4/30/2011 ‒
Sweep me off my feet

I don't care what some say about guys being not supposed to watch the royal wedding. The math favors my curiosity: I'm 22, and the last really big royal wedding was three decades ago. And then there's the fact that all major TV networks have decided to devote blanket coverage of the event, going as far as pushing their evening newscasts to a later time slot to accommodate the video feed from Westminster Abbey. You can imagine the perverse joy inside me when I watched ABS-CBN take the BBC's coverage, knowing that Huw Edwards and Sophie Raworth aren't strange names to me, and scoffing when the local channels insist on throwing in ads when their feed was funded by the licence fee.

Yes, there's the spectacle - the "richest display of pageantry" in a while, the newspapers would say - and then there's seeing how people reacted to the event. There are the people camping outside the procession's route - a million, again according to the newspapers. You'd forget there are people who don't give a toss, the Brits who think it's just another wedding, only one funded by the taxpayer, supplying another reason that justifies their wishes for the monarchy to wither out of existence. And then there are the two billion people - newspapers, yes - watching on their TVs around the world, including the people on my Twitter timeline.

There's the urge to talk about how the union of who we're now supposed to call the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge happening in a much smaller world. But instead, I'll talk about how my friends fawned over every detail. Granted, they're female media types, so they're not just fawning about Kate's wedding dress or William's eerie similarity to our incompetent president. The BBC somehow managed to rig a camera, a spinning camera, at the high ceilings of Westminster Abbey. I was afraid it would fall, kill the newlyweds, and trigger a flurry of conspiracy theorists. My timeline was going, "wow, that camera, I like!" although not in those exact spazzed-out words, of course.

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4/27/2011 ‒
Nicksy comes barging in

"May tinatapos kasi ako eh," Sudoy said.

"Okay lang," I answered. "Magpaparamdam na lang ako kay Sars."

I bid him goodbye, walked out of the office, waited for an elevator, went up, went down, and in between, sent Sars a text message.

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4/24/2011 ‒
No more fighting

The last time this happened, we were fighting to stay together. Yes, I wanted to break free, but I was completely hesitant to do so. Letting go was just an option for when the while thing was irreparable. She, on the other hand, didn't want to let go. She gave me space, knowing I'd give us another try at one point or another. I did, a couple of months later. It wasn't irreparable.

Now, it happened again, and it's completely different. I just told myself, "right, that's it, there's nothing you can do." All she could muster was a mere "I'm beyond pissed at you!" Actually, I screwed up. It wasn't meant to be a spectacular break. I just broke off the wrong way, perhaps at the wrong time, and there it was. No more fighting.

I know we get tired after a while. We get bored. We look for something new. We decide to just forget about certain things, no matter how much it meant to us before. What amazes me - maybe it's the wrong line, but whatever - is how we do it. We hold on so hard. Or, we just let go. And it's never consistent. Two minutes ago I wanted this thing so badly. Two minutes later I don't give a damn.

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4/12/2011 ‒
Hazelton Avenue

I've been in this, uhh, situation for the past four months, and all I can say is this: I need a vacation.

Go on, say it. You've been working at home for the past four months! Why the heck would you still need a vacation? Actually, it's a shallow thought. In the past three weeks I've been looking over the house, while my parents go on not-entirely-for-pleasure trips. Dad brought mom along to Singapore, and my sister somehow tagged along with them. Then dad brought mom to Baguio, and my brother somehow tagged along with them. All throughout, I've been looking after the house, sleeping in the master's bedroom, waking up at six in the morning, and foregoing my morning walk to sweep and mop the house.

I'm becoming a bit of a domestic diva. I haven't perfected the processes yet, but lately I'm feeling a bit more responsible with how things are around the house. I wash the dishes. I remove the dead leaves outside. I water the flowers. I cook my own corned beef omelettes, provided I remember to keep them in the fire rather than flipping it too early. (I know the recipe, but I fail in implementation.) But go on, say it. You should've been doing that a long time ago. I know. I don't have a line for that.

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4/06/2011 ‒
And the bubble goes pop

Surely you've been seeing my intermittent posts on The Duets Project - that little thing I have on Facebook where I post photos of me and someone else. Since I don't have that many photos of me in the first place, I have to go to everybody else's Multiply pages and hunt for albums with photos of me and someone else in it. Hard, because there aren't that many photos of me in the first place, partly because I never really was out and about.

Not that I'm complaining. More often than not I have a good idea of whose albums to go to, so I'm just treated to a kick back in time - back to, say, when we were still freshmen, when I was particularly earnest about doing things the right way. That thought makes me cringe now. I took things seriously and now I'm in between a rock and a hard place, if I'm allowed to exaggerate. And then that's forgotten, and I'm back to my nostalgia trip.

What makes these trips so fun is the fact that they seem so far away now. Everybody was right - you worry about things today, but when they pass you by and a few years fly by, they become mere artifacts. I worried about falling in love and now they're just silly stories. And I still don't have a love life to be proud of, but I have silly stories, albeit one I refuse to talk about, because I cringe whenever I think of all the blog entries I wrote. Am I in love with a girl named... I don't think so, Nicksy.

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4/03/2011 ‒
Temperamentally untalkative

I shouldn't be doing this - after all, I'm the most insecure person within a four square meter radius - but I don't know. I pick up a magazine and, rather than flick through random pages to appreciate the design or hope for an eye-catching photo, I go straight to the masthead and read the names of the people who were involved in the making of the magazine.

My official position goes along the lines of "I don't know whether this is the thing I should be doing." I've tried applying for magazines but I never got past first base, to mangle my metaphors. Actually, I never even got to first base. And then you see the same names in different publications - I think I've read too many magazines in barber shops - and you have me elaborating on something I've complained about before.

Yesterday I was having a long overdue haircut and I was reading a magazine I wouldn't usually read, partly because it's about something I wouldn't usually be interested in. Okay, it's design, but it's snobbish design, like there is such a thing as non-snobbish design. And besides, I had no choice - I was in a different barber shop, one with magazines that are either oddly irrelevant, or particularly old they're so dilapidated. You wouldn't know it's Daiana Menezes on that spread. So I picked up the one that I could practically read, and went on to read the masthead. And there it was. A person that I knew.

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