Moments and Whatnots

The Curtain Call

2010-10-08T04:27:00.000-07:00

Guys, Thank you for keeping up with this blogsite. Its time to hold my mouth shut and stop my ramblings. I'm glad that I will be leaving this site with a light heart knowing that I have been blessed with the love of my family, my baby and friends- people that matter. As I embark on a new chapter of my life, isn't it nice to have someone beside you holding your hand, and making beautiful plans together?
Thank you all! Its been a pleasure sharing some swaths of my life with you.

Between the world and me, I am the happy one.

Goodbye earthlings!

Para Sa Aking Minamahal.

2010-10-07T19:12:00.000-07:00

Bago ako tuluyang umalis ng bansa, isinangtabi ko muna ang aking mabigat na mga bagahe at sumama sa aking baby sa kanilang malayong probinsya. Matagal na naming pinagpaplanuhan ito ngunit dahil sa kanyang trabahong nagdadala sa kanya sa ibat ibang bahagi ng mundo, madalas ay hindi ito natutuloy. Pero ngayong ako naman ang dadalin ng kapalaran sa ibang bahagi ng mundo, hindi na ako pumayag na ipagpaliban pa na mapuntahan ang lugar kung saan lumaki at nagkaisip ang taong mahal ko. Ilang beses na din naman syang napunta sa aking probinsya, at dito'y ipinakita ko sa kanya kung saan ako madalas maglagi noong kabataan ko pa, isang hindi malilimutang karanasan ang maglakad sa lupang kinalakihan mo kasama ang isang tao na mahal na mahal mo. Lalong pinaglalapit ang mga puso nyo ng ganitong karanasan.
Babalikan ko ang lugar na ito pag dating ko mula sa ibayong dagat, syempre, kasama ko pa din ang mahal ko.
salamat sa pagpapatuloy mo sa iyong lupang kinalakihan, at higit sa lahat, salamat sa pagpapatuloy mo sa akin sa iyong puso.
Maghihintay ako sa muli nating pagsasama.

On being happy

2010-10-05T19:53:00.000-07:00

Have you ever felt so happy with someone that nothing else matters? Forgive me for being one slimy bundle of mush today, I'm in love. I'm incapable of finding the right words.

Im sorry,My heart renders me inarticulate.

Toy

2010-06-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

This is a story of many of us who have gotten into a situation with no any other way out but to pass through it.Through the seemingly interminable series of denial and disbelief, and then acceptance, followed by the painful awakening, a very long process of self healing caused by our slip of judgment. Maybe we had seen it all coming, but we were too enamored to care, we'd thought we were in control, until one day, just like a junkie, we were all under the influence.Defenses collapsed.Interventions denied. Truth twisted. Logic defied.

You were the shiny toy everyone wanted to try but didn't want to keep. You were just a novelty item, no lasting value, a thing to satisfy a fleeting whim, and after being used up and outgrown, thrown into oblivion. Of course you didn't know that, your intentions were pure, divine even, and unlike any toy, you weren't battery operated that could perform only what was told. You were capable to care, to love. That they didn't know, to them you were just a thing.

While you were on a display, someone showed a sliver of interest, someone you had been seeing sauntering around, but never really bothered to stop and see your worth. And when he finally went your way, you gasped- Thats the effect he had on you -Your heart beats a god damn mile per second, butterflies everywhere.You were happy, alright? And while he was giving you a time of a day, you secretly wished he would see you as different, you silently prayed to be owned. You hoped.

He held you and you never felt more special. You could have sworn there was love but you never much cared. You were there, he was there,in a place where there's no sense of time and no concept of right and wrong- That all that mattered. It was magic.

And then he dropped you, he never even bothered putting you back onto your dusty shelf, just like that, he let go and went about his life. He left off when you thought the twinkle in his eyes were for you, he walked off just when you felt there was a passionate connection. And after being completely swept off your feet, he disengaged.

And now look at you,shoved into your new place, this time amongst other toys on a basement bargain price. Marked down. Used up. Abandoned. Damaged beyond repair.

You were just a toy to a person whose hands break.

The Penitential Walk

2010-05-01T00:40:00.000-07:00

It was Friday afternoon and it was pissing down,half scaring the shit out of people due to the prevailing news that any rain that'd come from April 21 onwards would be acidic bringing forth skin diseases and even cancer. While half of the population was worrying over the atrocity of an acid rain, I was contemplating if I would come to the "Penitential Walk in honor of Our Lady of Peace and Good Voyage". I should awfully feel ashamed of myself to admit that my idea of this incredible feat was just mainly for pure fun clearly sidestepping the true essence of the century-old tradition. The walk was due at 11pm and I started fidgeting like a horse in heat at 6pm. Should I still come?
A friend told me a story of a man he knew who promised to come to the walk but at the last minuted bailed out, the man's right foot swelled for days, giving a clear testament to the ineffable power of the Virgin.You see, I am not a highly religious person who dances to the beat of cymbals as if being eaten alive my hundreds of fire ants while holding out a replica of a saint, but I have my religious streak, albeit an inconspicuous one, and besides a swollen foot was enough for me to join even the 250-kilometer Death March. I got into my most comfortable get up,packed my bag and went off.

Okay, what will you do if you are in the company of people who know practically everything there is to know about saints? And who insistently talk about it, leaving you feeling like a complete moron slash pagan who worships trees and goes head hunting for food? Surely, My knowledge of saints is shamefully scarce it cant even fill a vial of a tubercular dwarf, and I was afraid I would just hassle them mercilessly with endless questions leaving them want to run away from me like headless chickens, so I just decided to shut it and observe.

Scores of people converged and their faith and their sentimental attachment to the saint was palpable it was almost too painful to watch, they walked barefooted, some even carrying poles half their own weight. The devoted ( and able bodied) ones were carrying heavily festooned 'carozas" onto which their beloved saints were rested. Being a hopelessly clumsy human that I am, A news headline that says "One Moron Ran over by a 50ton Caroza and Stepped on Beyond Recognition by 10 sweaty Men", would not have come as a big surprise.

The Penitential Walk doesnt only attract the faithful, the mere curious and the "what-have-I-gotten-myself-into", it also lures teenagers who wear sweaters in a 29degree celsius heat, and funky shades in 3 in the morning (maybe they found too much candle light blinding?) , and I am constantly amazed with the industrial amount of product they put on their hair! 4 hours into the walk and their hairs were still fighting the law of gravity!

The most challenging part of the walk was the uphill way to the city proper, I vividly remember because everytime my friend saw me nearing the collapsing point, all the colors drained out of my face, and toungue sticking out and wagging like a pendulum clock,he would tell me that we still yet to walk through the most difficult part (perfect timing! its as if telling someone who is suffering from a left leg tumor that another tumor had just sprouted somewhere in his right leg)I was huffing and puffing at this time so hard, it caused a series of tornadoes in East Africa.
I was tempted to tell one friend, "dude, If I just drop dead at any second, Can you drag me by the ear to the cathedral and have my knackered body blessed?"

When we reached the cathedral, people held out their white handkerchiefs and vigorously waved them at the oncoming Virgin. The guy in front of me was a bit too enthusiastic he was practically whipping my face with his towel that reeked of comedones, perspiration and sanctity. It would have solicited loads of eye rolling and snarling but even I was transfixed by the wondrous effect of the Virgin to the people, including, admittedly, myself.

to be continued.

Topple Over

2010-04-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

Here is the story of someone who keeps deluding himself into believing he's a shining gift to all mankind. Let's call him "Topple Over". His name fits him like a glove- He has an unusually big head that seems to be in constant struggle in defying the law of gravity,and thus one should only expect to think that he'd just topple over,fall on his head and crack his skull open any second.
Topple Over only associates himself with people of certain repute, He doesnt coexist with the hoi polloi (ordinary people) for fear of infestation of some flesh eating bacteria and the corruption of his holier-than-thou morals. He has an inexhaustible resource of tall stories- people drop dead at his feet and lust after him like rabid mad dogs. He claws at your self image and tear it into pieces until you find yourself questioning your own self worth. "You are so fat! It doesnt suit you!". These pseudo-constructive comments corrode your self esteem like a rust to a metal until you see the very image in the mirror Topple Over wants you to see. An ugly, fat science experiment gone terribly wrong.Whatever happens to the man who used to laugh at himself? The man, who despite what nature did to him, still managed to pull a wide grin and say "At least Im not losing a limb". A man who used to spend little time looking after his looks and more on making others keel over laughing?

Beware of Topple Over, he lurks in the dark, cloaked in friendly concern but can kill nevertheless.

To Follow the Sun with a Whopping Hang over!

2010-03-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

It was a lazy Saturday morning and despite all the pre-hangover precautions, I got out of bed with a pounding headache, Now before you go pegging me as somebody with a drinking problem. Let me tell you I dont usually hit bottles not unless it calls for a celebration, although admittedly, lately I have been too eager and enthusiastic in this department that even settling of Meralco's bills warrants drinking myself silly.
The binging happened in a friend's pad, as I was contemplating how to tame the monster atop my head (namely my hair) I got a call from her asking me if I would want to come over her pad because she had bought crates of keg beer and Absolut vodkas and she wanted a decrepit alcoholic like me to finish them off. Being a very gracious human of this green patch of Earth, I said yes.
I came to her pad which was reeking of smoke with an afternote of perspiration. I put the number of people in the room around 8, and like anyone addled by alcohol, everyone greeted me as if we were on a toothbrush sharing terms, Everyone had been posessed by the Divine that I nearly fell on my knees and chanted Hail Mary's.Is this Utopia?!
I knew that the reason why my friend wanted me there, aside from my unbridled appetite for booze was my ability to keep everyone in the loop. You see, I am no Shrinking Violet, and you won't find me nursing one beer all night long keeping to myself while embroidering my initials on a table cloth while the rest was being rowdy and obviously having fun. I just dont see any point in excluding yourself from the group you in the first place were invited to as if you had a severe case of halitosis.
She told me to do something about the guy opposite me who was evidently would rather be anywhere else but there, I struck a conversation and I gathered that that was all he needed because he didn't stop talking for the next three days, He mentioned about being straight more than 10 times even without being asked (with some affectations like flexing his biceps) and I thought "Straight? one more pluck of your eyebrow and you'd be Nicole Kidman", the only way to survive him without going stark raving mad was to be under the influence of alcohol.
It was nearly 4am and I was starting to have trouble sticking to my train of thoughts when I decided to slink off.
My milk of human kindness was going stale. I need to go back to my coffin.

The Invasion

2010-03-25T07:10:00.000-07:00

I hate going to the gym, I may be wearing a chastity belt but there is a limit to my masochism. One day, the ever playful universe threw a prank on me. I came home and Lo and Behold! There it was! Sitting like a grinning maniac on the clear side of our already cramped apartment- the home gym equipment, complete with squat boards and whatnots. I immediately gave my customary smirk and examined the evil with the same fondness of Count Dracula to garlic, Did I ever tell you I sometimes act cinematically? I looked up and muttered under my breath " Nice try, If you cant bring me to the gym, Let the gym invade my living space!" I would have looked as if I was talking directly to heaven making it all the more cinematic if the ceiling wasnt too low it was almost touching the tip of my nose, instead, it rendered me the look of someone who was preventing his nose from hemmorhaging and spilling his brains out.
Upon thoroughly examining the invader,I positioned myself and laid flat onto the board.
I woke up just in time for dinner.

I Told You I Am Not Of This World

2010-02-25T00:43:00.000-08:00

When things get out of hand and I feel that all too familiar homicidal tendency eating at me and egging me on to either get into a spontaneous combustion or lurk in the dark alley and pounce on an unwitting human while screaming like a banshee with a stubbed toe, I get "otherworldly" quirky (If that's not making you wet your pants yet or your dentures scurry away like a headless chicken, you need to up your medication)

The things I do to avoid more body counts are as follow:

1. I go and bite into my comfort grub- Jollibee cheeseburger, not that humongous Champ that can dislocate your jaw and renders you the look of someone giving breech birth to an 18-pound baby, but that plain yum with cheese. It eases me off really, its my narcotic- alters my mood. My soothing, numbing agent. Its as if I scale back to the point in my life when troubles melted like lemon drops, when the thing I only worried about was when asked by my dad to sing and I couldnt sing with 'tremolo' at every ending of the word (give me one-an-an-an-an, moment in time-an-an-an-an, when im more than-an-an-an, I thought I could be-eeh-eeh-ehh! -Geez! Why Couldnt I just belt out twinkle twinkle little star!). My dad found it cutesy and prodigous, my brother thought I was having a root canal without anaesthesia,neighbors within earshot predicted as if with divine certainty that I would end up embroidering my handkerchiefs with my initials and sending out heavily scented bookmarks and my mom worried that I'd end up taking the place of my "chang Remy"- the village's undisputed queen of songs whose performances graced every dead's wake,that would be later on superseded by videokes that turn your brain into pulpy mush- a very cheap way to romance the soul of the departed. I am telling my family and friends that when its my time to go, never, ever bring that clutter of crap in my wake or else I'll haunt them mercilessly, I can make a good poltergeist.
Going back,I must eat my yummy yum burger alone, I dont want another freak worrying over my sanity, because.. look, I have a confession to make, I involuntarily smile when downing my grub,I even catch myself mumbling some words of approval repeatedly to myself that people would think I just came out of the cave and temporarily left my dinosaurs unattended.Its like an unself conciousness of someone who never worries about getting fat. I once had it infront of a friend who started giving me quizzical looks and right away contemplated calling a priest to get me exorcised- He got out of the store dripping with ketchup and fries shoved down his ears. And for an ineffable reason, He stays 10 meters away from me thereon.

2.I walk, and I cover miles! It gives me the sense of total abandon. When I walk, the seamy side of my life folds away (Insert the name of your stressors and stresses here), I live for the moment, I live at the NOW. (Eakhart Tole, is that you?) Taking brisk observation about my surrounding. My senses are heightened, and please, I don't crawl up buildings and wear spandex (It will surely make me look like a weather-beaten flag). Of course, I dont tell the true reason to people when confronted. I just tell them I walk because I wanna pose for some steamy publications in the near future, They won't understand, so why bother?
There was one time that I told my housemate I was just going to buy newly baked, steamy hot pandesal in a nearby bakery, and after 3 hours "buying" pandesals in a 'nearby' bakery, I went home bringing rockhard pandesals that could alternately be used as pumice stones if you so desired." I thought you were going to buy FRESHLY BAKED pandesals?! Throw these to someone and they'll have multiple head concussions!" barked my housemte. "They were.. 3 hours ago." was all I could say.

The Crotch-Grabbers.

2010-01-27T22:30:00.000-08:00

My street is all haunted by creatures of the dark-the crotch-grabbers. They are a group of elite faggy warriors who possess a heightened sense of smell, that able them to sniff crotches meters away, x-ray vision that can instantly decipher the size of the male specie's genitalia, strategic positioning included (downward,upward, sideward and 'taped,clamped and obscured), it all depends on the material of the garb, the flimsier it is, the more their body vibrate as if invoking the spirit of some benevolent spirits. Among them lies a mastery of self-defense and wreaking havoc on unwitting victim. If they see you steadily standing and all wrapped up, they will sneak behind your back like a true ninja, kneel to the ground, cock their arms back, focus all the energy and strenght into the punch and release it and Baam! You have been proton canonned!It is when they hit the back of your knees with such a great force it renders you instantly paraplegic.The good defense is to constantly horse kick every 10 seconds, it may make you look like a cross between a horse desperate for a shag and a complete moron, but at least, you'll be spared, if you were lucky enough, given that there is indeed a crotch-grabber at your back bracing to strike, you might even get the upperhand and flatten his overly made up face with your wooden slippers.

One crotch grabber, upon my first week of immersion in the area, kept on yapping about his boyfriend's flourishing career as an up and coming print ad model, He would tell the narrative story of their wondrous relationship at the mention of the words "love" , destiny (even if the only destiny word that can be found was that on the Destiny Cable Van that zooms by the street). His eyes would instantly turn glassy at the mention of romance, and his whole body, spastic, like a possessed blender. And as true as his words, As I was riding a cab along C5 road one day, There it was, the boyfriend's billboard beaming with a knowing smile,It could have been glamorous if it wasn't for the catch phrase "GOT TERMITE? Call 6754568" on the upper right of the billboard. A few questions formulated in my twisted mind, 1. Is the boyfriend the exterminator? 2. Are the exterminators really that good even humans with termite-like quality can be annihilated? 3. Is the boyfriend's picture the closest the ad agency could get to the real termite? A termite personified? 4.Was the boyfriend bludgeoned, tortured and manhandled into posing for a termite
ad?

Another crotch-grabber has a preternatural fascination to garbage collection day when heaps and heaps of garbage are shoved onto the designated sidewalk area, It's as if he was Storm and the garbage is at his beck and call, he is clearly in his element. He cajoles someone is his syrupy voice and a hush-puppy, I-havent-eaten-for-a-week look into going with him to a store, and when they get right smack in front of the collected garbage,forcefully push the poor soul into the mountain of stinking rubbish, the last time it was done, someone had kissed a shitty diaper.
To Be continued..

on the Destiny cable car as it zooms by the street).

to be continued

Departure

2010-01-26T20:59:00.000-08:00

Your day began like any ordinary day, you were doing the same stuff and was certain nothing would be any different,until it was not.

It was noontime and the book I was reading had gone a bit dull so I decided to saunter by my friend's small eatery. Fancy is not particularly the adjective one would use in describing the eatery but people gravitate there like it was a soup kitchen dishing out rations to the homeless. It is manned by insanely funny friends who have an unfortunate habit of scalding each other with boiling cooking oil and shoving uncooked squid balls up the unwitting victim's nose. I went inside, observing and helping a bit when a man of around 50 stopped by and started to contemplate the food on display. He was known as Mang Ben, a burly, affable man who barely went out of the house. His funny antics, bawdy jokes and raucous laugh were highly engaging, Its as if Mang Ben was an Uncle you never had. He was cracking everyone up while endlessly poking quail eggballs with a stick and dipping it into the gelatinous sauce letting it sit there a little longer.
A tricycle halted in front of the eatery and disgorged a highschool student, my friend whispered "That's his daughter". Mang Ben,upon seeing his daughter immediately took her bag and quipped "your bag is so heavy, what's inside? a refrigerator?" at which everyone chorused in laughter. I noticed how he immediately planted a kiss on his daughter's forehead and wrapped his arms around her "Are you hungry? go and grab something to snack on" and the daughter started ordering stuff. I also noticed the way Mang Ben looked at his daughter while she was pouring sauce onto her quail eggs. It was a look of sadness, and longing, and pain and tender love. A look people in the airport departure area cast over their relatives on the other side of the fence, the kind which seemed to say something that cannot be said even during the most articulate moment in one's life. It left me transfixed, the spectacle infront of me was an unconditional love of a father to his daughter in the rawest form,it wasnt the nagging type we all tend to get from our parents, nor a restricted show of affection. It was simply Love.
"How's the damage? 12 quail eggs, 2 fries and 2 halo halos" inquired Mang Ben, and upon forking out the bill, off they went with his daughter's cumbersome schoolbag still clung onto his shoulder and arms wrapped around. I watched the two until they turned left and gone.
We went back to business,hours passed and we were all greasy,reeking of smoke and knackered when someone came running to the store "Mang ben just had a heart attack and he didnt make it." All of us looked at each other in disbelief and started muttering "he was here just hours ago, he was full of energy and cheery,how could that be possible?" It was only until we saw the remain of Mang Ben being wheeled into the ambulance did we manage to wrap our brains around the deeply harrowing news.
My friend was steady muttering "It must be my quail eggs that did Mang Ruben in, But we didnt notice him eating up that much, It's as if he was keeping us all entertained with his jokes in order to divert our attentions, If I knew he was downing quail eggs on end, I would have told him to stop"

The last moment of Mang Ben's earthly existence shows me the fragility of life, that there are so many reasons to be alive,but too many ways to be dead, even the most innocuous thing as a quail egg can put paid to a life.
We all get to think that Death happens, but not to us, and not to all the people we love and care about, we are immortal and so are the people we share great swaths of life with, its the mere concept of immortality that makes us put off the love we feel for another until tomorrow, and until the next day, and the next, until death knocks on our door to ferry someone that's close to our heart away and its just a little too late. Its easy to talk about the death of someone who is remotely connected to us, a death of a stranger, but what if the loss we have to deal with is that of someone closer to home? Is it really possible to be strong and see all the sense of it? Does it even have a sense to start with? Can we really get over it and move on or will we just be a piece of hollow ragdolls, forever walking through half-life, devoid of substance? Can we really still find the will and the reason to live when we have been mercilessly wretched to pieces?

Death happens.Death is in all form.

Don't strew with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow,
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now!

Life in Slow Mo

2010-01-21T00:21:00.000-08:00

Ysabelle,

The pain of not being with you makes me all hollow inside, it's the kind of pain when someone loses his core, the mainstay of his existence- everything turns black and white, you never live, you just drift through life while trying to make sense of it. I miss those days when I would wake up to your kisses, times when the only option was to start the day swinging you in my arms while you laughed, oh that wondrous little laughter mahal. I close my eyes and think of your sweet little face, the thought and the possibility of seeing you again, that what keeps me afloat,somewhat. Through all this flurry and madness, my unconditional love for you is the only thing that is sane.
Tito misses you more than anyone can ever know. It pains Tito not being able to walk with you in the park, not hearing your first words, your songs, and not carrying you up into his arms.
In silence Tito suffers. I love you mahal. Until we meet again

With All the Love in the World,
Your Tito J

My Top Ten 2010 List

2010-01-21T00:20:00.000-08:00

Pateros

2010-01-17T08:12:00.000-08:00

I have been living in Pateros for nearly 4 months now, Its funny that when you live in a city, you measure your stay simply by looking at the accumulated bills, disconnection notices included, 4 white Meralco envelopes mean that you have been shacking up for 4 months, 2 5gallons of mineral water make up for 2 days and a once-in a-month visit from a petulant neighbor to whom you have clung your cable wire on means it's been a month of Travel&Living and time to fork over the cable bill, or half of it for that matter. This must be how an adult lives, eternally worried and sometimes harried by bills.
When I first came here, I was overwhelmed with too many people, the place is a typical urban underbelly- decadent, decaying- Crammed spaces, too much variety of humanity (typical humans, almost humans-for some freak of nature never quite look like humans, may resemble racing horses, shake rattle and roll all time favorite creepy characters, used to be humans- used to posess a natural beauty and charm but because of too much shabu and snorting of god-knows-what,have turned into creatures of the dark, the undead, seemingly humans, think they are superhumans- those with higher-than-though attitudes, humans of other specie- fairies, twinks, closet queens, and queens that out the closet queens for no any other reason than to annoy and put them to shame. and genetically engineered humans -humans that can filch your valuables in a fraction of a nanosecond) Narrow street that used to be my everyday battleground with merciless and ungiving automobiles that wouldnt give a flying fart if you lie face flat to the gutter or pop your arms out of their socket, the space is such small you instantly feel like going on a 'toothbrush sharing' terms with,lets say the biggest slob of the vicinity.
But despite the squalor,the decay and the gut-wrenching smell of abnoy, I am having a glorious time here. The people, regardless of their genetic make up and smells that persist to linger in your noses and flirt with your olfactory nerves are the same humans I have come to call my friends. This is the place where I can do brisk walking at the wee hours of the morning without the fear of being stabbed, held up, chopped into pieces, mugged, turned into sacrificial stuff to some deities or to a more cinematic context, hung and offered to King Kong. This is where every house invites you in and practically shoves the content of their fridges up your noses (thus the added 30pounds, which makes walking in the narrow street all the more life-threatening, I am like a walking bowling pin- Target by default). And more amazingly, this is the place where everyone glugs alcohol in a fashion that can put all the members of Alcohol Anonymous America look like wimpy, pubertal schoolboys.
Alcohol industry is especially thriving here, the whole street alone imports innumerable cases of alcohol on a daily basis, you wouldnt wanna see them mad, they all turn green and maniacal.
Another staple of Pateros life is the videoke, almost every gathering and "made-up' celebrations (collection of garbage day, the miraculous survival of Buday the dog from imminent demise, The outing of Brando, the long awaited comeuppance of Nene's tormentor in Katorse). Everyone here sings, but do they sing well? Thats another issue altogether. I know someone who sings like a drunk person with terminal asthma, It may seem okay,since ingesting alcohol can be an effective excuse for the voice that can call forth the rain of scorpions (I sing terrible! must be the alcohol wreaking havoc on my voice box!), But what can you do if you sound like a drunkard ashtmatic in a nebulizer even before you take your first shot? Let everybody's sense of propriety gets pickled by alcohol! they wouldnt know the difference between a frog's croaking and your voice singing, they may even find it charming, you might even get laid!
Life can truly bring you to places you never even thought of going, places you only heard so much about but not actually intending on going. It's as if being singled out by the whimsical, playful universe and carelessly plop you into the lives of people you never imagine liking and wouldn't wanna be seen dead with, until the magic works its way, you discover the generosity of their hearts and their unpretentious love of life and eagerness to live, and together you create a raucous,tone-deaf music while enjoyably swigging cheap booze.
To all my friends and my adoptive family here in Pateros, Thank you for letting me into your homes and into your lives, and yes, thank you for shoving everything you can offer up my nose. =p

.....

Bloody Tale

2009-11-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

I hate blood, or rather, I hate the sight of blood, and when you are living with friends whose primary source of amusement is to see you wetting your pants and trembling like a posessed blender in fear, disclosing it is like peddling a basement bargain priced gadget up their noses. There was this one moment that they locked me inside the room only to find out that we were up to a movie marathon-the movies in tow were the whole collection of SAW, I would have fervently prayed to Zeus to strike the television (and my friends) with his fiercest lightning bolts, if I wasn’t too busy banging them with an electric fan. I am not a thoroughly squeamish sort of guy, you see, I have no problem downing 3 baluts (aborted duck fetus) or let us say stopping by a mobile lugawan, and sit alongside pedicab drivers, pimps or hookers while trying at small talk, (I have learned that in order for one to get the best and most innard parts, one should pal up the stall owner, you don’t necessarily have to introduce yourself, because no matter how frequent you drill into their skull your name, you will always be known as just “pogi” “boy” or in the cases of women owners “darling” sweetheart” or yes, “pogi”, although you’d start questioning their sincerity and credibility when the person waiting to be served next to you looks like a cross between the bride of Frankenstein and something that escaped from a mad scientist’s petra dish. Just shut it, sometimes it is comforting to know that in shedding a dirt cheap amount, one can fill up his stomach and get his ego bolstered up.

So where is this blog leading? Surely my train of thoughts is dancing freestyle again. From point A to point D and then back to point B. No wonder Ive only got 3 readers, the rest have died of motion sickness and vertigo..

Oh now I remember what this is supposedly all about. The other day, My friend/housemate’s mom asked me for a special favor. Why does my heart impale itself upon my ribcage everytime I hear someone use my name as an opening salvo? Perhaps it is because,in all the serious confrontations of my life, its always been like that, someone mentioning my name as if to warn me to steel myself from the sting of the next verbal shot (“Dadge, I think we should stop sending you allowance” Dadge, hold my hand and let us pray to God that he banish the devils residing in your decrepit body” “Dadge, I hopelessly heart you, This is Brando by the way”).
You see, my mom is in the states, so my friend’s mom is the closest I could get to having a mother. She needs a blood donor for her Dad who just recently had a blood transfusion.
I swear that the moment I heard it my soul left my body and hover away screaming as if it was on fire. I am deathly afraid of the idea of someone as inexperienced as an 18year old nursing intern poking a large needle into your vein and drain the blood out of you, its as if my mental search engine has brought scores of grim pictures of blood donation.

To be continued..

The Horror Queen of the Right Wing

2009-09-23T04:39:00.000-07:00

Probably the reason why I'm having this constant need to strangle anyone within arm's reach is because I stopped blogging months ago. A lot of things were going on, short course,teaching job and front desk stint, albeit a fleeting one. Front office course was a refreshing experience,I got to revisit the feeling of getting late again, bringing my trusty backpack and sometimes packing lunch and hurtling it on unsuspecting classmates. Part of the curriculum was the 100 hour practicum time and so off we went to Subic, the nearest and the most convenient place for us to wreak havoc on hospitality institutions. We decidedly stayed in the hotel where we we would also be doing the training and the raucous mirth and drunken merriment are still ringing in my ears. The excuses not to go on duty varied from melodramatic ("I just got into a serious fight with my boyfriend, I'm afraid the tendency to crack open the skull of any approaching guest with the keyboard can be so tempting, I fear for other people) to cinematic ( "I saw a girl clad in white dress cavorting in the hallway"), we later found out that it was a gay classmate rehearsing his Japanese catwalk, It wasnt exactly a dress as one would aptly assume under the dimly lit corridor but layers of fitted queen size linen, thrown in a recognizably decent ensemble. That fag! no wonder my classmates would immediately feign any sicknesses known to the history of mankind. (one classmate even claimed of having a candidiasis, and she stated it while putting an act of a severely and incurably itchy -----)) just to play hooky from duty if assigned to clean the right wing, it was haunted by Ms. Marian Rivera aka Renato Dela Cruz.
To Ren, I hope,by now, you have completely mastered your walk of horror.

Singled Out

2009-02-12T22:43:00.000-08:00

Ringggggggggggggggggg! Ringggggggggggggg! "Hello sir, This is Ms. Bee of Camel Dung Recruitment Agency, We've received your online application, and you've been shortlisted for the position of a hotel receptionist,Please attend the interview on monday,11 am. The employers will appreciate it if you would come in coat and tie.Thank you."
The post was in Saudi Arabia, a country that conjures up mental image of veiled women, sandstorms and a prison gang rape scene for smooth guys- daunting scenarios,but what the heck, I've been bum for the longest time, the ax is getting rusty and the village body count must stop. I should go, but not in coat and tie for crying out loud! the tropical heat is searing and the agency is located at the country's red light district, I dont want to look like The Godfather cruising around for hookers!
The whole building is cheek by jowl with Filipinos who are applying for placements abroad. Mostly hard labor (plumber,etc.) and domestic jobs. I felt awfully out of the loop wearing a rolled up smart shirt, a pair of tailored pants and patent leather shoes in a place where everyone was wearing simple shirts and denim jeans. I wanted to crucify everyone in the agency who insisted on the outlandish ensemble.

to be continued.

You know its your birthday when

2008-12-24T02:47:00.000-08:00

*Everyone around you seems to be possesed by some sort of a benevolent spirit. Letting you get away with minor transgressions like commenting on your friend's hair (your hair looks as if it would sit up and beg for peanuts) and karate kicking a neigbor on a whim. Everyone becomes a laugh whore, doubling over at your corniest jokes, even if they are the ones you are poking fun at. You are beyond reproach.

*You wake up with 44 messages in your inbox,and since your birthday coincides with christmas, you automatically skip those generic ones and focus on the more personal sms. This is a critical moment because as a self professed sociopath, this is the time of the year when you determine real friends from phoneys, thus weeding out considerable number of people from your life. Im sorry, but REAL friends can be out of sorts at times, but they just NEVER forget ocassions like this.

*Your phone rings like nuts. More than half of it comes from half way around the world. You know that it costs 250,000 dongs for a 30minute call from Vietnam, and a remarkably stingy friend from Singapore who contemplates for a month whether to buy a new tie and ends up going to a thrift shop, a friend from Madrid who is doing 4 jobs while attending some aviation safety training -these are the gestures that just floor you and render you at a loss for a better word to say, you're vocabulary is reduced to two words- THANK YOU.

*Cash finds their way into your wallet. And since you were born during Christmas day- a highly anticipated holiday for kids and for those who resist growing up, cash just pays a flying visit to your wallet and immediately make a bee line for the pockets of your godsons and god daughters. It is always like this, A grandson will knock on your door, accompanied by one dozen entourage, each expecting some kindness induced by holiday spirit. Hiding is not an option, because these kids have an unfortunate habit of mercilessly haunting you. You end up joining the statistics of 'Maralitang Pilipino".

Old Flame

2008-12-14T05:06:00.000-08:00

It is said that in every relationship, there is always that someone who loves more. They cant stay equally in love, because, as what happened to Romeo and Juliet, They will cancel each other out. Something's gotta give.
In my previous relationships, It was always I who loved less. It must have been my cocky assurance or in retrospect, I can owe it to my gaucheness brought by immaturity. I loved, but I just didn't know how to measure up to their love, because theirs was the overwhelming type. Its funny how we get too close to comfort when we know we are loved. We become so lax and nonchalant because we go under the impression that eventhough we lapse sometimes, they are just there, at our beck and call. With open arms.
But I learned that there was also this concept of 'too late'.
They are all gone now, probably totally exorcised everything that has to do with me out of their lives forever. Sometimes I miss them, each with a varying degree of sense of loss, each with a differing kind of sting that kicks me from the inside when spurred by the slightest memory. It is like this, you go to a place where you once have been with the old flame and the memories start flooding back, People around start asking if everything is okay, and you force a lie out of you mouth. "yeah, everything is fine".
But inwardly, provoked by that de javu-like state, you start reliving the moment, the laughter, the smile and every piddling detail. "this is where I brought my old flame, we sat over there, I ordered this, my old flame that." Every second of the recollection was a splinter inside you.

I guess there is no use letting my old flames know that I'm as sentient as anyone else, and during their times of great pain, I also suffered losing a part of me the moment they walked out of the door. I also cried like a baby.

How can you smile and cry at the same time?
And how can you accuse someone of defiling a place, and at the same time relishing every second of it?

I wish I'd never walked with you around town but I also wish I could still walk with you around town. I wish you'd reconsider and I wishI'd forget.

Chicken Pox for the Soul

2008-11-17T05:26:00.000-08:00

Im pushing 23, and I thought, after having been here in the world for a little over 2 decades, I could get away in this life without catching the dreaded vacirella zoster virus (VRV), or without any pretensions and attempt at niceties, lets just call it- c*nting asswipe virus (CAV).
I woke up the other day feeling a bit feverish and itching like crazy, I would have sworn I was practically humping the nearest rough wall of the house to relieve myself from the unbearable itch. And they all reared their little hideous heads winking at me saying "Drum roll pls! Let's party!". I looked like a cross between a chessboard and a laboratory experiment gone terribly wrong. I've heard that chicken pox at this point in one's life can cause irreversible damage-Pockmarks. Much as I despise being one of those pockmarked unpopular geeks in highschool who excelled in physics but lagged behind during p.e. classes and the eternal laughing stocks, I just have to throw in the towel and accept how the cookie crumbles for me. Surely, my pockmarks wouldnt define me as a person, and hopefully I still get to keep all the people that matter to me, my family and friends. I woke into a cold realization that physical appearance is just overrated, because in just a snap of a finger, it goes out the window without even deigning a passing glance to its host. Its the substance that stays, your very own person.
Oh well,the next challenge of my life will be finding someone who can stare at me for a minute without cringing and say "I still love you, pockmarks and all".
I just cant wait. =p

Bus Rides

2008-11-08T00:18:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed by now my two readers that I'm a little erratic. Some days I'm all happy and nostalgic, other days I'm forlorn and reclusive and other days I just want to activate my flamethrower to clear the space with. It may be a mild bi-polar disorder, but I say, I'm as normal as the next guy, Im not a psychiatric case, in fact this is not what I'm writing about.

Flashback 8 years ago, I would go around my province alone in a decrepit, grafitti-covered minibus for no any other reason than I enjoyed being in one ("the tv program is a rerun, I'm outta here", "My playmates are all wussies, Im outta here", "I broke my brother's favorite CD, I'm outta here") my tendency to just pack up and leave unprovoked predates my post-circumcision years. I chose not to get on 'snazzy', shiny ones, they detract from the rural appeal, I would make sure that the one in tow was a prehistoric, a sort of bus with peeling paint, and with wooden windows that've surely seen better days- the more rugged it looked, the better. I dont know what exactly fixated me on that quirk but every bus ride throws me into a state of catatonia, and total oblivion to all the earthly worries and cosmic torments. It's as if I'm in a vacuum where nothing seems to matter, and there is no concept of time. It feels much like leaving all the baggages behind and just ride away from it all. To paraphrase Milan Kundera, its "the unbearable lightness of being".

I would always sit by the window, with all the air velocity trying to deform your face and throw your hair strands into the one seated next to you's esophagus or the other way around. I suggest that if you had gotten under the knife, let's say a nose job, never consider sitting by the window side, if you dont want your silicone implant to go into orbit. I'd travel with my modest concessions, a can of Pik Nik and an occassional boiled peanuts sold by pushy peddlers that go aboard, assault your eardrums with their pleas to buy an overpriced canned sodas, my most hated ones were those who seemed gentle and flashed you a saintly smile, and after politely declining their wares, acted as if they had a short term memory loss and shoved their products practically up your nose again.

The trip was roughly an hour, there was nothing to see in the pitstop except decadent houses and business stalls, so I would get off the bus, just do a little stretching while walking along the seaside, relieve myself and get ready for the trip back. I didnt want my bus to reach the terminal, because it meant snapping back into reality. I didnt want the journey to end.

Life and dreams are like taking a bus ride, the road can be rough, shaky and cluttered with people who tend to get in your face. Sometimes, strangers that sit next to you try to strike a desultory conversation, strangers that soon become an indespensable part of your life, who, despite so many pitstops and terminals, still choose to ride with you. Together you just laugh off the inconveniences. These strangers are your travel partners, your friends.

The wonder of Life and dreams lie in the immateriality of them. The fact that we cant have everything in one life and there is always a big room of possibility that we may not get hat we dream of- it's this very drama that makes the struggle worthwhile and sweet. Its the pursuit that brings happiness. Its that proverbial journey that keeps us loving life, the unpredictability of each new day, and the friends we gather along the way.

With these crazy people? Who ever wants to reach the pitstops?

Blabbing in Zzz

2008-10-22T22:36:00.000-07:00

I have a nasty habit of talking in my sleep. When I was shacking in an all-guy dormitory during college days, my roomy would tell me I was mumbling something in my slumber. He couldnt figure anything out because for one, it was in english, and for another, just like any other typical nights in that dormitory, he was all plastered. I had a fear of unconsciously blabbing out my deepest secrets, the blackmail potential types.
This past forthnight, its been happening again. My sister in law told me I, in one moment seemed like arguing with someone and the next trashtalking in a rather seedy place. Weve been sleeping in one room, all six of us (mom, bro, Doonah, my sis in law and Ysabelle) for two weeks now because Ysabelle tosses and turns in her sleep, thus the possibility of her hurting herself is high (in the slightest creak, all six of us just bolt upright simultaneously, its like a choreographed Thriller dance move.). and the airconditioner has a power of all the horses in Sta. Ana, We need more body to generate heat and ease it off a smidgen, another reason is, before going to bed, we like to goof around and poke fun and often times butcher each other, nothing binds the family better than the old banters.
Four straight days of talking in my sleep, and the only words they figured are "Blast, You, Drop Dead, Hilarious". Its quite a comfort I talk so fast (both in waking and dousing hours) they cannot catch every word, it becomes their latest past time "cracking my indecipherable sleep mumbo jumbo''
Given I still have so many unresolved personal issues, those that I dont give a flying fart during my waking hours, and the fact that Ive been burying my head in all my unfinished books, heavily annotating them and looking some words up, my mind might still be working during my REM.
Keep your hyperactive stream of thoughts unintelligible Dadge, for the life of you!

Profiled

2008-10-20T04:42:00.000-07:00

I am Dadge, to my family I am DJ, but I discourage anyone to call me that way, I personally believe that using initial names, aside from straight cut jeans, muscle shirts on twinks and putting on scarves in a frizzling tropical country, should be punishable by law, whereas "Jr and Sr'' should be accorded a corporal punishment. Dadge sticks, and often times it causes much ribbing in my daily grind, when ordering an overpriced espresso, the baristas will knowingly scribble "Doodge, Dutch, Butch" and the worst Ive gotten so far- "Doosh". It drives me to summon the fiercest lightning bolt and aim it at the man behind the counter. "Do I look like a breathing, caffeine-swigging vajayjay to you?".
I am 5'11 and a little under 145 pounds.I would love to think that I am devastatingly handsome and humans -straight, slightly bent, moderately bent, severely bent and those as bent as Auntie Annes' pretzels, throw themselves at my feet, begging to be stepped upon but no, Im just your ordinary looking guy with enough facial hair to stuff a sofa. I hate sunlight so I'm kind of beige, and I am told not to walk in shorts for I can be a potential road hazard- I can blind motorists and during inclement weather, I can be a perfect receptors of lightning. I'm sorry to disappoint but I never use papaya soaps, aside from making your nipples sore, they render you the look of a weathered, overused tupperware, flaky. I once tried to work on my tan and ended up with a 2nd degree burn and I swear my body was emitting heatwaves that could roast a turkey for a week.
I embrace my pastiness.
My weighing scale at home is connected to most of my closest friends cerebellum. And when my weigh tips the scale a pound heavier, the implanted chips in their heads beep and send them the impulse to inundate me with gratuitous comments like ''obese, Judy Ann Santos and Monster Turd". My mom once told me. "Son, you dont have to drop any more pounds, if you go on living on parsley, you'll end up with two pelvic bones jutting out your hips area, not attractive at all!" It doesnt help that both of my brothers have an enduring love affair with weights and active sports, standing next to them, I look like a creature from different specie.
I have very few friends, it must be because I hate cutting a deal, or maybe I'm just an old-fashioned sociopath. My friends can win any contests, they don't have to lift a finger, they just make you see the futility of going againts them. They did their masters at "The Grinch' School of Meanness and Atrocity" in which I am the Headmaster.

My weight is fairly grounded. I am bugged.

I used to be of a hopeless romantic sort, who could identify himself with any songs, including Enya's. Who, in just passing mention of the word 'love', could blush and enthuse about the concept of destiny for the next few days. In the ineffable process of aging, my concept of romance has done an about face (insert your most horrid romantic disillusionments here). Instead of getting into a wistful state when seeing lovers trying to swallow each other up while exchanging inordinate amout of drool, I cant help but cringe. I still get in like with anyone who catches my fancy, but they are of fleeting type. They wouldnt even hear the end of it. This is my romantic civilization. Because some centuries ago, I was a raging troglodyte who had an overwhelming propensity to fall for the beasts.

I love to read but I don't read in public places. I can't. Reading is my metaphor of boffing around. You need to get a room or else you wont have a boner (unless you are a flaming exhibitionist.). But I always carry books nonetheless, it's an effective way to discourage people from barging into your personal space and when it fails to ward off creeps- hard bounds can be a good weapon to crack open skulls.
I blow my dough on books and I have no qualms about it. When in a bookstore, I get hopelessly hysterical my friends instantly disown me and love me at a distance of let's say 5 meters away. They can never understand the depth of my personal affair with books.
I talk in a peppy manner, and yes, I am verbose. There is no cure for a verbal diarrhea. You may use it againts me but my gibberish is replete with idiomatic expressions and esoteric vocabularies (no pun intended). My Australian friend, Mark, would always heckle me everytime I utter something he remotely knows about, asks me to say it again and then the definition followed by its usage. When the word count exceeds 5, he starts getting the Medusa glare and an occasional cussword. I dont mean to be pedantic and uppity but when you 'feel' the words, they just come out of your mouth in the most appropriate moment, because looking for any simpler word to make yourself less befuddling will just blow everything out of context- that, for me is pretentiousness.

The Cup

2008-10-18T02:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, maybe I was awfully delusional to even think that in my ripe age of 22, I'd still have undiscovered predisposed genes for greatness, but like a delusion, it was just an unshakeable belief to something untrue (fact reeks!).
My bro is a pro, he breathes tennis, his weapon of choice in bonking heads are his racquets, you can hear his blood sloshing through his veins when there is a big match and he unabashedly guards the remote clicker like a hyena guarding a cascass- he gives you a choice: espn or a head concussion. Not that we only have one tube in the entire house, but what pains me is the fact that he terrorizes everyone who gets 200meter within the big plasma, that is his territory, he peed all over it. This presents a painful problem- How can I appreciate the enlightening mumbling of Boomhauer? Or the comedones of my favorite stars? Ah! the banes of the youngest.
In tennis, which is his religion, He genuflects before the image of Nadal, he doesnt want me around everytime an epic game is going on because, chatterbox and mean machine that I am, I always quip the obvious. "Kuya, Look at Nadal's sweatstain around his armpit area, that must be reeking no?!", My brother, known for his succinctness, tells me to shut up, which only makes the matter worse, because when I am told to zip it, the Energizer Bunny possesses me.

This morning, as I was annotating the cereal carton's nutrition facts, He asked me If I would want to tag along with him to the court in the proviso that I'd refrain from throwing expletives and colorful imprecations at the players. ( yeah, I can curse in 15 languages)

We packed our stuff including bottles of Gatorade, an easy read book (I had a feeling I'd be spending more time in the court side than on the court, so, instead of needling other players and causing riot or dishing out bottled waters to the 'seasoned' players, might just as well bury myself in a book) , I wore a black shirt, to go with the ''dark horse of the court'' image. "Whats with the black shirt? It's a tennis court we'll be going to, not some memorial park!" snapped my brother, "Tell that to Andy Roddick kuya". I answered, and we drove on.

to be continued,im still digesting my lunch.

The "IT" Girls of Waverly Place

2008-10-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

"They' hot and you're not!"
The "It" girls (Ita na girls) are the 2-woman militia of the place. They make sure everything is sparkly and screechingly clean, including my ego. You see, I'm the sort of boy whose jokes, if fell flat, says it all over again until you get the hint that you REALLY have to laugh if you fear for your life and the national security, and the 'it' girls only know that too well. Let me take the liberty to profile them

"It" girl number 1. "She's hot! She's as black as your crumpled carbon paper" Doonahhhhh (I require you to extend the last syllable until your lungs shout for air.).
-She is the one I always ask about the first moment I get in the house, and she gets the most of the loot everytime I travel, the last time I went in her room, I saw a Victoria's Secret complete body line, Body shimmer included so don't be scared when you see a slimy creature doing the laundry in the backyard. Having been with me for the longest time, she has earned the "retort license" thus maintaining the body count statistic one notch lower. I have gone into the habit of asking her at every opportunity "Doonah? Maganda ka ba?" in which she quickly retorts "OOnamanYesKuya" in one syllable, and then she bats her eyelids like a possessed voodoo doll with a conjunctivitis.
She knows me through and through, which is a bit sad because I can no longer give her a cardiac arrest. When she hears me clumsily getting about my room in the morning, she sets the table. Her motto is God is in the detail, so she matches my placemat with the coaster. She knows the stuff I find inedible, she knows the color of the underwear I am wearing, she knows If I'm running out of an aftershave, or a perfume, she even promptly USB Charges my mobile phone before it even blinks red, as well as the Ipods. We're in cahoots in times of my alcohol binging and some 'pecadilloes'. I remember one time, I left the aircon on for 32 hours and when my mom came in from a vacation, she'd ferreted it out and furiously stormed into my room. Doonah then melodramatically said "Ati, Patay yan, Nag iliktric pan lang si Kuya DJ" and my mom answered " Eh Bakit ang lamig lamig ng sahig?". Doonah quickly quipped. "Nabuhusan ku yan ng yilo ate, Naglampaso ako para mamatay ang mga anntz". After that, I was thrown down into the room with neither a window nor an electric fan for a week, Doonah has a convincing power of a drugged carabao, but she still tries to keep up a fight, eventhough a no-win one.

Doonah is a rather petite girl, you can even stuff her inside your drawer with a few space left for your vanity bag. She has hair that defies the law of gravity, and the only way to tame it is to put a hollow block on top of it. She has a kind of laugh that makes your hair stands on end, I dont know about your 'it' girl but mine, laughs like a possessed blender. She is horribly clumsy thus the polka dot pattern on her legs. One time, out of sheer boredom and neurotic tendency, on her sleep, I connected those dots with a marker hoping to create an elaborate pattern, it looked like a demented sketch of a suspension bridge.
She has a golden brown complexion, or should I say a deep golden brown, or perhaps rust?
I cant tell exactly which but I find it really nice. A foreigner's delight! But its pretty obvious she dislikes it for she blows her meager salary on papaya soaps and whitening whatevs. There was a time when she was heavily sloughing off skin that everytime she would get near the table, I would cover my glass for fear of ingesting some of her dead skin cells. She, like the half of the population, had also got bitten by this "Belo' hype. It took a little over a month for her to stop musing the famous catchphrase: "Oonly Bee-low tat-ches my skin". At which we would cackle a sarcastic reply,
"But who touches Doona's Boobies?"-"Only Tasyo touches Doona's Boobies".

Tasyo is the village guard who roams the street at night, our Doonah's paramour, her "Bibs".
I digress.

The King of the House

2008-10-17T05:26:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay I'd thought I will have gone by now to some exotica staying true to my shiny loose canon reputation, but no, I'm afraid I will be sticking around like a tinnitus in your head for a bit longer. For the love of creatures, straight and bent, beautiful and fugly! Why do I always get fooled into believing that everyone is from the tellytubby world spreading nothing but kindness,goodwill and vapid, one syllable words to the world?! Goodwill my water retentive arse, you pathological liar. I am now getting all my eggs from your basket before they all get hatched into slithery, squishy and venomous whatevs, and be the rightful King of the house instead.

My mom, apparently bored with my whining, catatonia and unspeakable habit of filling the house with Twilight zone'esque screams decided she'd had enough and booked a ticket to the U.S. in the earliest possible schedule, probably to find her peace and quiet.

Because its a standing and popular belief that a mere mention of my name will turn water into blood and bring forth pestilence, locusts and occasional incurable boils.

I, being notoriously known to survive on pita bread and balsamic vinegar, welcomed the idea the way you'd welcome Jehova's witnesses on your doorstep. "But what about the house?! your plants?! the grass?! etc". The only thing I am capable of looking after is a swollen sebacious gland. The task at hand is too nigh. Can this all be done by the two ''it'' girls? I dont know, when a matter is just way above my head, I sit still until it goes away.

Let me just tell you about the "It" girls.

Once Upon a Time In Chinky China Part 3: The Lady Ninja In a Corset

2008-10-16T01:27:00.000-07:00

When my turn to get a massage comes. My friend remarks that I look as if I was on my way to the guillotine with no executive clemency possible. The masseuse is a heavy breasted woman with a waist so small you'd think she's invertebrae. She promptly instructs, or rather pantomimes me to take my clothes off, including my underwear. I just hate it everytime I melt into a doddering idiot, and when marooned in a room with a girl with passable looks and a breast big enough to supply People's Republic of China milk for a year with a little left for some small cheese industry, I get weak on my knees and instantly becomes religious (oh god, please oh god..heavens, holy trinity). She then slathers me with inordinate amount of oil that is remisnicent of my grandma's El Shaddai cure all ointment, If the universe is trying to send me a message, can I get a second transmission?
5 minutes through being caressed with brother Mike Velarde's wonder oil. The masseuse seductively whispers "byoo-tee-froo" while scratching her mammary glands on my backside. This is when I become a saint waiting to be canonized. My piety shoots past the kingdom of God. I think I also admonish the Hindu Gods.
She grabs my butt and you know whatelse. And you perfectly know that it takes all the forbearance in the world to say no. My friend, getting under the impression that something 'epic' is going on inside, shouts in near panic voice:

"Dude!! Say no! Whatever it is, just say no! If you did, I'll call your mom and tell her that you screw a whore with a madcow disease!"

Inside, I start sweating buckets, while the masseuse is trying to examine my anatomy. I even make it out when she says that everything will be for free, that she just happens to like me. Inside my head, the devils are doing the conga again while the angels demurely watch while bonking at my conscience singing in unison "Gonorheaaaaa...la la la la, Syphillissss, ta doom, ta doom.. A-I-D-S!". This is when I start to think of the long term effect of this seemingly exciting and kinky encounter. 1. if I had a go, chances are, my family jewel will just rot and eventually drop off. 2. Syphillis? gonnorhea? AIDS? Yes my angels, I can hear you quite well 3. My character and dignity, How can you ever respect a person who mates with just about everything that bleeds for five days?, I dont mean to sound prudish but the proposition, however tempting, is just plain dirty and lowly.

I told the girl that I have had enough of her massage, gave her a hefty tip bigger than the actual service fee (for her massage and for punctiliously studying my anatomy, kidding.) and thanked her.

We manage to get out alive, my friend, with a newly pedicured and slightly bloody nails, and me, with new admiration and assurance from knowing that I learned something new about myself- I have a penis and a brain, and in the face of extreme sinful indulgence, I know how to use them both.

We forgot about the free accommodation and both agreed that a nice, decent hotel with a hot bath wouldn't hurt, and besides, after all what happened, I was badly in need of a personal, private space to recollect the misdaventure in that dank and dark cubicle..Simply 'byoo-tee-froo' *wink

Once Upon a Time In Chinky China Part 2: The Curse of The Gaudy Parlor

2008-10-15T06:49:00.000-07:00

After convincing the Chinese immigration officers that I am the person whose picture appears on my passport and not just a product of some nuclear experiment gone haywire, we are allowed to enter the miasmatic city of Shenzen, where we are assaulted by the sight of 1. homeless people who are either just idling around or waiting for their trains to come (there's a train terminal adjacent to China Southern gateway) 2. Peddlers of knock off stuffs that whisper to you conspiratorially about the clandestine locations of their wares which seems enticing until you see Dolce and Gabbana spelled as Dolshe and Gabbina 3. State of decadence - aside from the Shangrila Shenzen, other buildings look decrepit, abandoned or just plain drab.
We start looking for recognizable signs of any massage parlors until our legs scream for morphine shots. When in a densely populated area, I easily get woozy and my humanity just goes out of the window, I grow batwings, and crave for blood. My close friends can attest to the morbidity of my mood. I can utter 3 sentences in one syllable. "Wevebeensearchinghighandlowforexpletive'ssakehowcomethereisntanyffrigginmassageparorsinatleast3kilometersradiusyoufreak! "
Before my friend pees on his pants from sheer terror, a lady wearing at least an inch thick of make up, a mascara that renders her the look of a drunk camel and clad in a provocative synthetic leather approaches us and say "Massa-gi?" while pantomiming it laborously. "Massa-gi? Massa-gi?"
I almost feel the impulse to shout "English, Tagalog? two syllables? three? "
After roughly a kilometer of hounding us (this is how people in Shenzen do their trades, they get in your face relentlessly and with a critical mass of tenacity), we relent to the offer, and I secretly tell my friend, "Please if you managed to get out of this alive, which I know you would because of your droopy, 'hush puppy eyes, tell my family it was I who fed our dog monosodium glutamate stuffed in sandwich when I was just 8 years old".
We steel ourselves.

Le me tell you about the parlor. It is a place where you wouldnt wanna be seen dead in, aside from the fact that it is downright garish, the neon green and pink plastic flowers all over the place remind you of some makeshift beauty parlor manned by a raging drag queen who can also pass as a policeman back home. Its a five star luxury all the way- If you spent practically all your life living in a cave. The place has 3 cubicles. and let me tell you about the rest rooms, there are No restrooms! I assume its either you bring your own latrines or you burst your bladder in order to relieve yourself.

My friend comes in first as I nervously sit on a couch for a foot massage and whatnots. I never had a footmassage before because 1. I'll keel over laughing my arse off causing my trachea to collapse thus clogging the air passage that will lead to my untimely demise 2. My feet, if tickled, can be a weapon of mass destruction, decapitating any humans within 2 kilometer radius . It is done by a pudgy chinese guy who reminds me of a butcher in some horror flicks that dont sell. But in all fairness, the massage is relatively relaxing and I have to emphatically think of the starved children of Africa and the Auschwitz extermination camps to prevent my feet from karate kicking the head of the masseur. He tries to involve me in some desultory conversation which is as good as not trying at all because his english sounds all chinese to me. One lady staff occasionally sits beside me, touches my face and utters ''byoo-te-froo". Oh that I can understand! but I prefer the word 'handsome'.
All throughout our 'indulgence', if you are so 'third world' to call it as that, my friend and I would talk loudly to know if we are not yet choked to death, chopped and tossed onto dog food sacks labeled as ''vitamins fortified'' yet.

Me: Dude! How are you doing there?
Friend: I am being molested! This girl asks if I'd want an extra service! She is so insistent I feel the urge to bang her head with a lampshade!
Me: I hope you wouldnt catch something venereal, work it man!"
Friend: Sicko! how have you been doing there?!
Me: My legs are overly tenderized I feel like a paraplegic! get a wheelchair, Quick!

to be continued...

Once Upon a Time in Chinky China Part 1: The Quest for the Dirt Cheap Touch

2008-10-15T01:25:00.000-07:00

During one of those idle days when all the devils from the underworld are cavorting and doing the conga line inside your head. My friend and I decide to traipse by Shenzen, the sourthernmost city of the Guandong Province, Mainland China, roughly an hour away from the riotous Hong Kong. My friend, who is the undisputed king of superlatives and theatrics ( its the greatest doughnuts! its the coolest place! its the worst smell! Its the freakiest, scariest face!) has been told that Shenzen boasts of great and dirt cheap massage parlors, and if you really have the eye for great and obscene bargain deals, you can even snag a free accommodation for the night, all under 150 Yuan (I prefer to use yuan, aside from its ancient feel, RenMinBi makes you sound as if you'd lost all your front teeth.) Having been addled with the Chinese opera music that is eternally blasting downstairs that regularly makes our brains just ooze out our noses, the prospect of getting away from it all seems irresistably inviting, or as the way my friend
puts it while throwing his hands on the air, ''fantastically brilliant!''.

We pack our bags, and head to the Jordan MTR station. While standing on the platform I start getting weird and quizzical looks from people. Everytime I get weird looks, I start to act like a lumbering log, indifferent and catatonic, until I convince them that I am really just an inanimate object that stands upright, its so effective that after a minute or two, they instantly lose their interest and leave you alone. It turns out that one of my 'festive' underwears is peering out of the bag. When you are 22, please take the initiative to buy and choose your own underwear, because your mom is just more than willing to run that errand for you at the slightest provocation.

There's nothing really much to see in the Hong Kong countryside aside from the occassional doddering Chinese oldies doing that hiphop dancing version of people who have extreme case of rheumatism called Tai Chi, I swear watching them can put you in a suspended animation. It gives you the urge to just grab the remote clicker, fast forward and get done with it. A single step can reach up to 3 minutes, during which you lose your consciousness while drooling inordinate amount of saliva.
In the PROC immigration, the lines to visa counters are mercilessly long, in this case, after standing 10 full minutes in queu, Its either I start muttering to myself all the country, city and airport codes that I have learned in college or flirt with the nearest human standing regardless of the gender. In that moment, the target by default is an Indian national whose smell can send your olfactory bulbs on the endangered specie list. I decide to quietly recite the codes while trying to breathe through my ears.

To be continued.

You Had Me At..

2008-10-10T04:26:00.000-07:00

Hey princess, I know that your pretty little head cannot understand any of this rambling, but do you know how tender I feel everytime you call my name? Your sweet little ineffectual tongue and delicate lips that utter my name, or rather the version of my name your innocent mind could muster. 'Tu-ta, Teeeeh-To, Teehh-ti". The latter if mentioned by any other humans will sound lascivious. I allow you to call me 'Teeh-ti" my sweetie. Only you.
Corruption has never been this sweet!.

I specially love it everytime you throw your hands at me, either for that warm hug, for wanting to be carried up or for that physical articulation of your vent up emotion followed by a resounding "slap!". How can I ever say no to that adorable face? Slap me silly, You sure know how to win me over my princess!

I am sorry if sometimes I get more excited than you when our favorite disney playhouse programs are aired, while you are just ogling the television in modest mirth, I hysterically jerk and incessantly sing to the tune of the programs' themes. I hope tito doesnt scare you.By the way, tito has no mental impairment my princess.
During your bath time, I know you hate it when us, adults are taking the brushing up to our hands but dear, We just dont want any carries to wreak havoc on your pearls. It doesnt mean that we are tormenting you, we just want to instill into your pretty little head the value of oral hygiene and the vileness of halitosis. Oh halitosis! why are some people as charming as halitosis?

And when you are being dressed up, I know that we always come up with the weirdest ensembles, You may not always get comfortable with the H&Ms but geez, they fit you like a dream! It entertains us seeing you 'all that'. It maybe our own repressed showbiz fantasies projecting onto you but honestly we just want the very best for you.
The whole household gets alarmed my princess everytime you get tight-lipped during feeding time. Tito does your food, and eventhough its a wee bit bland, it surely is healthy. No MSG, no artificial flavors, only pure tender loving care.
You are growing up so fast my princess. and if there is anything I am guilty of, Its the fact that I am a doting tito.
And I will never get absolved from this guilt until Mr. Alzheimer knocks on my doorstep.
I love you so much my princess.

You had me at 'U-haaahhh!"

Time Space Warp

2008-10-09T05:40:00.000-07:00

We met years ago, you were in your uniform, I was in my trusty old pyjama. The place wasnt fancy, my bare apartment was not of a romantic type that makes lovers croon and consign their affection to paper. It was dark, naked and uncharacteristically cold. But there was nowhere I would have rather been.
Its funny how we remember every piddling detail of such wonderful encounter. The scent in the air, the smallest of gestures, the stolen glances, the faintest smiles and the way it made us feel. We may have seemed to throw everything into oblivion as we go about our personal hustles and bustles but a slightest whiff of that particular moment in time can send gazellion wattage of electricity through our frozen body, sending us in a time space warp of good old memories. Thats the magic of true love. It wont leave you, It can be swept under the rags of your existence, but it will never leave you.
Years have passed,3 apartments and too many cold nights later. I still think about you. I still get fried from the gazellion electric wattage generated by sheer reminiscence of our old days. I still get trapped in a space warp.
I wish I wouldnt have to time travel and get inside that imaginary four dimentional cube just to call you my own. I wish, once again, everything is real.

I love you more than any words can say.
Until we meet again.

Plummeting

2008-10-07T19:38:00.000-07:00

I'd thought I was resilient to this downward spiral feeling, time when nothing seems to go right, and everything is just all over the place. Time when you have just fallen down your rump, only to find out that you'd get kicked and hammered mercilessly further down the muck. It is when, even the idea of attempting to flounder becomes nearly impossible and emotionally taxing. You fail miserably even before the execution, your mind has no mercy telling you so.
When you talk with your friends, you shield yourself with the shiny exterior to augment the happiness and alter the grim reality, You dissect the truth and offer them the left over, stuff that isn't thoroughly depressing, but how can you pull this one off, when you know in your heart that everything that's going on in your pathetic existence IS depressing?
You get into the game of self delusion. You tell them that everything is going swimmingly, you even manage to crack a joke or two, but in truth, you have no good news, only chapter of misfortunes, your life is everything but exciting, you are feeling down the dumps and crappy, but you never want to cast your shadows on any of them. They deserve to be happy and you ought to face the bitter fact-You are singled out for that cosmic torment. You work out your own salvation.
This is the time when you surrender to the hopelessness that's eating you alive, grawing at your person, you throw in the towel and you clam up and let them gush about their bright and promising lives. Their stories only underscore your lack of anything. You sink into the quicksand of depression while you steel yourself and listen to your friends with sense of detachment, viewing it at a certain distance. You know you are happy for them, you have to be, as what the norms dictate, but inside your head, the maggot is squirming telling you, what all of those stories make you? Are you worthy to be their friend when you are so smallish and insignificant?
When everything becomes so overwhelmingly unbearable, you shut the thought out, and then the world. You start to live in your four corner darkness. Feasting on your own pain, coiled into the smallest ball your tired and harrased body can muster, until you become inconspicuous to the prying, questioning eyes of people around you, until you blend in with the darkness.
I just hope this demon will pass. I wish I'd resurface again from this melancholia. I hope all the means will be justified. I wish I'd stop bleeding.
God, you know Ive been a good boy.

Let It Rain On Me.

2008-09-23T07:04:00.000-07:00

It all started when I was seven, pitifully rangy despite the constant prodding of my mom to take
multivitamins big enough to choke a horse. My mom, a sort who studiously consulted the food pyramid to ensure tha we were getting all the best nutrients and cajoled us into drinking tall glass of milk before bedtime finally relented to the idea of her youngest, bathing in the heaps of rain. I must have looked like a stoned leprechaun doing the mating dance -awfully uncoordinated while soaking up the downpour.

Before becoming a weird man I am today. I was a weird child.

I then would go to the 'other side' of the village where my playmates were residing, a group of rowdy, rambunctious kids who could survive on tomatoes and noodles for a month, already soaking, dripping wet rioting around under the torrents of rain. A quintessential klutz that I was, my clumsiness could be spotted miles away by the naked eye, characterized by tripping and falling onto big puddles of mud while trying not to knock myself unconscious. Imagine the jeers and goodnatured but brutal name calling from my playmates who were so accustomed to roughing everything up.
We would then shoo the hapless carabao away from its comfortable puddle, tagging the rope that was tied to its nozzle and lilting a cacophony of sounds similar to Indian Warcries, I would then suggest to do a matching choreography but instantly dismissed before even volunteering to do a demonstration- my showbusiness potential was not particularly appreciated by my posse.

I had an inexplicable and almost paralyzing fear of the beast. And their gesture of shooing away the object of my horror was almost sweet, but once I found out that the intention was to redirect the carabao to where I was fixedly standing, to put it mildly, made me lose the will to live. If I had a weak heart, believe me, I would have had a couple of bypass surgeries in a span of a year.

Rainy days also meant scores of bullfrogs, another object of my utter horror. (the very reason I stopped eating cheesebreads). My childhood playmates, who, in retrospect, I affectionately call Little Spawns of Satan, would then put a croaking bullfrog inside my shorts. My mom would only allow me to play in the rain in two provisos, 1. To rub oil on my back and chest to ward off pneumonia and 2. to take off my underwear for reason until now is not yet clear to me aside from the fact that too much coldness can shrink your wily into a wrinkly prune. So the sensation of a bullfrog scratching againts your buttcheeks while trying to further explore your crotch area was (Expletives deleted) horrible. Much as I wanted to just drop dead that instant and take my shorts off, a LIVE, croaking frog looked more appealing than a squished-up, DEAD one inside your shorts.

These happened when it rained. When we owned the streets, when adults could only watch from afar, sheltered.

The children turned into men, even the one who was constantly a default target of an enraged and displaced carabao, and whose buttcheeks, despite too many contacts with bullfrog, never grew warts.

When it rains, I still get the same excitement. It brings back memories of time when all we wanted in life was to play in the rain. Times when we could be oblivious to the world, and all the worries could be easily drowned out by our shouts and laughters.

I still play in the rain. Alone this time, but in my mind's eye, I swear I still can hear them laughing at me.

Spaced Out

2008-09-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

My days here in the P.I. are numbered. Its a one way ticket- the saddest thing aside from unrequited love,a head pounding hang over or a root canal without anaesthesia. One way ticket is my metaphor for uncertainty, it whisks you somewhere without any guarantee of being flown back. Its like finally fleeing from the total control zone of Yodok, North Korea, only to find out that all the important people in your life are left behind, including your will to live. I know that I am extremely lonely, because my attempt at humour falls flat and makes me woozy. I dont feel any emotions at all. I get this when the emotions become overpowering that my system stops to acknowledge them anymore. It does the automatic shutdown, either from emotion overload or for self-preservation. I just dont want to think about any of it anymore. Even writing this entry feels like an out of body experience, I am not the one who is keying up these words, its my raw emotion. It dictates my person, taking ahold of me completely. Overwhelming sadness reduces me to a zombie. I know that one day, when i get back to my senses, I'll keel over laughing upon revisiting this entry. "what was I thinking? this one will surely make the cut to Elton John Drama Awards (cling! fell flat)" .
But for now, I am not thinking, I am feeling. The bad thing about saying goodbye is, there isn't really getting used to it. The departure area that holds teary, bloodshot eyes will always be like that- a place of unspeakable sadness,painful sense of abandonment, and helplessness. Once you walk past the immigration counter and into the departure holding area, you are officially alone, and have to rise to the occassion of looking after youself, because no one else will.
My friends, I am now leaving, thank you for putting up and sorry for my neuroses. Ill be missing you all.

Just Another Crappy Story

2008-09-19T05:17:00.000-07:00

I am always asked where my hometown is. "Bataan". I'd say. "Oh so, are you carrying any of those lethal flipknives?" or worse " Bataan is in Mindanao, right?". There is a limit to my masochism and oftentimes when stupidity becomes visible from the outer space, I see myself snapping "Bataan is somewhere off the coast of Kiribati just a speedboat away from Tuvalu, It's a no-fly zone, and chances are, extraterrestials may suck you down deep into the abyss". It is often mistaken from Batangas (thus, the flipknives) and with regard to the allusion to Mindanao, its either they have been frozen for 2000 years or they are just plain dumbos. So, in order to avoid any more body counts, I just say "I am from somewhere up north." If they start pressing for specifics, I twist my head 180 degrees,stick my tongue out,barf inordinate amount of green thingy , and if there's a staircase in sight, I do the 'spider-walk" belly up. That never fails to discourage.
When I am abroad, people, as if the mere mention of "Bataan" kicks a dormant synapses, allude to the Death March that happened when the likes of Barney were still roaming the earth singing in unison "I love you, You love me, We're a happy family.." while snacking on each other. I am often put in the spot of narrating a dissertations about the horrible event of 1942, but my knowledge is smidgen and pitiful. I always feel the impulse to grab a bayonet and just impale it upon my ribcage to end my moment of agony.
Bataan, is just a tiny, least-heard-about speck on the Philippine map. It is full of rice fields that never fail to switch on the "magtanim ay di biro, maghapong nakayuko" in your head. It is the soundtrack of Bataan. Once a friend from Manila visited, he asked if we could pull over and take a better view of the vast expanse of the rice paddies. I swear if I hadn't known him that well, I would have thought he was doing an impression of Judie Garland aka Maria, half expecting for the Von Trapp kids to materialize. He was enthusing about communing with nature like a maniac when he unwittingly stepped on a puddle of fresh carabao manure, the memory of Bataan wouldn't leave him that easily, it was literally stuck on his sole (soul? excuse the pun) , we continued traveling, windows rolled down to ventilate the car. I was busy talking my head off, he was busy snorting the car freshener, I was waiting for the thing to shoot up his nose but to my great disappointment, it never happened. I then told him that when I was younger, instead of snow (for very apparent reason, if the reason is still not apparent, come closer, I'll karate kick you senseless. ) , We would play around pelting horse and carabao manure at each other. It was pure, unadulterated fun until someone aimed that excrement at you mouth, the result was always atrocious. I was always the weakling and the 'pampered one' among the group of rowdy, rambunctious kids and I would always come home with a green organic mud pack smeared all over my face with an occasional string of undigested hay. I told my friend stepping on the dropping wont cause him to foam at the mouth and drop dead. Its just grass after all . He wouldnt buy it. Oh this pampered, pompous ass.

Angels With Tooth Decays

2008-09-15T05:41:00.000-07:00

The time I was in Hong Kong teaching and pulling Playhouse Disney-esque stunts to engage even the most wayward and disruptive of my students (at least half of the class) . Virtually all kids were all dolled up like a dream, everyone had his/her own nintendo ds, mobile phone, and a pinay yaya who was waiting outside yakking with other nannies about their strife and grievances concerning their meager salary, their delinquents sons/daughter back home and Judy Ann Santos, not necessarily in that order.

But Hong Kong kids with all their upper crusty accoutrements can never measure up to the zest for life of the third world children. No gadgets can trump the joy of a filipino boy who just received a '2 for P50' shorts from his tatay, or a filipino girl in threadbare clothing that had once been her older sister's getting a new slippers from the week's market bargain.

If you want to see the world's sincerest and most genuine smiles, Look at the faces of Filipino children, they may be lacking practically every tooth, but their toothless mirth suggests innocence in its purest form. Their smiles can heal a soul, touch a heart and make you feel ashamed of your useless pursuits. They smile at us, seemingly saying "Look at us, We may not have everything money can buy, but we are having the greatest time living!"

Happy Horse from Hell

2008-09-14T02:02:00.000-07:00

Back in college where everyone's greatest pastime was hitting bottles and subsequently hitting each other with bottles on his head when alcohol started killing dormant brain cells, providing live entertainment to the less drunk ones. (The degree of damage was directly proportional to the amount of alcohol consumed). I'd heard a tale of that notoriously elusive horse that, just like Da vinci's La Gioconda, for some weird and cryptic reasons, casts a knowing smile. It was so elusive that in the span of my college years, I never got the chance to see one. I was told by my hard core friends, who can destroy three internal organs at the same time (pickle their livers, scorch their lungs and fry their kidneys to dust with salty and cheap nibbles, e.g. boy bawang and everything else with price tags below P5.) that the odds of finding the Mona Lisa of Booze is 1: 12. or one bottle in every dozen- the very reason why I finally dropped my quest to finding that proverbial happy horse. One bottle of Red Horse, to put it mildly, can drive me into a coma for a week, what more a dozen. There must be an easier way to die.
Years after college, when the most popular past time is still hitting bottles but this time followed by hitting ON each other instead of knocking each other senseless. (and blaming it on the hapless alcohol the morning after.) I stumbled upon a bottle peculiar from the rest. A horse that had its mouth curved into a wide grin. The holy Grail and the lost continent of Lemuria! ( Im being cinematic again,my bad.) Finally, my encounter with the horse that had kept me baffled for years was one gulp away. I swilled and I swear a boulder of ice would not have made the taste less vile. It kicks you from your guts out and it kicks you hard!
Post Script:
A boy wearing a black shirt was seen spread-eagled on their doorstep, presumably braindead until he was poked with a broomstick by the maid. oh well, blame it on that horsy smile and I say, chalk it up to experience.

Sensory and Baggage Overload

2008-09-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

I am leaving for the gulf in less than three weeks and the sight of stack of half read books on my bedside is making me cringe. If that tower of tomes topple over onto me while in sleep, I'll surely suffer from multiple head concussions. I dont intend to bring them with me, apart from their bulk,they weigh considerably heavy. I know only too well how cumbersome it is to saunter around the airport carrying so many stuff that makes you look like a hawker of assorted useless goodies. Oh I'd better stop and read on.

Oh,It Pickles my Olfactory Bulbs!

2008-09-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

I lived just around the corner of the shop that sells dried stuffs. From dried geckos to dried seahorses . An american friend,while walking along the pavement asks me upon seeing the hapless creatures, "Isnt that the symbol of the aviation school you are from? Won't you have one pinned on your right pocket?". This friendly banter becomes a regular brunt to bear that one day I just snap and retort "That was funny the first 100 times i heard it. Cant you think of any creative way to piss me? Like this, Oh I thought all along it was the shop that reeks of dried decay, Its time for you to get a prophylaxis". Thats the last time he ever mentions about my college insigna. I hope he never takes it seriously.

Nodding Acquaintace With Hepa and Salmonella

2008-09-13T07:01:00.000-07:00

Hong Kong street food is relatively cleaner, but sometimes, it's that extra filth, extra danger of potentially contracting diseases that makes it more appealing. My personal favorite is the pig innards with some unknown vegetables tossed altogether into a cup big enough to fill two growling stomachs. The special sauces, which are bloody red in color add an extra 'ommmph' and render a disgustingly, fearfactoresque, 'fresh-off-the-abbatoir' effect. It costs 15HK$.

I swear If I were in the Philippines, I would have bought two servings of rice for my utter satisfaction. It is best when washed down with water chestnut that tastes weird and pulpy.

See people? not only in the Philippines do people feast on animal parts that are supposed to be thrown away. Its a worldwide obsession!

The Wrinkly Terracota Warrior/ Greengrocer of Temple Street

2008-09-01T06:16:00.000-07:00

There was this old decrepit lady in Yau Ma Tei wet market who sells the freshest of green produce. Just by looking at her, You would think that she's been around since the Manchu Qing dynasty. Her severely crooked back renders her the look of a hunchback pre-adoslescent oompah loompah (about 4'8). She was perenially looking down at her wares that I think she would be needing neckrings on hydraulics to prop her head up. But never underestimate her, she can tie bunches of vegetables before you can even say "oh my goolay!" She's so limber I was always half expecting her to do triple cartwheel and then painfully split along the narrow market aisle. I once brought my american friend to the wet market and pointed him the lady I so admire. We couldnt get a better view of her coz she was always surrounded by people who either wanted to buy her produce or just plain curious to see this hardy and highly industrious lady who has withstood the test of a lower class chinese life. When my friend caught a sight of her, He said, "Dadge, Why is she not dead yet?
Perhaps its the tea dude.