Makulay

When I noticed that my life once again threatened to shrink into greyness, I got worried. I hated the thought of pale and gloomy days stretching on for months on end. You see, I've had days when I felt like the last person on earth, cooped up in my room, my cellphone steadfastly silent, with nothing to do but sit down and feel time pass.

Recently, that threat had come knocking on my door once again and I feared that it may be the beginning of another boring spell. But, I have been fortunate to have good friends around me. Just when I was about to fall over the edge of my sanity, they manage to pull me back up. It's amazing, really, how most of us manage to neglect the little things that matter.

So far, my year has been a treat. Sure there have been times when I was bored out of my wits and I was mind-numbingly depressed (yes, it happens), but then there's always something of interest that would make the next day more than just bearable. And that something would often spell the difference between 'a little more bearable' and 'pretty fucking awesome'.

I have come to appreciate the fun in my life, even the petty dramas. Yes. Whether I'm living my life in orgasmic happiness or desperate sadness, the point is that I'm living it with other people around and not by myself. It's not black, not white, not even boring grey. It's my life in full, badass, technicolor mode, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Go forth

People from my high school are multiplying left and right and here I thought I was good at Math.

Roll call!
Preggers: Janvier, Gladys, Czarina(?)
Has kids: Gina, Micky, Rhea, Kate, Angeleen, Bugoy, Ferds, Arbert, CJ, Carolina, Cristina, Marc

And I might've missed other people. I already fried my brain composing my previous entry. XD

The Amazing Dagupan Weekend Trip

The weather last Friday wasn't too promising for my weekend trip to Dagupan, but who knew that despite the cloudy skies and my financial drought I'd have one of the most awesome weekends ever?

(more…)

Memories

People find it weird when I tell them that I could still remember "scenes" from my childhood.

Okay, so that didn't come out right. What I meant was that I could still remember certain events when I was still about a year old and the only words I knew were the likes of "aboojoo jaji".

Y-eah.

Memory #1: For some reason, I still remember my first birthday, when Kuya held me as we sat on our yellow couch, Kuya Edgar on the floor to our right, our cousin Ate Jena (also on the floor) to our left. Somebody took our picture but I forgot who it was. I just remember being held and sitting on my brother's lap. There was also a moment that day when they made me sit on soft table that looked like a big, round ottoman and around me were all my presents.

Memory #2: My nanny, Ate Miming, was carrying me and we were outside the house near our small hut/rest house. My Dad was about to leave for work so my nanny rushed to the garage so my father can say goodbye to me and all. She was saying something like, "Aboojoo aboojoo, hingi ka aboojoo! (Aboojoo, aboojoo, ask for aboojoo!)" So when we got to the garage, my Dad was smiling and I held out my hand and said, "Aboojoo jaji." He then gave me that old, six-sided, two-peso coin with the coconut tree on it… Yes, "aboojoo" meant money. XD

Memory #3: Another memory with my Kuya in it. For this one I think I'm already about three or four years old. It was in the playground of our old school in Dagupan. There was a metal climbing frame. We sat about five steps up and he held me as we posed for a picture. I think it was our Mom who took it, but I'm not too sure anymore. That part's blurry.

Memory #4: I'm sure I was four years old this time because it was the night before my first day of school. We were inside our parents' room and everything was kinda dark-yellowish. It was either the globe-like lamp was turned on or there was a power outage and only a candle was lit. Everybody was laying down and my father was teasing me and said, "School Bukol ka na, Nanin!" (Okay, I need to explain a couple of things here: School Bukol was an old Filipino TV show and within our home, they used to call me "Nanin" until it evolved to "Nanen" years later.)

I think that's it. Whew!

Home?

Where is "home"?

As soon as I clicked "Save Entry" on my previous post, I couldn't shake the thought out of my head: I'm not "going home" to Dagupan, I'm just visiting.

Due to some "complications" a couple of years ago, I don't have a house in Dagupan City anymore.

Whenever people ask me where I'm gonna go for the holidays or during long weekends, my mind defaults to "nowhere" as an answer.

I consider myself NPA–No Permanent Address–because I really do not have a permanent address, like I said before. I've lived in four different places in the last two years: the Cityland condo in Makati, Ate Epie's house in Palmdale, Kuya and Ate Awit's house in Katipunan, and now my place here in Ortigas.

Now that I think about it, our family doesn't have a place we could collectively call "our own". Most people I know have their families' house to go home to during Christmas, while I go "Oh, shit" whenever Christmas comes because it means staying with my brother's family and his in-laws again where I feel so much like an outsider. It's not that they're not nice people. On the contrary, they are very nice and have been extremely generous to our family. Hey, they let me stay at their house for a few months for free after all! But you know what I mean, right?

So if there's a chance that we could all be together–like my brothers flying in from the US and London and somehow everybody's here in the Philippines–where would we stay? At a hotel? Hahaha! We are so screwed.

Province-bound?

So I might go home to Dagupan tomorrow after work with two of my high school friends, Ti and Allan. It's Gabby's (Gina and Micky's baby boy) Christening on Saturday. What a cutie!

I'm kinda excited to see my high school friends again. The last time I was with them was last March, I think, and Gina was still pregnant at the time.

*  *  *

I've been a download whore for quite some time now. My bandwidth's usually dedicated to downloading torrents, be it music, movies or my favorite TV shows. Currently, I'm downloading the entire first season of Kyle XY, my favorite summer show while I was in the US. I'm so glad season 2 already started. The story's not too bad, and I still find myself enjoying each episode.

For my next download, it's gonna be season 1 of Dexter. Yes, my favorite serial killer definitely deserves some major bandwidth allocation. Oh, and it returns September 20th! *GLEE!*

*  *  *

And for you Yahoo Messenger users… ad-free YM!

Hurrah for Victor!

Lesson Learned

Always keep a change of clothes in the office.

*sigh* I wish I've done it before. Now I have to endure soaked jeans and shoes for at least 2 hours before I could go home and change.

Stupid fucking rain.

Question of the Day

How can you be a friend to a friend that's hurting, when you're the one who caused the pain?

Heh.

Off Early

I got off work early today because the internet there wasn't working. Seriously–there's not much that can be done when we're not connected to the World Wide Web. Our issue tracker is internet-based and our servers are in Sydney. Even my current issues need internet connectivity so they could be tested properly.

So what did we do at work today? Tech sessions/knowledge sharing on our build environment (Maven) and adapter and composite patterns. That's it. I was able to fix an issue but that didn't take up too much time since it was only an HTML thing.

After the last tech session, Joey just told us that we could all go home since we're not doing anything, anyway. And so here I am. XD

Movie marathon na ito!

S1

Just got home from our Ateneo-MIS block dinner. After work I took a cab to Gerry's Grill at the Promenade in Greenhills. It was really awesome to see familiar faces. Somehow, everyone was different… but the same. I dunno how else to explain it, but there. We stayed there the whole evening until it was just me, Rob, Estee, Jonah, Grace, James, and Andrew. We practically closed the whole place but we could've stayed longer if only the restaurant guys weren't waiting for us to leave. XD

We talked about a lot of things and I found out a few things, too. Some weren't really surprising, but still quite interesting.

Oh, yeah. Dad/Itay/Robbie/Rob… *BIG HUG* Sorry hindi kita masabayan sa beer. I really hate the taste. Hence, the margarita.