thanks
Posted at 10:50 AM

it's been quite a ride so far. as in, quite a ride.

and so much to be thankful for.

and so this post is really that. giving thanks. but well, too many people and too many things so really can't draw a list.

but i suppose you all know who you are.

maraming salamat

here's a verse i got from ailene some months ago... particularly apt for today because my  ultimate thanks for one heck of a ride, a really fun life, goes to our God.

isaiah 26:12 - Lord you have established peace for us. Indeed all we have done You have done for us. 

excerpt ulit (i wonder if i posted this before)
Posted at 09:30 AM

I wonder who originated the idea that everybody has to fall in love and live happily ever after. While I do hope that everybody fall in love at least once in their lives, I’m not as sure about the happily ever after part. Some women really just aren’t built for it.

And yet, when a woman is single, everybody feels obliged to console her by saying such inane things like “Don’t worry, you’ll find the right man.” The only thing this does is make the woman feel bad if she doesn’t, because that now means she’s ugly. Even if she didn’t want to get hitched in the first place, she now feels she has to. I wonder how many women wed simply out of peer pressure.

Now the happily single woman gets to keep her money and use it to pamper herself. The single woman gets to go out with her friends anytime she wants. She dates only the people she finds attractive. Men will still make themselves attractive for her. She gets to play with the children of her siblings and friends and return them when they become whiny and annoying.

On the other hand, the married woman has to share expenses with her husband even if they didn't do anything to boost her well-being. She only gets to date her husband, who by now has no incentive to keep well-groomed and will pick his teeth in public. The whiny and annoying children get returned to her.

It seems then that the ideal marriage is with somebody who has a lot of money and will lavish it on her and use the rest to keep himself desirable. But of course, men like these already have boyfriends.

that was close
Posted at 08:32 PM

there was a chance i wouldn't make it.

i got a text from my teacher asking how many essays i had submitted for class. i said 4. there were 5 required essays. she was submitting her grades the next day and the way things looked, i was getting an 'incomplete.' so i did what many people in my position might have done. i begged.

my teacher, God bless her, allowed me to submit the last essay. i had until 4 that afternoon. it was 10am when i got the notice. i had 6 hours to write a profile of a personality who had to be fairly well-known and whom i had interviewed.

miracles do happen.

there was somebody i had interviewed, somebody fairly known - carlo vergara, creator of zsazsa zaturnnah. fortunately (and surprisingly) i still had my notes. i sat down and mustered all the concentration my generally feeble powers could muster, and wrote.

the stakes were a bit high. it was the completion of my coursework on the line. and i had to cram like heck. by the time 3pm came around, the essay was done. not very good, and largely unedited. but done.

and that's how i spent the last day of my 33rd year. how strangely appropriate.

isn't this a terribly enticin book?
Posted at 08:25 PM

saw this blurb on the back of a novel. mind blowing. i hope you don't mind, i just had to put my comments in here. an opportunity not to be missed.

Harriet escapes the harsh life of a flother-lass in a Yorkshire fishing village, and goes in search of a new one (a new fishing village?).

Samuel is a gentleman. He is a quaker, a philanthropist n he is a collector of photographs showing working-class girls in their working clothes (wow. characterization can't get more intriguing than that). He wants harriet's photograph for his collection.

Set in York in the late 1800s, The Sweetest Thing is an intimate story played out in the shadow of the cocoa factory (feel the shivers down your spine? the cocoa factory. *shudder*) and the asylum, the photographic studio and the Meeting House.

A brilliant contemporary novel about late victorian life it gives us a world of morality, espionage and cocoa (undeniably three of the greatest themes in life), where one man believed he could make his fortune from a mouthful of sugar and a pin up girl.

biker chick (hehe)
Posted at 05:40 PM

the goal: get fit this summer. the method: bike for aerobics and weights for the other things.

pretty much ready. got the outfits - tank tops, shorts, post-biking slippers. what else, what else.... oh yeah, the bikes.

we looked so fit. on the first day - at 6:30 in the morning. i looked at our outfits and said: "pwede na 'to. kain na lang tayo!"

*burp* but hold the sea cucumber
Posted at 10:41 PM

it was a really great lunch...

 fried rice, shrimp dumplings, sweet and sour fish, salt and pepper squid.

not bad for two people. and when the whole thing was wiped out, it was time for the seafood noodle soup.

 "what's this?"

"sea cucumber."

"really?" sad face.

"why what's with sea cucumber?"

"they're so cute!"

"they are?"

"they were featured on lambchop's play along! you can't eat anything featured on lambchop's play along!"

going home
Posted at 11:27 PM

heading to baguio for a couple of days, haven't been there in a year. too long... too long.

it's really not a 'trip' in a sense. for some years now baguio has been as much home to me as manila has. it's really not 'packing' - just bringing along a change of clothes.

it's the music though that's kinda a new experience.

bringing along a discman. was so excited i got a couple of spare sets of batteries and even burned a cd from piglet. the whole caboodle is even in this case - a separate pouch for the discman, headphones, etc, and little flappy things for the actual cds.

ok, so the music package isn't mine (well, a couple of the cds are)... and everybody is into digital music. but still... this is fun! for a gadget geek like me, i would've thought this wouldn't excite me, but man...!

i think it's the whole pulling a cd out and placing it in a player. for somebody born in the long playing album age, those shiny little discs still hold a fascination for me  

another home
Posted at 01:22 PM

i would spend every summer as a kid in mindoro.

we had a house in san teodoro - a town somewhere between the capital town of calapan and the resort  haven puerto galera. the beach was 10 meters from the front of the house and was all ours. in the early mornings we'd see the sun rise over the baco islands before going for a swim. the afternoons were devoted to taking long seaside walks, reading books, or just lounging around. to this day i can spend hours just sitting and looking at the water.

here i learned to swim and snorkel. i learned to drive a motorcycle and take one all over the island - once very fast escaping from what we believed to be npa (who exist in great numbers in mindoro).

i went back last year for a writing gig, my first time back in a decade. so few things had changed. except the house.

the house, which we fondly call the clubhouse, was a shambles... although shambles might be too kind. the place was looted, the windows broken, everything overgrown. it was almost like my childhood was trampled upon and left to die.

i'm going back to mindoro soon. in so many ways it is still my island. for those of you who know the music of south pacific, mindoro is my bali hai. 

i will be making a trip to the house. although with cap pulled low and instructions not to be addressed by my first name. the house is no longer ours and is the subject of litigation. i will be making a trip to the house in which a ghost of a little girl still walks - i need to see that girl again.

and once i've said hello, i will head back to the resort town which i never stayed in growing up but is now my destination. i will go back to what will then be my present life, now on that island.