how to gauge your maturity.

you know there's something wrong when you meet up with friends and they're talking about:

1. doing it a bezillion times a day
2. bad breakups and broken hearts

and all you can add to that list is how pimples have decided to make real estate of your face for the time being.

when i grow up, i want to be...

a grup.

"poker in front, liquor in the rear."

poker is today's badminton. i wonder if the cardplaying craze will last longer than zagu (i've only had one of those so far, and that was only because christi got me a glass and demanded that i drink it after i said i would never have one). as for me? the only chips i'll play for are the edible kind.

skinless chicken and swords.

i got home only to find that everybody had already left.
on the table were two pieces of kentucky fried chicken, de-skinned and unappealing, plus the dregs of my father's tuna salpicao.

i almost burst into tears.

please understand that i starved myself in preparation for this easter meal.
all i had for breakfast was a biscuit and a glass of water.
i deprived myself of food while i was in the office because i KNEW what was waiting for me at home. at least i thought i knew.

i was so frustrated that i went to the neighborhood grill queen and got myself a slab of grilled liempo. while i was there, i derived satisfaction from the sudden downpour of rain. god knew that nothing but a freak summer shower and omega-3-free pork would soothe my soul.

going off-topic, the steak knife/butter analogy reminded me of this bit in my anthro 112 paper (Batad: “Kapag Ang Palay Naging Bigas… May Bumayo”):

"Aside from clothes, I had a nailcutter/can opener (very useful. I was able to open a number of cans, I felt so proud of myself) and a knife--a REAL hunting knife, not some puny blade (courtesy of my father who seems to have a fascination with knives and guns, I think he sees himself as some kind of woodsman). But I think I degraded it when I let my friend use it to chop onions."

that knife was worthy of crocodile dundee, i felt so cool having it with me. didn't see any crocs, though. as i said, the only action that knife saw was versus a couple of onions.

dragonlance's tanis had wyrmslayer. arthur had excalibur. frodo had sting while the shards of narsil became aragorn's anduril. who cares? i had onion-chopper.

why a period means the end of a discussion, plus fabulous things you can do with steak knives.

random thoughts while waiting for pages to close.
i'm still at the office. posting via safari, some of the functions aren't supported, hence the linklessness of this post. i'll probably edit when i get home. home, where the fam is enjoying easter lunch. without me.

regularly met up with marga and paul during the holy week. together, we weren't exactly the holy trinity. trinity, yes... holy? not even if we were dressed in white robes and cardboard wings complete with cotton balls for added angelic authenticity.

how did i wind up staying at home? ah, well.
*cue tinny music that initiates flashback sequence*

cast: me (of course), marga
setting: a mat in the garden of 4 aruego

*some parts of the actual conversation have been edited

marga: i wish the beach were right there.
me: mmhmm.
both: whoosh whoosh (those are supposed to be waves)
me: let's go to batangas.
marga: game.
me: you drive, i'll give you gas.
marga: i don't want to drive. let's take the bus.
me: ok. where will we go? you think we'll have somewhere to stay? they might be full.
marga: *eyeroll* there are plenty of places! game?
me: hmm. i can't. i have my period.

silence.
periods. end. discussions. not. just. sentences.

YES! update: the pages are good. i can go home and eat!

last thought before leaving the office: after my editor asked me about job-related concerns last week, i said that i was a steak knife being used to spread butter.

steak? butter? i'm heading home.

intros back from the dead.

in the spirit of easter, i'm resurrecting introductions that never saw print for one reason or another--these reasons may be painfully obvious once you've read them.

start monologue.
should i be bothered that paragraphs that have more of "me" in them wind up in limbo rather than on the pages of the newspaper for The Thinking Reader?
but then, i'm not my audience (i'm not a Thinking Reader, i go straight to the funnies of other dailies, because we don't have funnies, we don't have "your stars" either), so the lines that appeal most to me inevitably die.
end monologue.

i present to you, intros back from the dead, plus comments:

Just another manic mall day
When rapper Andrew E.'s ditty "'Wag kang Gamol" (Don't be a Gamol) came out sometime in 1995, most didn't know what a "gamol" was and why it wasn't desirable to be one. Some thought that the term referred to a mallrat, since the song was released within a few years of SM Megamall's opening. Whether it's true or not, "Gamol" has morphed into the nickname of the biggest mall in the Philippines. Which brings us to the topic at hand- supermalls. (Feb. 2005)

//i liked the title, but i can see why Thinking Readers won't relate to the finer points of Gamol etymology.

Does going global mean going gone for SMEs?
If a goldfish accustomed to the fishbowl life were thrown into the open ocean, one wouldn't expect it to come out again, unless it was in the form of sushi.
The times we live in have been labeled as the age of borderless societies. Borderless in the sense that information, services and goods flow in and out of countries with little or no restrictions. (April 2005)

//the title, along with the sushi, disappeared.

Mario's: from fine dining to franchising
Mario's has nothing to do with the video game about two plumbers with a fondness for fungi. (Feb. 2006)

//when i was interviewing mario, i kept asking him about italian food. note to self: mario's serves paella, sisig, kare-kare (definitely NOT italian food)... he had a moustache for crissakes, can you blame me?

Ensuring good karma: corporate social responsibility (tongue-in-cheek)
Let's face it, when you're on top, you become a prime target for competitors. While you're happily looking for new horizons to conquer, those behind you are sharpening their knives, taking aim at your large, profitable back.
Perhaps corporate social responsibility isn't a purely benevolent concept. Think about it, in the world of sports, when somebody badmouths a winner with a reputation for being a "nice guy," he's inevitably branded as a sore loser. On the other hand, if the winner has an ego the size of his paycheck and an attitude to match, the press and the public will root for whomever is able to knock the wind out of his sails.
So with businesses, it's easier to forgive a huge company that charges an arm and a leg for their services as long as they provide arms and legs to the more unfortunate-arms, legs, houses, electricity, whatever. (April 2006)

//i knew this was going to die, but i had to write it. i saved it under the filename "i wish"

Julie's Bakeshop: anthology of bread
As exhibited by pan de coco, pan de regla, and all pans in between, Filipino bread typology is rife with humor, imagination, and creativity. With 500 bakeshops spread nationwide and more than 200 varieties of bread, Julie's Bakeshop has established itself as the fastest rising dough-maker in the industry. (April 2006)

//pan de regla and the rest of the first sentence didn't make it. but i'm glad that the "fastest rising dough-maker" bit stayed, that phrase took me a good few minutes of actual thinking. i'm not sure how many got the "anthology of bread" reference, dough... i mean "though."

happy easter.

50% brad pitt, 100% nondescript dude you wouldn't look twice at.

on the train, i once sat across a guy whose profile hinted that he was a pinoy version of brad pitt. then he turned his head and brad pitt disappeared... no brad pitt potential whatsoever could be found on his face. i wonder if the train dude has any clue that the left side of his face is better looking than the whole of it, and if he did, would he consciously look to the right (thus showing the left side of his face) when posing for pictures? hiding half of your face is kinda hard, but thoughts?

...
...
...

this post has been edited. you'll never see what i originally wrote.

it's so hot.

to the cheek of the dead asses society now present in ATC: i'm sorry i couldn't make it (shoutout to deej: i'll crash boys' night out just to see you). i'll never forget the day we asses almost burned down pisay-- we were toasting marshmallows in the field, reading whitman. today is kinda like that golden day. so bright, it's unreal.

[09IV06]
there are days that burn so clearly
they render themselves in sharp relief

memories are etched in light and shadow
as the sun writes itself on skin

and every stinging detail is set in
higher contrast than reality
while every second ticks louder than the last

big dreams and the wrecking of childhood constructs.

it was cheska's birthday on the 6th. it was good to see the "berks"--the people i'm stuck with for the rest of my life. good for them. even better for me.

on the way home, conversation revolved around the dreams we had when we were children and the things we want to do before we die. may i present my list of short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals:

short-term: get rid of my zits. honestly, who thought i'd hit puberty during my mid-20's? i thought i skipped it altogether. this is what i get for chanting "[i've got] baby skin, baby skin" in our high school cafeteria while my other friends were comparing acne-removal notes.

mid-term: pursue post-grad studies, get a job at google (i'd gladly be their mascot), learn how to sing one song perfectly.

long-term: write something that means something (what? keep writing like that, and you're setting yourself up for failure. what a wonderful display of exposition) and become famous (neil gaiman type of famous). see the world... while seeing the world, i have a to-do list as well:

1. keep asking where the "fifteenth chapel" is while in the sistine chapel.
2. ask if ohana really means family, and if family really means no one gets left behind while in hawaii.
3. write something about sunset over the colorado desert while watching the said sunset.
4. do my rameses-as-voiced-by-ralph-fiennes impersonation ("moses! why can't things be as they were?") while in egypt.
5. ask a random greek what the meaning of life is (while in greece, of course).
6. while in an irish pub, ask an irishman what the pronunciation of "deimne" is.

which brings us to the wrecking of childhood constructs. "deimne" is the name of the main character in the wizard children of finn, a book most of the marcelo cousins have read (it was always lying around the house, waiting for the next kid to pick it up). while we were talking about it, we discovered that none of us said his name the same way.

"DIM-nuh"
"DI-mi-ni" (rhymes with "jiminy")
"daym-ni" (dime-knee)
"di-MEEN" (i was a kid, ok. it looked a lot like "denim" and i took my cue from there).

there's also "majere" in dragonlance. what if they decide to turn it into a movie? how will they say "majere"? i've come across five variants:

"ma-he-re" (like the spanish "mujere")
"MAH-zheer"
"mah-ZHEER"
"MAH-jr"
"mah-juh-RAY"

it's disconcerting when you talk about the same people and disagree on the pronunciation of their names.
nomenclature is potent, just ask rumplestiltskin.

on top of the name game, co-workers recently told me that what i thought was mamon is actually pan de regla. dammit. there go my childhood constructs. at least i still have my childhood dreams
(what a neat tie-in! you saw that coming, didn't you?).

postcards. pages. poetry.

got a postcard from a friend, she spent three days in amsterdam after six weeks in germany. how is it that i'm still here? the world is so big and i haven't seen much of it. we work so that we can do the things we want. by the time we actually have the dough to do the things we want, we're short on time and loaded with responsibilities. i've been planning to pack a bag, fill it with clothes and the necessary stuff-just so if i get the urge to go somewhere, all i have to do is grab it and GO, everything else be damned!

one of these days i'll fill up my truck's tank and see where the road takes me. knowing my truck, it'll probably stall before it runs out of fuel. ah well, one can dream.

anyway.

i've been playing with google's page creator. pretty nifty.
so far, i've made a shrine to myself.
well, not really a shrine... more like... just click on it already and save me the trouble.

last saturday, another friend (what can i say, i'm a friendly person) said something like, "so, you write poems." she might as well have said "so, you have a ripe zit on your forehead" or "so, your fly is open." if you REALLY know me, you'll know why this is. the day after, i remembered bits and pieces of that conversation, and out of those bits and pieces i came up with this:

[05IV06]
longing stretches the skin so taut
that a single breath can threaten
to rip its seams

when the body cannot contain
we asphyxiate
quietly, secretly
and kill just enough so we fit
comfortably in our selves

world's best. state-of-the-art.

use superlatives often enough and they become meaningless. seriously, how many "d'best" buko pies can there be? and who knew that "asia's best in hairstyling" (hand scrawled sign) could be found in a sleepy philippine town? with that said, i daresay this is going to be the world's best blog.