Thursday, August 16, 2007




Today...

is just like any other day, hectic and overloaded with so much work to do. Yet it is different because my good friend Tina is gone. After three and half years of seeing her everyday, the whole office landscape has been altered because her visage is no longer visible. The laughter, jokes, hurts (the tiniest bit), the caring voice...has finally wafted away. I'll miss her a lot since she'll be in the United States. It'll be a full year and half before we see each other--well, that is if I'm still in the Philippine Navy or if I'm still alive (nobody really knows when the good Lord will take us...)

Cheers to you Tina!!! Hope we'll see each other as a an office barkada again.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

What a Pain!

Today I feel that I'm in hell. Literally. My back has been killing me since yesterday. With all of the rush to get to work, I slip and land on my tushy. Good thing that my head didn't hit the floor or else I might have ended up a vegetable on life support. But the pain...it seems to run like a freaking horse all over my back, and like daggers being stabbed onto me. It's all my fault. I should've been more careful.

What else has happened today? Ah yes...got my first rejection slip from a publisher. But it's alright. It was my first venture into fiction writing. I guess my stories were a bit trite...At least writing out my frustrations is better than letting them steam over. I'm trying to get out of the Walter Mitty mode that people make me to be.

Friday, August 10, 2007

TGIF

Thank God It's A Friday!!! I have two free days for rest and recreation, which means that I could take the necessary breather by reading books, drawing/ painting, or watching a bit of television. Many would think that I lead a too sedentary lifestyle, but hey what I do for a living is tiring physically, mentally, and spiritually. But I have to deal with it or else I'd just crash down.

Sometimes I do miss those quiet moments when I could put my feet up on a chair, drink some espresso, and read or meditate. At this moment I'm reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and Haruki Murakami's Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. Tolstoy's story-telling is flamboyant in its details and well, a bit excruciating since it has many lives and stories intertwined in its plot of the doomed love affair between Anna and Count Vronsky. With Murakami, though strange and the plot not interconnected, the stories are terse but beautifully and hauntingly told.

I do hope to finish the Murakami soon. With the Tolstoy, maybe after a few months.

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

A Funny Thing Happened On My Way to the...

We often try to make the tedious days sweeter by surrounding ourselves with light and laughable moments—making fun of someone’s Bisaya diction or fooling around with your boss’ picture using Photoshop. Or sometimes we create a scene, acting like the clown to ward off those knotted brows and glum faces. Today, out of the blue, I just decided to go for it and jiggled away like a macho dancer—right in the middle of the hallway. Who cares if I seemed foolish, at least I was able to make two of my friends to smile and laugh. Goodness! We are already so burdened with the daily grind, why not console ourselves with a little tomfoolery once in a while?

If it weren't raining like all hell broke loose, I would have wanted to get drunk like last Friday. It was really fun swaggering to and fro, and almost puking out my stomach's contents on Starbucks' carpeted floors. Good thing Ian and Esmie were there to help me out on my feet and rush out. I really wonder why that coffee shop always figures in these hilarious moments in my life. I guess the fates had laid it out for me.

Thursday, August 02, 2007

That Old Career...

These days I often find myself reminiscing about my “old” career as a museum/ cultural worker. I really don’t get it why people look at me in disbelief when I mention the word “cultural worker.” I guess the first thing that comes to mind is of a Japayuki dancing in one of the seedy bars in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. They just settle down when I add the term “Museum,” but still it’s funny how they interpret it as being merely a ‘tour guide.”
As a cultural worker—particularly in the field of museum education, it’s quite fulfilling since I get to teach about art, its history and concepts, and learn as well from professional historians and art practitioners. Art is still the continuing influence in my life, from the visual arts to prose and poetry. I breathe it and like a fish out of water, I need to get back into the pond and start living it again. I do wish that God would let me return.
And Finally I'm Thirty-Two...

What the hell?!? In two days time, I'll be finally facing the big 3-2 and sure enough I'll be looking at myself in the mirror and wonder how I ever reached this point in my life. No, I don't feel morose or even non-plussed, rather I just feel normal. And still a VIRGIN and proud of it...really. I just don't feel the need to create relationships at all, or even let my hair down for the opposite sex. I'd rather have the peace and quiet that singlehood affords me, and yes, I don't have to feel the financial burn that a date would entail. Probably I'm a real narcissist.
The good thing is I have finally mended some burnt bridges...with Berna for starters. Now, if only I could really fathom the estrangement I had with Glenn. Esmie says that I'd better give him the benefit of the doubt, and just act as friendly as always. That's good advice but quite hard to follow through.
Patience is a virtue. Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas: "Fortunate is he who has been able to learn the causes of things."