you_are_gravity

I'm home! So far I've gone on a job interview, bought a hula hoop, and gotten very moderately drunk with Reg and Carlene. The hula hoop is awesome, while walking around Greenbelt in my corporate job interview garb with the hoop around my shoulder, Reg said I looked like a stripper (thanks). Then I found out from http://hooping.org that it's a foot and a half too small for me, so I have to make my own using a PVC pipe; after all, hooping is serious business. So if there's anyone out there 4'7" and under who would like to place dibs on a red, white, and blue hoop, feel free to take this one off my hands.

Why hula hooping? Why not. Along the way, I realized that being employed puts food on the table and airfare in the bank; but it doesn't necessarily guarantee a huge degree of fulfillment, as opposed to so-called success or accomplishment. I've complained incessantly about the boredom and the repetitiveness, but it's a means to an end.

The thing is, I really can't tell anyone what success looks like from my perspective. I know I'd be a bundle of nerves if I had to survive from paycheck to paycheck, so I guess success involves dodging bankruptcy. I also know that success has a lot to do with not going hungry and having the option to stay warm and dry come rainy season; but that can't be all there is to it, right? I don't know how it's come to this, where it's easier to recognize failure over success. Reg put it best when she said, "I can't tell you what I want or what my dreams are, but I can tell you what my house will look like."

I forgot who it was, but I read an interview in which some woman made it very clear that the worst thing a parent could do is live vicariously through his or her children. The worst thing you can do is place parameters on someone else's dreams. Dreams are highly personal, but that's often forgotten in favor of the "dreams" we allow society to craft for us: the house, the insurance policy, the promise of immortality or something like it, the endless list of academic credentials, and the list goes on.

Besides, hula hoops are fun. They're round, if crafted correctly they're practically unbreakable, and unless they're doused in gasoline or made of sandpaper, they can't cause any serious injuries. And when used correctly, they look and feel infinite--even in the most mundane way. So right now success is keeping a ring of PVC around my waist. My record so far is something like 5 seconds, so I've got a long way to go. Success is perpetual motion.

I've seen the Flaming Lips live and confirmed that Wayne Coyne is made of man bits. Now I want to learn to use a hula hoop correctly. But I/we/you and I will always, always travel.

"We scanned the skies with rainbow eyes and saw machines of every shape and size."

I love David Bowie.

Or maybe money solves the problem once I buy myself something happy, like a ukulele or a book, then after that the money's gone and you're bored again. I'm here because of money and the boredom is making my ears bleed.The best part of my day was still hanging out at MLNW with Isa. Friends and clothes are a good combination, especially when the clothes help bring in money.

But I now know that 0101.01.00 is the harmonized system's tariff code for "Live Swine".

Online Town Meeting with Obama on CNN. America wants its shitty jobs back so I might be out of skyscraper work if their plan pushes through. Then again, SGS isn't an American company. It's weird that we're still swamped with work considering the financial crisis and the fact that we're handling trade contracts for countries in deeper squalor than our own. Makes you wonder about all the money swirling around the world, and you have to ask where the hell your sense of security is hanging. 

Today I signed my first contract and celebrated the way the rest of humanity does: by peeing in a cup and submitting a blood sample. Is this how the corporate world works, you get a foot in the door and all they're interested in is your pee? The next 3 months will be spent working towards god knows what, because at this point I can't tell anyone, not even myself, whether or not I'll enjoy this.

I've come to accept that it's really not a matter of doing what you enjoy, but of making that compromise that eventually allows you to do what you really want to do. Isn't that what all those tedious hours spent in school are about? sure, you learn stuff along the way, but the edge you create for yourself at the end is what it's about. It will be boring, but at the same time it's an opportunity. I really have no idea where I'll land at the end of this (I just hope it'll be awesome and it involves a lot of arguing with people because I genuinely enjoy a good argument).

I was never a full-time anything and I never intend to be. That's why I don't see the point in judging people based on their job descriptions.The whole idea of graduating and landing a day job is completely overrated because at the end of the 8-hours you put in each day, you're still not your job and your job isn't you. It's a huge part of you in that it demands a lot of your time and sustains your lifestyle, but there's always a lifestyle that comes with it.

My lifestyle's not cheap, and I know I could be resented for that, but it's not like I'm not the one going bankrupt to sustain it. I like having fun, don't we all? I don't see the point in martyring people who work their asses off only to complain about how boring their lives are and how mediocre they feel just coursing along the same prescribed trajectories of school-then work-then wife and kids. It's one of your responsibilities towards yourself to make things interesting, look at Richard Gere and his gerbil.

Three months, then we'll see what happens. In the meantime, it's just a day job. Real life begins after 6 pm anyway.

I've embraced my inner capitalist a long time ago and accepted that while it looks noble and sexy to be a starving artist (or entrepreneur, haha), I need to sustain my stupid gas guzzling, credit card swiping lifestyle. It's pretty insensitive to talk about employment, which is a pretty touchy subject considering that come graduation, a lot of people find themselves unemployed. So in a sense I have the easy way out by finding myself practically employed without the graduation part.

I've got a job offer with some 21st floor Makati CBD schtick. I know it's going to be deathly boring and there will come a time when I feel shortchanged considering the compromise I've made on what I really want to do with my life (which is still pretty vague because I really like money--admit it, so do you) and the kind of compensation they're offering. But the difference is it's actually there. It's not something I'm pinning my hopes on, it's an actual offer. And I have 'til Wednesday to give word and the Monday after I get back from Singapore to start. They'll hopefully give me a day off to defend my thesis, but otherwise, that's it.

So I've been weighing the odds, and it all boils down to there being no harm in it. After all, it's a start, which is what I direly need when the requirements of the industry that's supposed to absorb us have inflated to ridiculous proportions. Where they once expected graduates, they now expect graduates with honors or MAs or at least 3-5 years of experience. I have none of those, so a shot at being the youngest pick and the only fresh grad at a fairly stable 200 year old company is...okay. It's just the nature of the work itself that puts me off.

And speaking of compromise, I don't know what I want to do with my life anyway besides just keep trying stuff. My first course in college (Theater Arts) was chosen based on this crazed obsession with trying stuff. I've coursed through ballet, tap dance, a stab at pole dance, an electric instrument, a classical instrument, acting, behind the scenes, weird-ass interpretive dance workshops, writing, and random seamstress jobs. While it was all fun, it all makes for a very disjointed resume. Now I'm having fun just sitting back and being in the audience, but we have to feed ourselves somehow (and I really like buying shoes, it's a crazy-eyed disease). Consultancy and analysis, which are pretty much euphemisms for paper pushing, aren't on the list yet, but they'd look good on paper.

Is being good on paper the only reason why we take our first jobs? Heck people choose to spend their whole lives married to someone because they look good on paper, this will be 500 hours of my life spent looking good on paper before moving on to the next thing. And the next, and the next.

"The world that we live in now, it seems passé to react to anything out of the ordinary. Hoping that we never get caught in the mess, hoping to live daily without interruption. Hoping to persevere this slow boring death."

-from the write-up on Dappled Cities' take-away show off of LaBlogotheque.com

When we were in Sagada a coupe of years ago, we kept running into this very, very blonde caucasian dude. We called him Chris Martin because he looked exactly like Mr. Gwyneth Paltrow. Some time after we got back and re-established our existences in the city, I found myself standing next to Chris Martin on a train and he was like "Hello again! I am Polish!". I've completely forgotten his name, in fact he didn't even blurt out "I'm Polish!" (although he really was Polish). What I remember was that he wasn't afraid to show how blown away he was by the randomness of it all, in his words "80 million people in this country and I run into you again". And that's how I met Chris Martin.

Fact is we're assailed by the random on a daily basis but we just stop noticing at some point. It's like at a certain age it becomes immature to admit you're still in awe of the world because you're too busy coping with the mundanity of everyday life.

I'm not a big fan of cynicism (although I have had some horribly cynical phases). From time-to-time I still get blown away by tiny things like other people's conversations and I find it hard to talk about this, because it feels like at a certain age it's imperative to pretend we're no longer blown away by running into the same stranger twice. We're gripped by this whole notion of professionalism and capability that involves pencil cut skirts and signing papers and it all gets very dehumanizing at some point.

I'm also beginning to find it increasingly difficult to be inspired by fashion, especially commercial fashion. Maybe it's the working environment at both of my internships, maybe it's me running out of ideas, maybe it's the dress code. Everyday we have two color choices, black or white--no prints. I understand that this is an opportunity to use your imagination, that there's a lot you can do with solids that can't be achieved with prints, but I prefer the flipside. I like that there's a whole spectrum between black and white.

Will someone please, for the love of god, crack open a fucking window?!

I've figured out why it is that I always have a headache and I'm always tired as fuck, even if what I'm doing here at (company which shall not be named) is nowhere near half as tedious and menial as the labor I put in at Natori. THERE IS NO AIR! We've probably been breathing the same stale air since the company moved to its new headquarters here in (unnamed location). What pisses me off even more is that there's a HUGE balcony outside my window--that's right I got the window seat, hahaha! Suck it!--and there is no way to access it. The room is all windows, windows which are covered with blinds and do not open. At all. It's like we're all allergic to the outside world because it's a threat to our perfumed and powdered, high-heel clad bodies. This place is *knock on fiberboard* a fire trap! And everyone's in heels! We'll be tripping all over each other in the event that the air gets sucked out of the room and we're all doomed to die!

Oh wait, the air did get sucked out of the room.

Sometimes while talking I forget to breathe. I just ramble on and on (like this) and then I start getting a little lightheaded. Only then do I remember to breathe. Breathing is a highly underrated activity and it doesn't get the appreciation it deserves until the day you find yourself stuck in an airless room full of women doused with Issey Miyake. I need a drink! I need an alcohol induced headache to make oxygen deprivation look like a walk in the park! Actually a walk in the park seems like a good idea, but all we have is a parking lot, and I'm headed there as soon as I click "save and publish".

It's comforting that almost everybody had Weezer's blue album on their lists. It's like going on a girlie PMS rampage, and discovering that you and all your girlfriends like yogurt with your Cheetos.

Another thing I noticed is how you can trace when somebody came of age (musically, I guess) from the Radiohead album they pegged on their lists. Brian has Pablo Honey BECAUSE HE'S OLD HAHAHAHA OLD! My clearest memory of that album was from the time they showed "Creep" on Beavis and Butt-head. I was an MTV kid, but the MTV I grew up with had Nonie and David Wu veejayjaying and played Ugly Kid Joe's "Cat's in the Cradle" every 2 hours. I couldn't tell the difference between Dave Pirner and the dude from Ugly kid Joe, all I knew was that they both kinda sucked and in my head everyone who sucked was the same person; one big chimeric mass of suckage with a Hitler 'stache.

And there was Migraine boy--BEST CARTOON EVER, then in its wake came Saw Boy and Brain Eater which wasn't even a third as awesome. Owel doesn't have a list (yet) but I'm pretty sure he'd put Kid A on his because Owel's convinced he's smarter than any of us. I'd put The Bends on mine because I was convinced that Clueless was a movie that would change the landscape of American cinema (I was ten years old for crying out loud), and high five with Peter Mot Mot with a mix of delight and crippling depression brought on by the opening riff of "My Iron Lung".

At 10 I hadn't discovered the magical golden delicious power of CD players yet, I was still hooked on casette tapes and was wearing the blue album thin by playing it every single night for almost a month when my brother said I could have it. In fact I could have all his tapes because tapes sucked and CDs was where it was at. Part of this collection was Sonic Youth's Washing Machine and Jet Set, The Beastie Boys Ill Communication, Mad Season's Above, and Rancid's And Out Come the Wolves. This was an awesome development because the only way I could acquire new music at that age was if it was my birthday or I happened to have a hundred bucks to spare--which was never.

I didn't have a walkman. What I had was a tape deck which I kept under my pillow at sleepy time so no one would get bothered by the noise. Once I got used to an album, it took me less and less time to doze off, until I got sick to death of the album and had to plug in a new one, then the cycle repeated itself. I ended up with a really bad neck before I even hit puberty, but my mom seemed to prefer this over my horrible sleeping habits. In fact, the whole casette player under the pillow schtick was her suggestion because she was probably willing to do anything short of pumping my veins with Benadryl just to get me to sleep before daybreak.

My mom loves music as much as I do. I'm pretty sure she hasn't forgiven me for recording over her copy of The Talking Heads True Stories when I was a toddler (I WAS 2! THE TAPE DECK HAD SHINY BUTTONS!!!). She buys White Stripes albums and says they're for us, then she stashes them away in her office. My dad has more trouble getting with the times and because of him we've never listened to the Beatles on anything but vinyl. Of course our introduction to the Beatles was with "Nowhere Man" which he said was his song, and I was all "WOW PRETTY SHINY SONG AND THEY ALL SING IN HARMONY!" without really getting what he meant. He also made us (me and my sister) listen to The Byrds' "Turn, turn, turn" which he said was our song, or maybe it was my song, he probably gave Irene something pretty like "Circle game" or "Where have all the flowers gone?".

Unfortunately, I never learned to like The Byrds so I never considered it my song. Maybe when I have kids and I'm miserable with my five-figure salary and my insane knowledge of the Philippine legal system, I'll listen to it again and get what he meant.

THREE NAMES THAT FRIENDS CALL YOU:
1. Care Bear -Jihan
2. Poop -Macky
3. Girlfriend -Carlene (I don't think she's ever called me anything else)

THREE MOST IMPORTANT DATES IN YOUR LIFE:
1. September 1, 1985
2. April 20, 2004
3. January 1 of every year

THREE THINGS YOU'VE DONE IN THE LAST 30 MINUTES:
1. drank milk tea
2. emailed Jing
3. Watched that Monty Python Spam spam spam video on youtube

THREE WAYS TO BE HAPPY KAHIT SA BAHAY LANG:
1. Anthony Bourdain and Nigella marathon
2. Play with babies, puppies are awesome too. My dogs are small with stubby legs so they're perpetual puppies
3. Make babies

THREE GIFTS YOU WOULD LIKE TO RECEIVE:
1. A subscription to McSweeney's
2. Banana shaped bag
3. Pie from the Piehole, nothing says I love you like the sweet smell of freshly baked Georgia Peach Cobbler. Or any pie will do. I like pie. TURTLE PIE!

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
1. I sew, but it's turned into something like a job.
2. Writing, or just vomiting words into notes like these. I also like to draw but that's like picture vomit.
3. TETRIS! I LOVE TETRIS!

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO FOR VACATION:
1. Singapore because I really love food and hohol with Pepe isn't so bad haha
2. San Francisco because the people are nice and you get free smiles from random street performers on Haight St, I shit you not. And it's not obscenely cold! And 826 Valencia is there.
3. Tokyo, so as not to let 3 months of Japanese language studies go to waste.

THREE FAVORITE DRINKS:
1. pineapple juice
2. milk tea
3. rose lassi

THREE THINGS FOUND IN YOUR BAG:
1. keys-wallet-phone by default
2. iPod
3. notebook

THREE FAVORITE COLORS:
1. red
2. blue
3. aqua

TOP THREE HANGOUTS:
1. Kopi Roti (smells like french toast and coffee ALL THE TIME)
2. Route 196 (it would've been big sky, but the bathroom's got herpes all over it)
3. Bread Box-Saguijo whatever, they're practically the same thing already

TOP THREE YOU LOVE SO MUCH:
1. Mikey
2. Budi, even if he can be a royal brat
3. Wandering aimlessly

TOP THREE "THINGS" SPECIAL TO YOU:
(things only)
1. Cookies
2. my iPod (okay, mine and Mikey's iPod) because it's awesome even on shuffle. It's not one of those schizophrenic iPods that takes you from Cyndi Lauper to Leonard Cohen without a decent transition. I already covered it with stickers and stupid crap so it's less enticing to the thiefy types (hahaha, thiefy).
3. My Lego watch, which is still missing.

TOP THREE ANYTHING THAT MADE YOU HAPPY LATELY:
1. Jack's awesome swimsuit
2. Scheduling the panel defense for my thesis, my thesis makes me pretty happy because it's going smoothly
3. Mikey got a haircut! Okay, it doesn't make me happy because it's not my hair, but I laughed. haha.

TOP THREE REASONS WHY YOU ANSWERED THIS SURVEY:
1. I like making lists
2. I'm done with Nikki Du's orders...
3. ...and have time to kill at the office. I also forgot my iPod cable so that's preventing me from doing the even less ethical task of using OJT time and resources for my thesis.

I TAG YOU, PIKACHU!

This afternoon, one of the girls working at Adora approached me to ask if I knew her best friend who was also a CT student. I said I did, and she asked me how she (the best friend) was doing. Turns out they hadn't really seen each other or had the chance to check up on each other since high school. It's just strange that no matter how old we are, we still refer to the people we were closest to in high school as our best friends. Who cares if you were only an nth of the person you are today, it's in high school that you consider your relationships to have been solid and sincere the way you'll need them to be regardless of how far past high school you already are.

In spite of the distance and me missing her wedding, I still consider Wendy my best friend simply because she's known me the longest. Heck, if she were anywhere near me at the moment I'd drop everything to spend time with her (and Amaya!). But there's a crucial fact missing from the whole best friend equation, and it is that I can't say we really know each other now. I guess that's what 4 Christmases and 4 birthdays away from each other does to you.

It's not like you have a choice when people are an ocean away. It wouldn't be fair of you to wish out loud that things never change and that you meet again as the same people with the same mannerisms, the same tastes, and the same ambitions. Things are changing all the time, we meet new people, we put on weight (except for the freaks who actually lose weight), we try new things and our ambitions change along with the currents of our separate lives.

One of the first things I ever talked about with Baki was how fragile friendships are because of how easy it is for people to betray each other. He brought up how it was necessary, expedient even, to just cut people off and always be thankful for your the company of your best friend--whoever it happened to be at the moment. This was at a point in my life when I needed a new word for betrayal after what had happened between me and another (former) close friend, so I readily accepted that belief in the solidity of friendship was for the naive and romantic. 

I'm okay with being called naive and romantic as long as I can still refer to Wendy as my best friend. We have shitloads of stories to tell, most of them about our firsts, and I'll be more than happy to add to those stories because catching up is more fun than disappearing completely. Other people can cut each other off, because it's really not that hard. It's like learning to ride a bike.

Catching up is work. You set time aside, sometimes there's money involved, you get past the first few awkward silences, the "ummm...so, what's new?" and you wait to get in the swing of things. But at some point your old mannerisms return, and next thing you know you're back in the moment again. You know each other now. I'll keep calling Wendy my best friend because she's worth that kind of work.

This morning, after allowing 4 trains packed with disgruntled women roll by, I finally got my self shoved onto the all-female car where I fell asleep leaning on some hapless stranger's shoulder.

Commuting is fun.

I hate to admit that I'm proud of Tengal, because personally I don't understand any of his work. But maybe that's the key to success nowadays, heck it worked for John Cage (note: I am not comparing Tengal to John Cage). It doesn't mean I don't respect what he's about.

Earl and I go a pretty long way back, all the way to first grade, and the first sign of this is that I'll never be able to call him Tengal without laughing inappropriately. My first memory of him is this time he was trying to use a chair as a desk by propping it up on his lap, but it kept bobbing from side to side so he ended up spending more time keeping it upright then getting any work done. I was six, and I didn't point out what a noob he was being because back then, I wasn't the obnoxious biznitch that I am today.

I have Earl to thank for my being as loud and tactless as I am at this point, this point where I'm not even that loud or that tactless. I guess this gives an idea of how spineless I was when we first became a couple back in high school. It wasn't that hard to get pissed off at Earl, and our relationship was a cycle of being pissed off one moment and giddy as a 12-year-old at a Hannah Montana gig the next. The fights grew bigger and bigger until finally I was just this resentful mess of PMS and female chauvinist rage. It took me a whole to recognize the neurotic spectrum of emotions that can only be felt when there's genuinely something at stake.

Before that I'd never really expressed my anger at our shortcomings (or anyone else's) or my sadness at the fact that it really wasn't working, eve before the relationship starter, and it was hard to adjust to being friends after everything blew over. It is within that context that I can now say we really are friends. Friends who mock each other relentlessly, but friends nonetheless.

And multiply refuses to upload a picture, so here's a puppy emoticon:

No more bitching about it. I've actually spent enough time with that ubiquitous doorstop of a paper they call "your thesis" to love the damn thing. On valentine's day it will be just me and my thesis making half human-half thesis babies. We will wax on about semiology and crack lame jokes that only we, and the very pretentious, get: how can you be Saussure? Har Har Har.

So here's what I've really been up to:
For the past couple of months I've been collecting advertisements, taking pictures of billboards and retail displays, and generally looking for common themes in how fashion is advertised. To be more concrete about it, through the seasons what generally makes up our societal definitions of fashionable.

What I ended up proposing was that apparel hit mainstream upon being advertised (no shit) and upon mainstreaming certain apparel, they become privileged with the notion of taste. Taste is an arbitrary concept that is legitimized through its endorsement from the higher echelons of society. Taste, in other words, comes from the top. If Tessa Prieto thinks its fabulous, it is fabulous. No questions asked. It doesn't even have to be Tessa Prieto, my point is our notions of taste are socially motivated.

Thus, in a capitalist society where upward social mobility is desired, the selling point in fashion advertising comes with associating products with opulence. Fashion is, after all, an endeavor reserved for the elite. No matter how ghetto you may be, your ghetto-ness only goes from ghetto to derelict when it's being paraded down the runway. In terms of opulence, I'm not just talking about wealth. The whole concept of wealth is completely irrelevant to the study without anything visible to signify it, and that's where fashion advertising comes in.

Fashion advertising is built on images, after all fashion is all about images. It rarely makes use of language or product descriptions, thus affirming that fashion is not concerned with the utilitarian. No one gives a crap about how long your Balenciaga heels will last, what we want to know is how fabulous they look and where to wear them. What drives the fashion industry is not the consumption of products but the consumption of images. So upon reading these images, what can be assumed about the market they're being sold to.

Now please greet my dear friend Cat who turns 21 today. I love you Cat!

This is probably the entry that makes me sound like a fossil, where I start cursing out those darned kids (in Tagalog, mga pambihirang bata!).

Over the course of 7 years, I've had 4 blogs. The first one I had to abandon because I forgot not only the password, but the name. I was so lazy about updating it because it kept asking stuff before updating like "Are you sure you want to save this entry?" then after clicking "OK" it's all "Entry has been saved! Publish entry?" Fucking annoying passive aggressive bullshit, thanks a lot Blogger! You're welcome? Are you sure you're welcome? Your humble acceptance will now be published, click.

So far Multiply and LJ have been kind, but between the two I'd still choose multiply for the ease of use. I like simplicity in my interfaces but I hate it when stuff you're working on magically gets swept off the desktop, which goes without saying that I'm not a Mac, I'm a PC.

I write this because over the past few weeks, a lot of people have been harping on about Plurk, which tags itself as "a social journal for your life" through which you can "share your life easily with family and friends". Which upon visiting a few sites is just a lot of one-liners like "Sexpot4000 will go take a bath now" or "Teh_fingerbanger is watching Die Hard 3" with some added fluff about Karma and fans and whatnot.

But seriously fools? One liners? I can understand being lazy about writing or reading, but there's actually something in between now, something so oddly passive where you're addressing a general public without actually saying anything; where you want to be reached without actually being spoken to. Something that treads the border between chatting, blogging, and changing your facebook status every few hours. Guys, language is your friend. Words are meant to be strung together, and the longer the better isn't always the case, but cohesion and relevance are god's gift to the educated.

How half-assed have we become that we even bother with this crap where social interaction is broken down to a line-a-day--and not just a line a day. "I have a crazy crab breakout in my nether-regions, can't talk now." is a line-a-day worth publishing...probably. Okay, maybe not. But if you're too lazy to drag out an entire line of cohesive thought or you're too lazy to read one, then you're in luck! There's a whole social network with a gibberish name that has been created just for you!

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. I have a system when it comes to eating M&Ms. I pour the whole baggy out onto my bed (or a plate or just a handful into my hand) and then divide the pile by color. Then I take the biggest color pile and hold it in my cheek til it melts. Repeat until no M&Ms are left.

2. I keep all my receipts until my wallet gets really fat, then I have to throw them all out.

3. I follow the business section of the newspaper fairly regularly.

4. I really hate fashion shows. I don't mind being behind the scenes, but I hate having to sit through them.

5. I am currently patting myself on the ass for finding an Anna Sui blouse for a hundred bucks at the ukay near my house.

6. I only discovered Ang Bandang Shirley because I was madly in love with Sheila and the Insects and followed them around whenever they were in town. Shirley, Sheila, and Manoks were all playing at the same gig and Owel was still playing bass for Manoks.

7. The first time I heard of the Purplechickens was through the excessive pimping of my friend Pog. The first time I actually heard their songs was through Tita Nella Sarabia.

8. When I was in high school, I swore that if I got into UP Diliman I would get a Darna yelling "Darna!" tattoo on my back. Yeah...I'm kind of glad I didn't get into UP Diliman on the first try.

9. I put down Theater Arts as my first choice when I applied for Ateneo because I'd never tried any theater related stuff. Ever. Of course it stopped being a "funny first choice" when I actually had to go to Ateneo. My second choice was Environmental Science.

10. The smell of damp freshly shampooed hair makes me nauseous.

11. I only see my dad on Sundays.

12. I have two adopted brothers, one's 6 the other is 2 and blind. Both are very awesome.

13. I really like kids and am thinking of taking a break from the whole clothing industry thang and just becoming a preschool teacher after I graduate.

14. I learned to use a sewing machine when I was 7. My lola taught me to use her 1950 portable Singer, which was a wedding gift to her from her sister.

15. If you want to bore the crap out of me and turn me into a PMSing angry bag of cuntrag, take me to the beach. I fucking hate the beach. I. hate. the. beach.

16. I'm not completely against nature in all it bounty and beauty though, I love the mountains. I like how the air is cooler and you get lightheaded when you breathe too much. Heck, I even like the Koreans.

17. It was my mom who got me hooked on ukay. The first time she took me and Wendy was when we were 13 and tagging along for the UP writer's workshop.

18. The way my baby brother looks now is exactly how I looked when I was his age, down to the haircut and the missing front teeth.

19. I had a weird younger man fetish when I was in high school. This was one of the things that attracted me to Earl whom I was convinced was only 15 when we were seniors. I was all "NO shit? 15 lang siya?!" then I was automatically dry humping his leg (figuratively of course).

20. I can be really gullible.

21. I suck at things I love like Economics and music. When I was in Ateneo, I wanted so badly to be good at econ because it was fascinating. I also had a huge crush on our professor, but that's another story.

22. I've gotten perfect grades for papers on books I've never read and movies I've never seen. Speaking of movies, I once won an award for an essay I wrote about a movie I didn't even watch. But I swear I really needed the money then because that was the time I totaled our car.

23. I was so obsessed with Jeff Buckley that I'd light a candle every year to commemorate his death. Now I can't remember when his death anniversary is but he'd have been dead for 11 years this year...I think it's March 30...Meh.

24. I like randomly picking things up when commuting or walking around, things like candy wrappers ("clean" candy wrappers), school supply packaging, ID pictures, toys,...I'd tack them to the bulletin board I have in my room. This later served as a mood board of some sort for Womyn in the Kitchyn, but it got to the point when Mikey would have to run back and swat at my hands just to keep me from picking up any more cruddy candy wrappers.

25. I stop by every clover patch I come across because I've already found a four-leaf clover once before.

My last phone had a compass, one of those things that measures the number of steps you take, a radio, and all that jazz, but the only feature I truly maximized was its rubberized casing which saved it from the obscene number of times I dropped it.

After that phone conked out, I got a new one from my mom in exchange for an mp3 player that she wanted for herself. Now that phone has gone missing.
I know we've all at some point questioned our attachment to technology and tried to go all walden pond on 21st century living, but this is the first time I've actually maximized a phone's features. 

I used the camera to take pictures of my baby brothers and of data I needed for school. The SD card had my playlists lodged into its miniscule 1 gig of space. I had rants recorded on it from those shiteous hours spent in C-5 rush hour traffic. I recorded the first time I heard Tao sing at Magnet on that phone so I could make Mikey listen to it later. Heck, my menstrual cycle was marked on that phone's calendar. If I get pregnant, I'm blaming the shithead who took my phone. That's right, I can't tell the difference between bloated and ovulating but my phone's got that data down.

Righteous types could talk about the evil in having and the purity in not having. Excuse me, I like having. We all do. Isn't that why we go great lengths to graduate, join the labor force, and earn paychecks working tedious jobs so we could continue to have all the detritus this world continues to offer like pretty clothes and shoes and cellphones we can mark our periods on?

That's all.

A) People who have been tagged must write their answers on their blog and replace any question that they dislike with a new, original question.

B) Tag eight people. Don't refuse to do that. Don't tag who tagged you.

Make list of all the things inside your bag:
I'll tell you what's NOT in my bag, MY FUCKING PHONE. To the fucker who took it, I want it back. SOON. And if I find out who the fuck you are I am hanging you by your tits and going henchman-Idi Amin style with a mix of G-Bay extravanganza on you, YOU WILL PISS YOUR PANTS. ass-hole.

What's the coolest thing to have happened to you today?
I ate cake. It was Mikey's dad's birthday. Hung out with Mikey's fambly. General wholesome fun.

What would you like to complain loudly about?
Then on the way home, I get my bag, check out my things and *poof* where's my phone? Where the fuck's my phone? I have a job interview on Tuesday, I have to pull out stocks at Modern Mythology, I have to contact people this week SPECIFICALLY THIS FUCKING WEEK, WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?! And there are pictures in there I need for a report, now what the fuck, do I have to go back to fucking FFI to snap them again and explain to people that "Oh, I had some insider information on me last week and this week I need to retake it, but don't worry it's for academic purposes yadda yadda yadda..."
You know the problem with you kleptomaniac assholes is that you try every fucking trick in the fucking book to justify your sneaky little fingers but at the end of the day it's not a matter of who does or doesn't deserve what or who was careless, it's that you took something that's not yours. Get a fucking life, loser. You're all "Eh kasi kayong mayayaman, di nag-aalaga ng mga gamit, eh tuloy hinalungkat ko yung bag niyo at kinuha yung mga gamit niyo, total mas mapapakinabangan ko naman blablabla niyawniyawniyaw wowowee" cry cry cry, and you expect sympathy.
First of all, HELLO. Who asked you to look inside my bag? Regardless of where my bag is and how far away I was from it, its contents are none of your damn business. And to put it simply, it's not yours! Even if you think you can make better use of something, there is a whole economic system that clarifies what does and doesn't belong to someone.

What are your aspirations?
I'd like a job that pays well but doesn't require brain fart work, preferably in a country where I'm not being robbed blind by the shitheads I pay taxes to, early retirement, then work in academe without really needing to work. Diverse portfolio, 2 kids, 2 dogs, spacious apartment. And I want to see The Flaming Lips, live.

Do you nap a lot?
No. But I get bored really easily and just kind of pass out.

What are you currently listening to?
Tao, The Dorques, Dr. Dog, Ohtis, Sufjan Stevens, Shugo Tokumaru, Menomena

What's your current fandom/obsession/addiction?
Ukay boot-hunt
Pineapple juice
Lee Pace's eyebrows

What was your most recent dream?
I've been having nondescript dreams involving people I hate. Bleh.

What are you looking forward to this month?
Mei-day, some sense of certainty on graduation and round two of practicum, people's birthdays, finding my phone.

What song do you suspect has been written for you by people who just happened to tap into your sad and secret life?

I know we're gonna meet some day in the crumbling financial institutions of this land
There will be tables and chairs, there will be pony rides and dancing bears
There'll even be a band.
'Cause listen after the fall, there'll be no countries, no currencies at all
We're gonna live on our wits, gonna throw away survival kits, trade butterfly knots for adderall

- Andrew Bird, "Tables and Chairs"

Threesomes, yay or nay?
Yuck.

What's the last song that got stuck in your head?
Of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance

"Does she know, does she know that I
Am not just searching for some first time high?"


What is your favorite weather, and why?
Middle of the night easy breezy weather. I'm a nocturnal creature but I'd hate to work in a call center.

How are you?
Been better.

What's something you'd like to say to someone right now?
GIVE ME BACK MY PHONE!
And you can contact me temporarily at 09073193898 until I get my sim re-activated.

Say something to the person who tagged you.
Goddammit, I'm stressed! Rub my back!

ohMotherufckfuLifeWHERE THEHELL? Thesis chapter 1, 3 deadlinegoddammit I miss my social life/need a drink/don't need to hear your grievances but thanks for caring. Hands off my face motherfucker! GAAHH!GWYGSDGWTFGADHDDHHH!!!

I've been at the factory too long.

I have a job interview in the morning. Surprise. It's a job I might actually want.

My thesis draft is due Friday.

I curse the ass who drafted the CT curriculum. Whose idea was it to cram 450 hours of practicum into the same semester that we're supposed to be drafting our theses? Assface. Whatever way with words I once had is down to zero now that "Assface" has crept into my vocabulary. Eat it, assface.

January 28, at Cafe Saguijo. Dinner at 8 with drinks and dancing to follow.

Aldus Santos--music critic, vocalist, poet, guy who sweats a lot--is launching his collection of album reviews and essays on the Pinoy rock scene at Saguijo. It would be awesome for Aldus if you all could be there, but it would be even awesomer to your benefit because the lineup for that night includes TRUE FAITH. Remember TRUE FAITH,  those guys with the video with the mannequin lover and the song that goes "Perrrfect, everything you are to me, oooh you're perfect" something something something?

Also on the lineup for that night are (of course) The Purplechickens, Pupil, Peryodiko, The Wuds, Rivermaya, and Markus Highway and snippets from Aldus's book read by Jason Caballa, who if I'm not mistaken, wrote the blurb praising Aldus and his copious necksweat.

Man, I LOVE True Faith.