I'll be honest. One of the best things about work is, well, a good broadband connection. Suddenly it doesn't matter whether I sit in front of the computer for (sometimes, more than) nine hours a day, typing the same old things, while I contend with a painful back and a painfully short attention span. With the help of a nifty pair of headphones - that, they also have - I can listen to any foreign radio station streaming online.

For the past three days, I was listening to Australian stuff. It somehow also helps to speed me up, since Sydney is two time zones away from Manila, and I hear the presenters say it's six in the evening when it's just four in the afternoon. Triple J streams at rates that my dial-up connection cannot take, so I can't help myself, for some reason. At that rate you'd probably see me just typing, slightly oblivious to the world, while Dools and Linda do their thing.

Now, apparently my co-workers sometimes talk among themselves, and perhaps something's already happened while I'm listening to some indie band's remix of some indie band's song. While I start typing two spaces in between paragraphs, I drift further into, well, isolation.

Don't get me wrong. Since the last blog entry, I've somehow started to talk to my co-workers, although we're still too busy to be able to do something else. I've started saying 'good morning' when I arrive, and I've started saying 'goodbye' when I leave, but maybe it takes a little getting used to. In three words, it's slowly becoming restricting. You can only say one thing so many times, so I go home dizzy about film release dates and award nominations. You can only keep you mouth shut for so long, so I go home lonely because I haven't had any stories to tell. You can only be oblivious to the world for so long, so I end up wondering where people are. Some have gone home, and I haven't got wind of it.

So, is it time to let go of the headphones? I'll admit, it's one of the only things that's keeping me sane - that, and three seats away - but it's hard, really, to be dropped into a scenario that is somehow totally different from the environment that you're used to be in. No wonder I felt that I haven't had stories to tell, and yet I badly want to say something - well, I'm doing that now - because it's been kept inside for so long. Thanks for the warnings, though. The world can be very impersonal at times, if not always.

On Wednesday, I was listening to the program after Dools and Linda - Kate O'Toole's current affairs program Hack - and she somewhat put it so perfectly. "You Hack listeners," she said, "are perhaps the happiest people in the world." Her guest explained that it's because we care about the world, and we talk to people about the things we care about. No wonder things are becoming mundane for me. It's somehow starting to revolve around the email, the word processor, the browser and the glances - at least, as Ranice said, until the first paycheck arrives.