9/30/2009 ‒
Fail days

I was running away from something earlier. I don't know why.

I don't know why I always run away from things, or how I got this habit of running away. I run away from tight situations. I run away from culpability. I run away from the people I love, whatever love means. I remember hiding for shallow reasons, keeping everything in for deeper reasons - it's just that I always don't want it. I always don't want the things that I set out to get.

Regret? I'm not really sure. Disillusionment, perhaps, not knowing that what you want has all these strings attached. So they say you just wait and it'll come. And then, turns out, you'll have to get your ass out of your seat and start really doing things. Initiative and all that stuff. I could've done that. I did, actually, although it's with the more mundane things. The safer things.

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9/26/2009 ‒
Antagonists

There's this one thing I forgot to tell both Krizzie and Carlo when they posted a comment to one of my (lately) rage-filled status messages on Facebook.

That status message, by the way, was about being the bad guy. I don't like the feeling. Given, I wrote that status message on a bad day, when almost everybody seemed to want to pin the blame on me for something. Perhaps I was annoying, but am I the only one who doesn't have the right to be annoying? Why is it that everyone else can get away with being annoying?

But that's beside the point. I hate being the bad guy. I hate it more when I didn't really do anything to make me the bad guy.

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9/18/2009 ‒
Back to regular programming

It was four and a half years ago. The day after April Fool's Day. The day after my high school graduation.

I was seated in a relatively lavish living room, although I pin that description because it's pretty big and brightly lit and the sofa's designed with flowers. I was with Gio and Mari, I think, nibbling on something, winding down, while waiting for my ride home to come. Upstairs, my classmates - former classmates, probably, at this point - were either playing video games, or getting drunk, or putting their romantic futures on the line.

Actually, I can't remember what the circumstances were. I might be mixing this up with Gio's birthday the previous year. Besides, his house was pretty near Mari's - we called him MJ then - and it pretty much looked the same. I might be mixing memories of Anton getting frustrated at my apparent video game prowess with memories of Robyn being so red and, arguably, so impulsive. I do remember that it was the second time I met Ana, Robyn's friend from her old high school. By some twist of fate, she was already a year ahead of her, studying at the Ateneo.

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9/15/2009 ‒
"I will never talk to you after this!"

The sucky thing with writing a series of blog entries surrounding a certain theme, at least in my case, is this: something always happens.

I mean, talk about putting your mind into something. The presumption is, I can talk about something for a certain period of time with the assumption that it'll, more or less, stay that way. Approach something in eight different ways, and eight different angles each, for the next four weeks or so.

But suddenly, somewhere in the middle, things will change drastically. Somewhat drastically, at the very least. The very point of the theme goes the opposite direction, and suddenly it's no longer current. Unless, of course, I decide to stick with sentimentality and pursue the thought further.

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9/13/2009 ‒
"Not this kind of talk!"

She stopped, pondered for a minute, and suddenly thrust a finger to her left. Whatever she said, I didn't really know, but the moment took quite a while to develop. More fingers pointed, the hapless subject returning to base for one reason or another. The bosses came along, deliberating, pondering, wondering, but it was quite inevitable.

I was thinking of ice cream.

Well, I was thinking of Dairy Queen. "DQ! DQ!" I said, clearly knowing what else that meant. Although that wasn't what happened - it was actually a one-point penalty that came at the worst moment of all: match point.

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9/11/2009 ‒
"We are talking, aren't we?"

My building sits beside a hotel, so it's no surprise when, during my walks towards my office, or away from it, I'd see parked tourist buses and foreigners, mostly Koreans.

One day, I saw the usual crop of foreigners, but they weren't Koreans. I don't really know. Americans? Canadians? English-speaking Europeans? Definitely not Australians, otherwise I could tell who they are through their accents. It was past six, smack in the middle of rush hour, and I was on my way home. Often I cross four roads on the way to the shuttles along EDSA. They were going to cross the road, too.

I had my earphones on, as always, but I oddly heard what one of the tourists said clearly. I think he's a tour guide or something. Maybe someone who's been in Manila for quite a while, judging from what he told his companions.

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9/09/2009 ‒
"No, you won't talk to me!"

This guy. This guy. I don't like this guy. I don't like the way he always butts into conversations, the way he presumes you don't know what you're talking about, as if you're talking about some strange concept, when ideally you should be talking about stuff that interests you, or something that you know about, more or less. I don't like the way he insults you with what he knows, because you don't need what he knows, because you know more than what he knows.

And it always seems that everything he does is to impress everyone. "Look," he might say, "I can do this! Are you amazed at me now? Do you like me now?" He gets something and he's part of the big league, never realizing how superficial things can be, that the ability to take photos with nifty lens won't make you cooler. Perhaps I should've told him that.

But this guy, I shouldn't be hating this guy. It's much like hating myself, and with a passion at that.

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9/07/2009 ‒
"You don't talk to me!"

On a lark, on the way back from the dentist over the weekend, I craved for something from Conti's. I ended up buying cashew brownies, and it somehow reminds me of Milo.

It's the latest observation I've made lately. The rest, well, I can't remember. It's definitely a downside to having another long weekend - you get less alert on the first two days, and then lose everything else when the third kicks in. It's partly why I don't like holidays, although I appreciate them when they come by. But not in this case.

We've had four holidays in the past six weeks. Two are long scheduled, and with all due respect, two were declared as a reaction to prominent deaths. (Whether the intention is political, I'll never bother knowing.) My line of work means I feel a bit humiliated at the amount of holidays we're getting, to the point that an email of mine had sounded slightly apologetic: "we have another holiday, unfortunately." I shouldn't have, you might say.

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9/05/2009 ‒
"Why don't we talk?"

I used to only hear her name from, I don't know, somewhere. Everywhere. The name on the ballot - which I didn't have something to do with - became the name that's half-constantly passed around on the second floor, a standard of excellence of sorts. I think I only heard that bit from Les, much later. I can't remember.

Anyway, when I finally saw the person who owned that name, I was a bit intimidated. It didn't help that she was carrying this huge video camera, the type that you'd see news cameramen use. Professionals use it. That must mean something. As a communication arts student, getting your hands on that means something - that you know what you're doing, and that you deserve to be doing what you're doing. And then I saw the name, and looked at the rest of the identification card, and started to wonder whether what she's doing is really official business, or connections personified. I prefer the latter, but that's moot now.

"De La Salle Philippines. Ma. Kristina L. Syfu. Student intern."

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9/03/2009 ‒
"Who says we can't talk?"

Maybe I should've gone to the bank first. But I wouldn't have remembered it anyway. I'll end up pacing straight to lunch, check my wallet, realize I only have three hundred bucks left - thankfully it's enough for lunch - and end up going to the ATM before returning to work.

But I wouldn't realize that I need to go to the bank first. After all, I went down the building slightly distracted. I had a question in my head and I was writing it down on my mobile phone, taking care not to write the wrong thing or bump into someone. I was done but I told myself I wasn't. I could've noticed that it's too early for me to go down and have lunch. I could've waited and organized my thoughts, maybe write them down on the back of a receipt, and not be thrown the possibility of a bias, which was definitely not what I had in mind.

Thank heavens for empty elevators. And thank heavens for mobile phones. Because in the end, they're the only ones you can count on: the phones, to tell everyone about your ordeal; the elevators, for a more physical means of release. I forced it out of my head, nicely, and I'm not rattled anymore. Fortunately.

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9/01/2009 ‒
"You two talk?"

Issa is outwriting me lately.

And no, I'm not suggesting that it shouldn't be this way. She writes very well, although I'm somehow still not used to imagining her do poetry. Maybe it's because I always saw her as this fun, crazy girl with deep interests. Her blog entries are often very random, but not as random as some of mine are.

Well, that's exactly my point. Lately I've been writing very random stuff, cobbling together awkward concepts and presenting them as metaphors. On the other hand, she's been on an inspired streak lately, doing this and this and this, leaving me wondering: why have I not been inspired lately?

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