Time and punishment

i'm dying to go shopping. i can't wait for my rakets to pay me so i can splurge on a little something. i made a teeny-weeny purchase today and while i do like what i got,i can't help but feeling a little punished for it.

walking to greenbelt 3 from the ayala mrt station takes at least an hour for an avid bargain-hunter and window shopper such as myself. on your way into ayala center, there's sm to sidetrack you. and on your way out of it, there's landmark (my cheap shopping mecca).

on this particular stroll, i decided to replace my landmark-bought, long-suffering, now-"smiling" pair of favorite gold thongs (sandals not underwear) with a dirt-cheap pair (php 149) from sm's ever reliable parisian brand.

my cheap shopping mecca seemed to sense this betrayal. as i meandered into landmark's ladies' footwear department, my favorite thong maker confronted me with a delicious array of metallic sandals that i could have bought instead if i had not already fallen into its archrival's clutches. i already have one of these in hot pink, so i know they're super sturdy and super comfy. damn. the bronze pair in particular would have perfectly matched the bag marlon bought for me (with much trepidation, i might add) in guangzhou.

waa. i'm sorry, landmark. never again.

haay. and i just told myself that i wouldn't buy any more footwear after this. i intend to slave away on my rakets and wait until i get paid for one of them until i can allow myself to celebrate. and i've restricted my "celebration" to a purchase that i need, but preferably are fun to buy -- like pants (parang ang tagal-tagal ko nang naghahanap ng pants na maganda), a good makeup remover or decent makeup.

the slight kalbaryo feeling is compounded by the fact that i can't celebrate my impending employment just yet. i still have to get through a drug test (as if! i'm such a boring person!), a thorough medical checkup, bureaucracy and the longest list of pre-employment requirements EVER.

waiting, waiting, waiting. ang saya saya.

Public service announcement

for all you perverts out there searching for college girls having sex, college wild things, college girl bangs, college girls in thongs, college girl porn, sexy asian college girls, and all manner of sexual activity involving college-aged females:

it's spelled C-O-L-L-E-G-E. not C-O-L-L-A-G-E.

so next time you decide to google your porn proclivities, spell it right.

now will you please stop f*cking up my statcounter statistics.

thank you and have a nice day.

--

speaking of porn, this is one of the cutest surveys i've answered in a while.

YOUR PORN STAR NAME:
(Name of first pet + Street you live in)
Daffy Aglipay (technically, Daffy the cat wasn't my first pet, but I think he was the first cat we had that wasn't called a generic cat name like Miming)

YOUR MOVIE STAR NAME:
(Name of your favorite snack food + Grandfather's first name)
Meiji Amarendra (O HA! that's the actual first name of my Indian grandfather. I've always wanted to name a child after him, but it's a bit of a mouthful). pwede ring Black Amarendra

YOUR FASHION DESIGNER NAME:
(First word you see on your left + Favorite restaurant)
Ericsson Spices

EXOTIC FOREIGNER ALIAS:
(Favorite Spice + Last Vacation Spot Visited)
Cinnamon Bintan

SOCIALITE ALIAS:
(Silliest Childhood Nickname + Town Where You First Partied)
Dipsy Manila

"FLY GIRL" ALIAS (a la J. Lo):
(First Initial + First Two or Three Letters of your Last Name)
D. Pau or D. Pa (ano buh)

ICON ALIAS:
(Something Sweet Within Sight + Any Liquid in Kitchen)
Caramel Sosa

DETECTIVE ALIAS:
(Favorite Baby Animal + Where You Went to High School)
Kitten Sta. Rosa

BARFLY ALIAS:
(Last Snack Food You Ate + Your Favorite Alcoholic Drink)
Chips Baileys

SOAP OPERA ALIAS:
(Middle Name + First Word you see on your Right)
Arevalo Norton (may bigla kasing nag pop-up na reminder na expired yung antivirus ko haha!)

ROCK STAR ALIAS:
(Favorite Candy/Dessert + Last Name Of Favorite Musician)
Truffle Lennox

New look

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let me catch my breath

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

shoot. maybe next time.

Warmth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

--

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

Bara-bara couple in Indonesia

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

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

anyway.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

--

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

Goodbye kiss

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

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

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

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

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

On location

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

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

anyway. let me show you around the set.


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


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


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

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


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

Where in the world is Currystrumpet?

big surprise, huh? :-P

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

bright lights, big city

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

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

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

meanwhile, i hear the cirque is in town.

Women like this exist????

"I've just started borrowing my husband's iPod, but he had to give me a lesson in how to switch it on and find a track, and I've got two pages of instructions that I take with me whenever I use it," says Lucy Dobbs, editorial director of a publishing company. "I would never attempt to download a song, because I know I'd make a mess of it - I'd probably end up closing down the National Grid."

"My mobile phone is a bone of contention between me and my husband," says Sarah Marshall, a marketing manager. "Until recently, I had the same phone that I have had since I first got one in 1997... Since my husband put my sim card in one of his old phones, he has given me three or four lessons in how to send text messages, but I still haven't got the hang of it. I think the reason I can't work it out is that I think it's pointless. If I want to tell someone something, I just call them."

"I bought an iriver [an MP3 player with lots of additional features] in January, and I have spent the last seven months trying to make it work," Jourdan, a writer in her thirties explains. "The instruction book was an inch thick and really hard to follow. So I gave up. Even a group effort with all my girlfriends failed. My brain just isn't wired up to deal with the annoying, irritating, sequential precision of technology. Plus, I only came to computers in my twenties and technology moves so fast that I have been playing 'catch up' ever since."

are these women for real?

is this article for real? my tuseran-fuddled brain reached the boiling point at the article's closing sentence: "As the saying goes, boys play with toys, and girls play with boys."

ANO KAMO????

prior to my last job, i considered myself a complete techie ditz, but i could at least figure out how to use my cell phone, turn on an mp3 player, and chuck the instruction manual within two minutes of getting my hands on it. my boyfriend's last three occasion gifts to me have been gadgets -- a cameraphone, a discman, and a laptop.

goodness. am i supposed to feel like a rocket scientist now?

And on the third day

... she saw that her eyes and smile took up more of her face. and she saw that it was good.
... she fit into tops that she hadn't worn in two years (a.k.a. pre-foodie boyfriend).
... she had a happy reconciliation with her favorite pair of jeans.
... she found that half a cup of brocolli/string beans/cauliflower/carrots is A LOT.
... she realized that string beans by themselves are absolutely vile.
... she concluded that the three-day diet was doable. not easy and definitely not appetizing, but doable.
... she figured she just needed to do it one more time (after the requisite four-day break).
... she longed to sink her teeth into a nice hot pizza.

--

i'm sick now, but i think it has more to do with the weather than the diet. and i was on the brink of gout on the second day, but that disappeared after i drank enough water to hydroelectrically power two small countries (maybe monaco and liechstenstein).

just one more veggie-laden meal, then i'm done. until next week, anyway. then i think i will follow in the grand puppet mistress' footsteps and become a leeetle bit more calorie-conscious.

Cleaning out my closet

after much procrastination, i finally sat down to attack/plow through/clean out my closet.

and inside, i found...

a meme! of my own making! tee hee.


--

three random facts about my closet

1. after i weeded it out, i had to return a lot – as in a lot – of clothes to my mom. i mean, i like the way my mom dresses, but i realize i shouldn't be dressing like i’m 56
2. my tops are organized by color, my dresses by style and length – for now
3. it contains a grand total of ONE pair of shorts

three items i’ve never worn but still haven’t tossed

1. blue halter with flowers from urban and co. (acquired in college, when i used to take my pay from summit in gc’s from speedo, urban and co., and benetton)
2. ultra-short gray miniskirt from onyx in milan. i bought this after seeing all the italian girls wearing tiny skirts over their jeans, but never had the courage to wear it when i got home. i think i can now, as the micromini is back with a vengeance.
3. beige lace top with a high collar from cubao ukay. i found it very charlotte (sex and the city), but whenever i try it on i feel like a frilly suman.

and a fourth –

4. vintage black wool sweater with sequins. old thing of my mom’s that i found and whittled down from its oversizedness. still waiting for a glam party in cold weather.

three things i will never, ever get rid of no matter how ugly they get

1. linea italia linen jeans autographed by all the members of wolfgang. (yes, i was the kind of bourgeois preteen who would go to a wolfgang concert in italian linen pants.) it holds wonderful memories of basti putting his hand on my leg just below the thigh as he wrote his signature *swoon*
2. each and every t-shirt i got for free on tour, from hosts and competitions. my favorite is the blue one with duckies from liederkranz netphen
3. super kawawa blue boxers from all boxed up. it was the first (or maybe the second) item of clothing i ever bought for myself, when megamall first opened

three things that i have a surprising number of

1. shirtdresses
2. halter dresses
3. scarves. it’s really disturbing – it’s like i’ve been subconsciously preparing to spend the rest of my life as a gypsy, roaming europe on a donkey

three dominant colors in my wardrobe

1. blue
2. green
3. pink (in that order)
   

three colors that are totally absent from my wardrobe

1. forest/olive/army green
2. mustard yellow
3. gray

three items that people wouldn’t expect to find in my closet

1. a baseball cap (free from the factory)
2. another baseball cap (free from the glee club’s 2004 US tour)
3. a mighty ducks hockey jersey. i was obsessed with D2 in high school and begged my mom to buy me the official jersey of the anaheim ducks.

three items that never fail to put me in a good mood when i wear them

1. turquoise corduroy jacket from mango
2. khaki shirtdress from sympa in paris. this is particularly good for fat days and as an instant interview outfit
3. gold and black printed skirt from bangkok (the one jayme likes)

three items that made me go, “oh lord what was I thinking?”

1. blue baby tee from landmark. it says “come and get it” in spray-painted capital letters. ugh.
2. ugly pink strapless bra from triumph. it makes me look like i have saucers strapped to my chest, and it never stays put
3. one-piece bathing suit with matching wrap skirt from woman. it is in this godawful print (see right). i can't believe i ever wore it in public. what a waste of the days when i was still skinny.

three people i’m tagging

1. you...
2. you...
3. all of you!

come on folks... you know your closet needs cleaning ;-)

--

my blog is a year old! happy birthday blog!

This...

... is my choir. or is it choirs? the ateneo college glee club, of which i was president, and the ateneo chamber singers, with whom i currently sing, performing bach's missa in f at last week's joint concert.

this is also the church of the gesu in ateneo. as you can see, it's quite large and fully packed. people love a free concert.

and this, as gp pointed out to our egroup, (from lower right hand corner of photo) is obviously not bach's biggest fan.

--

this had better freaking work. ang mahal ng pinag-grocery ko ha. (mahal is relative in the eyes of the unemployed.) maybe i should have returned the imported vanilla/hazelnut nonfat yogurt. but it's all i look forward to on this blasted diet.

i figured i should try this now while i don't have to expend much energy on anything. and i should do it if only to make room for the weight i will gain when i see marlon sometime in the next two or three weeks.

the promise: up to 10 pounds (up to is such a non-claim. i could lose like half a pound.) by the end of the given diet period.

tita mary (of inquirer fame), my waistline is in your aged, crepelike white hands that have never done a day's housework.

what's left of me will check in with y'all on friday.


The Three-Day Diet

Day 1. Breakfast: black coffee/tea, half a grapefruit, 1 slice toast, 2 tbs peanut butter. Lunch: half cup tuna, 1 slice toast, black coffee/tea. Dinner: 2 slices any meat, 1 cup string beans (is this sitaw?), 1 cup carrots, 1 small apple, 1 cup low/nonfat yogurt

Day 2. Breakfast: 1 egg, half a banana, 1 slice toast, black coffee/tea. Lunch: 1 cup cottage cheese or nonfat yogurt, 5 saltine crackers (that's it?!?!?!?). Dinner: 1 skinless chicken breast, 1 cup broccolli, half cup carrots, half banana, half cup low/nonfat yogurt.

Day 3. Breakfast: 5 saltine crackers, 1 slice cheddar, 1 small apple, black coffee/tea. Lunch: 1 hardboiled egg, 1 slice toast (that's it again!?!?!?!?). Dinner: 1 cup tuna, 1 cup peas or carrots, half a cantaloupe (hmm i don't eat this), half cup low/nonfat yogurt, 1 cup cauliflower.

Magic ingredients

after this weekend, i am convinced that all you really need to transform a sisyphean (look it up here), potentially tedious task into a fun and happy experience are the following:

• a large group of nutty friends (7 or more)
• a vast repository of lyrics from broadway musicals (the entire sound of music works best)
• a smaller repository of lyrics from some cheesy band you all loved when you were younger (this weekend it was wilson phillips)
  
• massive quantities of fast food and/or sugar
  
• a big, schoolbus-type car
• a sudden, insane craving ("hmmm. parang gusto ko ng hot fudge sundae") that can infect and possess at least ten other people
• the element of carefree risk

acs sang in three concerts in the span of two days -- bayan umawit, a celebration of the 40th anniversary of vatican II. it sounded like it was going to be a dud, like all the other concerts we've sung in as chuwariwaps (aka backup singers). but no. sobrang fun. the crowd at the saturday matinee and evening shows were so game.

and my goodness. may bayot (most recently seen as mama euralie in once on this island) performed with us and she was utterly fabulous. we kept missing our entrances because we were just hanging on to her every note. the woman can make even farting sound divine. thus leo and i just had to have our picture taken with her before she rushed off to another performance (at 10pm!). she was so cute, dashing out of her dressing room with her wheelie suitcase -- "dali, dali, at lalagari pa ako!" haha. starstruck.


major props as well to the up filipiniana dance troupe, the most infuriatingly fit group of college students i have ever seen. watching them rehearsing and goofing around backstage made me wonder what recreational dancers (i.e. those who don't plan to do it for a living) do when they graduate. it would be such a tragedy for these talented performers to go into corporate slavery.

i also found myself wondering why i allow myself to be so heavy and clumsy and have so much flab around the middle, and mentally clubbing myself for not being able to do splits and high kicks. maybe life would be more fun if i could.

on a side note, i got to experiment with what i've been learning in my solo voice lessons, since a full band, rockstar soloists and iffy miking requires you to be as loud as you possibly can. it was fun, and it must have sounded ok, because the priest standing in front of me in the finale hugged me afterward and said:

"what is your day job, sister?"

i told him i was jobless and to pray for me to find work.

his reply: "what? why are you jobless? you should be a diva!" awww. i wanted to tell him to pray for that, too, but his own well-wishers dragged him away before i had the chance. anyway i hope he remembers to pray for me even just once. you never know how much clout a priest has upstairs.

the sweet little old nun beside him added, "you not only sound beautiful, but you look beautiful too!" (while patting my hand as you would expect a sweet little old nun to do).

hmmmm. it must have been the blue christian dior eyeshadow. that or the strappy three-inch heels ;-)

Work in progress

page 1 of 2 of my collage for kooky's book, and the product of at least two sleepless nights. i'm about 70 percent done with the whole thing, and i hope to wrap everything up by tomorrow. just have to hunt for the last few words of the "ransom note" text and do a little painting.

so far i must say this has been one of the most well-planned collages i've done. i usually don't like taking more than an hour to do most of my artworks, but i guess i'm being more praning about this one because it's not just for me. the last time i did something over a span of several days was my second anniversary gift for marlon, and that was a whole book full of collages.

for some weird reason, i can't figure out what to say about myself in the short bio that i have to provide for the book.

--

major triumph. my mom has finally, finally agreed to give away one of the dogs to an officemate of my sister without putting up much of a fight. (she's put up more than enough pre-fight, though.)

so it's sayonara to snoopy today. he's the least cute dog that we have. and i've already caught him trying to hump his baby sister, maya. (bad dog!) as if we need another canine teenage pregnancy in this house.

farewell, horny doggie!

Fast approaching

freelance work (crossing fingers). self-pimpage has kept me busy this past week: going for a voice talent audition, texting and emailing contacts in the publishing world, trekking all the way to the hinterlands of bf homes paranaque to let myself be raked over for a contractual stint, even sending a couple of stern ym's to my regular raket supplier who ditched me after i was late once. (i know, i know, ako na nga yung late, ako pa yung may ganang maging stern.)

i'm quite optimistic about my prospects in the next couple of months, not even counting the two big things that i'm expecting in the third quarter. i've managed to put myself at top-of-mind of some of my old contacts, and have made new ones, which is always good.

a very nice woman who interviewed me today used to be a freelance writer until she went full time with the company that she presently works for. it was nice talking to her -- she knew all about what i am just discovering -- that it's fun to work for different people and things, and even better to have time for everything else you want to do.

something she said perked me up: when you're a freelancer, she said with a conspiratorial grin, "there's always, always something to do. you just never run out."

the many-headed behemoth. this is the same old, lumbering behemoth, except that it now seems to have multiple heads that don't know what the other heads are doing. two of those heads are talking to me and saying different things. ang gulo. this second head seems to be a little faster though, since it has already pinned me down for an interview while the other has yet to sort out its schedule. i'm now scheduled for two interviews, for two different positions at two different departments.

could my lovely little career as a freelancer really be fated for a swift end? if the behemoth really gets its act together, could this really mean...

an office job? aieeeeeeee! *breaks out in hives*

my artwork published in a book. i've been invited by 7 shots road manager/poet/fita fighter kooky tuason to create artwork for her upcoming book of poetry. it'll be like a neil gaiman-style comic book, with one writer but different artists interpreting the poems, benefiting the women's crisis center.

i said yes almost without thinking, but when i went to kooky's site i realized that it was going to be a bigger, more exciting thing than i thought! i had been totally unaware that this girl texting me was the one behind romancing venus, an album of her poetry set to music and recorded by celebs (check out the press here). when it sank in, i started getting really excited.

kooky sent me a poem of hers to interpret (by next week! aackk!) and thankfully, ideas for the collage are starting to come together bit by bit. i'm excited to start working on it, and just a wee bit apprehensive -- this is the first time my collages are going to come out in the open, and for such a big thing too. wish me luck!

oh and do check out kooky's site. if not for the fact that what she's doing is cool and is for a worthy cause, then simply because the site is super funky. :-)

malaysia (truly asia). ah, the perks of having a nerdy workaholic boyfriend. marlon got assigned a malaysian brand and will be flying there first week of september to get himself oriented. we both thought it would be fun if i went along. :-)

anyone know good places to eat, sightsee and go shopping (for really cheap) in malaysia? i'm hoping we get to see another city aside from KL, because i've heard it's almost exactly like singapore except for the petronas towers. hehe.

Because the night

... belongs to us. yes, it's that old 10,000 maniacs song.



it's a shot of the earth at night. and for some reason, i found it really beautiful. and comforting, in some way.

click here to see the full-sized version.

i wouldn't have stumbled upon this site had it not been for, well, stumbleupon. a free download for ie and firefox, stumbleupon is kind of random search toolbar. you enumerate your preferred topics upon registration, and everytime you click the cute little button that says stumble! you get bumped to a random interesting website that has been given the thumbs-up by other users. you can rate the site (a simple thumbs-up or -down) to help stumbleupon form a better picture of the kinds of sites you'd like to see. (god i sound like an infomercial.)

i am quite delighted with this nifty litle toolbar. it brings me back to the days when internet access was php150 per hour. you simply didn't know what to do with all this content, so you ended up stumbling upon sites upon sites upon sites -- some cool, some totally incomprehensible.

try it, it's fun. it's a helluva lot more fun than hotbar, that's for sure. :-)

first got wind of this on popgadget.

Rainy days

what else would a book nerd do with a spate of rainy days but create the perfect reading experience?

and so it was that i curled up for a bit of last night and most of today with tamsin by peter s. beagle, the author of the last unicorn. those last three words should tell you volumes about the quality of the book i have just finished.

(never heard of or don't like the last unicorn? let me know. i must document you, you are such a rare breed.)

i actually bought myself tea to sip while reading it, TEA for godsakes, although i didn't know it was precisely for this book when i bought it. it was a nice chai black tea with lots of cinnamon in its scent, which went insanely well with the cold, gloomy, damp, rainy england-type weather (tamsin is set in england).

tamsin is a beautiful, beautiful book. i first read about it in the one-dollar fantasy anthology that marlon and i bought, where it was hailed as one of the best -- if not THE best -- fantasy book of 1999. the description of the book, though i forget it now, started me pining for it. thus i exploded into paroxysms of booknerdiness the other day when i opened a plastic bag of borrowables from gutsy (one of my favorite book nerds) and found it inside, waiting for me.

tamsin is the story of so many strange and wonderful things that i can't even begin to go into.

this is about as much as i can say about it: it's like listening to a fascinating, spirited person who can fluent speak every language imaginable, or can slip convincingly in and out of any accent you can name.

that's peter s. beagle in this book -- he shifts from the language of a bratty american 13-year-old girl (of any 13-year-old girl -- i mean, i could remember what it was like to be 13 and think that way!), to that of a self-assured 19-year-old; a lost seventeenth-century beauty; an older-than-time being; a boggart; a mysterious shape-shifter; a ten-year old british math whiz, and so many more, all without skipping a beat. it's superbly fluid.

bottom line: if you see this book anywhere, BUY IT WITHOUT HESITATION. or at least start reading it in the store and keep coming back until you finish it.

--

this bulletin board at the landing of kfc katipunan has always bothered me.

luckily, now that i have photoshop, i can calm my disturbed left brain.

--

totally unrelated but must be pinned down: it took me a while to put my finger on it, but i'm happy. i feel that i'm on the right track, although it probably doesn't look like i'm on any sort of track. the future looks good, and i trust it. i trust myself more now, too.

Sleep, VCDs, Lulu and my boyfriend

…were the common themes running through the past weekend, which i more or less sleepwalked (sleptwalked?) through.

brace yourself, this is a long post.


friday

woke up in that strange, sluggish, groggy mood and with that heavy-headed feeling you get after way too much sleep. my first action was to immediately justify the non-performance of the day’s errands in favor of watching the motorcycle diaries, in the mood for love, and season 5 of sex in the city all in a row, using lulu of course.

ooh-ed and aah-ed over maggie cheung’s killer silhouette and marveled over the countless times she changed her cheongsams – the costume mistress must have gotten them on sale.

talked to my boyfriend on the phone. drifted off to sleep at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m.


saturday

emerged from my slumber at 2 p.m. and decided to fend off aforementioned strange, sluggish groggy mood and heavy-headed feeling with errands, dinner and girl talk. said errands included the purchase of mouse traps (don’t ask – but i can recommend the good ones), this month’s preview, and bringing five pairs of favorite shoes to mr. quickie after my last remaining favorite pair died on me.

was prevented from leaving the house early due to a text from the friend i was supposed to meet, whom i hadn’t had a good long talk with in over a year.

“uy sana ok lang, sama ofismates ko.”

which straightaway drove me to bitch long-distance to marlon for half an hour. i love this friend, she’s like a sister to me, but i hate it when this happens.

you haven’t seen a good friend in a year and agree to meet up for dinner. you build up a healthy reservoir of girl talk – for her ears only – and then she decides to drag along complete strangers who you have to be nice to. what if you don’t want to be nice? what if you don’t want to make the effort to make sure the strangers are included in the conversation? what if you don’t want to explain the whole back story of he-who-must-not-be-named, zuma and why you lived in singapore for a month?

come to think of it, the last time this happened to me, it was the same friend! only the inestimable value of our decade-long friendship prevented me from texting her back a big fat HELL NO! that, and i was out of prepaid credits.

instead, as a form of silent rebellion, i tied my hair back in a tight bun, pinned my bangs out of sight with plain black hair pins, and donned baggy khaki pants, a black hooded sweatshirt, and a pink t-shirt with an inkstain on the neckline. except for the pink, people who know me will know that the entire getup was so not me.

naturally, both tagalong officemates turned out to be males. normal, straight, fun males. one was a process manager who just happened to be looking for someone to edit an ISO manual. good thing i’m permanently on raket alert, as halfway through kung pao chicken i had to field such tough questions as whether my “rates” included headers and footers.

the other was a tall moreno guy with dimples and a cute smile. (they still exist! hallelujah!) he was so nice that i immediately wanted to set him up with my sister. unfortunately for her, he was exactly my age.

(pause. yes i have blinders, and his name is marlon.)

so the evening didn’t turn out so bad, after all. at least until the killer coffee from gloria jean’s.


limbo between saturday and sunday -- or so it seemed to me
(approximately 2am to 7am)

flouting my regular bedtime of 2am, i found myself popping in disc after disc of sex and the city, season six, until 4am.

then i had some brilliant ideas and wrote a bit.

then i tossed and turned.

then i read the august preview, which is so me – it prominently features bollywood and landmark.

then i tried to sleep.

then i tossed and turned some more.

then i tried to ignore the sunrise, and the jeeps roaring to life, and the neighbor’s alarm clock ringing, and the smell of their breakfast cooking, and – just when i was about to fall asleep – the sound of workmen sawing and hammering a brand new wooden cabinet. or wall panels, or a dumbwaiter, or railroad tracks. whatever. i don’t know what it was, only that it was being made at six freaking thirty a.m. right in front of our house.

all this while being totally not sleepy, a.k.a. wired beyond belief.

i am never, ever having hot coffee from gloria jean’s ever again.


sunday

forced myself out of bed at 9am for my first voice lesson in almost two months. since my teacher is also a friend, i felt duty-bound to warn him that i was so sleepy it wasn’t even funny, and that it might result in my being extra slow for today. naturally his solution was to ply me with more coffee. just what i needed, right?

blundered through the lesson, home for a fitful power nap, to ateneo for choir rehearsal, and sleepwalked back home to bulldoze through the final two episodes of sex and the city. i sniffled all throughout the series ender, although the tears might have been from my grotesque headache or the inner torment of having to choose between blessed sleep and staying up to finally set my nocturnal lifestyle right.

(wait, i almost left out the cabbie who was evidently so happy to drive on a traffic-less sunday afternoon that he got me from mandaluyong to ateneo in ten minutes flat. i’m so not exaggerating. either he sensed that i was late to rehearsal or that i was way too out of it to care about his driving. at any rate, i left the house fifteen minutes before rehearsal and still had time to grab lunch at kfc across ateneo. in fact, queueing up at kfc took longer than my cab ride.)

had a conversation with my boyfriend, which mostly consisted of me nonsensically phonating (look it up here) and him being very wonderful and patient.

watched mean girls while drinking numerous glasses of water to flush mean old gloria jean out of my system.

you know what? i think its finally working. this weekend, thankfully, is over.

*yawn* good night.

Dibidi dibidi

i have a confession to make: i watched before sunset without having seen before sunrise.

i couldn't resist -- i have a laptop with a dvd drive, a comfy spot on my bed and a whole lot of time on my hands (yes ate, i'll edit your pics). and it was just lying there on my sister's bedside table. and i've always wanted to see it.

when i was done watching it, i realized it was just as well that i hadn't seen the first movie. if i had seen the whole back story of jesse and celine unfold, well, baka sumabog na ako sa kilig while watching the sequel.

i initially thought i would get all senti about europe and the people i met there (especially certain of them). much to the movie’s credit, i didn’t – there was less of paris for me to swoon over than there was of jesse and celine, the people they had become, and the connections glimmering just beneath the surface of their long, real-time conversation. i loved how the conversation was just so real and natural, how easy it was to fall in love with celine (all over again, i imagine) and how jesse seemed to have turned into a bit of a cad. i loved how each of them invariably said things in the space of a long conversation that seem to contradict other things they had said, like real people invariably do. i loved how so many “clues” could very well point to one ending as to another.

and of course i loved the romance. because i'm a romantic, naturally, and i firmly believe that jesse and celine fell into bed in her apartment and had (at least) that one more night together. how could they not?

i also firmly believe that it doesn’t matter if you miss a flight, because you can always rebook it, no matter how expensive or inconvenient. such is the wonder of modern technology.

--

also saw finding neverland, which provoked quite a few sniffles from me.

i went around the house putting together a small pile of dvds for me to watch over the weekend, and now i don't know what to see first. most of them i haven't seen at all, while some (like the motorcycle diaries and in the mood for love) i've seen up to a point.

spanglish
in the mood for love
the butterfly effect
A.I.
the motorcycle diaries
sex and the city season 5
sex and the city season 6 (missing a few discs though)
and i know my sister has superman 1 to 4 around here somewhere

hmmm. this requires popcorn.