secretly upload all my palawan photos to flickr
7. ... that kick-ass starfish i smuggled home is going to smell tomorrow
8. ... soon i'll get to go back. next time, it'll be all about el nido, baby!
   

When the mind travels

i've had travel on the brain recently. what with daydreaming/hostel-hunting for barcelona and wrapping up the important details of the palawan trip on thursday. i thought i'd just let my mind wander a bit.

* sometimes i worry that i no longer know how to write for myself. at work, i write for a triumvirate: viewer (the fictitious "aling fely"), client, boss. sometimes i manage to throw myself in there somewhere, but that pretty much depends on how much i can become one (better if all) of the persons in the trio. don't get me wrong, i'm not unhappy at work. just -- worried.

my blog is supposed to be my own personal space, but lately i wonder if i've really been treating it that way. maybe i'm writing for a triumvirate here too -- here, at least, i should be part of it.

* right before my very first europe tour, i used to measure time in terms of the trip. the future was cut up into neat segments called "before i leave", "while i'm there" and "when i get back," each with a hope or goal pinned to it. i wrote about it in english class and sweet, wonderful doreen scribbled next to my A, "relax! just flow with it." i'm falling into that same habit again; anticipation can be so delicious. but this time there's no doreen to tell me to just let things happen.

* it's going to take a lot of guts for me to draw in the office on wednesday. it's not just that there are so many artists and creative people -- it's that there are a lot of opinionated ones as well. how many times have i been mean just to be funny?

* marlon and my family will be thrown together for four days. wonder how it'll go. can't help but think that he's being very brave about this.

* wonder if being in the philippines' most pristine corners of ocean will give me more ideas for my new baby. must take lots of pictures for charlie to use.

Travel bug decides

Cannot be made reserves with more than 90 days of advance.
Excuse the annoyances.

-- Hostal Avinyo's reservations page

i have magnanimously decided to grace barcelona with my presence this november. madrid is still reeling from the loss.

searching for accommodations online is my new form of daydreaming. and computing my budget for a four-day trip (not to mention for the whole three-week tour!) is my new way of shaving at least a couple of years off my life. bakit pa kasi nag-euro? why? why? as if we third-world tourists weren't kawawa enough already! the last time i was in europe with the glee club was in 2001 -- the euro was a faint and distant mumbling, and one could still feel like a millionaire when having currency exchanged, despite being a third-worlder (particularly in italy and slovenia).

ugh. this can only mean one thing: must. stop. cabbing. (that's my biggest guilty pleasure as of late.and it's damn expensive.) buti na lang talaga hindi na ako estudyante. those days, money-wise, were the pits.

okay. nakabusangot na ako ulit at the prospect of scrounging for money. shall now return to my hostel-hunting. lalala.

Meme

this took a while, but finally got to do nette's tag. i'm tamad so i won't tag anyone, and you can all lift this when you feel like being a little self-absorbed. ;-)

once you've been tagged, you have to write 8 facts/things/habits about yourself, saying who tagged you. in the end you need to choose the 6 people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs.

1. my first crush was at the age of three. it was on this tisoy guy who worked for my mom. i recall he rather looked like a young eduardo capetillo, a.k.a marimar's one true love -- sergio.
   
2. the only subject i ever failed was high school trigonometry.
   
3. i've never tried drugs. (people never me offer any at parties. i wonder why.)
4. i wanted to be kimberly (pink 5) from bioman.
5. i hate my arms. (but the boyf vows bloody murder if i have them lipo-ed someday.)
   
6. i only wore shorts to college once.
   
7. my favorite alcoholic drink is bailey's. (boring.) after that, tequila. (juvenile.)
8. i love my hands and feet -- they're tapered and narrow. (thus am now freaking out because boxing is giving me skinned knuckles.)

--

slow saturday -- slept in till 12, hied off to boxing, took advantage of my temporarily supercharged metabolic rate to scarf down takeout from burger king, napped, giggled through t.s. white's "the sword in the stone", figured out how to squeeze more savings out of my paycheck, studied pieces for acs and surfed. even had time to think about my new baby while taking a long hot shower at the gym.

in the cab home, i realized i can now not feel guilty about having saturdays like this because the launch of the captain is actually a full month behind me.

love it. :-)

Decompress

artwork by our venerable tatang

if my office was a person, this post would probably be the equivalent of me looking deep into his eyes and letting out a lovesick, contented, delirious sigh. have i already mentioned that i love my workplace?

starry-eyed muni-muni aside, this looks like fun. i haven't drawn in ages -- the last time i seriously put pen to paper was doing the collage for kooky's (still unreleased) book, and that doesn't really count as drawing.

i used to draw and paint a whole lot when i was younger; then i hit puberty, lost the ability to focus, and started getting impatient. if i couldn't finish it in ten minutes, then i wasn't going to finish it, period. i took a once-a-week, three-hour-long art elective in college, where i was forced to take time with my work. the fruits of my labor were not bad at all, if i may say so myself, and i took to keeping a visual journal.

ironically, now that i work with a very visual medium, i've fallen out of touch with that part of me. although ideas are demanded of me on a daily basis, five-, fifteen-, and thirty-second bursts of words have become my way of putting those ideas across. sometimes i worry that i'm getting spoiled by having a creative juggernaut of a partner who creates visuals to match my words.

i can imagine that this coming wednesday will be extremely hectic (what with me flying off to palawan the next day!!!!), but this looks like something i should make time for. katuwaan lang naman, diba?. at may tsitsirya pa!

Meet the Captain

captain burbur

captain burbur hails from planet ocean park, in the distant galaxy of hong kong. while in his home galaxy, he was known to those who knew him (umm, bale dalawa lang kami ni marlon) by the unremarkable, if obscure, name of fu chi.

upon reaching philippine shores, he found himself possessed of powers mysterious and magnificent -- making him thoroughly deserving, he reasoned, of an equally magnificent new image and epithet.

newly clothed in a sticky, paper-thin (but virtually indestructible, of course) breastplate, a cape generously loaned to him by a neighbor named spawn f. igurine, and the vivid memory of a local matinee idol's cotton-mouthed superhero shout, he took upon the magnificent persona of captain burbur!

he stands a proud and valiant guardian over precious founts of inspiration and magic, as well as powerful magnetic fields filled with marvelous sounds and images. and his adventures have only just begun.

sundan ang pakikipagsapalaran ni captain burbur... ang pinakabigating oso ng bayan!

(so now i guess you know what account i handle. and how nutty things can get at the office by week's end.)

Franklin returns

back at the factory, one of the straws that broke this camel’s back was the introduction of a “personal productivity tool” called, innocuously enough, the myFranklin. named after the much-touted franklin planner that many factory higher-ups swore by, it was reconstituted from a thick black zip-up daybook into an excel spreadsheet with a dizzying number of cells, which we had to fill up with word counts and hours (or fractions of hours) we spent achieving those word counts.

image from www.geek.com

a number of us lower-order drones used the actual franklin planner, but the staid black, zip-up bible-like casing scared me – i felt my stubborn loyalty to my lonely planner would save me from being thoroughly assimilated by the factory. if the franklin planner in its book form gave me the heebie jeebies, its electronic incarnation had the power to draw blood from the very pores of my scalp.

here was something that literally forced our work, our skills, our very art (if you’re the type to take your profession as your art) into miniscule boxes and numbers that were forced lower and lower (well, lower for man-hours and higher for word counts), all in the in the name of the two-faced factory god, “personal productivity.” i say two-faced because way even after i left, nobody had yet come up with the brilliant plan that would transform all those cells and decimals into an actual, actionable productivity strategy. (j, meron na nga ba?)

anyway, why am i bringing up such a horrid memory? ironically enough, it’s because, in a way, the myFranklin has followed me to my new digs. my creative sanctuary, my wonderful office, with mucha and michaelangelo splashed on its walls and ceilings, has been invaded by the deadly excel sheet! aaaugh!

this time, though, the time-tallying is for a behemoth-wide efficiency audit, and the make-your-own-format spreadsheet is called, for lack of a better term, the daily diary. after the token rebellion, we creatives decided to hunker down and fill up those damned spreadsheets because, well, they aren’t really limiting or violating – they’re simply out of character for a workplace like ours. personally, i felt that unlike the myFranklin, the underlying objective and productivity strategy gave birth to the tool, and not the other way around. and i’m all for that.

plus, the daily diaries started to look even better when we realized we could use them to inform the powers-that-be of the inefficiencies that make our lives hellish. especially the ones that look like this –

2:00pm-6:30pm forced break (waiting for video material)
actual excerpt from my daily diary

so while some of us have to get our creative skills cracking (“mentoring”, “research”, “field work” and “brainstorming” now take up a *cough* significantly larger chunk of our time), it’s all good for now. i’m on the side of anyone or anything that wants to get me home earlier.

'Nlabo

… ng IE! WATDAPAK HAS HAPPENED TO MY BLOG?

firefox people, what does it look like to you? (rorschach test ito.)

Water, water everywhere

lion in the rain

first, the heng keng weather.

there were probably no two people more desperate determined to have a good time in heng keng that weekend than marlon and i. we soldiered on against the elements, despite the fact that the only protection we had thought to bring against the rain was closed flats (me) and a big red jacket (the boyf).

we made our way up victoria peak in the rain, and marveled at all the fog ("wow sweetie! so mats fag!") where we should have been thrilling to a clear, 360-degree view of hong kong. our supposed "lunch with a view" at cafe deco on the peak turned out to be "lunch with a backdrop of construction workers, bamboo scaffolding and white nothingness", but no, todo emote pa rin kami.

spot the difference

if not for a major downpour at ocean park, we probably wouldn't even have bought an umbrella. "this better have an ocean park logo on it", grumbled the boyf as he forked over hk$ 89 for a plain blue umbrella. siyempre, pag bukas namin, wala.

ocean park was probably the closest we (or maybe just i) came to giving up on the whole idea of having a good time. it was a typical bara-bara couple scenario -- the rides were closed because of the rain; we were late to the first dolphin show; and i had come to the horrific realization that i was wearing ancient mongolian torture devices disguised as flats. braving hordes that made sentosa seem like a happy memory, i sloshed forward in the rain until we collapsed in a cold, damp and almost-miserable heap in the ocean park theater.

i've seen this show once before as a kid, but the dolphins were worth it. anything that can erase oozing blisters from your mind for at least an hour are indeed God's most brilliant creations. having had our feel-good factor boosted by the dolphins, we cheerily whiled away the rest of the afternoon playing "spot-the-incoming-pirated-goods" from our perch, as well as "where-the-crap-is-that-panda" at the panda habitat.

second, the new account (a.k.a. the obsession).

shortly after nabbing the new project, i made it a point to go home early one weekday evening and curl up in bed with chocolate, pen and paper, and a tagalog-english dictionary. i was pleasantly surprised to find that we have so many tagalog words pertaining to water that all begin with the letter "A" -- perfect for my purposes.

so, yeah, it's a water thing. words fail me when i try to communicate how excited i am about it, since it will entail seeing my all-time office crush clad in something skintight, waterproof and (hopefully) skimpy.

at the moment, charlie and i have water on the brain. we're not the only ones either -- the father-daughter team being considered to do photography for this account has been doing water-y test shots. the daughter photog has invited me to do test shots with them twice now -- and the weird thing is, she doesn't seem to be kidding.

daughter: "deepa ha, next week magdala ka ng mga gown-gown, mag-test shots ulit tayo? ang pangit kasi nung model namin."

me: "sa bagay no, may baleña din naman sa dagat."

cut to me dressed as a giant pusit: "i'm ready for my closeup!"

cut to me presenting test shots to client: "and this is the visual treatment we had in mind for the account -- ay, oo nga no, ako pala 'yan, ehehehe..." (cue nervous laughter)

uh, okay.

Endorphins!

after seven rounds of boxing, i plopped, drenched in sweat and purple in the face, on the floor to roll up my hand wraps. i looked outside and said to myself -- it's such a beautiful day!

grabe pala ang nagagawa ng endorphins no? pre-boxing, i would have spent this saturday locked up in my room lolling around in bed, munching on something, and luxuriating in the feeling of being absolutely brain dead.

ah, onga pala. i box now. i didn't want to blog about it until i felt i was really committed. baka ma-capoeira kasi ako. as you probably guessed, my silence about it means i never went back after the first session. the shame, the shame! but since i've been boxing religiously, thrice a week for a month now (well, except for the week i had an injured wrist) and since i just plunked down two grand for my very own boxing gloves and jumping rope, i figured it was safe to finally write about it.

i thought i would pass out halfway through my trial round (i literally gasped "diyos ko, ang puso ko!" much to the amusement of my trainer), but in the past few weeks i've grown to really like both boxing and my boxing gym -- red corner on panay avenue, near the office. feeling ko super sulit siya, since i get one-on-one training. i always get tickled whenever one of the trainers -- all rough-and-tumble ex-boxer types-- says something like "tara na, babanatan kita sa abs ngayon!" or "hayaan mo, papapayatin ka namin!" it actually makes me feel like there's hope for my body! haha. in fairness, the locker room attendant said to me this afternoon, "ma'am, pumapayat ka na!"

my weird, never-routine workdays have actually made it easy for me to keep to my thrice-a-week commitment. i steal away from work while waiting for my daily plug material to arrive, which takes the edge off the fact that i even have to spend so much of my day just waiting. so it looks like i'm this for the long haul, or at least until makabawi ako sa gloves ko (which is about three months based on the per-session rental cost of gloves at the gym -- gawd i'm such a cheapskate.)

september will be the ultimate test of my commitment -- hello, nightly rehearsals for acs, the launch of my newest baby, plus boxing? good luck to me! kapayatan na sana ito!

Ramblings of a travel bug

update: tried getting a feel of both barcelona and madrid via flickr. seeing all the eye candy each place has to offer isn't helping me choose, but it sure is fun to look at.

so, where to, where to? check out barcelona and madrid and let me know what you guys think!

--

the obsession has barely begun, and already my workdays are getting more and more packed. thankfully, i always manage to force some spare minutes (that, admittedly, add up to hours) into my day.

and lately, aside from a smattering of the requisite online haunts, i've been spending a hefty chunk of my free time over at lonely planet (with the occasional side trips to renfe and msn travel, currently on beta). i've been on a happy mini-quest the past couple of days: after tolosa, should i madrid or barcelona?

the answer still eludes me. both are trainable from san sebastian (what seems to be the closest cosmopolitan area to tolosa). one has the prado (and can be a jump-off point to quite a number of intriguing side trips, if my poor wallet doesn't die on me first) while the other has gaudi and, well, seems to be more alive.

other areas that interest me are granada (trainable from tolosa via madrid) and valencia (which doesn't seem trainable from tolosa at all, but maybe i'm just not looking in the right place). oh and i have to check on andalucia.

--

in related news, my contribution to the upcoming family vacay in palawan is putting the itinerary together, which is pretty much done. there's not much booking to do apart from the hotel, and one can hardly be anal about anything when my family is involved.

pero parang nakakapansin na ako a. when there's a trip to be planned, i end up planning most of it. this is especially true of recent trips with the boyf. so much so that i realized he was half-expecting me to book a hotel room for him on one of his personal (non-work related) trips home recently. i'm not so in love that i couldn't tell him to stuff it, and he (dutifully, but a bit dazed) booked his own room like a good little jet-setting yuppie.

otherwise, i actually don't mind -- reading up on the destination and planning the itinerary actually psychs me up and puts me in the mood for a trip. plus, oddly enough, it makes me really look forward to the boyf proposing someday -- it'll be his turn to wrestle with logistics, moooahahahaha.

It begins

the first job order is sitting expectantly on my desk.

charlie and i have cracked open the art nouveau books. (charlie: “shet sumasakit ang ulo ko.” me: “bakit?” charlie: “sumasakit ang ulo sa sobrang gusto kong gawin ‘to.”)

we’ve set our first chicken barbecue (official food for brainstorming) appointment at our friendly neighborhood gotohan for 10 p.m. tonight.

let the obsession begin.

Office politics

warning: i'm trying to process something at the moment, so i might just end up rambling.

i actually wanted to write about work in the same post as one of my more memorable hong kong moments -- may something in common kasi sila. (or who knows, i might still. hmm.) but i think i'm too excited about my newest assignment to wait any longer.

the telltale sign of an obsession in the offing: i invested over a grand on new books with my latest project in mind, all the while mumbling to myself that i have reimbursible allowance for (supposedly) work-related expenses. i might have used work as an excuse to buy myself these gorgeous books, since i've actually been interested in klimt and mucha, and in art nouveau, for the longest time. i even had an art nouveau stained glass coloring book when i was in grade school.

so i was delighted when charlie (my partner at work) told me he'd been eyeing this style for our new baby. he'd been inspired by the giant mucha stickers on the glass walls of our pantry. sometimes i really love my office -- especially when the things put in it to inspire you actually work!

or maybe i bought the books to make me feel better about landing this project.

see, this particular account has had practically everyone in my unit drooling for over a year -- way before i started working here. it's a dream project -- big budget, great concept, super-organized and dynamic client. when i saw the material the production team was drawing inspiration from, i was hooked too.

i didn't keep the fact that i wanted the project a secret. none of us did except, ironically, the very team assigned to the account. one of the people on that team, a good friend of mine, was so deadma (or was it nega?) that every time we spoke about the project i got the feeling she didn't give a rat's ass about it.

as they say, be careful what you wish for -- it might come true. by some twist of fate my boss decided to yank out the project from under that team's nose, and tossed it into my and charlie's laps, triggering a rigodon of accounts within my unit. to my surprise (and horror), my friend on the other team was crushed when my boss broke the news to her. and so friday night, guilt was forcing me thisclose to giving up the account.

somehow i kept on thinking of my major takeaway from my factory days, and (ugh i hate to admit it) from the big bald man. he told me that "typical filipino employees" don't speak up about how they feel about work (out of, i guess, hiya). they somehow expect their bosses to read their minds, and develop all this angst when their concerns aren't addressed or their sentiments taken into account. he also told me that he hadn't expected i would be that way.

and somehow, i guess i resolved back then to prove that i wasn't -- that i didn't want to be -- that "typical filipino employee" he took me for. so i've never had a problem speaking up about what i think at work, whether it's dissatisfaction or confusion or enthusiasm or whatnot. so much so that i get frustrated when i see officemates stuck in that "typical filipino employee" mindset. my friend is one of those people i constantly nag to get out of that frame of mind.

was i an evil person? pinulitika ko ba ito? did i inadvertently manipulate a person or situation to get what i wanted? should i have just shut up about the project and not let anyone know what i felt about it (eh hindi nga ako ganun eh.) or should the team in question just have shown a leetle more enthusiasm for the project?

maybe i bought the books to make myself feel better, and to revive some of the original enthusiasm for the project that was dampened by guilt. and maybe i bought them to assert my ownership too. the account is my responsibility now and i'm going to give it my best shot, guilt or no guilt. good luck to me -- sana hindi ako masyadong ma-obsess, at sana lang may kaibigan pa kami ni charlie pagkatapos nito. haha.

random rant: it's nine in the morning on a monday and the resident office d.o.m. is playing makeout music f*ck me-i'm-high-on-ecstasy music trance. isn't it a tad bit early to be thinking about getting sweaty with someone half your age?

Three

happiness by the harbor

in hindsight, there was no other way we could have celebrated our third year anniversary.

different. a little surreal at times (planing in from two different countries to meet in one of the world's busiest airports? definitely surreal). not without its difficulties (in this instance, two words: ocean park). but always, always, full of love and laughter (and a little too much food.)

three years, and we're stronger than ever. i love you, sweetie.

Quickies

got lots to tell about the heng keng junket, but i can only manage itty-bitty posts here and there. not only do i have an injured wrist from boxing (yes, boxing, you read that right) and can barely type, but things are a-brewing at work as well and i'm eager to write about those developments.

in the meantime, check out my heng keng photos on flickr.

Live it, love it

Rain, rain go away

just got back from the third anniversary junket to heng keng. after whirling about the city in a daze for most of my first day there, i found that i had been mentally bracing myself for a thoroughly crappy hong kong experience.

at first i thought it was the literally the black stormcloud looming over our weekend (g had sent me a heads up on the crappy weather conditions the night before). as you can see on the left, our welcoming committee consisted of a less-than-picturesque mix of chinese street signs and british weather.

later on, i realized that wasn't the real black cloud hanging over my head, but one simple, emotionally loaded question. it was my mom asked me over a year ago, when i was still working for the factory. we'd been talking about how relocation to hong kong seemed to be as much as a goal as an eventuality for promising factory people, including -- it would seem -- myself.

then she let the bomb drop. "who wants to work in sh*tty hong kong?"

in it was all the resentment and bitterness she felt about my dad's experience as an expat in hong kong right before he died; how she felt, in a way, that what happened to him -- to them -- there led to the irreparable damage to his heart, to her life, to their hopes, to our life as a family.

i told marlon about this as we walked in a hong kong that seemed so full of light and life. all i could say at the time was, "it's not shitty at all." but now i know what i really want to say -- expectations and disappointments, parallels and differences, past and future all taken to heart.

it's such a blessing when, every now and again, things turn out differently.

Buti na lang

buti na lang maghe-heng keng ako tomorrow. buti na lang talaga. kung hindi, may nasapak na akong editor kanina. isn't it just pathetic when a naturally bobo person intentionally acts even MORE bobo just so he can piss you off? (note to self: when must piss off someone, attempt to do it by acting really, annoyingly smart.)

ANYWAYYYYYY. just a couple of things left to do before tomorrow -- print out my carefully (carefully daw!) researched itinerary, put the finishing touches on my gift to marlon, and pack my bags. then it's happy happy heng keng weekend! -- hugs at the airport, dinner with jambi+g+c, the great anniversary gift swap, and (hopefully) enough sightseeing and shopping to last me until the travel bug demands to be fed once more.

toodles ;-)

Pump it

black eyed peas. araneta coliseum. july 27, thursday. tickets at 5k, 3k, 1.5k and 500.

the high school hip-hopper in me is breaking out the tight top and big pants at this very moment. thank goodness though—i’m no longer that high school hip-hopper, and can actually afford decent seats.

i am so getting on the phone to reserve my ticket now, now, now! who wants to watch with me?

Anticipation

so here's the plan, sort of.

hong kong this weekend. (the boyf and i are celebrating our third year together.)

palawan in july. (the first family vacation in gawd knows how long.)

france in october. (choir pimpage.)

spain in november. (competing, as the acs, for the very first time.)

i can't wait.

The sari that launched a template

The sari that started it all

update: is it just me, or has everything on this page -- except this post -- gone italic? is it a firefox thing? gaaah!

back to our regular programming.

the inspiration for my spanking new template (care of the supertalented rina) came to me amidst a flurry of gorgeous silks and a hum of rapid bengali. that december afternoon, my indian relatives were taking me shopping for indian wedding garb, and my still-jetlagged head was a-spin traipsing about the crowded intersections and buzzing sidestreets of gariahat market.

there i was, sitting disoriented in a shop called “the silk house”, while aunts gabbered on about fabrics and colors (well that was my guess—it was all greek to me), the shopkeepers pulling out ream after ream of richly colored fabrics for my perusal.

then a flash of chameleon shimmer caught me. it makes me chuckle to remember muniya being taken by it too, and helping me protest against more silks being piled in front of me. “you like this one, right?” she asked me conspiratorially. after receiving a dazed nod from me, she erupted into a stream of tart bengali that ended in my lovely, pink-chameleon sari being rung up at the register and packed neatly into a long, flat box.

then we tumbled out into gariahat again, this time in search of sparkling goodies to drape my lobes, neck and wrists with – all matching, of course, the shining colored green-and-pink sari i held in my arms.

i’ve wanted to turn my blog green and pink since coming home from india with the sari tucked safely into my suitcase. it’s a reminder of the part of me i found there, among my family. i can still remember my grandmother saying, with unabashed pride and pleasure, “you look like a bengali girl”, the first time i modeled a sari for her.

it’s also a reminder of one of the most memorable times marlon and i have shared together. i will never forget the first christmas we spent on our own, or discovering my family with him by my side…
...or the panic that rose up in me as i realized, on the day of the wedding, that i had completely forgotten how to make the series of deft folds and tucks my aunt taught me. my mind was an utter blank, and i honestly thought i would not make it to the wedding. after over an hour of twirling futilely in yards of silk, i gave up. we called upon our resourceful muchachos to get a local girl from next door to do up my sari for me. marlon made sure to document the whole affair on video, should i be called upon to wear a sari again sometime in the future.

… or the first time i stepped out of the house swathed in all that silk. it was, to say the least, an interesting play of contrasts. the slightly unreal feeling of being utterly beautiful and regal was by the gripping paranoia that the sari would tumble around my ankles at any moment and leave me stark freaking naked. i glided down to the street only to tumble gracelessly into the four-wheel drive sent to pick us up.
so here it is, my newly sari-fied blog. eye candy (i hope) for you, and wonderful memories for me.

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.