My whole thing with K-pop began almost nine years ago. As the story goes, it was on what turned out to be a date with Shalla - we weren't officially dating yet - at the Ayala Triangle Gardens, years before it became yet another massive construction site. For some reason, the conversation went to K-pop, and she made me listen to some songs.
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I was awake for almost 28 hours. I'm pretty sure I was up before five in the morning, and, of course, I wasn't able to fall asleep through the night. I tried, but it's hard to sleep while sitting on a chair that's just made for sitting down, surrounded by all those beeping sounds, and your eye still on the monitors, which have been screaming "respiratory apnea" for the past few hours.
We got into our private room at six in the morning, and even then I couldn't sleep. That time, I wasn't trying. I was just up. I'm don't think it's adrenaline. I didn't really spend time running around, save for that one convenience store run. (Was I even supposed to be out and about?) When we got settled I was thinking of getting breakfast - Shalla apparently was ordered to fast, never mind that the ER team said she can eat "anything" just a few hours before - and of getting some work done. I mean, I am in the midst of what is potentially - no, definitely - life-changing event, and I have the feeling I am going to be reprimanded for not being productive.
Should I get coffee? I decided against it. Then I remembered that I have not had coffee since breakfast from the day before, from before she sat beside me, asked for a kiss, and then admitted that she took almost all of her antidepressants.
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I think it's a 60-inch television hanging on a pillar in the middle of the room. I'm not good at these things, but then, I never really think about it all the time. I even have to remind myself that my laptop has a 13-inch screen.
That screen displays the status of every patient in the room. There are sixteen beds. The first four aren't displayed, perhaps because they're designated "critical". Well, I assume it is, because the partitions are labeled with a C. The rest have an A, which I assume stands for "adult".
The screen says the first four A beds are slated for admission to the intensive care unit. Two of them have been waiting for a bed for two days. Another one has been waiting for three.
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Sometimes, usually when I'm idle, I find myself imagining up features that would've been a good idea on the music blog I used to run. Not that I yearn to do it again. I sometimes just think like an editor.
One of the best features we ever pulled off there was The Five Songs I Can't Live Without. I've played with that idea for months, but I only really sprang it, if my memory isn't failing me, at a Shakey's in the fringes of Cubao. It was Shalla's nephew's baptism reception - I was the godfather - and we had this short exchange while waiting for the food to arrive. Or was it after? Whatever. I remember telling her about it, and her saying it is a good idea.
It was also one of the more challenging features we ever pulled off, because up until that point we didn't make a point of pursuing interviews with musicians - or anything close to that, for that matter. Let's put it this way: one interview took eighteen months (and several space explorations) to pin down, while another popped up from out of nowhere that I found myself buying a marker in a convenience store near the Taipei hotel we were staying in.
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Some photographs have been edited using post-production curves from Shalla Yu.
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