Lost In Translation

I just finished 60 hours of Korean Language classes.

I think the next time I set foot on Seoul (or any other Korean city, for that matter), I won't be the bumbling English-speaking idiot who knows only how to say "Hello", "Thank you" and "How much is this?"

In the meantime, I will pester all my Korean team members to speak in their native tongue when conversing with me... at half-speed. Their normal speech just leaves me befuddled and I catch only 20% of what they say.

So for now, 안녕히 계세요!

I have a dream...

And that is to be...

*drum roll*

A housewife.

Yes, you got that right: the very thing my own mother warned me not to become. The very thing she chose to be when my younger brother was born into this world. The very thing she and my dad decided she would be to be there for our (their children's) growing years.

Momsie was on her way to a high-powered career. She was working for a multinational company, she had the brains, she had the skills, and she had that "corporate" attitude - something along the lines of "mess with me and you will rue the day your mother went into labor".

I got all that from her - my temper (more fiery and hair-trigger), my taray looks, my ease when it comes to communication (even in a language I do not speak), my razor-sharp tongue (I have made onion-skinned people cry with my normal speaking tone), and lately my "more corporate" look (up until three years ago, my style of dress is more of "collegiate" but I digress").

What I did not get from her is the "corporate dream". I never dreamed of becoming a high-powered executive, driving a luxury car (I'd prefer a pick-up truck!), toting the requisite laptop-BB-handbag combo (a laptop and a non-QWERTY phone will be a-ok), dressed to the nines (this part I can do, hehe), and living in a penthouse condo unit (a home on a farm, please).

All I want is to stay home with my dogs, my (future) kids, my (future) businesses, and keeping house. I'd like to be blogging about my day, the stuff I cook, things from the market, the latest in dogs and kids... you know, a stress-free (in the office/corporate sense of the word) kind of life.

I was home sick a few days ago and, though my body was heavy and wracked with fever with eyes burning like it had ten chili peppers in it, I found I still enjoyed doing the dishes, thinking of dinner, sweeping up the millions of hair my dogs shed, doing the laundry and mopping the floor (my latest addiction).

Momsie said, to be a housewife is to not have your own money (that's why I will put up a business) and to be a victim to routine (which is why I will keep more than one blog, and take lots of pictures). Now, more than a quarter of a century after she first said that to me, I still say I want to become what my mother is.

** Oh yes, PMS-ing!

48 hours down, 48 hours to go...

The plane left at 9:35PM on the dot. We arrived 25 minutes early. Definitely a first for me...

48 of the best hours this month, so far. 48 to go and I am getting sadder by the moment. Whenever I'm here, I never want to go back to Manila. When I'm in Manila, all I think about is the next time I come here (and eat som tam coz I'm takaw like dut...) - crazy I know but I love it here. I love this city more than I love the city I have lived in for the later half of my life.

I want to call this home but I can't.

It was not meant to be.

Just like you and me.

And so, as I need to say farewell to this beautiful city I wish were my own, I need to say goodbye to you too. You, whom I wish were my own too.

Time will heal all wounds.

Pray tell... why do I write such incoherent posts lately?

You Were Saying?!?

ONE: Do you love me today?

TWO: Bakit naman "today" lang? Lagi naman kitang mahal...

ONE: It's only today that matters to me. Hindi naman natin alam kung may bukas pa tayo eh. Our "today" is the only time we have that we are certain is really ours.

TWO: What do you mean by that? Love mo ba ako today tapos bukas hindi na? Bukas ba iiwan mo na ako?

ONE: Hindi sa ganun. Hindi natin alam, baka bukas masagasaan ako ng tren. Baka bukas mabangga ako ng truck, maholdap at masaksak, atakihin sa puso sa stress, hindi na magising...

TWO: Kaya nga nag-iingat diba? Para sigurado tayong may bukas pa tayo para magmahalan?

ONE: Hindi din kasiguraduhan yun... pag oras mo na, oras mo na.

TWO: Nakakalungkot naman isipin.

ONE: Wag mo nang isipin... dadating yan kung kelan dapat. It's a matter of "when", not "if". So... do you love me today?

TWO: Yes, I love you today. I loved you yesterday and every day before that since the day I realized it. I will love you tomorrow and every day I will live thereafter.

ONE: That sounds so nice... but we don't know that either... As long as you love me today, I'll be ok. That's enough for me.

There's A Fine, Fine Line...

Yes, I saw Avenue Q with Paolo the other night. Aside from singing along like two 3-year olds in front of Sesame Street (with nudity and foul words), I also felt like sticking a knife between my ribs hearing this song again after ten million years... Okay, two years.

This is a song by Kate Monster after Princeton dumps her to find his purpose (ugh, I do hate that word). Emphasis 100% mine...

There's a fine, fine line between a lover and a friend;
There's a fine, fine line between reality and pretend;
And you never know 'til you reach the top if it was worth the uphill climb

There's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of time

There's a fine, fine line between a fairy tale and a lie;
And there's a fine, fine line between "You're wonderful" and "Goodbye."
I guess if someone doesn't love you back it isn't such a crime,
But there's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of your time

And I don't have the time to waste on you anymore.
I don't think that you even know what you're looking for
For my own sanity, I've got to close the door
And walk away...

There's a fine, fine line between together and not
And there's a fine, fine line between what you wanted and what you got.
You gotta go after the things you want while you're still in your prime...

There's a fine, fine line between love
And a waste of time

I sure hope you're not wasting my time as I am making sure I'm not wasting yours. Coz that would suck...

This Is Why I Hate Math...

Through the years, my Math teachers always had that great power to inflict pain on me. All they had to do was start with: "If A = B and B= C, then A = C"... Give me a few seconds and my brows furrow in irritation. A few more minutes and my skin starts to blister. A couple more minutes and I'll run screaming out the door where uniformed attendants are waiting to strait-jacket me and tie me to a front-row desk. Okay... the last two sentences were just in my over-active imagination, but am sure you get the picture.

So, on the topic of "If A=B... " ek-ek.-ology.. this is my opinion: If someone is important to you, you don't necessarily love him/her. But if you love someone, it is automatic that he/she is important to you. Agree?

I, for one, definitely do. Of course I would not have written those words for someone had I not believed them in the first place. But yes, I do believe that loving someone immediately elevates that person's importance in your life by 100 steps.

So... I would much rather be loved than to be deemed important (a digression: politics was never one of my aspirations. I'd rather be loved than to be made important. You know, love is all that matters and all that crap...), that much is true. But I do wish I would be loved enough to be deemed important.

A is not always equal to C.

Relasyones Chuvaness!

From Facebook:

"... a successful relationship requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. Always with the same person, but deeper and deeper everytime. Each time on a whole new level you together open in love and discover the truth of your beloved anew. There is no limit to the beauty of your beloved. If you think you've reached the end, stop generalizing."

Awww gawd...

Well, what if the relationship in itself is something that your family and society in general frowns upon? What if it is something God forbids?

What...ever!

TODAY (Day 7): Things Haven't Changed

I hope you read this... I meant for you to see it.

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TODAY (Day 6): Perfection Is Relative

"We are the perfect couple. We're just not in the perfect situation."

I wonder why I feel that this was made especially for us?

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TODAY (Day 5): I Never Stopped Loving You...

I will NEVER stop loving you...

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TODAY (Day 4): Nowhere To Go

I wish I could make you see that yours is not the only heart that's broken, that yours is not the only life that's now incomplete, and yours is not the only happiness that is insincere...

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TODAY (Day 3): Life Is Good; Life is Painful

I won't pretend to know what you feel, but I believe that life is good because life hurts. But I'm still sorry that it had to hurt you too...

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Day 12: Expensive Internet versus Free Internet and Late Night Shopping

Day 12, continued: I finally got connected on the darn expensive WiFi at Starbucks on Convent. I got to check my office email, post the docs I needed to post, send the emails I needed to send and clean up my inbox. After that, I chatted with Kyx for a little while then went on home.

Still no internet at home. I'm so pissed... Then Sister tells me about a site that gives out free internet (one hour per month) for every username you create. How easy was it to create a username (and claim one hour of internet usage gratis)? I won't say it's easy as pie, since I don't bake and baking is not something I will categorize as simple (this is also a classic Kasseopeia digression, which is a good example of "easy"). Let's just say, all you need is an active imagination and the ability to type. SO, with that in mind, I created a username and I surfed for free for an hour. Hurray!

The plan for the day was: shopping. Then shopping. Then more shopping. But things change, especially plans so we ended up doing laundry (how exciting!), watching a few movie downloads, writing on journals (I did this) and reading a few verses. Shopping was postponed... for the evening!

So we watched Paranormal Activity (I'm so glad I did not choose to watch this at the cinema over 2012. I would've felt so cheated!), Shutter - Hollywood version (not so scary. The idea of Megumi didn't scare me since she was a benevolent ghost and that damn Ben Shaw deserved everything and more, damn him! So I can't wait to watch the original version, which Rap kindly lent me early in November and I haven't gotten around to watching. Sorry...), 2012 (the first five minutes, which we missed in the cinema because Italianni's has horribly slow service) and The Proposal (at this point I was already writing on my journal so I was just glancing back every now and then. I've seen it, anyway). I miss watching TV (or in this case, the laptop) with my mom and sibs. We're all night owls and we usually did this a lot in Manila - stay up late and do nothing productive. Heck, it was great for bonding. I'll miss this when I go back to Manila.

After dinner, my dad went for the bed (he's the only one in the family who subscribes to the early-to-bed-early-to-rise philosophy. The rest of us think sleep is a waste of time if we're gonna do it for all eternity anyway) and the rest of us went for... Thanon Silom! Shopping should be an Olympic sport!

I walked away with two new dresses (fit for the office, how about that?) and a couple of pairs of earrings. I got my mom a dress for herself, two shirts for my nephew (Bradir's kiddo), a bottle of acetone for Sissy (for her nails, not to manufacture illicit substances, you idjit!), and a couple of chilled sliced melons. After sundaes at McDonald's, we went on home and hit the sack.

Woke up at around 1am and checked my phone. Missed a couple of messages (which made me very sad), couldn't go back to sleep, wrote a little bit on my journal... then finally drifted off to sleep.

This is the beginning of Day 13 and I'm due home in 9 days (theoretically 8, but my flight is in the evening so the last day still counts. Besides, it makes me less sad)... and I got my Internet back! Woohoo! Thank goodness. Strabucks WiFi and international calls and texts on roaming was becoming extremely expensive...

Day 9, Day 10 and Day 11 - No Internet, No Life!

My internet has been on downtime since Christmas Day. Am now at Starbucks (it's more expensive here... just like in Seoul. A bid to lure the peeps to buy local? Maybe!) taking advantage of the Wi-Fi, which is peng mak (very expensive) at 150 THB for an hour. WTF?!? But what the hey, beggars can't be choosy... on second thought, I chose to pay for this so I should stop complaining and start blogging, yes? Yes. On to the post...

Anyway, Day 9 found my family in Thana City in Bang Na (near the Suvarnabhumi Airport) for CFC Central Bangkok's get together. It's theoretically a post-Christmas party but it's really just an excuse to get together, have a potluck lunch/dinner of delicious Filipino food and sing karaoke the way only Pinoys can.

Momsie and Popsie camped out in the living room until early morning to finish cooking pork spareribs adobo and my Mom's special kare-kare (to the uninitiated, it's pork hock in peanut sauce and eaten with shrimp paste). Mom and the Three Little Pigs made the nata de coco delight on Christmas Eve.

Thana City is like Eastwood City - a veritable garden of condominiums and golf courses. Of course I exaggerate. There was just one golf course. I stick by my claim of a garden of condos, thought. At the Prestige Condo, there were two swimming pools. TWO, darnit! While in our condo at Silom, we had a shower. No tub. Where's the justice in that? Oh... we're just a few minutes by bus, train or cab from the nearest malls. Bang Na takes half an hour by cab on the highway. There's the trade-off. Ok, I rest my case.

Being the picture-fiends that we were, we had several sets of 10-second timed ten shots in the playground (yes, there was a playground) and the gazebo. My family is a crazy lot, as you all probably already know. Pics are on Facebook, just in case you're curious. Friends-only, though, so don't say I didn't warn you.

As I've said, Bang Na is near the airport so every now and then a plane roars through the sky, making us look up. I have the habit of trying to identify the airline by the markings on the tail fin and body, so I kept chanting "Thai Airways, Air France, Cebu Pacific, AeroFLot... wait, is that PAL?" with every new take-off. Bro and Wifey cringed at each one, though, as they were due to leave in a couple of days. Boohoohoo...

We got home late to Bang Rak... like 10pm? The sisters and Bradir stayed up till the wee hours of the morning. I hit the sack at midnight. The next day was shopping day, so I needed my energy to be UP UP UP!

Day 10 - Jatujak, here I come! We left for Jatujak at 11am. We took the BTS to the Mo Chit station then walked. And walked. And walked. Then we shopped. And shopped. And shopped. Oh, yeah...we shopped too. Then we got sunburned. But who cares about sunburn when I was able to buy my pasalubong for my whole team plus my officemates... and a few other items for special peeps in my life? *wink wink*

After Jatujak, we took the MRT back to Sala Daeng Station. After a close encounter with the not-so-dead/not-so-living, we walked on to Burger King. After a heavy snack (no lunch... we opted to stay hungry and keep shopping - not a bad idea, on hindsight), we decided not to go on to MBK and Panthip that day. So Bro and Wifey went on to MBK with Popsie to buy more pasalubong while the Three Little Pigs plus Mom and Bradir went on home.

I had a bum stomach that night but I still went out with my sibs and Mom to feed Bradir some kwai chap. We also proceeded to get drunk... on soy milk (I prefer the one with sesame seeds - not too sweet). We also went walking along Silom in search of a few things to buy (shopping, of course, is first and foremost on everyone's mind). But my tummy allowed me to walk just one block when it beckoned me home for "call of duty". There's still tomorrow, anyway.

Day 11 - Bro and Wifey are flying back to Manila at 11pm tonight. I also finished re-reading The Time Traveller's Wife... and cried again, like I did the first time. FInally, Jen and I can discuss the novel (again) without me forgetting the little details (I need Memo Plus Gold - Kuya Kim had something going there!) and muttering "I need to read it again". I also made a BIG decision today: something that will change the course of three lives, one of them mine. What that is and why I made that decision is for me to know (and for you to find out, dear reader. Unless you're one of those whose lives will change) so don't ask. I won't tell. Let's not waste each other's time.

Cooking is a sure-fire stress reliever for me so I defrosted and peeled a kilo and a half of shrimps. Then I cut up five heads of broccoli, minced a head of garlic, a large onion and diced four tomatoes. I made garlic-buttered broccoli and gambas. Both dishes were wiped out at dinner.

So now, it is the beginning of Day 12 and my internet is still dead as Ninoy and Cory. But free internet is out there...somewhere. It takes patience to find it and not have to exchange a new dress for an hour online. Unfortunately, patience is not my virtue...

TODAY (Day 2): To Err Is To Be Human...

We had the time of our lives, didn't we? But time, like everything else, runs out too. Thank you for everything...

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TODAY (Day 1): People Lie...

I'm sorry. I, too, am but human... Forgive me...

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Today is 8 November 2009

Today I realized that I was waiting in vain.

F*ck it. I will wait no more.

"Actions speak louder than words", you said. I hear the message. Loud and clear.

Thank you very much. It was fun while it lasted.

The 30-day Mark...

So it has been thirty days since... 1) Ondoy hit the Philippines and washed away A LOT of stuff; 2) a nameless storm hit and washed away 3 years+ of... stuff.

ANYWAY, now is not the time to mope. Now is a time to celebrate because my Pisay roommate of three years is now... MARRIED! Congratulations, Mrs. Abigail Pascual-Olayres. Like I said in my speech, I am SO happy for you... obvious naman sa dami ng all-caps na ginamit ko diba?

Pictures not yet uploaded, too tired to do so. Rey, share your pics!

♥ ♥ ♥

Today, 25 October 2009:

I have been smoke-free for 85 days...and I still don't miss it.

I missed the 3K Run for Life this morning. For the life of me, sleep and comfort felt more important than a marathon I have been wanting to run for months now.

I saw a Pisay friend walk down the aisle and marry her sweetheart of 9 (?) years. Aaaawww...

I still am not in a hurry to get married, though... much less enter another serious relationship yet again. I'd rather live vicariously in that aspect for the time being, thank you very much!

I met up with my other Pisay friends and it made me realize how much this job is really disconnecting me from the world I once inhabited. It makes me wonder: is it still worth it?

I have been thinking since last night: There is always a FIRST time for everything... and I have been wanting to ask "so when was the last time YOU did something for the first time?"

♥ ♥ ♥

So there's this talk of another big storm hitting the country in a week's time. God have mercy on us all...

Before I hit the sack, I would just like to say: Actions speak louder than words. If your actions can vouch for you, don't bother with words. They most often complicate things.

Harharhar...

Simply Happy

On Thursday, 17 September 2009:

I have been smoke-free for 53 days... and I don't miss it at all!

I have been alcohol-free for 15 days... but I miss it. =(

I have run a total of 10km in the past week.

I have spent a total of 3,200 pesos on clothes in the past week. *gasp*

I climbed the inclined wall twice in less than 3 minutes at each attempt. Whee!

Kuya Manny was our guy at the wall.

Alvin traversed 9-10-11 successfully, yey! Neither Japes nor I did. =(

Japes forgot to drop me off at Sucat... and we ended up having to turn back on the way to his house. *lol* I-take home daw ba?

@>-;-----

On this day, 19 September 2009:

I am happy. Simply happy. Happily simple. =) More energy, mas happy!

@>-;-----

Taking Nikka to walk in Boni High Street. It's kinda cloudy and rain is threatening BUT we're forging on. Kowiz will drive. Ayoko mag-drive. Kailangang hawakan ang asong malikot!

Ciao for now!

On This Day - 6 September 2009

I have been smoke-free for 35 days.

I have run a total of 30km in the past month.

I have consumed more chocolate-covered cereal in one sitting than any normal homo sapiens should consume in one week.

I realized that things happen... not necessarily for a reason.

That doesn't change the fact that I still have the need to ask "Why?" without necessarily having the need to hear the answer.

Still... why?