5/31/2023 ‒
Everything, it seems, has changed

The objectively earth-shattering news that... what's happening, exactly? Is it just Tito, Vic and Joey who are leaving TAPE Inc., the producers of Eat Bulaga!? Is the whole show itself leaving TAPE? The announcement - live-streamed, not aired on television - was carefully-worded but left a lot of things vague, just like the in-fighting within the production company over the past few months.

But anyway, that news - that news is just one more salvo in what has been a pretty unsettling few weeks, or months, or years, even, depending on who you ask.

Today is also the day when we woke up to the news that the Senate passed a "reconstructed", to quote some media outfits, version of the proposal to establish the Maharlika Investment Fund, which will... I don't know what it will do, exactly. What will it invest on? Proponents are now saying it will greatly contribute to the government's push for build new infrastructure. Alongside loans from international entities and other countries? Alongside major Filipino conglomerates who have already built layers of elevated highways in the capital? Is this when I use the "shadow government" card?

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5/29/2023 ‒
Your rom-com opening scene

Yes, it's romantic, the idea of brushing your teeth at the same time as your significant other. That's how it all pans out in the movies: there's always a scene where the couple would be shown brushing their teeth in front of the mirror, in various phases of cleanliness - I mean, I assume they didn't take a shower at the same time, because this is a romantic comedy and not an R-rated thriller, right?

And one always spits before the other.

I did say it's not an R-rated anything.

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5/27/2023 ‒
It's rude to stare

I remember it clearly. I was at the Milky Way counter at the first ever Shopwise branch in Alabang. I know, that dates this whole thing, because that counter no longer exists - and that supermarket has changed significantly since this happened, the biggest change being the loss of the second floor and, with it, the "walkalators" that was such a cool thing when they introduced it the first time. But anyway.

It was Father's Day. I'm pretty sure we were out for dinner, but there was also a grocery stop. This was a different time, after all; we only had one car and we had to do everything in one go - or at least I think that's the mindset my parents had at the time.

It was a Nokia 7110. The guy waiting for his lunch in the counter had a Nokia 7110. Remember that phone? It was a slider, but more importantly, it had a scroll wheel instead of up and down buttons. I didn't even have a mobile phone back then, which makes sense, because it's 1999, and the 7110 was a new thing, and if you saw someone with it then they must be pretty rich because it was an advanced phone. I mean, it had WAP! But also, it had that scroll wheel!

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5/20/2023 ‒
We once again cram everything at the tail-end of the month

Oh boy, here we go again.

But, first off, haven't we been through this charade for the past few months now? Three weeks or so of nothing written, and then, the next few days spent chasing posts on here. And it's not like I haven't been writing elsewhere - I mean, I wrote two things over on the Once Monthly. Things don't just write themselves, after all. Not the way they used to, at least.

To be fair, though, it's been a pretty busy past few weeks. I found myself chasing a magazine towards the finish line, and stumbling every time because we're also working on an event, a flagship event, and things can get pretty frantic on that front. I mean, we haven't done that event for four years. We had plans back then, but lockdowns happened and we had to shelve them. Far too long, as it turns out, so revisiting them wasn't as easy as we thought.

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