Another memory: Illi and I, with his Sony Handycam. Bikini Open, in the late nineties. This girl in a yellow bikini, gyrating in front of his camera for all posterity, and the girl didn't know what a tampon was.
Final memory: my aunt Rowelda had her wedding here. I remember her motif was green.
I never thought it would be here... I can just see Chuck and Illi raising their eyebrows, going "whaaat?!". Between you and me, I think it's just the GTD voice going over and over in our heads. We've fought against the lure for so long, and I'm succumbing. All that aside, it's a very picturesque place.
Party this Saturday!
So now the world knows I'm getting married ("world" being my workplace). I have personally never had so much congratulations in my life, I got congratulated less when I graduated fifth honorable mention. Truth! (yes, elementary allowed me to graduate with the honors they give to students so their parents won't get mad at the establishment... I keed, I keed. It's great, eh? )
Anyway, congratulations. What does it really mean when they congratulate you for getting married? Why are they issuing congratulations? I've been mulling it over, and here are some possible hidden meanings:
1. Congratulations on being brave enough to shackle yourself to one single person for the rest of your life, world without end, ad infinitum.
2. Congratulations! You've officially gone nuts.
3. Congratulations, you've managed to sink your hooks into a human being and actually managed to convince the human being that you're worth staying with forever.
4. Congratulations, this is a feat that no ordinary mortal can achieve.
5. Congratulations, you've avoided old maid status.
6. Congratulations - we never thought it would happen.
7. Congratulations, I never thought you'd do this before I would.
8. Congratulations, you're not going to be lonely!
9. Congratulations, you can now have sexy times without skulking around and denying it!
10. Congratulations, I'm happy for you.
All in all, it's very weird to get congratulated. Is marriage an accomplishment after all? It's just strange. I don't mean to sound like an ungratefully paranoid brat, but seriously - sometimes I just wonder.
I know this comes out next year, but it's pretty compelling. On that note, I now have the Smashing Pumpkins tune on heavy rotation. Brainwashing for the masses.
"That is the burden of the thinking citizens: the bafflement of the ignorant."I don't like a lot of people. I can only count a handful who have my utmost love and respect; I reserve my contempt for the rest of society.
- Jessica Zafra, No Plastic
My family plays it. I grew up playing it, though I went on an extended hiatus (which continues to this day). My brother is gung-ho about it. My grandfather played it. My dad and his brothers were champions in their individual age levels.
Alright, alright. Here are some more reasons why tennis is imminently watchable:
Marat Safin
(written during the height of Wimbledon 2008 fever)I'm alive. And kicking. I've missed blogging but haven't found the time to do it as often as I have before. So many things have happened. I'm currently in the middle of raising the next crop of "Nikka's Hos" and from experience I barely get time to breathe.
Wish I could do this at work. Damn SurfControl.
I just realized I left my poddie's cable back in Dumaguete. Aargh!!! I want to get this song ASAP!!!! Darnit darnit darnit.
It's an autobiography by Toby Young, much to your disappointment. He worked for Graydon Carter, a.k.a. the force behind the magazine we know as Vanity Fair. Php50, for the hard cover. Steal!
If you're going to walk into a strip club, the best time would be at around 11PM, on a Saturday night.
But things never work out the way they're supposed to, which is why I found myself sauntering into the Navigator last Sunday night, at 9PM. If I were an Israelite in the days when Christ was alive, I'd probably be buried under a pile of stones right now together with my cohorts. We were the first patrons of the club, and nothing was happening. Well of course nothing was happening! It's frigging 9PM on a Sunday, nothing starts at 9PM on a Sunday.
Then again, it wasn't a best laid plan; it was a spur-of-the-moment, what the hell kind of thing, the kind of crazy idea that gets acted on when you're driving down a lonely road from a popular tavern somewhere in Lapu-lapu. The night is young, spirits are high, company is good.
And so it was that yours truly ended up in a sleazefest. Oh, the men. All of them were writhing in slow motion. Seriously, is slow-motion supposed to be sexy? I was itching to hit the "fast forward" button if there was one, because all of them moooveeed soooo slooowwwlyyy. It was ridiculous. I wanted pole tricks, and action, and props. I got slow motion pelvic thrusts, and Penshoppe briefs, with the occasional cheap scarf. They didn't even bring on the Johnson's baby oil.
Oh, and it was apparently cowboy night, because each and every stripper wore cowboy boots in varying degrees of ugly. And pek-pek shorts (as Sheila Lou calls them). It's a possibility some of those little shorts they were wearing were actually ladies XL; those things were girlier than my shorts.
I spent the night scrutinizing their underwear. A Warren brief would have delighted me no end, but I suppose the boys have a budget for their undies because the cheapest one I saw was Penshoppe - the most expensive, Mossimo. I could be wrong. I saw No Fear undies that could've been fake.
(To be continued)
Sometimes the only cure is to let go. I feel better having talked it all out. I hope he does, too. Peace is peace, however temporary.
It is a dark and stormy afternoon. The angry earth and howling winds.
I love it. If anything, at least I can't smell cigarette smoke. On dry days, it's all the city smells of, ciggy smoke and spittle in the streets. That's probably why I especially love it when Cebu is lashed by nature; no one stays on the street and smokes/spits. No one can. Everything is drenched. The air smells so clean. Sometimes I just stay outside and watch the rain, feel the wind. It's more therapeutic than Lipton Vanilla Tea. Something about the anger of Mother Nature seems to calm me. Life becomes less complicated. I guess I'm one of the lucky ones, not having to scamper about trying to hold on to life... it could be worse, living in Samar or some such.
"Math is inescapable" I thought, listening to Ronan's discourse on the computation of performance indices and their relationships (I refuse to use the word correlation, for fear of turning into Paulie, who has lately been having statistics and MS Excel for lunch). It's everywhere. Remember the old high school we-don't-use-it-in-the-kitchen adage? Our teachers were too kind to mention it's all going to catch up with us in our old age anyway.
I have always thought that numbers are man's way of explaining the unexplainable. Everything needs to have an equation, so we use numbers as a crutch. Why does X happen? Because Y divided by Z says so. When Q gets multiplied by the square root of the hypotenuse, A happens. We're now in control.
Especially in a BPO. I find myself calling things by abbreviations, mentioning numbers, making decisions based on statistics. It's no use trying to avoid math.
Another thing we can't avoid: Ronan's leaving. It's like a gaping hole in our collective unconscious. Our dear leader is gone. I can't blame him - it's greener pastures, more responsibility and we all wish him the best.
No one can replace Ronan. In a way this is my tribute to him - his ability to project positivity at all times, regardless of what's going on in his personal life; his patience and understanding; his mind-boggling secret formula of big words + abbreviations; his habit of suddenly bursting into song. Ronan is many things. A little boy in a grown man's body; at times, an old sage in a relatively young man's body. He embodies tenacity, focus, drive. He can seem laissez-faire and all over the place, like an octopus playing the drums. But, this is what makes him Ronan. We will miss him. He is one of the very few people I know who has the ability to mesh with everyone, at some basic level.
He'll still be in the same company though, but that's cold comfort. Still, this is what growth is all about; it hurts, and adjustments have to be made. For the longest time, he's been the one we all run to when we're not sure of anything, and to be robbed of that feeling of security, it's like trying to find our balance in a world where everything's shifted.
At least we still have Jet and Darwin, the Dynamic Duo. It shouldn't be so bad. We aren't the babies we were last year; there's nowhere else to go but up.
