I should be here.

Lately, I seem to have no control whatsover on my appetite: I stuff my face with food even when I’m not hungry. Suffice it to say that my binge eating sessions have reached such an all-time high that they caused me to gain about 10 pounds in approximately 3 months, and I now look like I have a personal, built-in salbabida (lifesaver) whenever I wear anything even slightly formfitting.

So I’ve decided that it’s got to stop. Not just for vanity’s sake, but for my health as well. And because I love going out of town and spending time on the beach (how very California girl of me, snicker, snicker) in a smoking hot bikini, that seemed like a pretty proper motivation. So Operation Shed 10 Pounds is now officially launched! Ba-ba-bing!

I already prepared The Fitness Plan (signed up for kickboxing, ah yeah!!!), I already have The Smoking Hot Bikini. The question is, where to? We’ve got to be honest, Boracay is one of the prettiest beaches in the country, so I’d say that’s my top choice. Plus, I’ve never been, so it’ll be really cool if my new, improved, 10-pound-less self can go there, preferably without spending anything… Plus it’ll totally help me stay on track of the Operation Shed 10 Pounds project. I mean really really help. So I like totally deserve to go–for free. Please please please, SEAIR?

If you guys don’t yet know, the reason why I’m so shamelessly promoting myself is because SEAIR’s (also Microtel Philippines) got this contest, and they will pick 8 bloggers (me! me!) to go to Boracay absolutely for free, which of course is totes generous and cool of them.

So click here if you folks also wanna take a stab at it

Every person has his/her quirks, his/her own set of faults. And I am not exempted from that: I am (sometimes viciously) vindictive, overly boisterous, and extremely stubborn. But the fault that has gotten me into trouble more times than I care to count is the fact that I speak my mind too often. I suppose not everyone considers that a flaw, but I suppose it is a fault in the sense that I, more often than not, fail to consider that not everyone is as prepared as I am to hear truths about themselves and the world around them. Or that not everyone has the capacity to understand that every person’s mind works differently–that not everyone is prepared to accept the way I view the world around me.

I may not know what real friendship is, but at least I know what it’s not: it’s not only being there when everything is shiny and full of rainbows. It’s not ditching at the first sign of trouble. It’s not conforming a person to your perception of what he/she should be. It’s not imposing double standards, and it’s definitely not spending your days as if you’re constantly on probation–like you make one wrong move and you’re done.

Just like any other relationship, friendship is a two-way street. I tolerate your quirks, you tolerate mine. The moment it becomes one-sided is the moment you should realize you’re kidding yourself.

PS: I changed the last sentence to something a little less painful. Perhaps I am not as viciously vindictive as I’d like myself to be.

Photo from 55th. (Happy 55th month,K. <3)

When you’ve been in a relationship for as long as I have been, you can’t go to any gathering without someone asking when you’re planning to get married. I admit there was a time when I was young (like, 16) that getting hitched was all I can focus on–the reason why I take my past relationships way too seriously and why most of them never worked out, haha. It may be odd to people who do not live here, but that kind of mentality is actually pretty common for teens here, most likely a result of a so-called patriarchal society. But that’s a topic for another post.

It’s not that I don’t want to get married, I do. But unlike then, I’m no longer in a hurry. It will come at the right time, and when it does, it will be sweeter than anything you have ever imagined. (Yes I can be a cheeseball too.)

All for now. Off to the beach in a few days!

I’ve been feeling this way a lot lately. Work has been really torturous, the ride home even more so, and by the time I get home I almost always make a beeline for my bed and flop down without even changing my clothes. I suppose this is also a downside of having a screwed-up body clock–I get tired more quickly. Ah well, my mind is more awake at night and I am nothing but a slave to the schedule it chooses to follow.

Not far from our office is a nice little corner where the trees, the sky, the houses, and the electric lines make a picturesque scene, or so I think. That corner is the photo above, of course, as seen through my eyes. Every afternoon, at sunset (at least on days I get off early enough to catch it), the scene is sometimes, for me, breathtaking.

It’s little slices of heaven like these that somehow, some way, make the stress of the day melt away–even for just a few moments.

The movie Lolita is one of the most thought-provoking films I’ve seen in a long time. In a society where “pedophiles” are, more often than not, thought of as monsters, it’s quite unnerving to find yourself at the other side–understanding, even sympathizing, with one. The movie was narrated in the voice of Humbert, a man who falls in love with his landlady’s (and later, wife’s) 12-year-old daughter.

The movie blurs the line of morality. Is it really wrong to fall in love with a child? And is someone as young as Lolita can be held responsible for her acts? The character’s ages tell us clearly who is to blame, and yet it is true that adults can be foolish, and that children can grow up faster than their years. In cases such as that, wherein the child manipulates the adult, and the adult loses his wits, who really is at fault?

Lolita (brilliantly played by Dominique Swain) has an attitude comparable to that of a toddler’s–curious, testing her limits, knowing her power, taking advantage. She knows she has Humbert wrapped around her finger, and she uses his fixation as a means to get what she wants: money, privileges, treats. And yet in the midst of it all she remains childish–she pulls faces, she moans, stamps her feet and screams her lungs out when she doesn’t get what she wants. One minute she’s laughing innocently at a newspaper cartoon, the next, making love with her stepfather. Such displays of innocence lead one to think that, like most adolescents, Lolita hardly knows what she’s doing, or the consequences of her actions–though she may claim otherwise.

The quote above is one of the ones I liked best from this movie. I’m thinking of painting them on a pair of shoes sometime soon, though I do think my mother will be horrified when she reads it, haha.

Happy hearts’ day to everyone, especially to K.

I will try to upload as much as I can this week (probably V-day related, I have several stuff that I have floating about in my brain for days now). Been really busy with work but I’m enjoying my work so far.

Have a great day everyone.

There’s too much crap in the world to add your own–at least that’s how I see it. If you’re not careful, all the negativity everyone spews out can get through you and bring you down. Smile–even in the face of something really ugly, there will always be something to feel good about. The laughter of friends, the stolen glance of your lover. Choose the people you spend time with: keep the good in and repel the bad. Negative people can suck the energy right out of you before you even know what’s happening. Open your eyes. The reasons to be happy are all around you.

You just have to be open-minded enough to see it.

Quote by Jules Combarieu

They say that a person’s room says a lot about them. I think the same could be said about hard drives–they are repositories of a person’s interests: what they love, what occupies their time. :3 K’s, for example, is filled with mp3 files of music he loves, or of his own compositions, or of his band’s performances. The percentage that music files fill up in my computer probably won’t even reach 10 percent. Instead, movies, photos, and illustrations clog up my disk space.

I am probably the most tone-deaf person I know (the fact that I was a choir member way back when doesn’t count–I was friends with most of the members and they accepted me right away, without even having to audition, haha), but that doesn’t stop me from loving music some. A lot of people I know spend the most part of the day with earphones plugged into their ears, but I find this really disconcerting. When I can’t hear the sounds of the city–buses honking, engines roaring, cars screeching–I feel like the world is on mute and I am in the spotlight.

Until now whenever someone asks me what kind of music I like, I still have trouble trying to find the right answer. I am not particular with genres or decades, and I am not partial to any singer or band. The songs I like best (such as XTC’s Then She Appeared and Rolling Stones’ She’s Like a Rainbow) are songs that I’ve heard from TV shows, movies, and videos that I liked.

The real pleasure of music, for me, doesn’t come from just listening to it. It comes from being a part of the experience and not merely an audience–you may be the composer, or the guitarist, or the singer. I’m no good at singing, of course.

But I find that it’s more fun to sing your heart out when you don’t have to worry about hitting the right notes.

Quote from the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

A batchmate from college recently passed away. We weren’t friends, but people are sometimes united because of the oddest reasons.

She was weird and did things other people regarded as outrageous, and her fuck-you attitude became a a reason for many people (me included) to judge her. But she always did her thing anyway, and this I admired her for.

We were classmates for three years but the only times we talked was way back when I was going through a tough time in school, and recently because of something that both of us experienced. She did something for me, something I’ve always wanted to do for her too but always changed my mind about. I regret that now. I take comfort in the thought that perhaps, by talking with her about that thing that we were both going through, I made her feel a little less alone.

I know she’s in a better place now. Probably having tons of fun and basking in eternal sunshine.

In a month or so, summer will be here and then it’s time for some fun under the sun! I have some really awesome summer trips lined up, but for now I must save save save. Lately I’ve been sleeping as late as 3am, exhausting, but it’ll all be worth it when we get there.

Thanks to everyone who liked this photo.