volume III

Blah Saturday

2011-04-24T01:24:00.001+08:00

It's technically Easter Sunday but Saturday is easier to make fun of.

Of course I never actually got around to discussing anything for the past month because I am a lazy, lazy writer who has nothing to say. And as a result the thing in my chest has remained there, and I am still coughing.

If you're keeping track that's two months of respiratory illness. I've been to the doctor thrice and nobody except my mother has an idea of what's causing it; she has blamed everything from pollution to irregular working hours to sugar. Apparently my brother's medical degree extends to her.

So tonight instead of holding up the so-called Cable Car tradition I am resting at home. What's the Cable Car tradition? Legend has it that in the late 90's the only establishment open on Black Saturday was Cable Car on Pasay road in Makati, and my high school/college friends always spent Easter Eve drinking there. It's a nice tradition, rivaled only by my tradition of flaking out every year.

Despite the cough, the band finally recorded demos which people can find here, or on the sidebar to the right. We are the highest-ranked band on Reverbnation without any fans. I'm actually proud of some of these songs, I just wish I had written them when I was half my age.

In other news: I also went to a couple of concerts and a couple of blind dates. Unfortunately the dates were not the same as the concerts. In any case, these deserve their own posts. Maybe later, remind me.

Last thing: a couple of weeks ago I attended a family gathering and as always happens, my mother introduces me to some far-removed relative. And as also always happens, they ask me if I am the doctor who is working in New York. Yes, tita, because it is more plausible to be the son who is the doctor working in New York than to be the one who is actually here.

This Is What Happens When I Don't Go Out

2011-03-05T01:26:00.002+08:00

I've had this annoying cough for about two weeks now. This isn't anything new; I once had a cough that lasted four months (it went away when I resigned from work, more on this later) but right now it's at that intensity where I can't enjoy myself when I'm out. Hence the post from my bed on a Friday evening.

Like I said, this sickness isn't new. I think I had something similar last year and the year before that and the year before that, each lasting several weeks. Every time I get checked out the doctors never find anything, which tells me the problem isn't fully physical, or at least, obvious. My mom always thinks it's stress. That's probably true, but it doesn't explain the times when I'm obviously stressed out but the coughing isn't there. So this is what I think it is: it's when stress becomes turmoil, and it doesn't get out so it turns itself into this annoying thing in my upper respiratory tract.

That sounded overly dramatic. But if you've read me before then that shouldn't be surprising, should it?

So for the next few days, months, years, I will figuring out what that turmoil is and will be writing it down here - somehow I feel that the internet is always listening even when no one else is - and I get better. (I admit there will be times when I already know what that is and will be writing in circles trying to avoid saying it straight...Hopefully it will be so entertaining that no one will notice. Hahaha.)

I literally need to get this thing off my chest.

Last Update

2010-05-23T20:10:00.000+08:00

Oh wow this is still here?

The last entry is dated over a month ago. I have no excuse.

Actually there is one. Notice how cluttered the Multiply interface has gotten? Yeah that's all I got.

This isn't an alcohol-induced post, by the way. For those you need to check Twitter.

Anyway. I still do want to write but there's really nothing that comes to mind that's coherent enough to be seen in print. Not that coherence is a requirement or anything, but I do want to read these stories at some point in the future and not have to do all the work of putting together these fragments and figuring out the point. I'm sure I will be too busy figuring out the present/future.

You know what I think I should've done? Stopped right after the Cincy posts and started a different series/blog. That way there'd be no pressure of trying to keep it running. Oh well.

So until I figure out what the heck I want to say - or another story worth writing comes my way - this site is on hiatus.

(While I was thinking of something to write about the thought crossed my mind that maybe like the other blog this thing has simply taken its course. I was half-serious about the interface thing. Maybe I should try out Tumblr or something.)

Random Europe Moment I

2010-03-30T21:55:00.000+08:00

My brother and I toured Europe with some family friends and a group of Australians on a tour package in 2003. During one of the nighttime visits to a wine bar/restaurant (I'm thinking this was just outside of Venice but I could be wrong) everyone was just hanging out after dinner enjoying glasses of wine when one of the elderly Aussies suddenly shouted:

"Where's my camera?!?"

She began to shout hysterically. "It was just here!" Everyone started to help her look around for it while her husband was trying to clam her down. But she still went on, "where's my camera?!?"

This went on for around ten minutes when someone finally pointed at her arm and said, "There it is!" Sure enough, her camera was slung around her elbow and she said sorry and everyone had a good laugh afterward.

Later when everything died down my brother whispered to me, "I swear, we were like, five seconds away from 'I'm sure one of you Filipinos took it!'"

Decade In Review (2000-2003) Part II

2010-03-03T20:56:00.000+08:00

Yes I know it's March. Get off my case.

2004. Looking at the photos I had from 2004, I guess it was a weird year and maybe not exactly the year my career "went to hell". On one hand, it was the year me and my brother went to tour Europe for two weeks, and on the other (and just two weeks after my European tour),I went to the US (Salt Lake City, Utah) for work. The Europe trip deserves a review all its own so we'll leave that for later. As for the US trip, well, on the very first night I was there I got a fever and skipped the very first day of work, and had to self-medicate with whatever they had at the gas station next to the motel. I'm not sure I was staying at a motel but it sure as hell was not a hotel.

On the other hand, I discovered the awesomeness that is Krispy Kreme a few weeks before the first branch opened here at The Fort.

My three-month long stay was cut short because I decided to start a long-distance hate affair with the office back home. I'm partly kidding. But the ending of all this is covered in this post. I spent the last two months of the year unemployed and well, happy. Started this blog in November that year.

Other notables: Fete at Eastwood in the two weeks between the two major trips. Talking with Donut Girl over YM because she was the only one on the late shift back home. Boracay for the first time. Christmas at Alabang Town.

2005. I was unemployed for most of 2005. The personal projects I promised myself that I'd get into never really materialized except maybe for one: finally studied art at the Vargas Museum in UP Diliman, where basically I was surrounded by five-year olds and Kathy Tan.

When all my savings dried up, finally looked for work and ended up having a record five interviews with eTelecare. I guess they couldn't tell if I was applying to get a job or a girl. Eventually one of us gave up on the other, and I'd like to think it was me.

Finally got in contact with one of my old companies sub-contractors and got a job with them. On the first day they assigned me to RCG, and for better or for worse, that reminded me that I could still do this job.

2006. Quit RCG (why of course, everyone does) to work at the big, bad top-10 Forbes-listed multinational company, and I guess, here I am. Everything (well, mostly) is here in this journal. It's kind of slowed down because of Twitter but some stories can't be told in 140 characters no matter how much you cut it up.

I need to tell better stories.

Was there a point to this review? Maybe not. But there's no point to anything, really. I am drunk.

Decade In Review (2000-2003)

2010-01-24T21:11:00.000+08:00

So.

I'm not really good at introductions (and you could probably tell that from the first sentence), and I don't know why. Maybe it's because introductions eventually lead to first impressions and I suck at that even more.

That's how this journal started way back in November 2004, a month after I resigned from my first real long-term work assignment. So most of the decade is actually on this thing anyway.

But for some reason I'm still compelled to make a review of the 00's. (What were they called again? The Aughties?) I don't know why. Maybe it's because by the time you turn 20 there are a lot of things about oneself that stop changing. I mean, you don't, but there are going to be some things that stick.

So here it is, a year-by-year play-by-play, looking back at the decade I went to work. Or pretended to, anyway.

(Might have to break this up into smaller pieces or this will never get "published".)

2000. I was disappointed when the Y2K big didn't hit because that meant I had to start looking for work. I started writing for a local newspaper...in Tagalog. That lasted all of three months before it was clear that I sucked at my native tongue and decided the only thing left to do was to just go back to school. Studied Java at IBM-ACE and never looked back. Well, I am right now, but you get the point. Played in a band that played almost exclusively at weddings.

Late 2000, got an interesting phone call from Her saying we would never see each other again. But we did, didn't we?

2001. Finished my courses and took a job at an software development startup company. That lasted (AGAIN) all of three months as the internet bubble-burst caught up with me/us. The company that was supposed to buy us out just, well, bought me instead. I suppose I got hugely unpopular to my officemates right about then. Three months into the new job I was convinced that I hated it. I ended up staying for three and a half years.

Oh yeah, 2001 also included that awesome night on Valero street, but that's another story that comes up in bits and pieces whenever I play "I Never".

2002. That was a steady year I guess. Went on my first plane ride, to HK, not realizing I would be on quite a number of plane rides in the future. Got into my first car accident after celebrating the 1st Ateneo basketball championship since 1988. Another friend dies in another car accident a couple of months later, coming home from our own Christmas party. I guess I'm lucky this blog post doesn't end here.

2003. Another steady year; I'm going through the pictures and it's all pretty much vacations and birthday parties and weddings. Which is basically what there should be photos of anyway. I guess we were all pretty somber that year following that tragedy. Oh, played in the ABL for the first time and registered basically one point. One point on one made free throw. One made free throw...after I was fouled...on a three-pointer.

Next: 2004. Ah, the year my career goes to hell.

Year In Review

2010-01-04T20:54:00.000+08:00

An original title for an original concept.

(Well I didn't want to spend all afternoon thinking of a clever title and never get to the actual article. I won't even bother with a picture.)

(Then I also realized I had no such summary for 2008. I had one post each that January and that previous December. So why bother with this at all? Eh.)

Most everyone on these internets hated 2009, what with the floods, tragedies, celebrity deaths and personal losses. And we've got more than enough record of that. I guess I just wanted to point out the best of '09. At least for me.

I saw more rock shows in '09 than any other year I can remember, maybe more than all the other years combined. Top five bands seen the most number of times, in descending order: Taken By Cars, Us-2 Evil-0, Techy Romantics, Up Dharma Down, Turbo Goth. Yes there's a pattern to all of that, and it's exactly what you think. And mostly because they all show up in the same night anyway.

(I also bought more albums this year since 2001. Why 2001? We'll get to that in the Decade in Review, if we ever get there.)

We also played live to an audience not made entirely up of officemates, so that has to count for something, too.

Discovered and rediscovered the awesomeness that is Distillery for a record 8 straight weeks, and moving to McKinley Hill winning me over in the end.

Work was still blah, but then again in that regard no news is good news. But I did get promoted this year, although I'm not really counting that as a highlight. Would've been a highlight if there was some money involved.

This is also the year I started living by myself. I almost wrote there "living alone" but it sounded depressing. Well in a sense it didn't last, but it's a start. As far as chances to start living independently I'll take it. And in probably the most awesome corner of Makati too.

I've written about record bad-five-day stretches before. 2009 gives me its candidate with one of the worst 4-day stretches I can remember. But this is a best-of so we'll leave that for now. Besides I got over that pretty quickly because...

2009 had the best 6-day stretch in recent memory. It starts with the Thursday that Ateneo won its back-to-back championship up to the Tuesday that following week. I shan't elaborate on any of this.

So I guess this is thanks if you were somehow involved with any of these, and if you weren't, you can make it up to me in 2010.

Everyday's Like Christmas Day Without You

2009-12-29T20:31:00.000+08:00

It's cold and there's nothing to do.

Not really sleepy yet.

Taking a break from the guitar inventory series to bring you what's become a yearly tradition: the Christmas wish list. I understand that it's been a few evenings past Christmas Eve, but would it have made a difference? I thought so.

Let's take a look at last year's list:

Mac - Typing on it as I, uh, type
Clae McQueens - didn't get this, but only because I procrastinated until it ran out of 7's. Got Creative Recreation kicks instead.
Guitar effects and cables - Digitech Grunge and Planet Waves cable, check
Broadband internet at the Condeaux - this was inevitable anyway
An abundance of free time - Oh, so close

So all in all, not a bad percentage of "success" for the past year, if that's how we keep score. But I did retail therapy myself through 2009, so all this isn't a surprise. More on this in the Year in Review post, when I get there.

It hits me that one reason that I didn't post a wish list is because I don't really need anything right now now. Nothing tangible, at least. But here goes:

Absolute Death. The book, not, you know, the sweet release of.
Strangers in Paradise Omnibus, when it comes out. I understand there are only 1,200 copies but it is a wish list.
A Lego Hotel.
~~A Blackberry. Ok that was quick~~
A guitar case, and a pedal board.
A Vox amp.
A Les Paul.
A gig to play the Les Paul at.
To still fit in all my clothes.
A decent vacation, with indecent company.

Obviously, I've set my targets a bit higher in 2010.

Taking Stock Part 1: Gibson SG Custom

2009-12-20T20:06:00.000+08:00

I took an inventory of all my electric guitars earlier. Of course, it was only an inventory of four so that took all of five minutes. But it got me thinking about the stories behind each of them, and that took a wee bit longer.

I'm excluding acoustic guitars because I went through probably seven of them very quickly in a few years since I couldn't take care of them very well. That's what happens when you always want your amps to go up to eleven. Besides, only one of them is still with me or in working condition, and there's no stories behind it. So far.

So where to start? From the beginning, of course.

Where did you get it? I got my first electric guitar in 1993 (1994?)- a fake Gibson SG - from a classmate whose specialty was playing Gin Blossoms covers. He sold it for the princely sum of P1,200, so he could buy what I assume were car speakers. I remember making the transaction in the Ople household - I have no idea why.

He first played (what else) "Hey Jealousy" to show me that it was working and in tune. But the deal was closed when he played the shred part of the solo for "Sweet Child". (The tab and friends call it Fill 1, it's the part of the solo that scales up the neck really fast and is actually played by a second lead guitar on the album. Wooo.) Oh how could I resist.

The SG wasn't as popular then as it is today but I was thrilled regardless. The most popular SG player was and still is Angus Young from AC/DC, and it was also the main guitar for indie goddess Juliana Hatfield and Soundgarden's Kim Thayil, so that was enough cred for me.

There are a couple of things that bugged me about it though. For one, the Bigsby tremolo was a bit out of place on a guitar known more for metal. Second, it hardly ever stayed in tune - mainly due to the trem - and the low E string was hell to keep in pitch.

It's also the only guitar I have that came with its own hard case. Which me and my friend dutifully vandalized one drunken night. I can't understand some of those hieroglyphics now either.

Where has it been? In college I was part of a band that played songs that had acoustic rhythm parts, so our rhythm player used an acoustic guitar while I used his electric. So instead of using the SG I used our rhythm player's Yamaha super-strat, which was a bit more mainstream and was more likely to stay in tune throughout "These Are Days".

My dad's friend used to come over and play Ventures songs on it for hours on end, which made me wonder how he made it sound so good. He died a few years ago and I never got to hear it played that way again. May God rest his soul.

The SG did make it on stage to one gig: Kampo in 1995, opening for Passage. Yes, Ira Cruz probably saw me die of embarrassment. And after that failure of a show I was convinced to get a new guitar if I am in any way going to play in front of people again.

Who was the girl you named it after? I actually don't call the guitars by name, but they do have names. Of course they do; I'm just that type.

I didn't know any girls in high school, so the SG had to wait a couple of years before it got its name. And no, I'm not telling because I've already died of embarrassment involving this guitar once and I won't again.

But the guitar (and the girl, for that matter) did change my life so it's fitting that they share their name.

Why aren't you selling it? Because it's my first. And you never forget your first.

Good To Go

2009-11-12T21:42:00.000+08:00

Still there?

It's not true that all my stories occur in 1995. Here's one from 2004.

I resigned from MPI in the middle of a huge project after doing everything I could to save it. Some people will have a different version of that sentence, and theirs may be more accurate, but that doesn't really matter anymore. I was a kid then and a bit idealistic about how companies and projects are run (still am, I suppose) and basically I had enough of office drama - I think my exact sentence was "This is no longer fun." As if that was the point of working in a multinational corporation.

Anyway, people had already known my intentions for a while, so when I tendered in my resignation it was immediately followed by the exit interview even if I still had 30 days to go. In fact I had two interviews: my team lead who was at the project site in Ortigas when I got to work, and in the afternoon with his boss who was in the Makati office. So after lunch I left my car in Ortigas, took the train southbound to talk to her.

The second exit interview took over two hours. Where she found the time out of her busy schedule I don't know. I'm way too honest at these things, and I can't stop talking.

This was on the 1st of October, and I had a night out planned in Metrowalk for the first day of Octoberfest. So by the time that the exit interview ended it was 5:30 PM on a Friday in Makati and I was without my car. And this part I remember quite well. I ran to the station and somehow (on a Friday afternoon) ended up on an empty train car. I made it to Ortigas in fifteen minutes. I asked permission to leave early (everyone else was doing overtime) and when it was granted I kissed my functional consultant thanks and good-bye.

I got my car and made it to Octoberfest with time to spare and got seats on the second floor balcony away from the crowds and spent the evening with cutest thing I've ever seen.

Now that was an awesome day, but somehow it's a day I don't want to happen too often.

In that second interview I had a gem of an answer to my boss' question: "What makes you happy?"

"The perfect Sausage McMuffin on the perfect Tuesday morning with the perfect girl listening to the perfect song."

(I said it was a story, I didn't say there was a lesson.)

Retail Therapy 2

2009-08-23T20:06:00.000+08:00

Because I refuse to admit that Twitter has taken over my life, so I'm trying to write something with more than a couple of sentences.

Also, it's the tail end of a long weekend and I realize I haven't written anything all month that's longer than 140 characters. So here are the highlights for August.

Fully Booked on Serendra celebrated it's anniversary and these are the stuff I scored:

Daredevil: Yellow
Spiderman: Blue

I realize I enjoy Jeph Loeb's reimagination work than Frank Miller's. Hmmm. Yeah that means nothing.

Gorillaz Rise of the Ogre
Sticker Bomb

Yes, it's just a book of stickers. In preparation for my Stratocaster hard case.

Saw Taken By Cars live around five times or more this month, including both of their performances during Manila Design Week. I'm not complaining. Also saw The Dawn at Clubb Dredd and feared for my life.

Tragedy struck my former classmate's wife while giving birth to her fourth child.

Yellow fever took over the country with back-to-back Aquino memorials.

Ateneo won over DLSU in basketball on consecutive Sundays. Saw both games the same way: in Fridays High Street, in the same booth. One-track mind, much?

Work is still work. Bleh. But I did manage to get Sun-certified in the process and basically turned every chapter in the review book into an excuse to drink expensive coffee and stare at girls in Starbucks.

By the way, realized that cross-posting is working again; but that means there's a stretch of posts that are on Multiply but are not on Blogspot. So if you're reading this on Blogspot you missed out on my valuable life lessons and outrageous hi jinx for three months. Which is like four posts, total.

(Just saw options in Multiply to copy to Facebook and Twitter. Be still my lazy, geeky, heart.)

Is There A Line That I Could Write

2009-07-23T22:53:00.000+08:00

Reposting from the distant past because words fail me in the present. But that doesn't make any of it less true. Originally published August 12, 2007.

When You Left I Was Last To Know

It was 1995. (Most of my stories start out with that sentence, I've come to realize.) September 11 or 18, I'm not so sure anymore. Pretty sure it was a Monday at least, because Mondays are notorious for these things. That was the day I saw you holding his hand.

To be fair, it wasn't like it was side-by-side-walking-in-the-park; he had his behind his back and you were holding them behind him, as if he was taking you somewhere. Somewhere fun. Would things have been different if it had stopped there? Probably not. But.

Days later, perhaps it was that Thursday, or the next: there's a narrow set of stairs at the corner of the foyer that maintenance people use to get to the air conditioning boxes outside the second floor. I've never seen anyone actually go up there.

Anyway, it's a pretty secluded hiding spot, except maybe if you took the shortcut from the campus' main artery to the foyer, or turned that corner coming from the library. And that's exactly what I did when I found you (plural) there.

Maybe I was coming from class, or just walking around aimlessly because that's what I do when I'm angry or depressed. No, I'm lying: I was looking for you, and I guess it worked. I muttered something under my breath while I walked past and picked up the pace, something along the lines of "Fuck".

Now I didn't think there would be another 5-day stretch that would hurt like that did. I was wrong.

Forever Was Just Too Long

2009-03-29T22:06:00.000+08:00

I really should take more pictures and stop relying on YouTube for content.

I first saw Paramita at Fete in 2006 (not sure if it was 2006; whatever year that was when they held it in El Pueblo and some idiot smashed my turn lights in the parking lot), at the "alternative" stage. When Ria Bautista brought the house down playing kickass drums while singing, I actually felt bad for the next band, which turned out to be my friends from the band formerly known as Olympic Smoker. Sorry, Justin!

Anyway a lot of failed attempts, I saw them again Friday night along with Terno bands Up Dharma Down and Radioactive Sago Project. They're still pretty good live, and I still don't know how you can play drums and sing at the same time, even if I've seen the Hell Freezes Over DVD. I can barely keep time playing guitar.

Saturday was the three-way birthday party for some folks at work. Quite fun even if I did go to it alone and officially uninvited. Now maybe it's because I didn't get drunk or anything, but I still don't get the point of kicking chairs and spilling Coke off the roof. So much for your Russell Hammond moment. Left around the same time everyone else did, except those who were clearly not going home until morning. Pics, as usual, are with everyone else.

And on the way home, a wasted Drei sat on my copy of Cutterpillow. Just the reissue version, but still!

My arms and shoulders are sore, and have been since Friday. This is strange because I have not been to the gym in weeks. Am I doing push-ups in my sleep? Can I tell my body to quit it, or at least do crunches instead? Then I'd be unstoppable.

Run Baby Run

2009-03-21T17:15:00.000+08:00

Not going out tonight because tomorrow Condura Run is at 5 AM, which is around the same time I'm usually in REM sleep. I'll be on the 5K track so which means I'll be done in time for lunch. I kid.

I had to buy running shoes because I realize I don't want to be the guy who shows up in basketball shoes for a running event. I went with Asics solely on the coolness factor of this video:

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Anyway, I'll see you guys at the finish line.

Yesterday was a bad day at work (actually, almost the whole week). Thank God for cake.

And I'm dead tired from all the late nights in and out of the office (more on this if some deep insight comes along; I doubt it though), and earlier today went to Gara's surprise baby shower at SM Marikina. And got lost looking for my car in the parking lot for the second straight night. Idiot.

Speaking of stuff that makes me feel old, one of my old friends from the old work got married in the US recently and I was going through this journal trying to find any stories about her because I'm sure there was a lot. Then I realized I started this blog after I resigned from that company. That's how old this news makes me feel.

Kick Up A Little Dust

2009-03-18T22:47:00.000+08:00

When I couldn't land a job after I graduated because of the last recession (or at least I think it was because of the recession; it's probably just as likely I was a horrible job interview), I joined a nine-piece band, counting all four vocals. I don't actually remember what we were called; and since most of the gigs we had were wedding receptions of friends and family, I only know that group as "The Wedding Band". I don't remember ever us getting paid, but the food was always good.

It didn't last long, or at least I didn't last long in it (I probably played less than a year with them on and off), but what it did do was introduce me and my playing to songs and genres that I wouldn't normally do or listen to intentionally, but were still cool as hell. Since I'm feeling nostalgic (plus I have a bunch of one-liners I need to put into writing), I list some of the memorable songs we did from that uh, era.

Breakout and Am I the Same Girl from Swing Out Sister. Probably the most well-known of the set, not counting one pop song (more on that later). The main riff of Breakout is pretty fun to do. One complaint is that we didn't get to do La La La (Means I Love You), which means no one got to shout "LA is a great big freeway..."

Promise Me a Carousel by David Benoit. Ridiculously hard to find a copy of this nowadays. Great guitar and bass intro and that's it.

Midnight at the Oasis, Spend Some Time and You are the Universe from the Brand New Heavies. Fun stuff to play, at least the parts you can actually hear guitar on. I also fake the solo on Spend Some Time. I only have one noticeable part in Midnight (at 0:26 in the video) and sometimes I even forget to do that.

Carnival by The Cardigans. Great song with a riff that goes on and on. Listen.

Fast Love and As by George Michael. I'm not sure if Fast Love went well with the wedding crowd, and I really didn't have much to do on As, unless you count doing the George Michael dance during the chorus.

If You Had My Love by J-Lo. WTF. There's an intro, and all of three notes after that. I think I skipped the only gig the band played that to an audience.

Roll On Snare Drum. Curtains.

2009-03-09T22:06:00.000+08:00

I actually wanted to delay this review post until I found a half-decent graphic or video to go along with it. But what the hell.

Eventful weekend just passed with the Watchmen movie and the Eraserheads: Final Set concert.

First off, the movie: I actually liked it, so much so that I don't get why some people didn't. It's a movie based on a comic book whose purpose was to explore the limits of the comic book medium. Naturally some parts of it won't translate well to the big screen, but I think Zack Snyder and Co. pulled it off as well as anyone could have. How many comic-book movies and movie franchises can claim even 90% accuracy with the book(s) they were based on? The Dark Knight? See: that Rachel character. X-Men? See: The Last Stand. Superman? See, uh, Kate Bosworth.

Comedian Patton Oswald sums it up well: "Tell you what -- before you go and see THE WATCHMEN, plunk down and watch CATWOMAN, GHOST RIDER and DAREDEVIL."

Before watching had dinner with Tina, Nikki, Paul and Pierre. This company should have shutdowns more often.

Saturday was the final final Eraserheads reunion concert with Arvil and his band of brothers. That night the E-heads showed us how it's done. (SMART and MTV and whoever was responsible for the audio, not so much.)

Video courtesy of some guy with a camera.

There's not a lot that needs to be said about that concert; it was a great end to the band that wrote the soundtrack to our lives. I actually get a bit teary-eyed on some parts. (I'll write more on this when I get a bit more articulate than "Wow.") Strange but I've actually never seen them live before that night.

Speaking of better late than never, I've finally joined Facebook. Tons of AJAX going on in those pages. I should know because I work with that stuff everyday so I know what it's capable of. One day after my 1000th search for the same name, I think it's going to pop me a message saying: "Just add her already!"

Why Do I Waste Valuable Time?

2009-03-01T20:06:00.000+08:00

Is it March already?

I'm reeling from the epic fail of a night I had last night. I got all dressed up for a black-attire party and spent a total of ten minutes there because I hardly knew anyone and I couldn't figure out where the open bar was. I swear, this is the last time I let Facebook invite me out.

But that was actually better than last week where I got all dressed up and did not go the the party at all. It's like I was imagining what the rest of the afternoon would be like at the party and I just couldn't bring myself to make small talk...future small talk. All that Neil Strauss reading for nothing.

Predictably, the evenings I enjoyed were watching bands play, even if I did forget their names the morning after. Well, except for Turbo Goth, who successfully doubled my knowledge of Smiths songs.

Other notables in the week was training day on Monday, which I enjoyed despite not learning anything new, Friday's Recess Session, and Saturday morning jamming and uh, troubleshooting. Actually a pretty busy week to preempt a pretty busy month, despite less and less reason to have one.

Earlier...

Last week while I was procrastinating on whether to attend a children's birthday party my grandmother,who was in Subic at the time, was rushed to the hospital for feeling weak, and sent the entire family scrambling for everything from medical advice to cash to contact numbers. Turned out to be a false alarm, but still...I don't think I've ever felt that scared and useless, like, ever. I think I went straight to the bargaining step.

I guess the question is, what I am still doing partying and blogging?

Trophy Display Of Bruises

2009-02-14T18:55:00.000+08:00

Because I'm a sentimental sap, I looked up all the posts on the old blog on or near February 14th. And what I've seen is that since 2005 I've been writing about the, uh, holiday, with varying (increasing?) degrees of disgust/depression, finally culminating in last year where I didn't write a single post the entire month of February. But as with the devil, just because you don't believe in Valentine's Day don't mean it doesn't exist. So I must write on it again. Ok, not must but there's really little else going on anyway.

I've actually only sent/gave flowers in February twice; once was a scam which was the subject of the 2005 post, the other was anonymously where I only admitted to be the sender like a year later. Those happened two years in succession I think, which means I haven't done it since. I don't even know if I can still pull something like that off. That either means that I've gotten smarter...or less brave.

Now, serenades is something I get behind on. I was, however, the one sung to last Friday, which I will file under "office prank" unless someone convinces me otherwise. (Side A's "Forevermore"? Really?)

In other news, spent last week with the Wommies and for some reason wound up with "25 Minutes" as my signature videoke song (another song that would make a lousy serenade). I also wound up with a couple of bruises from slipping down stairs, which explains the lack of pictures.

Went to the UP Fair for the first time ever (I think -- I may have been there before but probably passed out on the back seat of a car). On Thursday there was barely anyone there despite the great band lineup (Urbandub, Pupil, Radioactive Sago Project). The second night was a bit more exciting; they had to stop the show since the emo kids broke down one of the walls. I can't imagine why they'd pull a stunt like that. Unless Side A was playing.

The New Twenty

2009-01-20T22:52:00.000+08:00

A couple of relatively big changes to rein in the new year: first up, my Black Spider-Man-inspired hair, which wasn't actually by choice since the barber didn't want anything to do with it until I had it "fixed" first. And so the result is a new look for me, and hopefully it's not as out of place as, well, a Black Spider-Man.

Second would be finally moving into the Condeaux. By moving in I mean spending two consecutive nights there; I swear my family keeps coming up with plot devices to get me to go home ("We need the car", "It's your birthday", "We have cake", "Go home").

We finally had the place installed with cable TV and internet. Now it's exactly as if I were at home locked up in my room.

Work is as good as work that involves cutting costs at every turn can get. I'll leave it at that. But a good couple of weeks of extra-curriculars though; saw the following bands (plus a few more) in the span of a week: Enemies of Saturn, Angulo, Mayonnaise, Bagetsafonik, Sugarfree, Analog, The Late Isabel, Imago, Fuseboxx and Up Dharma Down. That's probably more local acts than I saw all of 2008. And more to come hopefully. Anything to get that bad senti-rock out of my ears from Jason's New Year's party.

I'm racking my brain to come up with insight on this 21st of January and nothing comes...so let's force it. As if turning the new twenty wasn't bad enough, Blue Monday was earlier this week, so called by sociologists as it is supposedly the most depressing day of the year due to a number of coincidental convergences. I didn't notice, and I didn't mean that as a good thing.

Eat, Drink And Be Merry

2008-12-24T19:43:00.000+08:00

One thing I've come to realize is that I'm useless at buying stuff for other people. I may have mentioned this before elsewhere; something about listening to other people's needs. Eh.

The other day I went to Greenhills to shop for other people and almost ended up with things exclusively for myself.

Getting self-gifts is easy. Yes I know it's too late for a wish list but there's little chance of me getting any of these this year anyway:

A Mac. But I have a good reason for getting on the bandwagon. Because it's pretty.
Clae McQueens! In pavement.

Guitar effects and new cables. Haven't decided which effects in particular, but definitely something crunchier.
Broadband internet access at the Condeaux.
An abundance of free time and motivation to do something more than just sit at home watching MAXX.

There are a ton more but I've mentioned them here at one time or another. I actually checked off some items from previous wish lists when I was in the US earlier this year. There's one wish item that might materialize tomorrow: Celtics extend their winning streak to 20 at the expense of the, uh, aspiring-70-win-club Lakers.

Earlier...

The team went to a theme park for the third year in a row; this year we went back to Enchanted Kingdom for our Christmas party. I don't have pictures because I knew our resident "photogs" would adequately document the event.

Somehow even with a carousel pass I still ended up on two scary rides (the frantic ride home and the MRT). The highlight would have to be eating at Kanin Club for obvious reasons. Hello Christmas weight.

Earlier...

Oh, I have to talk about the "gig" during the *other* Christmas Party. I don't mean to sound like a prima donna but please if I knew that we'd be playing the Wherever You Will Go and something from Stonefree I wouldn't have suggested the idea of playing at all. Thank God for the Lisa Loeb number (I Do).

And OMG there have got to be a billion names better than what we called ourselves. If I had a band I'd call it The Infinite Monkey Theory.

Earlier...

Actually had a couple of nice night outs this month (the NSI thing, Wiiing at the client office.Sidebar and the impomptu Gesu concert). And for some reason they disappeared just as the holiday shutdown started. What's going on here?

Later...

If anyone came here looking for some deep Christmas insight, they're looking in the wrong place. In any case, have yourselves a merry little Christmas everybody, whichever version you prefer.

Look At This Tangle Of Thorns

2008-11-29T20:26:00.000+08:00

It's a Saturday and I'm stuck home again. I seriously cannot recall the last time I was out. Visiting hospitals and the corner McDonalds do not count.

Now there's nothing inherently wrong with being at home but it does feel like the world has moved on without you.

...Boy, Christmas depression came early this year.

So let's just recap what's happened since the last post and maybe I'll snap out of it.

The long-awaited new Guns N' Roses album Chinese Democracy came out last week. Ex-drummer Matt Sorum is caught on TMZ saying that it's "a toe tapper". I'm surprised at this. One, that people can point out Matt Sorum in a crowd, and two, Matt Sorum has a personality.
Finally finished reading Nabokov's Lolita after two failed starts. I read the last page about a week ago, and I still feel dirty.
After years of Gibson fandom I've gone out and bought myself a Japanese Fender Stratocaster that's at least 20 years old. To which my cousin remarked: "Ewww John Mayer".
The condo (dubbed The Condeaux for an added touch of class) is slowly making the transition from "tiny" to "cozy". Now if I could only start actually living there...
A few folks from work are/were in the hospital (for different reasons). I think sicknesses are getting more complicated. And we've no Dr. House to help us out. Maybe we do in terms of temperament, but not in terms of expertise. I kid doctors.

Later...

Sometimes I think that at the start you're given a bunch of credits on which to build the rest of your life with, and I've unwittingly withdrawn and wasted them all and that's how I ended up where I am. I remember a friend telling me that He doesn't work that way and there are days when I desperately want to believe her.

Lonely Planet

2008-11-16T17:39:00.000+08:00

Well, it is.

Boracay IV was even more subdued than the previous trips. Did nothing but sleep, eat and stare. At the ocean. But given how work has been lately, doing nothing feels entirely justified.

This is of course step four of the cliche Boracay trip: blogging about it, I do get minus points for not using a DSLR. But cliche as it is there really is nothing like that sunset. Even sunrise people agree. I could've done without the ensuing existential crisis, though.

This is of course the yearly thing with my mom where she takes me or my brother as her plus-one when she goes on this money-market seminar with a few hundred brokers and traders and other people I have little in common with. I don't remember when I started going on this trip; but the little girl I once convinced to henna tattoo her arm much to the disappointment of her banker mother is graduating college next summer. God that's depressing.

There was this part at dinner where all the older bank officers were raving about the Beatles bossa-nova remakes that was being played over the speakers. I didn't know Bora had a two-year time zone difference.

Spending the weekend with a couple of hundred bankers isn't as boring as it sounds. You can tell that everyone has a bit more swagger than the usual yuppie, playing with money and all. You can tell by their choice of swimwear.But being at this beach is like being a kid at the candy store. With the candy under lock and key. And the storekeeper is watching. And you're with your mom.

Cover My Descent

2008-11-01T20:00:00.000+08:00

October is over already? And not a single post. Which means yes, I'm monumentally busy again. And that's no longer news, is it?

My cousin suffered an aneurysm some three weeks ago, and a week later the family buried next to our lolo. He was just five years older than me, which means growing up I found it hard to relate to his high school/college/working world at the time. But I will remember a couple of things. One, that I would do some of his high school art projects for him and they would get recognition at his school (Claret?) whereas projects I would do for my own classes would get nothing. And two, my mom eventually sold our car (the one I was driving after college) to him; a '92 Corona, which is the car I wanted to drive when I first learned how to, and the car I crashed into the back of a cab after the 2002 UAAP championship. I'd learn later on that he was caught for speeding on the NLEX, so if anyone from college or Magnus Philippines Inc was witness to that, that wasn't me. He is survived by his wife and three kids, and some award-winning artwork.

Later...

October came and went, and that means the company Beer Bash just concluded last week. While it wasn't as crazy as 2006, it did have its moments...moments already lost in a drunken haze. Thank God for photogs and their Multiplies.

Thursday, went to an Analog gig with a couple of other bands at Route 196. The guitarist from Blue Teeth makes me want to quit playing guitar altogether.

Friday, spent Halloween mostly at work (predictably) and then had a quick bite at Grams before signing off. Signs of slowing down? The horror!

Later...

I've been feeling so inept lately, which is never a good thing in general, but is a horrible thing coming into another big project. Need to snap out of this. Retail therapy so far hasn't worked as well as expected, and my bookshelf is quickly running out of space. I have some other ideas, but they all involve complex sugars.

Between The Earth And Sky

2008-09-28T10:48:00.000+08:00

So the UAAP Men's Basketball Finals just wrapped up, and really this post would've made more sense a week ago. But Ateneo just won the championship round for the first time since 2002, so the post-series buzz runs a little longer than usual.

Here's the all-time most memorable moments of UAAP Basketball for me, and they're not always about the games:

That regular season game against DLSU in the 90's when everyone, including players whose last name wasn't Sison, dropped like three dozen threes and we won by, like fifty (citation needed). I remember people starting to get bored by halftime.

A regular-season game played in the Blue Eagle Gym against UP that exemplifies what Ateneo basketball was all about in the 90's. With the Eagles down by two with a chance to tie in the dying seconds, Pinzon breaks any sort of press the Maroons throw at him, but then takes the ball himself into the paint amidst the trees and throws up a wild shot that hits nothing but the backboard. Game over.

Losing Game 3 of the Finals to DLSU in 2001. Saw the game at Strumm's Makati, organized by one of the bosses at the office. After the final buzzer sounded, my boss Carlo, an Atenean who was ironically in Taft at that time taking his MBA, and I alternately texted the Song For Mary line for line until we finished it.

Post-game analysis with Cybil in Starbucks Katipunan after losing Game 2 of the Finals to DLSU which took the series to a deciding Game 3. Saw the game at the Moro Lorenzo gym. At least I though it was post-game analysis. Who remembers anymore?

Winning Game 3 and the series against DLSU that year. Of course I remember seeing the game in Moro; the long three in the dying minutes that put the game out of reach. The campus suddenly flocking with people who were coming from the game and all over. Spontaneous blue-eagle-spelling from total strangers at Grilla in Libis after. And then of course the accident in Timog that evening/the following morning that sobered me up. I thanked God for two things that day.

Which brings us to this past week where history repeats itself, somewhat. The series didn't take three games, and I didn't get to see the game at all because I was out interviewing the next generation of portal developers, but still got updated with the highlights (Thanks Cricket, and you're welcome Pat). But it wasn't just the game that repeats history: the day after the game I got into a freaking accident again! With not one but two cars! Not my fault this time, though. Hopefully this isn't the start of another tradition.

Cincy (Epilogue)

2008-09-14T20:04:00.000+08:00

Alternate title: The Rest Is Still Unwritten. But then that exposes me as a The Hills viewer to too many people, and we can't have that.

As expected, when I get home I'm suddenly too busy to write and it takes me two weeks before I come up with an epilogue. It could also be that I've been looking for something to look back on; some moral of the story. But obviously there is none. Besides, dwelling on the past is so last month.

It's been raining almost non-stop since I've been back, and I like it. In fact, I like everything about being back. The people, the food, the drinks!

Ok, almost everything: Saw this god-awful band Friday night...

Words That Would Mend The Things That Were Broken

2008-09-01T03:03:00.000+08:00

Last post from Cincinnati.

The closing credits to Cincy will roll to the songs of Maroon 5 and Counting Crows. Since Collective Soul, Blues Traveler, Live and DMB concerts serve as the soundtrack of the middle parts, it only follows that the credits will belong to last night's double act, which will also be this trip's final gimmick since I fly out tomorrow (yay). The songs will be, quite predicatbly, Won't Go Home Without You and Angels Of The Silences.

Actually, Counting Crows didn't perform Angels (boo) but let's pretend that they did. Videos to follow. The coolest moments of the night were: singing Chris Isaak's Wicked Game as the intro to She WIll Be Loved, and the spiel in the middle of A Long December.

The teaser for Cincy will be the image below. Note that I don't have Photoshop on this laptop owing to something called SoBC, so I had to use Paint.NET.

The trailer for Cincy will be 15 seconds long because, well, I'm not clever enough to fill 30 whole seconds. Also in the name of SoBC I'll need to indicate generic character names Client A, Client B, Client Manager, Waiter, etc.

Client B (after realizing that some of their back end systems aren't compatible with each other): It's amazing we get products into people's homes at all.
(Waiter returns to check up on customers after long discussion of how spicy the hot sauce should be)
Waiter: Did you find the spicy-ness of your food OK?
Client Manager: On a scale of 1 to 10, it's a 4.
(JonRay rolls his eyes)

Client A (looking at one complex new requirement): This looks interesting.
JonRay: Yeah that hasn't really worked out for me.

JonRay (to Jenny, from back seat): Remember, this is the stretch where we saw the cops hiding in the grass before, so be careful. Just saying, before I go to sleep.
(Later, JonRay wakes up to find the car parked with the windows down)
Officer (to Jenny): License and regstration please.

(Walking to the apartments after work)
JonRay: We're about to come to our first-ever pretentious U.S. moment
Jenny: What's that?
(Stops in front of apartment building)
JonRay: This is me.

But of course this/real life isn't a movie. It's not even a bad indie movie. For one thing, in real life you don't get to say goodbye.

The Kind Of Thing You Only See In Scented, Glossy Magazines

2008-08-30T08:35:00.000+08:00

Actually there's nothing much to see or do at the University of Cincinnati, except things that remind you why college life is so good. It's not as big as the only other school I've seen in the US, but that's not saying much because apparently Stanford holds the record for contiguous land mass for a school or university. Citation needed.

Today marks the last working day of this trip, as Monday is Labor Day and apparently that and the weekend before it is a big deal. We'll see. Anyway, I'm left to my own devices again for this rainy Friday afternoon/evening and I spend it procrastinating whether to see Tropic Thunder in Newport. I know I'm the type to find that type of movie funny but in the end I didn't, because I don't recall ever bing satisfied with a Ben Stiller movie the first time I see it. Usually it takes the movie being shown ad infinitum on HBO before the true gems of jokes set in ("What is this, a center for ants?"). Meet The Fockers doesn't count, that's special for another reason.

Things are starting to wind down on this trip. I know I hate on Cincy for the most part on this journal, but it's really not that bad. For a modern city, there's some old school city love kind of vibe that we don't get in cities at home, except maybe for the South.

Take tonight, for example. Because of my unwillingess to ask questions (a character flaw that we'll revisit some other time, I'm sure), I got on the wrong bus on the way home, and I ended up in another Kentucky town, Covington. (There are a number of cool-looking bars down there, apparently; it's a shame I find this out only tonight.)

Anyway, I had to wait for something like 20 minutes for the next bus that will take me back downtown. For most of the trip back I'm the lone passenger and I get to see Cincy from the other side. It's actually pretty on this dreary Friday; the San Fo Giants are in town and the Great American Ballpark is lit up like an upside-down chandelier. I especially enjoy the huge halogen lights of the ballpark for some reason, and fireworks go off when Encarnaction hits a grand slam in the third inning to put the Reds up 4-0. Further down, the buildings and the twin towers of the P&G headquarters stand out in the Cincy skyline. There are a lot of people in red walking around because of the game, and maybe a wee bit more people than usual owing to the long weekend.

When I get down at Fountain Square there's an amateur performers concert going on, and while they're not Nucleus Running they're not that bad. I hang around the square to see a number of badly-named acoustic duos ("Hi we're and ") and leave when depression starts to overtake the appreciation of everything about tonight. I go home and make myself soup and wash it down with Bud.

I realize there are a million ways to tell the story of 'nothing happened'. And sometimes it seems like I'm going to have to go through every one of them.

Sometimes You Turn Your Back To The Wind

2008-08-25T06:17:00.000+08:00

Alternate title: Hoosier Daddy.

This weekend, Jenny and her possie went to a mountain resort in Tennessee called Smoky Mountain. Hopefully for them it's nothing like what comes to mind when you hear the words "Smoky Mountain". Unless of course, that first thing that comes to your mind is "Paraiso".

In any case I passed up on that. Left to my own devices, I booked a bus out of town and went to Indianapolis, Indiana, the last piece of this "tri-state" area that I haven't been to. Indiana to me means only two things: racing and Reggie Miller, and I'm lucky enough to have time to visit the homes for both.

(Technically, automobile racing's home is probably Monza, Italy and Miller's home is either UCLA or the torn-down Market Square Arena or one might argue, NYC's Madison Square Garden. But I needed a segue.)

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is located on the outskirts of town, opened in 1909 and the first Indy 500 race was held there in 1911. Also called "The Brickyard" for once being totally paved with bricks, it was home to F1's US Grand Prix from 2000-2007. It's home race is the annual Indy 500, and there are a few other competitions that are held there including NASCAR and motorcycle racing. This week there weren't any, which is OK because I wouldn't have had the time to watch anyway, so I had to content myself with the Hall of Fame.

The Hall of Fame houses, among other things, past winners of the Indy 500 and other icons of autoracing history. The only names (and cars) that were familiar were Schumacher, Jacques Villeneuve, Mario Andretti and Juan Miguel Fangio. Oh, and Danica Patrick. You don't have to like cars or racing to appreciate the stuff in this museum. At the very least, it's you chance to see the evolution of the internal combustion engine before our generation starts phasing it out.

Next up is downtown's Conseco Fieldhouse, the home of your Indiana Pacers. Of course, the season was over as well, and no I wasn't on the mood for the WNBA's Indiana Fever. I'll just note that the gift shop featured throwback jerseys for probably the entire starting five of that classic Pacers team that went up against the Knicks year after year, and that all things Jermaine O'Neal (recently traded to Toronto) were already on clearance. JO never did get the chance to do any playoff damage, and is overrated overall, but I still bought from the sale since he was the only semi-reliable big man on my 2005(?) fantasy NBA team, the Roswell Rayguns.

Indiana itself was probably slightly bigger than Cincy, but I can't verify that since I was only there one afternoon. It actually reminds me of a European city that I can't place. Vienna, maybe? Now that can't be right.

On the way home I had a slight scare because my bus reservation said 7:50 PM and by 8:30 it was still nowhere in sight. Then I remembered I never did check what time zone Indy was in. Was it Central or Eastern? The Pacers play in the same conference as the Bulls, and they're in central. Eaux fuck! Turns out it really was just late, and Indiana is on EST.

Next: The University of Cincinnati.

The TV Should Apologize

2008-08-20T07:58:00.000+08:00

I know I've been here too long because I've started to understand The Hills. Stayed in last Sunday with the remaining bottle of wine and I got to see MTV run a Hills marathon all evening; all this to hype up Monday's season four premiere "We'll Never Be Friends". Oooh drama. Because I don't get enough of that.

There are a few things that betray this and some other "reality" shows as reality. One, how can there be a camera shot of a reality-show "star" entering a room...from the inside? Can they read the person's mind? Second, in a show where everyone is being followed around with a camera crew, how can any meeting be "accidental"? OMG, Spencer's here? The sound guy with the boom mike and another guy lugging around heavy video equipment didn't tip you off?

And finally, no way Whitney is that pretty and charming and just happened to be applying for the same job as Lauren in the show's pilot. At this point I'm like, OMG I'm giving this, like, too much thought.

Earlier that weekend, I saw Vicky Cristina Barcelona, both as a change of pace/scenery and because I hear ScarJo plays another free spirit in this one. In any case, new dream: see Barcelona. (You know, after Japan.) In the film at least the city is one big canvas for Gaudi; it's beautiful. The movie itself was typical Woody Allen fare: little plot, almost chick-flick-y and character-driven. But they were good characters, which saves it. And did I mention Scarlet as a free spirit? Rebecca Hall isn't bad either.

So between that, Saturday's breakdown and Lauren Conrad's reality show life, it's been a very uh, unmanly weekend. I need to do something about this. I need to go to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Next.

Break Cork In Case Of Emergency

2008-08-17T07:01:00.000+08:00

No that's not a line from a song, as far as I know.

My fellow traveler's boyfriend and his brother are in town for the next two weeks, which explains why my date(s) tonight are the following:

After what I've been through today trust me this is the best I can do.

I have this habit. When faced with something I can't deal with I automatically conjure up some episode from the past that was also something I couldn't deal with at the time, but at least now I just remember being paralyzed and not actually are paralyzed. Or put another way, at least that only hurts in my head and not in, uh, other parts. There isn't a name for that tactic/condition yet, as far as I can tell. Psych graduate-friends, be a dear and help name it after me.

Here we go again.

Classes were suspended that supposedly rainy Monday. Someone had the bright idea to spend the day at his house to "jam" (read: play pretend-rock-star). The venue was going to be your lover's best friend's house.

I use the term "lover" in the loosest sense. All three of us were too young to know what love was, and at least one of us still doesn't. But I digress. Lover's best friend's house. Hardly neutral territory.

You and him and some bit player in this story take his Beetle. I hitch with my friend in his Lite Ace. Why do I tag along? Because I'm an idiot. I remember the song playing in the car (of course): Today by the Smashing Pumpkins. The irony is not lost on me.

The time it takes to get to the house is around 20-30 minutes, and there are a bunch of ways to get there. When we do get there the Beetle is nowhere to be found, but the bit player is. She tells us your alibi: apparently, you realized you had to get home right away because your folks didn't know where you were after they learned that classes were suspended, and so you had him take you home. This couldn't have worked out better if you planned it, and a big part of me still thinks you did.

You can imagine how expressive the "jamming" session turned out. The rest of that ironically sunny day I just drowned myself in something slightly less classy than 2005 California Red.

These are the stories that make up who I am; these stories of disappointment, weakness and despair. What else stories would you have me tell?

Put in more cliche terms: what do you want me to say?

Understands The Weather Of The Winters On Its Way

2008-08-15T05:35:00.000+08:00

Current activity: time travelling.

A couple of days ago for no reason I could not get Even Flow out of my head. I guess thoughts do arrive like butterflies.

This one is for the kids who wish they were in Seattle in 1991. If you check the related videos there's a really good version of Breath, too.

A couple of weekends ago (before the concert), I went to Newport alone to kill some time and clear my head and so I took the opportunity to eat up front at the bar inside Rockets. Summoning all my The Secret powers, I got my order taken by one of one of the twins. (Jessica or Elizabeth, I prefer Jessica just because.) Yes, that's where I spend my The Secret credits: waitresses. Anyway, I got something called a Route 66 burger, and Jessica kept asking how I found it and refilling my Diet Coke.

Johnny Rockets provides each booth with a mini-jukebox showcasing some really good classics. We've never had one actually work, though. Anyway while eating and staring and clearing my head, someone selects to play the Beach Boys' "California Girls". When you're in the presence of the trinity like that (pretty girl, good food, great music), you have to crack a smile.

Later...

Tin (another Tin) was in town last week and after seeing a forgettable Pineapple Express (sorry Seth) on Friday we went out to the mall the following day. Tin rounded up her friend May and we met up with Kim from Jenny's team. One of the first few stores we entered was Papyrus (yes, that Papyrus) and the girls spent an annoyingly long time inside a store that sold perfumed paper products. Suffocating from lack of testosterone I went out to look at other things, and then I saw that the adjacent stores were Abercrombie & Fitch and Banana Republic. Not what I had in mind.

The gimik quickly degenrated into: Tin and May at VS, Jenny and Kim at Sephora and me looking at Tokidoki toys. The only place all five of us agreed to visit was Apple.

Next stop: Walmart. Or at least that was the plan. On the way there we got separated from the rest of the convoy on the highway. That's when Jenny said, "Follow that Walmart truck!" And that's when we got lost completely. Twenty minutes later we called it off and decided to go grocery shopping at the nearer Kroger instead.

Later...

There, I bought a poster book that collected some of the most memorable X-men covers (including that Rogue/Magneto one that still rocks to this day), thinking it would be great as a gift. When I check the groceries out the cashier looks at the book, looks at me and asks "Is this for you?" I answer, "Let's pretend it's not."

I'm keeping it, by the way.

Now...

If time travelling were possible, any one of those days would be fine. But I'd probably prefer to go back either two years or go forward two weeks. Either way, I'd be home.

Beat Back The Pain We've Found

2008-08-08T07:30:00.000+08:00

Alternate title: Is This Real Or Am I Dreaming.

As you can tell I'm still high from the concert on Tuesday at the Riverbend Music Center. Dave and the boys played for something like three hours to a packed house and lawn. We were lucky to get good, uh, grass, and could see the stage without straining our necks too much since the "lawn" was actually the side of a sloping hill. Not bad for 40 bucks. And we were lucky it stopped raining in the morning.

I really should brush up on my DMB discography; I only own one album (...Crowded Streets) and got lucky since they had like three songs from that one, including one of my all-time faves. The concert was mostly to promote the new album, so I didn't know a lot of the songs but it didn't matter. Singing along to the last lines of Crush was well worth it. No, I made sure I didn't catch that on video. Videos and pictures to come.

The Band would launch into fifteen minute instrumentals before ending their songs, with guitar player Tim Reynolds taking about half of that. Isn't he listed as an official band member by now?

The place as I said was packed. Behind us were a bunch of drunk kids (beer was sold), and in front of us there was this girl who'd scream at the top of her lungs...before the front act even started. If she was that enthusiastic shouldn't she have better seats?

There was an annoying group of people to the right of us who were playing out some sort of real-life television drama (One Tree Hillbilly?) and wasn't really listening except when the band was playing Ants Marching, which annoyed the hell out of me. From time to time one guy would "break character" and would wolf whistle at the band for no reason in particular. I seriously think he puts that in his resume under "special talents". Argh.

Jenny seemed to enjoy it as well, except for the part where the drunk kids started stepping on her brand new beach towel and my bag, and kept invading her personal space to take drunk pictures. Kids!

At the end of the evening, some people found out the hard way that sloping hills and alcohol do not mix. I didn't take pictures; as much as I enjoy people getting hurt I am not a fan of getting beat up.

I guess from that night it's all, er, downhill?

...

In annoying news, my project manager reminds me of all those teachers who, when asked a real question that was not from the textbook, would answer: "Good question. That's your homework." Ugh.

Drink In And Always Be Full

2008-08-01T04:22:00.000+08:00

Last weekend was dubbed the Prius weekend. Renting a car here is like playing in a raffle: I never know what car we're going to get until we're actually there. And since we were saving on gas we booked a sub-compact which turned out to be a hybrid. I was thrilled; you know how I want to talk about being good to the environment.

It's actually pretty fun to drive around, mainly because of the power button instead of an ignition (I'm driving an Xbox!) and the computerized dash, which shows which power source is moving the car at any given time. It also shows how much gas you're drinking up per trip (45.8 mpg by the end of the weekend). We actually had to google how to start the car when I had lost "the touch". Apparently you need to step on the brakes when you start the car; otherwise it's just like turning on the ACC.

But that's not the main part of Prius weekend. I got to see 90's relics Collective Soul, Blues Traveler and Live, uh, live! We decided to go see them on Sunday evening at the last minute. I'm sorry Manila but that beats Lifehouse any day.

The show was done in Turfway Park, which is actually a horse race track in Florence, Kentucky. It was held on the grass with no seats so we camped out as close to the stage as we could. There weren't many people there which was a departure to the kind of crowd the same concert would draw in Cubao.

Blues Traveler actually steals the show for me, and I think I know why. I've seen high school kids do Selling The Drama pretty accurately; and as good as the guitar solo in Shine is I'm sure someone cracked it back home. Even December is easy to transcribe. But I've never seen anyone else do or even try Run-Around. John Popper is god.

I managed to get the last parts of the song on video and share when I can.

No, Collective Soul didn't do Perfect Day and while that was disappointing I guess it's just as well. That way I can't ever compare it to the Nucleus Running version. Hahaha. They also snuck in the Killers' lyrics "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" during the muted parts of December. Note to pretentious cover bands. Ahem.

Live didn't disappoint and did all the hits, including my personal favorite All Over You. And in case you were wondering, Live ended their set with Lightning Crashes and not Selling The Drama.

I haven't even gotten around to talking about Hooters. Maybe some other day. Music geek in the house.

Next Tuesday: the Dave Matthews Band! My Cincy movie has gotten its own soundtrack

Dealing In The Limits

2008-07-25T05:03:00.000+08:00

I forgot to mention that I bought Amish chicken (I don't know what that means, either) from the grocery, and some bread crumb + seasoning with it. On my first try I burnt it, and on the second I cooked it too raw. What did I get on my third try? You guessed it...a Filipino!

Yeah that joke had been incubating in my head for three weeks.

There are days when I think that New Order's Regret is the best. song. ever. Yesterday was one of those days.

Anyway.

I realize that I am and will always be a comic book geek. If there's one good thing about this city is that the library is reasonably stocked and is loaded with hidden gems. They've got a pretty decent catalog of popular fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, microfilm (blast from the past!) and reference books. So when presented with this buffet, what did I go for first? Comic books!

You'd think it would've sounded less juvenile if I said "graphic novels" but really, it doesn't. Go ahead try it.

So in the time I've been here, here's what I've read so far:

Garage Band by Gippi (from Italy)
Arkham Asylum (pre-Sandman Dave McKean!)
Batman Year One (to prepare for the movie)
Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America (Loeb is good)
Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (These guys are rrrrreally good)
Skim by the Tamaki cousins
Sin City

Among others. Of course I had to read every single X-Men comic they had. My question is: what the heck happened between X-Men #11 and now? Who are these people? At least one thing hasn't changed: Chris Claremont is still the master of the betrayal plot twist.

Onto another geek angle, also at the library I found a copy of the software Design Patterns book written by the Gang of Four, with a foreword from Grady Booch, the grandpappy of UML. I saw it at Barnes & Noble but it figured it was too expensive and too heavy to bring home, so I decided to regularly go to the library to finish it instead. Which brings me to conversation we had a week ago:

"...so I'll be going to the library to finish it. But it will take away time spent at the gym."
"The geek overpowers the jock, no?"
"It's the story of my life...no, wait. The reverse. The reverse is the story of my life."

I didn't care to elaborate.

Fast As Wheels Can Turn

2008-07-16T05:31:00.000+08:00

The following day we took our spankin' new (rental) Jeep Compass to the one reason to drive at all in the States: the outlet malls! The one we went to this Saturday was 65 miles away and basically took an hour to get there from downtown. It sounds like a long ways, but it also takes an hour to get to Glorietta from QC, so no one was complaining.

No one was complaining about the car, either. But it would've been so cool if we were able to afford a convertible and re-enact, well, every cool movie scene that included a convertible, ever. But we'll take the Jeep, thanks. No movie scenes come to mind.

So if I'm driving the speed limit (55) and people, including old ladies, are still passing me, that means that everyone else is breaking the law, right? When I described this to the folks at work Seth told me to just flip them off or something. Ah see, that I can do.

The Jefferson outlet mall itself was nothing special, but since it was Independence Day weekend, most everything was on sale. Spent around a couple of hours there, mostly procrastinating.

Oh, and I finally got to eat KFC since I got here. Yes, downtown Cincy doesn't have a KFC. Or a McDonald's. Bizarre. And sad.

On the way back we dove into the Kenwood mall to "retro-shop" (Jenny's term), wherein you look at stuff you've already bought and see if you saved money buying it when you did. You've done it too, admit it. Kenwood was more a traditional mall with the Macy's and the Dillard's and three kinds of Foot Lockers (regular, Lady and Kids). Then we ate at Cheesecake Factory, which is the franchise where Kaley Cuoco's character Penny in Big Bang Theory works. Look it up.

The next day was grocery day at Jungle Jim's which is a huge grocery with international products. Products of interest were: San Miguel Beer, San Miguel Dark Beer (I assume this is Cerveza Negra), Mang Tomas, Ligo sardines and UFC. I ended up getting the sardines, just because. I also got into a long discussion with the cheese guy on brie ($8.99 bleu-infused vs $3.99 plain. Duh.).

I also got carded for buying vino. Again, just because. I mean, hey I already have the cheese.

Something On The Surface It Stings

2008-07-10T06:34:00.000+08:00

The long weekend actually started on Thursday night, when our client manager decided to fully indoctrinate us in American culture by taking us to the firing range. When we got there he asked me to stand near the wall. Oh no, hasn't he forgiven me for screwing up my last project manager stint yet?

But my Rizal moment didn't come to pass of course, we were actually the ones doing the shooting. We took turns firing a .40-caliber Glock 23 to a target about less than 15 feet out. (At that distance a perp would've probably taken me out before I got a shot off. But anyway.) The target was your typical blue silhouette with a bull's eye. You actually had a choice of that, a picture of your typical convenience-store robber, or a terrorist. Really. We didn't take pictures, though; we were already getting weird looks from the other uh, enthusiasts.

Now I would've been impressed that our client manager has taken up shooting firearms except that: he didn't know how to load the magazine and then proceeded to insert the magazine backwards. And then tried to shoot it with the safety on.

I also learned that the bullets can and do get jammed inside the chamber. OMG so it is a valid plot device! I should apologize to Michael Bay for all those times...

So after that he took our paper target home because one shot came really close to the bulls' eye. I didn't tell him but I'm convinced it was my shot. But anyway. So now I have GSR on my jacket. I hope washing will get that out, otherwise it's another trip to Homeland Security.

Yes I used "perp" and "GSR" in a blog post. What are you going to do about it, punk?

There were no casualties other than my innocence.

The next day was the Fourth of July. And today is the Ninth of July. Why did people stop calling it Independence Day? Because it was easier to remember it for a history test? I wouldn't be surprised...

Watched Mr. Independence Day's (that's what he calls himself now) Hancock despite RottenTomatoes very persuasive 38% rating. Whatever, it was something to do. The Dark Knight can't come soon enough.

After that we saw the fireworks display over the Ohio River from Newport, which was great. There were plenty of people on the levee mainly because there's nowhere else to go in the city for the celebration. And it's not really even in the city, it's in the next city in the next state. Oh Cincy.

More on the long weekend, next.

Roll It Over In My Mind For The Hundred-Thousandth Time

2008-07-01T04:46:00.000+08:00

Now Pixar is just showing off.

Saw Wall-e on opening weekend. I have a couple of suggestions on how to make that movie the greatest movie of all time, but I'll wait until people back home have seen it. It's good, just short of Incredibles-good, I think.

Saw Wanted the day after and maybe it was because we saw it after Wall-e, but I came out of the cinema slightly annoyed. But at least I know exactly what my $9.75 was for. Thanks Angelina.

Anyway, the post title is taken from the Juliana Hatfield Three song "This is the Sound" on Become What You Are. I swear that record rocked my already rocking 90's.

I mention this because I got the album off Amazon, which is a first for me. Good bye per diem.

It's also because I realize that I can't escape the fact that my Cincy movie is going to have an art/indie film ending and not a Disney (and Pixar?) one.

Finally had a drink or two or three here. Something tells me I'm in for more.

Random U.S. moment: Ate at Johnny Rockets again and gorged on onion rings, which is one good thing about staying in the US. This Rockets' branch (I now just call it Rockets coz I'm so local) also features blonde twins as a couple of waitresses and I've (secretly) nicknamed them Jessica and Elizabeth. Raise your hand if you think I'm eating there again.

Oh, if anyone wants to see what Cincinnati is like, you can check out the new 3 Doors Down video for "It's Not My Time". The statue prominently shown there is the one in Fountain Square, and near the end I think the band is playing on the walkways between the mall buildings. What? You say that it looks like any other city? OMG it is, you have no idea.

The Loneliest Spot In The World

2008-06-20T07:51:00.000+08:00

...is the pitching mound in Yankee Stadium. That's according to the Costner movie For The Love Of The Game. Or it could be Sunday afternoon in Cincinnati, according to me. Yes, it's a baseball post. And yes, I misled you on purpose.

The day before this picture was taken I was actually also at the Great American Ballpark, watching the Reds play the same Boston Red Sox team that beat them this Sunday. I accidentally got in without paying by going through the Reds gift shop. I'm not talking about bleacher seats, too; these are like, Perfect Catch seats. (More baseball movie references.) Too bad I didn't have my camera then which is why I went back again the next day.

Of course I didn't know that I was actually getting in for free that Saturday so when I went back and tried to pull the same stunt I got caught. "You're gonna have to wait outside, son." Ah my short stint as an outlaw.

I'm also guilty...of now being able to cook pasta noodles! I didn't take pictures, so you'll have to take my word for it. And that it tasted effin' amazing.

Spaking of a Boston team beating the crap out of the competition and winning a series, the Celtics closed out the Lakers in probably the biggest letdown of a game I've seen in years. Impostors in purple and gold showed up, and there was a stretch where the Celts were getting any shot they wanted when they wanted. I especially like how Dime magazine describes the Boston defense as a box-and-one, except that the box is on Mamba. The Big Three get their rings and tear up their membership cards for the Karl Malone/Pat Ewing club, while John Starks and Nick Anderson thank Odom and Co for taking the top spot in forgettable Finals appearances. OK, maybe not.

Propinquity

2008-06-13T07:36:00.000+08:00

Celtics are rallying from being down twenty-four in the third to just two at the start of the fourth.

These past two weeks, I learned:

How to iron a dress shirt (from YouTube)
What a dryer lint filter is, and how to clean it
A new word
Two scoops of ice cream is more than enough here
That microwavable rice isn't half bad
How to drop trash down a chute
That 90% of the Filipinos in Cincinnati are in Benihana...working
That I comprise 5% of the remaining

Walked to Newport, Kentucky over the weekend to re-enact my favorite Walk To Remember scene. Oh, and to get away from Ohio. Got to eat at Zari's highly recommended Dewey's and it did not disappoint. So much so that Jenny can't hide her fandom of a 17" half-and-half.

Finally got to see a decent bookstore here (B&N) and I promptly offered my the contents of my wallet.

Random US moment: I found a Journeys store and got myself a pair of the controversial K. Cobain chucks, well, because I can. I already wore them the following day, and while I was walking around town Sunday a black couple stops me in the mall and asks me to raise my pant leg. They examine my kicks (they're called kicks yo) and the lady asks me a couple of questions regarding where I bought my shoes and I answer the Journeys store down at Newport. She ends the conversation with, "That's fucking gangsta." I'm sorry, but that made my day.

Celtics overcome the largest halftime lead in the shot-clock era (18 points) and win 97-91. Note to McFarlane toys: Wanting to buy: Allen #20 with Larry O'Brien trophy icon on the jersey.

Beat L.A., Go Reds

2008-06-06T07:24:00.000+08:00

Tonight, the Celtics are up four entering the fourth quarter of a see-saw Game 1.

I've been in Cincinnati for almost a week and a lot has gone down already:

I have a new dream: to go to Japan. At first I was disappointed with the Nagoya airport (because the plane didn't transform into a giant robot after we got off), but then I got through the rest of the place and there were Japanese girls everywhere! Everywhere! Who would've thought?

Twelve hours later, I was stopped at border control (again) and ended up spending close to an hour inside Homeland Security because apparently no one there knows what "software requirements engineering" is all about. So after thirty minutes of waiting and another fifteen explaining CMMi to immigration I was re-booked on the next flight to Cincy (since I missed the one I was supposed to get on because of all the waiting). This trip is exciting already.

Oh, I also thought I lost my luggage while waiting and actually almost left for Cincy without it as advised by the airport staff. Thank God I procrastinate like crazy.

Cincinnati itself is kind of a quiet place as warned by everyone who's been here. The weather here is more exciting than its night life. Yesterday I received my first tornado warning, and today the city is on a heat warning. Not that the heat warning means anything, though. There are hotter Philippines winters. Sissies.

I think the only thing they do here is watch Cincinnati Reds games. And drive with the windows down with the radio at full blast.

The apartment I got is huge. I think I actually squealed when I stepped through the door. OK, too much information, sorry. There's a Thirties vibe going through the building and it's actually pretty nice. There's also a "fitness center" on my floor. And that means as much to me as it does to you. Walgreens is around the corner, and four days out of five Jenny and I are there shopping for "emergency" dinners in case the tornado hits. Suuure.

Pictures in Multiply. I'll talk about work stuff if it gets interesting. In the meantime the weekend is near so maybe things will pick up.

Maybe it already has. Celtics win, 98-88.

Cincy (Prologue)

2008-05-30T19:20:00.000+08:00

It's ironic that its when you have plenty to write about that you won't have time to write it down. The weeks since I've been back from my West Coast trip have been a blur; and the next thing I know I'm flying back out there again, this time on the opposite coast. I'm due at the airport in four hours (3 AM) and I haven't gotten any sleep yet because I need to write this down.

But let me get back to the past few weeks. It's a blur, but its been an exciting blur. And I don't think I've ever put that e word down in a blog entry, like, ever. What a brave new world this is, this world of consenting adults. I won't detail that here, I'm in too much trouble as it is. Hahaha.

Work has been steadyyyyerrrr than it's been for a while, so let me take this opportunity to be grateful. It really feels like we (the team) have turned a corner on work. (Hope I didn't jinx it just now.) I guess I realize/always knew that this isn't something that's won in a couple of rounds; it's a grind-it-out, Knicks-style, slugfest where it's sweeter when you come out on top. Round 4.0, Fight!

Speaking of 4.0, tomorrow I leave for Cincinnati to meet up with Jenny so we can work on the future of Customer Portal. So there are two things you can be sure of:

The sun will come up tomorrow
The irony of the trip is not lost on me

I also got the requisite pre-departure haircut and requisite parental speech on eating right while on travel.

Yesterday was also Grace's last day to work beside me, which no matter how far you see it coming is never easy to take. Her project and mine is officially signed off as of today, and she's off to a new adventure (as always) and I'm off to the next phase of CPGT. So today really feels like an epilogue and a prologue all at once. Us leaving at the same time is...weirdly fitting? But definitely sad. It's like turning to a new chapter, and getting a paper cut in the process.

What Doesn't Happen In Vegas Stays In Vegas

2008-04-10T01:03:00.004+08:00

One post a month. That's what it's come to.

I've been back in town for a while, but I've finally gotten around to writing stuff down. Stuff I remember:

Cosmopolitan San Francisco. At least that's what our geriatric sightseeing tour bus driver said.
My first Cirque du Soleil show, Love, at the Mirage. And the after-party at Revolution Bar.
The Strip, notably: Caesar's Palace/Forum Shops, The Venetian, The Mirage, The Bellagio, Paris, Fashion Show Mall, and the Hawaiian Tropic-themed bar. I know now why Britney got married in this town. One can't help but be stupid here, it's great.
All the good food!
The bedsheets at Treasure Island.
James, our Pacquiao-rooting, closet Pinoy-loving Lincoln Town Car driver.
Dropping my camera on the Walk of Fame. And forced to buying a new one at the Walk of Regret.
The cement prints in front of the Kodak Theatre. Classic.
Walking to Zuni (and discovering back home that a restaurant called Zuni just opened at Greenbelt 5)
Having a Starbucks fix near Rodeo Drive. Because I needed to use the bathroom.
Stanford U! Go Cardinals!
Outlet stores in Sac-town
Wine-tasting at Sonoma. If you thought I was pretentious before...
Snow! And that two layers of clothing and a dress jacket is not enough. And that you can't step on it with Vans without sinking.

Pictures at the newly refurbished multiply site. So all-in-all a great two weeks. Better than the Utah stay, but then again that's not saying much.

After I got back it's not like I've been unpacking this whole time; a lot's gone on but that's a story for another, uh, month?

A Thousand Points Of Light

2008-03-03T01:42:00.003+08:00

I just realized that February came and went without a single entry. Take that, shortest month of the year!

Just a quick update:

Boyet and Chinx had a baby (apparently) and had her baptized earlier. Baby Nhaya is an Aquarian, I think. Good for her.
Hung out with Arvil Friday night watching U2 live in Boston DVD at Gweilos. Because we can, dude. Because we can.
Des celebrated five years of working for guys named Procter, Gamble, Hewlett and Packard.
I'm trying to decide on a neutral-colored PSP Slim. But which?
Finally used my multiply account. Still arranging the photos, coz there are a lot. I'm thinking of starting from HP-Baguio offsite 2006.
Leighton Meester is more than enough reason to watch Gossip Girl. And after I made that important discovery she begins to pop up in the weirdest places: as Britney-clone Justine on Entourage and again as a murder suspect on CSI:Miami. She also showed up on Veronica Mars so there's a second reason to re-watch that show. The first reason was to overwrite the damage done to my brain and Kristen Bell's rep by Heroes Season 2.
Rallies abound in the city but I could not care less. That's not just a figure of speech. I literally could not. Care. Less.
Kathy gave me a copy of Erich Segal's Love Story, making her the second person to recommend that specifically to me. I have yet to find out why.
TGI Fridays has a thing on their menu called Sizzling Chicken and Cheese. Someone up there likes me.

I'm off to San Fo (that's San Francisco) in a week for a two-week foray into the States. I will be hunting for a decent wristwatch and a copy of Evan Hecox' Urban Abstract, and maybe some rare CD's. Hopefully this fares better than the time I was in Salt Lake City.

On a sad note: Life got a little less lonely when you showed up, and with you leaving I'm scared of reverting back to that nutcase I was early last year. I am really going to miss you.

29 For A Moment

2008-01-28T00:09:00.000+08:00

Some people say that writing is healthy. At the moment I'm not so I'll try anything.

I'm under the weather because we covered up the mirrors in the hotel room with my blanket so no one could cheat playing Indian poker and I forgot to take them down and I slept with the air conditioner on full blast.

I haven't written in a while so there should be more to talk about than that.

My office laptop died on me after the weekend I decided to buy a portable hard drive. So somehow it's not as bad. The first few days without a service desktop were hard though. It was like one of those X-men adventures where they lose their powers and have to survive on wits alone. Usually involving a Danger Room sequence. Geek alert.

Birthday came and went with a bit more fanfare than usual. Probably because the universe owes me from last year. Thanks to everyone who greeted and thanks for the cake(s). I think the healing has begun.

With the exodus of two important channels (Jack TV and Basketball TV) from our cable provider and the writer's strike, cable is officially crap. What's worse is they taunted us with Discovery Travel and Living for a couple of weeks before pulling it out as well. Thank God for P2P. You hear me? P2P! Large entertainment conglomerates, you brought this on yourselves!

I think the music has also plateaud. I hope I'm wrong and I've just been watching the wrong channels and reading the wrong blogs.

Canceled my gym membership, in a strange twist on the New Year's resolution staple. Simply don't have time to make it worth the money its charging. And it's also one tired scene; everyone I know has either canceled themselves or just stopped going. I need some physical activity to take its place though. My weight is at a two-year high.

I have 6-book backlog from being too busy:

Curiosities of Wine - Pamela Vandyke Price
History of Beauty - Umberto Eco
Heartbreak Soup - Gilbert Hernandez
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern - Various
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Fever Pitch - Nick Hornby

Which is also keeping me from buying more books.

My mom and I cleaned Zara up today. Need closet space and fast.

Change is in the air. Good or bad? Probably good, by default.

Year In The Rearview Mirror

2007-12-31T01:30:00.000+08:00

I really shouldn't be doing a retrospective on the year since I want to get out of it as soon as possible. But here we are.

Good things:

The trips (Boracay twice, Italy in September, one out of two offsites weren't half bad)
The team growing, and growing up
Maybe a couple of weekends. Three, tops.

Bad things:

Everything else? Not really. But let's not get into detail and just look ahead.

I was supposed to put here how the good and bad years seems to have alternated since high school but I checked the 2006 year-in-review and it wasn't so hot either. So there goes that theory. And all you people who have read The Secret and believe the freaking laws of attraction, before you even get a word in, shut up.

Interlude Too-Hoo

2007-12-16T00:35:00.000+08:00

More moments like this and I will fucking go nuts.

There's no one I can scream at/with and no one I can talk to and probably more importantly no one I will listen to.

I am tired and cranky and fed up and bringing up memories of '03. They tell me to stop living in the past but the present and future's no good to me.

I am tired of fighting and I am tired of being a pawn.

I am not a survivor. Despite my claims on the contrary.

And the worst part is: This is all I have.

Rome If You Want Too-Hoo

2007-12-02T01:51:00.001+08:00

rome 07
Originally uploaded by ray-gun

Yes, it's been a while (again) and work is the culprit (again).

I'm not really in the mood to talk about the trip because it will depress me too much. I don't really know why, but here's a clue: I traveled around Italy by myself last September but this will still be known as the year that sucked.

Anyway.

That's the Colosseo, which I also saw the last time I was here but what the hell, when in Rome. This shot was taken while walking away from it to the Forum and a building they call the Typewriter, which if I had been paying attention the last time I was here I would know what its significance is.

I remember taking this picture hurriedly because it was getting dark and also I was trying to fit the lamppost in the frame. Turned out pretty well I think. I won't over-analyze it too much.

***

Fast forward to last Thursday's "coup attempt". You can't help but laugh because it was hardly a coup; I don't even consider it an attempt. You call that a coup? People my age know what a coup is. That is not a coup.

Some thoughts, though:

Arresting members of the media seemed like a tactical error to me.
Curfew? Really? I think people just played along to add some spice to a somewhat dreary protest rally.
I heard someone died during the coup...except that it was a municipality away and probably totally unrelated.
I am so glad I stopped being a journalist.

***

Saw the play version of Jessica Hagedorn's Dogeaters yesterday without even really knowing what the book was about. Going to plays and musicals and stuff is great because even if it sucks you have to appreciate the effort that goes into it, and it rarely sucks anyway. Not that it sucked of course. I have to soak up all the culture in the city before the Metro Manila Film Festival kicks in, because it will suck and make everything around it suck.

***

Tally -Suck: 6, Coup: 6

Interlude

2007-11-01T17:42:00.000+08:00

God I'm tired, and my head fucking hurts. It takes so much of time and effort to just be decent and I hate it. I hate it a thousand times over.

I hate excuses just as much, yet I'm so full of them.

I'm not like you.

Rome Around The World

2007-10-30T01:28:00.001+08:00

rome 06
Originally uploaded by ray-gun

Let's walk some more.

This is taken at the Piazza del Popolo, which I guess means "People's Place", or "Popular Place". I found it by accident looking for the Spanish Steps, which means uh, Spanish Steps. Maps are for sissies. Sissies whose feet will live past the age of fifty.

The twin churches in view are, according to Wikipedia, Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto. Between them is the Via del Corso, which is significant because that's where all the shopping in Rome is concentrated. It's a long stretch of road where many an hour of my very valuable free time was spent looking for the smallest Prada bag ever created, thinking "smallest" meant "least expensive".

Fast forward to today, baranggay election day, where I saved myself a lot of trouble by actually voting and keeping the streak alive. This is significant because apparently, if I miss two elections in a row, I'm tagged by the government as an absentee voter or some such and I'll need to register again. The words "register" and "government" in the same sentence together is rarely a good thing in this country. So hurray for me.

Oh, and it's also democracy in action.

I tried to say something funny but it came out anti-democratic. And more importantly to me, anti-funny.

Next: Rome If You Want Too-Hoo.

Rome If You Want To

2007-10-29T01:10:00.001+08:00

rome 27
Originally uploaded by ray-gun

How long has it been? Too long? Yeah.

Anyway, continuing with the Italy set, here's a shot of home away from home away from home: the Roma Termini station. Why so? Because it houses 2 McDonald's outlets.

Actually, it served as home base because it's at the center of both Metro lines and is the terminal for the inter-city trains. This is a shot from the 2nd floor balcony of Ciao! while waiting for the train. You probably can't see it from here, but the display of the arrival and departure schedule is in analog, which makes it that much cooler. You'll see.

Beneath it is a small mall and beneath that are the Linea A and B stations, where I spent like half the day each day. Half of that walking around deciding where to eat while still ending up at McDonald's each time. You can take the Pinoy out of the islands, but not the pickles out of the Big Mac, whatever that means. They have something called a Crispy McBacon, which in another life might have been called a Western Bacon Cheese. Ordering that was my version of trying out Italian cuisine.

Fast forward to this weekend and I'm annoyed at not being able to go out until Sunday because among other things, work emergencies. Yes, I will probably grow old alone, but I wasn't expecting that to happen, like, today.

Next: Rome Around The World

Go Ahead And Rome

2007-10-07T23:46:00.001+08:00

rome 19
Originally uploaded by ray-gun

Guess who's back. Tell your friends.

I've been to four Italian cities in six days and for some reason I don't know where to start with this post. Maybe it's because I waited so long to start writing this down. Anyway.

First stop of course, was Rome, where I had to work for a week and a half with my clients to keep them happy. On the first day I got lost looking for the office because a) I didn't look it up on Google Maps before I flew in and b) I'm a cheapskate who won't pay thousands (Peso-converted) for a cab ride. So instead I paid for a map that will double someday as a souvenir for anyone I forgot to include in my pasalubong list.

They don't call Rome the Eternal City for nothing. They have structures that predate the actual calendar we use to predate things. Unfortunately, I didn't have a tour guide to take me around the city and explain things to me, so I just kept snapping pictures at whatever looked interesting and looked them up on Wikipedia when I got home. Tip: when touring in Europe without a tour guide, just follow big groups of Asians.

That's St. Peter's Square (but not really a square, duh) in the picture, where I've actually already been to once trying to get blessed. But it was the easiest place to find because even the Metro (subway) tells you where it is. According to Wikipedia, that thing in the center is an obelisk, and doubles as a giant sundial. People fill up the square everyday, and the line to get into the Basilica was ridiculous so I decided to stay outside and take pictures of postcards.

Oh, and I think the Vatican souvenir shop cheated me out of 20 Euros. But I was too inarticulate to complain.

Next: Rome If You Want To

Marking It Down To Learning

2007-09-04T01:25:00.000+08:00

Before anything else, some pop culture learnings:

Counting Crows play live in such a way that no one anywhere at any time can ever sing along.

I realize that Kris and Lolit Solis are not hosts of their respective showbiz news shows, but perennial guests.

And now the headlines:

After a lot of near misses, I'll be leaving for Rome on Wednesday and I'll be back in two-plus weeks. You know what this means? Me and that damn fountain that promised me true love will get to talk.

It also means that I'll be 4.5 hours away from Monza during the Italian Grand Prix this weekend, adding yet another entry to my "So close yet so far away" list.

It also means I can put my camera to its intended use of stalking Europeans.

And by special request I'll have the last part of that trip off so I can visit Paris again. Not to retrace the Da Vinci Code, like what everyone else wanted me to do the last time. Just to take the city all in. Not all places are this awesome. I hope things turn out awesome. For a change.

I'll see everyone when I get back. People are so freaking busy. Forza Azzurri!

Grab Your Sunblock, We're Going To Hell

2007-08-20T00:31:00.000+08:00

Now that I've been pressured into writing something my mind's a complete blank.

Okay, maybe not a complete blank. I've been watching reruns of Entourage for two days and whenever I close my eyes I just hear cursing in my head. Well, more than usual.

(And phrases like 'hook me up', 'let's hook up' and 'off the hook'. What's with all the hooking?)

...

It's been raining like crazy this past week, which kept me home Friday (though technically the term should be 'kept me from the office' because I did manage to get out of the house that night). And since tomorrow is officially a holiday, that will be four straight days I did not go to SMPC. Woohoo.

Saturday ended up enjoying music. It's gotten very hard to get people to just go out and enjoy live music. Like it always has to be someone they know before they can commit to a night out. I say: But you don't know anybody!

And we agree, with beer and the music, you get to trim the fat from your conversations. You can go straight to the point for those couple of minutes while the next band sets up. And that is how my friend now knows my sob story. So the cycle is complete, I think. I hope. Next(!)

Any takers? You in the hoodie?

When You Left I Was Last To Know

2007-08-12T03:49:00.000+08:00

These Roads Go On Forever

2007-07-30T00:02:00.000+08:00

One day I vow to quit it with Dashboard Confessional snippets. That won't be today though.

It's been a busy couple of weeks (years?) and all I've got to show for it is an increasingly bad mental state. So much so that I had to take a day off in the middle of the week to keep from, well, you know. So how did I spend this temporal oasis?

First, spent a good chunk of the day spending good money on good books at the new Fully Booked. Fables 3: Storybook Love and The History of Love. Sense a pattern here? Then got a legal copy of Heavier Things because I get guilty like that. And topped it off with the Bianca King Manifesto mag. Just because.

Next, finished half of Storybook Love while having coffee inside said bookstore. While eavesdropping on some college kids working on some project. Okay, ogling.

Then, caught the end of this season's first Ateneo-La Salle game. How apt, I thought. Then Ateneo won (w00t), and the analogy stopped there.

Then had dinner at that place again. with friends. Pork with some cheese in it. Love. And of course, cake. And then promises of doing all this again sometime this century.

Then hooked up with tickets for The Simpsons Movie and had Springfield-sized fun. And I didn't have to watch it alone, unlike last time.

And through all this thoughts were swimming in my head. Not very good ones. I will share just one:

You're right. I expect too much out of life.

...

Okay I wanted to say something more. How empty this all feels.

This Is As Social As I Get Now

2007-07-11T04:45:00.000+08:00

Today hurt like fucking hell. More than yesterday.

Just Hear This And Then I'll Go

2007-07-04T03:29:00.000+08:00

Our family buried Lolo last Sunday. And it didn't really hit me until the last couple of hours I was there.

It pains me how I have nothing to write about it. Anything that will come out here will sound fake, rehearsed, premeditated.

I used to kid that the reason I never go to the province is because they ask me the same effin questions: what year am I in and why don't I eat vegetables. And maybe that's why I remember very little, and that's one thing I know I'm good at. (Maybe I'm just good at it for the useless stuff.) Because I spent all my time there wishing I wasn't.

I remember he used to work at the air base, and picked up a few words, habits, culture while he was there. And he didn't talk much. Which was probably the only thing I could relate to. I remember the warm dark nights getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, wishing I was back in Manila.

I remember in the old house, before ash floods claimed it, that in one of the rooms there was a sketch of him done by my dad. It was pretty good, too, I have to admit. I try to imagine my dad sketching his dad. Making portraits isn't easy; it's not like taking a picture or tracing a magazine cover. You actually have to know the person you're trying to capture. Pay attention to all the details with all your senses.

I should start paying attention.

Fevered Brain

2007-06-23T00:56:00.000+08:00

Fever-induced post, which is new for me. Usually they're alcohol-induced.

...

Fever, stomach pain and the inability to speak or swallow kept me under house arrest for three days. But I think the stomach pain was just a reaction to not having McNuggets for dinner.

I realize that being sick and being me has its similarities. The powerlessness, the idea/truth that there's very little one can do to make things better except let them run their course. And while it's overly dramatic (and wrong) when I say that it hurts more than the sickness itself, it sure doesn't make things any easier.

Another thing that sucks about being sick is that it doesn't even distract me from that.
...

Two things I wish I had more time to do:

One is draw. I have probably stopped developing this around the time I started working. Sometimes I think that that has something to do with everything that is wrong with me. As in everything. I just can't put my finger on it. (Or maybe I can, a little bit too easily, and of course to me the simplest solution has to be wrong. A riddle for another day.)

The other is to play around with my Echo Park, set here to Pride setting. That's easy enough to remedy. Thank God.

...

I actually have an officemate that I met previously on a beach trip me and my friends made in 2003. And I didn't remember until I saw the pictures again. I rationalize that I was so fucked up on that trip so I probably don't remember anything. There's a big chance that I was there getting over someone, which is like, 90% of the time.

Oh, to live forever in that other 10 %.

Further Notice

2007-06-18T00:02:00.000+08:00

I'm back.

I need to write; I think I know that now. Even if it's the same story over and over again. Even if all it does it make things worse inside, and reveals weaknesses. Even if there's no one who answers. I'm reminded of Rilke:

"Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

I know quoting Letters to a Young Poet in a blog is like a band covering, uh, Black, but that's one more habit I need to get rid of: caring about what other people think.

...

I also need to post pictures. Especially when words fail, as they are beginning to.

It's father's day today (but the picture is a couple of weeks old). I don't talk about my family much, maybe because I don't think it's/we're interesting enough. The picture is pretty neat, though, because we all looked stuffed. And tired. Except for my brother who always looks like that.

...

Today I went to a high school classmate's daughter's first birthday. An expensive affair I'd imagine, as the setup included a giant inflatable slide in the shape of the Titanic. (Writing that just now made me think now that would make a better blog photo than my family in Baguio.) The party was rounded out by a magician, and suddenly but predictably I became sad again. Or sadder, if you know me.

...

There are going to be some changes around here. There has to.

Let's Get Out Of Here

2007-05-13T02:17:00.000+08:00

Suspended until further notice.

Labor Day (Again)

2007-05-02T02:25:00.000+08:00

OKAY.

It's been a while since I've last written here, and there are a number of reasons for this.

One, I've been incredibly busy. Not just with work, but also with work-tangent things. When I do find some free time I usually just want to sleep/dream.

Two, I have nothing to say, really. Despite the fact that I've been doing tons of stuff that I know I could probably make sound half-interesting.

Three, I do have something to say. But that I've said it before, in another time in another place.

Four, I do have something to say but no one wants to hear it. I don't mean that you don't care what I have to say, maybe you do. I mean the words that come out of my mouth may be something you may not want to hear.

That said,

I remember one Labor Day when I got dragged to this hat party (don't ask) and much like it is today, I had to deal with fighting another losing battle. So I ended up playing Stockton and Malone on NBA Jam in the Megamall arcade just so I could drown out the hurt.

The mall has changed, and so has the games. And no one throws hat parties anymore. But that's about it.

Maybe I said this before some other time some other place.

Remember To Breathe

2007-04-11T02:21:00.000+08:00

An entire 5-day weekend went by without an update. And really, I should have, if anything, to get that angst-ridden post out from the main screen. How 90's.

In fact, there should be a lot of things I can put in here; small improvements since the end of March.

But I'm too sleepy and out of words. Perhaps this is the trade-off?

Anyway, when I do get a decent post in, you'll be the first to know.

The Only Way I Know How

2007-03-31T04:10:00.000+08:00

Wow is all I can say. About the third worst day I've had in as many months.

This is a drunken post; everything is fleeting.

Thank you for guiding me home safe, by the way. This will probably mark the first time I've referenced God. Yay for Lent. Duh.

It's 4 fucking AM why am I awake and feeling sorry for myself? Oh right, it's because:

Who I am up until this point is obviously not enough. For anyone. For the record, I have no idea why this is, or what the FUCK is wrong with me and consequently, I do not know how the FUCK I can make it right.

Who I am will NEVER be enough.

I do not think I am ANGRY. Just HURT.

Disappointment is something I've had to live with all my life, and yet I'm never used to it.

You are right, I am NOT HAPPY. But I do not know what that is, whether that exists anymore. Maybe it's just a myth people spread around to make them forget that it doesn't really hold weight. It has been too long and too little and it's always tainted and it's NOT a state of mind I don't care what the book says.

I want to feel complete.

Maybe Plan A never existed. Maybe this is all I get. Like stillborn children. That's it. You don't really get a choice.

I have no idea how to REACT. What do you want from me? How do you want me to take this?

People always end with questioning my HEART. I'm sorry it's under FUCKING repair. And maybe even if it wasn't, there's just not FUCKING enough of it to live the life THAT I WANT.

You know that I want this, right? That I would do anything to make this work?

This is in NO WAY making me feel better.

Some Dance To Remember

2007-03-28T02:27:00.000+08:00

Does it, in fact, get better?

...

Today I should be in Rome, but I'm not thanks to a faulty travel agency and my genuine cluelessness of how to get from point A to point B. It would have been nice to be back there even for just a couple of days, even if it's for work. Besides, me and the Trevi fountain need to talk. We had a deal, yo.

...

Thursday through Sunday was tiring, but it was a good kind of tiring. The kind of weekend I wanted to have since I had weekends. I want to take one moment from that weekend, and stretch it infinitely in time in both directions.

...

Team Rillo are ABL champions for their division this year, two years after I "retired". They obviously did not miss my 0.000001 point average (1 lousy free throw in three seasons). How sweet it is!

...

Congratulations to the not-so-newlyweds. Thanks for telling us after three months. Uh, how sweet it is!

...

I don't want to be head-barely-above-water guy. Or weak-link guy. Or no-filter-in-my-head guy. Or even guitar guy. Who I am here at this point is not who I want to be. I want an identity. I just don't know what that is yet.

...

I know I am going to get an earful tomorrow/later. I will be strong for/because-of you.

...

Does it, in fact, get better?

Deep Will Only Bring You Down

2007-03-17T03:01:00.000+08:00

I ~~want~~ need to know, at the core, what is wrong with me. Why do I believe in the things I do.

...

I am brought back, unsurprisingly, to the fall of '95. Coming to school and having to face you day after day after day and prove/pretend that I was strong enough to take it all in. For a minute I find solace that then it was way worse, and not because I'm older/wiser/stronger now; pound for pound, it was a much harder battle to fight.

And then I remember that it almost killed me.

...

I find myself having fits of melancholy, if there were such a thing. It doesn't matter if it's when I wake up, driving on the way to work, at work, on a break, having dinner, laid out on the beach, on a plane, alone, with friends, at a party, out at sea, writing documents, jamming, crossing the street, on the phone, watching television, blogging, going to sleep, asleep. It just hits, hard.

...

I'm back from the islands and I will take it for what it is. Three days of sun and sand and sea and shakes. What it is not: that magical place people describe on other blogs. I've lost the capacity for that.

What I will take with me from that trip:

Playing frisbee on the second day. Just throwing and catching in the sea in the late afternoon, next to the topless European.

Sitting next to my sleeping friends while sipping shakes.

The stars, of course. When the night clouds finally gave way.

Explaining what the symbol on Heroes looks like to the henna tattoo artist.

Hearing New Deep just before leaving for Manila. The soundtrack to our lives.

The Rest Of Me Is Dead

2007-03-05T00:46:00.000+08:00

I will try to talk/think of something else.

Our new guitarist should realize that his fuzz effects has an off button. Another good reason to go minimalist in terms of distortion. I suddenly so appreciate my Super Overdrive. And two words: bridge pickup! Pleeeeease!

I don't mean to sound like Jack Black, but I think I need to teach a course on rock history. Names that will not come up: Creed, Lifehouse.

Saturday was a ridiculously trafficky day. Somehow ended up on Katipunan for a late late lunch. I know there are plenty of haters, but win or lose...

Slight drizzle on Saturday night triggered a change of plans and ended up eating ay Cyma. Yes, I will invite you to go out and be totally silent all night and it will be normal.

There are bite size special Nestle Crunch bars that have peanut butter, caramel or melted chocolate in them. Mom bought some home from Subic. It's really effing good. Is this sold anywhere else?

Went to production last week and was not without issues. But all things considered and given our/my luck, it was pretty uneventful (a good thing). I am so relieved. But...

I find that for someone obsessed with the idea of cause and effect (actual or potential), I can't connect the dots on how we got here.

It's weird, but its beginning to feel like my favorite time of the work week is Wednesday afternoon at three. That's when for at least thirty minutes I get to take the mask off.

I'm off to the beach in T-minus three days. "I'll ride the wave/Where it takes me/I'll hold the pain/

Release me.

Still Building And Burning Down Love

2007-02-24T03:01:00.000+08:00

It's U2 for 24 hours today, so sue me.

...

Tomorrow (actually, in a few hours), our baby goes to production. Except that I'm not so sure if it's still my baby, or maybe it is, except that it hates its parents like all babies eventually do.

Don't get me wrong, I'm relieved that we're here. But at what cost? And relief is to happiness is like, well, settling is to living your dreams.

There was a moment last night that I realized I had very little to do with the decision to move forward. And that didn't feel nice. And there were other moments when I wish I'd just disappear.

...

My right side still hurts. The drugs have worn off.
You gave up on me after fifteen minutes. Split-screen sadness.
I came home at 2 AM without accomplishing anything.
Some days it feels like I'm walking around with one lung. Or that my heart would beat right out of my chest.
I know exactly where I wanted to be and spent an hour and a half trying to ignore it.

I dare you to find a sadder boy.

In Places No One Will Find

2007-02-17T04:44:00.000+08:00

The title has nothing to do with anything. I jut wanted to get that out of the way.

This is a drunken post, so pay no mind.

Today I want to wake up as somebody else. Ok, I've watched too many movies to know that's a half-truth. I want to wake up as a smarter, taller, emotionally stable version of me.

Somebody told me something tonight that made me realize, I don't want to be like everybody else. Maybe somewhere else I said otherwise, I don't know. I don't get it either.

I have a special power. Every thing I touch turns to crap.

No one should ever drive home with a broken heart. No one.

I need my best friend. As in, right now.

On the way home I stopped by for another drink. I don't know what made me do it. Maybe it was the beer, but I don't think so. I just wanted something familiar. But not routine.

Keep your secrets. I will turn it into crap if i get wind of it. Or. I really just don't care in either case. I don't care about whether you succeed or fail in your new thing. I was just trying to make conversation. It's not important. Nothing is to me anymore.

Maybe I am a masochist. How does the line go. Who makes me feel glad/Just to be sad/Thinking of you.

Hi. I'm 28 and I'm in this weird place where I haven't really taken the steps to be 28 yet. I'm not 22 either. I still buy CDs off the rack and OPM will always mean the Eraserheads and my favorite TV show will always be one week apart and love is eternal. When I was 16 (and 18 and 22 and 27) I took what was a promising future in being me and ripped it apart because I was scared and hurt and because somewhere I imagined a connection existed where there was not. Just because you aced Psy 101 doesn't mean you get it and even if you do I won't fucking listen to what you think the answer is.

I have trust issues. But you knew that before you got here.

Thansk for having that vote of confidence. I know I haven't done much to deserve that. But thanks nonetheless. It's nice.

The doctors (real ones) still don't know what is wrong with me. I'm too shy to tell them my theory.

Where have I been these past twelve years?

I want my life back.

I Want To Feel Something Other Than This

2007-02-07T02:51:00.000+08:00

I guess that sums it up.

So there's really no point to the next few paragraphs, is there?

My friends tried their best to cheer me up, and it worked for a while, and I love them for it, but since they're my friends they also know I'm stubborn, so it doesn't really last. At least I have new quotes to barely live by.

I went to my temple. No, not Rockwell. The alma mater. The fresh air did me good but nothing much after that.

Retail therapy worked for all of eight minutes. That's a thousand bucks per minute.

Someone warned me about chemicals, so much for that. Besides, I'm not cool enough.

I'm too tired to go on.

You Know It's All I Think About

2007-01-31T00:18:00.000+08:00

Last week I came across a sunburst standard Squier Stratocaster on sale, which was great because some time ago I decided it was time to own one of those things after years of Gibson fandom. But I sat on the decision/had too many meetings and when I finally came around to buying it this week it was gone.

Story of my life? Not quite. The story of my life would be trying to purchase it and being told it wasn't on sale.

...

Anyway I especially wanted one because I needed massive cheering up, where very few have succeeded. I'm not sure now whether that would have worked though.

I do not want: anything in black or red or double fat strats or strat-copies (technically a Squier is still a Fender) or super-strats or stratacoustics or strats in black matte. Just give me my sunburst and the complete Gin Blossoms discography.

Yes I'm stubborn that way or haven't you noticed. Nothing will ever do.

...

We've formed another band and while the set list is far from perfect, it does get me to play some of my favorite songs, which I won't share just yet. Suffice to say no freaking MYMP.

..

Still coughing and still wired out and still hanging by a thread. And going into software BAT. Something tells me I'm not through taking a beating.

Somewhere Along In The Bitterness

2007-01-27T01:55:00.000+08:00

I feel that I will literally just drop dead...

...from exhaustion. I'm in meetings all day and my day starts at 10 and ends at 12 or worse and there are a billion things I need to do and I have no idea how to do them correctly so sometimes I need to do them thrice over just to make sure it's right and even then it won't be perfect and that just fucking kills me.

...from coughing. I've been sick for about three weeks now and I'm pretty sure people have gone past pity and into annoyance and sometimes I find it hard to just fucking breathe properly and I have this theory that it's really just crying without the waterworks and that one really bad cough will be my last.

...from loneliness. See above and it kills me to see you mad or unhappy and sometimes I really just wish my heart would just fucking stop beating.

...from depression. I have come to the conclusion that just by definition, I will never be good at the things I need to be good at so fucking badly.

2007-01-21T00:35:00.000+08:00

No title this time.

I fell in love for the first time when I was sixteen. It started out the way it always starts: not at first sight, because usually "first sight" will involve unflattering flourescent lighting. There's this period of silent admiration, when every single day is just a contest of how good being with her can make you feel. This takes about the same time to deliver a package, around six to eight weeks. Then there's the very very short period where people start to notice and you yourself get a little vocal about it. Maybe throw in a back massage now and then. Okay, once, but you get the point. This short stretch will culminate in a singular night of celebration, in this case over beer and smokes.

What happens immediately after that is a mystery period. For example, if celebratory event happens/happened on a Friday, the mystery period will span that weekend. In these couple of days I am hung over with something else aside from alcohol, and I cannot wait to get back to class.

And then the bomb hits. On Monday, the girl is incredibly distant. Aloof (hate that word). Desperation creeps in. The type of desperation where you try to look around for anything that will start a conversation but it's all in vain. This goes on for about a week before she ends up holding someone else's hand, and I end up somehow on the depressing end of a stopped ferris wheel.

Now maybe I've read too much Hornby, but I know I came up with this theory long before I read the book or saw the movie (I think she's witness to that): that every uh, "relationship" since then has had more or less the same fucked up storyline. The time periods may stretch or contract a bit but relative to each other they remain the same. And it all ends up the same as well, except usually it's without the ferris wheel. But always it's a fucking circus. Bouncing off the walls and whatnot, being destructive inward and outward and generally just screwing your life until there's nothing left. And one day there will really be nothing left and you will have to find something else to read.

What the hell makes me think that each one is different? Or that one day it will all change? And what the FUCK happens over the mystery period? Not that it matters, probably. I cannot stop it.

And why does it hurt like it was new every time?

Happy birthday to me, by the way. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to.

Taken Hostage

2007-01-20T02:21:00.000+08:00

I guess it's time to shake the dust off this quote from the Sandman books:

"Have you even been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...

You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "maybe we should just be friends" or "how very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."

in Sandman: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman

This is shaping up to be the saddest, suckiest birthday ever.

There's No Way To Go But Down

2007-01-15T00:01:00.000+08:00

Outside Looking In (from the Gin Blossoms) is probably the best-named best-of ever.

...

There's NO way to GO but down.

Yes, it's another delay and another black mark on my record and another two weeks of slaving to the grind. It's all very new to me, why? Because usually I don't stick around to find out how delayed a project is. Haha. So funny coz it's true. Somewhere out there there are a couple of former project managers who are not laughing.

It got so bad I actually drove around the block a couple of times hoping I'd run into someone I know so I could go out for a drink.

Des says it builds character. I'm fucking dying of character.

And yet when people ask me how work is I always say it's great. Either I'm too proud to admit that things are going wrong (work-wise, the other stuff that's going wrong I'll get to in a bit), or I'm in denial. Or both.

But things are great. Honestly.

...

Ran into a couple of friends, independently. One was the harbinger of way delayed news; the other was the harbinger of delayed enlightenment. No, I shant elaborate.

Except that I realize again I have a weird way of coping.

...

I spent Saturday at work (because clearly that was the weekend's hottest ticket), fighting software design issues, sleep deprivation, that lump in my throat, and talkative officemates. It always has to be something, isn't it?

...

I was looking around and I realize I've been tagged! Very timely, too (okay, so it's dated last year). I need the cheering up:

Instructions: Name ten of life’s simple pleasures that you like the most, then pick ten people to do the same. Try to be original and creative and not to use things that someone else has already used.

In no particular order, and trying not to be too specific:

Well-blended vanilla shakes.
Celebrity impressions.
An email that I can reply to without double thinking what to say.
The guitar outro to "Alive".
Seeing you break into a smile or a laugh.
Breakfast.
Perfectly worded sentences.
Sunday afternoon Ateneo campus.
Meetingless evenings.
Good endings.

I won't ask ten people to do the same because I don't have that many readers.

Edit: For some reason that list made me feel worse. Ahhh to hell with it.

2007-01-12T01:33:00.000+08:00

You know what the source of all pain is? Caring.

And All Of My Lonely Secrets To You I Tell

2007-01-11T02:15:00.000+08:00

Now look what you've done.

A friend once told me that listening to Everything But The Girl was never a good sign. I'm inclined to think that he's right.

I can't take this!

If I listen to any more of this I'm liable to break down.

Speaking of EBTG, that's one band name I wish I had thought up. The other one would be Dashboard Confessional. There's some linkage there somewhere. Find it.

Speaking of linkage, and just because it's all over the blogosphere, I link. You're killing me, Steve Jobs.

Sometimes In Life You Get A Second Look

2007-01-06T23:44:00.000+08:00

The first post of the year comes to you from my fevered brain in bed on a Saturday night. And it's surprisingly upbeat.

So 2006 was far from perfect. In fact, there were times when it just plain sucked. And times when things were just blah. So what's with the outlook?

It could be that I've finally learned to take the good with the bad, instead of just highlighting the crappy stuff like quitting your steady job and delayed project deadlines.

Or it could be that this was the year I found myself at a/with company that was cool enough to work for, and decided to take the step out of just being a developer.

Or it could be that I've turned well-adjusted. Or sold out, depending on who you talk to.

Or I just ended the year perfectly.

Yeah, that's it.

(I think I just dared reality to wipe the smile off my face. You know what? Bring it on.)

...

Yeah that was a crappy retrospective. But I'm sick, and I need to sleep/watch House, unless he operates on a baby again. Maybe tomorrow.

If The Fates Allow

2006-12-26T20:06:00.000+08:00

Christmas 2006.

Barely got into the spirit of the holidays just in time. Maybe it's the weather, or the lack of free time to let it all sink in, but it really came late this year. I was forced to give out money as gifts this year, which is the corniest thing ever, at least for the giver. Everyone else, of course, enjoys it. Ask my dad.

Which isn't saying I'm not happy. I am; it's just that I have no words for it. Not just yet. This is also the year when I didn't have a wishlist, which if you know me is something short of amazing. Okay, I have at least one item, and you can't wrap it up.

...

Tons of stuff happened between the last post and Christmas. Had the yearly Christmas Party (number 3) with the boys, and all that entails. Of course ever since 2002(?) it's been a bit subdued. This is a good thing.

One thing that won't die are the stories. Please guys, let's write some new ones.

Next, treated the team to a day in Enchanted Kingdom, which was great. The last time I was there was in the last century, and was something of a seventh wheel. None of that this time. What I did have this time around was a chance to get on some rides. Well, most of them. Except this:

No thank you. I'll be in the ladies room putting on makeup.

Then it was off to Christmas Party number 4, in a foreign land. Well, technically it was.

Where I embarrassed myself by not knowing how to arrange dates in descending order. I guess that's why I do Java and not Oracle.

Sidebar: We had better get some recognition soon. Do we need to freaking campaign for it?!?

...

Then it was a wild scramble to get things done by the break. That should be break in quotes because I'll be coming back to work during it because I need to get more stuff done. My tasks should consider birth control.

Of course in between all that is to be all Christmassy and buy gifts and trinkets and distribute them.

...

Friday never hesitates.

Went to work at the other office. Tried to park at my secret free parking but due to the collective design flaws of the Civic dashboard and the magnetic sensor strip (and not at all due to my idiocy!) I spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to get the strip unstuck and consequently parked at the ridiculously priced Metro parking.

Oh, before that spent a couple of relaxing hours at the Power Plant and did a bit of shopping. I do the whole bit where I pre-select stuff to buy, go out and window shop some more and come back. It's as if I have no January production date! Wow!

I like the Makati office. It's cozy. Sorry, Ortigas.

Then I wound up at Greenbelt 1 (what is this, 2005?), then at Serendra and then back in Makati for a game of Taboo...

I will scrimp on the details for now, turtle pie calls. As does my self-preservation instincts.

Have yourselves a merry little Christmas, everyone! Not in the sad Tori-Amos-sense. More like tongue-in-cheek OK Go.

Existential Carousel

2006-12-16T02:01:00.000+08:00

"The rules still apply."

Easy for you to say, you're on the inside looking out.

...

Tonight was the second of count 'em five Christmas parties I have to attend. Too bad I'm still not in the Christmas spirit. Then again, when was I ever?

That sounded way too cynical, even for me.

I haven't done any shopping yet, and I've already received a couple of advanced gifts, so I guess the guilt is starting to kick in. Where the hell am I going to find the time to get stuff for other people? Some time ago I figured that unless I really make an effort to listen, I never know what people want for Christmas. Is it just me?

...

I imagine that when people ask what is important to me, there is never a case that they'll like the answer.

...

Just in case you were wondering, the mob actually did get Krispy Kreme to open after-hours. So the score is Fat Mob 1, Human Dignity 0.

...

I have a question, and maybe it will sound cynical again, but sometimes when people say good luck, why does it sound more like: "Good luck, you snowball headed for Hell"?

Possession Of Cocaine Donuts

2006-12-10T00:53:00.000+08:00

So last night we were sitting outside of the just-minted Krispy Kreme PH just before midnight. The store hours really should've ended at ten but since the lines for the donuts were so long they closed the register at around 11:30 PM.

Anyway, while there were still people inside enjoying the last of their original glaze, the store was obviously closed. However, over time, a mob started to form outside of Krispy Kreme clamoring that the store open specially for them, since they could see a batch of donuts still in the conveyor belt. The poor lone security guard had to put up with gems such as:

We'll pay double!
We'll pay triple!
If all of us rush the door, the guard won't be able to stop us!
We know those people inside! (After standing outside for quite a while.)
Open up, or we're going to Gonuts!

Rrrright, so why don't you? We'll pay double, and we'll throw in our dignity as a bonus!

My friends and I are convinced that there is an active illegal ingredient in the donuts that makes these people need to have their 'fix'. I was ready to sell my half-dozen (down to five by then) for a thousand bucks. I bet I would've gotten some takers.

Some members of the mob also looked like they needed to lay off the donuts for a while.

...
I first had Krispy Kreme at the gasoline station grocery next to my hotel in Salt Lake City, and I had that for breakfast almost everyday for three weeks after that. When I hear KK, I am reminded of two things:

Me realizing that it was time to leave my job.
Talking endlessly with KC over Yahoo! about the United States' only noteworthy contribution to global well-being (the donuts).

KC, due to her weird job setup here in Manila, was on the NA shift and was the only one online during the mountain region time zone. This is her on the left with Auds. She's also smart, funny, and taken. And, I'm convinced, will soon need donut rehab.

Something Infinitely Interesting

2006-12-09T02:49:00.000+08:00

I may have used that title before.

And why not? I was listening to Morning View again thinking the power chords could take my mind off things. Then comes track 9, 'Echo' and I'm even worse off.

...

Someone please tell me how this makes sense: a couple of years ago, maybe even one year ago, a night like tonight would have been OK. Perfect, even. Now? Not even close.

And I assure, it's not, and I'm not, growing up.

Guess what's swimming inside me again. If you guessed either alcohol, despair, jealousy or love, then you're probably right. Then again, those things seem to come hand in hand anyway.

...

I wish I could exorcise that part of me that makes all this seem important. Of course, I would have wished for that ability long ago and if it were granted then I wouldn't be here.

I did something stupid last night that almost made me break down. Haha, 'almost'. Even I didn't believe that.

...

Fuck I didn't just write that.

...

Something funny happened at Krispy Kreme which I will share later on. But let me just say, some Filipinos are just downright embarrassing.

How To Make Everything Right

2006-12-08T08:58:00.000+08:00

1. Go back in time.

2. Throw your infant self in front of oncoming traffic.

Like, Jeopardy Smart

2006-12-03T01:17:00.000+08:00

Why am I blogging two nights in a row because I need to dammit and besides no one cares anyway so fuck off oh yeah I'm liquored up again (I like that word, liquored) but not so much really for lack of anything to do we just drink they say the taste of beer is the same everywhere so why did I drive an hour and a half for it that's just nuts people bailing on you is never good and if they matter its like a billion times worse and no I don't mean tonight particularly just in general.

Some sort of Saramago homage, that was. Jesus, I'm so out of it.

Onto secular things. Yes, let's.

Things to do:

Rearrange everyone's task to fit skill set, experience, contract timings, etc to fit the new schedule. Like sudoku, except with consequences and a hundred times harder. Fix bugs in my modules and clear up design issues. Write low level design elements for Phase II and write their test cases. Consolidate scheduled jobs. Read the project plan and improve our audit standing; I think I'm the only PM in the site who hasn't read his project's own project plan.

Ha it just dawned on me why this project is on the track its on.

...

I really need to make my Christmas list. I'm afraid it will reach a record length. And I don't even have that many friends to begin with anyway! Who the heck are all these people in my life? I kid. Love you guys.

Talking about checklists reminds me of this talk we had about how we were wrong about checklists and patterns when were younger. There is no pattern; all it gives you is a best-fit line, and each new dot could be the exception that proves the rule. In the end, we're all just victims of circumstance.

For example, I always thought smart was on the list. Then it needn't be on the list. Then it was barely on the list. Now it's back on the list.

Sometimes I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore. Everything is so fleeting.

Make Your Little Getaway

2006-12-02T02:04:00.000+08:00

Will the world please follow the script?!? The world in my head is so much better, honest.

There has to be a 2-heartbreak limit per day. New rule.

Where do I start and when does it end?

...

It's been a crazy week at work. Whether or not the outcome is a win is still undecided. But now we have a shot, and I'm taking my best one. I will fight for this one if I need to. Check that: I will fight, period.

It's been a crazy week at work. There was one point during the week when I was sure I went through all the seven deadly sins in a span of 30 minutes.

...

I know I'm not making sense a little bit more than usual. I think it's because I'm liquored up again. To quote a previous version of me: I'm sorry I can't let it go as easily as everyone else. I'm not wired that way. Just let me handle this the only way I know how.

Table For One

2006-11-26T23:25:00.000+08:00

...is usually just as good/bad as table for three.

...

Had a rather busy weekend trying to avoid work, but it was with great success. I was either hung over or mixing the ingredients that create a terrible hangover. I was in Greenbelt twice; basically just sleep sandwiched in between. Then it was off to get coffee and then watch Alabang bands with ...groupies. And finally, some band covered "Fire and Ice". The trouble with this world is there's not enough Poison.

Typing that I remembered one groupie was checking out the drummer. Rikki Rockett, indeed.

...

This is the prolem when your heart does cartwheels. It gets dizzy and it's bound to miss a step. How does this go again?

...

My clients are flying in from the States to see how harrassed we are. It won't require much of an act.

I think I'll have a hard time being hospitable if I don't have enough sleep. I'm not hospitable enough as it is.

Troubled Souls Unite

2006-11-19T02:39:00.000+08:00

...We got ourselves tonight! (air drums)

...

I turned on the TV and put an NBA game as background noise to give a semblance of normalcy to my life. No such luck.

...

I think I've figured out what makes Blogspot and Livejournal so different from each other: the font size of the header. With a bigger font size for the post title, Blogspot pressures you into writing deeper, more coherent stuff; that every post has to be a work of fucking genius. Time to move, then. I'm kidding.

...

Some definitions:

Flags Of Our Fathers cinema: A room full of people who couldn't get into Casino Royale.
Noontime Mass congregation: Non-boxing fans.

...

We obviously didn't make the cut after slaving for weeks to meet the deadline. I'm kind of ambivalent about it. It's turning out to be a busy Christmas. Sometimes I wonder about my role; there are times when I feel like I'm a kid playing in an adult world. Like Tom Hanks in Big, except, you know, less successful.

...

I got my RAZR! Lovely to look at/Nice to hold/But I think it's broken/'Coz the JVM won't load ! Another reason to not love Java...no, I can't stay mad at you for long.

I keep forgetting that I have a camera in my phone, even with the T630. Shouldn't it follow that I should have more colorful posts? This is all I could come up with:

I call it "Me Not At Work". Looking closely, one will notice:

...the graphic novel I'm not done with yet, creatively covering my graduation picture.

...the lamp from Boracay in the mirror to remind myself of what I'm missing.

...me violating the SoBC somewhat. (sirens)

..my sketch of a very angry Eddie Vedder (copied from Rolling Stone).

...pictures from Europe and past software development teams.

...an open television set.

...a bowl of change.

...a pink guitar pick. See, I can multi-task, just not about work.

...

I find myself dreaming a lot. I need some creative outlet, like, right now.

Cebu 360

2006-11-10T17:43:00.000+08:00

Blogging from the Continental Lobby of the Marco Polo hotel in Cebu. Using unfree hotel internet for an hour, which explains why it took me two days to decide if blogging was worth it.

But it is if you have a 360-degree view of the city with mangoes wrapped in bacon in one hand and a beer in another. I don't have proof of course.

...

Time's up.

Can You Hear Me Mouthing Your Name

2006-11-04T14:32:00.000+08:00

A few moments before I start working. On a Saturday. With a massive headache.

You'd think I'd get used to this by now.

...

Sometimes I think I'm in over my head. That maybe it would just be easier (and healthier) to quit and settle for the deal, instead of the answer. Which really isn't that bad in the first place. But I am an idiot first and a coward second. So I rally on even if it kills me.

Ah, doublespeak. Triplespeak, even. You'll never catch me alive, coppers.

...

Last night was weird. Like the past and the present/immediate past decided to get it on and left cigarette butts and empty beer bottles and McDonald's wrapper in their wake.

...

You'd think I'd get used to that look, that body language, by now. But one never does, no? How the hell can I be back here again?

...

I guess it's been a while since the last post, and quite a few things have happened since. One of my peeps got him a new daughter but I was too busy to congratulate him. Finally spent a weekday out of the office and worked from SBC, where I actually got work done because no one could send me email . Finally saw what the house/company band was like. And realized I miss playing live. Or even just playing with someone else. There's also the beer bash and the (requisite) after-party. My one-on-one with my two-headed manager that hopefully bears fruit. Seeing old friends.

I didn't say big things, just things. Nice things. Which is all I'm asking for at the moment.

...

I'm off to Cebu in a few days for rehab. Think I need it?

A Captain Has To Go Down With His Ship

2006-10-21T03:14:00.000+08:00

I'm actually too depressed to blog. The title should suffice. See you all on the other side.

After The Show It's The After Party

2006-10-16T00:05:00.000+08:00

My weekend was spent watching the Entourage marathons instead of working. Yes I said 'spent', not 'wasted'. It's not the other way around, you know.

But as I was telling my 'peeps', you don't really take a break when you take a break these days. There's always that little voice that reminds you that you should be doing something work-related even when you're not, if only to take some of the workload off the rest of the week. And it's probably that that sucks the most.

...

(This is a week delayed post. I've resorted to looking at the past again because the present is the pits.) If I'm not mistaken this is the weekend we went to Red Box and "sang" til four in the morning. Where I learned that a) people pretend to not know "All For Love" (theme from Three Musketeers) and b) people don't know who sang "Your Song" and c) I can't stop thinking about...work.

That Cold Black Cloud Is Coming Down

2006-10-08T18:22:00.000+08:00

I've sunk into a(nother) deep depression. I want to think about something else.

Everything just bites.

...

So I turn to TV for some old-school comfort:

I'm a couple of hours away from finding out who killed a busload of students on Veronica Mars.
Everyone on Entourage is sporting a RAZR and now I want one too.
Guilty pleasure: Teen movies. I don't know if Win A Date With Tad Hamilton counts as a teen movie, but lines like "Sometimes Goliath kicks the shit out of David. It's just that no one bothers to tell that story" kills me.
Guilty pleasure: The food review on what used to be "F".

...

What a vicious double team: I eat when I'm depressed, and I'm depressed because I've been spending too much time at work which is also the reason why I haven't been to the gym. It would be funny how it all works out, except it's not.

...

We are an organization in transition. We'll see if it all works out. I'm hoping it does, because I can't possibly take any more bad news at work. I do wish this new development gives me a chance for a do-over. Maybe not the kind I'm hoping for right now, but at this rate any chance to regroup and reinvent is good.

...

I miss my non-HP friends. I miss the history and the roots. I miss Makati malls and rock bands and tired high school stories. I miss ripping acoustic music and the Da Vinci Code.

...

I had this thought sometime during the week: that I have a weak heart. In quite possibly every sense of the word.

Walk Without A Cut Through A Stained Glass Wall

2006-10-02T00:22:00.000+08:00

My family has taken my camera so I don't have pictures of Thursday's freak storm (or its aftermath). But we have the rest of the blog community for that. I just want to say I want my cam back.

...

Like so many of my entries, I had an epiphany but now I don't just have the words. It involved listening to other people and stuff. Bleh.

...

I was in Makati with half of a recently broken-up couple and I was trying to be funny: "You know what we need? More deathbed memories (a term I picked up from Top Gear referring to 'this car, on these slopes'). So that just before I die, my life flashing before my eyes will take three hours."

...

Win or lose, it's the school we choose, dammit.

...

Friday's despedida/videoke fest for JerWOM was a good break before October hits. But maybe I shouldn't have let myself go on Heart and Vanilla Ice. There goes my rock credibility.

...

Finally I found some time to start reading again, and it turns out Lolita is very creepy. I should stop referring to it when describing my preferences (literary or otherwise).

...

October hopefully will turn out to be a better month than September. Home stretch, people! Let's make this work! Let's have Christmas off! I want to go to all those drinking sessions in December! Exclamation point!

...

Asynchronous Javascript and XML is the devil, apparently. I'm already designing it my head on how I can revert the entire app back to straight-up JSP with minimal effort, if it comes to that point. Hopefully not, of course but you never know. Thank God we used custom tags.

...

I realize that I may have lost the ability to string more than three sentences together to convey a coherent thought.

The Waking Up Is The Hardest Part

2006-09-24T02:02:00.000+08:00

I have no idea what I'm running on anymore. Fastfood, maybe.

...

Shame on you, Brothers Burger. For P85 I expected a lot more. I'm sticking to Wham! You picked the wrong tired software developer to disappoint.

...

Sometimes I daydream about holding up big signs that say what I want to say out loud but don't for reasons of survival. I'm holding a few up right now. Can you read them?

...

I don't know why I fight in battles I know I can't win. I don't know why I engage in these things at great personal risk, that leaves me exhausted, that leaves me for dead. All I know is that the opposite, not fighting, scares me shitless.

I told someone from the office that I was tired of fighting . But I also said I didn't want to not fight for anything less. Amazingly it made enough sense for her to say she got it.

...

I can't believe I'm here again! It feels so familiar...the need to experiment with the commandments, the bleeding hearts, the desire to pick up a guitar every five minutes, the late night snacks, and the alcohol. It's so familiar it feels like coming home, if home were a miserable, miserable, place.

...

Then it hits me, I'm running on denial.

I'm Not Together, But I'm Getting There

2006-09-20T01:48:00.000+08:00

There are two types of people you meet in life. Those who stay, and those who leave. If someone stays and it's you who leaves, that counts as leaving as well. So I guess all in all there's a 95 to 5 leave-to-stay ratio. That's a pretty depressing attrition rate.

Stay with me.

Here Come The Little Things

2006-09-11T00:11:00.000+08:00

I lost my work ID and I can't sit still. Maybe writing about it will help.

...

I have a ridiculously long list of guilty pleasures. I'll lay them out from time to time. Some of them are normal for someone my age and gender, such as . Some not so much.

For example, this inaugural entry: Groupee TV. Even when Cathy Bordalba isn't hosting.

...

I had "I'm so miserable" as my messenger status and a record number of people asked what was up. Your concern is touching, but I guess I'm bothered by the fact that everyone thinks it's so plausible that I'm due for a breakdown.

...

I hate the fact that my character flaws are all so obvious. It's like being the villain in an 80's movie.

Understand I'm Accident Prone

2006-09-10T01:02:00.000+08:00

Is there some sort of rule that there are no road rules when it starts to rain? If didn't think it was possible, but we get even dumber when the storm hits.

...

Work is ridiculously exhausting. I've paid my dues, haven't I? I mean, I was doing overtime when some of these kids were going through Orsem.

Okay, I'm not that old. But you get the point. Is it time for the Jon Ray of old to resurface? The vice-president-in-charge-of-revolution? It probably is, but I'm thinking that would even be more exhausting. Damn you, aging process!

Didn't I swear some time ago that I'd never do OT again? Promises, promises. Bliss is actually convinced I actually like this. I don't. I just don't like not giving it my best shot.

...

Something weird happened this evening. Some middle-aged lady asked to borrow my umbrella so she could get her car. Her car is apparently a fifteen minute walk away, and she made me wait in front of the mall. And it's not like she asked for it in a nice way. Kind of she was expecting me to just give it to her. Of course, I lent it. Why me? I guess she read the word "sucker" written somewhere on my forehead.

(No, she wasn't pretty.)

I mean, I'm not that nice. Actually I think I was just looking for some good karma. No such luck.

...

One of my oldest friends suffered a mild heart attack and needed an operation. He's fine now, but it's got everyone a bit rattled. About growing old, living a healthy lifestyle, dying, that sort of thing.

But sometimes when things like this happen, I feel like it's not really happening to me or to people I love. Lately when I'm stuck at work I don't feel like it's me typing away at my laptop; it feels like I'm watching myself on TV so it doesn't really matter what happens in the end. All I need to do is turn it off.

I need to take more of them blue pills.

...

Earlier (just before the umbrella event) I felt lonelier than I have in a while. A combination of rain, Greenhills, unrequited love and a project going nowhere fast can do that to you.

Blue Pill, All The Way!

2006-09-03T23:54:00.000+08:00

I choose to believe what I want to believe.

I went to my first ever book fair. I don't know why it took me that long. Books rock.

Ran into a few friends after being ditched by another set.

If anyone's ever thought of pulling a "book heist", book fair weekend is the time to do it. The skeleton crew over at your regular mall bookstore doesn't stand a chance.

...

I think that when you're a kid, you're inclined to root for Betty Cooper. But as you get older, you tend to switch sides over to Veronica Lodge. Maybe another switch happens when you get really old. Maybe not.

...

Today I saw magic. One should see magic everyday.

See The Open Mouth Of My Suitcase

2006-08-27T13:03:00.000+08:00

At work again. On a Sunday. Breaking a commandment of some sort. And not the ones that involve the neighbor's wife and goods.

Sometimes I wonder if all this is a test and if it is, what it means to fail it.

To make matters worse, last week I finally got myself a copy of Carnet de Voyage, and fuck: I want to be a cartoonist. Some people's dreams overtake any social pressures or even common sense and by all indications mine should, too. Except I'm too scared and too old and too infatuated with...stuff.

...

I typed in some words where this paragraph should be and it sounded so mean, even for me. Whoa, limits!

...

Entourage is so damn entertaining.

...

Last night I got invited to a goth-punk book launch. (Goth-punk describes the launch, not the book, I think.) And I opted to stay in bed because I didn't have enough energy to drive three blocks.

Things I need right now: sleep, a backrub, peanut butter donuts, and to quote Dave Pirner: a pretty face and some time to waste.

Looks like the donuts are the only realistic ones on this list. I am sooo tired.

...

I so want to make this work. This company, I mean, and everything in it. But it's not up to me, is it?

I've Come To Find I May Never Know

2006-08-20T16:12:00.000+08:00

Suddenly, rapport is no longer so important. I used to think it was such a valuable thing. Don't get me wrong, there's still a minimum requirement of course, but now it's not so high up on the list. I no longer think it's necessary to complete each other's sentences. Sometimes I want the end of each sentence to be a surprise.

Some people still don't make the cut, though.

But it's still a nice word to say out loud: rapport.

...

I have done a lot of terrible and dumb things in my life. Things that could get someone shot, broke, trapped under car wreckage. I guess in many, many ways I'm lucky to be alive, loved, and making money. Its amazing the karma police haven't picked me up, locked me up and thrown away the key.

...

I heard a line on the telly that reminded me so much of high school: "There are no permanent friends, only permanent interests." Unfortunately, the line came from S-Files, I think, and they were referring to something totally different.

...

Darvin Ham is playing in the PBA. And is getting dunked on by the natives. I have half a mind to send this tidbit to DimeMag.

...

I'm tired. Can I please, please hit the beach after this storm?

Welcome To This One Man Show

2006-08-14T00:07:00.000+08:00

Along the lines of "Don't want what you can't get" is something that is becoming increasingly advisable as the days go by: don't ask for what other people can't give. A line of thinking recommended for work, life, and relationships.

...

I've been reading Sting's autobio Broken Music while watching the bonus DVD with Every Breath You Take (The Singles) and some things pop out:

I'm already two-thirds into the book and we're only just been introduced to Stewart Copeland.
Andy Summers is now my new guitar hero, at least for the next couple of days. Bring on the fifths!
I'm amused that the guitarist is the shortest member of The Police.
The Police is greater than the sum of its parts.
I need to get back to work.

...

I finally made it to the Mall of Asia. Speaking as a professional mallrat, I'm impressed. Dozens of new shops and food stalls to try out. Then there's our impeccably dressed friends from the south. All one needs, in my no-bearing opinion.

One more thing: I had to pay overnight parking because a) the stupid ticket said "Flat Rate" and b) no one pointed out that the overnight limit was at 1:30 AM. One thirty! Damn you family-oriented shopping centers. The "S" in SM stands for swindlers. The guards even admitted that this happens every night; in fact this particular Sunday morning there were at least five cars worth of confused MoA shoppers. There's no doubt in my mind this is a con. A legal con, but a con nonetheless.