sunnysideups

blag!

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 16:06:06 GMT

In the spirit of retrospection, I've decided to study, based on my longest blogging span ever, what I've been up to all these five or so years. Annotated. And complete with links.

Here goes

Chapter 1. 2004.

In which all I care about is fashion.
In which I propose a cure for eyebags.
In which I have an awkward conversation with my rocker ex boyfriend.
In which I suffer a break-up.
In which I narrate a trip to the bathroom.
In which I am lethargic and my ex-boyfriend's friend dies.

Chapter 2. 2005.

In which I hypothesize about the effectivity of brutal honesty.
In which I reflect about Valentine's Day for the first time.
In which I reflect on the meaning of life.
In which I first compose a song.
In which I hide from the future.
In which I get bitten by a red ant.
In which I discuss my dreams of being an actress.
In which I love my father.
In which we are saved by a good samaritan.
In which my family falls apart.
In which I reflect on adoption.
In which I dissect a frog.
In which I tell of driving, commutes, the Armageddon, and names.

Chapter 3. 2006.

In which there are subtitles.
In which I pretend to be a detective.
In which I am awakened.
In which I make a political punchline.
In which an ex is triumphant, a house burns down and I acquire a dog, and I get power.

Chapter 4. 2007.

In which I lose everything.
In which I am surprisingly hung up on somebody.
In which I admit I am a workaholic.
In which I recount a memory of grade school prom.
In which I vote.
In which I am a weather girl.
In which I take advice from a warthog.
In which I make a momentous To-Do List.
In which I become an animal rights advocate.
In which I create a comic using Microsoft Paint.
In which I bullet point the aspects of my life, including Solita Monsod.
In which I bare the contents of my room.
In which I have a misadventure on my birthday.

Chapter 5. 2008
In which I make sense of my tattoo.
In which I move out and start a new blog, totalling six blogs so far.

What have we learned?
- I write an awful lot about an awful lot
- I think more than I have to
- I have a tendency to reflect
- I have not accomplished anything of note in college
- I have had several paradigm shifts
- I was alarmingly pining for ex-bf2 for about two years
- I have my moments

This is an awful lot of text + intertext for one to swallow. So I'll be taking a bit of a blogging break. See you all soon.

wanting

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:15:10 GMT

Listen.

"And I want you now
I want you now
I'll feel my heart implode
And I'm breaking out
Escaping now
Feeling my faith erode."

promise

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 07:19:29 GMT

Post-Structuralist nuggets of wisdom.

"What remains irreducible to any deconstruction, what remains as undeconstructible as the possibility itself of deconstruction is, perhaps, a certain experience of the emancipatory promise."

----Jacques Derrida on the Transcendental Signifier.

optimism

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 06:58:05 GMT

I am grateful for the sun, the rain, the weather, the general effect of climate because it is nature's way of responding to our destruction.

I am grateful for my life and the function of my bodily organs.

I am grateful for my parents, my family.

I am grateful for my friends whom I do not see anymore.

I am grateful for my boyfriend who's still there, despite reasons to do the contrary.

I am grateful for the food in my house that is there if I decide to eat.

I am grateful for Hillary Clinton endorsing Obama.

I am grateful for the transportation that has not broken down at any point since I started commuting to school since time immemorial.

I am grateful for the opportunity (opportunities no matter how sparse) to go to Baguio.

I am grateful for the movement.

I am grateful for my adviser who puts up with me despite reasons to do the contrary.

I am grateful for my best friend who is coming home later this month.

I am grateful for being alive.

I am grateful for all the blessings and challenges I have.

I am grateful for the SPSS tutorial.

I am grateful for all the humor.

I am grateful for the time to do stuff. No matter how little.

I am grateful for all the stress I have because it makes me realize the value of fun and relaxation.

I am grateful that it has occurred to me to be grateful.

It's great. Be freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

tankard

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:12:48 GMT

when we were children, back at the old house in Baguio, we had an assortment of aquarium fish.

One day there was an explosion of guppies, small tadpole-like translucent little creatures that just zipped like comets around the tank. Oh, it was a fiesta and the bigger fish just opened their mouths and swallowed the babies.

We tried to save all the guppies that we could and put them in a smaller bowl.

In the end, only nine little guppies grew up to be magnificent orange Swordtails, each with its own insignia on the tail and we didn't give them names, just general descriptions. Like, thin orange fish with the longest black tail or stubby orange girl who always gets pregnant.

We raised them for nine or so years and they became a permanent fixture on our countertop. It was so cool how they grew and developed personalities and everything.

Then, one day, one of my aunts decided, ohh, hey, why don't i put a SHRIMP in their aquarium?? JUST FOR KICKS!! She thought it was a GRAND idea and slipped that clear milky-organ-ed almost-invisible thumb-sized creature in the tank without us knowing. To this day I don't effin know why she did that. For serious.

Shock and vomit came when we saw the next day that two of our fish children were floating on the aquarium surface, a pale pasty pink instead of bright orange, obviously departed, and with crimson puncture wounds on their bodies. And then the next day and the next day fish corpses turned up on the surface, and we had to evacuate thin orange fish with longest black tail and his sister, fat orange fish with red belly to another container so's they'd stop dying.

Took us four days to see that, hiding behind the live rock, was a malevolent looking shrimp/lobster-ish thing with its long pincers (obviously the weapon of choice used in the crimes.) I actually took the time to observe what about the tank made our fish die and so I witnessed one of the murders.

The shrimp would wait for the swordtails to come by, then it'd lash out with its long spiky appendages, rip through the gills, and watch as our little fishies would slowly lose blood and oxygen supply, twitching its poor body, turning pale and paralyzed, but tortuously slow, like the shrimp wanted to see it scream and beg first before it'd finally let the dead body float up to the surface. Then with none but a bubble to mark its deed, it hid behind the rock again.

So I took a fork and killed the bastard.

Why the sudden memory?

Oh, well my brother's fish (incidentally also a swordtail), pregnant and rather stressful to handle since it jumps out of the tank on a frequent basis and commits what is seemingly suicide, finally could not take the stresses of tank living and choked on the plastic seaweed ornaments we put in the fishbowl.

And, more importantly, the shrimp-swordtail relationship is quite like my relationship with my thesis right now. Okay get ready for the metaphor.

Thesis is the shrimp that has got me in a chokehold and watches as I rapidly lose blood, oxygen, and energy, ultimately leading to me, dead from stress, and about to be flushed down the toilet. Much like the swordtails in this story I alternately wish to live in peace and to jump out of my claustrophobic tank and plummet to imminent death on the floor. Because of the choking shrimp and the choking seaweed named Thesis and Life-in-general.

Someone bloody take a fork and help me kill the bastard.

tiiiiired

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:01:29 GMT

open.

hysterical.

a drunkard.

not demure.

exposed.

indecent.

not nice.

lovely.

sexy.

intelligent.

funny.

daring.

confusing.

not helpful.

tactless.

not thoughtful.

careless.

fake.

out of all the names I've been called, i still like Tin best.

beeyatch

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 09:39:39 GMT

Puerto Galera (Port of Galleons; according to Jason, Photo Gallery. haha its cute) was fun. Awesome view, awesome company, awesome relaxation potential. Would've been a perfect weekend.

Too bad for the awful silence though.

conked

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:48:53 GMT

Friend emailed this over to me today.

Apparently I'd been napping pretty seriously yesterday at the library. Damn thesis and other unfinished bizniz.
And I woke up with a post-it on my hand. Hahahaha. You naughty little fiend, you just HAD to set this up. Hahahah.

There is always humor in madness.

saccharine

Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:14:46 GMT

You've always laughed at the couples who did lovey dovey things, saying "Sige!!! magbbreak din kayo!!!!!!!" And you used to laugh at all things maudlin. You used to say eew everytime your ex-boyfriends told you they loved you. And you used to flinch when they asked to hold your hand.

But there's a first time for everything.

And you pay attention to all the little details for the first time in a while.

The way he smells so good, and how he's such a boy, smelling like mint and candy and hair gel. And your cardigan sleeve ends up smelling like him and you just have to sniff at it over and over.
How he opens doors for you, and lets you walk into rooms first, and how he pulls your chair out for you when you want to sit down. And how all that makes you feel so good to be treated nicely.
How he pretends to look away when you catch him looking at you and he mocks concentration at something far away.
How he says he hates people who follow the current, calling them dead fish, and how, when you tell him that the only fish you know who swims against the current is salmon, he tells you he thinks you're live salmon.
How he strokes your hair, and runs his fingers through it, and pulls you to him gently so you don't get wet in the rain.
How he hates umbrellas, but offers to hold it for you anyway and cares so much about being a proper boyfriend.
The way he worries if you're bored, or okay, or cold, and he holds your hand and makes it all better.
How he doesn't like slightly loose t-shirts, but he wears the one you gave him anyway, and says he'll wear it the next day.
How he has girl pictures on his phone, but lets you see it, just to assure you that he's not keeping anything from you, and even shows you the entire contents of his gym bag in the spirit of sharing everything.
How he looks at models on magazine covers, and other hot women, but says he loves your body more.
How he brings you to all his favorite places, and that is enough.
How he introduces you to other people as his girlfriend, and smiles so big when he says it.
How he deftly proves surprisingly hard to mock and ridicule from family, and how he says it's all okay. How, when my brother bitingly asked him if minors have a curfew, he answered with, "It's okay as long as you're accompanied by an adult" and turned to smile at me.
How he blushes when you tease him, and how he keeps all quiet and smiley when you whisper something in his ear. How he has two moles behind his ear and two more up his bicep. And how anything he does, you just can't help thinking he's so sexy. Haha.
How he makes it like his heart's gonna get ripped out if he leaves you, even if it's just to attend class next door. And how you waited outside his class for close to three hours, but it was all okay, knowing he was just beyond the wall you rested your head against.
How he checks your pulse every now and then, and holds your face in his hands.
How you fed him all the bad unhealthy food, but he gladly ate them anyway.
How he carried all your heavy stuff and loaded it on your car without complaint. And how he achingly asked you to stay one more day.
How his face looked when you said goodbye to him from the car window and how he watched you drive away.
How you miss and love him so much already.

away

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 07:03:42 GMT

I'm going home to Baguio this weekend.

Insanely, crazy, happy and ecstatic that I will be seeing boyfriend up close and in the flesh. :)

Will permanently attach myself to his side. Probably am in danger of never coming back to Manila ever again. hahaha.

Just a few hours wait and I'll see him na.

Finally.

seek

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:17:11 GMT

Quote for the month.

"I hope I find someone else who doesn't make me feel more bad than I really am. I will find someone who can find some goodness in me, because I know I have plenty. I will find someone who--at the very least--in the misguided belief that I am wretched and wicked, offers a hand to save me."
-----A.P., Lewis, 1975

feeling like a rag doll

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 07:13:06 GMT

rag doll in the corner
appendages twisted, flayed
spread-eagled like a prostate monk
and punishment inflamed

dull eyes flicker fire and ice
like hell in the bottom ring
neck snapped and shoulder torn, i see
etched sorrow is your king

dust dancing all around your hair
mold and decay on your sleeve
half-rotting like a spindled corpse
sad imprint do you leave

what better days have you seen, rag doll
what happiness was due?
pinpoint the time you faded and
when they'd forgotten you.

games

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:37:04 GMT

JASON: Your turn, babe.

TIN: Okay. If you and me were in a science fiction movie, what would we be?

JASON: I like the characters from "The Island." Ikaw ba?

TIN: Anakin and Amidala. Minus the part where he burns and she dies. . Okay, so you're stuck on a deserted island, with limited resources. What would you bring: a swiss army knife or your girlfriend?

JASON: I would bring you, of course. What's the sense of bringing a knife if there's limited resources anyway.

TIN: Haha. The other guys I know would bring the knife so they could have all the coconuts to themselves. . Okay, so we're on the island. What do you imagine us doing in the first 6 days?

JASON: Build shelter. Don't ask me how, we just do. So we have a convenient place to. . (play)

TIN: Okaay. Hahah. So after we (play), we discover that the island is populated by cannibals. They say they'll let us live if: a) they eat your left leg or b) their chief takes me away to be his 7th wife. What will you do?

JASON: I will let them eat my leg just so they won't touch you..

TIN: Aww. Really? Haha. I would say just take me, then when the cannibals are sleeping, I'd escape back to you. Okay, so I've escaped. We have 20 minutes before the cannibals find out that I am gone and hunt us down. We only have a flare, and some rope. How do you propose we escape from the island?

JASON: Umm. Logically, we can't escape from the island with just a flare and some rope.

TIN: Alright. Hahaha. So, you have a choice between sending a flare up to a passing airplane, but you'll risk waking the cannibals, and using the rope to build a raft but it'll take 25 minutes. By then, the cannibals will be hunting us down. What will you do, shoot the flare, or build the raft?

JASON: Build the raft. Then I'll shoot the flare gun at the cannibals, buying us more time to build the raft and escape.

TIN: We have completed the raft and are safely out to sea. There are bull sharks to the left and manta rays to the right. Where will we pass?

JASON: Straight ahead.

I love how he just never fails to make me laugh.

boycott

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 15:41:33 GMT

awesome

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 13:37:20 GMT

Don't tell anyone this, but when I was a child, I used to watch "The Little Mermaid" four times a day. On Betamax. I know every line ever said. I know every song. And every hidden Mickey. I bought the merchandise. The Little Mermaid Barbie doll. The stuffed toy flounder. The rubber Sebastian. I still have The Little Mermaid comforter and bed sheets. I use them occasionally, when no one's looking, and secretly pretend I'm swimming with dolphins.

When my friends came over, I'd make them watch with me too. I'd slap them stupid if they said they didn't want to watch the movie again. I'd make them wait till our little silver Betamax machine stopped whirring and whining so I could play the whole thing again. Hanna ended up hating mermaids. And she'd flip out when she'd see yellow and blue-striped fat fish.

But look, 12 years later, and looky here, I still love it. And seeing this, I just loved it more.

ass

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 17:21:47 GMT

The reason why I keep on going on at this rate is because I believe I can accomplish everything.

EVERYTHING.

If I try really really REEEALLLY hard. Take for example, my schedule this semester. I'm graduating, at nine kick-ass units, with two subjects that might as well not count. I have a Marine Science class which is all about us building relationships and a Biology class that is all about poison.

I crammed a thesis proposal this weekend, for 36 hours straight (sort of. nevertheless it took me three days to do something I should have done in a sem), with an ailing urethra and an overly dramatic fanboy soon-to-be-boyfriend. It was because of a cumulative series of crappy research training and wrong turns. Enough said.

I have two (plus one secret one) orgs that I attend to, all of which involve a countless amount of transcription, letter writing, addressing, sealing, delivering, follow-upping, media liasoning (say it with me. In french. Media LI-AY-SAUGH.), building relationships (oh, Prof. Marine Science will be SO PROUD) and various other tasks that require 2.4 hours of my time in blocks. Then meetings in the afternoons-to-evenings and a crappy-ass commute home.

Oh. And there's the fanboy to attend to and constantly assure. It is by far the most objective, honest, brutal relationship I have ever been involved in. He thinks of feelings in pie charts and the development of feelings as ladderized promotions. (Do you love me na? How bout now? Now? When's my next promotion? What tasks must I accomplish?) It's quite endearing I assure you.

In a society beset by problems, and with various societal issues requiring your attention and the attention of others, I suppose this is what it should feel like to be involved. In the grandest sense of the term.

And so we soldier on, going about it as meaningfully as we can without being lost in the motions. (Repeat after me: WE ARE NOT MACHINES!!!!!)

Then when I am curled up into a tight little ball at night, staring at the ceiling, trying to slow down my pulse rate and checking my vital signs, being so tired all the time and wound up that I can't ever relax my shoulders anymore, I think, is this how it's going to be for the rest of my life?

. . . Yeah. It will be.

So there's everything to accomplish on my perpetually growing task list, and I am left with four words my brother says to me every day when he gets to see me under the mound of paperwork.

YOU ARE STRESS PERSONIFIED.

bam

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 08:05:50 GMT

On today's issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer,

I present you with my friend and slate-mate and org-mate and kasama sa pagkilos at paglaban....

BANG NA BANG SA CENTENNIAL.

heheheh.

but we should pay more attention to what they're holding. Thousands, (millions?) missing. Jonas, Karen, She, students, journalists, political leaders, farmers. Fathers, brothers, sisters, children, friends.

Military continues to deny damning evidence that they, by the auspices of this paranoid and power-hungry regime, are behind these.

What will the new army chief of staff do? What will we do? We will fight. And lobby. And demand. And struggle.

Back to school na, people! Summer campaigns over. Tuloy pa rin pakikibaka!

cryptic

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 07:12:03 GMT

I do not believe in long- lasting feelings or promises that end in "forever."

No emotion can be strong enough or sustained enough to last a frickin lifetime.

Because, people have an attention span of less than 20 minutes.

Waiting for the onslaught to end. Fizzle fizzle fizzlin' out.

afternoon

Sun, 01 Jun 2008 09:30:40 GMT

After the Jun Lozada forum, Mico, Yas, and I sat staring at the sky (and my favorite hangout, the one, the only Main Library), waiting for the rally to DAR. Romantic Sunken Garden if not for the (or more so because of) the shirtless soccer players.

Then I thought holy hell, I'm never going to have the time to sit and lounge on the grass at this school on an afternoon like this with these people ever ever again.

Shit makes me not want to graduate yet.

boy

Sat, 31 May 2008 16:15:29 GMT

I was asked recently what my ideal guy was.

I haven't actually given that much thought, save for this maniacal insistence on the highly improbable but ever dream-worthy "artist-musician-athlete."

I guess everyone could pinpoint certain qualities they tend to like in their ideal person, but they're all very general and could encompass 70 million people with the same personality traits. Like, being tall. Or having a dry sense of humor. Or being clean and well-groomed. Or ambitious. Or family oriented.

Maybe because if you narrow it down too much, like asking for a man with two moles on his left aorta, you'd be effectively making your chances slim.

The bare minimum, that I always always ask is that they spell right.

I know it's elitist to assume everyone has had access to literacy like few of us have (comparatively), and I can't say why, but it's always been my pet peeve when guys talk to you (via cellphone) and they can't spell right.

It's been a theme in my life, though, and has since made me question the feasibility of this standard.

The first boy who ever wrote me a love letter was a neighbor.

He'd sit on their wall, which had a good view of our bathroom, and would wait for me to brush my teeth so he could say "pssssssst!" at me. I wouldn't turn around to face the small window, lest I see a gnome, but on the ninth day of stalking, I woke up one morning to find he'd left a branch of pink orchids on the bathroom's window sill and a letter, written in his chicken-shit scrawl declaring his admiration. The contents are inane, but I remember clearly that he began his letter with, "Dear Missss" and ended it with, "Sige, I have to go now kailangan ko pa ayusin comp-puter namin."

My first boyfriend, during one of our epic quarrels, told me to fuck myself, and I told him curtly that I will not stand for such language. He said, via text, "Sorry. Na-frostate lang talaga ako."

Another, who explained why he didn't call on my birthday, "The network was down. I was seriously trying to cuntact costumer [costumes pare.] services."

I mean, yes, I've misspelled a number of times like "weird" and "wierd." But I always wanted someone who could at least pretend to consult a dictionary when they aren't sure what to say. Maybe 'cause spelling right is a sign of being well-read, and I like wide readers. Or that being a writer, it's permanently drilled in your mind to copy-read everything that comes across your field of vision.

But so far, no grammatical genius yet.

It's so frostating.

mom

Mon, 12 May 2008 13:55:04 GMT

All parents have a love story, surely.

even if it's hard to imagine them being young. and lustful. . . *shudder*

I asked mom about hers on mother's day in keeping up with celebrating her being our mother and how she came to be so.

And here's how it goes.

Mom was 21. She was working as a teller in a bank. She had three best friends whom she went out partying and drinking with all the time. She was, at the moment, two-timing her long-time boyfriend of seven years, Johnny. Specifically, she was dating their finance supervisor on the side. Because, she explained, the dude gave kick-ass presents. And two, Johnny was working at a diamond factory in Israel, far from reach and sight. So Mom figured to find a replacement in the meantime.

Then she met my Dad. The details are hazy. Something about meeting at a bar in Manila, and my Dad pursuing my Mom quite persistently. Dad, fresh from military school, was gaunt, and really, really dark. A far cry from the handsome and strapping young men swinging by her bank and wooing her. My Dad was also dating somebody else. I don't know what drugs my parents were on. But my Dad kept note of where she went to work. She went back home.

Months passed.

My Mom had, by this time, broken up with her boy. Johnny. I'm not sure about the finance supervisor.

One bright, sunny day my Dad decides to waltz past Mom's bank’s great wide windows in tennis gear. Something about him appealed to my Mom. The way she described him to me, I had an image of a young pre-surgery Michael Jackson in my head, with a shock of curly (curly??!) dark hair, white headbands, high starched kneesocks, and white hookah shorts. The kind that gives you wedgies when you strain with effort. She was so smitten, that when my Dad walked in the bank and invited her and the girls out for drinks with him and his buddies, she readily accepted, all flushed and excited.

Clad in her best gear, she and her girlfriends went to the Halfway House at Camp John Hay that evening, and waited for the boys to come in. She understood the invite to be a hepta-quadruple date, with her girlfriends pairing up with Dad's friends, and Mom would (naturally) pair up with Dad.

But to her shock and horror, Dad walks into the bar with his girlfriend in arm, a girl whom we shall henceforth call Beth.

She spends the rest of the night drowning in alcohol and scheming how to exact her vengeance, somehow deciding to bring wrath and fury upon my Dad. She made a bet with her best friends, saying that before the week was out, she'll have shoved Beth out of the picture, and Dad would be hers. Command and conquer, baby.

She invites my Dad out for drinks the next day, this time at a classier joint.

My Dad arrives with his buddies, but warns everyone that he'll have to beg off early because his girlfriend Beth has cooked a special dinner for him that night--consisting of his favorites like pinakbet and liempo and such. Sorry, guys. I can imagine my Mom narrowing her eyes at this. Meanwhile, smiling.

She gets him stone fricking drunk. So very very drunk, that he misses his date.

However, mom's evil laugh didn't last long because, Dad somehow made up with his girlfriend such that she promised to cook for him again. They set their date for Saturday after their PMA Parade, before my Dad and his classmates were scheduled to leave for Manila on assignment.

My Mom somehow sniffed this out, and concocted another evil scheme which she promised to execute flawlessly.

Somehow, she and the girls got invited along to watch the parade at PMA with Dad and his buddies. After which, everyone else retired to their respective nooks to rest so that they'd be fresh when they'll travel to Manila in the evening.

My Mom, charmed and flirted like a hussy, and ended up convincing my Dad to ride with them. Mom's best friend Grace, who owned the car and who was in on the plan, decided to take seven long detours on the way home, including a long and winding drive up a mountain. So long, that my Dad missed his date.

By the time they got back to the city, it was too late, and he had to hop on the bus immediately, to get back to Manila, thereby missing his second date that week, and leaving his girlfriend to steam and sour on a dinner table full of uneaten specially-prepared food he never got to taste. They had an epic quarrel, no doubt, because by the time Dad got back from Manila, he was already Mom's boyfriend.

Mom gets a pile of cash from her friends, because she won the bet, making Dad her boyfriend before the week was out, and bitch-slapping Beth out of the got-damn picture. Obviously, they ended up getting married. And that's how we came to be. . . *shudder*

But there's still a long saga in between, from what I hear from them, my Dad's version making out my mom to be a frivolous, flirty, volatile, two-timing beeyatch girlfriend (told very lovingly, I assure you), and My Mom's version. . . well, she admits to two-timing. "Eh kung ikaw ba naman kailangan mag-hintay nang tatlong buwan dahil nasa Mindanao siya, na hindi naman tumatawag, anong gagawin mo??!"

To this day, she insists that the moral of the story is that I have to be a go-getter if I want to meet "the right one", the guy I'll end up marrying. But I didn't get the aggressive temptress gene. Maybe it's recessive. Her grandchildren will be gago, I can tell.

Meantime, I ended up as an awkward, wallowing little twit who never gets any dates. Although I can picture myself getting married someday. And yeah, I could have my own love story someday, sure.

Although I'm pretty sure it won't be so "The Bold and The Beautiful"-meets-"Melrose Place"-meets-"She's All That"-esque in proportion. (I can picture my Dad now: "Is that true?? Am I just a stupid bet?! *sob*")

All things considered, I think they turned out pretty well. I mean they're married now for almost two decades. And they've still got the spice going, don't ask me why or how, it's too traumatic.

It's funny though, because all these years I always thought of my parents as pretty boring people. You really can't imagine they came out of a love story that was pretty fucked up when you think about it.

revolution

Sat, 03 May 2008 12:42:00 GMT

May 1 rally was OK. My parents even encouraged me to go but my Dad teased me to no end. He gives me money and says like, "o ayan, para sa bayan!"

If anything, I got a nifty new fedora hat, tanlines on my upper arms that look like shirtsleeves, and met a new Russian (Sergey) who joined the rally--walked roughly 15 kilometers with us and suffered the heat too! And he's so galing at speaking Filipino. I asked how many years he's been here, he said "last September lang." Eh bakit ang galing mo mag tagalog? They teach Filipino as a foreign language in college daw.

Everyone started calling him "Russian Revolution." Terry's all like, "O, nasan na si Russian Revolution?" Usually he's talking to Fudge.

I was flag bearer, walking and/or sprinting behind the really big Oust flag, but didn't chant so much this time. Really long line, I doubt if anyone beyond two rows could hear me. The whole thing rocked, though, despite the heatstroke. Really big turnout.

I bet all unenlightened drivers were so pissed at us for blocking entire sections of road from Espanya to Mendiola. Rallies disrupt the status quo, and even if we scream and yell, much as we want to bring down a corrupt regime, rallies aren't specifically meant for that.

It's not cause and effect, like say, if you rally, she steps down (although in special circumstances and conditions it could happen), but we do this to show the current (presumably oppressive) status quo CAN be disrupted, and it SHOULD be disrupted, and it's an awesome smack-in-your-face way to get your points across. To the general public. We call it "prop action." And rallies are the highest form. But not the highest form of struggle.

Anyway, I talked to Sergey a couple of times, 80% of which he didn't understand or couldn't hear so it was pretty much just me conversing with his cheek. He's from St. Petersburg and said R&B's really big in Russia. Made a mental note to check it out. Then I asked him if he likes Kirpichi but he asked me why and I couldn't explain. But their nickname for him turned out to be quite apt.

Tin: Nagrarally ka ba lagi?
Sergey: Dito o sa Russia?
Tin: Dito.
Sergey: Hindi, ngayon lang.
Tin: Eh sa Russia nagrarally ka?
Sergey: Oo sumasali ako.
Tin: Bakit ano ba issue niyo dun?
Sergey: Patalsikin si Putin.

I was laughing so hard.

the workers of Atlanta Inc.

They've got a problem with their factory supervisor who's denying them union rights.

that's Sergey at the left-est corner.

Nessa calls this "Tin's paparazzi photo."

simple, really, give everyone their democratic rights.

Syento-bente-singkong pagtaas ng sahod. Across the board, nationwide.

I love it when skies turn red.

cold

Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:35:21 GMT

May issue of Fortune 500 is out and about in the house. I got bored and started reading it. Things of note.

One of the reports said oil companies are drilling in the polar ice caps. Which alarms me quite a lot.

Maybe because something fishy's going on there. They're gonna ruin the polar ice caps more. may or may not cause polar bears to die. [Oooh, fact! did you know polar bears live in the arctic, and penguins live in antarctica? totally different neighborhoods!]

Why are they allowed to drill up there? Again? I refuse to believe we've reached peak oil this soon, or that we're running out. Someone out there's got the goodies and doesn't wanna share. Or all this bosh is speculation and giant superprofit-driven.

Good news, though, the polar ice caps are melting! Yeay for them! Because, the story said, it means they can break through ice easier (Russia's got a big headstart, it said), drill miles beneath the ground, and/or discover plant life deep within the cold arctic sea and hope to god the billions of years have turned it into the mulch we call oil. Deesis "The New Arctic Oil Rush."

I mean, there MUST be serious downsides to this, right? Right? Guess I gotta do a bit more reading.

Meantime, hang in there, little guy. . . girl? . . it's a little hard to see.

metal

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:21:51 GMT

I know this song's tagal na, but THIS IS WHY I LOVE TOOL!!! Badass bass sheeyat. Badass bass sheeyat.

and because I'm so anal about knowing what lyrics mean. you can't get any more nerdy than this.

whims

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:13:26 GMT

You wouldn't think you'd end up at this place on your "work break."

But finally finally finally I can say that I've been there and done that on that street with these people.

Although I always imagined it would be different, and wouldn't smell like horse shit all the time, but more like noodles and tikoy, and that it would have more AUTHENTIC chinky people. But I had a kick-ass time! Some of my favorite moments were:

the spiky-penis medicine
francis buying the cheap apple "champangne" with no name; and asking the saleslady to read the label
francis buying the cheap "champangne" with no name, and being told that it's gonna help his sex drive. "Pwedeng pwede!!!"
hunting for working ATMs in narrow eskenitas and NOT dying
the almost-ride on a horse-drawn carriage
the semi-awkward conversation
the freaky sex toys and breast enlarging pills
manong mais giving audio-visual (read: emphatic hand gestures) instructions on how to get there
the Korean DVD store
the slightly sleazy temple of junkies
saying "Shing Tang Mayyyyyyyyyyyy!!!" over and over
the Chiu Chow style of dining with the excellent tap water
because it's the darkest, most metal broccoli tips I've ever had in my entire life.

Needless to say, I enjoyed our little adventure, and I'm never going back there ever again. Cheers.