Insomnia

On weekdays You wake up. Clean up, dress up, go to work. then you arrive from work, clean up,  pray and go to sleep. On weekends there's cleaning up to do, chores to get out of the way, ministries to attend to until the weekdays start again. And then you come home, lay your head on your pillow, and, because you can't sleep, think.

You always hope that tomorrow would be different, that something would happen--a crash of thunder, a bolt of lighting, a sudden flash of inspiration, an epiphany, anything-- that would shake you to your core and make you sit up and take notice; something that would make you realize just what it is you're supposed to be doing with your life, what your plans ought to be, what you should be doing to achieve those plans. You pray for wisdom, and yet even as you do, you battle for faith, every moment a fierce struggle between all you think you know and all that you see happening around you.

On the Eve of 23: A Place Like Here

Weird how I've managed to convince enough people into believing I don't actually have a birthday. I guess some people think its a religious thing, although I'm not a member of the Iglesia Ni Kristo which is the only religion I know that doesn't celebrate anything. (I could  be wrong, of course, so don't take my word for it.)

Anxiety Attack

My dad is sleeping over at our house tonight. My dad.

For other people that sentence is fairly innocuous. My co-workers certainly think its no big deal. But I do. It's a big deal; a big nerve-wracking one. And no, he's not a rapist, just so we're clear on that.

Zombie Me

This morning I was so sleepy I made a fool of myself multiple times, and didn't even care at the time.

1) I was asked by the bus conductor where my stop was.

Mask!

On a whim, last night I bought a ready-made paper mask, the kind that's plain and without a single hint of paint or design on it. Don't ask me why I bought it, but I did. I took out my paints and brushes and proceeded to ignore my cousin, who came home a few moments after I did. I don't know why, but when I'm working with my hands I just space out until I'm done with it. I started at around ten-thirty and finished at exactly 2:23 am.

Cultural Exchange

An entry taken from my journal, originally dated 09 August 2010.

This afternoon I came back from lunch with a small white envelope that simply had my name scrawled on it.

Like-its

Like this, only prettier.

While on the way to the train station, I had an idea: What if I invented post-it notes that had the Facebook 'Like' symbol on it? What would happen if I then proceeded to stick those post-its to whatever I think is 'like-worthy'?

A poster showing a particularly delicious looking California Maki and some Ebi Tempura? Like. Nice security personnel who helped an elderly woman with her luggage? Like. A cute little girl wearing a big smile and tossing her curls while pulling her mother along by the hand? Like. Free postcards that you can take as many as you want? Like. A kiosk selling scrapbooking materials at half-price? Betsy C.S. and 2 others like this.

Morbid

Last night, at around half past six, I received this text message:

Nga pala, baka ma-traffic kayo sa Tulyahan, may bangkay daw ng lalaki na nakita dun e. Na-salvage daw ata.(By the way, you might get stuck in traffic at the Tulyahan (River Bridge), they found a man’s corpse and think he was “salvaged”---a Filipino term for when someone is killed in an ambush.)

At the time that I was reading this, I was with an acquaintance from work, and we were making our way through the mall towards the bus stop. We were trying to talk as much and as loud as we could in the vain hope that we wouldn’t hear the latest female rendition of Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” (Which is a perfectly acceptable song, by the way.). The kind of message that I’d received is not something you’d expect from a high school student who had only previously texted you to ask if you’re free to join in the benefit dinner the church is holding that same evening. Needless to say, when I read it, I stopped dead in my tracks, and, believe it or not, seriously thought: I hope it’s not my father.

Irritated by people more talented than myself.

There, I admitted it. Lots of people are more talented/ intelligent/ socially adaptable/ essentially better than I can ever hope to be. And some of them irritate the gadobeepers out of me (“Gadobeepers”-- yup, I just invented that, don’t ask me what it means, I don’t know either.); but that’s just because they’re wasting it.


I walk around inside a mall targeting the A & B markets on my way to the bus terminal -- clearly, that mall is not for me-- and some wise guy in charge of the PA system decides to play a CD of acoustic renditions of otherwise perfectly not-disgusting songs if A) the songs weren’t being sung by girls with fake American accents and B) the songs themselves actually sound better than the original versions. But A) they are, and B) they don’t.
This is annoying enough on its own, until you realize that if they could muster that much courage to make themselves look (and sound) foolish, then they could’ve expended that same courage to do something original, and help make the music industry better.

If you’re like me, and you’ve wanted to learn to play at least one musical instrument decently all your life and still haven’t, you’d be irritated too.

They say that to be an expert at something you’d have to devote at least 10,000 hours practicing it, whatever ‘it’ is. Ten thousand hours. Ten thousand. Now, I’m no mathematician, but since that’s the number for reaching ‘expert’ level, then to achieve ‘mediocre’ you’d at least have to attain half of that. So, 5,000 hours of, say, guitar practice, and you take all you’ve learned using all that time and proceed to make a ridiculous boy-girl duet of Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”? Seriously?


I understand that you’re just trying to be known, and that the easiest way to break into the biz around here is to be all pretty or hunky or pretty hunky and sing already really popular songs (probably counting on that song’s popularity to pull you along). But making sure that the songs you pick are either really unsuitable for acoustic guitar renditions, or that you make really bad versions? Or, I don’t know, just ignore intellectual property rights altogether and sing it the exact same way with the exact same “adlibs “ thrown in for good measure? How ridiculous can you get?


Oh please don’t let them take that last question seriously and actually try.

I Know I Should Be Working

But I'm not. At least not yet.

(Pause)


I've been accused of being a "Grammar Nazi". But I'm not. I use "Filipinisms" a lot ("CR", "push through", "fetch"), confuse my metaphors, and botch my sentence construction. The previous sentence is a case in point.


Okay, so my Facebooks statuses (stati?) often deal with absurd grammatical errors which I often overhear or am forced to pay attention to. I, however, don't go around correcting people's grammar at the drop of hat. I guess it just irritates me when people speak to me in English, attempting to use the old "I speak English therefore I am superior" attitude (which is annoying enough on its own) and then go ahead and say something like this while looking down their nose at me:


"You know we should continue with it, irregardless of whether they will marked it or not."


Just typing that made me roll my eyes. Twice.

Okay, so I'm done ranting. Back to work!