holy crap on a cracker

Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.
Good things come to those who wait.

Now don't jinx it, whoever does I will slice from throat to navel.

Things to do before I let Death give me a makeover:

1. Travel to Europe and the Mediterranean - specifically, the south of France, Florence, Egypt, Greece, and Hungary.
2. Become a travel writer.
3. Bungee jump.
4. Live in Manhattan for a year.
5. Live in Paris for a year.
6. Get out of the corporate life and spend my days flitting from one country to another. How, I have no idea.
7. Travel with Greenpeace or Doulos for a month
8. Learn to prepare a five-course meal on my own, from buying the ingredients to washing the pots and pans.
9. Learn to appreciate wine
10. Finally understand stock trading
11. Find someone interesting enough that I won't get tired of him for the rest of my life. Children optional.

I'll see you later, bitchessss.

Seats are reserved for the Alkies, and God was it hard to get.

I'm about to get creamed, I don't have anything left to do about it anymore but just suffer all the screaming I will surely get. When I think about it I want to flee town, but really it's not that big a deal except that I'm not exactly his best friend.

To console myself I just think of more deep shit I've been in in the past. Like that time in my previous job that I was so tired already of the monitoring chart I was doing for a big workshop we had, so I put "Martian" in one participant's nationality (I was too tired to ask around). I forgot all about it, then that chart was mistakenly sent to the country office.

Or that subject of the email ("the stupid book") that I sent my boss (I do that because I can joke around with him, then he forwarded the same email without changing the subject to all the contacts we had. We had to apologize left and right but fortunately they just had a good laugh.

No shit, I'm really about to get screamed at.

I really really have to stop stuffing my mouth and I really really have to start braving the gym again. Sometimes it's just too difficult - an Alkie mentions keema with buttered rice at Behrouz and I melt.

A friend advised me to keep a food diary (and be honest about it), just to keep track of what's going in. I don't want to, because I'm scared to see what it would look like at the end of one week. Speaking of living healthy, someone forwarded me this email:

Reasons for sleeping and waking up early

Evening at 9 - 11pm: is the time for eliminating unnecessary/toxic chemicals (detoxification) from the antibody system (lymph nodes). This time duration should be spent by relaxing or listening to music.
Evening at 11pm - 1am: is the detoxification process in the liver, and ideally should be done in a deep sleep state.
Early morning 1 - 3am: detoxification process in the gall, also ideally done in a deep sleep state.
Early morning 3 - 5am: detoxification in the lungs.
Morning 5 - 7am: detoxification in the colon, you should empty your bowel.
Morning 7 - 9am: absorption of nutrients in the small intestine, you should be having breakfast at this time.

Pammy retaliated with this:

Evening at 9 - 11 pm: is the time for drinking beer and eating sisig. This time duration should be spent by relaxing or listening to music.
Early morning 1 - 3 am: is the time to try counting how many bottles of beer you've drank. If you can't count anymore, you've had enough.
Early morning 3 - 5 am: is the time to stop by Behrouz for some keema. With rice. Buttered rice.
Early morning 5 - 7 am: Sleep.
Early morning 7 - 9 am: Sleep.

Although I would add "Sleep until noon." Healthy living talk makes me uncomfortable, like them healthy eaters are eyeing me with pity, counting down the moment of my death. I'm pretty sure I'll die from cancer, or maybe I'll get hit by a falling building. I just can't imagine going to bed at 9pm and eating low-fat and tofu and alfalfa sprouts.

Healthy ka nga, wala ka namang friends.

Are you single? If yes, would you date me?

Were you always this good looking?

You must have worked really hard to get those abs. Can I touch it?

What is your cellphone and landline number? How about email and YM id?

Do you live alone? Can I visit?

How many kids do you want?
(Followed by "Oh my gosh, me too!")

Will you marry me?

The party was so fun, it just had to be shared to everyone. Pam kinda feels selfish for keeping it to ourselves.

Go and have your own theme party.

I was once at a dinner party, where at coffee time I found myself alone with a man who was actually cleaning his laptop right there at the party.

I'm not Ms. Congeniality, but I made an effort after two minutes of him looking at the space beside my right ear. "So, what do you do?"

He looked at me suspiciously, then asked "Why?"

Geez, I don't know freakazoid, maybe to fill the awkward silence? It's called small talk and people do it to be polite, and in an ideal world you will give an interesting answer and we would banter back and forth and I would conclude that I did not waste my time on a misanthrope. Freak.

I got up and found other people.

It doesn't matter really.

How they dress, what they do, how much they make -- men are men and sometimes they are pigs. Not always, of course, but nature made them to be so. They have this gene inside them in varying degrees.

It's not even intentional, they just do their thing without being evil about it. They don't stop and think whether they will hurt you in the process. Stay away from those who intentionally makes you cry though, before you snap and kill them.

I've met them young and I've met them old, and what can I say, they will always be little boys who need constant care and attention. They can make the dog drink vodka and they will wonder what will happen if they spit from the highest point at Shangri-la Mall's escalators.

They still drool over toys, and it just gets more and more expensive over time. Toys are defined here as "things that look pretty but have no actual use, or things that are overloaded with features but they don't use it anyway, so it's there to look pretty".

This is not a hate post, rather I'm trying to put it in perspective. Maybe in time I will understand them, but sometimes it just gets too tiring.

Manolo Blahnik's Rottura, $635 at Barney's NY. Also available in purple, black and teal.

I have one assignment I can't seem to begin to write about. It's like there's a huge rock in that part of my brain where my memories of that event are stored, so if I try to access them I get pounded in the head. From inside.

It's not that I don't remember it, it's just that what I remember of it is not for public consumption. Who will care if I ate choriburger in the pouring rain, or that I got sloshed for two nights in a row? Wait, I didn't have the choriburger, I got the hotdog. See?

I do remember that Chivas killing all the bacteria in my throat, and that after 10 speed rounds of that with five other people in their hotel room I thought my face was lopsided. I remember the conversation at the balcony, while we chain-smoked.

I remember a lot of things. You just don't want to be reading them, trust me.

More about it in the near future.

The only thing constant in this world is change. Having said that, I don't know how to react when a friend told me that I'm not the person he used to know. I write differently, I hang out with different people, and looking at my Friendster pictures, wondered where do I get the time and money to go to those places.

I admit it, I did change. Two years ago I didn't have a life, at least the life I was used to. My routine was home-office-home. I didn't go out with friends, my social life was basically zero, and my social circle was limited to a chosen few. I thought I was fine with it.

Then I got zapped back into full consciousness without anything clouding how I see the world. It was, as if for the first time in a very long time, I got to see what it all really was -- a big joke. It just stopped being funny.

I had to make up for lost time. I met up with people I barely know (now they're a permanent fixture in my life), and gotten back in touch with old friends. I was trying to regain what remained of my old life, but the universe presented me with a new one. The result was better than I had hoped for.

Yes, I write differently. I think I'm less angry and more grounded now. (And of course I can't be all sarcastic and angsty when I write for the paper.) And yeah, I hang out with different people now, not because of anything but for the only reason that they are good persons and have now become good friends.

Besides, my old friends have different lives now. Marriage and children takes so much of their time it would seem so selfish if I suggested we go out for Mojitos. I still love them to bits but our priorities are not the same anymore.

People change. I did, and I like who I've become.

As for all the traveling, I have no explanation for that. That's why I'm poor.

I can't keep up with the links lately:

Because they're people too and who are we to say who's going to hell and not.
Rachel Ragaza's Multiply fiasco

For Mother's Day, try something different. Photos by Giff and Jill.
Adventures with Mom

My friends think of the best parties ever.

There was the Yukata party.
Then Pammy's birthday party in costume.
And of course, the Mozzie relaunch pajama party.

Over the weekend we held a Friends (the TV show) theme party. If you're a fan, you'll get why the food served were meatball sub, pizza, lasagna, and cheesecake. We watched the special DVD courtesy of Fifi, "The One With All the Parties" and the highlight of the night, Giff's Friends Scene It.

We were Team Rosita (the Barcalounger), and won the first time. The next two games were lost to Pammy and Fifi. It was a little scary that we remembered that much trivia, but then again if you watched the whole ten seasons countless times you'd remember every lyric to Phoebe's songs, and not just Smelly Cat.

Sample questions:
What was Chandler's nickname for his third nipple?
Who said "You didn't marry your Barry, honey, but I did."

If you can answer that, better get your own Scene It and invite us to play. We'll kick your ass.

P.S.: Stupid hotel wanted us to pay for a missing teaspoon which we never took (because why would we? huh? huh?), then we wanted them to give us a discount because of the broken aircon, broken locks, missing appliances that were supposed to be there. They shut up.

In the past 4 hours, I've ingested 2000mg of mefenamic acid in my system, and still I'm in terrible pain. I want to cut my legs off -- one, I can't feel them anyway; and two, they hurt somehow. This is one of the record highs in my Book of Period Pain, and it's never fun.

Yesterday we roamed around Serendra, Bonifacio High Street and Market! Market! (I didn't enjoy that one) to take pictures using our plastic cameras. This is the part where I should be dropping bratty references to Those Who Hate Lomography, but I won't, because I'm a mature adult who will rise above the occasion. Pfft.

So yeah, I'm in pain and I just want to lie down in a dark room and not move. But of course I'm still here, almost comatose while wondering why some people buy perfume that make them smell like beets.