Grayness

this fugly grayness! when will it end?

normally i love really gloomy weather -- leo and i get to pretend that we’re in the u.k. (“reminds me of ahhhrland”, as we like to say). plus it was a convenient excuse to put off boxing for an entire week (“kasi naman, kakatamad ang panahon”, i said to myself almost helplessly). but it’s stretching on a bit too long. affected na ako!

most of last week was sluggish – i was practically falling asleep at my desk by 7pm. depriving myself of endorphins was most definitely not a good idea, as i found out yesterday when i finally slunk back to the gym. whereas seven rounds in the ring gave me nothing more than a “healthy glow” on my last session, yesterday’s four measly rounds were enough to reduce me into a purple-faced, wheezing, pudding-like creature. must get back on track.

the weekend was surprisingly gloomy as well. i usually enjoy going to the mall to window shop or run non-essential errands by myself (it gives me a sense of normalcy to counter the all-nighters and late hours). but i just found myself getting – well, lonely. i wanted to try cyma at shangri-la, but it didn’t seem like much fun to try a new (and supposedly good) restaurant all by myself. so i went for comfort food (bibingka with salted duck egg) at via mare – and, since i was the only person eating alone and there’s not much people-watching at shang, still felt lonely. haay.

then there was sunday’s conversation with marlon. lately, talking about wanting to be with each other invariably leads to difficult questions. you know those old-school questions that parents are supposed to thunder at young couples who want to get married? “saan kayo titira?” “paano kayo mabubuhay?” yeah, those.

i guess when we started out, we thought we could breeze through those matters armed with mobility and financial stability and all those things young couples are supposed to try to achieve (well, not that we have, but we seem to be on the right track). it’s rather ironic that those very questions would end up staring us in the face anyway.

i don’t know why asking those questions can be so difficult when, for all intents and purposes, we are quite blessed, and our futures should be brimming with promise. this just seems to be one of those inescapable moments when the future just looks more like a soup of decisions than a shimmer of possibilities.

it’s – well, hazy. kind of like the view from my office window.

Productive weekend

• shrink new jeans (scalding soak + very hot tumble-dry)
• watch season 2 of lost on dvd
• buy rechargeable batteries for digital camera
• mass-download new mp3s

my acs friends like to joke that marlon and i treat singapore-manila junkets like trips to quiapo or alabang. i think i believe them now. especially when my to-do list for a weekend in a foreign country begins to look like one for any old weekend at home. naturally, it's a given that at the top of the list is "spend much-needed quality time with the boyf." :-)

the number of photos we have at jumbo is insane

i won a great new pair of levi's from a "fashion lab" event at the ramp at crossings (part of an entire fabulous outfit!), and i picked out a size that was too big for me. as it was quickly wonking into a pair of butt-crack jeans, i read up on denim shrinkage methods and decided i needed marlon's ultra-hot shower and his dryer. i had great jeans all throughout my sentosa saturday (didn't have to hitch them up once!) but they went right back to butt-crack mode when i tried to shrink them a second time.

lost was great and gave us major eyestrain, as usual. iyak na naman ako ng iyak sa mga koreans. i'm finally starting to like sawyer, and i'm glad they offed michelle rodriguez's character. her involuntary sneer at the end of her every line was beginning to annoy me.

i got the rechargeable batteries, and a whole bunch of music from people i just read about and have not heard. unfortunately, i hit some weird button when i was renaming the files and now i have about thirty mp3s all named "corinne bailey rae - call me when you get this".

Rain again

i love, love, love this weather. (unfortunate incident with bedroom ceiling notwithstanding.)

some of my favorite rain memories -

1. being picked up by the driver from grade school on rainy days, and watching rain trickle down the window. sometimes i would have the whole backseat to myself, so i would lie down and watch raindrops upside down. or i would sit with my head against the window and try to predict the path a raindrop would take, and the other raindrops it would run into and take along with it. i particularly liked it when the raindrops gathered and made fat pools on the window, quivering with the effort of resisting gravity.


2. walking home after school one afternoon in the rain. i must have been in fifth or sixth grade (we were still living in bel-air, about a ten-minute walk from my school). i was walking with a friend, but i can’t remember who it was. i do remember getting scolded by my yaya and shooed immediately into a hot bath. but that was worth the fun of splashing around in squeaky black leather school shoes and the satisfaction of finally peeling off my dripping uniform.


3. the numerous brownouts induced by stormy weather. the most memorable one was when we had just moved into the mercedes street house in bel-air and we hadn’t unpacked anything yet. my sister and i tried to heat takeout from hossein’s persian kebab in a frying pan over candle.


4. the blissful, confusing, gray and rainy afternoon with frank in lindenholzhausen. i wrote about it here, and here.


5. getting up for my 7:30 a.m. classes in college and making endless calls to ateneo in the hopes of hearing that classes got called off. paunahan ‘yon with all the mothers of the grade school and high school boys who were, of course, fighting to get on the line at the exact same time. often, i would hear the female recording on the ateneo trunkline (which had this weird clackety-clack background noise) say “classes are suspended for grade school and high school levels only), which was my signal to sigh and get out of bed. but i lived for the recording that went “classes are suspended for all levels.”


6. marlon picking me up from leo’s “tea and strumpets” despedida at aui’s house. i texted him, expressing my dismay at the rain. his reply: “rain is our friend, my strumpet >:-)”


7. well, it’s not exactly a favorite memory, but it certainly was memorable: getting stranded on the mrt, and having to walk on the tracks in the rain one day before my birthday last year.
8. hiking in mcritchie reservoir with marlon and kissing in the rain among the treetops. haay. i miss marlon.
9. the heng keng junket, when ocean park was one big puddle.
10. oh and speaking of puddles, how can i forget? the glee club kiddies (me, pia, maggie, jett, leo, joshua, tor, jonel and gideon) sang for a wedding at caleruega, and it rained really hard on the way home. josh was driving his fx, with all of us crammed inside.

tor: "watch out for that poodle!"

josh, swerving to avoid the poor pup: "what poodle? where?!"

when we realized tor meant "puddle", we all collapsed into "poodles" of laughter.