sick
i am sick...
...of not having enough f*ckin' sleep last night
...of not having enough f*ckin' sleep the night before and the night before that, and before that
...of my f*ckin' roommate's snoring
...of f*ckin' nosy neighbors
...of f*ckin' bus drivers and their greedy ways
...of the f*ckin' thought that i'd be slaving for more than 12 hours again today
...of my f*ckin' desk
...of f*ckin' technical drawings
...of preparing the f*ckin' status sheets
...of sending the f*ckin' status sheets
...of f*ckin' intelligent PID which isn't so f*ckin' intelligent after all
...of it all.
i am just sick...
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giving when It counts
(A/N: This is part of an e-mail i received some time back which i received again this morning. This story is so eartwarming...)Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease.. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the little boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister.
I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes, I'll do it if it will save her." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded.
He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away".
Being young, the little boy had misunderstood the doctor; he thought he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood in order to save her life.
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(un)holy week
it has come and gone without creating a particular fuzz with me. i don't know when it happened to me but the holy week for me has been anything but for quite some time now.
i remember that as a kid, i'd be particularly keen in going to church and praying harder than usual during these times. i'd go to those processions behind the statue of some saint. i'd endure movie marathons about christ's passion and other life stories of some martyr who died depending his faith...which back then was sometimes due to lack of choice. of course now, during the advent of cable and satellite tv, literally hundreds of other shows can be seen on the tube not even remotely related to that subject. i, myself stayed stuck in our house in subic watching reruns of gilmore girls and seventh heaven for 9 (or was it 10?) hours. i used up this time-off to catch-up on much-needed sleep, read a few chapters of my book, and watch some films on dvd.
anyways, as i was saying, as a kid, this season bore some degree of significance (even of the smallest measurement). all of which, i lost as i grew up.
i hope it's not because i'm losing my faith.
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campus (sex) education
i came across a very disturbing article in a newspaper yesterday i think which i remembered just now, hence the timing of this post. it's about a survey conducted by some comm res class from up. the survey shows that a third of the sample (can't remember how large) of up students practice sexual activites while on school ground. i think up has enough school ground to accommodate everybody so this does not come as a surprise. sure everyone know stuff like these happen specially if you believe that the sunken garden or the lagoon is good for something. and the dorms...ahhh! i think the up dorms are haven for people who are so in touch with their sexuality as to try everthing even for once. some even discover their true sexuality under the caring roofs of the up dorms. there was even a joke circulating on campus regarding an all-male dorm, narra and it's supposed new name, gumamela. anyways, i need not elaborate. go figure for yourself. i might offend some people which i do not dream of doing.
i can't believe the numbers though...i mean, 1 in every 3? where was i when all these actions were happening? right! i was busy being a foul-mouthed nobody (kidding!).
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b*tch!
why is that when you are finally enjoying the night someone would always come along the destroy it? i was with some friends having dinner to catch up on each others lives. you see, despite the vast technology available to get us connected, we seem to drift apart more and more.
so we decided to dine in that new posh restaurant in greenbelt. the food is good, wine's great, ambience perfect. we were getting along fine. or maybe that's just the alcohol kicking in but we were having a good time nonetheless. that is, up until this woman came up to one of my friends and introduced herself. they ended up talking most of the time. she hogged him all throughout. after a few more wine, they started kissing. finally, some action (hehe)! remind me again why i'm alone? anyways, while they were kissing, this lady, who for the sake of anonymity we'll call jackie, suddenly pulled away from my friend and in front of all of us say:
"hindi ka pala marunong humalik ano?" that b*tch...we were all taken aback. who wouldn't? she practically announced to everyone that he is a lousy kisser...i didn't know what to do. none of us did. we usually try to rescue each other in awkward moments such as this. so i did what i can, i went to the restroom and call his celfone. we usually make the call appear an emergency so we could get out of bad dates, bad food, bad situation and most specially bad odor! this one calls for one of these calls. my friend taking the hint agreed to play along. so 5 minutes later we were off. but this woman will not go down without a fight. while saying their goodbyes and swapping phone numbers, she looked straight to my friend's eyes so my friend stared back. after a while she said, and irritated at that:
"goodness! kiss me! i'm the type you keep!" the nerve! in the end, he gave her a smack in the cheek. i would have rather slapped her. you have no idea how much restaint all of us practiced just to avoid to kill her.
while on our way to another bar, our friend said after being quiet for some time:
"i don't have to be slut to know how to kiss! and for the record, noone has complained before. i kiss perfectly fine!" one of our lady friends hugged him and said," oh honey, of course you kiss fine!"
we all laughed. including him. how was she supposed to know? our lady friend after realizing what she has done playfully said,
"you jerk! i was trying to comfort your lousy-kissing ass!" the night wasn't as bad after all. you just have to have the right company.
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all-time low
'eto sabi sa 'kin nung ojt namin...before start of business no less!
"sir, bakit po parang sawang-sawa na kayo sa buhay n'yo, sir?"can't blame the kid though for being such a keen observer. no more than you can blame him for being honest. here's a tip i should have given him though...i don't wanna f*cking hear it! so shut it!
this is officially the all-time low point of my life.
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paradox of nothing
i haven't been posting lately because well, nothing's really been happening. that seems to be the story of my life...doing nothing of particular significance. i sometimes find myself deep in thought as to where i'm taking my life. now is one of those "sometimes." and like all other "what-am-i-here-for" scenarios i played in my mind over and over, i come up with nothing...much like my life.
the good thing here is (as the book i am reading says), "there has to be something in nothing; otherwise how do you define nothing when there's nothing to define to start with. it's always something even if it has to nothing." another two cents from you 'ol folk.
so there you go. my life is not really nothing (if the author of my book is to be believed). it is something which just happened to be nothing.
if you can't make thought of what i just said, you're in good company. believe me.
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untitled
i have been a cornucopia of so many emotions lately, that i think i have gone bonkers. well, not that i haven't yet in the past. but seriously...i think it should be made illegal to feel all too different emotions at one time. it's f*cking confusing! i'm restless and worried, for only heaven knows what! i am excited and anxious at the same time. again, apparently for no reason. i've been turned on and off within the span of 2 hours to a person i barely knew from the embassy (tell you more next time). i am eager to go on but utterly confused as where i m going. i am lost on my seat, right behind my desk in my office in the middle of alabang...although i haven't felt so sane before, i think i am starting to lose it. and fast!
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alang kwenta!
yours truly to a dazed colleague:
"who am i?
i am bored!"
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i am so going here!
that is if anyone of my avid readers (all 4 of 'em) is willing to pay $625 per night plus chartered plane fee plus gazillion more for food plus another gazillion still for goverment taxes. i think it should be illegal to have a place like as beautiful like this. what were they thinking? $625 per night? but i still wanna go here. when elmo comes back, we so have to go here. anyways, she'll be a gazillionaire then. libre! libre! libre!
amanpulo! when shall my humble existence set afoot to thine fine sand of a beach? when shall my aching muscles be soothed by thine turqoise water. when shall my pocket be bottomless? because until then, you shall be only but a dream...(and OA! well, that's what this place does to you....)
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oh! wise one
the philosophy of someone whacked in the head: "even the concept of normality changes with time. nowadays, being normal means being insane since everyone seems to be one; whilst being abnormal means acting as if nothing's wrong.
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i love the movies!
this year is turning out to be a very good year for hollywood movies...the award season is well on its way producing even better movies than last year like the "million dollar baby" and "the aviator." two movies which i think are superb and worth every praise and recognition it got. i was also particularly excited about "lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events" mainly because i read the book and loved it. having jim carrey on it doesn't hurt either.
here's a list of other movies i am so dying to see:
1. star wars episode 3 (the only other movie, i spent over 4 hours on queue to get to the premiere; LOTR being the other).
2. sin city (because i think frank miller is a genius; tarantino also guest directs so it has to be really exciting...think pulp fiction, kill bill. ahh! the possibilities!)
3. batman: begins (nuff said!)
4. fantastic 4 (i'm kinda intrigued how they'd go about this)
5. king kong (peter jackson's directing...need i say more?)
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disclaimer
i know i said i'm a reality tv fanatic (see below)...but never (read: not in a million years) would i watch those silly lovey-dovey-find-my-future-wife-on-national-tv kind of show. it's pathetic. a new low on the history of tv if you'd ask me.
sounds bitter, no? cynical lang...hehe. not that it's a good thing. what am i saying? pardon yours truly. this morning is not a particularly good morning. even worse than the past 600 or so mornings. interesting...i haven't had a good morning in 2 years. it's a wonder i'm still sane, albeit barely.
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reality on tv
okay, i am officially a reality-tv addict. before, i used to free-up my sundays or at least schedule whatever after 9pm just to be able to catch survivor. then there was this period when i'd go home early on a wednesday to watch the amazing race. and who hasn't gone gaga (okay, the adjective is a little too much, i know) over american idol. but now, i have yet another show to fill one of my many lonely nights...the contender premiered last night on axn.
the show is a boxing reality show focusing on what else? boxing. barbaric as it may seem (seeing as how i was never the type to resolve to violence...verbal, maybe. physical, never!), i can't help but watch as the characters deal with the most powerful human emotion..."love and passion." the boxers, who are actually professional middleweights talk of their reasons for putting their body on harm's way to earn a million and it all boil down to one thing...love. one talks of how he wants to provide a better life for his kid or help out his parents or send siblings to college, the love and passion was there all the same. something so raw...that you can't help but feel for them.
but then again, some things are worth fighting for.
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did you know that...?
keeping it true to my latest obsession, i am writing this post. please read on because this is not just physics stuff...
mendeleev, that guy you have to blame for the ugly periodic table hung above your chemistry lab, was labeled as eccentric and downright absurd during his time that despite his genius, he got booted off from being chair of the chemistry department his university, called by many names by his colleagues and never even been cited for the nobel. why? if you may ask...because he believed in what he does and has strong faith in what he knows.
you can very rarely see a man of character like our ol' man mendeleev. most succumb to the pressure of being labeled that they'd rather change who they are than to just dismiss what others would say to them. that's what i don't understand about people...how they can trivialize others to words such as ugly, rich, fat, sexy, stud, what-have-you's. what they fail to realize is that by doing so, they, quintessentially are reducing a human being to nothing but statistics. and believe me when i say that we are more than what we perceive us to be. i believe that our potential is limitless. hence the reason why i don't take someone seriously when they are trying to describe anybody. because more often than not, they fail. and miserably at that.
if you'd ask me how i will describe myself, i'd answer: i simply am.
by the way, medeleev got the recognition and honor he deserved. at his death, students followed his funeral procession with raised periodic tables.
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simple enough?
i have to tell you my latest obsession...particle physics. i know it sounds little too geeky, but hey! to each is own. i am inspired by this book i am reading
"god particle" by leon lederman. if you happen to have read
"angels and demons", this may book may actually ring a bell.
well, the book mainly aims to explain in the simplest manner the nature of the universe by using breakthroughs in particle physics. lederman went to great lengths to idiot-proof the book. lederman, by the way is a leading authority on the subject having been director of fermilab (the leading institution on particle physics, along with CERN) and a nobel laureate himself.
the book tells of interesting facts that can make you realize how simple the world can be if not for the complexity of "outside forces." for instance, did you know that all matter are primarily made up of 12 kinds of particles (6 quarks, 6 leptons) and 4 forces? yup, all those stuff that you see...from the stars in the sky, to the beautiful beaches of galera and yes, even a friend having his "happy" moment in the highlands of baguio. they are nothing but a collection of 12 particles held together by 4 forces. simple enough, no?
here's another interesting fact, the biggest particle accelerator built to date is the one in fermilab (4 miles around!). i don't know if the supercondensing super collider has been commissioned yet because if it is, it would be the largest. this particle accelerator is also a project of fermilab. anyways, inside the particle accelerator, particles such as protons are being collided with each other using tremendous amount of energy that amounts to US$ 1M of electricity bill per year. the temperature inside the main core of the accelerator reaches a staggering 10,000 trillion degrees above absolute zero. the last time this temperature was reached was a few microseconds after the bigbang! can you imagine simulating the bigbang in a lab? hence my latest fascination.
i have told friends that i now want to become a physicist (although i am quite certain that i want to enter law school soon). they think i am insane...then maybe i am. at least i'm not alone (i hope).
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galera chronicles
(A/N: This goes out to Markus who asked about how the trip was. This is an account of the first day...saka na yung other days.)
so, you must be dying to know how our weekend in galera was (as if...hehe). i must tell you that it was awesome. been there once before with some blokes who can't keep themselves sober for five good minutes. so there lies the difference with this trip, because this time i was with folks who are more interested with the beach than getting to someone else's pants (or skirt, or both depending on which way you swing). not that we are a frigid bunch but we were there primarily to get away from it all...especially the madness of the city and the hell-hole we so-lovingly call our office.
so we were there a good 3 days. we were off early the morning of 25th (that's a friday) arriving at the batangas pier before 8 in the morning where i've seen arnel, some dude from college. anyways, we arrived at the island before 10 and settled as soon as we got to our room. syempre, we changed to our bestest beach outfit we carefully shopped for some days back. our girls in their swimsuit under some other articles of clothing (they are filipina women after all, ching!) and our boys in their board shorts and tank top (why i even am describing what we wore is beyond me). so first order of business...lunch which occupied the rest of our morning. the afternoon saw our first real galeran adventure...Snorkeling.
sisidin mo, mang lando!
you probably figured that mang lando is our boatman (the term boatman give me the creeps! if you've watched the movie boatman, you'd probably understand). mang lando took us to the coral garden for an afternoon of Snorkeling. although many of us were disinterested at first and this was definitely unplanned (not that we had any to begin with), we decided to go anyways. so after 25 minutes of boat ride out to the middle of the sea, we got to our destination...coral garden was it? so despite that ugly orange life vest and who-knows-who-else-used-it snorkel we hopped onto the water and snorkeled away. i only snorkeled once and my friends never. so you can only imagine how difficult it was for us to move with that blasted thing strapped in our faces. to prove a point, elmo swam directly to another boat banging her head to the bottom of it with me laughing my ass off and another boatman looking on. (hey! i was calling out for her...she can't hear me! what else could i have done? the boatman was closer...he didn't do anything). well, no harm done. elmo was fine. great even. 'twas nothing a few laughs can't shake off. and laugh we did.
while there, several small boats offered to drag us around the reef for (a low-low price of) 50 PhP. reluctant at first of the idea of being dragged around with only a rope supporting us, the difficulty of moving with the ugly vest prompted us to budge in with the other boatmen's insistence. in short, we snorkeled away holding onto a rope tied on a boat moving around the spots where corals are suposed to be great. at the end of the day, we realized that the 50 PhP we paid for the small boat was 50 PhP well-spent. it was a wondeful sight. a compelete contrast of our lives on land. there, time seems to be unimportant. it was very dynamic and fluid that you can't help but admire the grace of how fishes swim around or how the corals sway with every changing current or how vivid the colors seem to be. it's like seeing everything for the first time (with e, kidding!). come to think of it, life underwater is also busy, busier than land's in fact...but not toxic. haay! i wish i could have stayed there forever...raymond seemed to have the same idea. he probably resurfaced only twice the entire 2 hours we're Snorkeling! unlike some people i know (di ba, che?). well, she had a pretty decent excuse. she was taking in so much seawater so she kept on readjusting her gears. well, i did too. which was why there was one instance when we couldn't put it back that we asked the boat to be stopped. while hanging on for dear life, we were shouting, arms twisted and all: "choto (wait, in japanese) manong! choto! utang na loob manong! itigil nyo ang bangka!" deadma! kineber kami ni manong! hayun! galon-galong tubig alat ata ang nainom namin! i was just wondering, can you actually die due to high salt content in the body?
our afternoon adventure didn't stop there! while on our way to our beach, the motor of the boat we were in suddenly started making funny noises. kinda like it's ready to blow anytime. we had to be be pulled by another boat to get to our beach. "pulling" seems to be the recurring theme of the day. i wonder when it's gonna be push-then-pull (out). if you know what i mean.
well, our first night wasn't as interesting as we thought it should be. stroll in the beach, talking and then some more strolling. oh! ron and i went for the massage locals were offering. i wanted it hard (hehe) only to get bruises and even sorer muscles because this masseuse was pounding on me like some kind of lean meat. ron asked to be stepped on like that on traditional thai massages. he got a "himas-masahe" instead.
we have been joking about "happy" since way back when. by the way "happy" is a term we adopted for you-know-what. if you're from ust, you'd probably know why. surprise, surprise! we didn't get any (hehe). at least some of us (read: elmo) met interesting people...those blokes from the office we only see at the caf; who, interestingly enough, we kept on avoiding during dinner. that was pretty much the first day. not much fun, yes but made interesting by the company we kept. this promises to be an interesting vacation indeed.
(by the way, the reason for this vacation is the completion of a project we've been working on since november. and while we're all having having a blast during these times, the project we left was in total disarray! talk about tough luck!)
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