A Lesson In Responsibility

I was very apprehensive to talk about it a week ago. Heck, I was apprehensive to even THINK about it then. But I guess right now I'm kinda over it.

So yeah, I got mugged. I won't go into details anymore, bottomline is I lost all the money I had 'til the next payday. The experience was very mind-numbing to say the least. When I got home, I was feeling pale all over.

There were a lot of "I could haves and I should haves" running through my mind then and I wasn't able to function well for the next few days. I was always priding myself on knowing what to do when faced with a situation like that. Turns out I wasn't.

The experience didn't do any good with trusting people either. I may still seem very agreeable but deep down I will always be feeling taken advantage of. Related to that, I can't even trust places as well. Before, I used to walk along that area in Makati at the oddest of hours and I wouldn't even be afraid of missing a step. Now I feel like I shouldn't go there anymore.

I didn't tell anyone about it except for a family member and a close friend since mostly I just wanted to forget about it. I even "atoned" for it by not having lunch the whole week. (Well, mostly because I don't have money to buy lunch, and I didn't want to borrow money from anyone.) :P

Anyway, I'm feeling ok about it now. Good thing I got my pay already. I worked hard for this and I'm going to try to learn to be more responsible for it.

Bored Series: Low Email Queue, High Meme

got this from a random blog. it would rock if i can get answers. :D

I ____ Podi.
Podi is ____.
If I were alone in a room with Podi, I would _______.
I think Podi should _____.
Podi needs ______.
I want to ____________ Podi.
Someday Podi will ________.
Podi reminds me of _______.
Without Podi _______.
Memories of Podi are ________.
Podi can be __________.
__________ is how I describe meeting Podi.
Worst thing about Podi _________.
Best thing about Podi _________.
I am ________ Podi.

In A State Of Emotional Numbness

"We made love last night
wasn't good
wasn't bad.
Intimate strangers
made meek and sad."

-- kd lang, Hain't It Funny

mm... i wonder what's wrong with the cosmos today. i woke up feeling rather fine. well... not fine, really. i wasn't feeling bad, but i certainly wasn't feeling good either.

it's not such an unusual occurrence. i've felt this way countless times before and i'm fine with it. i'm not compelled to lean to any type of reaction to any stimulus i receive within the day. simply put, i feel blah.

the disadvantage of feeling like this -- being somewhere in the middle -- is i'm more prone to slipping down the emotional slider. nothing serious. it's sorta like i don't feel like doing anything for the meantime. like, i'd rather be hugging a pillow. eating chips. drinking beer. watching a sappy romantic comedy. rather than answering emails from people telling me their lives are being screwed up by new technology.

bottomline, i can't wait 'til i get off work. friday night. i'd probably get me a few slices of blueberry cheesecake, and steep my heart in sugar and coffee.

mm...

The Beginnings Of Messianic Complex

"Happiness has come to this and God, it's such a heavy burden to bear."

-- Abra Moore, Happiness

ok. i'm basically a good guy, right? and i believe everyone around me is nice too. conflicts happen when individual perspectives don't really align that well, but it's only normal, and more often than not, i accept it. but yeah, basically i'm a good person, and i'd like to believe the people i consider friends are good as well.

sometimes they may act really bitchy, really mataray, or sometimes they would act like the whole world revolves around them (and they don't even notice they think this way), or the whole world has a conspiracy bent on making their lives miserable... but since i believe they're basically good, and they don't mean to be that way, and at the outset, they're just concerned for their own welfare and the welfare of the people around them... I WON'T TAKE IT AGAINST THEM.

i get angry, sure. i get pissed off once in a while. i'm only mostly bag of water like the next guy. prick me, i bleed and all that bullshiot. and when i'm stressed out, i don't make any attempts to hide it at all, but for the sake of all that is good in this world, i try my very best to work with things as proactively as i can...

what gets to me is IT TAKES SUCH A TOLL ON MY MIND. if people around me are breaking down, and i let myself go as well, everything good that i believe in, that i have learned, will just COME UNDONE!

i will say it again... i still have a lot to learn. i firmly accept that. i am honestly looking forward to each and every bleeding minute of it. but basically, BASICALLY i know how to keep myself sane for the meantime. and i do whatever i can to help my friends.

please, please, please i just need enough strength not to let myself go again. i don't want to go back down there.

When God Wants To Have A Laugh

taking a break from answering emails. whew. the long weekend has been a whirlwind of expenses. i guess, like people starting out work and getting their first salary, i get really stuck up on my budget and cram as much as possible for two weeks' worth of living.

a major culprit would be the weekend sale in megamall. it didn't matter if there were enough people to create a black hole, it didn't matter if my mother was always breathing down my neck (anak malaki sayo yan; anak hindi bagay; anak pautang naman), and it didn't matter if i'll be passing out from hunger... i'm getting myself new clothes! i don't have to borrow from my younger brother anymore, whee!

and yesterday, i promised myself i wouldn't spend anymore... that i need to have my expenses controlled for the next two weeks... but NO! i just had to decide to watch house of flying daggers, get myself three new books at a book sale, and treat some friends to lunch!

look, i don't regret spending my money on the things i got... but dang, i need more control! i can still survive until the next payday, but i really have to tighten my belt. no extraneous activities of any kind.

which, at its core, is how i prefer things to be. actually.

--

ASIDE: last night after watching house of flying daggers, i went to the restrooms. got inside one of the stalls and peed my merry way to bladder emptiness. and when i stepped out of the stall, guess who i see.

a WOMAN.

with a look of shock on her pancake encrusted face.

i must have turned slut red as i looked down and muttered an "ohmygoonesssorry." and as soon as i got out of the room, i was chuckling like some serial killer who just finished clearing evidence. that was enough to make my week.

Cracks On The Glass

all in all it's been swell. the people have been really great ('cept for this one guy who snapped at me) and the work hasn't been too stressful. my brain is at a constant cadence and i get enough time to do the things i like. sometimes i even get to spend too much time having fun.

for the past week, i've been chugging booze like crazy. enough to get me tipsy, not enough to get me drunk. kinda makes one think about falling in love, ne? needing just enough to get one tipsy, but not too much as to get one drunk.

lol... listen to me... 1AM and i'm blabbering jibberish like i haven't for a very long time.

and i haven't, come to think of it. i kinda miss it. being cerebral. staying up late, just thinking. it starts like a crack on a glass mirror, and then extends... producing offshoots as it walks its jagged path.

not anymore.

i can't tell if the glass has been completely shattered and there's nothing in front of me... or if the glass is still there. i can see the world before me, but i don't know if something still separates me from it. it's hard to tell. i guess i get cerebral and try to see the cracks on the glass because i want to know if something is still between me and the world. i want to know if i'm safe somewhere inside. (if safe is what you call it).

well anyway... i guess i just have to wait and see. glass or not, i'm still teetering over the edge. and all it would take is one nudge.

Feeling Of Impending Doom

i should be sleeping right now. i have my alarm set to go off at 3AM. but i still have that headache from last sunday, like a perpetual moon swirling about my person. i would have thought a personal moon would have been cool, but apparently it's not.

it hasn't always been a headache, this moon. last sunday it was a sore back. i don't even know where it came from. i was at megamall with bug, on the escalator to the third level, near cyberzone when BAM! there it was. bloody samurai jack just slashed perpendicularly with my spine his ultimate bad ass samurai blow.

i winced at the rate it spread throughout my body. and i was thinking, "uh-oh... please let this not be an omen of things to happen for the coming week..." and after that, little annoying things kept on exploding -- me forgetting stuff, stuttering, being absent-minded on little things, forgetting to turn on some corner while walking home, et-fucking-cetera.

i've always believed there are signs everywhere. sometimes i just tend to misread some of them. right now i'm trying to see if there's some other way i could interpret the signs the cosmos is throwing at my face. and in doing that, the cosmos rewarded me with a headache that won't let me sleep. OK, I GET IT. this week, THE FIRST WEEK I GO LIVE, the joke's on me. just get it over with already.

Hindi Pinapalampas Ang Gabing Tulad Nito

simple lang. inuman. tawanan. kantahan. umiikot ang buong mundo sa ilaw ng dalawang kandila na nasa gitna ng sala. hanging amoy ulan na paminsa'y umiihip sa siwang ng mga bintana ang tanging nagpapalamig sa gabi. kasama ang mga kaibigan -- mga dati nang kakulitan at mga bagong kakilala. walang problema, walang komplikasyon.

tagay ng gin ang nagsimula, wala nang pasakalye. bawal ang urungan. patigasan ng sikmura. lahat ng kasali, inaasahang maghimayan ng emosyon. at ganun na nga ang nangyari. sa bawat pag-ikot ng shotglass, sa bawat paglunok ng gin, kanya-kanyang storya ang lumabas. ibang klaseng chaser, ika nga.

ang maganda pa dito, walang kahit anong bahid ng pagbabalatkayo ang nagparamdam. nagpakatotoo lahat. masakit na masarap na masaya. gin, san mig light, at tawanan lang ang katapat ng bawat pang-aalaska, ng bawat pagsang-ayon, ng bawat pagtanggi.

at pagkalipas ng ilang oras, pagkatapos ng hindi na mabilang na ikot ng shotglass, naamoy na ng mga gising pa (na apat na lang mula sa pito, maliban sa anim pa na nauna nang umuwi pagsapit ng alas quatro) ang malamyos na pagsimoy ng hanging sabado.

lasing man habang nagliligpit, tulog man ang iba sa sahig, kumakabog man ang ulo ng iba... ang kwento'y saka pa lang mag-uumpisa. :)

kaya kay jade, jac, jette, mark, ariel, ino, tinny, jek-jek, abba, pryor, sheryl, randall; sa mga hindi nakasamang sina manelle, marvin, norman, joseph, at noel; sa mga naging kaibigan na sina sylvia, jovy, ariel, at brian... mahaba-habang inuman!

TIG-IISANG TAGAY NG GIN SA INYONG LAHAT! :D

Bored Series: Sex, Drugs, Rock n' Roll, and E-Mail

just because i like the keyboard and i can put it on my lap, i'm going to type in a new journal entry.

also, we've just finished another round of email simulations containing five emails. i don't know if i did well, but just because i've finished them... huzzah!

and later after work, we'll be heading over to jac's house for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. hahahaha... i wish. (don't panic bug.) we'll probably just have booze and i'll be inhaling second hand smoke again till the wee hours of novaliches morning, (hmm... maybe i ought to drop by oscar's place too.)

right now, i just finished answering another online quiz, but i'm too lazy to put the results here. the whole team is waiting for our 15-minute break, which will be around 8, and then after that... another hour or so of surfing and doing nothing.

will be going live on tuesday already. hope we already have the login for one of our tools then. i have 6AM-5PM to burn inside the office, with saturdays, sundays, and mondays off. kinda ideal if you think about it. i don't even know why i decided to pick the 10x4 schedule. but well, it's just going to be for three months anyway.

.....

oops, teammates are spamming. i swear, their correspondence has just eliminated the already blurred line between sex and alcohol. i'll be back.

Bored Series: Still No Tool Login

nakakahiya naman, we have to go side-by-side with the veteran reps again. maybe it's just me but i think the rep i pair up with doesn't like me too much. ok, we're not limited to one rep per person, but... i'm shy ok? and she seemed really nice. and i was there in the area already. and i didn't want to walk around the office anymore, looking for another person because everywhere i go, people seem to be always looking at me. one of the drawbacks of being tall. huff.

anyways, yeah she's nice in a cruel way. tough love ika nga. it should be a good thing and i should be challenged by it, but again, we have that word, challenge. pfft. upside, i'm really learning a lotta stuff from her. but my impression of her is really one nasty professor bearing down on a student.

sigh, well. a good student i am not. but i'm grateful none the less.

Ode To Being A Newbie

if there's one feeling i'm totally afraid of, it's the feeling of being a newbie. starting with a blank sheet of paper, not knowing how the lines will pan out once you're done with a few strokes. not knowing how other people will see it.

if one thinks about it, one should welcome new beginnings. a chance to redeem oneself from the backlogs of the past. starting over. for me, i can even think about it as faking my death and starting a whole new life somewhere. it's as profound as that. for me that is.

naturally, beginning something new doesn't necessarily mean the new path taken will be a brighter one than the one you left. it might be just as perilous, or maybe even worse. but we don't know that. (and if there's one thing i've learned from my life before, it's not to get ahead of myself too much.) the thought that you're given another chance to face life head on would be enough to push you through this new experience.

but then again, we're back to the first point. the scary feeling of being a newbie. of being a kid again. i hope people understand that feeling like a kid would make me more or less act like one. that is, being curious about everything and asking a lot of questions, no matter how inane.

sometimes even acting recklessly. reverting to my old self.

only better. :P

It's Not Good Bye After All

i have been riding the wave of inconspicuous normalcy for the past few days. acting like an ordinary person is something new to me, but it's not difficult getting used to. the last few days of client-specific training went fine, and we finished the finals last friday. a few people weren't able to make it because of one reason or another, but bottomline is the whole batch will miss them a lot...

for me, i will miss mommy sylvia mostly. the two of us are plenty alike... 'specially when it comes to trusting instincts. we follow it like a bright red blinking arrow pointing us to where we feel we can be most happy. i understand the decision she had to make when she told me she thought about things thursday night while reviewing for finals -- that feeling of being an outsider. it isn't so much about the people, because our batchmates have been really, really great... but that's not the only thing that counts. one also has to like what s/he is doing.

sylvia understood that. she's sad parting with the people she considered good friends in a few weeks' time, but she also understands she won't be very happy if she stayed. besides, we could always keep in touch. there are some people who pass by, who sit and talk with you, who really make a mark... and after that moment, it's UNTHINKABLE to even think of the rest of your life without them. :)