Stuck

Riding the MRT isn't so bad when I have a pen and paper.

I was running late for our Amazing Race trial run this morning so I took a cab. I wanted to take the train to practice sketches. Taking the train on work-day mornings is a pain. Sometimes it gets so packed I can't even get extra space to draw. I'd either be trying really hard not to be squished by the person in front of me, or tring really hard not to be pissed at the person who blocked my view, or trying really hard not to breathe because of the bad smells. Or all of the above. As you know, the MRT is famous for having bad smells.

So anyway, I took the cab. We did our rounds around the city this morning, which I dubbed my "first walking tour of Oxymoronland", had lunch and went our separate ways. I wanted to watch a movie but my timing wasn't right, so since I was tired and sleepy (I had to wake up to an alarm on a weekend!!!) I decided to take another cab ride home.

When I got in I made my usual, "Hi, can we go to...." line and repeat myself again because most cab drivers can't get how I say my street name and I still can't pronounce it the way locals do. He said okay after the second time and I settle back into my seat. Two seconds later the driver tells me, "You took my cab this morning. I drove you to you the city."

I did a double take. He was the cab driver from this morning! How coincidental is that??! He said he's been driving a cab for three years and it never happened to him until today, so he should buy himself a lottery ticket. Singaporeans have this superstitious belief that if something extra ordinary happens to you you should try to push your luck: buy a lottery ticket. Get the number of the car who cut in front of you and saved you from being squashed by a truck (that car got squashed instead) and enter that number in the lottery. Somebody called to tell you you've won the raffle, and you won another raffle draw the same day: combine the number of your ticket and enter it in the lottery. You get the drift.

But I do agree with him, it was pretty amazing.

Here's my sketch of him, from the morning's cab ride.

Finally installed my scanner. Here's some sketches.


Either my pencil is too light or I have to lower the brightness of the scans?

Weekend is a good time to get bored, you can do anything. I can slow cook anything or cook anything from scratch since I've got a lot of time on my hands.

This morning I woke up still feeling sick. My nose has become a faucet for something green and yellow, the newly-opened box of tissues on my bedside table is depleting fast. My throat is making me cough unconditionally, involuntarily. I wished I cooked more congee yesterday that I did.

Cooking congee is a pain, you have to stir it every five minutes or else the pot overflows and you don't want to lose the already-thick water (the congee will lose the nice consistency if you keep adding water).

It was a good thing I bought a lot of fruits yesterday. I like peeling fruits and cutting it into nice little cubes. So I cooked congee while peeling and cubing oranges and apples this morning.

I love the smell of orange peel, it smells so fresh and sunny and bright. It smells like the weekend.




***

I just watched Kramer vs Kramer. Very good movie. The film is packed with so much raw and simple humanity. I like how the film showed everyday casualness. And the little unpretentious things: when the lead character Ted reaches out to touch the face of a female friend to comfort her, when he casually pats the elbow of his ex-wife, when the son drowsily walks to the bathroom, when Ted clumsily slices his son's dinner into little pieces.

Dustin Hoffman deserved the Academy Award. He's very handsome too. I cried many times.

This one man is dying. You have less than one minute to relive moments in your life one last time. One last time to feel like that again, one last time to see her face again, one last time to be there in that moment again.

One last time.



What would yours be?

I watched Next during the weekend. I really can't stand Jessica Biel. She looks very...cocky, like she's hot stuff. I can't stand both her and Jessica Alba. Hey, that's two Jessica's.

But no, nothing against Jessicas. I just can't stand both of them.

That's all.

On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning.

One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl.

Tell you the truth, she's not that good looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either - must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl", properly speaking. But still I know from fifty yards away: She is the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest and my mouth is as dry as a desert.

Continue reading...it's worth it. Trust me.

Written by Haruki Murakami, this story can be found in The Elephant Vanishes.
Link taken from The Catcher In The Rye.

It's not the plug that's broken.

Silly me.

There was another appliance plugged into the same circuit as the fridge: the kitchen hub.

How I found out:
Last night I cleaned the kitchen hub. Being the one who-realized-the-kitchen-stove-is-too-dirty-to-go-on-cooking-in-it, I have to fix this problem. The solution: clean it.

Okay so this morning I was preparing my lunch (baked salmon). The stove won't work. Lo and behold, it was plugged into the same outlet as the fridge last night! I didn't even remember that our stove was using electric spark until this morning.

So there you go. I feel like those girly girly damsel in distress. How could I have dismissed the problem last night as a broken outlet? I knew it was an appliance!

So I hope the hub is tripping only because it's wet from my thorough cleaning. And not because it's really broken.

Should I wait until tonight when the hub's SURELY going to be dry and try again before calling our landladies? Or should I call them now??

I'm up at 4am in the morning typing this.

At 3:30am, I was still in the threshold of sleep when I fumbled for the aircon's remote control on my bed side table. It shut off in the middle of the night and it must have already been off for a couple of hours since the room was already getting warm. I hit the power on button a couple of times, nothing. I sat on my bed (wide awake now) to aim the remote control better, knowing something was wrong. No luck. I became wide awake then at this point.

Since it was 3:30 am I decided to use the alternative: the electric fan. No power as well. Damn why must I always be the one to first find out when things go wrong?

The thing with sharing an environment is, if you are the first to find out something is wrong, the responsibility to fix it becomes yours. We ran out of cleaning supplies, guess who found out and guess who had to replenish it. We are out of dish detergent. Guess who had to run to the shop to get a refill, and get more refills so this doesn't happen for a long time again. These are little things so I don't make a big deal out of it. Besides, somebody's got to do it and you all know the next bit.

So after much trial and error with the fuse box, the verdict is this: the outlet where the fridge is plugged is broken. I knew something has blown a fuse but it was hard to tell which. It involved lots of guessing until I gave up and shut off everything and switched on each unit (or do you call them circuits?) one by one to see which will cause a complete shut down. So there you go. Good thing it wasn't the fridge that was broken.

I realize this: I can do away with any appliances except for those that control the temperature, i.e. heater or aircon.

Okay the room's cool again, I'll try to go back to sleep now.

My lower back is killing me.

Today I went back to the studio after more than a year of abandoning my clay.

I thought I would struggle and get frustrated.

But to my surprise, I churned out nine healthy-looking pots in one go. NINE. That was more than I had ever done in one day in the last 8 years. (Pathetic right?)

All in one try. No clay wasted. I centered my clay even better than I ever had in my entire potter-ing life.

It must be meant to be.

Maybe it's a metaphor.

I can never have enough

-Books
-Canvass bags
-Pajamas
-Boxer shorts
-Pencils and pens
-DVDs
-CDs
-Bed linens
-Reese's
-Unlined notebooks
-Lozenges

This post would've been great with photos. But my digital camera is still not fixed.

After three months (or more) of hibernating on the weekends, I finally went out today and did not cook anything.

So what made me come out of my routine weekend coma? Take a guess.

Members 20% off at Kinokuniya!!!

I've ran out of books to read since two weeks ago but I didn't want to buy more books yet. Kinokuniya usually holds a sale every two months and I was waiting for it. I swung by the shop last night to get just one book (When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris) since I was desperate and I was pleasantly surprised that they were having the usual members 20% off everything this weekend!

Since it was already late when I got there, the shop closed before I was sated. I was only able to grab two other books. Well another book and a graphic novel. So I decided to come back today to book-binge. I'm a slow reader, but hopefully my supply will last me two months.

I realized that I hadn't been to the mall to go idle shopping in a really long time. No wonder I've been having a spending itch. I've bought three pairs of pants in the last three weeks. It only occurred to me now that I only have two decent pairs of slacks for work. The others are just...sickening. And since I only have two decent pairs of pants and do laundry religiously, they're now slowly becoming sickening.

Anyway so today I went back to Kinokuniya to leisurely browse for books. I find that it's nicer to browse the book store at night, the sounds and noise of people talking seem far away, even without listening to my ipod. Or maybe I'm just more tired at night so I'm not alert anymore.

It felt good to finally come out of my apartment on a weekend and not feel like such a bore. I planned on buying books and then walking around the mall to see what else is new in the world of consumerism. But alas, I bought (and spent) more books than I expected so I decided to can the exploration. I did hop over to Toast for a quick late lunch and brewed coffee (finally after months of instant coffee) before heading home.

I had a great time.

But I wish I had more reasons to go out and enjoy life in this way.

Maybe it was in the way her short hair stuck up in all the wrong places. I liked her long hair. Now it's too short. Her hair was a bit of a mess on top her head, and not in an on-purpose way that is the current fad, but she didn't seem to mind. In fact, she didn't seem aware at all how her hair looked. That's how she is. She is not bothered by those kinds of things. Which is why she leaves her apartment without make up everyday. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've seen her with her make up on. Not even at a party. Well, if she does put make up on, she must be good at it, because I can't tell. She looks tired when she's tired. She looks bright and awake when she's having a good day. There are circles under her eyes when she stayed up all night to do something. There is no cover up. Every time. Or maybe I just can't tell.

That is why I like her.

She's old fashioned. Liberal, but old fashioned. I like talking to her. She has interesting views and wonders about things I wish I'd have thought of. I've always been drawn to her. But it's that drawn-ness that builds a wall around me whenever I come close to being close. In a different time, she and I would've been great friends.

We would talk for hours. Have breakfast together before rushing off to work. Speak to each other in metaphors. Try each other's food. Hang out all day without saying a word--I'd be doing some crossword puzzles while she reads a book or bakes a batch of cookies. And it will be the best time I've had all week.

We'd try out new restaurants.
Watch lame movies.
Roll our eyes at overly melodramatic lines.
Laugh our way through comedy TV shows.
Walk to the grocery store.
Browse the bookshop for titles.
Get invited to friends' picnics.
Have a usual meeting place.

And maybe, just maybe, we would fall in love.

But this isn't a different time. I have a reminder on my finger of the life I've committed to four years ago. Nonetheless, there's a thought that always crosses my mind whenever the girl with the now overly short hair appears from her apartment building.

She is my life that could have been.



***

Author unknown.

I would rather not be his wife.

Finally got some Polaroids scanned. Many many thanks to Paul Shue.

These are some scenic shots.



My handwriting is sooo high school.


More to come.

Yesterday was an unproductive day. Woke up at 9 plus, did two rounds of laundry. Cooked congee with dried scallops. Fried the chicken marinated in toyo-mansi (soy sauce and lime), I coated it in cornstarch to make it extra crispy. Skyped with sikkin all afternoon. By the time she was ready to sleep, I was ready for a nap. I woke up and it was dark. The day was almost over. Ate left over congee for dinner and the left over panfried fish with caramelized onions. Watched Babette's Feast before sleeping.

Today I woke up at 1030am. I've been waking up at normal waking up time for the past few weeks, around 830-930am. That means I was already late in starting my Sunday. For breakfast, I made omelette with tomatoes, onions, and mozzarella cheese--it was yummy--and left over congee. I can never cook soup or congee or anything with sauce for one serving only. Good thing I always don't mind eating the same thing for days straight.

The more you veg the more sluggish you feel and the more you will regret it later. So I decided to go for a walk around the neighborhood--and try out my new camera! I loaded the camera with Fuji Superia 400. Bad choice, I should have bought an ISO 200 film since it was bright and sunny outside. I probably got another uneven tan. I brought along my Polaroid too, just in case.

So for the first time since I moved into my apartment two years ago, I explored my own neighborhood. I took lots of shots. I'll probably save my anecdotes for when the film is processed. I ended today's walk with, you guessed it, a trip to the grocery store.

I have this spending itch. I want to buy expensive shoes. Or an imac. Or Aura Athletica yoga pants. Or furniture. Or a painting. I have this compelling urge to go get something nice for myself.

And it's pathetic.

Happy weekend, guys.

After a long hiatus...I've taken photos again! Thanks to Angel who generously provided the apparatus!

These are photos from my beach trip during the Easter weekend. They were taken using a disposable camera. The photos turned out better than expected! I love the vivid colors of the photos---most of which I can't post!


By the way---I just got my re-conditioned Canon Canonet QL17 III today! Yay!!! Long live film photography!!!

It's everything else.

I won't for one second deny that I've been blessed. Things have worked out pretty well for me. I got into the university I wanted and got the kind of job that I wanted after graduating. I only had two requirements: that the job would let me practice my Mandarin and that I get to travel. The latter came as a surprise, I wasn't meant to travel but the opportunity came along and so I spent the next six months in Taipei---a place I've always dreamed of living in, especially after watching Turn Left Turn Right.

I wanted to experience living in Europe for a few months--and I was able to do that. Three and a half months during the winter thru spring and another month and a half in autumn. I had a blast.

I wanted to move out of my parents' house and be in another country. I should do both together, no way I can move out and still be in Manila, unless I'm getting married. When I was still studying, I told myself I wanted to move out by the time I'm 25. I didn't know how I would do it and at that time it was pretty much only wishful thinking. I wasn't super smart and I wasn't an overachiever. No way I was getting a scholarship to schools abroad and who in their right mind would want to hire me and pay for my relocation when I've got virtually nothing to brag about?

But I did it. When I was 25, I packed my bags and moved out of my parents' house and into another country. I don't know how I did it, but I did and I am here now in a room I'm paying for, using a laptop I'd saved up for, and enjoying a comfortable life I would like to think that I deserve.

Even if I did have many struggles along the way, even if I had to work my ass off 80 hours a week, even if I went through bouts of uncertainties and massive amounts of self-doubt, things came pretty easily. They just got in through the front door and positioned themselves strategically so that I only had to pick it up and put it in my pocket.

But now I'm beginning to wonder if this is really what I wanted. Life in Manila is pretty easy if you're the kind of person who doesn't care so much. Wait, that's not entirely true. Life in Manila is pretty easy if you came from a Filipino-Chinese family and if you don't care so much. You know exactly what to expect. You go to a Chinese school, graduate, get into La Salle or Ateneo (UP is too liberal for your family's liking). Get a job in a corporate office, stay there until you get fed up with answering to somebody else and join the family business. You date around or meet the daughter or son of your parents' friends, get married, get your trust fund, start a family, hire nannies to take care of your kids. There's little else you need to decide on, since your parents can pretty much solve all your problems for you. And if you fall into this category, you'll let them. That's why life is so easy.

That's one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to move out and be in another country. That life in Manila is not the kind of life I want. I want something else, something creative, as in something that creates, not the artsy kind. I want to have a different life, something out of the ordinary, something I would embrace and be proud of, something that isn't patterned out of many others' easy life. Something big, something fun, something nice. Something that will make me smile genuinely, involuntarily. Something that hasn't been lived before, something that is truly and uniquely my own.

So what am I doing here? Five years in a corporate job. I'm not so bad at it but why don't I enjoy it? It has some perks: I can afford to buy the things I like, I get a paycheck every month, people at work are great.
But it's boring. And predictable. And meaningless. And sad. And most of all, it doesn't feel like...me.

I guess, in trying not to be the easy-life people, I've become just like them. I wanted something easy, so I took a management course that would surely land me a job after graduating. It was the safe choice. No risks involved. And because I was already doing "something", I didn't go out and explore and take risks and figure out who and what I wanted to be. Well, I did but it was mostly reverie. There are so many things I can imagine myself being that I would enjoy, but of course it all seems impossible.

So here I am, years after the first thing I had hoped for came true. I got everything that I wished for.

And yet I don't know where to begin.



Hope you all had a nice weekend.