Hearing Vivaldi

"When it was done and you went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and that something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay, and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I've ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don't care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I've never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness."

From Lisey's Story by Stephen King

Mirage

呼吸着一种孤独的味道

心跳在你沉默以后慢慢的被淡忘掉

我笑了笑反正你看不到

我要的幸福

遗落在你怀抱

当爱失了焦

那些最初的美好

早被你搁在一角

街上拥挤人潮

走着看着都是摧眠符号

记忆停不了

穿过读你的心跳

穿过想你的味道

我只想不被打扰

假装多好我只要

只想要再拥有一秒

去相信你的拥抱

一直会让我依靠

继续等待

还心甘情愿的不想逃

当爱失了焦

那些最初的美好

早被你搁在一角

街上拥挤人潮

走着看着都是摧眠符号

记忆停不了

穿过读你的心跳

穿过想你的味道

我只想不被打扰

假装多好我只要

只想要再拥有一秒

去相信你的拥抱

一直会让我依靠

继续等待

心甘情愿不想逃

假装多好依然是

依然是暧昧的tone调

一个人无理取闹

两人世界的煎熬

我被自己困在自己设下的圈套

像是驼鸟

相信时间是唯一解药

视而不见

傻到了无可救药

其实早明了

你的爱已随风飘

想要找

再也找不到

假装多好我只要

只想要再拥有一秒

去相信你的拥抱

还心甘情愿的不想逃

假装多好依然是

依然是暧昧的tone调

一个人无理取闹

两人世界的煎熬

我被自己困在自己设下的圈套

假装自己

已解开冰冷的手铐

"Iris: I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said "Journeys end in lovers meeting." What an extraordinary thought. Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that, but I am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had. I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said "love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost. But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night. And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. Its called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space! Yes, you are looking at one such individual. And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years! The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmas', the worst Birthday's, New Years Eve's brought in by tears and valium. These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life. All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back. Oh god, just the sight of him! Heart pounding! Throat thickening! Absolutely can't swallow! All the usual symptoms."

From THE HOLIDAY

MC

My best friend was just made partner in the largest accountancy firm back home. After all the travails throughout the years (including really grave health concerns), she finally made it to the top. Another friend meanwhile is in the midst of his "taipanship" as I would like to call it. For the past few months, he has been on the call even on Sundays while making the rotations of all the departments. Being self-employed does have its disadvantages but in the long run I think the rewards will be more than a thousandfold.

The choice between being a salaried employee and being an entrepreneur is somehow dependent on not just the financing but more on whether the individual is a major risk taker. Being risk averse has never been my cup of tea. With that being said, the only thing I need is the green bucks and I will be on my way...

Gallant avenger

Egg dipped cheese sandwich

Thy name is MC

Peace

Facebook, MySpace, Multiply, Friendster, Hi5, Yahoo 360, Windows Live Spaces...looks like the social networking community has expanded too much...I've actually been sent so many invitations and some of them from people I do not know from Adam. But that's exactly the point right? To gain new friends but keep the old.

As for blogging, I have only this and Windows Live Spaces. And I remain faithful to the old run of the mill journal entry ala Bridget Jones. Finally saw Moleskine being sold here in Page One. And it comes in different colors! I'll probably buy one soon as soon as the old diary's filled up.

One of the partners in the largest Singaporean law firm told me that she never took up writing as a profession because it was not lucrative. I guess that remark firmed up my determination not to work for her (or someone like her).

"Do you do it for the money, honey? The answer is no. Don't now and never did. Yes, I've made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it… I have written because it fulfilled me. Maybe it paid off the mortgage on the house and got the kids through college, but those things were on the side–I did it for the buzz. I did it for the pure joy of the thing. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever."

On Writing

Stephen King

I was watching an episode in Discovery Channel about a Japanese zookeeper who handraised a polar bear, which he had named "Peace." Now that's what you call a great job.

Bloody hell

I remember vividly trying to catch dragonflies (tutubing karayom kind) that flittered to and fro among the cattail-like aquatic plants in the canal beside our house. Then my mother called me saying that I should stop going near the water as there could be mosquitoes which might bite me and give me H fever, which had afflicted one of my playmates who lived a few doors away. Fast forward 12 years later and I find myself in a dingy lab at one of the pavilions of Palma Hall (Pav 4 I think). It's quite hard to maintain the accuracy of measuring reagents for an experiment while a swarm of mosquitoes is pestering you to no end. I distinctly recall being bitten numerous times. But I never realized that one tiny bite would lead to such a bloody mishap for me.

Yup, I got dengue from a mosquito lurking in the dark corners of the U.P. campus. In the 90s, dengue was already on the upsurge in the tropics. The dormer in me, who never knew the symptoms and who always practised self-medication, was content with popping paracetamol pills which turned out to be ineffective. A bloody headache that accompanied the very high fever that did not want to go away was what caused me to avail of the 'crappy' facilities of the infirmary. The doctor took just one look from the rashes that appeared out of nowhere as he conducted the tourniquet test on my arm and then said that I should contact my parents because I had dengue. Really nice timing. It was exams week. How could I possibly study microbiology inside the hospital! (easy with all the germs inside right?)

Well, things were just going to be more grievous as I had to spend a night in the infirmary...but no...I was awakened in the middle of night to be transferred to a real hospital because they did not have the proper instrumentation to monitor my platelet count. So I was rushed to Capitol Medical Center in a cab only to find out there were no private rooms available and I had to content myself with the ward. I think that first night actually aggravated my condition as I was lumped together with other dengue victims who were either being transfused with blood or were vomiting blood. This aside from the fact that the airconditioning was super cold and they did not provide me with proper protection from the freezing temperature.

The next day I did get transferred to my own room. And that's when the real horror began. They had to get blood from me every hour to determine my platelet count. Collapsing veins nonetheless, my 10 fingertips proved useful for bloodletting. And this was during the time when lancets were not of the automatic push button kind yet! Blood stored in the bank - check. Vitamins and antibiotics injected straight to the IV - check. Itchy rashes in my appendages - check . Bad hospital food - check. After a few days, my platelet count was surging back to the normal level. Or so I thought. While reading the newspaper, I suddenly felt blood trickling from my nose. The gush didn't stop immediately and I had to be assisted to the bathroom. That was when I really cried because I realized I might undergo blood transfusion and I was not really fond of the idea of having alien blood penetrate my vessels. What if it came from a criminal? Or from one with a strange disease? My thoughts were really grim at that point so much so that my body made a quick turnaround and triumphantly got rid of the virus. How's that for immunity! (alab ng dugo ika nga...)

My dengue experience served many purposes. One, I realized that I had a very high threshold for pain. Two, I lost weight (for some time only hahaha). Three, I could no longer be a blood donor as I was already considered 'contaminated'. Four, I abhorred mosquitoes with a vengeance such that I began protecting spiders that preyed on them. Fifth, I learned how costly it was to be confined in a private hospital and vowed to stay healthy for the rest of my life (well, I haven't been confined since that time). Sixth, I was able to study for a major exam in just one day. Never knew I had such capability (I usually just threw caution to the wind and guessed hahaha).

So what prompted me to write this piece? Last Friday, an officemate was actually talking about how her home was located in a hotspot. Unluckily, it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy so to speak as she and her husband got dengue over the weekend. Not many people know that there is no cure for dengue. In this instance, an ounce of prevention is indeed better than a pound of cure. In the meantime, I would shy away from watering holes...

"The appetite is sharpened by the first bites."
José Protacio Mercado Rizal Alonso y Realonda

More than meets the eye

Time passes by so quickly that it sometimes catches me off guard. It has been one year to the day I arrived in SH. It has been a month since I went back home. It has been 6 months since a friend entered military service (as I told him repeatedly "never pick up the soap!"). One good friend (a former boss) just marked a significant milestone (wish I could give her a ruby for it if you get the drift). And an old roommate from my college days recently spent several days here in my humble abode. This human rights advocate is now based in Bangkok (talk about the best location right now for a human rights org...) after having spent her internship in Geneva. Talking until the wee hours was all we did. It felt like deja vu. The only difference is we were not in the dorm. But the topics remained the same - of life, liberty and property! Although I could say another issue closer to our hearts dominated our conversations (One guess hahaha).

I had a good Japanese lunch with my headhunter last Friday who was obviously trying to test my mettle in eating exotic food. Too bad for him. He never knew I was that adventurous. So the bill turned out to be quite expensive for him. =)

07-07-07 seems to be a great day for a lot of things. For one, there is Live Earth the concert against global warming. They had ones in the cities that I love (Hamburg and SH). The commercials were nicely done. I wish the message would really cut across and be remembered. Another memorable event was the announcement of the 7 new wonders of the world. I had actually voted and only got 4 of them. It seems like lobbying worked for some of the sites. Too bad for Cambodia.

Watching the Transformers was like a trip down memory lane. Hot cars, hot men (Josh Duhamel...ok Shia LeBeouf who is the IT boy of the moment with Indiana Jones as his next movie), hot girls, funny script (that Visa call was really funny), lots of fighting scenes...too bad Jazz had to die. And I hate Megatron's appearance. Well, who cares about the plot when you have all those dazzling Autobots lining up!

Optimus Prime: With the Allspark gone, we cannot return life to our planet. And fate has yielded its reward: a new world to call home. We live among its people now in plain sight, but watching over them in secret, waiting, protecting. I have witnessed their capacity for courage, and though we are worlds apart, like us, there's more to them than meets the eye. I am Optimus Prime, and I send this message to any surviving Autobots taking refuge among the stars: we are here, we are waiting.

After reading Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, I realized that indeed my home country can be best described as the 51st state, for it copies even the problems of Uncle Sam! Gore's treatise on how the politics of fear, secrecy and blind faith subvert wise decision-making, degrade democracy and imperil the country and the world may have had the Philippines as a setting. As he succinctly emphasizes in the end: "The question before us could be of no greater moment: Will we continue to live as a people under the rule of law as embodied in our Constitution? Or will we fail future generations by leaving them a Constitution far diminished from the charter of liberty we have inherited from our forebears? Our choice is clear."

First memory of the Eunos kitchen

3 new reasons why I left for greener pastures which I forgot to put in my last post:

1. My apartment got flooded and many valuable hard bound books got soaked. They were beyond saving as most of them became moldy immediately. One would think this happens only in the news right? Wrong. This was the fourth time that it occurred since the time I moved in there in 2001. The very first one was actually more damaging as it destroyed my very 'new' desktop at that time.

2. My brother's car got hit at the front by a jeepney. The were on an incline (as all roads in Baguio are) and my brother saw that this jeepney ahead of him was having a hard time. So he made sure there was a distance of 2 cars between them. Traffic was at a standstill. Then suddenly boom! Out of nowhere the jeep skidded downwards towards the 'new' car, destroying the front bumper in the process! The jeepney driver could only come out, scratch his head and then had the gall to say, "The brakes weren't biting" (direct translation).

3. While I was packing my stuff, I was visited by the lineman who said "We have to cut off your electricity because you haven't paid." Shit. There must be some mistake I said. But he wouldn't hear any of my explanations and proceeded to cut the electricity. My blood pressure rose together with the room temperature. But my fury seemed to dissipate as determination to get things over and done with took the better of me. Gooodbye PINAS! hahaha

The common denominator between Juday and me - we both like Ryan. Now to add to this, I am beginning to show interest in cooking. Huh? You heard it right...My mom has been bugging me over the years to observe her and maybe absorb some of her fine culinary skills in the process. I never had the inclination. But now, after being the instant pasta and German smoked pork belly aficianado and Chinese and Thai food gourmand, I decided to at least try to learn the basic skills in cooking. My first attempt is to cook adobo. I tried it before using the Mama Sita mix (of course the diners didn't know that!). This time, the output resembled a blander version of what my mom makes. Somehow succesful considering I used distilled white vinegar (this was the most reasonable as I tried smelling the other kinds there and they all smelled like the acetic acid I used in the chem lab!) and light soy sauce (which tasted like the one used in Japanese food...I should use the dark one next time). Here's to better tasting food cooked by myself in the near future and a cookbook ala "Memories of Philippine Kitchens" in the long term.

My friend in SH got a satellite to prevent himself from dying from boredom. Unfortunately for him, he unknowingly bought the one for Filipinos. And now he has like 12 Filipino channels - ABS CBN, GMA 7, Mabuhay TV, ETC, ABC 5, NBN, Studio 23, IBC, Cinema One, MTV Pilipinas and even RJ TV! Yikes...talk about Pinoy overload. I do not even have TFC here. Well, he observed that our celebrities were good-looking (better than the stars of the country where he is now) and had good voices. I had to point out that not everyone had that trait. I guess ASAP and SOP amazed him, as well as the roster of fantaseryes and telenovelas. (The Kapuso network was celebrating its 57th anniversary that's why!). Well, he plans to give me the satellite in the future since apparently it would be able to get the signals for those Pinoy channels anywhere in the world (or as the cablemen claim). In the meantime, he has to be envious of my Taiwanese channels.

Simlin Square was a gadget geek's paradise. They had everything on discount! Too bad the iPhone isn't available yet...dream dream dream dreammmmmm.

Transformers has been released and my brother says it is fantastic. He adds, "It's a trip down memory lane for your generation!" Ouch. Talk about a kid who is a decade younger telling me that. Well, I did watch even the cartoon movie before so I'll be lining up for this one. The only thing I don't like is the fact that they changed Bumblebee from a Volkwagen Beetle to a Chevy Camaro. He loses his cuteness factor...which Josh Duhamel makes up for.