Barcode

Tempted to start with “There’s this guy..,” but I figure that that’ll be overrating the whole thing, appending too much value than what’s merited by a few short conversations, a jologs tirade, and a trip to some godforsaken property. That’s all there is; no covert interests or complicated play of meaning. He belongs to another class in this universe, that which they call cool. No one would allow you entry to that whole new world.

***

Right off the bat, I decide that remaining sitted for the better part of the work shift will do your back, your neck, your self-esteem no good. Especially when all the others are putting their social skills at work over lunch at the pantry, over group activities, and over stuff that don’t scream “work” or “writing” or “website.” Many times I ask myself why I can’t seem to connect, to put extra work to all the getting-to-know-you, and then suddenly I remember the demons and connect them with all these kind human faces in close promixity. Bad, bad. Let the issues rest.

***

Been sleeping for less than the prescribed eight hours for weeks now. I don’t blame the TV set; I reserve all the harshness for the endless bus commute, the pretty abnormal distance between home and office. Whenever I wake up at 6:30 am and feel my muscles throbbing and my eyes determined to resist intervention, I make the sign of the cross and look forward to the morning Bible sessions. Yes, Bible. For this week we choose a proverb each and put in our two cents’ worth. I’m alive, alive. (The comma serves such a wonderful function.)

***

We’re tainted by something and we know it like the back of our hands.

***

I’ve recently been to Bora. It’s been fun, the sand and the sea and getting killed by that drink they call waterfalls. Nursed a pretty awful hangover on the way home, and right then I vowed not to touch alcohol again – well, except for rubbing my hands with it.

***

I bet you. (/gayspeak)

Hopeful than today

I know, I know. How can you ever justify procrastination? Last-minute voters’ reg at Quezon City Hall today: I deserved every pore of its bad face, all the singitan and gitgitan, the nagging ache on the knees, the unfortunate fact that I have to return for the biometrics aspect of it. I arrived at around 8:30AM and stood in line for the next five or so hours. The long and short of it? Huwag tutularan!

I felt all heroic and expensive during the first hour or so of pila, but eventually realized that I’m no cut above the rest: I’m a Johnny-come-lately, 23 and voting (hopefully) for the first time next year. I used to think that I’m the disenfranchised one, and that being part of statistics would serve me nothing. Then I got acquainted with the real thing, that recurring theme in my life I call laziness.

Thanks are in order, though: Tita, for the reliable company and the luxury of a substitute in queue; the hardworking Comelec and City Hall staff, who may be far from perfect but nonetheless put up with the most seasoned procrastinators; and UP, for the training. Pila forever, I’ll be waiting, everlasting…

Dear October

I’ve been thinking of a Dear October entry,one that applauds the month for being promising, for taking care of me like a family member and not a mere transient, for staying steadfast despite the many trust issues. But ideas fail me, words as well, and I have to whip up events out of my head to make my October a lot more interesting than it really is. For one,  these times have “calamity” written all over them, and my emotional woes pale in utter shame when placed  beside the victimization of Ondoy and Pepeng and the floods and the landslides. I surrender to the crippling guilt: I was safe and dry under our roof, I was nibbling sweets, the AM radio program reducing the floods to an installment of an exciting daytime soap…

Back to the mundane self, I feel like October’s end won’t come as necessitated or as willed by the gods. There’s work, the unending daily tyranny of long commutes and restless hours, and the written pieces churned out in between. There’s the shindy with Kristeta and the gang on the weekend after next, then the visit to Papa by the month’s end. The days other than these are peppered with empty thoughts, which make them feel like uneventful high school weekends all over again.

Aside from October, I have you, vagueness, to be grateful for. The days are lonely, but I latch on to every meaning buried under inarticulate expressions. Instead of saying “Eff the minions of insecurity,” I remain civil and just pen another unwelcome letter to my dear October. Or November, December and sucky eternity.

In My Life, Lloydnesses, and such resplendence

There is much to be said about a commercial film featuring Vilma Santos, ABS-CBN’s current gold mine John Lloyd Cruz, and Ate Vi’s son Luis “Lucky” Manzano. In My Life’s box-office appeal lies not only in Ate Vi’s tried-and-tested luster or John Lloyd as magnet of cinemagoers by default, but also in that bankable idea of two gay men in love as protagonists. And New York (Very in the tradition of Dubai and Milan, chided a good friend). And, in the final instance, Ate Vi and John Lloyd pa rin. No other way around it, eh?

Now let’s get right down to business. The Jessica complains about the cinematography, but I’m a tad clueless in that department, so I won’t make a follow-through. The story, on the other hand, is pretty solid, plausible, and akin to a true-to-life Pinoy neighborhood dish. Shirley Templo (Santos), a complacent librarian recently angered by her daughter’s plans of living abroad, takes a New York vacation and spends time with her son, Mark (Manzano) and his boyfriend, Noel (Cruz). After her brief turista episode, she decides to stay for good and discovers the less attractive (or downright horrendous) part of the whole deal: finding a blue-collar job, adjusting to the fast pace, and establishing a relationship with Mark and Noel in the face of  misunderstandings, a life-threatening disease, and reestablishing motherhood once again.

I bawled without shame inside the theater because I was watching characters who were broken and needed some sympathetic fixing.

Viewers are entertained, amused, made to learn about the dynamics of mother-son and mother-son’s gay partner relationships. But we are eventually let in on the secret: Shirley, after all, is a far cry from a perfect mother, and she still needs to come to terms with many things about her children and their life choices. Her relationship with Noel – one who is fragile and generous to a fault – redefined her role as a mother to Mark, who himself silently felt shunned after he coming out to his mother many years ago. Shirley is far from the Pinoy stereotype of a mother orating and hurling things at her son because he is gay; she is, however, still fraught with many issues and shortcomings that a forthcoming tragedy shall ultimately magnify.

Ate Vi’s range is undebatable: she can go from subdued to hysterical (pure, unadulterated ham) and the scene is played out so beautifully when she does either. And that scene where she danced? The woman still has groove! And why does the camera loves Ate Vi’s face so much?

John Lloyd’s face screams sleeplessness. He would have been more convincing if he has the moisturized cheeks and dapperness of a New York-dwelling gay guy, a look achieved quite well in Luis’s grooming and wardrobe. The level of anticipation for their screen kiss exceeds that of lunar landings. The kiss was swift – too swift for some, I think – but John Lloyd’s eyes and the transmitted emotions proved rather enough for me.

Miscellaneous: Tirso Cruz III has that scary expression, and his hysterics in one scene borders on the funny. Vice Ganda, Nikki Valdez and Dimples Romana are top students of  the supporting-role school, as expected. Rafael Rossell tries too hard in the film. And I agree, Star Cinema should start splurging on extras, like the Ian and Pamela characters. We are pleading.

J and I were seated on the third row from the front, but we weren’t our usually complaining selves. I laughed and cried and replayed in my head some outrageous lines from the character Hillary (Vice Ganda), and I knew I immensely enjoyed and felt.

</Glorious pop culture moment>

Tidbit

I’m amassing a lifetime’s worth of zits by waking up at 6:30AM and sleeping at 11Pm or so, but allow me to say that I’m loving my new work. No more of the slack pace and comfort-zone privileges at my old company (Oh boy you kept me infatuated for almost two years), and now I’m in for new concepts like SEO writing, canoodling with marketing tools, and being at peace with all of my officemates. What novel ideas. Love ‘em.

Self-promotion (yes, the shameless one!)

This new baby is keeping me busy – well, busier than wrestling with Miggy and molesting an imaginary chocolate fountain. I write most of the stuff to amuse myself , thus I don’t expect heavy traffic anytime soon. At any rate, visit it if you’re being a good friend, or if you have the time. Time for useless pursuits, I mean.

Thank yow’s are in order

I am blessed among men women. Thank you Tetel and Michelle for recommending your interior-designer friends and saving my fat ass. Life’s s too good I wanna do hundreds of kandirit.

Freewheelin’

Save for applying for an NBI clearance and other work  requirements, I’m looking forward to many things right now. A new desk, a new ergonomic chair (hope it’s an upgrade), and a new batch of faces. I have a week’s worth of lull time, which means I can be bored out of my skull all I want. SSP has given me an assignment, and I’m glad for the distraction and the extra moolah. I’ve started a new project, too, and it involves a blog storing my book impressions and cute book covers in thumbail format. Allow me to sneer; this is how exciting my life turned out to be.

I’ve also set unrealistic goals for myself, including (1) Jogging around the village at 6AM; (2) Doing research on the online health & wellness products industry, a smart, responsible preparation for the new job; (3) Jumpstarting a more healthy lifestyle, which involves but is not limited to drinking tea regularly, reducing consumption of sweets and salty matter, and doing an internal saltwater bath before the 16th; (4) Recovering my reading arm; and (5) Reviewing my finances, setting more unrealistic goals of saving up. For posterity’s sake, I’m recording these goals here, even though I’m convinced that the only errand I can run this week is catching a late-night screening of Kimmy Dora.

I don’t like being an ingrate, and so I won’t rant about how glum and uncertain the future is, and how huge of a risk I’m taking in leaving an already well-paying job. It’s unhealthy to construct a web of complications in one’s life.  Better to keep things simple: in a week’s time I’ll be on the payroll of a new company, and I’m bigger than all these pesky fears, and I’ll be meeting my dentist in a couple of hours for oral prophylaxis. And since I surely have a namesake, applying for an NBI clearance might as well be called alay-lakad. Eeek, useless rambling.

A dog’s murder and other curious readings

The voice in Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is unmistakable. It is the voice of someone with Special Needs, as psychology and social labels would tell one. It is the voice of Christopher who, in his yawning impotence in the face of complicated human emotions, finds refuge in mathematics and the sciences. It is the voice of a young man who refuses to be touched, disdains metaphors and the color yellow, and spreads out his fingers in a fan to express love for his father and mother.

Christopher, who likes prime numbers and solves quadratic equations in his head out of boredom or panic, discovers the murder of Wellington, a dog in the neighborhood. He embarks on a detective work largely patterned after Sherlock Holmes’s; he interviewed strangers,  picked out a Red Herring and a prime suspect, and adopted a chain of reasoning. He puts to good use his photographic memory.

The investigation leads Christopher to a discovery of a kept truth in his life, and he is now the unwilling main character in his self-devised mystery narrative. In his confusion, fear, and hurt, he draws strength from the irrevocability of logic and intelligent thinking. During a difficult moment, he even exhibits a certain self-consciousness and imagines a deadly virus on earth, where “there is no one left in the world except people who don’t look at other people’s faces and who don’t know what these pictures (emoticons) mean and these people are all special people like me.”

There are plenty of heartbreaking bits in this novel, and author Mark Haddon, who has worked with autistic individuals as a young man, knows how to excavate an emotional site with the use of seemingly detached pronouncements: “I couldn’t hear people talking so I felt much calmer and it was nice,” or “..or I will get a lady to marry me and be my wife and she can look after me so I can have company and not be on my own.” With a matter-of-fact tone – a seemingly neutral treatment of the tale by the narrator himself - readers realize that Christopher’s world are not at all different from theirs, and they are let in on the many different secrets in surviving pain, bewilderment, and too many noises in the head.

La la land Cebu

I use this line even when I write fluff, but now I mean it: there’s an ideal marriage of the old and the new in Cebu City.

I went bat-shit crazy over many things (lechon, the Edge Coaster and historical bites, among others) during our three-day stay there. We were warmly received by Crown Regency, which had been fun and A-OK, save for the complicated elevator system that could get you God-knows-where if you have serious navigation issues. My day-tour sweat, if it were gold, could have already run a small country’s economy, but it would be irreverent to pass up a chance to explore the many faces of the city.

Good times. Here are the trip highlights. I’m too tired to busy myself with transitions and paragraphs.

DECENT COMPANY No one would want to go on a holiday with a pain in the ass, or simply a person who’ll travel the half-assed way. Shoutouts to Mich (your Club Ultima membership is a blessing for poor people like me), Mel, Grace, Mart, and baby for the superior fun. Here’s to hoping there’ll be more to come, even if soon I’ll be on the payroll of another company.

LECHON AND OTHER GREASY PROVOCATIONS CnT Lechon deserves all the hype it’s getting. On its own (read: without sauce or your reliable Mang Tomas), the meat’s tasty, the skin crispy and lovely to the fingers and tastebuds. Royal Concourse, on the other hand, is a buffet resto the size of a gymnasium, with a spacious stage for functions. I believe those guys when they say “crispy pata buffet”; the greasy, evil thing are loaded in batches every couple of minutes, and no one is found wanting. Lastly, Jo’s Chicken Inato (yes, your neighborhood inasal joint) has really good food for much less. Camaron rebosado at P70, fresh mango milkshake (I downed two!) at only P38. Cebu is really a wise pick for any food savant.

TAOIST TEMPLE This commanding presence is found inside Beverly Hills, a posh subdivision. The structure is worth the long flight of stairs, although you should be prepared to be “awarded” by the security guards if you have more than one mouth. They’re strict about the silence and the no-picture taking policy inside the temple.

HISTORY LESSONS Magellan’s Cross is right across the City Hall. Inside this landmark, Sinulog ladies offer prayers for P50, dancing and prancing their way to your salvation. Afterwards, you can go to the Sto. Nino Basilica to light your candles. The collective breath and sweat of the thick churchgoing public that Sunday (it was a 10AM mass) will tell you what Cebu City is all about.

CASA GORORDO MUSEUM This is the only ancestral house we saw in the city, and I think it’ll pale in comparison to its Bacolod City counterparts. At any rate, it’s an airy, modest house that sheltered four generations of Gorordos, the most famous member of which is Cebu’s first bishop. It is now owned by the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation. A winning moment has happened here as well: Mel playing the piano, kuya guard reprimanding her with “Naku magagalit ang may-ari niyan.” Erm kuya, shouldn’t we be avoiding the mirrors?

SKY EXPERIENCE ADVENTURE If you’re the kind who considers your hotel an attraction in itself, it’s best to check in at the Crown Regency Hotel for its comprehensive recreational amenities. There’s the Snooze Lounge for a good lazy boy massage, a spa, and the famous Sky Experience Adventure featuring the Edge Coaster, Sky Ride, 4D Theater and the Sky Observatory.

We availed ourselves of the buffet deal at the Sparkz Restobar, where we paid P600 for a buffet dinner, a sky ride ticket, and the access pass. I didn’t vomit my dinner when we rode the Edge Coaster; the scary part lasted for a mere five seconds. What followed was a good, short round of the hotel’s outer rim (we’re on the 38th level, baby) and after the ride I was inclined to do it all over again – this time, in a short frock, maybe?

We also got to visit SM Cebu, Ayala Center (the scent and overall layout reminds me of, what else, Glorietta), and the Tabo-An Market for some danggit shopping. I heard from the hotel concierge that the powerful dried-fish smell can actually make an AC unit bog down. Unsure about that, but Mich, J, and I definitely defined “rotten business” after the trip to the market. No evil stares or icepick threats at the elevator, though.

I missed a Mactan tour and a Bantayan beach getaway, but Cebu City is already a smorgasbord in itself. Now if you’ll excuse me, my dried pusit (a pasalubong to self) is in the frying pan and needs some attention.

____

CnT Lechon & our Edge Coaster ride photo from Art Seblis, Last photo (portrait) from Grace.