6/29/2015 ‒
An appreciation of awkwardness

How to fiddle with the remote control, part this-has-happened-too-many-times-in-human-history-for-us-to-track.

It's oddly fascinating, seeing people enter a door tentatively, feeling a bit apprehensive, not certain whether they're in the right place or not. Or maybe they know, but they don't quite want to take that risk. You see the door and walk past it, your feet quickly bringing you to the restroom, allowing you to wash your face and your hands, and take stock of what exactly you've gotten yourself into.

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6/26/2015 ‒
Of Jurassic monsters and obnoxious men

A warning: this blog entry contains spoilers to Jurassic World.

But let's be honest. What is there to be spoiled? Jurassic World's premise is pretty simple: modern-day people are chased around by dinosaurs. The specifics may be different - the first movie has straightforward clones; this one, the fourth, has genetically modified ones - but the principles are the same. Dinosaurs chase people around. The people you don't care about die; the people you do care about, somewhat, survive. And in the end, all is well.

Just look at the characters. There's always one guy who sees the dinosaurs as an attraction, and another who sees them as living creatures. (And there's always romantic tension between the two.) One of the kids will have a wide-eyed fascination for all this, while his sibling will not care, at least initially. The park's owner is always a well-intentioned man who doesn't quite know what he's getting into. He'll always butt heads with someone who has a different, more sinister plan for the dinosaurs. There's always a hapless employee and there's always a geek who cared deeply for the dinosaurs at the detriment of everything else.

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6/15/2015 ‒
Dating a homebody

That's KARA's comeback stage at this week's M Countdown. Crap. I know much more than usual now.

Rainy and I have been dating for two and a half years, and it took all that time to make us realize a couple of things. One, we are homebodies. Two, we'd rather just hang out somewhere, preferably at home, rather than go out.

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6/11/2015 ‒
It's the government's fault why we are all so rude

Rainy found herself standing up inside the bus, one of two she has to take for her new job. A given, considering it's not yet nine in the morning, and rush hour is still speeding along. Yes, not-quite-pun intended. Or no.

Anyway, a seat frees up, and she makes her way to that seat, since she still has a long way to go. But someone beat her to it. A guy, she tells me.

As this is not an essay about the supposed death of the gentleman, I won't be talking about how he should've given way for my girlfriend. Besides, that isn't the kicker. The twist was what happened later. So he gets his ass on the seat. He looks at my girlfriend. He makes this satisfied, smug smile, the sort that says "ah, a seat" and "you will not have my seat, you bitch!"

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6/10/2015 ‒
Here's your Old Age McReminder, sir. Do you want a McYouth with that?

Nothing screams "you're old" like being in McDonald's early in the morning at this time of the year.

I find myself eating breakfast there relatively frequently lately. Sometimes you'd wake up later than you intend to - in my case, fifteen minutes later - which means you can't have a proper breakfast, because you're spending all of your time doing your bathroom things and getting dressed and actually going for work. If I'm going to work by myself, without a car, this means leaving at a quarter to six - a quarter to six in the morning! - so I'd miss the heavy traffic that gathers on our badly-planned roads at around seven.

I get off my shuttle and I'm still hungry, so off to the nearby McDonald's I go. I always have the same thing, more or less: a Sausage McMuffin with Egg and a coffee float, and sometimes a hash brown if I woke up particularly late. At seven in the morning, this particular branch near my office isn't crowded: just a couple of people on the queues, enough to foster familiarity. "Coffee float, sir?" one of the servers asked me, and I knew I've been there far too often for my benefit.

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6/07/2015 ‒
Who am I without you?

For five months, I let a comment sit on this blog's moderation queue.

Today, I deleted that comment.

It was for a blog entry I wrote four years ago. An inconsequential one, by all means - or at least inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, even if back then it absolutely wasn't. Back then, no. Back then it felt like a big deal. Back then - considering I had little to hold on to, relatively - it felt like a big deal. Now, of course, it isn't; I'm on stronger footing, so to speak, and the follies of the past remain just that. Follies. Stupid things we thought were brilliant then.

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