Placebo Effect

They paved paradise, put up a parking lot

2012-02-20T19:18:00.008-08:00

Armi of Up Dharma down plays the first few notes of the band hit ‘Tadhana’ and there was a collective sound of glee that resonated not in a music bar, but in an open space in Baguio City, where students, musicians, artists and residents were in one with the cool breeze, and their beloved trees.

The evening concert came after the tree-planting activity and prayer rally of ‘Project Save 182,’ a collaborative group headed by environmental activist Dr. Michael Bengwayan to call for the trashing of SM Baguio’s redevelopment plan that involves the earth-balling of 182 trees.

On the morning of February 5, more than 182 new trees were planted at the Pines of the World park, in a symbolic act participated by some 200 advocates from Baguio, others from Manila.

Approved by city, DENR

The redevelopment plan was given the green light by the DENR and the local government of Baguio.

According to DENR-CAR Regional Executive Director Clarence Baguilat, when SM applied to ball the trees to pave way for the mall’s expansion, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje approved it on certain conditions. That SM ‘transplant’ the trees and plant 50 saplings for every one tree uprooted.

“It’s like being allowed to kill a person, provided that I make 50 new babies,” said Conviron Altatis, one of the activists who helped mobilize the movement, using Facebook primarily.

Altatis did a spoof monologue of Henry Sy, SM CEO, and Henry Sy’s grandson. His amusing performance earned him applause, but most when he delivered his very last line.

In a fake chinese accent, he said, “I asked my Lolo Henry, ‘Lolo, if we become grandparents, what is the story you would like us to tell them? That there used to be pine trees in Baguio, or that there used to be an SM in Baguio?’”

‘Occupy’

They call it the ‘SM Occupy,’ a movement that originated in the US to protest corporate greed. The definition fits to the group’s cause, as weeks before, the same people marched to the upper Session road near the mall to stage a rally filled with music, and performances, crying, as seen in one of the signs, “cut your greed, not our trees.”

SM Management said they are going to build the multi-leveled parking lot using green architecture and technology. It’ll help decongest traffic, they said, and that they were vying to be given a LEED recognition for an ecologically-friendly structure which will use no airconditioning and only natural light, the first of its kind in the country.

“That’s absurd,” said Bedejim Abdullah, member of the Cordillera Conservation Trust, an environmentalist also rallying to save the trees around SM. You want to be friendly to the environment, don’t cut the trees, he said, as well as everyone in the protest did.

“I hope I can stop the cutting of trees,” Baguio City Mayor Mauricio Domogan told me when I went to the City hall the next day. The land SM Baguio now stands in is a private property owned by the Corporation, bought from the national government in a bidding in 1992 for almost P70M. “We cannot do anything because we are bound by law to let them do what they want with their property,” Domogan said.

DENR-CAR’s Baguilat said, “if the government doesn’t want trees to be cut, then don’t sell these lands.” Asked whether anyone of them in the local unit could put a stop to it, he said, “the city government. Political will lang ‘yan.'

“Earth-ball”

"No trees will be cut," says SM in an online statement posted in their website as well as in reports. VP for Operations in the Northern Region Engr. Bien Mateo gave an interview to GMA News TV's Bawal ang Pasaway with Mareng Winnie where he emphasized that they were not gonna cut trees, they were just gonna earth ball them - and that every single one affected will be replaced with more.

“Their favorite word is ‘ball’” said Altatis. What SM plans to do with the trees is earth-ball them, meaning to uproot and replant them somewhere else.

Bengwayan said earth-balling will be tantamount to killing. As per historical reference when 475 trees were earth-balled in Camp John Hay in 1994, 17% of them survived due to a “transplant shock” the roots experienced. Out of the 475 trees in John Hay, only 43 live today.

“But 17% is better than none,” said Baguilat.

Bengwayan also pointed out some numbers: 182 trees can absorb 27,300 liters of water everyday, which will help lessen the risk of flooding. 1 pine tree can also take in 40-45 ibs of carbon; 182 pine trees can contribute to the reduction of 9,790 ibs of carbon yearly from the air we breathe.

A tree a day

Baguilat said the Luneta Hill, where the trees stand at risk of SM’s expansion, is a very little patch of greenery as compared tothe remaining ‘significant’ patches of forest that remain in Baguio that must be protected, like the Camp John Hay and the Forbes Park.

Bengwayan told me the groups fear it may be a precedent to the cutting of more trees. “If they can cut 182 now, what’s stopping them to cut more?”

Among the crowd present that day was veteran artist Ben-Hur Villanueva. He said the point of the movement is to assure the children today that they will grow up in the same Baguio their elders lived in - a city rich with pine trees. “The adults, may politiko na ‘yan, but the children - they need to be aware of the importance to have trees.”

“We need to have a provision where the trees these children plant will be legally theirs,” Villanueva shared his thoughts with me. He said it was to give the child the right and claim to a tree, should its life be challenged later on. It was to assure, he said, that as the child grows up, the tree grows up with him.

Plans

In a chit-chat by the sideline, the event secretariat revealed they feel the cutting of trees is gonna happen “anytime soon.”

The Luneta Hill, once open to spectators, is now surrounded with armed guards in every corner. Mayor Domogan and the DENR show no sign of budging. In my conversation with Baguilat, he told me that it was a direct order from Secretary Ramon Paje and that their mandate is to follow.

Mayor Domogan insistently explained that unless the National Government says or does something, the government of Baguio has no choice but to honor land owners’ rights.

DENR-CAR also looks to Secretary Paje for any possible change of heart.

Kabataan Representative Mong Palatino has called on the Congress to probe the mall oligarch’s expansion. Palatino filed House Resolution 2069 seeking a joint inquiry into legality and propriety of the permit granted by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) allowing the earth-balling of trees.

Plea to SM

Baguilat added that the fate of the trees lie mostly in SM’s hands, saying the environmental groups should direct their attentionto SM and convince them to spare the trees.

But the environmental groups look to take their case to the President himself. They gathered signatures from the numerous rallies they will send to President Noynoy Aquino at the Palace.

Bengwayan and other groups cry to the government: honor Executive Order #23. EO 23, in its gist, prohibits any body including the DENR to issue tree-cutting permits in natural and residual forests.

In a text message, DENR-CAR Information Officer Abner Villanueva insisted the order does not cover Luneta Hill as it is a private property for commercial use, and that the trees were not naturally growing but actually just planted - by SM themselves.

Green Building

SM's Mateo also told Pasaway that "Trees are very important. We also find importance in them. But we want to also explain that caring for the environment is not only limited to trees. We care for the trees, but caring for the environment also includes water reservation, energy efficiency, reduction of carbon footprint, and this is what we're promoting in this expansion; making it a green building."

SM also explained that in 2005, they experienced problems of soil erosion and that after examinations, a careful enhancement of the area showed to be the best solution. They also said that the expansion will include the construction of a water reservoir which can contain 6.9 million liters of water at any given time - an amount that can be absorbed by 4,000 pine trees - to prevent run-off.

But the main thing, they say: It will help decongest the city, lowering carbon dioxide emission. Economically, the expansion will also create jobs and pay taxes that can provide significant funding for the community.

For his part, Domogan defended the development for its eventual benefits for the city, and added a sidenot to the interview: "Minsan lang, pinapasok ang politika, kung nag-express ka ng opinyon na hindi tugma sa kanila, sasabihin, nabili 'yan. he was bribed! And that's not fair."

----

“Shoe....shoe...mart...mart...mart,” hummed Up Dharma Down to the tune of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’s’ intro; the people laughed, clapped, hysteric. As dawn breaks, around the pine trees, she sang, “they paved paradise, put up a parking lot,” and everybody grew quiet, reflective.

The people camped overnight at the park, praying a brand new day under the lush of pines could offer some hope. Just meters away up in the hill, it was another morning of mighty business for SM Baguio.

(Inlet photos courtesy of author; main photo credits to Beatriz Flores)

Letter to the future

2012-01-17T09:53:00.001-08:00

Dear 25-year-old me,

How are you? I hope you're doing fine, I hope you're happy, because the 21 year old version of you is quite in a good place and she's looking ahead and she's counting on you for her future well-being. So don't disappoint her. Here are a few tips:

1. In 4 years, try to not be single. A lot of your friends claim you intimidate boys but I think you're just not girlfriend material. Plain and simple. If you can, make some adjustments, try to move some stuff around, but don't compromise yourself please, I beg of you.

2. That said, you can try opening up to people a little bit. I also think you're oftentimes emotionally unavailable. Try to break your exclusivity complex. Get out of the house more often, it will be good for you, plus, it can get you acquainted with a lot of things, which, to be honest, you are severely lacking considering it is your job to know things. Do it for your craft, and enjoy in the process.

3. As for work, I think you're on the right track. But frankly, you're still a slave of your vain agendas. Admit it, you initially craved to get your name out there. Now that you (sort of) have, you can now focus on doing stories that mean more to you, stories which will make a difference in people's lives, and not something you just can be smug about. Please don't be a sell out. I will kill you.

4. I gave you until 23 to have a piece published on Inquirer's Young Blood. You first tried at 17 and never tried again. This, you have to do. For yourself, you owe this to the girl who was heartbroken in Grade School for not being picked out as staff of the newspaper.

5. I know I set out for you to drink more, but let's face it, you can't and more importantly you don't want to. You hate the taste of alcohol and even more the idea of getting drunk. Huwag mo ng ipilit, you're a straight-up chic and I'm fine with that.

6. You have to have had more serious purchases by then. I'd settle for an iPad or an iPhone that came straight out of your pocket. Or maybe you could be paying for your house. 25 ka na nun, you can't let your mom continue paying your rent, mahiya ka naman. And to achieve that, here's a tip to the 22, 23, and 24 year old versions of you: You are not rich, stop spending like one.

7. How to save? Learn to cook meals. Yes, food is divine and yes you love it I know but you can't continue living off take outs. You had a phase of cooking pasta and it was a good phase, you were decent. Why can't you go back to that? And another: Stop buying books. You have so many in your shelf you have not read yet. You're only excused for when your favorite authors publish a new title.

8. And anyway, the Brontes are pissed with you. Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights have been sitting on that shelf for a year now but then you keep on buying new ones and reading those instead. There's not a single classic that you've read, not even To Kill a Mockingbird, not even Pride and Prejudice; you take pride in knowing Moby Dick's first line yet you can't even buy a copy. It's about P200 at NBS, you schizo. You are a walking shame. Please prioritize reading a classic.

When you were 18, someone told you, "you're only 18" and you answered him back: "I'm ALREADY 18." But you gotta realize that at some point, you'll reach an age where you will be definitely "already" and not anymore "only." I pray that by that time, you have done enough not to have any regrets. I think you're sensible to know there are some goals that need to be hit, I'm just worried you're taking yourself too seriously. You gotta be able to say "hey I'm only 25" because at 21 I think I'm already old and running out of time.

Relax.

You and I have a dream of changing the world. But face it, you can't at 25, so if you can't change the world, I hope that by that time you would have at least already changed yours. And some others'. Self-belief is the key, and I sincerely hope you pick out some of that along the way.

No pressure. Good luck!

Love,

your 21 year old self

Here's to dreams coming true in 2012

2011-12-31T13:39:00.000-08:00

10 years ago, I was in a car with my mom and my sister going to megamall in what might have been just my 2nd or 3rd trip to Manila. My sister was ecstatic. I, however, couldn't take my mind off the fact that for the 2nd year in a row, I lost the first level of the campus journalism competition.

This was the memory that had played over and over; during high school, when I won my very first (very minor) writing award, when I was aboard a bus in makati on my way to AFP office to submit my intern application, and then on that chanced volleyball story that gave me my first ever byline.

10 years ago, I had sulked on the back of a car looking up the tall buildings of Manila and thinking, will I ever get to be here?

It was a struggle. From failing the Flame exam. From getting a low grade in Business Journ, a grade said to represent a "why are you taking up Journ?" ranking. From being rejected several times the first 6 months after graduation. To being told, and the exact phrase, "Saan ka pupulutin?"

I was ready to move to London, to leave my friends here, and make living with my family my new dream. I was prepared never to become a writer, or work in media. I was ready to make that move, and I was sure it was the right decision. But my best friend told me, 'it's not a solution, it's an escape."

So I decided that if I was to make it my battle, I would have to fight much much harder. So I did.

10 years ago, I was at the corner table of our school hall desperately waiting to hear my article title to be called but never did. In the last 6 months of 2011, I was able to write, thanks to the faith of the editors and support of my boss, stories that shared a considerable amount of spotlight in the Internet.

2 years ago, I was in the loft room of my friend and group mate writing the script for our final broad Journ project and thinking, am I good enough? Before the year ended, I wrote and produced a segment that aired on my favorite newscast.

3 years ago, I had my picture taken in front of the company I'm now working for, thinking at the time, someday maybe....Last New year's eve, I was watching Cesar Apolinario from the newsroom, admiring his quirky 'sugod bahay' walkthrough espesyal, and thinking of ways to introduce my self and tell him I enjoyed it. As we counted down to 2O12, I was also in the newsroom, with Direk Cesar himself, bouncing off (but mostly him sharing) ideas and envisioning stories for the year ahead.

There are colleagues my age who have achieved so much more; who are talented in a way that blows my mind and picks on my insecurities; whom I admire and hope to be like. The road is long, and I'm trailing in the race, but 2011 has put me on track, and I'm running and I don't, in the least bit, feel that I should stop.

It is a constant struggle, of confidence, of grit, of stamina, and of self-belief but when I remember the 11 year old version of myself, I'm reminded that this is the struggle I can consider a gift.

Thanks to people who pulled for me and the universe that conspired, from a skeptic, defeated, demoralized girl in 2010, the past year weaved its magic to restore my faith and bring back the girl who believes that dreams can come true.

For when they do, even in small fractions, you get to look that 10 year old shadow in her asking eyes and say, "See, I told you," and she will smile, and you'll know you're not gonna fail her. You just have to chase some more.

So here's to 2012, to more chasing, and to the hope, that we never, ever, get tired :)

"May the odds be ever in your favor."

The year 2011 and what Social Media has become since

2011-12-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

2011 saw the future King of England marry his Princess, but unlike his parents' wedding, William and Kate's special day invited a special set of guests: the Netizens.

The mighty netizens that can trend whatever hashtag it wills. From the fuzzy #RoyalWedding to the empowering #ArabSpring. The people of the Middle East decided to utilize the power Social Media to fight and eventually overthrow power, so much so that they even wanted to proclaim Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg a modern hero.

In a web forum, however, Zuckerberg said Facebook did not fuel the revolution in places likeTunisia, Libya and Egypt. "It's not a Facebook thing, it's an internet thing," the young mogul was quoted saying. It is an internet thing, and precisely the kind of power Social Media wields that when the deadly tsunami and earthquake hit Japan last March, the internet was the melting pot of all outreach, whether it was to send good thoughts or tangible help. And it was successful.

Even breaking exclusives has come to be a Twitter forte. The first reports of the Osama bin Laden raid in Pakistan last May were from an unknowing Twitter user who was live tweeting an event he didn't know at the time would be the fall of the world's most wanted terrorist. Raw and vague tweets came dashing in onto Twitter, which were later confirmed by journalists from major media outfits- coming to the 140-character platform rather than getting in front of a camera and going live on TV.

New York Time's Brian Stelter said over the documentary "Page One: Inside the New York Times," and I quote: "I don't know why anybody who's a reporter isn't on Twitter, I constantly berate my colleagues who aren't on it. It drives me nuts hearingmy colleagues talk about a story at noon, and I read it on Twitter on midnight. Why is that allowed? Why are we not on top of the news?" Here is a kid who had two things in excess: Internet time, and passion for news. He blogged and blogged about TV News long enough for the Times to notice and hire him, at a convenient time where WikiLeaks was just exploding, and Stelter had his game face on, looking out for leaked videos, cables, talking to Julian

Assange and convincing the Editors to put him on Page One.

Even the Philippines is having its share of WikiLeaks exposure, with the media milking the cable of Kristie Kenney allegedly underplaying Cory Aquino's role in democracy. The former US envoy kept mum and could not be reached for an on-cam interview, but GMA News' Lei Alviz had an idea: tweet Kenney, and although the reply was of "no comment" equivalent, Alviz was able to screengrab and voila, story is complete.

President Noynoy Aquino's communication group, for one, is so fond of Twitter that they sometimes forget they are the Palace's mouthpiece.

Atty. Edwin Lacierda, during the height of transport strikes, hit back at critics: "Noticed how leftists are so onion-skinned? Tinawag lang perjuicio ang strike, pumuputok ang butchi nila! Mahilig bumanat pero mga pikon pala."

A journalist called Lacierda on it, saying he should separate personal opinion and government duty. But the Presidential spokesperson candidly replied: "Why? Who came up with those rules?"

Perhaps Atty. Lacierda is right, that there are no rules governing the platform and how News is integrated into it. But it only makes it more fun, more free, and this is not to say the media would have a carnival out of Twitter notoriety, just that news limited to recorders, cameras and steno pads is long over. Welcome to the digital era - where it is no longer enough to just think, do or be; now it's to think, do, be something, and then tweet it.

Today, everyone has a voice, everyone - from top government officials to a street photographer - want a piece of Social Media for themselves, making stories that unfolded over the Internet a must for the mainstre

am audience, lest we alienate the more than 20 million Filipinos online whose voice and pull got Twitter to include Philippines among countries to have its own Trending Topic list, and get this, language. [GMA News Online: Twitter now in Tagalog]

Some say this might be used as a tool for sloppy research, but as its very nature goes, the rampant use of Social Media among every kind of person - whether it be a citizen, a resource person, a subject, and the journalist - leaves no excuses for a work to lack a certain element. All you need, if not within a screen's reach, pans out with the press of your fingertip.

**************

When Facebook was starting, Yahoo offered to buy it for $1 billion, Zuckerberg, then just 23, turned it down. Microsoft followed suit and put $15 billion on the table. Zuckerberg told BBC that by the time of the Microsoft offer, he had already regrouped Facebook and made decision that they were not going to sell the company for whatever price, they were going to build it. His colleague was quoted saying, "It takes a sort of an insane degree of self-confidence to weather through that storm," an expert said: "He could have made over $4 billion personally and he didn't even consider it, that shows what kind of a guy he is." It also showed what kind of vision he had for Facebook, and where society and communication is headed.

Before Facebook, there was Friendster and Myspace; Social Networking was already a thing but not without the human element that Zuckerberg had so brilliantly weaved in, making it into a social product that everyone just can't seem to get enough of.

"Now the cultural change is more and more people are finding that they can build a reputation, they can help disseminate interesting information, help people discover stuff, get credit for that, they can be part of people discovering other stuff and I just think that people are seeing, everyday, that it's awesome." - Mark Zuckerberg

Had the Anti-Planking bill been filed at a time of no Facebook and Twitter, it could have just as easily slipped through to become a law. But under netizens' probing nose - no can do, Mr. Castelo. With Social Media,

there is a pressure for the government to get its act together and perform well - to please its people, and rightly so. After the DPWH photoshopped mess and the Batangas Hollywood sign brouhaha, every official is made to think more than twice about what he'll push. In today's trending topic times, no one wants to be made out to a meme. It's funny but it just isn't flattering.

Wasn't it a blog post, which was followed by a site poll and then a loud online clamor that fast-tracked the renovation talks on

NAIA? The Ninoy Aquino International Airport had been in a poor state for a long time, but alas came the tweets and blogs that merited space in TV and broadsheets which left the government no other choice but to contain the public and say: Yes, we will renovate it, don't you fret.

Wasn't it Social Media that Tourism Chief Ramon Jimenez endorsed as the best medium to promote the Philippines? It can sell as well as Chicken Joy, he said. Best-selling author Paulo Coelho had once already tweeted dreaming of coming to the Philippines. With his almost 3 million followers, cult as you may, who worships and subscribes to every word he writes - expect a fraction of that to visit our islands.

Wasn't it Social Media too who gave birth to Charice, Maria Aragon, and the worldwide phenom, Justin Bieber? The 12-year-old Justin, starting out in the Industry, thought up a marketing plan that some record execs in the Philippines are mind-blowingly failing to take notice of, he said: 'I continued tweeting, promoting my shows, replying to messages, that way, my fans feel like they're part of my career, from the beginning, it makes them feel they're important, which they are.'

2011 saw the influx of issues that took to Social Media to get a push: some socially relevant, some turned out ugly, and some are just downright viral but nevertheless made our internet time (mischievously) worthwhile.The gauge today seems to be: if it didn't rend, it just plain didn't.

And let me close it with an excerpt from a piece by New York Time's David Carr: "Like many newbies on Twitter, I vastly overestimated the importance of broadcasting on Twitter and after a while, I realized that I was not Moses and neither Twitter nor its users were wondering what I thought. Nearly a year in, I’ve come to understand that the real value of the service is listening to a wired collective voice." [New York Times: Why Twitter would endure]

No one in the internet, not even Lady Gaga, is Moses. But as Facebook reports to having 800 million users, and Twitter claiming its pushing to 200 million; with a well-meant cause, we, as roboheads and as people, could very well part the sea.

Letter to the great @michaeljosh

2011-11-27T07:49:00.000-08:00

Dear Sir Josh,

I was backreading my Tumblr the other day, reminded of how totally depressed, hopeless, helpless I was last year. I asked you, if Jeff had not left, would you still have hired me? You said yes. I hope that's true. Because I cannot even begin to ponder on the alternate reality of me not having met you, worked with you, of not having met Neil and Stacy, who, in a year, have become my brother and sister. Of not having met Gayna and Justin, who, by the way, I feel sorry for. Neil and Stacy had 1 1/2 years with you, I had one, the time they spent with you is just way, way too short.

There's a line in this movie that goes, "How much did they first pay you to give up your dreams?" I watched that movie during the 6 months of my depression, I remember feeling scared shitless of someday maybe having to answer that question. But then you called me, and welcomed me "home" and taught me, mentored me, and Sir Josh, because of you, I will never have to answer it. That is the most amazing gift anybody can give someone, thanks for giving it to me.

You oversell me sometimes, you know. Build me up, sign me up for things I'm not sure I can even do. You know how frustrated it was becoming for me not being able to write -- and one day, you said, "go write an article for Online." It felt like finally taking off ground, that was my respite, and you understood. Remember the couple of AVs I got to write because of you? I may not have shown it, but I'm sure you know, it meant the whole world to me. You get just how important for me this job is, and day after day after day, you give me opportunities to make things happen for myself.

I remember that one day in Bacolod where we set up an interview with the Azkals (thanks to the power of Facebook, and great charm :p) and watching you, for the first time, do field reporting. I was in total awe of how good you are in everything you do. Sometimes it's overwhelming, listening to you talk, and you staring at me, waiting for my input in the discussion, when all I can do is think "Man, this guy knows his shit." But still you let me talk, and talk, and talk, senseless many times, but somehow you find a way to pick pieces out of what I said, weave it into something brilliant, and credits me for it! You once told me, you're putting in your all to teach us, to set us up for bigger things, and that you are not threatened of the possibility of us being better than you someday. Which is laughable, because you're a genius it actually makes me sick, no way we'll be better than you, but 3/4 of our time together, you made us feel we are. That was the formula that worked. Only you could have pulled that off.

I told you I have already reached the 5th stage - Acceptance. And I think I have, I actually did well today. But a Harry Potter reference just had to find me, didn't it, it just had to. "When Dumbledore left, it was the end of Hogwarts being a safe place for Harry to live in."

Maybe we were all wrong setting up a relationship as close as our team's, knowing that working together in a fickle industry, we would have to part ways some time. Maybe it's that. But screw it, if I have to do it all over again, I wouldn't have done it any other way. There is no person better to have coached my 1st year in my dream job than you. I desperately hope I could extend that time, but this has to happen, you have to go, and I have to let you.

I found a blog that I did a few weeks before you hired me. The blog reeked of anger, I was a writer, hell I was writing a piece on Senator Salonga, and I was....unhappy. "There's a severe lack of trust in leadership," I wrote. That was our team's gold, you were our gold, the insurmountable trust in your leadership that has allowed us to grow into better practitioners, better people. My mom sends her thank you.

I will miss our constant clashes in ideas. Your angry g-Chats when I do something that falls off your standard, and me, instead of hating you (as with every other employee), hating myself for letting you down. Simply put, I will miss you, so badly it may even make me cry. Congratulations, you have always wanted to prove my "Nobody makes me cry" statement wrong.

But get this, like Harry and Dumbledore, we will someday meet at King's Cross Station, and we will sit down, and you will tell me, looking back, that it had been the plan, for me to carry out a prophecy, and I will realize I'm even luckier than Harry, because you, Sir Josh, are not "just inside my head" you're real, and my dreams came true because of it.

You're a great teacher, Sir. Not just that, you're a great friend, and as I told you, brother and shrink at times.

As Stacy put it, there will never be another @michaeljosh in my life. And while that's too damn tragic, I know too well that the weight is a gift. So this pain of parting ways with you? This will all just be manifested in making you proud.

"Lian, you have to grow up," you tell me often, I can't promise you that I will, because you know how much this affects me and I'll probably be angry and tortured for a while, but this I promise you Sir Josh: I will do you freaking proud.

Love,

your favorite :-D

(At 3am in the Newsroom, after deciding to stay when the Libyan rebels proclaimed they had

taken hold of Gaddafi bastions, and accidentally getting to cover the East Coast quake. Fun times)

Falling Slowly

2011-10-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

The first time I heard Glen Hansard and Marketa Inglova's 'Falling Slowly,' I thought wow this is a really good song. Then I heard it again, and learned the words, heard it again, downloaded it, heard it again, put it on my repeat playlist, and just when you think there's only so much time to devour a song, you hear it again on a movie it was made for, with lead 'actors' that turned out to have actually 'fallen slowly' for each other in real life, and a story that defies the foundation of this theory we call the 'Happy Ending.'

In one of Glen Hansard's live performances, he introduced the song as a "story about going to a party with your girlfriend, and she goes off to get a drink, and you're standing there on your own, and you look across the room, and you see this girl you utterly fancy, it's not mental, you just feel it, and you realize that it's your girlfriend. You're like cha ching!"

But what if you don't have the 'cha ching' moment? What if, when you look across the room, staring at this beautiful person you just desperately fancy and you realize, he's not your boyfriend? What if when you look across the room, you find that nobody's even there?

And Miluju tebe? ('It's you I love' in Czech) What if you can't say it? What if there's no one to say it to?

What I loved most about the film 'Once,' despite the characters remaining nameless throughout, is their not ending up together. The guy fancied the girl, the girl loved the guy - at a whim, on a romantic hill in Dublin, days before deciding she wanted to make it work with her husband. And it ends there. Him going to London, going back to the love he once lost and chasing a dream. Her staying in Dublin, rekindling a marriage. Was it a sad ending? No. It's life. It's not perfect, but it's tragically brilliant when it hits the right notes.

I think that even though longevity and consistency make for a wonderful life, sometimes you have to look at it in frozen frames, pick out moments when the world stood still and you said to yourself, "cha ching! this is it," no matter how long it lasted for. In a span of weeks, a guy met a girl he at least loved for a moment, and those moments were incomparable only because they shared the same sad music. And that whiff of a memory, of meeting a girl, and singing in a music store after knowing her for only a day, has a potential of lasting forever.

When you're 21 and still single, every conversation you will have will more or less include a question why you haven't found love yet. How do you answer something like that? They'll ask, "don't you want to?" "aren't you ready?" But of course you want to, and you're ready. But when have wanting and being ready ever merited realization?

You could be standing all the way across the room, looking out a window to nothing, and feeling happy by default. And you say, "wait I'm happy here." Sometimes, that's enough, and you can only wish for more moments like that. Like tonight, as I write this, and on the 15th time today that I've played this song, I look across the room, and I realize, I am, in fact, happy.

Cha ching.

Besides, "games that never amount to what they're meant will play themselves out" right? It falls slowly, and sometimes on a rather different path, sometimes painful, but it falls in whatever place it should. It doesn't mean it's not a happy ending.

It's just life. Raise your hopeful voice. You have a choice.

Life to the Twenty somethings

2011-10-25T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's too early to call it a midlife crisis, too late to call it puberty. It's the time of your life where you're too old to show off and too young to screw up. The time you're pressured to "go out there," "have fun" and "see the world" when you can barely afford a decent meal.

It's the time of paradoxes. Season of the bipolars. Age of depression.

Your decisions could determine the next 10 years of your life. The no's and yeses you give out could ultimately draw the line whether you're gonna marry your true love, or someone who makes sense, or if you marry at all. Whether you get married in a beach, or at the city hall; whether you get to live in your dream suburban house or in an urban broken home.

It's all being decided at this very moment, when all you have the energy for is battle PMS. The world is staring you bluntly in the face, asking "What the hell are you going to do?' and you, well, you don't know.

It's not that you don't know what you're doing. It's that you want to do everything. You want to travel, you want to fall in love, you want to be dedicated to your job, be the best at it, you want to change the world, and there is just so little time to do it all.

Hollywood actress Helen Mirren once said: "The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening."

When you are finally at a liberty to do everything you want, that's when it gets the scariest. Because what if you can't do it all, what if you can't do anything? You can no longer blame it on the perils of being too young, or too much responsibilities, you can only blame it on yourself and the fact that at your best, you were the worst.

And it's messing up your head. You're at a sweet spot of having aged but maintaining a little innocence. The perfect time to be responsible, but to dream big. The time you're allowed to see the world through rose-tinted glasses because you're young, and idealistic. You are part of the future, and you can actually change the course of your generation.

It's a lot of pressure.

Mostly on yourself. When you look in the mirror and see a twenty-something so unsure of herself, when she should be weaving magic.

But as I said, it's the time of paradoxes. You're chasing the unknown.

Scrambling for a dream you're not even sure exists.

And you're falling and you're sinking, and you take on a destructive path into the labyrinth of suffering out to your great perhaps.

There's no other feeling.

21st

2011-10-11T21:45:00.001-07:00

Turning 21 on the 18th. F yeah. I started to blog wish lists on my 18th birthday. It's been 3 unproductive years of wishing :-D

But the kicks you get out of just the process of thinking about what you want to get, googling for images, and the expectation that lasts for 2 minutes - it's enough gift.

You never know what might arrive on your doors, after all on Harry's 11th birthday, he got a letter from Hogwarts. Here's to the hope that maybe, as I turn 21, something magical happens.

But I'm willing to be materialistic in the meantime:

An iPod Nano. Just like the one I lost. I have terrible dreams about it.

I need it when I take the jeep or the train. I need it when I walk around alone.

I need it when I eat by myself. I need it when I write. I need it as I sleep.

I need it, basically.

This is a book light, in case you were wondering.

Because I don't have a bedside lamp.

It's a story of a carnival couple madly in love who decided to chemically engineer their children,

resulting to a family of freaks. I love it. Can't find it anywhere though.

'Looking for Alaska' was one of the best reading experiences of my life. The closest I've come to feeling the same lately was the Hunger Games trilogy. I want that feeling back. I'm taking a risk with John Green - anything from him. (But maybe not 'Will Grayson, Will Grayson.' I'm still upset with David Levithan.)

Yes I know I said I will not fall into Apple's lair. But about everyone I know who uses iPhone look happy, and digitally contented. I want the same life, please.

(This one's a hint for my Sister)

Or you know, you can just give me bottles of Nutella and I'll be just as happy.

Or awesome tees.

Or just leave a One Tree Hill/Harry Potter quote or lyrics from Coldplay/Snow Patrol on my Facebook wall. I'm not hard to please.

Cheerios.

Reality Bites

2011-09-04T12:58:00.001-07:00

My best friend has lately been blogging about the Winona Ryder movie "Reality Bites." She was just quoting characters from the movie, and until tonight, she has not written comprehensively about how she's feeling. But I knew why, because I assume we'd have the same reasons if I was to also blog about that movie.

"You better do it now, and you better do it fast because the world doesn't owe you any favors." When I was 15, graduating from High School, I had a complete set of dreams. I had my life planned out, I was going to pass UST, become the school paper's editor, win writing awards, and graduate Cum Laude. Only one of those happened, that I went to UST. Looking back, I have regrets, would I have cared to be the school paper's editor or Cum Laude? Probably, but in conclusion, I think going to UST was enough, the things I didn't do and didn't get were in exchange of lessons and motivations I hold dear to me now.

By 4th year, I assessed myself, I had a knack for story-telling, I was getting decent feedback. I had two targets: GMA and Inquirer. At least one of those came true. But it wasn't easy getting there, I did sports, business (for a very brief while) and then settled when I thought I felt reality bite: I was going to be a writer for a Magazine. I was ready to make that job forever, except that against my acceptance was unhappiness. There was something wrong. And then someone called, my future boss. And my life, after months of wandering lost, was back on track.

Am I happy? Yes. Is it everything I hoped for? More. Is it enough? Not yet. And that's the point. It's never enough. You get a trial period, sink into the excitement of something new and good, and then lose it, for the search of something better. And then you get it, and then you want more, again.

You see friends, classmates, colleagues, who, at your age, have achieved more than you have, who are doing the things you want to do, living the life you ache to live. It triggers you into questioning whether what you're doing, where you are is the right thing. Of course at that moment, it's not, your mind is already tainted by the illusions of what could be. Then you sleep it off, so the next morning you could wake up feeling good about yourself, and regaining the happiness that momentarily slipped off.

I had plans of taking a Master's degree or a crash Journalism program; of working freelance in London or New York, just to fulfill a fantasy of living abroad. Experience the apartment-hunting, interviewing room mates, getting chinese in the middle of the night, taking the subway, checking voice mails. I had plans of having a piece published on Inquirer's Young Blood, or meeting a favorite writer over coffee (which might happen, by the way). I had simple plans too: learn how to play guitar, drink alcohol, kiss somebody, and go out of town alone. (I did get out of town, several times, but with friends.) Plans that take a backseat to obligations to my job, familiy, and bank account. I've always said I wasn't going to write for money, but I have to admit, it's getting increasingly harder to keep that principle.

For 2 years, I've been holding on to this title: "Dreams come true in Manila." Over time, ideas have come on how to execute it, who to get as subject, how to start it. It's just always been at the back of my mind to do a project that will both fulfill a personal goal, and something more that "sounds cornball but I'd like to somehow make a difference in people's lives."

When I stop and sit to think about what I'm going to write, I come to a halt to a sentence that begins with, "I." How was I going to write about dreams coming true when I don't know for sure if mine have. And I think that it will be a long-running struggle, because who can tell whether your dreams have come true? Who is to say that it has climaxed, and who's to say that it has stopped. Lelaina was right, "The answer is... I don't know."

We don't know. I will be turning 21 in October, would I be the person I was going to be by the time I was 21? I had a list, an idea of who I was going to be, but at the end of the day, reality does bite. "The only person you have to be by the time you're (23) is yourself."

And you just have to hope and make sure that that person is happy, and that she's doing what she should, because dreams come true everyday that you have it. And everyday is another day to be yourself.

The Bernidos: A love story

2011-08-31T08:42:00.001-07:00

Both Theoretical Physicists, you'd expect a constant stream of heavy science when you talk to them. Well, that's just half right.

Commenting on husband Cristopher's schoolboy addiction to Marvel Comics and its mutant heroes, Maria Victoria Bernido, 'Marivic' to friends says, “Mutation is very possible now. You're synthesizing; if you go down to the molecular level of nature and combine it with engineering, it is possible.”

Before the topic of mutants, the couple talked about tackling the biological application of Physics for their 6th International Workshop in 2012. They said these kinds of conversations relax them.

It was during the middle of a no-class day at the Central Visayas Institute Foundation (CVIF), the high school the Bernidos revived in 1999 which earned them a Ramon Magsaysay Award last August 2010. They had most of the day off, and they revel in the fact that they could talk about Science without running the School at the back of their minds.

Still, they were in School that day, both alternately leaving the table to check on things.

The self-proclaimed workaholic couple, who admit to being jaded by “the same interview questions,” laughed when I said was writing their love story.

Not Too Bored After All

When they met in 1982, Marivic was an instructor at the University of the Philippines Department of Physics and had no intention of marrying anyone. “I didn't want to get bored,” she recalls thinking at the time. Marivic was a girl who spent high school solving the most difficult mathematical problems simply because they were difficult.

Little did she know she had a male equal, Cris Bernido. When they met, Cris was a visiting professor at the University of the Philippines while taking his doctorate Physics degree in Albany, New York.

Cris eventually became department chairman and he and Marivic had frequent conversations on the backwardness of the Philippines in terms of science, among other things. Marivic was slowly realizing that before her was someone who shared her views and aspirations. And, soon enough, love was born.

Lovers' Talk

Never in the young couple's wildest dreams did they imagine that, 28 years later, their love would serve the cause of Philippine Education in a way that would make the world sit up and take notice.

The cornerstone of CVIF is the Dynamic Learning Program, a student-focused teaching strategy. The program has earned the couple admirers from the global academe. The local media, meanwhile, focused on their decision to leave the Big Apple to live in Jagna, the rural part of Bohol where Dunkin' Donuts is as rare as the couple's decision to leave the First World.

The Bernidos say moving to Bohol was no sacrifice. “We have long fantasized to live close to nature,” Marivic quips.

Cris says that when they talk of love, a lot of it has to do with the trees, the silent breeze, solitude, meditating and, of course, science. Their dream is to build a Research Center atop the Ilihan Hill, a 10-minute trek from the mercado (market) where a small chapel stands overlooking Jagna's main roads.

Although that dream is yet to become reality, the Bernidos have been hosting the Jagna International Workshop for Physics for the past 15 years. It has been attended by such luminaries of the world stage as Nobel Peace Prize Winners Gerardus 't Hooft (1999) and Frank Wilczek (2004).

Radical

In the 1990s, public secondary education in the Philippines became free, so private school enrollment dropped and many teachers began transferring to public schools. Thus began the decline of CVIF.

When the Bernidos took over, students didn't know their decimals and fractions, and couldn't even compute the circumference of a circle. Cris found it lamentable since, he recalls, in high school he was already predicting the distance and time of projectile motion.

“Your goals are high, and reality is just way below,” Marivic points out. To remedy the situation, the first thing the Bernidos did was to ban calculators. Second, they reduced non-class days.

In Jagna, as in most remote provinces, the town fiesta is a big deal. So big that the school had to hold off classes for a month to focus on festivities. This led to the Bernidos' most drastic transitional act: fire some teachers.

For 70 years—starting from when Cris' great grandfather was Bohol Governor—CVIF had been run a certain way. Then came these rich physicists from New York changing too many things. People were angry. “There were very painful decisions,” Marivic admits, “but we had a goal for the school.”

The drastic measures taken by the Bernidos led to a drastic improvement in the quality of teaching as well as CVIF graduates.

Before the Bernidos took over, the passing rate for the University of the Philippines College Admissions Test (the UPCAT, what many consider the toughest in the country) was 0. This year alone, nine CVIF students have passed the UPCAT. An increasing number of CVIF students have gone on to college.

The One

“We didn't want to be just consumers of science and technology. We wanted to have a chance at a bigger success,” Marivic recalls, sharing that this mutual vision was what told her Cris was The One. Cris had proposed through a letter, telling her they should get married because together they would “build a nation.”

After a six-year, long-distance relationship—Marivic took her post-grad studies in New York, while Cris returned to UP to teach and flew across Europe for his post-doctorate studies—they finally married in 1988.

What about babies? “After realizing we were not having kids, we accepted that there was another plan for us,” Marivic says. “And that was to have 498 intellectual children instead.” The couple never bothered to find out why they couldn't have kids. They focused on building their own version of home.

“But there's still so much more to do,” says Cris. Among them will probably be the reconstruction of the 1930s main building, which used to be a cinema house, as well as modernizing the school in terms of structure and equipment. Marivic admits progress is slow. “Hindi pa namin nasusundan, naluluma na yung nasisimulan. (We haven't even resumed the work, and already, the structures we built are wearing down.)

Despite the tight budget, the Bernidos are determined to “never ask for dole-outs.” It has been their principle from day one. “Breaking points came often,” Cris says. But they were set to do anything to stick to their no-handouts policy. Once, they even took advantage of an airline overbooking mix up to receive US$400 worth of compensation, right at the time their bank account had been depleted to a mere US$10.

Passion

Although 78% of their students are scholars, they still have to help out others—especially those who bucked the odds and were going off to college. “There was a time when all of them asked for an allowance at once, and we didn't know where to get the cash,” Marivic recounts. “We are never really childless. We actually have a handful.”

Like busy parents, the Bernidos hardly have any time for themselves. They've never been to a real vacation in a decade and have not had a television for 11 years (the latter, by choice). Cris affectionately blames his wife for their lack of downtime. “She feels her time is better spent on research,” he says.

The Bernidos' day starts at seven in the morning for the flag ceremony. They're home by five. During their free time, the couple does research on the Internet. On weekends, they speak at conventions. More lecture invitations pour in during summer breaks. “One day, we will,” Marivic promises when asked when they would take a trip to relax. Cris only smiles.

Sweetness

From time to time during our visit, Marivic would ask her husband if she looked nice. At one point, she teases Cris into singing the song he used to her during the early days of their romance. Cris finally agrees. Marivic gets up and stands behind Cris' shoulder, her hand resting on it as she sings along. After 22 years, they are still passionately in love.

Their love story will continue against the backdrop of Jagna. “Manila or New York has no appeal for us anymore,” Cris says. When asked if there is nothing more they desire, Cris chuckles and replies, “For a climber, there's always another mountain to climb.”

“Ad infinitum,” Marivic agrees.

The analog hearts

2011-08-15T03:45:00.000-07:00

What makes a great song? Is it the lyrics? Is it the beat? Is it the voice behind it? Your favorite artist? The personal story you discover behind the writing? Once during an American Idol season, one of the judges said Siobhan has a quality that just eats up the entire stage. And that's true. But when the show's done for the night, who do you listen back to? Which song would be put on loop on your itunes, which would have a quality that just eats up your entire room, and would have meaning when all the lights are gone, and there's just you and the music?

I got my first walkman when I was around 10. My tapes were mostly Spice Girls, Cranberries, Lionel Richie, and (of course) Freestyle then. That was the time of appreciating albums, listening to every track. The difficulty of getting through the next songs made it inescapable to listen to the whole thing. Now it's just always that one song you google to get the title of, download, and between everything we have to get done in a day, we miss out on the other songs in the album, or the other albums from the artist.

And then there was the discman. I got mine at a very pivotal moment of my life: my grade school graduation. It was a graduation gift. That was my Westlife era, I had all the albums, and though I didn't quite relate to all of them at the time, I felt like I did, and they were the only thing that made me feel better. My sister then introduced me to Edwin McCain and Goo goo dolls. It was my understanding that High School girls during that period had - they just had to - listen to 'I'll be' and 'Iris.' So I did, I liked Iris. Everything was changing at the time, I was leaving my childhood friends, my family, and changing continents. Could you imagine how uncomfortable it was to sleep with the discman playing overnight? I never found the right place in my bed where it would not poke me and jolt me awake in the middle of the night. But for all the comfort it offered, I can't really complain.

I miss CDs. My mom always hated the fact that it doesn't take more than 2 weeks for me to break the CD case, and lose the disc amid a pile of indiscernible stuff inside my room. Do you remember the CD pull-outs? How it's terribly disappointing to find only pictures and not song lyrics? And when you do find lyrics, it feels almost an obligation to pore over the words. Of course it helped that there was MTV, who provided us with the must lists. For some time, it was a dictator of taste among the young generation, and it did a good job. At least for me, it introduced me to Coldplay.

What were the hits when you were in HighSchool? I remember it was a big time for the OPMs. Sponge Cola had just released its first album 'Palabas', and boy was it brilliant. I have never really gotten over Neon and Gemini enough to carry on with them through their succeeding releases. It's just that when I think Sponge Cola, "I know I can never be enough to replace your whatever" automatically plays in my head same as when I think of Hale, I sing "I really really need you here tonight" even when at the time, I knew squat about needing somebody. I just knew that whatever those words were, it might mean something enough to affect me.

I think song's meanings aren't absolute. My best friend's happy song is One Republic's Apologize, as one of mine is Snow Patrol's You could be happy even if to the majority (or to common sense) they are heartbreak songs. But you can't really fight the feeling inside you - if it makes you happy, it's a happy song. Augustana's 'Boston' is close to the hearts of many for its moment-stopping piano intro, and for most, it could be that. To me its the getting of lover and moving out to Spain thing. That line just says so much about all the frustrations in my life that sporadically finds me in the most inconvenient times of the day. And just to listen to it, even without the piano, it makes sense to me probably not in the way it makes sense for some.

My friend, who is a Sara Bareilles super fan, told me Sara wrote 'Love Song' as a protest to the record execs who kept telling her to write a Love Song, when she didn't want to. When I first heard it, I thought it was a modern theme for feminism, and it probably still is despite Sara's intent otherwise. Isaac Slade was also quoted as saying that 'You found me' is dedicated to the moments when he wanted to meet God in the sidewalk to ask why life was that way. Weird that I also connected to the song like that. Though for some, it's hopeful. Whatever it means to you. As long as it makes sense, right?

And then comes the ipod. God in the form of Steve Jobs' gift to mankind. There was the shuffle feature, the itunes genius, the most played feature. It was the golden era for the music lovers. Not discounting the influence of TV Shows, movies that led the way to a google search of a song, which ends up to a whole weekend of indulging in an album from a newly-discovered artist. One Tree Hill gave me Keane, Nada Surf, Jimmy Eat World, Gavin DeGraw, Wakey Wakey, Kate Voegele and so many more. Sometimes I look back to the days when we didn't have ipods, or the internet, would I have discovered the music I have, would I have owed so much to songs as I do, would I have grown up depending heavily on it? Or would I have carried on with my McCain stance of loving a song for its fuzzy exterior? I don't know. But I'd like to think I would have still loved it as much, no matter how.

So I go back: What makes a great song? It's when you hear it, either for the first or the thousandth time, and everything around you just falls apart so nothing in the world exists but just you and the words that make that moment worth staying alive for. Even if it's just for a moment, even when you press stop, the sorrow resurfaces and you're back to being terrified. What matters is you had that moment, of clarity, of tranquility, of assurance that this world is not so much a bad place.

I have not had an iPod for 5(?) months now. I have also not had the chance to download and restore my music library. There was a night when I had to get up at 1 am in the morning to turn my room over to try and find that iPod, which never turned itself in, and which rendered me sleepless that night. I needed my music so much that when a taxi radio played U2's With or Without you the next night as I was pulling in to the door of my building, I almost didn't wanna get out. Speaking of U2, I once walked the stretch of Ayala Ave. in Makati aimlessly with only 'Beautiful day' to assure me that I was not lost. And that I'll probably find my way back.

Last weekend, I began the work of downloading. By Saturday I had almost 10 albums and 30 songs of variety. I woke up Sunday morning doing nothing until sunset but lay in bed and listen. I just kept still, and immersed as if I was meeting a special friend for the first time and rediscovering things about myself in the process.

It was a great day. They were great songs, and they tell me that this is probably a great life.

All thanks to the game: An Azkal afterthought.

2011-03-31T06:48:00.000-07:00

The Philippines settled for a scoreless draw against Palestine March 23, putting them in a dangerous albeit dramatic situation of a no-more-tomorrow challenge to beat Bangladesh in the next 2 days.

At that time, the National team has already survived 2 devastating earth quakes, and weathered a stressful game that took Phil Younghusband, their prized striker, away from them in the most important playoffs of their lives yet. A day before the match, veteran Yanti Barsales was battered down, goalkeeper Neil Etheridge was having digestive issues, and Rob Gier had flown out of Rangoon into Britain to his pregnant's wife aid. Not only did they have to win, they have to win over a team fresh from a rout victory over Myanmar- a squad they were only able to draw 1-1 at the start of the group round. The pressure was on and the circumstances were not helping.

All of this the nation is only seeing through Twitter updates from the team and the media contingent who were allowed in to Burma. The Azkals had to almost literally rely on just themselves to go through the final hurdle.

The Bengal Tigers were in it to win it. They matched the Azkals in attempts in the first half, some proved to be quite a scare but the Fulham reserve stayed formidable in front of the net; each save a defeaning 'NO!' for the Bangladesh offense. Four days before that, Neil Etheridge posted on his facebook page he was "still hurting" for conceding the last-minute goal from Myanmar that robbed them of 3 win points, that could've given them a much-needed advantage over the other 3 teams in their group.

At the Aung San Stadium, though, Etheridge looked determined to not make the same mistake again.

For 90 minutes, he didn't. He kept a pristine sheet, while his team mates tear the pitch apart for a 3-nil trashing en route to history. From bottom 8 to top 8 of the 2012 AFC Challenge Cup.

The Azkals kept going to James Younghusband in the first half. Even Etheridge was trying to spare them the work by kicking the ball from the goal all the way to front yard to James. Playing without Phil, James has become their golden boy. The Chelsea-bred striker was the clear choice, but when newbie Angel Guirado saw an opening, it was for Ian Araneta to hit home.

Sgt. Araneta, the Azkal veteran, broke his 11-game silence with a 1st goal loud enough for the Philippine Twitter land to hear. In the game's 41st minute - within those seconds, Filipino sport fans converted their loud cheers into tweets that brought a virtual stadium down.

Ian's shot wasn't textbook perfect. But for what it meant to the All-Filipino Air Force hitman, who have been with the Azkals since day 1, and to the million supporters who were dying to take over the driver's seat in a do-or-die duel, it was no more than we could ever ask for. To Ian Araneta be the glory.

Their confidence up, and the odds in their favor, the Azkals were on a roll. Two minutes after the 1st goal, James had his eyes on Ian, who was poised for a back-to-back. But the Bengal goalie wouldn't allow an embarrassment; met Ian and stopped a meltdown.

Unfortunately for them, Angel Aldeguer-Guirado was just heating up and he wasn't looking to settle for a 1-0. Araneta returned the favor and fed Guirado the ball, who then - with all his might - headed it like a dagger straight into the net and into the Bangladesh heart. The two defenders who joined the goalkeeper at the post were caught flat-footed and stunned by the lightning that jolted an entire nation.

35 minutes to go, the Philippines had fashioned a 2-point cushion, and had dominated the Twitter trending topic list. Angel Guirado on an upper spot, Ian Araneta below him, and - this not confirmed to be Azkal related but I'm pretty sure - "Great Header" just spots down.

The future was looking ultra bright. By this time, Twitter has been flooded with different versions of Guirado-adoring tweets, and right then and there, the Philippines has found its new Angel.

And it wasn't looking to stop soon. At the 63rd minute, Guirado released a header, his eyes on Yanti, which, despite a slightly aching body, he translated into a bicycle kick that could've been monumental if it wasn't for an offside infringement. Still, the stadium has become an Azkal land, and they were giants stomping on Bangladesh, who were staring to look little.

Around the 70th minute, the Azkal offense found James Younghusband all alone upfront, the Bengali goalie all his to attack. James looked like he hesitated and ended up fumbling the ball over to Anton del Rosario at the side, but by then the Bengal defense was full-force and the Kaya defender had no other choice but to just wing an unproductive shot.

The clock ticking away; all hopes fading for Bangladesh, their dreams barely breathing which at the 80th minute, Guirado ruthlessly killed with a roller. Philippines: 3-0.

Every fan "watching" the game through Twitter was ready to hug their computers, or the person next to them. It was one of those moment I just wanted to stand up, sing the National Anthem, and run around with the flag crying.

The minute I saw the PFF's tweet "FULLTIME," I was ready to die, and so were everybody who had it in their hearts to see the Azkals succeed.

In that extraordinary moment, though separated by miles, and shut off from communication, the country has never been more one.

And now we are onto the World Cup Qualifiers, an aspiration that we wouldn't even have thought to consider. As hard and ambitious it may be, now the country has actual hope to reach such immense international platform, that hope actually justified.

The World Cup is actually a possibility, and we all have reasons to believe again, all thanks to the game.

Paper Heart

2011-02-16T09:58:00.001-08:00

I've never gotten to celebrate Valentine's day. Never had a date, never had presents, never had letters. Through the years, it's gotten so much easier to see through the next box in the calendar. But it never felt like I was missing something, it always just seemed like I was saving it for something better.

Last week, in front of the whole family, my mom dressed me down for being single. One by one, each one in the family gave their complimentary "You should really get a boyfriend now" litany. They said I was old enough. They said it was time.

Like love has a "time." You can be 10 years old and meet the love of your life at a playground, or 95 at your deathbed. You don't age and suddenly reach a stage where you are biologically required to fall in love. There's no telling when your heart needs it - when it needs it, it will have it. You don't go off running to fall into someone's trap; you just stand there, and you fall.

And the heart serves alternative functions meanwhile. You learn to love food, you learn to breathe to see the next Harry Potter film, you fall in love with the boy in your book, or the voice behind a favorite song, or an everyday routine at work, or a perfect picture of people you love. You learn to do all things in the meantime, as there is no harm in occupying all the space in your heart, because when the right person comes by, the heart is gonna know, and it's gonna give way.

That's why I've never understood the pressure of getting a boyfriend. You don't just wake up one day and decide to "get" a boy. People make it sound like a purchase. It's an emotional investment and I like quality, something my fortune's worth. Because if I'm really gonna spend, I'm really gonna spend. What is so wrong in making sure I get my fair end of the bargain.

I like being single, but I'm guessing it must feel a whole lot of nicer to find someone you can make a Beatles song reference to. Someone who you can put on speed dial. Someone who just proves to you the butterflies are real. I'd like to fall someday. And I even welcome the idea of one day maybe have my heart broken, and get my fair share of crashburn, cry-all-night, break up torture - I'm not scared of the pain, in the end, we all get hurt anyway. But if I cry, I want it to have been for something real, something totally monumental I wouldn't have minded losing it because having it once is already a gift in itself. If I love, and lose, I want it to have been a truthful experience. Not because I just wanted a boyfriend.

Relationships are so transitory nowadays. But I believe that when something is brewed just right, it'll end up just right. And that is something I am perfectly fine to be waiting - no matter how long - for.

Compared to finding the perfect piece of a half rigged heart that intricately fit the other half of yours, what is a bit of time?

Shuffle

2011-02-01T05:23:00.000-08:00

I just wanna check if I'm able to keep my ipod "recognizable."

1. Letter Song - Tyler Hilton
2. Move Along - All American Rejects
3. Deeper Well - Nada Surf
4. Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off - Panic! At the Disco.
5. Wordplay - Jason Mraz
6. Christmas Lights - Daphne loves Derby
7. Gravity - Sara Bareilles
8. Must get out - Maroon 5
9. The good kind - The Wreckers
10. Never knowing how or why - The Boxer Rebellion

Can I be honest? I can't place #3. It's a Nada Surf, I'm ashamed of me.

Crushes

2011-01-15T02:18:00.000-08:00

They're definitely not just for kids. They're for everyone; you can never be too old to have a crush. That flutter in the stomach for a gesture that has absolutely no meaning but one that consumes your entire brain trying to analyze? That's a whole sleep lost we deserve to suffer from.

Even the ridiculous ones. Even the one I had on Aidan Grimshaw where I traveled to London just to chance upon maybe meeting him strutting along Oxford Circus. Of course he wasn't the reason why I went there, but he was the first thing that came to mind when I found out I will.

Or if it's as near a person as Chester Taylor when I was a freshman in UST, where I even preserved his number (which I got from a reliable source I tell ya) on my phone thinking maybe someday, I'll have the guts to use it.

Or if it's the real crushes you get as with DJ Caro, my P.E mate in Basketball whom I went nuts for just by the sight of.

Yes I'm name dropping, because I'm brave. Because I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. Whether they're unrequited or just totally improbable - like my undying love for James Lafferty (yes I still think I have a shot with Aidan) or my newly-developed infatuation for Andrew Garfield, who, I might say, is up on the top of my list to be my next wallpaper.

Only other guys who have made it there on my virtual wall were Kobe Bryant, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lee Dewyze. But Spiderman is just going to have to hang in there a little while longer because Neil Etheridge is definitely my favorite next pin-up boy.

Silly things like these, they divert thoughts of work to some kind of a storage folder while you bliss in 10 wonderful minutes of just spacing off and thinking about your wedding. Of course it's so much better when your work has to do with thinking about these crushes. And getting through to those crushes; incidents that are just most deserving of a screengrab, and tantamount to a blog post. Like this one.

I'm writing this because I haven't eaten a thing since last night but for the first time in a very long time, I don't care. My stomach is full of butterflies.

Also I'm writing this because days ago, a boy's name came up in some conversations, and I can't believe up until that time, I have not lay a thought on him.

All because I'm busy with the awesomeness of getting to watch Jesse Williams every Thursday night, or staying up on Twitter all day, looking out for Etheridge's next tweet. Which, in turn, gives me a feeling so much nicer than any other feeling being in love with somebody who's too full of himself to give a crap ever gave me.

I'm writing this because I have finally come into the conclusion that there are so many other guys out there, and that he falls way desperately out of that league. Or, as I'm realizing, any other league.

So I think when I say, this time, that I have finally moved on, people ought to believe me.

I have my wallpaper, and my heart devoid of his name, to show for it.

All hail 2011

2011-01-01T00:03:00.000-08:00

Finally, misery year is over and I can finally say 'To hell with you 2010, I beat your ass.'

By some streak of luck, I managed to get out of that hell year alive, and well, kicking. There are some things I learned that I'm either gonna leave behind or take away with me. The leave-behinds are well out and done, and I eventually just tired out of talking about them (as I'm sure those who'd been hearing it did as well) so I want to move on to the ones I'll carry over to the next year.

First, the light one, but never to be underestimated: The power of Music. They say the words which no other person can, and fill some terribly empty space where no other can even go. Bands to thank this year: Wakey! Wakey! and Keane. "I know you wanna stay in bed, but there's light outside." Of course this year, I finally got on riding with the Beatle (band) wagon, and let's just say that without "Hey Jude" I've probably jumped into the MRT rail and be dead by now. (I'm dead serious.) So this year, my iPod is some prized (or is it priced, i never really mastered the difference) possession.

Second, also light, but also very powerful: My Books. Lee Fiora, Miles Halter, Esther Greenwood and all of them fictional characters who served as my Loony Ward and actually managed to make me feel I was not crazy. Not even close. You abandon these books sometimes and yet when it comes to times of crisis, you come running back to those shelves, desperate for some company. And company, I got. However sad and loner-ish that sounds, I'm proud to say I got myself new best friends this year, residing and preserved forever in the pages that once came alive and gave me home.

Next, I think I'm probably going to be more social this year. Granted the process of getting there would be very awkward and painful but I'm determined to live that "version" of a full life. It won't mean I'll be partying, relax you guyz. I just mean maybe it's time to choose dinner dates or coffee dates over FRIENDS marathon from time to time (note: 'from time to time'. You can never totally leave FRIENDS behind.) Working at a large company for almost two months now has highlighted the severity of my being an exclusive freak; exclusive freak - a disorder by which a person feels the critical need to keep things she holds special all to herself and to the ones close to her. To put it simply: when it comes to people horizon, I very much need to broaden it.

Next next, a very light one I probably won't take seriously thus would never take effect: Watch my diet. I'm thin, I am, but my tummy has grown so big it's gotten so out of control and I've thrown out a lot of my favorite clothes because they don't fit me anymore. In the past week, I've received three gifts from three special people which I gave back/exchanged because there was no way I would be seen wearing a skimpy shirt looking like a knocked up bimbo. That's how bad it is.

Next next next, life is really just so freaking funny sometimes. Five months ago, I was in total, utter depression, so terminal I had to write "positive" things in a notebook just so I'd have something to read the next morning or else I'll lose it. And then something happened, and I'm writing this now with a heart lightest than I've ever had it, and there's not even a boy involved, just life, and the parts of it I was given.

Next next next next, maybe this year I can include love (yes the cheesy stuff) in my dreams, too. For so long it has been just about work and career, now that I've found peace, as my boss puts is, "at home", maybe now there's a place for lurve (and other drugs.)

Last, I need to work on my faith.

Last last, I have now taken it upon myself to make my family work, in the best way it ever did. Among all my other goals, that's probably on the top, but one I've been carelessly neglecting. Maybe 2011 will finally be the difference.

2011, you got my ass? I hope you do, and save it, if ever, too.

Five fictional characters I can identify with

2010-12-12T05:54:00.000-08:00

1. Peyton Sawyer (One Tree Hill)

Her passion. Her head that almost completely fills up with dark thoughts; some twisty stuff that gets you mad. Yet in all of it, she shines through with art, with love and with friends. I wish I can be half the person she is; maybe nobody is cos she’s freaking fictional. But her depression, her sadness, and the way she feels that life is a big joke sometimes - - that’s me, and I’m only starting to learn how to get through with the same headstrong passion she battled her fears with. How she braved to change the world by putting up her own record label, by telling the man she loves that she freaking loves him. I’m trying to be as successful with my fight. I’ll do it with her words and music. God I love her.

2. Ted Mosby (How I met your Mother)

Hopeful and trusting. His faith in destiny, and in the good of people that turns out to be a backstab sometimes. His unwavering belief that someone here is meant for him, and that he will find her no matter what. That he doesn’t have to play by the rules and tricks of dating because when two people fit, they just do. I love that.

3. Lee Fiora (Prep)

Realistically, she’s the one I can relate to best, but she’s also the one I wanna get away from. Truth hurts sometimes. She’s growing up tormented by her own imperfections, feeling like the world is always out to get her, and there’s just nobody there to tell her otherwise. This sinking feeling of being alone all the time, the painful, glaring reality that she isn’t special and she’s never going to be. But yet she tries, and tries to convince herself she doesn’t need to change because that would just be another failure on her end. I am Lee Fiora, but I’m trying not to be.

4. Julie Baker (Flipped)

When I fall in love, I really fall in love. I put the boy on the pedestal, I look at him like I’m wearing star-filled glasses that everyday with him in it becomes sunshine delight. Otherwise what’s the point of being in love? It goes for other things too, she falls in love with a Sycamore Tree, she falls in love with chickens and eggs, and they become something else - something deeply special. That’s love, true love.

5. Liz Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)

I actually fell asleep on the movie. And I share the sentiment with a lot of people that Liz doesn’t know how to count her blessings. That she was way in over head to think the doors shut off on her face when actually, it was her who walked away. But I relate to her because when you lose yourself, it’s madness, and a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do to find it. She was brave enough to leave her whole life in search of the perhaps, and honestly, I was just too jealous I wouldn’t ever have the guts to do what she did. I want to, but I can’t. Good for her.

Passion

2010-12-10T07:30:00.000-08:00

Days ago, I was tweeted by one of my boss, asking me to sign in to this website and vote for her favorite Korean singers/bands. Seeing that it was my boss, I was kind of "under orders" to, but seeing that it takes just about 3 seconds to do so, I didn't really mind. More importantly, I didn't mind because if I were to ask people sign for an online "Bring Leyton back in OTH" petition, I would really appreciate it if not only would they be okay in doing it, that they wouldn't mind as well.

There's a mirror in people that makes it probable for everyone to respect the other. For me, that's passion. I love everyone who has it and I loathe anyone that doesn't. That's why even if one of my best friends constantly blab about cars and robots all the freaking time, and one of them talks about India and I pretend to keep interest, they have my respect. Because in the pool of a million blah people, sadly some of them resides near my spectrum, a buzz of passion is most welcome.

I don't care if your ultimate goal is to decode the world's lengthiest CMS text, or if you go 24 hours without shutting up about Anarchy in the world, and even if you dedicate your whole life to collecting Edward Cullen memento, I would respect you, because there's nothing sadder in this life than to live it without so much an ounce of passion.

I grew up being passionate about certain things at certain times, some were short-lived, some have stayed with me from kindergarten to now, some I cringe about, some I'm proud of, but if I die, and if someone were to write my Obituary, he will have a lot of material because 0f all the things I didn't have, I had passion.

So if you talk to me and rave about the one thing I hate but sound passionate about it, I will guarantee you I will listen. I'd probably be shouting "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP" in my mind, but you'd be able to keep a record that will last for as long as you hold the heat. And as long as you remain the person whose eyes light up, and whose heartbeat increase dangerously faster by the mention of that one thing you hold ever so dearly, you remain the person whose life mattered.

It explains my addiction for Singing Contests. Everytime there's a soundbite of someone saying how they waited their whole life to be given the chance to do what they absolutely wanted to do, and how their world would fall apart if they come short, I relate too much that I could feel myself cry. I get the passion they dreamt their dreams with, and for that, I can identify. Plus, I love music. But still, I like America's Next Top Model for the same thing even if I absolutely have no inkling towards modelling. I love it because it says a lot about how this life is too short not to risk breaking your heart for that ultimate chance to make it complete.

I have a cousin who draw like she was born just to draw. Unfortunately, no matter how she tried to, her mom could only send her to an IT school. This is a girl who didn't have the choice to follow her heart even if the directions were blazing, but she keeps a drawing pad and would take out her pencils everytime she sees anything that was worthy of drawing. And she keeps her dreams alive just by keeping that pad, so even if she becomes an IT person and hate the world of it, she will forever keep that spark.

Months ago when I was looking for a job, everyone kept telling me to work somewhere else, some place where there's money, some place where I'm absolutely sure to excel in, and I kept explaining myself along the lines of "No I'm chasing my dream." Not everyone got it, most of them just found it laughable, some blamed me for being picky, some said I was too idealistic. It was a hard time, the hardest time actually, but I kept going because those people were the kind of people who didn't know one thing about having passion, about finding what you love doing, and wading through hell just to be able to do it. I wasn't about to start listening to them, because in my world, they don't exist.

I'm blogging this because I've gotten a lot of crap and watched people take crap from people for being passionate about something, and I watched people stop being so engrossed because they wanted to fit in. They wanted it most not to stick out in an otherwise flat, boring, mediocre world of these people who spend their waking mornings having no kind of passion at all. Like it was a duty to love something, like it was such a crime to commit yourself to something that bad it makes you crazy sometimes.

I've had dozen of conversations consisting of the most awkward silences ever because the other end offered nothing but the most stupid, dumbest responses ever uttered in mankind.

I mean come one, do you even fucking care about something?

Please care. About anything, about anyone. And when you do, make sure you're its biggest fan, because even if you're not, the fact that you are trying to makes you matter. It means you count. It makes you visible, it makes your mark.

It makes your Obituary colorful and so brilliant your mourners would be confused whether to laugh or cry. And it would be the best funeral ever.

Make your death count. Make this lifetime be worth something.

Rundown

2010-11-28T04:04:00.000-08:00

First, and most importantly, I can say I'm finally happy. Like all that months of misery suddenly just became a blur, a distant past, a feeling I could no longer remember because my heart has ran out of room for it. And thus my long absence here, you can never really write happiness. The past weeks, I've not been bugged by the need to go here and share because I worried that what I had would be de-valued if I wrote it, like I didn't want anyone knowing, like I didn't want anyone having access to it, like I wanted it exclusively mine.

Thanks are in order, though. This can be largely cited to my new job. Last week when my boss asked me if I had non-negotiables in work, I told him, "I wanted this too much too long to have non-negotiables." And I meant every single word of it. From the day he interviewed me up until now, I've worn my heart on my sleeve. It might've been terribly broken then, but I'm slowly having it mended. That's why when I learned my almost-a-month salary would be delayed for next payday, I didn't really mind. I was just too happy to be there, to be doing what I'm doing, and to get paid for it is mostly just so I could eat and commute everyday to work. What I've gotten was fresh air, "like I was drowning and it saved me."

You have to know me, you have to have been there to really understand how much my life had changed in a matter of the words "you're hired", where everything about those phrase seemed just absolutely right, and in place. And as I said before, finally, my life is on track.

***

On a more specific, less-dramatic note, what happened since then were:

1. I've fan-girled over Broadcast Journalists A LOT. So much I could be mistaken for a psycho stalker who can be capable of pulling off the world's most bizarre stalker display of fandom.

2. I've been learning A LOT. On bad grammar, bad composition, bad editorial judgment, dangerously slow buffering of brain in times of newsroom urgency, sucky tech skills (which has a lot do with my job), and the likes. Some of which, I've been learning the hard way, but there's nothing really new with craft-related heartbreak because I've waded through a whole pit of it since college. But it's the good kind of pain, the kind I like, the kind that is welcome, the kind that renders me unable to sleep at night thinking of ways to get better, which is also the kind of insomnia I crave for. Simply put, I'm beginning to have the old me back.

3. I went to Baguio. With two of my best friends, Apple and Angelique. We basically just drove 6 hours and back, did Manila things only in a cooler weather, and nicer people, but I've always held Baguio dear in my heart, so I guess there lies the difference. After all, they say it's always the thought that counts. Plus, I was finally able to buy that The Catcher in the Rye shirt. Apple and Jicky bought one for themselves too, so they owe me that.

4. My food baby has gotten so out of control. I look like I'm freaking pregnant and all I can wear are loose-on-the-tummy shirts. And I don't want to cut back on my eating, and I'm too lazy to do push-ups as many have recommended, so I'm kind of on the doom of how to deal with this pseudo weight problem. But it doesn't really bother me that much. Heh.

5. My holiday season will remain cold, that's all I could say. Haha. You think a big company would offer an array of possibilities, but the closest I've come so far was this one guy I saw around the newsroom whom nobody knows and whom Apple have called as someone who looked like he hasn't taken a bath in a while. Plus my Lee Dewyze of the season (formerly David Cook, Matt Giraud, Ollie Murs), Aiden Grimshaw got booted out of the X Factor, so I've been boy-less in every possible angle. Thank God for TV shows and hot stars it comes with. And thank God for Rupert Grint in the latest Harry Potter movie. Which brings me to...

5. Harry Potter. I was finally able to see it. It just makes me sad to see the magic has disappeared significantly from the past films. It's all been just dark twisty stuff, and although that's what was really on the book, I guess I miss the flashy, wondrous magic I grew up with since the Philosopher's stone. And I still can't believe they took a swing at Twilight, they should've just let it go, if you ask me. I re-watched the first 6 films, and every time, I am left in awe at the genius that J.K Rowling is. She will forever be my hero. Harry Potter is just this humongous metaphor of life, and you couldn't ask for a better way to say it than with spells and portkeys. I actually dread the 2nd and last part of the finale - I can't believe we're done with it. I better save up to buy the books soon and re-read them.

6. Books. I have so many that I'm still yet to read. Some of them are: The Little Prince, Love Stargirl, It's kind of a funny story and Franny and Zooey. I'm a quarter into Jane Eyre and I haven't been able to get back into it. When I go home at night, FRIENDS is always just the better option in bed.

7. Friends. The Jeep will be having a costume party for Cristmas! Theme: TV/Movie character. I've been thinking of going as Rachel Berry, but it would mean more to me if I can go as Peyton Sawyer, although they might see it lazy on my part since the Peyton look I'm thinking of going for is her classic plaid/chuck get-up, which is also basically my look. Or I could go as Robin Scherbatsky but I ain't got no knee-high boots. Or maybe I could go as Jamie Sullivan.

8. Christmas. It's nearing, and however bad things have been in my family, we still try hard to make it merry for some of us. If all else fails, there is always the food. Food never fails.

***

That, among other mundane things, is, for the most part, the rundown of this last month. Nothing special really, just a girl who's trying to live and be happy, and taking it day-by-day.

Stevenage hey ho

2010-10-29T05:32:00.000-07:00

I flew for London Thursday morning. Finally. But not without complications. The Ticket money my mom sent was delayed so my relatives pitched in shares to make up the whole fare, but all the transfer centers were closed before my travel agent can even withdraw it. Fortunately, my mom and my travel agent has had a long working - and sometimes, personal - relationship, so she just payed for it herself in the meantime. I got the ticket at 8 pm Wednesday, so I had to beg my friend DJ to hang out with me at UST until then. Bribed him, actually, with Twister Fries.

My GMA boss knows I'm here in the UK. I told him while I was there last Wednesday, as he was rushing off somewhere and I figured it was the best time to tell him without getting sticky inquiries about it. It worked, fuckin genius. It's kindov became official, at last: that I will now work for GMA. I'm blogging this in the risk of jinxing it (again). But they're already expecting me Monday, so that's that.

Plane Rides** Hmm. The best thing about travelling is the people-watching you get to do at the Airport. Especially at stop-overs and the lounges look like freaking United Nations Assembly. And oh btw, Qatar Airways isn't that bad. The food is actually good. They have a selection of salads, pastas and pastries on the side, and their main course always comes with rice. Which is perfect. My only complain is their TV selection. The TV guide listed a lot of programs but all I got were 5 episodes each of How I met your Mother, The Big Bang Theory and Friends. And all of those, I've watched in the last week. AND. Plane movies are supposed to be of wide range, that's what I loved about plane rides to London the most, that I get to watch a lot of new movies, sometimes even those not shown in the Ph yet. I expected to watch the Social Network - and all they had was fuckin Eclipse. Which wasn't bad, I thought, since I wasn't paying for it and I had 14 hours to burn, why not, right? But I couldn't get through it. I changed the channel at the scene where Jacob was telling Bella about imprinting on someone (which in normal people language means falling in love.) Sorry you Twilight fans, but that's just ukgrh. They're attempting to create magic out of the words and concepts they use, but it just came off really pretentious. And in an obvious way. But they got one thing right, doesn't Jacob Black own a t-shirt? But the silver lining was - they had Grown Ups. Starring Adam Sandler. Right on the Money.

I shared the Doha-London ride with 2 foreign guys. My first guess was that they're French since their English had that exotic-nonenglish-twang, but they lined up for the Non-Eu passports queue with me. It looked like they went backpacking, maybe they still are, and their next stop is London. The cute guy was singing Taylor Swift's You belong with me, trying to prove to her newfound British friend (they met only at the Doha Airport) that he can speak good English. I eavesdropped on their conversation and found out, cute foreign guy was on a h0ok-up world tour. He was going through the list of all the girls he 'got on' with, and said the best girl, 'definitely', was China girl. He pronounced it like Chee-Na. Go Asian, right? And for all the time I was on listening range from them, they kept talking about the girls they met along the way. It made me think of Cha and how she would've loved to be in that list. Because they're both so mercilessly hot, and if I only had that kind of guts, I would've went for it just like the British girl they were all over at the airport. Imagine 7 long hours above the clouds with them - especially the China boy, the 'above the clouds' part would've turned so literal.

I arrived at Heathrow around 10 pm. My mom was already there, with, guess this - BACON WRAPS. Bacon freaking wraps to welcome me. I'm telling you, my mom, for all the things she's clueless at, that, she got perfectly. We took the Picadilly Line to Southgate, where Nigel (my stepdad) picked us up. It's 13 degrees here, so it's really not that bad. And from that sweltering, suicidial summer in Manila, this is a very welcome change.

My mom went to work for an early shift, but she should be getting home soon. Because it's such a 'nice weather' (meaning, it's not raining BOOYEAH), she suggested we visit University of Hertfordshire and ask around for my application. Which, I remember, I've not completed yet.

So I'm just lazying around here at home, cooking Bacons, putting Butter and Cheese on everything I could get my hands on, feasting on the open bottle of Nutella, and catching up on some X Factor, and admiring my sister's newly-renovated room. When I was here last, there was leakage in the water pipes abover her roof, so they got it fixed off of the Insurance. And the clever person that my Mom is, she ripped some of the wallpaper apart so the insurance people would think the leakage caused it, and therefore, replace it. And because my mom's friends were getting rid of some things like beds, and tables and cabinets, they gave it away for my sister's new room, and add that to the OC clean-up my mom did with it, it now looks immaculately tidy. And I just can't stop lingering around. Plus she left her closet with a lot of her clothes still in them -- bad decision. I'm gonna return with lots new stuff, I can't even!

I will be flying to Dundee on Sunday to visit her, because my mom thought it was pointless for me to go here and not see my sister. AS IF WE'D DIE IF WE DIDN'T SEE EACH OTHER. But my sister sounded sincere about me coming over so I guess, that's a good thing.

My itinerary's kinda hectic, especially with a Fred Perry-hunt I have to go on to for Dharel, because my Mom has heard about him quite a lot and I guess, likes him because she's willing to look for it wherever. And with only 6 days here, I won't forgive myself if I spend so much a half day here at home, where the only evidence of being in the UK is that even with a jacket, it's still cold. Everything is basically like I never left home. I'm watching House here on the cable, btw, as if I've not had enough House Marathon, and don't even get me started on Friends. And I really have to go out since my only memory of this trip would just be from my mind because surprise surprise, I forgot my camera. With everything I've been through, I kindof need this 1-week stay to count, and matter like it never did before. So I better spend my time wisely.

Which reminds me, it's now nearly 2 in the afternoon and I have not taken a shower yet. But here: greetings from our sala with the stinky me and my trusty Nutella:

Though that hair, I shall cut. Maybe tomorrow. Have a good day, y'all.

Faith restored

2010-10-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

I know, I make the agnostics weep. But I was once given the full scream by my sister when I declared I was agnostic. Because she's the Philosophy major in the family, I couldn't really argue with her when she said, "I didn't know what the feck I was talking about." It's still true what I said though; that if God were here, I'd really like to talk to him in private because I'd like to get to the bottom of my main concern on Earth, explained best by this passage from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre:

Why could I never please? Why was it useless to try to win anyone’s favor? Eliza, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected. Georgiana, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged. Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished, though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory; he called his mother ‘old girl’, too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded wishes; not infrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still ‘her own darling’. I dared commit no fault; I strove to fulfill every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.

Luckily, I think I've successfully applied the rule of attraction the last few days so every positive thought that I sent out to the universe were bounced back to me through positive manifestations. ( Read/or watch: The Secret for more on these rules of attraction meme.)

Here are some of the things that's been slowly restoring my faith the last couple of days:

The Jeep Birthday Tradition, where celebrants are mandated to treat the gang to a round of Red Box. But because this was a double-celebration (me and Jicky's) thus more money for the group, we kind of felt we had to feed them as well. Only Chiara was missing, but her spirit lives on! (Haha) It's rare to gather us all in one place, so this was kind of a milestone.

2.

Free Books. For my birthday, Nachi (How to be bad) and Apol (The little Prince) gave me two of my book-lists as presents for my birthday. They had cute dedications, but I don't have an internet at home, and where I'm doing this, it doesn't have bluetooth. You get the tech complications and whatnots. Plus, I bought myself a Ned Vizzini too, because its old cover was available at FullyBooked gateway and I didn't really want another book with the movie poster on the front.

I'm flying to London this week! The exact date is still on the works. I was supposed to go Thursday night but I can only book one on the morning, which I think, won't do since I still have stuff I need to sort out before I leave. Which leaves me with Friday, or worst, Saturday. I really wanna go ASAP. But I'm better off just "letting it be". I think. I'll be greeting from Stevenage soon! But wish that I get there string-free first. Cos it's all crazy right now.

A new job, which I will reveal the day after I start working there. So it would already mean it's legit and fo shiz, because if there's one universal element that works wonders for me, it's jinxes.

Kthnxbye. And hope that I keep the faith.

Oh you know, I'm just losing my faith in Humanity

2010-10-18T19:45:00.001-07:00

It's become a habit lately for Nachi and I to root back from history where we'd gotten our being agnostic. Why we're not necessarily in love with God, and why, over the years, we've lost our appetite for Religion.

It began at a very young age when I realized I was the only one in my family who didn't have a Father. My mom wasn't there as well, and whenever she came home, there is always this wall that we've continually mounted for the years we've spent apart that's become too high to tear down. And I so badly want to tear it down. But it's not always easy to relearn how to love. If I was a character in Ricky Lee's Para Kay B, where this girl descended down to earth from a place where there's no love, I'd probably be her, shocked by the x-ray vision of her chest through her eyes that revealed, she had no heart.

Growing up, I had to put up with an Aunt who constantly scared me, and I had to live along the current of her mood or patience or else, I'm dead meat. In my 20 years, I've probably ran away from home more than 10 times. Because there is always this vacuum inside our house which never passed up on the opportunity to suck me in, and often, I found myself gasping for air. Very young, I knew, I wasn't one of the lucky ones. I lose important documents, get in trouble for the most mundane things, be humiliated crying in Grade School and my sister will refuse to come to my defense. I joined writing contests and lost them all, I get sick on the days of our Field Trips. On the day I didn't, my mom and I were left behind by the bus while we roam around Megamall clueless of what to do next. This, of course, was the reason why I wasn't always allowed to come to Field Trips. I once spent my recognition day in Grade School home alone, and my yaya had to scrounge around for any relative available to pin me my ribbon. I'd gotten a 3rd honor award, but by then, everyone was more interested with my sister's gold medals in sports, art, and beauty pageants. It was one day during those years when I got slapped (softly) by my aunt when I refused to pray the rosary in bed because, "he never listens anyway."

And then I went to come live with my mom in London. And I just got tired of praying because I knew that nothing will ever be a blessing if I was stuck in London, sulking every waking morning for being too damn unhappy. Nobody understood, they all thought I was just a spoiled kid who wanted things to go her way. But ofcourse I wanted them to fucking go my way, because it never does.

And did I mention? In the wide number of my generation, I was picked to inherit the family disease. I have a heart illness, while every one of my cousins live in perfect health. I don't wish sickness on anyone, not even on the person I loathe the most, but you just don't overlook the fact that as if your life doesn't suck enough, the universe gives you a ticking time bomb inside your chest. (No it's not so serious, I won't die from it - well maybe someday I would - it's just an inconvenience I have to live through for the rest of my sad life.)

By High School, I became happier. I thought I found my niche, and then I decided to fall in love. Which started the long-running streak of insecurity and self-pity and this infinite thought of never being good enough. To say it short: I grew up wading through a chain of defeat and failure. That whenever I succeed at something, it almost always fades out with whatever wrong is going to happen next. And they never wait too long - tragedy, I mean.

I managed through College, because I was already aware that I'm jinxed. That not only was I fated to trip on public places with a dozen other people there to laugh at me, I was also fated to fall short on the bigger things in life. And even if I manage to come through, I had, by then, drained out every bit of emotion until I'm too spent to really celebrate the good thing, because I've already become numb.

I thought that I had my time coming after Graduation. That I'll no longer be categorized into the status quo where I always lose among, and that this was my time to live without strict walls of judgment. But I failed each and every job application until I was just forced to take one that's already there, one that don't necessarily make me happy. During those times, one failure after the other, I visited the church to plead my case. I was bargaining for something; something little that I need to have compared to all the other hundred people who were getting everything they wanted without having to ask.

It's true: Bad things happen to Good people. And it's not an isolated case, because I've spent most of my life watching jerks and bitches get to their pedestal when I'm always tripping through hurdles. And God knows I've worked hard. He should, because otherwise, I have maybe not cried loud enough.

It's gotten to a point where I'm comfortable with being the girl who never gets what she wants; where my name is associated to bad luck, and nobody is ever surprised to see me fail any more. They just feel sorry, because I'm the kind of girl who gets bare and naked vulnerable for the whole world to pick on. And I don't mind, I've grown accustomed to having an audience to my heartbreak story, it's just, it would be nice to be the girl who gets something for once. Not even everything, just anything.

And up until this point, I have not had the break. I'm still the girl who spends her birthday looking pathetic waiting for a call that would never come. The girl who ends her birthday with a terribly aching heart. For as long as I can remember, I've always had to wake up the morning after my birthday, trying to mend the extent the Universe has chosen to break my heart this time.

It's not as if I'm the most oppressed person. But heartbreak is relative. I couldn't just compare my life to a girl who has nothing to eat in Africa, because in life, you get what you get. And whatever we're given with is proportionate to things you can and can't have. I have not asked for too much in my life, I never did, but I've never felt like I was blessed. Most often, I feel forced to settle for whatever's there because after 20 years, it has become the story of my life.

And I'm just really having a hard time believing that there is someone behind all of it, with a glowing robe and a wand waiting for the perfect moment to cast a spell and make my life magical. I know he supposedly carried the cross, and died so we could live, but am I suppose to carry a cross too? Isn't my burden heavy enough for a girl who only ever wanted a tiny hint from life that she, too, is being taken care of by whoever is in charge?

All I know is that if God was to be human for a day, I will make sure he hears it from me, and all I've kept through years are vent out to the one person who actually can do anything about it but haven't.

I haven't given up on faith, i'm just saying, I will kick the next person who will tell me "it's all in the plan." Because that plan sucks. Really, really does.

The Birthday Post

2010-10-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

I have had a very, very hard year. And I don't think a smooth couple of months could recompense for all the heartbreaks that I waded through everyday since March. And all I wanted to do before that was be happy, and I had all these expectations about what my life was going to be by the time I'm 20. And this isn't it.

I have long snapped out of my depression, but I just thought that my happiness goal could make it in time today, so I wouldn't have to wake up on the morning of my birthday feeling totally lacking and empty, which I did. Coupled with a phone call from an estranged cousin who told me I should go by their house, when all of us knows it's not a good idea to drop by considering all the tension around us. But still, I could never cut ties easily and it just breaks my heart to be reminded of all the things wrong in my life on my birthday.

And my mom hasn't called me yet. And I'm having a frustrating time at work, while I wait for my fate to suddenly grow in color or collapse right back to tiny more little pieces. The waiting is the hardest part, indeed, and instead of look forward, I dread the day because I've long been accustomed to having my heart breaking that it's kind of normal for bad things to happen to me. Apparently, that's my deal with the universe.

I'm having spaghetti and Ice Cream for dinner today with the folks at home, and if this were any other day, I wouldn't have cared enough to treat - - but this year, I need all the good vibes I can get. To come home to a dinner-less table and glee-deprived household as my birthday comes to its end after another painstakingly dragging day at the office would just be.........It would be too much.

And I've gone to the bathroom and cried soundless twice this day already, and I haven't even gotten past Lunch, which I decided to ditch because 1.) I have no appetite 2.) I don't like to be greeted over and over again when I'm aching to spend this day being greeted by the only people who could make me happy 3.) I didn't to spoil their happiness with my sourness. They already think I'm weird as it is; I don't need any more bad rep.

So if we could just fast forward please. Because I put the C in Crappy Birthday, and I'm sick of it.

Triggers

2010-10-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

This morning, as with every morning, I battled with my rebel bangs to look even just a little like a bang. I was running late for work, as with every morning, and I was getting every bit desperate. Then I remembered I still have that Bench Wax from a year ago that I lent my cousin. (Plug: It's great, girls, really fixes up your do' for ya.)

I was applying it on my hair when I couldn't resist taking the container up my nose until I've smelled every last bit of the fragrance. Every last bit of last year, when I bought it with my best friend (Karl) because my best friend (Jicky) told me to. Every last bit of 5 months ago, when I'd sulk to the side of the classroom by the podium, fixing my bangs with it like I was doing then, with my friends making fun of my "trying hard to have a bangs", when clearly, my hair just wasn't fit to. Every last bit of my last birthday, when that wax, my Pond's bottle, my Nivea deo spray, my ipod, and my ipod charger were the only things I needed to survive during the hell period of school, when we were barely sleeping, and each time we did, it's usually in Cara's house where you could get every thing you needed anyway. (Ipod charger, included) Basically, every last bit of the life I remember being truly happy.

After that long, the wax still smelled as great. (Plug: the product really lasts through time, guys) But it left a sting on my nose, like suddenly, even my sense couldn't recall the association of smell to happiness. Like they went together, and without the other, it just wasn't the same thing anymore. And it wasn't. I don't remember where and when I read it, but some character in my book, or movie, or series, said that the reason why they say 'you can't lie to yourself' is because your body is hardwired to know the truth, and recognize every inc of lie you make, even silently; silently as smelling hair wax at a bland morning, looking for something that turned out not to be there. Not anymore.

As a result, I came in for work, itching to do something different, go some place else, somewhere that's not here, because obviously, my bench wax doesn't get along with it. I need something that could make that thing smell as great.

But what the fuck do I know? I'm a girl who's basing life on the smell of a hair wax. Really, what the fuck do I know. I don't know anything.

Except for the fact that I can't bring myself to use the wax anymore.

Book List

2010-10-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

I still have a lot unread books from my ~~tower~~ bulging undersized shelf, but as I was browsing through the Barnes and Noble Website, I came upon some that barged itself right in a cozy spot up my book list. Add these to the ones I have been meaning to get since 2006, and I've got myself a whole to-buy section that's so hard to stare at. Mostly because I am poor, and there's always something better to spend my money on, like, you know, Jollibee and McDonald's. But here goes:

1. Raymond Carver: A writer's life by Carol Sklenicka

2. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

3. Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

4. It's kind of a funny story by Ned Vizzini

5. The boyfriend list by E. Lockhart

6. Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

7. Love, Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

8. The Alchemyst: The secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel by Michael Scott

9. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(yeah snicker your little snickers, I haven't read it yet)

10. Franny and Zooey by J.D Salinger

11. The Harry Potter Series by J.K Rowling

(because each and every one of my copy - except the last - is squandered by book theft)

And those ladies and gentlemen are what's keeping me alive. Recently, I was really struck by the latest commercial of Nescafe: Para kanino ka bumabangon? And since then, I've been thrown into this deep pensive, to look for that something(one/place) I really wake up for. It's sad, but as of the moment, this list, my friend, is what I get out of bed for.

I wake up, it's a bad dream, no one on my side, I was fighting, but I just feel too tired to be fighting, guess I'm not the fighting kind

2010-09-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

This is slowly becoming a drag more each day.

Office job really kills the energy, whatever of it I have left. I just sit here, and wait for the series to be up so I can hoard the office internet to download them. I refresh the multitude tabs of the social networks I'm a member of, in dire hope of something to really, truly inspire me. It has been a fruitless quest.

Writing for a Magazine has its perks I surely wouldn't have gotten anywhere else. Firstly, it's not much of a stress. Since Nachi arrived, it has been less boring, I now get someone to infinitely talk of hollywood memes and judge people with someone who really gets it. It's always nice to have more than just a familiar face. So no matter how laughable it gets inside the office, I'm not too much unnerved because we usually just smirk it off and de-stress by discussing feel-good tales, mostly memories of college, and The Jeep anecdotes. Not that it's really heavy -- well for now, at least it's not -- but from where we are at the moment, it's essentially an easy job.

Easy because we've been doing it for the longest time. Hunting for Human Interest stories, going down some place to interview, and bleed off in front of the computer to make an article out of it. It's life as far as we know it. Only now we get to do it without ridiculous side-homeworks from subjects we don't give a rat's ass for: we actually have all day, 5 days a week, to do our stuff. That's like liberty in a bottle, you just open the cap, and drink it all in. Plus, we get paid. How awesome, right?

And truthfully, I'm thankful for this job more than I'm thankful for anything in my life right now. I went through some pretty dark shit months ago, and this job has been more than like the end of the tunnel. It's actually a bit disarming sometimes to wake up every morning and realize that, no, Nami, you are not miserable anymore. Well, really, to not be depressed, because misery is just so much more complicated than being in the state of casual non-sadness.

Best of all, there is a very clear promise of a national byline soon. How soon, that depends on how hard Nachi and I are willing to work (haha) and ofcourse on the company's gamble choices. My cousin once joked me that this would all amount to nothing, because it's a new Magazine, and its genre is not so much mainstream, that maybe after one issue, we'd be laid off. And I just said that I didn't care. At the time, what's important for me was to have something to do, and not be depressed while doing it. So far, so good.

Maybe I'm just built this way. To want what I don't have. To be consistently in desire of something more, or something different. And that's pathetic, but I just can't find comfort in anything that's mine-- because anything I'm involved in is bound to end in the mediocrity bin. So I always beat myself up for things I couldn't do. Oftentimes, it's stories I cannot write. I've definitely grown more secure with my talent over the years-- that's saying I believe that I am a readable writer. That my pieces don't invite a lot of mocking judgments, and pity snickers for being too crappy. Or do they? My point is, I think I'm kinda decent. But this is my blog, I can commit grammatical error and dump shit all over this and it wouldn't be such a big deal because it's my life. And my life is basically just as drab.

But my stories, for publication later this year, or early next-- that is gonna carry my University, my Professors, my company, and most importantly, my career. Everything I will write, people will see, and If I don't do well, I'm committing a suicide. Not saying that we'd incur that immense readership, but this is something very personal, "If I can't be great at it, then I don't wanna do it." But do I have much choice? This is the only job that took me in, and frankly, it's the only one I wanna do now. So all this is up to me, and it's too much pressure. I usually find myself wrapping up stories out of hopelessness because if I linger around it, the more the suckyness shows, and the more depression creeps in. So I just send it out.

And while I wish it won't be torn apart into something totally unrecognizable, I also think that it could use some retouching. But there's this issue shared by the other writers here about the editorial leadership, and it's making me uneasy towards whether humbling down or standing my ground, even if it's just an internal battle. Many of you won't understand this, and might even think we're some sort of egoistic, lowless beginners to be challenging power this way, but when you see me, remind me to tell you the stories in which all of this were based on in the first place. If you're my batch mate, I'm confident you'd understand.

So my struggle? I need help with my writing. Any kind of indirect, implied, applied, mentored, suggested-- basically anything-- help just to hold me down because I'm fluctuating out of sanity. But I'm not getting it professionally, and by my severe insecurity, you probably already know I'm also not getting it personally. I guess what I'm saying is I desperately want to be better at this, and I feel like I'm so far from any of my dreams.

Having a Professor tell you you're not fit for Journalism is another blow to what is already a broken psyche. Maybe I just need some rush, some adrenaline, some energy to bring back what it used to feel to be doing what I'm doing. It's the best natural high because I've felt it at one point, but all of those are foreign to me now. Not even narcotics could take the place.

And there isn't even something to recompense. Books have done that to me quite a few times, but because the novel I'm reading now is boring the wits out of me, I am, again, left alone. But I don't know how to be social, I'm not a stickler to those rules -- befriending, dating, mingling -- I'm usually often confused, and don't know what I'm doing, so most of the time, I'd rather have my face stuffed on paperbacks. Not that I don't like to, trust me, I fuckin love it. But when I get to the page of so much passion, so much love, so much energy, and I just want to dog-ear the hell out of the paper, run around the house and grab somebody I could kiss, and hug, and probably make out with if I'm too damn carried away, but whenever it happens, there is no one there. And I just settle for a tumblr post, or twit, or facebook status, and one time, a creepy Group Message, just so I could have an outlet for firing emotions because if I don't let it out, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

My life is a ball of too many emotions, and there is not much to do about it but curl it up for the future when I can share it with somebody who'd understand. Maybe it's just hormones. Maybe it's because I've had my period for two and a half weeks now, and as my friend once observed, I usually go crazy during my awfully long menstrual phase. Maybe watching John Mayer with my best friends who are so much more of a fan than me will help, maybe I just need those kind of energy be pumped back to me. Music is always a pleasant salvation.

But I kinda need something long term here. I'm thinking of sponsoring a child in World Vision. Never a pet. Maybe getting a boyfriend? Definitely getting a boyfriend, but it's not exactly something you could just get. The universe would have to conspire first and the cosmos would still have to decide first before weaving our fates together and all that, and that just takes too long. I'm getting impatient.

This has been a ridiculously long vent-out, and I still have not started my story, which would be our maiden issue's cover. Imagine the pressure. Thus, this post.

God please help, but in the meantime, Tom Chaplin, thanks heaps.

Not a love letter

2010-09-14T09:10:00.001-07:00

And so again, I write about you. I wouldn't have, if only I haven't been reading books that reminded me so much about you and so much about myself when I fell in love with you.

But I did promise never to write you a letter again, let alone a love letter. And I barely have 5 minutes to do this; else, I'd wake up tomorrow being reminded of all those moments I've poured through the pages of my books, weeping silently for I have known what it must've felt to love hopelessly, and be aware that I knew simply because I once knew you. And for that reason alone, tomorrow, I'm gonna wanna worship you, and build you a statue made out of whatever words I will write here. That's not gonna happen.

Because if people were rain, yes, I was drizzle, but you were never a hurricane.

Although I did send you a message tonight. I'd been meaning to since last night. I ended up sending it to a couple of friends, but it was originally meant for you, wherein I quoted John Green's Miles Halter in one of his internal monologues on death, wherein he had said that he had been irretrievably changed, and wherein I added, "Do anything, but please never die." You didn't reply - why would you? Such a random, creepy text of a former admirer asking you not to die.

But for what it's worth: Please don't. Because I'd made a promise with myself to someday, when I can write better, when I'm wiser, write a novel about you. And I don't ever want to end that non-love story with you dying, and with me moping, more than your loss, over the fact that you had gone too soon and left me not knowing you. We are young, and even though I've said a million times about how I'm no longer in love with you, I would still wanna know you. Because among all the things I do not know, I knew love. May it be considered Young Love - but who are people to say? Because when I read these things: of how many times they question themselves worthy of loving someone else, but never having to question the worthiness of the someone else, it seemed to me I had loved. Whichever of the kind it was, I had, and for that, at least, please don't die.

Besides, all my material comes from you. And that's why even if you were never a hurricane, you were still, and forever will be the event that had "irretrievably changed" me.

And all the poignant sadness, or suffering, or self-destruction that came after found shelter in the fact that there was once you; and that I once had found my "Great Perhaps."

I am 22 minutes past my stopwatch and I must stop writing now. Not because you also left me Perhapsless, but because you didn't even have to die. You just had to be you, and I just had to be me, and if love was rain, we make a very good Alabama Summer.

And for that, you don't deserve 22 minutes, not any more, at least.

* The books mentioned and sporadically quoted and cited were Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep and The Man of my Dreams, and the most recent, John Green's Looking for Alaska.

Book Review: Pacific Rims by Rafe Bartholomew

2010-09-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

Well, kind of.

All along I had called him "Reyf", it seemed more sophisticated, more fitting to a tall, white, blonde man: more American. It turned out he hates being called that, (it's pronounced as Rahf). The players and coaching staff from the Alaska Aces, the club who took him in as some sort of an Insider, had injected an offensive pun. They called him Reyfist. How Filipino.

This is more a testimony of the author than the book. Because frankly, nothing in there surprised me. Well, nothing except the talk-off that ensued between Roe Ellis and Tim Cone during the halftime huddle of an all-important PBA Finals game 6 - - in some level, I guess I knew that the players and coaches are bound to clash at one point, I just didn't expect it to go down as dramatically. I would've loved to see it, but when I think about Tim Cone yelling "Fuck you" and kicking off a board, I scare off and change my mind. Everything about the flip-flops, the weird, albeit mesmerizing, rims, the traces of Basketball in all walks of Filipino life, and most importantly, the phenomenon that is the Ginebra Fandom (and how it really takes you on a cloud nine to be chanting GINEBRA! GINEBRA! even if you were losing), are somewhat old news to every Filipino hoops fan. Rafe's historical account of Philippine Basketball was more an offering to non-Filipinos; we, however, could only nod in recognition.

But still, I found myself squinting in either laugher, amazement, and disgust in the tales, as if I was only encountering these stories for the first time. There's something about an American writing about the most colloquialy Pinoy trademarks that is truly endearing. I can't believe Rafe had stopped at random sari-sari stores and taken part in corner-of-the-street leagues playing three-on-three with sweaty men who probably made fun of him in local dialects every time they get the chance. But Rafe loved all of it - every single bit of it, and because of that, Pacific rims becomes more than just a Basketball Book, it becomes a commentary on the beautiful country that Philippines is, and a reminder that some of us aren't loving it enough.

Halfway through the page, the pessimist in me was leaning into the thought that maybe Rafe was being phony. Countless people have helped him to achieve what would come to be the breakthrough in his career, ofcourse he owed the Philippines hearty praises. But when I got to the chapter when he started defending the Fil-Ams and their westernized swag, he proved to me his sincerity. I, too, find this Fil-Ams a little too airy for comfort, and to have an American defend them sets the point of the book's truth and the author's commendable candor. I also got the sense that when he described the Filipino players' strange fodness for carressing each other's butts, he was creeped out a bit, and that all the more warmed my heart because it meant the Philippine Culture was still very much our own, despite being reviewed as the melting pot of all foreign norms and thus, lacked identity. A dedicated gay heckler whom the players treat as if they didn't know the "ladyboy" lusted them incessantly - that's pure Pinoy for you, and I was kind of proud.

Let me share to you my favorite line from the book. Now this line came in many forms all throughout the pages, Rafe sees to it that this point was clear consistently, but this line, I think, painted the best picture of the immense love for Basketball Rafe said Pinoy had: "The devotion it must have taken to build an entire court from scratch touched me. It was one of the most sincere expressions of love I've ever laid my eyes on."

For a PBA fan, Pacific Rims was the locker-room pass I've always wanted. Granted, I would've much appreciated if it took me that deep into the Ginebra team rather than Alaska, but the Willie Miller anecdotes made up for it. I've always known the Thriller was a clown, I just didn't know it was that much, and for that, and for all the locker room exlusives, I'll forever be thankful for. You, Rafe, had just made a fangirl's dream come true.

It was during the last chapter, when the book got into a play-by-play narrative of Alaska's championship rally, that I found myself really manifesting the love of the game. When I read Fred Uytengsu's pre-game pep talk -- "I take a lot of pride in this organization because we play by the rules; we do it by the book. We're decent human beings. Guys, you are great men. Tonight, you are going to beat the little men." - - I felt a hot sudden surge of air in my nasal area, the one which is usually a pre-emptive when I'm about to cry. Well, I didn't. But I was almost there, and that's exactly what Basketball does to you, even if it was some other team, it was still Basketball, and it could very well move you to tears. I don't exactly remember watching that game, but as a die-hard Ginebra fan who took the Gary Granada lyrics of the 90's Alaska reign over the Gin Kings seriously, as a Tim Cone non-believer and a loyal, often-harassed, follower of Mac Cardona, I was probably on my couch enthusiastically waiting for Alaska to lose. But to be taken back to that moment, in the behind-the-scenes of Alaska's debacle, I almost wished I could've rewind back to that game and cheered for the Aces instead. I felt for them at that moment.

I also knew how the series was going to turn out. But I poured into those chapters feeling like it was all just happening now, gasping over late-game scrambles as if I didn't know Alaska was eventually going to be champions anyway. I guess that explains why Basketball Fans still watch replays with the same mood they watched the real thing with - there's just something about the tipping of the ball, the flight towards the basket, the monumental pauses the ref takes before making the call, and the joy that moves through your entire body if the call favored your team - - that even if you watch it a thousand times over, the magic remains the same.

And that's what made reading Pacific Rims an unforgettable experience; the passion Rafe had for writing the book I share - - definitely not as much, not even close, but still - - the language he'd written this love story in, I understand. And that made me feel the same unexplainable flutter in your heart that Basketball gives you: like you were part of the team, like you belonged. And that to me seemed quite marvelous.

*The last sentence was borrowed from Paulo Coelho's Zahir

My long-running, open-ended plight

2010-09-08T20:05:00.000-07:00

I woke up today particularly hopeful to write just a bit better. Yesterday, I stunk the whole place up with a story I did. I can't even get myself to think about it - - it just reminds me how much I've fooled myself, why I ever thought I could be a writer one day, why I ever considered this kind of life in the first place. Because plainly and simply, I suck.

But yesterday, there was hope. I figured that it might just have been the lack of material, the lack of inspiration (which is, most of the time, the case) or the fact that I haven't been eating good foods lately. Or that I haven't been getting my customary 10 pages a day (I can barely get through 5). So for hopes of some spark to fly by, I pulled out copies of Time Magazine from my office's stack. I've been meaning to get this particular issue for myself, (the first time ever that I'd purchase Time), it was the one with the cover story on Aisha, the Afghan teen who had her nose and ears cut off by the Taliban when she attempted to leave Afghanistan because her in-laws were abusing and maltreating her.

I read Aryn Baker's piece, and not once was I stuck on a complicatedly-stitched sentence. Her words were clear, they were outright, they were simple, but damn, they were intense. And here I am, always trying to puff my words with a whiff of wit - sometimes with the called-for puns - or even drama, because without it, my story screamed of mediocrity. No not even mediocre, it was useless, it was a grueling, catastrophic waste.

Now I know I shouldn't be going off comparing myself to Time (or Newsweek, which I often do) because it would have been such a hilarious, depressing attempt at an otherwise super uneven contest. But this is what I like to do, I like to think in big bubbles, it's the only way I can insert some sense of...well, bigness to my dwarfing career. It's like when some actress think of Julia Roberts when she does scenes, surely, she wouldn't par with one of the most decorated Actress of all-time, but putting herself up to such an immense test would, at best, heighten the lowest she can fall.

I saw at the issue's backpage something of an Asia's Prize Essay writing contest. When I saw that the deadline was August 31, I felt a tinge of sayang!. (For God's sakes, I don't even know how to put this sayang emotion to an english equivalent.) But while I was reading the directions, I felt as though a thousand mocking eyes were at me, whispering to themselves how a lowly, talentless pseudo writer could possibly fathom joining a Time-collaborated Essay contest. I mean, fuck, what was I thinking? I can't even write a decent write-up on a coffee from an animal's shit - - how do I even write "a fresh idea on the key challenges facing Asia that will have an impact on public policy and business in the continent"? Pretty delusional, right?

And in that split-second, warped into the realization of my petty, hopeless dreams, all that I've been about, all that I've worked for - and practically lived and breathed for - came crashing down and pulverized to tiny, sharp, broken pieces. That if I try to put it back together, I will cut, and further injure my already wounded spirit.

And that's exactly what happened today. I woke up this morning absorbing, for the first time in my life, the idea of a 'new beginning.' Out from my bed to the bus going to my office, I've already been writing inkless word on my head, on the faces of passengers next to me, on the bus window that reeks of Manila's congested traffic. And for a while, I felt motivated. I couldn't wait to get my ass in front of the computer and type these words. I had a whole lead on my head. I put it on the screen, and there, greeting my day, staring me bluntly in my bewildered face, was yet, another set of catastrophic mess.

But I wasn't about to let my spirits fall - it was only 9 in the morning! If I can fall down the bell jar at 9, how miserable could I be at 3 in the afternoon? I was determined.

The result? Me, sitting blankly in front of the computer, at 11:47, a dozen tabs of articles open in my browser, and not a single word (not even a single idea) written. Not because I can't (although yes, I very much can't) but because I don't want to. I already know I'm bad - - but to see the physical evidence of it blinking at me, ready to leap out of the screen to punch me, just so I could wake out of this senseless, ridiculous dream of wanting to be a writer, would kill me. It would, literally, put me out.

It's not as if I don't have the material for a good story (which in fact, I don't) - I can have the best material in the world right now. But I can't seem to find it, I don't seem to be able to spot it, or the have the right eye to see it, and even the right mind to understand it - I don't have the sense of a writer. And even when, by some miracle, I do, I doubt that I can even make something out of it. I'd probably end up butchering an otherwise majestic tale.

And the worse part is: I don't know how to do anything else! And frankly, I don't want to do anything else. This is my life - my air, my food, my lover, my heated affair, my best friend, my business partner, my nemesis, but also my rock - this is everything. And to see it flail desperately out of form, I was terrified.

I don't expect you to understand. My mom doesn't even get it. Only my closest friends would know. (Monica, you of all would know, after witnessing my 1-hour walk-out slash breakdown over a low-graded paper, how I'm just about feeling right the fuck now.) But in an effort to explain the immensity by which writing affects me, imagine Mariah Carey, waking up one day, realizing she could no longer belt out what has once been the world's perfect note. Hell, let's not even talk about the pros here. Imagine some of the UAAP's worst (in technical skills, in commercial potential, in mass appeal, in raw talent, and sense of the game) players -- imagine them as young boys, holding a ball and baking themselves every day under the sweltering sun, perfecting what they think is a pretty rad touch, imagine them on the day a College called, recruiting them, imagine them realizing that their dream is finally going to come true. And imagine them today, from the Team's second team, and a multitude of bad press, all of them saying he simply sucks. Imagine him dribbling a ball on a deserted court today, and he can't even make an undefended, well-positioned, timely trey - - and finally realizing it all has been a big, cruel, prolonged joke. Imagine him in that heartbreaking moment - then imagine him in me.

That's what it means to me.

That's how much I am torn to pieces right now.

That's how much I'm screwed. So if you're not me today, right in this moment, and on the moments to come, good for you.

My kids will never go to college (Or I shall never become a writer)

2010-09-06T19:14:00.000-07:00

either that or I should abandon writing and move to the more lucrative Industry like Out-Sourcing (a fancy peasy term for Call Center) just so that by the time I'm married, I have my kids's college money in a trust fund with some still left to spare.

College is so expensive - that I just realized. (I know, I know, what a self-absorbed little brat I have been for not having considered that earlier.) In UST, on tuition alone, my mom spent P240,000. If you add that to all the allowances, the miscellaneous, the excessive foods, and all those days I never unplugged my television, and my laptop, my mom must've had superpowers that could turn leaves into peso bills.

I'm here, sitting in my office - when I should be reading Pacific Rims at the comfort of my own time, I am instead semi-palpitating on the after-thought, this sickening, revolting, after-thought that I've wasted a lot of good money in the past. Money that my mother earns from overworking. God, what a horrible daughter I must've been.

And what a horrible daughter I will be, if I insist on going to Graduate School next year. Four years of College costs just as much as one year of Post-Graduate studies, which, I wasn't surprised, also costs the same as a 5-day training course in the BBC. Yes, it's the BBC, I know. But how much are brands really worth?

They used to say opportunities. They told me that UST on my resume would translate to my dream job (provided that my ~~talent~~ comes at par). Well guess what, it fucking didn't. I've devoted some significant moping time trying to get my head around on the reality that is my non-existent, short-breathed, writing career. Or screw it, maybe I simply just can't write. Maybe I have been under the illusion that I can - maybe I'll accept that. But I know some of the best writers who (those not only touted by me but touted by people whose opinions matter) are also scraping for the dream job - whatever version of that theirs may be. I even know a friend, good writer, well-cultured, and studied Journalism in Wesfuckingleyan (the one in Ohio, not in Cabanatuan) - but even she was overlooked.

Money matters have been a major hold-up in this whole Master's degree thing. But the more that I ingest this screwed-up philosophy over the many tricks of job-grabbing, the more that I'm discouraged to shell off a major part of my family's already shelled-out fortune for an Education that may only come as good as mere bragging rights.

It's not as if I'm asking for the impossible. It's not as if every one of my Journ peers are held into the undergrade. Cos they're not. Have you ever come across a published article and thought, "Damn it, I could do that!", or even, "Mother***** I can do better than that." It's not a very often occasion (because half an hour I spend in Inquirer.net is tantamount to half a week of depression over their writing skills that could trump mine mercilessly - you can imagine my misery if I visit the more up-class online pubs) - but on the ones I do, I could almost cry.

But I can't say I wasn't warned. During my sophomore year, Christian Esguerra, Journalism Instructor and Senior Reporter for the Philippine Daily Inquirer, told the class that the odds were mean. I remember him saying, "only 10 people in this class will get to have a serious career in Journ........if you're lucky." I'll never forget that. In our junior year, Eros Atalia, Arts and Letters Filipino Instructor, Writer, and Author, said that the sun had fallen down on us. We were only a year into Graduation, it was then too late to drop out from the course, he said, was actually a curse. "Anong ginagawa niyo dito? Niloloko niyo lang mga sarili niyo," I can vividly remember his comic self saying, widening up his eyes to reveal a more serious look, trying to psych the class out, who were still smirking to what we thought was just a cruel joke. The worst he said was that we will never be able to pay our parents back, that we will forever remain indebted to them 'till the day we die, which meant that they've wasted their time funding us - which is now a fact, as you may have already noticed by the first sentences of this blog, that turned out to be personally true.

Ofcourse, at that moment, I was too high on my horse to listen. I was passionate, I was hungry, I was so fired up - I thought I could defy statistics. I thought I was "lucky" - and that was just months ago. It took five months for all that fuel to dry up because what remains in me right now is a pseudo-writer imprisoned to a London Grad School fantasy, and the warden of life is just outside my rail, ready to bully me. God what a sucky imagery, no wonder I wasn't hired.

I've made a lot of blogs like this in the past. But all of them ended with me saying that I'd never give up on writing, that this was my life. While that remains true, I am no longer sure. At the moment, I can afford to dream, to still think I could be "lucky", but when push comes to shove, I'll be forced to break up with the one thing that have made my heart flutter. Because it's also the one thing that have torn my heart desperately apart.

But until then, my future kids will have to accept they won't be going to college.

I, too, am willing to go the distance

2010-09-05T06:50:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is a movie review. Well, sort of. In the risk of ruining the gumball that is Drew Barrymore and Justin Long's newest movie, Going the Distance, I'm shooting for the stars to write something of the sentiments that I could no longer contain. And also, there will be spoilers. So be very wary.

First off, I will start with this declaration: It is better than 500 days of Summer. While the very much riveted Deschanel-Levitt Indie film is more to my usual taste, Going the Distance, however managed to arrest me in an immensity much stronger than Tom and Summer's Ikea date.

Which therefore gets me to say that Tom Hansen is no longer my dream boy. He could suck up all The Smiths that he could get, which, by the way, never really approached my music bubble, (yes I'm no fan, Oh I'm very truly sorry) - because Garrett Grant and me will be busy hoarding the pub game machine. Granted, I don't know the game, but still. I share Erin's incessant need to top even her own score, and for a girl who once played on some random guy's mobile word game in a party instead of talk to him (which, I then found out, was decorum) - I'd like a guy who can make me sweat for a run on a Text Twist High Score. It also goes for other games, except NBA Live, because I suck at that.

They didn't even have to try. Erin and Garrett? Nobody fell into the deep, hopeless, pining over the other. One night, after a couple of beer, and a domineering win at some friday night general knowledge quiz, before a Top Gun poster, were two Shawshank suckers; and in the span of a monologue act-out and a humor to let someone play the soundtrack to their hookup, they were caught.

That's comforting to me, kind of, to know that you could still meet a person who, without an effort, fits you. Who, when he says, "That sucked!" after he had just followed you inside the airport, you understand, and know, immediately, what he's talking about and burst out the ever-elusive, relationship-defining, "I know!". Because when, "you know," you really just know.

And how could you ever turn down a guy who's fantasy of death would be to die eating tortellini? Only the dumbest would dump someone, who, in the first place, was willing to answer Q&A probing of your life-altering album and not say, "None." Oh God I hate that.

In the middle of making this post, (I was googling whether it was an album that Erin had asked Garrett for and not a song), I stumbled upon a review who incidentally contrasted mine on-point. It said that the movie wasn't able to live up to the 500 Days hype. As pretty as Zooey was, an introverted, ghostly-pretty Summer would not be able to compare to Erin Lankfurt, editor-hating, Cruise-loving, LOL-ing Erin, promising intern for the New York Sentinel.

After Garrett's stint of the oblivion, non-committing dating life, he found himself saying I love you to a girl he had just met weeks before, and been in a short, long-distance affair with. But when he said I love you, you believed him. You believe that any guy could just as easily transform from a roll-with-the-punches jerkoff to someone who would cross the coast for you, if the girl was ERL-a slob, albeit endearing, girl who just happened to be your Ms. Right. You believe that any two different people, once they'd met, and they were soulmates, would just know, and would just be nothing short of in love.

Another favorite scene is when they watched The Boxer Rebellion, and Garrett made that speech about real talent going down the waste in place of some commercialized Jonas Brother-lookalikes that could make John Lennon weep. Are there any more of those guys left? I'm sure they are, but I seem to be so far off their spectrum, or maybe I'm really just no Erin Lankfurt - but even Erin Lankfurt didn't know she was an Erin Lankfurt. Until Garrett made her feel like she was the girl.

It was sappy, in some way, but the movie had the kind of dialogue that if not happening in real life, made you wish it was happening in real life, because if it did, what a cool world this must be.

They've always told me not to get hooked to movies too much, because I end up dazing to the idea of a well-tooled Happy Ending. But if the movie was Going the Distance, and your leading man was Garrett Grant, who religiously follow your work online even if you were broken up, why is it so wrong to wish that life, was, indeed, like a movie?

Is a boy with a job he hates, and a ragged apartment that comes with a creepy room mate; a boy who gets a fake tan, and a boy who's best mother reference was a life owed to her vagina, too much to ask? Are we really in such scarcity of men? Have we really gone abundant with Jed Mosleys (refer to How I met your Mother Episode: The Wedding Bride)? If so, then trash all The Boxer Rebellion and other genius music alike, put on Iyaz (no offense), wear too much make up, too few clothes, flirt with a beer-chugging, disco-popping, loser, with his shirt collar up, and quote Vanilla Twilight lyrics (again, no offense) as our next day's status of our newly-found affair.

But then again, if it comes to that, I would gladly live alone, with my ipod on.

Because today, my playlist has grown richer thanks to an awesome soundtrack, which takes us full circle to Going the Distance, and the amazingness of a Justin Long-laden screen.

Hopeless Romantic

2010-08-02T07:17:00.000-07:00

I've been contemplating on tearing my old notebook apart, going back and forth the last few days, weighing how much I would probably regret doing so. And then I finally decided to, but convinced myself to take one last peek, confident that whatever I

will read, I will want to throw away. I've been that miserable. But I opened the notebook to this:

Lately, I've been reading too many love letters, and I could almost feel a dagger thrusting through my heart - not because of the lack of someone to write a letter to, but because of the lack of the same beautiful words. I know I could never write the same, because I don't feel the same. ~~That made absolutely zero sense.~~ But hopefully, this doodle can sum up exactly what I'm feeling.

I took the Chic-Lit (Vince's Life: The Wedding) never expecting to put it down. Besides, I had so little to read and so much time to do it. I also didn't want to put it down simply because I wouldn't be able to resist not knowing if Vince - the Edward Cullen of my teeny, boppy Filipino generation - would end up with the love of his life. And so I didn't. I have a huge, pretty detrimental, unhealthy penchant for happy ever afters. The ones where sadness is just a cliche segue to the much coveted perfect ending. I think it's not as bad as most thinks it is. Reading Vince's life, I dazed off to my own literary dream; between the pages and my head were words suddenly materializing as if I had somebody I could write about.
If I had, I think I could laud him that way. I know I could laud him that way. I could, just as this fictional Vince Teves, make the world root for our love, or at least, root myself in the world's behalf just as long as somebody is believing. I have metaphors, I have symbols, I have anecdotes squatting in the better part of my head, rolling in circles, searching for some meaning, because without somebody, the words would've failed. I would've failed. And I don't wanna fail.
The greatest love letters I've ever read was those from people I personally know, those whose love I've witnessed and therefore know that their words truly had meaning. Those whom I know didn't fail.
But I could fail. I could feel the words dying, and what's really sad about it, is that I'm weeping for the loss of my story, when I hadn't even had the person I could share the story with.

I think I'm gonna keep my notebook for a little while longer.

The real-life sitcom

2010-07-31T09:36:00.000-07:00

I've been watching FRIENDS on loop the past months, jumping episodes, shifting seasons, only to find myself back to the series premiere and ready to go through the whole thing again. It's been keeping me sane and I've developed a certain kind of addiction from the habit where I need to hear their voices or else I wouldn't be able to sleep. During the middle of it all, I always continue to wonder the logic behind the series theme song, 'I'll be there for you', and similarly, as the song's happy beat, why the series was so...happy.

If you come to look at it, all six of them should be miserable. Joey is living on a pretense dream, his whole life is made up of a thousand pathetic auditions and nobody has the heart to tell him he's a bad actor. Phobe never went to High School, she went through a very damaging teenage life and will die knowing nothing but touching people's bodies with oil. Chandler will never get out of his suit, and the monotony that comes with it, and also, people don't like him. Monica has a mother that thinks so little of her, and a whole lifetime of proving that she's more than just a fat girl even if it consumed her. Ross have had three divorces before he was 30, and a career that involved talking about a subject that's been dead and extinct and nobody ever cares anymore. Rachel, the girl who knew nothing about life, ironically enough, found herself in the best place among all of them, if the best place is not where you're even friends with your sisters.

My question is, why are they happy? How can you have a job that's a joke, broke, a DOA lovelife, and be happy? How can you feel like it hasn't been your year, and that you've always been on second gear, and be happy? I've enjoyed the show, I did, it's my happy pill, but for a girl who claims she has a personality disorder, the lack of a tragedy just wouldn't suffice. As I said, I need to find a rational explanation to why they have continued to be happy. And then I met my Friends.

Something comes up, like a Booksale, or the premiere of a new movie, or a Chicken-all-you-can promo, and there's not a second of hesitation who to invite. I believe in soulmates, I do, but I also believe that God's destiny person can be anybody - and I'm glad he gave me ten of them. There's a quote from 'Wedding Crashers' which goes, "True love is your soul's recognition of its counterpart on someone else."

And the counterparts are endless. True Love is found on the way we ask somebody for soft copies of a series we both love, or a book the other person have read which the other wants to badly read. True Love is found on the way we borrow each other's ipod, and we're always bound to find at least 10 common favorite songs. True Love is found on our Facebook statuses, where we didn't need to be there to get it. Where our sarcasm goes beyond its function, but nobody is complaining. True Love is found on the way we all don't like to drink, and we all don't like the Party Scene. True Love is found on the way someone keys in a song in Magic sing, and somebody always says, "Hey I was gonna sing that."

There's this storyline in Season 5, when Ross just got his second divorce, was going through a rough, annoying time, and the rest of them shut up about it, supported him when they didn't even like his ex-wife, and they thought he got married too fast. At times, they didn't even like him. I feel like that Ross now. I'm sure that my friends have something to say about my sadness, I'm sure that they all think that some of it borders into foolishness sometimes. But I get that, I would've thought that about myself too. And I know I'm annoying. But somehow, they've managed to go past their opinions - which would've all been valid any other way - and just drag themselves over at my side, shut up, and just as Monica did, cooked me my favorite dinner. Well, not exactly. But there have been lots of good foods, and guilty pleasures like Football (One time, Angelique even let me have a 50-peso Hardbound Candace Bushnell book if only to make me laugh), and even endured my terribly corny jokes. They have all came and pitched in their share of shoulders for me to cry on (even though what we mostly did was laugh, so hysterically, it blows my mind), and never having to ask why.

But they're most likely to be fed up sometimes. But what's really amazing is that, even when they stopped understanding, even when they stopped bothering, they never stopped being there. Someone can rant endlessly that no one would even care to listen anymore, but at the end of the day, when it's all dried out, they're always there, ready to brilliantly mock you and make you laugh again. I guess we also find True Love in that, in the pauses of affection, and moments of disconnection. What we fail to give in the meantime, we give all out in the end. The hatred we feel towards one's annoying quality, or any kind of pain we inflict on each other because we're all so insanely temperamental, or the times we've passed judgments just because we can, and however things seemed bad at the time, is, just the same, a confession of love because at the end of the day, we choose to forgive, we choose to understand, and we choose to overcome the differences, find true love in spite of it, and eventually, find true love because of it.

We've all reached the point where any conflicts that may arise is not considered a criticism of anyone in any way, but instead an acknowledgment that we are different, but yet, we're all the same. We've reached a point where we no longer feel the threat of befriending somebody outside the group, or letting people inside once in a while, or having the group split to sub-groups because it feels more safe that way sometimes. We've reached a level of confidence in our friendship, the kind of level which we're sure to be friends forever - no matter how many times more in the future that someone's bound to hate somebody. I guess, after 4 years, this is kind of it. Whoever we are now, whatever we are now, this is it - this is a product of puberty, hormones, testosterone, insecurity, competition, frustration and flaws that we've managed to overcome to be able to come out as happy, as contented, and as loved as we are now. This is it, whatever The Rembrandts was talking about, this is it. Our season premiere just started rolling.

There's so much more I like to say; like when I'm with them, I never feel inferior, nor superior, or like I never have to explain why I am the way I am nor do I feel the need to shut up when I can't help but do it anyway. Like, how I can just be myself, and belong, even if I'm not from Manila and thus, don't know a thing about the pop trivias the rest of them enjoys discussing. Like how much we all came from different backgrounds, and still ended up living and liking the same life. Like when I visualize my dream apartment in New York, I see Cha, Monica, and Jicky living with me, Nachi, Apol, Sam and Dharel living just across the hall, and Chiara, Candice and Karchelle living just across the street. Like when I visualize my dream coming true, the ones I want standing next to me are the same people who have stood by me when it didn't.

Like, how everytime I watch Friends, I understand why they're happy because I am too, and because they made me.

So much more other things that I need to stay but can't, because I feel like whatever I will write will never come up to par to how truly amazing they are.

But the last thing I'll say is this: when I'm with them, I don't have to ask why I'm happy, I just am.

And that's Friendship. When, as the Rembrandts puts it, even at my worst, I'm at my best with you.
I love you so much, it's retarded, #The Jeep.

Skipping Stone

2010-07-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

"She's more like a skipping stone. I usually hang on for the ride, see where it takes me. But when the stone stops to skip, it begins to sink. And that's where she is, she's sinking."

I randomly clicked a page on Facebook yesterday, and it reminded me of everything that has happened wrong in the past 4 months. Things that I've been really trying hard to get over, things that I'm letting go, things that shouldn't affect me anymore right now, but it did. It still did. I texted my best friend who I knew was going to have a different opinion than the rest. Not that I'm not grateful, I am, but I needed someone who's likely to tell me something different. Because God knows nothing has been working for me lately. He told me that it was a phase, and I shouldn't rush it, that it was gonna go away. We recalled about the time I'd started college. I quit the Choir, I'd failed the Flame exams, I still didn't have any real friends, I had a conflicting schedule with my roommate - the one person from home I had constantly with me - and every morning before I wait and go to class, I would just lie inside my little dorm room and drown in my own sweat and bitterness. I remember wanting to desperately go home every weekend, just like I do now, to lock myself up in the bedroom and replay High School. The time in my life that I didn't have to work to be happy, I just was. He told me that I always get that kind of phase, that beginnings are supposed to be really hard. And just as things worked out perfectly for me in college, this phase is going to turn out for the best too. I wanted to believe him, I really, really did.

But I couldn't look past anything anymore. Back in college, I always had weekends to look forward to, or the next month, or the next sem, or the next year. I remember I'd hit rock bottom when I was a sophomore. For reasons that were entirely my own, I was buried in deep shit but I've always had tomorrow to look forward to. Now, it feels like there's no tomorrow. It feels like it's always just today, and what I have today is what I'll forever have. And today, I have nothing. And even if I go home, even when I went to Baguio, even when I went back to my High School, desperately seeking for happiness in familiar places and faces, I felt really, really lost. That even if I go to London, I would only just come back with no places left to run away to. It's this sick lump in my heart that I constantly feel throughout the day - the feeling of being stuck with no emergency exit. And that's what I badly need right now, an emergency exit. Something that'd whisk me away from this terrible sadness and make me effortlessly happy, and make it last longer, make it constant, make it so big that no downfall would ever be bigger.

And what's really killing me is that I feel lonely, but I feel stupid. I feel like the people I once thought as shallow, those I've encountered over the years, found out about their problems, rolled my eyes, and wished for their sake that they'd just get over it. I wish it was that easy, and I wish I hadn't been all that judgmental. You never really know what's going on with a person's life even if she appears to be completely fine, or superficial for that matter. I've been saying that I feel like I could use a shrink. Someone to just lift the heavy cloud above my head, and make me see the silver lining here. Because I know there's one. In fact, I know that there's more than just a lining, there's a whole field of gold in front of me and I can't even see it. Even if I know it, I can't feel it.

For the past 4 months, a lot of things had been finding me, from songs to books, to podcasts, to people, to old blogs - a lot of things had been doing for temporary relief. But I feel that I should be permanently well by now. I think it's my fault, in some way, that I've thought too far ahead, and too much, of my life that the litteness of it now is nothing but depressing.

I just wish that I wasn't led on, that's all. I just wish that when I was 16, someone had told me, brutally and honestly, that life was going to be this difficult. I just wish I'd known, so I could've prepared for the rainy days. I just wish someone had given me the nifty umbrella, because right now, I feel like a big thunderstorm had soaked me with all of its fury, reduced everything useful I have to watery trash, left me neck-deep in flood, and everywhere else I can run to for shelter had either been clobbered by water, or too far away. Yes, that's exactly how I feel, like someone had left me in the middle of nowhere, amid a pouring rain, and there's nobody to call.

I've come to respect many people along the way, though. If there's a silver lining, that would be it. That I got to see life and realized it isn't a fairy tale, and that it never was a fairy tale, but there were still people who have came out of this tragic story alive and that they're extremely brave and everyone who's still going through it is just as brave. I just wish I could find the same inspiration. Or maybe I have the same inspiration, or maybe everyone is as sad as me, and I'm just dealing with this more openly - like through this blog. Or maybe I'm brave as well. Maybe I'm even braver. Because I know I've been torn apart in the past 19 years in ways worse than anybody could ever believe. I know because I still hadn't recover, or maybe I won't ever recover. But I know I'm broken, that's the one thing right now that I'm sure of. I'm broken and I don't know what it's gonna take to repair me. At the end of the day, I just wish I had a clue. Because this uncertainty that everyone had raved about being exciting, and had told me to face head-on, is nothing like the thrill they say it is. It's just an old, murky, beat up track, and my both my foot are are locked to the ground. It's a bad dream, that's what it is, and I wish I could wake up. It sounds like a sappy cliche, I know, but I wish I knew better.

My life has been a painful skipping trip, I've sunk a lot of times, but I've also been to the high part of it, but all of this is just making me think how my life could've been more solid, more steady. I wish I could just stop skipping and be strong enough to resist sinking, because a girl like me could use the peace. I could cry my heart out, withdraw from all these anger and bitterness, and I'd still sink. Because iI think if I let go of the weight, I'd be left with nothing. And I know anything is better than nothing. I just wish I have something.

So you know why I want the shrink. The girl they always say who knew, she doesn't know, the girl they always say who comes through, she's stuck. She doesn't know how to skip anymore, because she doesn't know where to go.

Of Bed Sheets, Cherries, and Old Friends

2010-07-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

I decided to stay in today. I figured it was gonna rain in the afternoon, like it did yesterday and the day before. And I haven't got any money left, so my trip would've consisted of pityful window shopping and pathetic sidetrips to pizza chains, waiting for miracle emergency money to suddenly appear in one of my wallet pockets so I could finally eat mozarella pizza. I woke up feeling extremely lazy anyway, with my book conveniently tucked in the corner one armstretch away from my bed. My cousin slash tour guide and today, slash house arrest buddy was cool to just hang out at home, and I think we both needed the rest. The boarders have all gone to school, including her brother, who only delighted us with one round of tong-its before he went back to his Uni. Her mother went to work - leaving the two of us to do whatever the hell we wanted to do with the house. We could've thrown a party - seriously, we just had to roam around the subdivision, knock on people's doors, invite them to snip into a little snack, force them to stay over for a movie marathon, and then get them to chip in money so we could buy more food. Chili pancit canton, I'd prefer, and iced Coca Cola.

But I'm not exactly the party-throwing, door-knocking, simultaenous-befriending kind of person. What I am is the kind of girl who takes liberty in having the house all to herself, cozy up in bed, and play Jack Johnson on loop. It's better when you're in Baguio, the weather makes perfect company for a hot coffee and idleness. I was slipping under the bed sheet - because when I'm short of a blanket, the bedsheet does it - when I realized it was the same bedsheet from 3 years ago.

I just came from London that month. I was back from Chiara's 18th birthday party in Manila and my High School friends and I planned to go to Baguio just cos. The house was empty, just as it was today, we'd came back early from town and we decided to just hang out inside, slip under the same bedsheet, put the camera on multiple-shots mode, and waste the rest of the day away doing nothing but that.

I remember being completely happy. I just got bangs - for the first time ever in my entire life- I had this face moisturizer that did wonders for my face, I'd just started wearing skirts, I had a princess headband that I've been meaning to get for forever, I'd just began learning my camera settings, and I know it was kind of shallow to find happiness in those, but I did. I thought it was the Universe's way of putting the kind of cherry I wanted on my kind of cake. I was just done with Freshman year, and there I was, opening up my Sophomore year in Baguio with good friends from home who'd chosen to spend those days with me doing completely nothing.

I've had my bangs for three years now, I have not just a moisturizer but also a -would you believe it- a face foundation that can do more than just wonders, I have a whole set of headband whose pieces I keep losing but kept replacing, I have a new camera that has better macro, but there was no cherry, there was just the crummy cake. I was just done with college, and here I am, opening up my Adulthood stage in Baguio, tucked under the same Bed Sheet, and missing my old friends, my old life, and my old headband.

There was a time in my life where I'd shamelessly depended upon material things for my happiness. Months ago, my route had been blocked because of a major fire, and I spent 2 hours on a jeep getting somewhere which would've normally taken 10 minutes, for a job confirmation I didn't even like. I figured that getting back would take as long, and that I didn't want to go home as sad as I'd left it, so I figured I'd just go to the mall at the far end of the road. Bench carried a shirt that I immediately fell in love with, and bought it. I remember feeling suddenly relieved, knowing that whatever emptiness I had of me at the time would be filled with a new, purple shirt.

It did - for a little while. And things just went down on a spiral from thereon, the void kept getting bigger, until it began materializing into a sickening pit, and I figured that I could reverse the pull if I bought more purple shirts. I started with a book, then shoes, then a hair cream, then DVD's, then a handy comb (finally), then a haircut, then a white shirt, then scarves, then another book, and another, and another, and then I just stopped. Nothing was making any difference, I still felt pretty empty, the void is still there, and I just knew that I can only buy so much purple shirts. There'd be a time when I needed to fill it with something real, and that time was now.

I remember doubting how some people used to tell me, "everything would turn out fine in your life, look at mine." And I'd look at those people and see sadness in their eyes. I don't know if I was judging, or I don't really know them all that well to really know. I just know that what they told me didn't do much

difference. I look at them and noticed that their career hadn't gone all that perfectly, which I thought was, at the time, the most important thing. I look at them and I see their 19-year-old selves and how their younger versions wouldn't even believe what they have to say now. I look at them and realize there's no cherry, too.

But there I was under the bed sheet, and all I could do was reminisce about the time in High School, my Baguio Vacation when I was 10 with my older cousins, the fiestas we spent over at my Grandparents, that Tagaytay trip in College, that Scotland trip with Mama and Ate, and the memories keep filling up my nostalgia until I realized I've been looking at life terribly wrongly.

Then I went back to really, really look at those people I mistook, when they talked about their family, their circle of friends, their choir practices, the dinners they have to go to, or that joke a friend told them the other day, I saw happiness. I looked at them and saw a home that's been filled with love, photo albums courtesy of wound-up film cameras, variety of cutleries from different friends, a full ref with foods from neighbors, and I just knew, all I need is the same kind of wealth. All I needed was to slip under the same bedsheet with the kind of love I had with my friends 3 years ago.

I've made peace with the fact that life isn't a fairy tale. That I might never be able to end up the kind of writer I've always wanted to be, that I might find myself in an office 10 years from now with no car and a bank account that couldn't afford any more purple shirts, that I might have to settle with a less abundant life that my mother gave me, that I might never be able to buy another one of those face creams. I'm starting to accept that we're not cut out for perfection. And that it's okay to go down that bleak road, as long as we keep it under the bedsheet with friends that makes you feel at ease with wasting the rest of the day doing nothing.

At the end of the day, they say, what matters is not the purchases you've made or the assets you've invested on and benefited from, what matters is the love you were able to get and receive. At the end of the day, your life will not be counted by the number of our purple shirts, but by the number of people who have came and gone under our bedsheet, and cherished it.

The Beatles got it right all this time. All you need is love. And today, I dedicate my life to just that. To fixing broken love, to rekindling some, to find new lots, to get back lost ones, and to strenghtening those that are of most importance. All I need is love, the kind that will stay the same, even under a different bedsheet.

The spectrum of a bus ride

2010-07-20T11:36:00.000-07:00

Today, I owe my life to Peyton Sawyer. The fictional character who had saved me time and time again, with her words, her music recommendations, and the way Lucas loved her. I sit inside the bus, and I play her podcasts for the thousandth time. Each time meaning different things from the last time. She started off with a Nada Surf reference - I knew full well how she was going to end it. I knew she was going to utter those phrases twice, the second time more heartfelt and intense, the second time she bores the words into your soul you can almost feel a scalpel taking out a tumor. "The weight is a gift," she said, I replayed it, the weight it a gift. I replay it a couple more times until I started really believing that the struggle is all of life's meaning, that you were supposed to be hurt that way, that pain is a requisite. Thing is, I already knew this. All of what she said on all her 14 podcast tracks, I already knew them. I already knew the concepts exist, and I knew how exactly she was gonna tell them. Thing is, those could've been my words, those could've been my wisdom, If I had only been more focused, more positive, I could've found those words long ago. Only I needed to find them in somebody else. It makes more sense that way - I find comfort in knowing I'm not in this alone. That someone in the 8 billion people, there was a person who seemed as if he (asumming it was Mark Schwann who wrote it) had been inside my head and verbalized what went on inside there.

It had always been like that for me. I've always felt the constant need to look for answers outside of me - and it can be everywhere. I remember days ago when I found it in the eyes of my 6-year-old cousin, how he reminded me of how happiness can be pure and untainted, how 3 minutes of undisrupted playing with a child have so much beauty in it. How I've been so distracted by so much materialism that I've forgotten about the simple things in life. The simple things I used to enjoy myself. I have to always look for answers somewhere else.

Today it was also Paulo Coelho. The Zahir narrator cited to Einstein and how he said that God doesn't play dice with the universe, everything is interconnected and everything has meaning. I made some mistakes in the last months, some of them was easy to let go, some of them has haunted me until today, and it got me regretting doing things that felt so right at the time. And I thought about how foolish I was to believe in myself in a way that I allowed myself to commit such. In some way, it was the same thing he wrote in The Alchemist. That if you want something, the universe will conspire for you to get it. I believe in fate, if there's anything I've ever truly trusted, it was that destiny is on the works with your life. On that, I thought, maybe I had to make my mistakes, maybe they aren't even mistakes in the first place. Maybe they're just factors, variables of a whole, long equation. And where do I find myself in that equation? That, i still have to see. I'm 19, just out of college, jobless, coping with momentary depression, and making blogs to save my sanity. I'm just through the first mile on the road to Santiago - and the time hasn't come for me to sew. My Zahir is still up for grabs.

I'm just about to close the book when my mom called. It looks like I can go to London on August after all. At first, I got really excited. Images of stevenage and our house came flashing on my mind, and in a matter of seconds, I've drawn up a whole itinerary of what I was going to do while I'm there. Then she said she'd be gone for the U.S for most of the time and I'd only get to see her for a week tops. My itinerary involved a majority of her. It dawned on me that my answers aren't in London, they were in my mom, and I need to be with her to get those. It just so happened that for me to get to her, I had to travel that far. But I've always said that I could do with being with her for one more day. She was offering a week. I had to take it, for my peace and hers. Mitch Albom once wrote that times not spent with your mother is a lifetime in itself. And I don't wanna lose another lifetime - I'd take one week.

When I put down the phone, the thing more fitting to do was to listen to some feel-good music. Something that didn't remind me of my conscious efforts to be happy - so I steered clear of my "Be happy" playlist. But then again, a song from that playlist came up on the shuffle. It was Wakey Wakey's Dance so Good. "Sometimes I wonder why you don't go mad," the lyric said. And I wondered why I don't go mad. I've been told quite a lot of times that I overthink, that my rationalization was getting bad for my health, and that I need to stop thinking and just....live. But I can't do that. The only thing that'd make me crazier is that If I don't think. I have to, it's a coping mechanism. It gets too much at times, sometimes I create my own monster and be eaten by it alive, but I get out from it by thinking as well. By creating a way out of it. As Peyton said, "it's a self-fulfilling prophecy", and I know it needs to stop sometimes, but not completely. Like her, I, too, am a pathological skeptic, but I have my Lucas Scott.

My Lucas Scott is in many forms. The past few weeks, it had been in the form of The Jeep. My awesome friends who had been on the edge of the cliff, their arms surely tired from holding me up so I don't fall out, but they're still there - patiently waiting for the time I help myself up. Because it's the only time I can really get back and release them from the chore I've been putting them through. But I'm thankful. The most important thing I learned from Chiara is the beauty of gratuity. How to always remember the things I should be thankful for. Today, and forever, The Jeep tops my list. Followed by my family, who I've reconnected to after four college years of being so occupied. I've finally made time for family and learned for myself that blood is indeed thicker than water.

It was getting late and I can no longer see anything through the bus window except the darkness. It was a cliche to think of the David Sedaris quote, but I found it the perfect time to really contemplate on what it truly meant. "You look at life as if through the window of a bus, hopping off at that instant you instinctively recognized as your own." The things I let go of, those I've moved on from, those I've passed up - those places were not my own. And I believe that now, I live my life by gut-feel. I left London by gut, I chose to study at Bayanihan by gut, I took the USTET by gut, I confirmed for the Journalism program by gut - and look where it has taken me. Every decisions I made had brought immense happiness and I wouldn't have done it other way. Whatever I did, or did not do, I did them by gut, and it's time to believe that whatever hole I've managed to dug myself into because of them - it's all just a phase and I was just taken aback for a while. I need to trust myself, trust my faith, and trust in time. It will all get better one day - and "everyday is another day to turn it all around."

Today I decided to look for answers in Baguio. On Saturday, I'll try to look for them again back home. I can look everywhere. But life is looking through a window of a bus - I will look and I will find answers everywhere but I'll get there someday. I may hop back up and continue searching - and I'd hate to end this in a Glee reference - but 'who cares what happens when we get there when getting there has been so much fun?"

Today I finally see the subtext behind the saying that the "journey is the destination." Today I owe my life to Peyton Sawyer, to Paulo Coelho, to Mitch Albom, to David Sedaris, to Nada Surf, to Wakey Wakey, to my friends, to my family, to my mom, and to Baguio. Today, I owe my life to that bus ride. Today, I owe my life to me, trusting that I hop out at the right moment, at the perfect place, at the perfect time.