Mga isang linggong nakalipas na naisulat ko yun ay naglalakad ako magisa sa mall, at eventually napunta ako sa Powerbooks. Sabi ko I’ll just window shop. I love books eh. Pero nung palabas na sana ako napansin ko ang isang hilerang libro na salmon ang kulay ng cover,  “Para Kay B” ang title.

One day, bored in the house with nothing to do, no one to talk to, nothing to watch on TV, I rifled through the DVDs we had lying around. And I found City of God.

Cidade de Deus

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There is a cat, right now, dying in our garage. None of this was intentional. I am NOT sick. None of us wanted this. And I really, truly am soooo sorry. :(

Let me explain >>>

And I held my Shih-Tzu in my arms, his puppy dog eyes losing their sparkle, and in its place a dull kind of unfocused glaze.
He had eaten something that quite obviously did not agree with him.
I held him all the way to the vet.
And he didn’t make it.

[A product of boredom, nostalgia and OneWord.com]

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So I was having my usual Coffee At The Mall On The Weekend date with my mom and brother, and over my shoulder, I noticed something… odd.

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So the time had come for me to get my Philippine passport made. And before the actual passport, I needed a passport picture.

Oh fucking no.

Passport pictures have specific rules, I know. Something about being dressed decently (at least from the shoulders up), and a certain measure of distance of the face from the borders of the pictures… Whatever. I relied on the fact that picture places know their shit and should therefore know the requirements.

I decided to just wear this cute new blouse I bought — white, sloppy, but cute, just the way I like it. Heh. That’ll at least take care of the required collar. I’ll wing the rest when I’m at the photo place.

I dragged my ass off of the computer chair to head to the nearest picture place whatchamacallit in the aforementioned blouse as my only prep for Passport Picture Purgatory.

I tried putting my words down in Tagalog. But after countless backspacing, I just… I don’t think I can. :(

But I’ll try, regardless:

read the continuation -- in TAGALOG -- here >>>

An old lady came up to me, while I was sitting and waiting and smoking and writing. She was nicely dressed, presentable, and shaky in that odd way that only old people shake. Rather, I think it’s better described as a quiver. So, okay, I mean, she quivered.

She sat down on the chair at my table across from me and says, “Hi, miss, are you Catholic?”

Startled, I answered with a prompt “Um. Oh. No.” But she sat right down anyway.

My affinity for coffee has developed, changed and evolved through the years. It was always an essential part of my life, whether decaf, iced, ice-blended or hot… Or even 3-in-1 instant.

When I was in high school, my entire family hung out at our nearby mall every weekend. We did the usual things — had dinner, heard mass, did groceries, watched the occasional movie. After all that, we would always sit at our usual café and, you guessed it, had coffee. My little brother, still too young for coffee, had milkshakes. I had my fancy frappes. Mom would have her brewed coffee, as did my dad.

In college, away from home, and not always present for our weekend family mall dates, I preferred coffee with friends over beers with buddies. Then I could write my assignments alone, catch up on reading or rant to/with a friend about the impossible Math/Bio/Chem/mostly Math exams.

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A friend, who I shall refer to as Emo Friend, got kind of drunk, and was talking shit. He was having personal problems and was wallowing in what I would call an emo moment.

He and another friend of mine started talking “god.”

Emo Friend was saying “I’ve been a good person all my life. Why is god doing this to me?” The usual questions about faith. A dialogue between him and Non-Emo Friend continued.

I was smoking my cigarette while silently listening to the two talk it out. If Emo Friend needed his god, who was I to get in the way of that?

CONTINUED >>>

Shadows & light. Dark & bright. Both extremes, together to create an almost balanced mix of both. Almost, because the shadows are just slightly stronger than the colors and lights.

Clear, solid outlines don’t hold in the hazy, wonderfully messy strokes.

Five to almost ten years before, I abhorred absolutely anything that had to do with pop. I got into a fight with some classmates in high school because they worshipped *NSYNC and I was all “Ewww they’re so gross. You guys are so baduy.” Early college I loved the rock concert crowd, hated the bubblegum pop fans, hated mainstream music… It was lame to me, the artists had no real talent, and it was all “image” and “marketing” and “fake."

Sexxeh.

CONTINUED >>>

Having realized that I’ve been reading too much Gaiman and that I needed to read a book by someone else entirely, I picked up a book that’s been catching my eye for years now. I’d wanted to buy it for some time, then the book disappeared so I forgot about it. Then one day last week it was staring back at me from the bookshelves again. It was a local publication — something I have to get around to reading more often, I know! — and only 150 Pesos.

It was F. H. Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles.

CONTINUED >>>

People in the Call Center industry are quick to defend their work; to say that there is no growth in the industry is bullshit!, they yell. Yes, for some companies that allow it, especially the one I was from, it was easy to “grow,” to be promoted, to climb the career ladder. From mere CSR, to TL, to OM… and so on. I could have gone up a rung had I applied any effort into it, had the bribe with a salary increase been shoved into my face a little more maybe.

But I remained a “mere” CSR. I didn’t bother even trying. I didn’t want to get promoted knowing that that would, in the long run, make it harder for me to leave if my time came to leave. I knew I didn’t want to have that kind of responsibility.

A few months later, I proved myself right. I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take the monotony. I couldn’t take the thought that I could be doing something more. Something more like me.