3/27/2020 ‒
Lockdown-not-lockdown, week two

20 March, Friday

 I listen to foreign radio stations partly to live voraciously through it. I know that my passport isn't powerful and I will never, in my lifetime, travel outside of this timezone and the two beside it, but at least when I listen to, in this case, the French-speaking Swiss, it feels like I've been whisked away to a different place.

But these times are different. Everybody's got the coronavirus on their mind, and inevitably it means you'll hear it in the hourly news bulletins, albeit pronounced differently. For the past couple of days, even, the Swiss took things one step further: their government had advised their citizens to stay at home, and the radio stations have begun to play the same audio clip before their news bulletins.

Read more »

3/20/2020 ‒
Lockdown-not-lockdown, week one

13 March, Friday

 I saw my cousin's ex-girlfriend at the supermarket. Now, I often saw her dressed somewhat to the nines during family reunions, so it was a bit surprising for me to see her dressed in a loose shirt. Also surprising: that we're talking, since I usually don't talk to anyone during reunions.

She lives nearby, but this isn't her nearest supermarket. There's one just a walk away from her place, but that's an S&R, which means it's crowded, and you'll have no choice but to buy in bulk. But then again, it is the first day of this lockdown - I mean, community quarantine. People will take the time to stock up on everything that they need, because this lockdown - community quarantine - will last for a month, and heaven knows what will happen then.

Read more »

3/12/2020 ‒
Seventy silver spoons

I remember when I was angry... well, angrier about a lot of things. I remember when I still felt the freedom to express that anger, whether by raising my voice at whoever's unlucky to be on the other end of the conversation, or through these essays.

I remember people always telling me that I should stop being so angry at the world. That I should chill out. That I should look at the positive side of things.

I didn't really want to do it, but I guess I did. Not to change my perspective or anything. Perhaps, I don't know, it was a mental exercise. At least, if I disagreed with the other side to something, I should understand that there's a valid reason, most of the time, for them to see things they way they did, which just happens to be diametrically opposed to how I saw it.

Read more »

3/10/2020 ‒
Man in pink

On the sidelines of last weekend's Komiket Cavite - if you were there to say hello to Shalla and maybe buy her stickers and pins, thank you! - there was this little girl who asked her mother a question.

"Bakit siya, lalaki, pero pink 'yung suot?"

She stares at him a little longer.

Read more »

3/06/2020 ‒
The last of the old school bloggers (not really)

When I started blogging fifteen years ago today, admittedly, it was to show off.

I mean, don't we all? Hey, look at me. I have my own space on the Internet. Sure, it wasn't the Geocities-hosted website I dreamed of, but it was a start. Here's where I talk about how the progress of that website was going, although in the end it never really progressed beyond a couple of templates on FrontPage. But I kept writing, because I also fashioned myself as a writer, oblivious to the fact that nobody really cared about what I had to say.

Sure, that's harsh, but fifteen years later, I still genuinely think that's the case. Or maybe it all depends on my mood, which lately has hovered on that negative side people don't want to acknowledge. Maybe it's because I tend to be a contrarian most of the time, adopting unpopular opinions because they are unpopular. But then, people agree with other people when they say something that I have said before. I don't carry that much cachet? Yes, I'll give that, because I'm not a celebrity. Nobody notices a non-celebrity round these parts.

Read more »