3/31/2014 ‒
Circling

I write this blog entry an extremely sleepy man.

One of our dogs somehow hooked up with another one on the street. I saw it and all. Over two months later she has given birth to seven pups, and while they're feeding on milk we have to keep watch over them. This has meant a complex sequence of tasks that involves knowing when to lock the mother in her cage with her kids, when to let her out, how much to feed her and when, and how to deal with our other dog who's gotten lonelier (or more bitter) by the day.

I woke up at half past three this morning. I was, technically, woken up, by the new mother's barking; she wanted to be let out of her cage. She, apparently, had to take a dump. I unlocked the back door and opened her cage, but, as it turns out, her collar has gotten loose, so she managed to get away (and dump at the other end of the backyard). And I managed to lose the padlock to the back door. Well, it slipped from my grasp and it ended up inside the cage with seven rowdy puppies, but I am bleary eyed, and already paranoid, thinking that someone might break into our house and kill me off or something.

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3/29/2014 ‒
Because, apparently, the 1975 is a big thing

Now, before you grab pitchforks and call me a hipster, lemme clarify something: I don't have an opinion about the 1975. They're just this band I've heard on my many sojourns on foreign radio, with a song about chocolate and a song about sex; I never really just cared about them, no matter what they did.

Well, maybe it's not surprising that they were brought here for a series of mall shows. An inhumane number, I still maintain: four mall shows in two days (plus a hastily-added "fan meet" on a third) is a bad idea in an urban region where traffic is king. But that aside, not surprising. They're a pop band. They're young and cute and apparently have relatable songs. I can't tell; I'm no longer a teenager.

My dad noticed their billboard along C5 as we went home from work one night, and he asked me: "are they all born in 1975?" They got their name from a poetry book, apparently, when they were still struggling musicians in the early noughties. Maybe they aren't young, after all.

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3/22/2014 ‒
Tris will kiss Four!

Here's all that I knew about Divergent before last night: it has a character named Tris, and Clarisse likes the book series. My sister hasn't even considered buying the first book. I was surprised, actually, to learn that Rainy's excited for the film version, which meant I'll inevitably watch it with her. And, as it turns out, her friends (and sisters) Janine (I've met her before) and Janelle (I haven't), because we both decided to buy a pair of tickets each, for some reason.

So, yeah. Divergent. Shailene Woodley, or that American teenager with a secret life. (I know she isn't famous for just that anymore, but forgive me and my past as an American television pundit.) That guy who looks like James Franco and Josh Holloway. (Again, my past as... I've done too many parentheticals.) Kate Winslet looking like a store-bought version of Bedelia du Maurier, Ashley Judd sort of continuing what she did on her last television series... nope, not putting a parenthetical there.

On paper it should be good. The set-up is, too: a girl discovers she's not like the others. Okay, that is setting you up for a "just be yourself" cliché - and if you think about it, and the not-subtle promotion the film's getting in the Philippines, it is like that - Anyway, a girl discovers she's not like the others, in a dystopian (ding!) society rigidly organized (ding!) into factions determined by skill set or whatever, where a revolution (ding!) poising one to be above everyone else is brewing.

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3/16/2014 ‒
Twenty-five

It just occurred to me that, in the past six months - or, let's be generous, a year - at least four of my friends have gotten married.

Now, this is not a complaint about me not being invited to weddings. (Debuts and weddings are two different things.) For one, I would probably be very awkward, and this, despite the fact that I am now in a relationship myself. Also, these friends are distant ones. By "distant" I meant friends from elementary school, or friends from college that I never really was in the same circles with. (By "distant" I meant everybody.) Then again, apparently, we were not too distant at one point in our lives, judging from the fact that I see them on Facebook - and they see me on Facebook, or not, because I am annoying - and I see them post photos of engagement rings and wedding preparations. But, for some reason, none of the wedding itself.

And then it occurs to me. I am 25. I have lived on this earth for two and a half decades. I have graduated from college. I have been working for a good six years now. I'm at the point when I should have saved enough money to buy myself a house and think of being on a household of my own. And here I am, still living with my parents, but not being a mooch; this is all me being conservative when it comes to taking risks.

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3/12/2014 ‒
Evil tricks (on me)

Let me just remind you, Niko, that you're probably crushing on her because she looks good in uniform.

I know.

And besides, Gretchen Ho looked ordinary when she left the Ateneo squad and became a television starlet.

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3/11/2014 ‒
We are strangers

I'll admit - perhaps for the second time, maybe the third - that I felt hurt when we finally met.

I was hurt because I was expecting we'd have a long, good conversation. Granted, there never was a chance of us doing that, because it wasn't just the two of us in a coffee shop, but fifteen of us in a restaurant that serves beer. Granted, also, that we've not really talked for a long time before we met. Granted, we had a lot to catch up with.

Granted, I have long learned to manage my expectations, about how the things I always think I would like always turn out to be a dud when I actually get it - perhaps a victim of anticipation, or perhaps my urge to be uncharacteristically optimistic. Granted, I didn't even expect this, but there I was, listening in to conversations, and there you were, a surprise visitor, and there we were, strangers, like we always were.

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3/08/2014 ‒
My childhood on a plate

Remember this?

Now, SM Southmall's been renovated - more like given an overhaul, considering that the mall lost a fourth of its retail space for parking, that rare instance when a mall demolishes part of itself - so I think you'd understand my sadness when I realized that part of my childhood has gone. This was when I was seven, or around that time, perfectly happy that I just had, or will be having, a birthday party at Shakey's. You get the idea.

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