leeflailmarch

While everybody else is either inside their homes preparing for media noche or outside destroying their eardrums by adding to the cacophony in the streets, I'm in my bedroom thanking God for the genius that are snug earbuds and getting ready to sleep because I have work early tomorrow morning. Before I turn in, however, let me join the public in doing one thing—making a recap of my 2012.

1 PLAY
My best friend since high school resigning from work might have been the best and worst thing that happened to me in the office. Worst, because although it's true for some people that having close friends as officemates can put a strain on their friendship, it wasn't the case for Maricris and me, and so naturally I was devastated when she had to leave. But best, too, because when she left I got to know her cousin Hannah and former teammates Cams and Jade more. Maybe I served as their replacement for Maricris, or maybe they served as my replacement for her, but either way, we had a lot of great times together, stuffing our faces at Bonchon, jogging, getting drunk on milk tea and coffee, seeing movies, singing karaoke and a cappella, and most of all, laughing our hearts out. Through Cams I got to know Claire Yvette, whom I like to call Clara, who works as a theater production assistant and generously gives away free tickets to friends. I was able to watch God of Carnage, which starred Lea Salonga among other brilliant actors, with Cams for free at the RCBC Theater. Amusing play.

9 TV SERIES
I surprised myself this year by taking part in activities that only my outgoing friends do. I continued going on dates with my online buddy Kojiwhom I've known for a while and we went to several exhibits, most notable of which was The Myth of the Human Body. I went to drink and party at clubs like Republiq in Pasay, Libations in Greenhills (where I teamed up with Tim, an officemate, for a few rounds of beer pong against two strange guys we met there) and Skye in Taguig. I went to two concerts: Katy Perry's and BIG BANG's. I even joined a couple of college friends at a beach resort called Acuaverde in Laiya, Batangas. I'm not a fan of beaches or any place that with noise or loud music renders conversations useless, and as expected of an old-fashioned introvert like me, I always revert to my default programming of just wanting to stay in my room, reading a book or watching TV series or movies on my laptop. This year I discovered 9 TV series—Community, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Revenge, 2 Broke Girls, Awkward and Sherlock—and the fact that I downloaded all of their episodes to date and watched them each night without much care that I have to leave for work early the next morning should tell you how good these shows are.

7 NEW-HIRE CLASSES
Our department at work, as I have mentioned in a previous blog, has never had to hire so many employees as we've had this year, and I am glad to have somehow become an instrument in molding these new colleagues of mine as part of our Training and Recruitment team. I began in April (unending thanks to Tata for making it happen) merely updating and tweaking our databases, and now with an expanded role I get to be involved in our new employees' development. I'm not the best at what I do yet, that's for sure, but I'm striving to improve and I'm enjoying every step of the learning process.

3 BOSSES
The team listing in our department was shuffled early this year and I initially dreaded transferring under the management of Agnes, whose name calls to mind unpleasant memories for most, but whose heart, I later found out, was golden and whose skills and knowledge only few can match. She eventually had to leave the company fighting for what she knew was right, and my team misses her even now. Robert replaced Agnes, and Ninno is who I report to for Training and Recruitment. (Titles removed for smoother narration, although of course I address them with their respective titles at work.) I'd share good things about them but since they're still my current bosses, that might just be deemed as sucking up (though they might not even get to read this at all). Let me say this, however: Work can be hell, and it usually is for those who (A) don't like what they're doing and (B) have difficult bosses. I am happy to report that both statements don't apply to me.

5 BAGUIO TRIPS
A few things I can remember from our Psychiatric Nursing lectures back in college and one of them is dissociative fugue. Also called a psychogenic fugue, it's a type of amnesia where one does not only have an inability to recall his memories and personality but also has the urge to travel or wander and even sometimes establishes a completely new identity. Minus the amnesia bit, I discovered I have this tendency to suddenly want to go on a "fugue state" especially when I am too emotionally burdened. And so it was in January after Someone's Revelation To Me That Changed It All (the details of which are to be either elaborated upon in my biography or carried to my grave) that I sought solace in Baguio. The biting cold, the many twisted roads perfect for walking at nighttime, the crowd who knew nothing of me—they all served to make me immediately consider Baguio my second home when I revisited it as a young adult in 2010, and those same things welcomed me with open arms when I returned in January. And again when I came back during the Panagbenga Festival. And again three other visits later, two of which I was already accompanied by friends.

I never really fully understood Kelly Clarkson's song "Sober," even when I've already listened to it more than a thousand times, until I watched a YouTube video of her performing it in 2011 at her Sony-sponsored concert at the Troubadour. She shared how she had written the song off a line from a friend who said to "pick the weeds and keep the flowers." It was probably that one line in the song that didn't make sense to me until she explained that it was about "[picking] the people out of your life that are cancerous for you and [going] with the good ones." That was a lesson I had to learn the hard way this year, actually. I don't always have to be the one working on making my friendship with someone grow—most of the time I just have to let it flourish. It may not often do so or at all, but either way I have to learn to let go especially if the relationship is doing me more harm than good.

And so there it is: 1 play, 3 bosses, 5 Baguio trips, 7 new-hire classes and 9 TV series. New friends gained, old friends lost. Countless books, films, dinners, jogs, laughs and lessons, the most important of which is—as cliché as it sounds—to love myself more. That's my New Year's resolution for 2013.

My friend and co-worker Pats and I climb aboard the half-full jeepney and just as we get seated, a man near the entrance shouts, "Abante na! (Let's go already!)" Not a barker, apparently, but a fellow passenger. I look at those around me and see that no one assents. In fact they seem embarrassed. They must not have been waiting as long as the man has.

"Bakit ho? (Why should we?)" asks the dude beside the driver, apparently the conductor, almost innocently.

"Because some of us have families to come home to," I want to say. "These folks have hungry mouths to feed with whatever money they were able to make for the day, primetime shows on local TV that simply cannot be missed. And I, at the very least, want to go to bed." I sum it up to, "Because you, [insert expletive here because it's more emphatic with one], are wasting our time when we could already be at home." But emphatic though that would have been, of course I say nothing.

"Bakit?" the conductor repeats, taunting the complaining man. "Pampasahero po ito. (This is a public utility vehicle.)" And the jeepney just stays put.

I imagine pummeling the conductor's face and making him unrecognizable to his family and friends. I get his point though. From a douchey conductor/driver perspective, however, a better answer to the complaining passenger might have been, "Kung nagmamadali ka, sana nag-taxi ka na lang (If you were in a hurry, you should have taken a cab)." This is a line a driver actually used on a female passenger somewhere, a friend told me. The female passenger in that story replied, "Eh kaya nga nag-jeep eh, kasi walang pang-taxi (I rode a jeepney because I can't afford a cab)," which wasn't really a redeeming retort but clearly shows the stalemate both the driver and passenger are in. Both don't have a lot of money and are barely getting by. Frugal Passenger can't very well disembark, get on a cab, roll down her window and give Douchey Driver the dirty finger as the cab drives by his jeepney. Frugal Passenger would also only be wasting her time riding another jeepney only to find out its driver is just as passenger-greedy as the previous one. Douchey Driver, on the other hand, has no other choice but to pluck out every commuter that he can find on the street to make a living. He has hungry mouths to feed at the end of the day, after all, just like Frugal Passenger. A likelier explanation, however, would be that Douchey Driver simply does not give a damn if he's wasting Frugal Passenger's time.

The douchey conductor of our jeepney, after getting no more rebuttals from the complaining passenger, looks away and resumes his job of enticing passersby with what he makes it seem like the last trip a public utility vehicle was ever going to take for the night on that route. Pats and I resume playing the role of Apathetic Frugal Passengers...and I look forward to another day of the same commuting scenario, because that's how things are going to be until I get up the nerve to study driving.

Xangsane, Ketsana, Conson and Nesat—locally, Milenyo, Ondoy, Basyang and Pedring—typhoons that ravaged most of the Philippines in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively. In September. During the week of my birthday...well, except in 2010. Fun.

I don't really remember much of the whole Milenyo incident, but everything about Ondoy is still pretty clear to me. I was almost two years into my employment with my first call center and I had just decided I wanted to spend more of my time studying Spanish than commuting to and from work, so I rented a house in Mandaluyong with my high school friend Carlo, a nurse, and a girl named Sienna, also a call center agent. My Saturday shift had just ended and I was going home for the weekend but I decided to wait for Sienna, who was also heading home, because it was already pouring and she didn't have an umbrella. The bus we rode to Baclaran unfortunately got stranded at Gil Puyat Ave. corner Chino Roces Ave. because of the flood, but between the sight of people trying to wade through the muddy waters outside and Frank Peretti's fantastic novel Piercing the Darkness which I had brought with me, I wasn't so bored. Within an hour or so, I was able to finish the book and take a nap. When I woke up to find we were still at Magallanes Interchange, I agreed with Sienna that we should just stop wasting time trying to go home and just return to our rented house.



I let Sienna go ahead by MRT at the Magallanes station because the car for women and the elderly was fairly empty, and we couldn't have possibly succeeded in getting ourselves inside any of the other cars had we insisted on going together. I texted my dad to pick me up where I was but he eventually relayed news that he couldn't get through the flood to come get me. I rode a bus to Mandaluyong and arrived at our rented house to find that there was no electricity. It was my dad's birthday and the following day was mine, and thankfully I was able to finally get home then...to a house that had just gotten flooded.

Basyang of 2010 wasn't so bad and it didn't really occur on my birthday. It was mostly strong winds, which resulted in a lot of fallen tree parts and missing roofs, but the rain didn't really cause any serious flooding...in the areas I had to go to daily, at least. It was bad enough, however, to cause me and my friend one early morning to abandon our plans of going to work together as there were no buses leaving for Baclaran. We simply decided to wait out the storm at my friend's place, and that was the moment we would later refer to when we talk between ourselves as the night we became a couple. The whole shebang's deserving of its own blog post, maybe even a romance novel, but two months thence, just a week before my birthday, the love story, inevitably and unfortunately, came to an end. My first serious relationship, over in such a short time, resulting in my very first almost paralyzing heartbreak. The whole romantic shiz might not be for me after all.

Pedring wasn't so bad either but though my birthday this year fell on my rest day, I still wasn't able to celebrate by going out with friends. I was home alone with my books and my mom who baked me a blueberry cheesecake just to cheer me up.

In less catastrophic news, Zuckerberg and his team of geeks recently updated Facebook. Now you have a news feed within your news feed and you can tweak more settings for your privacy. The way these updates usually go, some privacy settings automatically get changed, and for me one of them was that posting to my wall got disabled. Two weeks earlier I had changed my birthday on my profile because I didn't want my Facebook wall flooded by birthday greetings from people who wouldn't normally greet me without the social networking site reminding them, and this along with my wall being inaccessible filtered the greetings from my friends. Those who really knew my birthday sent me their greetings through other modes of communication. People eventually started posting on my wall after I had enabled the option though. In hindsight, it could have very well been the perfect Let's-See-Who-Actually-Remembers-My-Birthday-Without-Help-From-Facebook experiment.

More interesting than the results of the accidental experiment, however, was how Facebook recognized the birthday greetings on my Facebook wall as posts about "Hehe people," which is "an ethnic and linguistic group based in Iringa region in south-central Tanzania, speaking the Bantu Hehe language." What the heck.


So...happy birthday to me. Hehe.

There are different kinds of people you may encounter at the cinema. There are those who like to put their feet up on the seats in front of them, regardless of whether the seats are occupied or not. There are those who can't seem to keep their mobile phones inside their pockets or bags for longer than 10 minutes. There are those who dare to bring half a dozen kids inside but can't control them when they get rowdy. And there are those who, like a special edition DVD, provide a play-by-play commentary of the film, pointing out things that might otherwise be unnoticeable to their friends with substandard intelligence, even giving a bunch of spoilers to brag about having read the book on which the movie was based.

There are those who would react violently when faced with the aforementioned behaviors. There are those would simply transfer seats to avoid confrontation... And then there are those who would long-sufferingly endure such behaviors because the movie has already started and few seats are left for the picking.

Julia, Aurea and I were in that last category the Saturday we went to SM Bacoor to watch part two of the final Harry Potter movie. We only chose the place because instead of our entire high school gang, only the three of us were going and we didn't want to plan our trip too carefully lest it not push through at all (we all know spontaneous trips have a higher chance of actually happening than very carefully planned ones). We like the mall because of its accessibility, but not having gone there in a while, we totally forgot the different levels of uncouth behavior one may encounter in it.

Several of those different levels came that Saturday in the person of someone I'll simply refer to as Girlie. My friends and I entered the cinema a tad late, but we don't remember Girlie being behind us already at that time nor can we recall when she came in. Three minutes of having her behind us, however, was enough to inspire us to conceive several methods of disrupting her cephalocaudal orientation.

Girlie wouldn't shut up.

"Bakit mo ako tinatawanan? Kasi magugulatin ako? (Why are you laughing at me? Because I'm jumpy?)" said Girlie, despite the absence of the faintest chortle from her companion, during the Gringotts scenes with the dragon and that one where the Gemino curse on Helga Hufflepuff's cup is activated by Harry's touch. We almost started thinking Girlie was actually alone and mentally challenged and was only speaking to herself.

"Paano nga ba siya namatay? (Tell me again how he died?)" asked Girlie about Dumbledore. Just one of the many foolish questions she asked about the movie...when she wasn't talking about herself and her jumpiness and her excitement over the movie...which she seemed to know so little about. We doubted she even knew Dumbledore's name. Or Voldemort's. Or Harry's, Ron's or Hermione's. We doubted she had seen part one of the film. Or any of the films in the series at all. A smart moviegoer seeing part two of any film would either research in advance or just shut up during the movie itself so she can actually follow the storyline. Obviously, Girlie hadn't done the former and showed no signs whatsoever of doing the latter.

Halfway through the movie, Girlie, thankfully, left her seat to pee. We along with other humans in a 5-meter radius heard her when she told her companion. That was the last we would hear from her for quite some time.

The battle between Hogwarts and Voldemort's army had just concluded when I noticed a flustered girl trying to find her seat using her cell phone as a flashlight three or four rows before us. I paid her no mind but moments later Julia whispered to me that it was Girlie. She was gone for too long she had apparently forgotten where her seat was. We weren't sure if she had met with someone outside the cinema or had some tummy trouble, but she admitted to neither when she spoke again with her companion.

"Ayyy, may anak na sila? (Oh, they have kids already?)" asked Girlie during the final scene while she was returning to her seat and I was forcing a tear out of my eye (Transformers: Dark of the Moon was more moving, Julia said, and I agreed though I haven't even seen the movie.)

"OBVIOUSLY!" I remarked before I could stop myself. Julia and, I could vaguely remember, a couple of others behind me laughed. Girlie, however, didn't seem to notice.

We found out later on that Girlie's companion was a dude. We doubted he was a friend or a relative of some sort, because if he were either, he would have found a way to make her tone it down at the least. Maybe it was their first date and had it not been simply in his nature to be polite he would have made a run for it already. Or maybe he was actually the reason the girl was gone from the cinema for almost an hour—a phone call to a friend to call Girlie and pretend he was a family member who had met an accident, or maybe a hint of laxative in their merienda. Whatever the case may have been, bless his soul. Most Patient-Slash-Cleverest Date meets Thickest, Most Annoying Moviegoer.

I have renewed sympathy for cardholders I speak with at work reporting the loss of their credit cards, for today I lost my Nokia N97 mini. Or it was stolen from me, I should say. Pulled out of my bag through a jagged tear made by some punk desperate for money.

It was about two in the morning on my second ride towards home, on a bus headed to Baclaran. I woke up with the vague sense that I had reached my destination, and I was right, except that the bus had changed directions and was already headed north. I got off the place where a year ago I used to wait for buses headed to Ayala. That struck me as odd. I always woke up right before reaching Baclaran, with a few other fellow passengers disembarking at the place. This morning I woke up on the bus alone, except for the bus driver who was yelling that we were already there, the conductor, and a dark-skinned man wearing a gray hooded jacket and with teeth that were spaced at least an inch apart (no kidding, I saw them earlier when he yawned for about five minutes while craning his neck and gazing around). I suspect it was the dark-skinned man who stole my phone; he already seemed very suspicious the first time I saw him. Or maybe it was just his looks that made him seem like a criminal... Or maybe he was not alone but in cahoots with the driver and conductor—how else would I have been left napping inside that well-lit bus, just three or four rows from the front, alone, and then only allowed to wake up after they had made a turn to start heading north?

The first hint I got that my phone was missing was when I got off the bus and finally made sense of which side of the road I was in. I noticed there was no music playing in my ears despite my earphones being on. I thought perhaps they had just been disconnected from my phone, but when that happens there's always loud music issuing from my phone's loudspeakers that immediately prompts me to reconnect the accessory to the gadget. There was no loud music coming from inside my bag. I fumbled through my bag's contents—twice, thrice, four times. Jessica Zafra's Twisted Travels, automatic folding umbrella, Starbucks tumbler, newly bought antiperspirant body spray, and small bag with toothbrush, toothpaste and other stuff I might need in case I suddenly have to sleep over somewhere.

No phone.

When it finally hit me that my phone was gone, I muttered to myself, "They got it from my perfectly secure bag! Impressive!" Then I found the tear in my bag and my admiration for the thief's skills was immediately lost.

I thought my wallet had also been taken from me, but thank God it wasn't. My coin purse was, though, along with a tiny mirror I always carry in my bag for checking my braces after I had eaten. When I couldn't find my Tic Tacs, I almost made up my mind that it was truly the dude with the hood who was the culprit, and that his periodontal situation was bigger than just his having battlement-like teeth. I found the Tic Tacs later when I emptied my bag of all its contents. I still think he's the culprit.

I had a feeling something might be wrong with the bus I rode the minute I took the second three-seater from the back. There were no two-seaters left but even when a couple had emptied by the time we were driving along Ayala, I still transferred to a three-seater near the front (I was trying to avoid sitting behind or in front of my suspect who was on a two-seater right in the middle). I also found it weird when the bus actually lingered in place somewhere for about five minutes. I know jeepneys and mini-buses in the Cavite-Zapote route like to treat waiting sheds like terminals, but not big air-conditioned buses who have already set off for their destination.

I should have listened to my gut and continued reading Zafra's book after I transferred seats. I always only sleep when I'm on a two-seater, with my arms hugging my bag protectively and my fingers locked together. I wasn't really that sleepy that time but it was so cold I had to cross my arms over my chest, leaving my bag unprotected, and eventually I dozed off. The one time I deviate from my usual bus behavior turns out to be the first time in my 23 years of existence I get thieved from. Awesome.

I wonder how the thief, whose testicles will soon shrivel to nothingness, was able to take my phone without alerting everyone to his crime. 2NE1's "Ugly" or "Hate You" (how appropriate, both of them) would have boomed loudly from the speakers once he unplugged my earphones. I don't really care much for my phone, however, because we've already had a good run. But my bag... I haven't even used my bag for more than 3 weeks and now I can't use it at all, not because of a broken zipper or a ripped lining but because of an unsightly cut on the exterior that screams, "I didn't listen to my mom when she told me never to sleep on the early morning commute home!" Thank goodness, my mom didn't give me an "I told you so" sermon when she heard the news; she was so sympathetic to my plight because she knows I work hard to buy things for myself. My dad, on the other hand, who was first to hear the news from me, gave me something like an "I told you so" sermon, though it was summed up in a snicker. I'm used to him being like that.

It's funny how I've long been complaining about my phone (or Symbian OS) being chock full of bugs and my fairly new earphones being dysfunctional so soon (it's always the left one that dies first; is it just with me or is that simply how it is with all earphones?). It's also quite hilarious how just before we left the office earlier my co-worker Rich and I got to talking about how we two weren't as motivated to work as most others because we didn't have mouths to feed or siblings to get through college. Now my glitch-y phone has been stolen from me so I have absolutely no more use for my partially working earphones, and buying a new phone and really saving money to finally move to a place nearer the office or maybe buy a car are a new motivation to survive at work.

OK, so now which phone to buy?

Three months after my last blog post, I return with exciting news: I FINALLY HAVE A JOB. No more making origami cranes and devouring all that's sweet from the fridge while watching anime. What I do now is commute for two hours to get to the office, talk to people over the phone about their credit card concerns, and commute for four more hours to get home. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that I'm no longer a contributor to the country's unemployment rate, but there was a time I thought people who can't ever leave the call center industry were pathetic, and now I seem to have officially become one of them. Sure, it's a bit different with my current job because I was hired directly by a prestigious international bank, not a BPO company, but I'm still tethered to the phone.

Frustrating as the tediousness of the daily commute and the job itself already is, something I find almost as equally taxing is the fact that people all around me quickly come and go. A team-mate can just disappear after getting his first month's salary, never to be heard from again. A friend can suddenly decide he wants to quit because of all the stress, or get sacked because of something illegal that he did. Team members across a department can get reshuffled, and your extremely nice boss can move up the career ladder and away from you because he's been doing so great a job at handling your team. All that's a given with any company, but it happens at call centers at a much more rapid pace than anywhere else. And for a person who very slowly works up the courage to trust those he's surrounded with, that can be tough. I only have two choices: be emotionally shutdown or what the hell, get attached and make the most of the time I have with my co-workers. I'm not sure if it was my being apathetic that made me last almost two years at my first call center, because afterward I decided to let my guard down just a tiny bit and I didn't last more than half a year at my second and third call centers. It's been fun though, despite having had to go through some heartaches, and now at my fourth call center, even though I initially decided to be emotionally dead, I'm choosing to put myself out there again.

Four Wednesdays ago, I chose not to go home with my dad by car because my team-mates and I were going out for dinner after work with our beautiful trainer Tata. We had work the following day, but there I was at Yellowcab laughing hysterically at my team-mates' funny stories, not minding the fact that everyone but me can get home in less than an hour, coming all the way from Eastwood.

Having eaten all the pizza, pasta and chicken our tummies can take, we all decided to head home, and during the cab ride to the train station, one of the co-workers I was with got to talking about a girlfriend she's meeting in Cubao to lend some money to. They've been friends since grade school and they were quite close, but come college she started only coming to my co-worker whenever she needed financial help. In almost every company I've been with, I've met people who were like that. Sometimes, however, I couldn't help but wonder if for those others who don't use you for your money you're only valuable for the meantime because of your convenient companionship. Do they stick with you only because you're there? Do you only get to play with them because you're the toy that was handed to them by their parents? If after you part ways for a while they still want to be part of your life, then maybe, thankfully, the answer is no.

Quite a few times already I've been told I was melodramatic by the guy friend I'm closest with at work. My new team leader told me just last Friday that he approved of my confidence and fast pace of speaking over the phone but that he thought I was too emotional. I wanted to clarify that last point with him because I didn't think I was like that, but I simply concluded that perhaps my melancholic personality does have the tendency to shine through even when I'm talking to clients.

I've always been a forever-and-ever kind of guy when it comes to relationships, romantic or otherwise. I find it cruel, not to mention exhausting, rapidly moving on from one relationship to another, and there are people out there who seem to have made a lifestyle out of doing just that. That's why it's difficult for me to trust people, because when I trust, I trust fully. But maybe these people who shuffle through relationships like they were just a pack of cards are actually doing it right. It can be as equally exhausting at times only keeping to a small circle of really close friends, that's why these people spread out their social energies toward more acquaintances. A scatter shot instead of a bull's eye. Going to multiple stores instead of frequenting only one. Or maybe neither I nor they have got this friendship thing pegged and, just like in everything else, a balance simply has to be maintained. We do all shop at many stores and appreciate many different brands, but we also all have favorites, don't we?


That Wednesday night we dined at Yellowcab, I got home at 11 and slept for only three hours before I had to return to work the next day. But I had a great time with my co-workers. Right now, though we're all in separate teams already, we still try to go out once in a while. Starting tomorrow we'll all be having different schedules. Maybe nothing between us has to change. Or maybe this is the parting of ways which will determine who among us actually wants to stay in each other's lives... Or maybe I'm just being too emotional again. One thing I should always remind myself is that in my cab ride toward my destination there will always be people who are in merely for a couple of blocks. I have to try to enjoy being with such people, because though they may only be passersby in my life, we may never cross each other's paths again. But there will always be that handful of friends whom I know and who know me inside and out. And they will surely be there for the entire ride.

Baguio's Panagbenga festival was last month but I couldn't go because I still couldn't file a vacation leave at work. When for the fourth time in two months I got sick and lost my voice again, I was convinced the signs could no longer be ignored so I submitted my resignation letter to my boss, citing my recent bouts of illness as the reason. An acquaintance from my high school days who has never been to Baguio reconnected with me afterward. One thing led to another, and not being one to turn down invitations to quests that promise much adventure—and being of the opinion that spontaneous trips have a higher rate of pushing through than well-planned ones—I found myself, with just a light jacket and not even a spare shirt in my everyday messenger bag, hypothermic after alighting at the bus station in The City of Pines.

It was my fourth time visiting Baguio. The first time was with my family, but like most events in my childhood I could only remember a few things about the visit such as renting a room at a house as transient occupants, and buying walis tambo and lots of strawberries. The second and third time were also spontaneous trips. I really fell in love with the city on my second visit. Among other things, I liked that there's no need for air-conditioning or a refrigerator, and that it's the only place in this tropical country where I don't cringe at the sight of people wearing fur.

Almost everywhere you go in Baguio, clean comfort rooms are being advertised, though you'll be charged a few coins for their use. You can walk to most places if you're not in a hurry and you're up for losing weight traversing the mountain city's streets. Alternatively, you can ride a cab, which is inexpensive. Even if you do though, if you go around even just a couple of the tourist spots The City of Pines has to offer, you'll still do a lot of walking up and down stairs and inclined pathways.

At Burnham Park, I had my companion Gerard take a photo of me under a Baguio City Library sign (nerd). He didn't want to go biking or rollerskating, and neither did I because those were two skills I failed to learn as a child.


At the Botanical Garden, I met with Igorots who knew to do the peace sign when a camera was pointed at them. I unwittingly touched statues at inappropriate places, and with my companion attempted but failed to get to the other end of the pitch-black tunnel past the Japanese-Filipino Peace Memorial Park torii.


There was a beautiful brown horse that, from the time we entered the Botanical Garden till we exited, just stood in place, unmoving, while a man invited passersby to have photos taken with it for a small fee. The man and the poor horse were, alas, ignored the whole while.

I don't know if people simply liked having their photographs taken with equine animals on higher ground better, but when we went to Mines View Park, the white horse there seemed to fare better than its brown cousin at the Botanical Garden. At the highest area of the park, I tried to climb a steep rock with a tree growing on top of it but I could only go halfway because I didn't want to miss a step and plummet to my death. Gazing around at the observation deck, we didn't need to use binoculars because the view was beautiful as it was. Worth noting were the half a dozen plain white rectangular boxes with crosses on them which I spotted at the backyard of a house just below. I could only assume they were coffins.


Mines View Park had a wishing well that wasn't interesting in itself but had a sign above it from which we learned that, in decades past, there was once a group of children who from the sides of cliffs would expertly catch with bamboo poles the coins that tourists would throw at them. If a kid catches the coin you throw, your wish is sure to come true because the kid shares with you in the act of wishing. The last time that was done, according to the sign, was in the 1990s.

We browsed through all the knitted items sold by the shops on the way to the Good Shepherd Convent nearby, but when we finally got to our destination we didn't think we'd find anything exciting so we just went back. There were lots of food and souvenir items being sold in and around Mines View Park so that was where we bought our pasalubong. I tried to introduce my companion to the taste of odoks (one-day old chicks deep-fried in oil and soaked in vinegar) but he refused, going instead for inihaw na pusit (grilled skewered squid, also soaked in vinegar). I and the girl who sold him two kilos of fresh strawberries had to agree that he was a wuss.


We weren't able to visit all the tourist destinations in Baguio and the strawberry farm in La Trinidad, Benguet—we only had one day, after all. But with all the walking we did I went home two or three pounds lighter. That, the souvenirs I bought for myself (new additions to my arsenal), and simply having revisited one of my favorite cities in the Philippines were good enough for me.

Let's admit it, kids can be irritating. There are kids who show no respect to the elderly but speak profanity so fluently you'd think they took swearword enunciation lessons from an adult—a heartbreaking thing to witness. Those who torture stray dogs. Those who throw their garbage out the bus window and spit and stick gum everywhere. But exceptional ones come along once in a while. Those who are precocious both in intelligence and manners. Someone like the boy I talked to on the phone three days ago at work.

"Hi, my name is Corey. I was the one you were talking to earlier," he said after I had delivered my opening spiel.

"I don't believe we've talked yet," I replied, shocked because I've never talked to a child needing tech support, and when I do it's always a prank caller pretending to be one. I failed to catch his name so I had to ask for it once more.

"Corey," he politely repeated. Silly me, I still didn't get it, but I wasn't about to ask again. He couldn't provide me with a ticket number from the previous call, so I proceeded to get his phone number to pull up his account. He didn't know their home phone number's area code, however, so he had to get his mom to tell me.

The account the phone number search returned was under the name of Tracey, Corey's mom. After verifying the product information of the notebook concerned, Tracey handed the phone back to Corey. So the kid was legit, but his mother was letting the boy do all the talking on the phone. Tracey was either lazy or trying to punish Corey for causing whatever technical problem the notebook has now, I thought. Turns out the kid was simply a genius.

My 5-year old niece can switch on our living room desktop computer, navigate the Start menu, play games, and switch the computer off. Under my careful tutelage she has learned how Sunflowers, Peashooters, Wall-nuts and Planterns must be strategically placed in Plants vs. Zombies, but this boy Corey knows well enough to back up his files in one folder on his desktop and another folder in a memory stick. He knows to perform system restore—letting the computer go back to a time when it was still OK—when something software-related goes majorly wrong with his laptop. He had actually just done that to fix the Windows password issue he had previously called us about. His current issue was bringing back Microsoft Office 2010 which he uninstalled a month ago. I didn't need to give him any instructions; I only helped him make the decision to do system restore again to that point in time.


When I think of children with behavior problems I'm reminded of a 90s TV commercial encouraging viewers to set good examples for kids. It had two variations, if I recall correctly: the first one showed a school-age girl leaving the faucet running as she brushed her teeth and her little brother watched, and the second one showed an incensed father who I believe was overtaking his way through heavy traffic as his son sat in the passenger seat, observing him.

Whatever thirst for knowledge and interest in languages I have now I credit to my mom who always told me to mind my Fs and Vs and who herself loved to read so she didn't think me weird when I'd rather plop down in front of our little bookcase and peruse science and travel tomes than get out of the house and play with the neighborhood children. Whatever technical savvy I have, on the other hand, I credit to my dad who since I was little, back when the latest Windows operating system was still 3.11, had always liked tinkering with computers. He always made sure my brother and I had a fully functional computer to play games on. I usually just watched my brother play though. Games like Duke Nukem and Counter-Strike make me dizzy, and I fail at two-player games.

My parents didn't try to make me any kind of child prodigy by forcing specific talents and skills on me, and this is probably why I never mastered any musical instrument or learn to ride a bike, dribble a basketball, or eat rice with my hands. They did set good examples and let me unravel on my own, however. As a result, yeah, I've become a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm the cute Cattail in Plants vs. Zombies—I can't annihilate an entire row of zombies with an explosion or slow down and heavily damage an enemy with projectile frosted fruit, but I can throw a quick succession of sharp spikes in any direction. Indeed that's oftentimes way better than being a master of one.


Corey had borrowed a memory stick from his brother (who was in front of his own computer at the time) so he can back up 2 gigabytes worth of games before system restore did its magic and brought back Microsoft Office 2010 on his laptop. As I was completing my notes on the call and Corey was checking if his Document contents were still there, I chatted with Tracey. I found out Corey was just 10 and the brother he borrowed the memory stick from was just 9. I only learned about system restore during our technical training four months ago. I had just turned 23 then. The opportunities and possibilities kids have these days are limitless, if we can only guide them through the right path.

For Project Desensitization I went for movies I haven't seen yet with actresses famous for having roles in romcoms. I didn't watch any Jennifer Lopez though; my high school best friend Maricris had already influenced me to see most of her films. Here are the rest of the movies I watched:

Whom I started with was Julia Roberts in her 1997 film My Best Friend's Wedding, which I found deserving of being considered an all-time classic romcom. I personally think, however, that it's quite ridiculous having a mutual agreement with someone to marry him or her when you're both still unmarried at a certain age, as Julianne (Roberts) and Michael (Dermot Mulroney) did in the film. You'll most likely be that desperate if, whether you're aware of it or not, you want to please other people, i.e. your parents, siblings, amigas, or the society in general who expects you to be wed while you still have thick hair and unwrinkled skin. Do it if you want to multiply. Because that has a real deadline to it, a.k.a. your aging reproductive system.


My Best Friend's Wedding had Cameron Diaz in it and so I thought I'd watch There's Something About Mary afterward. I should have seen the classless humor coming, however, because Ben Stiller was in the movie. Now I know what that photo I've seen many times before with Cameron Diaz and a portion of her bangs standing up is all about.

Next: two chick flicks with the number 10 in their titles. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? Not so good. 10 Things I Hate About You, on the other hand? Surprisingly enjoyable. Any story with books, poetry, and characters who are mavericks will always appeal to me. Julia Stiles may have a sizable jaw but she's pretty nonetheless, and charming too, just like Heath Ledger. They had great chemistry.


Katherine Heigl was hilarious in The Ugly Truth, especially in the scene where her character Abby couldn't keep her composure at a corporate dinner because of, er, a special type of underwear Mike (Gerard Butler) character had given her. The ending where Mike and Abby fly on a hot air balloon turned me off though. I can never stand sketchy background or special effects. Either you make them look very real or don't use effects at all. I shouldn't have to go to the movies if I still have to convince myself of something to believe it. What I see should already do that automatically for me.


Something more recent: Love and Other Drugs. Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway reunite but this time Jake's character actually genuinely falls for Anne's. I saw it twice, the first time alone and the second time with one of my college best friends Mines. Three thoughts: "Very 1990s"; "Hey, I still know my pharmacology"; and, "One true sign of devotion is when your lover stays by your side even with the knowledge that you've got an incurable disease (like in A Walk to Remember and The Notebook, two of the best romance films I've ever seen)."

Two movies which are very 1800s: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Apart from the central love story of both films, they also tell of the societal role of women during that period in England, how they get passed over for an inheritance because there's another male offspring albeit one from a previous marriage, and also how they can instantly become wealthy by being wed to a man which they may not necessarily love. Not so different these days, when you come to think of it, also in the way family and relatives like to eavesdrop and gossip. I wish women today would know etiquette like they did back then though.

I've never read any of Jane Austen's works because if I couldn't stand most romance movies which only run for an hour and a half, how can I possibly stand to read a romance novel for double that number of hours or more. But I know that Jane Austen's works are good and Emma Thompson's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility for the big screen only made that story better, I'm sure. Even her performance as Elinor Dashwood was brilliant, as well as, of course, Kate Winslet's as Elinor's sister Marianne.


Pride and Prejudice was, as one of its reviews stated, absolutely glorious. I couldn't think of another adjective for it.


A movie with a tangle of issues concerning time: The Time Traveler's Wife. I am confused by how that ending (I shall not spoil it) is possible if Eric Bana's character had already died. But putting that aside, two thoughts: "Don't joke about the time traveler passing out even if it's to express how beautiful his wife is"; and, "One true sign of devotion is when your lover marries you even when you're inclined to disappear at the most unexpected of times."


And lastly, Windstruck, the only Korean romcom I watched because it was recommended to me before by an old friend. Thank goodness for freeware like VLC Media Player which can speed up a video up to 3 times without skipping scenes. 2 long hours! And the dude dies not halfway through the movie as in P.S. I Love You! There were funny scenes, however, and the ending was heart-wrenching, which kind of made up for the rest of the film.


I'm not ashamed to say I cried watching most of these films I selected for Project Desensitization, even the romcoms. Because it's by crying that we determine how into a romance or drama film we are. We either ache for the characters when they yearn for something, or we ache for ourselves because we have no such something to yearn for. And that's primarily why we watch movies anyway. To have some form of escape, to feel emotions we don't normally feel, to be able to live vicariously through the characters onscreen. Because whether we admit it or not, sometimes our lives just aren't that eventful or interesting.

Big sigh of relief, all that's over now. I already met my quota of romance films for possibly the rest of my life (there were too much, hence the delay in my blog posts about them!). But I'm not sure I was desensitized at all by them. I may have only ascertained that no matter how cynical I may be about love most of the time, I still am a romantic aching for himself and yearning for someone.

It might be my restless spirit which refuses to be contained in one place and by a routine, or it might be the Philippine climate, but I have always wanted to be constantly traveling to a different country. We all long to acquire what someone else seems to be enjoying. In the same way that Asians, especially Filipinos (and not just women anymore), strive to get fairer skin whilst Caucasians want to become tan, we people from the East long to experience living in the West and vice versa, even if it's just once in our lives. And all the better if while in a foreign city we get to find love.

Before Sunrise shows exactly how that might go. American boy Jesse (Ethan Hawke) strikes up a conversation with French girl Céline (Julie Delpy) on a train from Budapest and has the crazy idea of asking her to delay her return to Paris so she can roam around in Vienna with him before his morning flight back to the States. Céline says yes as she has enjoyed talking with him. They don't do anything fancy in Vienna, just lots of walking and talking. Their conversations are devoid of inhibition, however, because they know their time together in that strange city is limited. They become lovers, although in their hearts they're not sure how they can continue being so. In the end, without exchanging numbers or even full names, they make a promise to meet each other exactly six months from that day at the same Vienna train station.


Before Sunset is Before Sunrise's sequel that takes place nine years later in Paris. No, they did not meet six months from that fateful first acquaintance and they are very frustrated about it. There is the same combination of spontaneity and detachment from the world and again in less than a day they do lots of walking and stream-of-consciousness talking.


The ending of Before Sunset is left to the viewer's imagination. While dancing to a Nina Simone record in her apartment, Céline tells Jesse who's sitting on her couch that he's going to miss his flight. In response, Jesse fidgets with his wedding ring, contemplating his decision, and says, "I know." Ironic how nine years earlier Jesse convinced Céline to go with him by telling her she'll at least have a memory to look back on if she finds herself unhappy with her marriage one day.

Paris may be a tad overrated but there's no denying the beauty of the place or of the idea of falling in love in it. Paris, je t'aime tells different stories of love in the form of 18 short films, each set in a different arrondissement (district) of the city. Although they are all as varied in style as can be because of their unique directors, through well-shot transition sequences and some recurring characters they blend seamlessly together into one portmanteau film that showcases why Paris indeed is known as the City of Love.


Paris, je t'aime is the first episode in the Cities of Love franchise created by Emmanuel Benbihy. It was followed by New York, I Love You which, although shorter and with only eleven stories and despite using the characters instead of shots of the city for transition, somehow fails to tie everything in the end. The whole is definitely not greater than the sum of its parts, but some of the short films are still masterpieces in themselves, such as the ones with Maggie Q, Natalie Portman, Orlando Bloom, and Shia LaBeouf in them, and the story of Abe and Mitzie, the elderly couple celebrating their 63rd anniversary at Coney Island.


Rio, Shanghai, and Jerusalem are next in the Cities of Love series, with Rio, Eu Te Amo already in the works. A similarly structured film called Moscow, I Love You was released in Russia last year. I wonder why with the Filipino's fondness of adapting foreign movies and TV series something called Manila, I Love You or Maynila, Mahal Kita has not been created yet. I've only ever made short videos for uploading to YouTube (amateur director), but writing and directing for a love-themed anthology film would surely make for an interesting experience...if I could be objective enough.

Back in college, when I'd get bored out of my mind in my dorm room and I had some money saved up, I'd usually head to SM Dasmariñas to window-shop. Books didn't exert a strong magnetic force toward me yet, so what I often ended up buying, if I did decide to spend any cash, were VCDs. During one of my visits to Odyssey I chanced upon Love Actually, and being a fan of Keira Knightley and finding the plot summary interesting, I purchased it. Since then it has been one of my favorite films and just two years ago I began a tradition of watching it every Christmas.

What I like best about Love Actually, apart from Emma Thompson's outstanding performance throughout the film and the scene where Mark (Andrew Lincoln) confesses his hopeless devotion to Juliet (Keira Knightley), is it shows different pictures of affection—grade school infatuation, office romance, love between siblings, love for the departed, fatherly love, marriage, love for country, and love that crosses language barriers. Not all of these pictures are beautiful, however, and the film is not ashamed to slap you in the face and scream, "There isn't always a happy ending, especially in love!" yet it is quick to encourage that despite whatever undesirable elements of the picture there are, "love actually is [still] all around."


You may have thought it, so let me assure you: watching a romance film all alone on Christmas Day is not as tragic as it seems. Or at least not as tragic as watching dozens of romance films to desensitize one's self in preparation for all one's eyes might encounter in public and in the media on Valentine's Day. Speaking of which, look, another ensemble romcom named after a popular holiday!


Valentine's Day received a lot of bad reviews despite its box office success. But I have no complaints, except that perhaps it was too long for a romantic comedy. Still, the episodic plot served to satisfy my attention span. And that many actors is no problem with me, as long as they portray their roles well. Honestly, how can people stand two hours of a story revolving only around one couple?

Here's another ensemble romcom: He's Just Not That Into You. It also slaps you in the face, but this time with less subtlety because it is not associated with a holiday that should have everyone feeling good about themselves, and this time with the reality that not all the consoling words people tell you after you've gotten your heart broken are helpful. That cute boy in school isn't picking on you because he secretly likes you. The guy you just had a date with last night isn't calling you because he wants to avoid seeming desperate. Consider the possibility the movie title itself presents: he simply might not be that into you (softened for the easily offended). "Expect the worst," as George Lopez's character said in Valentine's Day. At least if something good happens, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Makes sense.


I hear they're creating a follow-up to Valentine's Day for next year. Guess what it is. New Year's Eve. Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel reportedly will still be part of the cast, but not to reprise their previous roles. Almost all popular holidays have an ensemble romantic comedy occurring around them now. Will New Year's Eve become a box office hit just like Valentine's Day? Will it receive mostly negative reviews from critiques despite its success just like its predecessor did? Will they also make an ensemble romance film for Halloween? We shall find out in a year or two.

So far I've only watched two films by Wong Kar Wai, which are In The Mood For Love and My Blueberry Nights, but I think he does very well at making spectacular artworks out of the simplest stories.


In The Mood for Love shows the development of a love relationship between next-door neighbors. Each has a spouse who's always away at work and who the protagonists think are actually involved with each other. The everyday scenes such as going to the noodle stall and eating alone are drawn out to the point that they almost drag, but only to say, "This is our everyday situation. Surely you can understand how this thing between us came to be."


The relationship that forms between them, however, despite everything, is platonic. The female protagonist declares at one point, "We will never be like them!" while she and the male protagonist speculate about their spouses' offscreen love affair. Putting yourself in either of their shoes, you will most likely find it hard to restrain yourself. Which is why you can't help but feel sadness and regret for them. And, at the same time, respect.


Notice how a lot of the shots in the movie were taken from behind objects such as hanging clothes, window grills, and bars. You really feel like you're spying on the couple. The film was supposed to have been titled, appropriately, Secrets, but Cannes encouraged that Wong change it. And so he did to a song he had been listening to—Bryan Ferry's cover of "I'm in the Mood for Love."

Now when you hear the title My Blueberry Nights, you immediately think, "Mmm, food." And it's not just the blueberry pie Jeremy (Jude Law) shares with Elizabeth (Norah Jones) which you find delicious. It's the ambiance of the film itself.


But perhaps Wong thought that 90 minutes for his first English feature film, though already shorter than the average American motion picture, would be too tedious for the American audience with a generous helping of ambiance. The transition between the different chapters of Elizabeth's life far away from the sweet Englishman who consoled her in his cafe with dessert and stories about keys and doors seems too abrupt. The scenes say, "Here's the part where Elizabeth works two jobs in Memphis and meets a drunkard and his estranged wife. And moving on, here's the part where she has a chance encounter in Nevada with a gambler named Leslie."


Yet through all those chapters, despite how the characters of David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman made Elizabeth's life eventful and interesting, the film showed not in so many words how lonely Elizabeth was away from Jeremy. Sending him postcards with updates on her activities (though not of her whereabouts) wouldn't do anymore. So being more sure of herself and having finally purchased the car she had been saving up for, she returns to the cafe where everything began. She discovers the spot in the counter where she had always sat reserved for her all along by Jeremy. And that final kiss interspersed with close-up shots of cream dripping down a blueberry pie—a sweet ending to a delicious story. "Mmm, food."

I have a gay friend whom I always ride the mini-bus with from work, who when he sees young doe-eyed couples walking by hand-in-hand and he's feeling extra crazy shouts at them, "Magbe-break din kayo! (Your relationship won't last forever!)". I don't think he's just being bitter when he does that because he was still in a relationship the first time he did that with me and our other co-workers. But I think that says a lot about people and their perspective on relationships: You can only be so idealistic and hopeful before you've actually gone through your first real breakup. The one that really hurts. The one with that person whom you thought you'd spend foreverandallthatgoodstuff with. Usually the very first one.

It's already February and that dreaded holiday that makes establishments spew hearts, cupids and roses is fast approaching. Seven months ago I had my first real relationship, and two months later my first real breakup. I don't regret anything (the story is actually quite worthy of being turned into a novel or film) but I'd like to get back to my old cynical-about-love self already. That guy always had his guard up. Though he missed out on romance a lot, at least his heart was protected. I like that guy. And I'd like to become him again to protect whatever pieces remain of my heart.

The great thing about being sick, apart from weight loss, is all the free time. In bed, at least. So I've devised a plan of action: watch romance films all day long in bed and blog about them! I've lined up 12 movies and I've watched 8 so far. The remaining 4—maybe I'll add more—I'll watch in the following days before February 14th. This much exposure to cheesiness can be bad, sure, but come Valentine's Day I should already be immune to tender feelings begotten when sighting couples being sweet to each other in public.

This isn't torture or masochism. This is what we call desensitization.

I almost didn't watch Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind because I glanced at its movie poster and skimmed through its plot on Wikipedia and thought, Air gliders and fighter planes? Not my type of thing. I prefer supernatural flight, like the ability I have most nights in my dreams. So I put Nausicaä last in my list of Hayao Miyazaki's full-length films.

After I was done with Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro, I finally watched Nausicaä and I must say it moved me the most of all the Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films I've seen so far. It's about a precocious girl in post-apocalyptic times who unknowingly fulfills the prophecy that heals their land of the decay that had overtaken it—nature's way of fighting against the abusive humans.


Totoro is about a cute and furry supernatural being the two children protagonists encounter in the forest outside their new home. Kiki's Delivery Service is about, well, Kiki's delivery service...and finding inspiration to do the things one needs to do. They are all masterpieces, but Nausicaä doesn't send you to your childhood. It has real depth to its story: the protagonist (and giant fungi and arthropods) against the presumably environmentally irresponsible world. It's the animated adventure film equivalent of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (which I still haven't seen yet) sans the statistics, pie charts, and other numerical data.


Nausicaä currently holds a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Oh, and there are black chocobos in the film too.

It's 6:15 in the evening. Two and a half hours more and you should already be up to prepare for work. And yet you're still awake.

The neighbors are partying and there's videoke involved. No, it's not really partying; they just happen to have a videoke machine at their disposal—if they rent it or it's actually theirs you have no idea—and once in a while they like to give it a whirl. By once in a while you mean weekly. By give it a whirl you mean, with no hint of bashfulness or even self-respect, produce series of sounds that remotely resemble Bon Jovi classics, the usual "diva" songs, and local pieces about getting drunk and getting laid.

Your bedroom is just one stone fence away from the source of the noise. You think that like cars being insured, videoke machines should be registered with the names of all who are to use it. Those whose names have been registered must go through an audition with the same strictness that Simon Cowell would uphold. All other users shall be judged according to the scores provided by the machine. It shouldn't suffice anymore that one would get laughed at or teased. A strong electric shock from the mic or the like if it's anything less than 80.

One of your window shutters is smashed so that even with all of them closed you can hear the voice of a girl desperately trying to sing Daniel Bedingfield's "If You're Not The One." And after that, Yeng Constantino's "Salamat." Then Kelly Clarkson's "Because Of You." Your window shutter is smashed because last Christmas Eve you pulled at it so hard in an attempt to make the same girl's unmelodious voice as muted as possible. The irony. You slept late then, and also woke up late. Will it be the same tonight?


You think to yourself, Thank goodness I've got earphones. With earbuds too so that all noise will be shut out. So you set your music player on shuffle and since you're not yet that sleepy, you switch on your lamp, grab a book and read a few lines.

Jo Larouche is just about to embark on a journey down the subway tunnel with his fellow Order of Odd-Fish squire Ian and a boy he just met named Nick. Is Jo merely making Ian jealous by coming with a stranger? And can this boy Nick be trusted? Even with your music player's volume at its lowest, however, you can't concentrate on the story. You return the book to your bedside table, turn off your lamp and close your eyes.

Half a dozen songs later, you're still awake. During the short pause between each song, you can still hear the muted cacophony outside your house. If you push your earbuds in any deeper you'd already hit your eardrums. So you raise your music player's volume a couple of notches.

Your favorite band comes on and you try to enjoy their music. But to no avail because between verses when the harmony is just a tad softer you still hear that poor girl's desperate attempts at reaching the high notes of "Salamat." You think to yourself there are other less embarrassing ways of letting the entire neighborhood know what her favorite song is. Most other girls her age have taken to giving blow-by-blow accounts of their lives on Facebook and Twitter. Sure, it can get annoying when one of them's on your news feed or dashboard but at least it's not a menace to your hearing.

You hear your dogs bark madly at a car outside your gate. Your parents and your niece have returned from the mall. It's 7:15, if you're interpreting the hands of your wall clock correctly in the darkness. If you sleep now you'd end up being late for work again.

Sighing, you get up and notice the noise from outside seems louder now even with your music player's volume raised. Are they seriously flaunting what they think passes for singing? Sure, television and the stage are for the celebrity, while the videoke machine is for the wannabe, but that's why there are soundproof videoke rooms at malls and the shower at home. You can only think that some people simply are unaware of the condition they have that is foolishness. It's like kleptomania. Or multiple personality disorder. Or halitosis. And you suddenly understand why other people are compelled to kill people for the most ridiculous of reasons. Someone murdered his wife because he saw her smile from afar at her gorgeous ex-boyfriend. Psh, you'd literally kill—or commit arson (the recipe for homemade grenades can easily be googled)—just to get some sleep.

Three grenades, er, hours later, your surroundings are peaceful, save for the occasional barking of dogs at nothing in particular. It's time to leave for work, but you stay at home instead because you're no longer that resolved to return to work despite recovering from sickness. You spend some hours playing computer games with your niece and sleep the soonest chance you get. Your neighbors aren't likely to lay off the wailing just because it's a Sunday.

Hey. I go by so many names now that I don't know what to introduce myself as anymore. Most people know me as Myk. Among the people from the last two companies I've worked for I am known as John or Johann. Among family I am known as Mikki. You can call me either of those names, but call me Mikki and you better have proof that you're related to me by blood.

I've been blogging since 2002 when I was a high school junior, encouraged by my classmate Angela and Mitchie who was a senior and my superior in the Cadet Officers Candidate Course (COCC). Aside from the writing part, I also enjoyed the designing of my blog and even that of other friends' who also eventually got into blogging. I changed blog names and domain hosts many times until I decided on Lee Flailmarch, which is an anagram of my name, and stayed with Blogger. I've tried Tumblr, which is basically blogging and media sharing for the lazy, and I've become part of YouTube's vlogging community. But I prefer Blogger for three reasons: I have my archives here; too many people are already on Tumblr (and as a general rule I prefer to stay away from the crowd); and Blogger is to Tumblr as books are to e-books.

Though I have my archives here, I won't be making them public. I like to think of them as the scribblings of five-year-old me: not for sharing with everyone, as some of them are silly and painful just to look at, but for fond reminiscing. I might think of my future entries the same and decide to stack them in a corner of my account too. But even if they're silly and painful even just to look at, one thing I want to make sure they are now is honest.

And so I blog again.

While everybody else is either inside their homes preparing for media noche or outside destroying their eardrums by adding to the cacophony in the streets, I'm in my bedroom thanking God for the genius that are snug earbuds and getting ready to sleep because I have work early tomorrow morning. Before I turn in, however, let me join the public in doing one thing—making a recap of my 2012.

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My best friend since high school resigning from work might have been the best and worst thing that happened to me in the office. Worst, because although it's true for some people that having close friends as officemates can put a strain on their friendship, it wasn't the case for Maricris and me, and so naturally I was devastated when she had to leave. But best, too, because when she left I got to know her cousin Hannah and former teammates Cams and Jade more. Maybe I served as their replacement for Maricris, or maybe they served as my replacement for her, but either way, we had a lot of great times together, stuffing our faces at Bonchon, jogging, getting drunk on milk tea and coffee, seeing movies, singing karaoke and a cappella, and most of all, laughing our hearts out. Through Cams I got to know Claire Yvette, whom I like to call Clara, who works as a theater production assistant and generously gives away free tickets to friends. I was able to watch God of Carnage, which starred Lea Salonga among other brilliant actors, with Cams for free at the RCBC Theater. Amusing play.

9 TV SERIES
I surprised myself this year by taking part in activities that only my outgoing friends do. I continued going on dates with my online buddy Kojiwhom I've known for a while and we went to several exhibits, most notable of which was The Myth of the Human Body. I went to drink and party at clubs like Republiq in Pasay, Libations in Greenhills (where I teamed up with Tim, an officemate, for a few rounds of beer pong against two strange guys we met there) and Skye in Taguig. I went to two concerts: Katy Perry's and BIG BANG's. I even joined a couple of college friends at a beach resort called Acuaverde in Laiya, Batangas. I'm not a fan of beaches or any place that with noise or loud music renders conversations useless, and as expected of an old-fashioned introvert like me, I always revert to my default programming of just wanting to stay in my room, reading a book or watching TV series or movies on my laptop. This year I discovered 9 TV series—Community, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Revenge, 2 Broke Girls, Awkward and Sherlock—and the fact that I downloaded all of their episodes to date and watched them each night without much care that I have to leave for work early the next morning should tell you how good these shows are.

7 NEW-HIRE CLASSES
Our department at work, as I have mentioned in a previous blog, has never had to hire so many employees as we've had this year, and I am glad to have somehow become an instrument in molding these new colleagues of mine as part of our Training and Recruitment team. I began in April (unending thanks to Tata for making it happen) merely updating and tweaking our databases, and now with an expanded role I get to be involved in our new employees' development. I'm not the best at what I do yet, that's for sure, but I'm striving to improve and I'm enjoying every step of the learning process.

3 BOSSES
The team listing in our department was shuffled early this year and I initially dreaded transferring under the management of Agnes, whose name calls to mind unpleasant memories for most, but whose heart, I later found out, was golden and whose skills and knowledge only few can match. She eventually had to leave the company fighting for what she knew was right, and my team misses her even now. Robert replaced Agnes, and Ninno is who I report to for Training and Recruitment. (Titles removed for smoother narration, although of course I address them with their respective titles at work.) I'd share good things about them but since they're still my current bosses, that might just be deemed as sucking up (though they might not even get to read this at all). Let me say this, however: Work can be hell, and it usually is for those who (A) don't like what they're doing and (B) have difficult bosses. I am happy to report that both statements don't apply to me.

5 BAGUIO TRIPS
A few things I can remember from our Psychiatric Nursing lectures back in college and one of them is dissociative fugue. Also called a psychogenic fugue, it's a type of amnesia where one does not only have an inability to recall his memories and personality but also has the urge to travel or wander and even sometimes establishes a completely new identity. Minus the amnesia bit, I discovered I have this tendency to suddenly want to go on a "fugue state" especially when I am too emotionally burdened. And so it was in January after Someone's Revelation To Me That Changed It All (the details of which are to be either elaborated upon in my biography or carried to my grave) that I sought solace in Baguio. The biting cold, the many twisted roads perfect for walking at nighttime, the crowd who knew nothing of me—they all served to make me immediately consider Baguio my second home when I revisited it as a young adult in 2010, and those same things welcomed me with open arms when I returned in January. And again when I came back during the Panagbenga Festival. And again three other visits later, two of which I was already accompanied by friends.

I never really fully understood Kelly Clarkson's song "Sober," even when I've already listened to it more than a thousand times, until I watched a YouTube video of her performing it in 2011 at her Sony-sponsored concert at the Troubadour. She shared how she had written the song off a line from a friend who said to "pick the weeds and keep the flowers." It was probably that one line in the song that didn't make sense to me until she explained that it was about "[picking] the people out of your life that are cancerous for you and [going] with the good ones." That was a lesson I had to learn the hard way this year, actually. I don't always have to be the one working on making my friendship with someone grow—most of the time I just have to let it flourish. It may not often do so or at all, but either way I have to learn to let go especially if the relationship is doing me more harm than good.

And so there it is: 1 play, 3 bosses, 5 Baguio trips, 7 new-hire classes and 9 TV series. New friends gained, old friends lost. Countless books, films, dinners, jogs, laughs and lessons, the most important of which is—as cliché as it sounds—to love myself more. That's my New Year's resolution for 2013.

My friend and co-worker Pats and I climb aboard the half-full jeepney and just as we get seated, a man near the entrance shouts, "Abante na! (Let's go already!)" Not a barker, apparently, but a fellow passenger. I look at those around me and see that no one assents. In fact they seem embarrassed. They must not have been waiting as long as the man has.

"Bakit ho? (Why should we?)" asks the dude beside the driver, apparently the conductor, almost innocently.

"Because some of us have families to come home to," I want to say. "These folks have hungry mouths to feed with whatever money they were able to make for the day, primetime shows on local TV that simply cannot be missed. And I, at the very least, want to go to bed." I sum it up to, "Because you, [insert expletive here because it's more emphatic with one], are wasting our time when we could already be at home." But emphatic though that would have been, of course I say nothing.

"Bakit?" the conductor repeats, taunting the complaining man. "Pampasahero po ito. (This is a public utility vehicle.)" And the jeepney just stays put.

I imagine pummeling the conductor's face and making him unrecognizable to his family and friends. I get his point though. From a douchey conductor/driver perspective, however, a better answer to the complaining passenger might have been, "Kung nagmamadali ka, sana nag-taxi ka na lang (If you were in a hurry, you should have taken a cab)." This is a line a driver actually used on a female passenger somewhere, a friend told me. The female passenger in that story replied, "Eh kaya nga nag-jeep eh, kasi walang pang-taxi (I rode a jeepney because I can't afford a cab)," which wasn't really a redeeming retort but clearly shows the stalemate both the driver and passenger are in. Both don't have a lot of money and are barely getting by. Frugal Passenger can't very well disembark, get on a cab, roll down her window and give Douchey Driver the dirty finger as the cab drives by his jeepney. Frugal Passenger would also only be wasting her time riding another jeepney only to find out its driver is just as passenger-greedy as the previous one. Douchey Driver, on the other hand, has no other choice but to pluck out every commuter that he can find on the street to make a living. He has hungry mouths to feed at the end of the day, after all, just like Frugal Passenger. A likelier explanation, however, would be that Douchey Driver simply does not give a damn if he's wasting Frugal Passenger's time.

The douchey conductor of our jeepney, after getting no more rebuttals from the complaining passenger, looks away and resumes his job of enticing passersby with what he makes it seem like the last trip a public utility vehicle was ever going to take for the night on that route. Pats and I resume playing the role of Apathetic Frugal Passengers...and I look forward to another day of the same commuting scenario, because that's how things are going to be until I get up the nerve to study driving.

Xangsane, Ketsana, Conson and Nesat—locally, Milenyo, Ondoy, Basyang and Pedring—typhoons that ravaged most of the Philippines in 2006, 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively. In September. During the week of my birthday...well, except in 2010. Fun.

I don't really remember much of the whole Milenyo incident, but everything about Ondoy is still pretty clear to me. I was almost two years into my employment with my first call center and I had just decided I wanted to spend more of my time studying Spanish than commuting to and from work, so I rented a house in Mandaluyong with my high school friend Carlo, a nurse, and a girl named Sienna, also a call center agent. My Saturday shift had just ended and I was going home for the weekend but I decided to wait for Sienna, who was also heading home, because it was already pouring and she didn't have an umbrella. The bus we rode to Baclaran unfortunately got stranded at Gil Puyat Ave. corner Chino Roces Ave. because of the flood, but between the sight of people trying to wade through the muddy waters outside and Frank Peretti's fantastic novel Piercing the Darkness which I had brought with me, I wasn't so bored. Within an hour or so, I was able to finish the book and take a nap. When I woke up to find we were still at Magallanes Interchange, I agreed with Sienna that we should just stop wasting time trying to go home and just return to our rented house.



I let Sienna go ahead by MRT at the Magallanes station because the car for women and the elderly was fairly empty, and we couldn't have possibly succeeded in getting ourselves inside any of the other cars had we insisted on going together. I texted my dad to pick me up where I was but he eventually relayed news that he couldn't get through the flood to come get me. I rode a bus to Mandaluyong and arrived at our rented house to find that there was no electricity. It was my dad's birthday and the following day was mine, and thankfully I was able to finally get home then...to a house that had just gotten flooded.

Basyang of 2010 wasn't so bad and it didn't really occur on my birthday. It was mostly strong winds, which resulted in a lot of fallen tree parts and missing roofs, but the rain didn't really cause any serious flooding...in the areas I had to go to daily, at least. It was bad enough, however, to cause me and my friend one early morning to abandon our plans of going to work together as there were no buses leaving for Baclaran. We simply decided to wait out the storm at my friend's place, and that was the moment we would later refer to when we talk between ourselves as the night we became a couple. The whole shebang's deserving of its own blog post, maybe even a romance novel, but two months thence, just a week before my birthday, the love story, inevitably and unfortunately, came to an end. My first serious relationship, over in such a short time, resulting in my very first almost paralyzing heartbreak. The whole romantic shiz might not be for me after all.

Pedring wasn't so bad either but though my birthday this year fell on my rest day, I still wasn't able to celebrate by going out with friends. I was home alone with my books and my mom who baked me a blueberry cheesecake just to cheer me up.

In less catastrophic news, Zuckerberg and his team of geeks recently updated Facebook. Now you have a news feed within your news feed and you can tweak more settings for your privacy. The way these updates usually go, some privacy settings automatically get changed, and for me one of them was that posting to my wall got disabled. Two weeks earlier I had changed my birthday on my profile because I didn't want my Facebook wall flooded by birthday greetings from people who wouldn't normally greet me without the social networking site reminding them, and this along with my wall being inaccessible filtered the greetings from my friends. Those who really knew my birthday sent me their greetings through other modes of communication. People eventually started posting on my wall after I had enabled the option though. In hindsight, it could have very well been the perfect Let's-See-Who-Actually-Remembers-My-Birthday-Without-Help-From-Facebook experiment.

More interesting than the results of the accidental experiment, however, was how Facebook recognized the birthday greetings on my Facebook wall as posts about "Hehe people," which is "an ethnic and linguistic group based in Iringa region in south-central Tanzania, speaking the Bantu Hehe language." What the heck.


So...happy birthday to me. Hehe.

There are different kinds of people you may encounter at the cinema. There are those who like to put their feet up on the seats in front of them, regardless of whether the seats are occupied or not. There are those who can't seem to keep their mobile phones inside their pockets or bags for longer than 10 minutes. There are those who dare to bring half a dozen kids inside but can't control them when they get rowdy. And there are those who, like a special edition DVD, provide a play-by-play commentary of the film, pointing out things that might otherwise be unnoticeable to their friends with substandard intelligence, even giving a bunch of spoilers to brag about having read the book on which the movie was based.

There are those who would react violently when faced with the aforementioned behaviors. There are those would simply transfer seats to avoid confrontation... And then there are those who would long-sufferingly endure such behaviors because the movie has already started and few seats are left for the picking.

Julia, Aurea and I were in that last category the Saturday we went to SM Bacoor to watch part two of the final Harry Potter movie. We only chose the place because instead of our entire high school gang, only the three of us were going and we didn't want to plan our trip too carefully lest it not push through at all (we all know spontaneous trips have a higher chance of actually happening than very carefully planned ones). We like the mall because of its accessibility, but not having gone there in a while, we totally forgot the different levels of uncouth behavior one may encounter in it.

Several of those different levels came that Saturday in the person of someone I'll simply refer to as Girlie. My friends and I entered the cinema a tad late, but we don't remember Girlie being behind us already at that time nor can we recall when she came in. Three minutes of having her behind us, however, was enough to inspire us to conceive several methods of disrupting her cephalocaudal orientation.

Girlie wouldn't shut up.

"Bakit mo ako tinatawanan? Kasi magugulatin ako? (Why are you laughing at me? Because I'm jumpy?)" said Girlie, despite the absence of the faintest chortle from her companion, during the Gringotts scenes with the dragon and that one where the Gemino curse on Helga Hufflepuff's cup is activated by Harry's touch. We almost started thinking Girlie was actually alone and mentally challenged and was only speaking to herself.

"Paano nga ba siya namatay? (Tell me again how he died?)" asked Girlie about Dumbledore. Just one of the many foolish questions she asked about the movie...when she wasn't talking about herself and her jumpiness and her excitement over the movie...which she seemed to know so little about. We doubted she even knew Dumbledore's name. Or Voldemort's. Or Harry's, Ron's or Hermione's. We doubted she had seen part one of the film. Or any of the films in the series at all. A smart moviegoer seeing part two of any film would either research in advance or just shut up during the movie itself so she can actually follow the storyline. Obviously, Girlie hadn't done the former and showed no signs whatsoever of doing the latter.

Halfway through the movie, Girlie, thankfully, left her seat to pee. We along with other humans in a 5-meter radius heard her when she told her companion. That was the last we would hear from her for quite some time.

The battle between Hogwarts and Voldemort's army had just concluded when I noticed a flustered girl trying to find her seat using her cell phone as a flashlight three or four rows before us. I paid her no mind but moments later Julia whispered to me that it was Girlie. She was gone for too long she had apparently forgotten where her seat was. We weren't sure if she had met with someone outside the cinema or had some tummy trouble, but she admitted to neither when she spoke again with her companion.

"Ayyy, may anak na sila? (Oh, they have kids already?)" asked Girlie during the final scene while she was returning to her seat and I was forcing a tear out of my eye (Transformers: Dark of the Moon was more moving, Julia said, and I agreed though I haven't even seen the movie.)

"OBVIOUSLY!" I remarked before I could stop myself. Julia and, I could vaguely remember, a couple of others behind me laughed. Girlie, however, didn't seem to notice.

We found out later on that Girlie's companion was a dude. We doubted he was a friend or a relative of some sort, because if he were either, he would have found a way to make her tone it down at the least. Maybe it was their first date and had it not been simply in his nature to be polite he would have made a run for it already. Or maybe he was actually the reason the girl was gone from the cinema for almost an hour—a phone call to a friend to call Girlie and pretend he was a family member who had met an accident, or maybe a hint of laxative in their merienda. Whatever the case may have been, bless his soul. Most Patient-Slash-Cleverest Date meets Thickest, Most Annoying Moviegoer.

I have renewed sympathy for cardholders I speak with at work reporting the loss of their credit cards, for today I lost my Nokia N97 mini. Or it was stolen from me, I should say. Pulled out of my bag through a jagged tear made by some punk desperate for money.

It was about two in the morning on my second ride towards home, on a bus headed to Baclaran. I woke up with the vague sense that I had reached my destination, and I was right, except that the bus had changed directions and was already headed north. I got off the place where a year ago I used to wait for buses headed to Ayala. That struck me as odd. I always woke up right before reaching Baclaran, with a few other fellow passengers disembarking at the place. This morning I woke up on the bus alone, except for the bus driver who was yelling that we were already there, the conductor, and a dark-skinned man wearing a gray hooded jacket and with teeth that were spaced at least an inch apart (no kidding, I saw them earlier when he yawned for about five minutes while craning his neck and gazing around). I suspect it was the dark-skinned man who stole my phone; he already seemed very suspicious the first time I saw him. Or maybe it was just his looks that made him seem like a criminal... Or maybe he was not alone but in cahoots with the driver and conductor—how else would I have been left napping inside that well-lit bus, just three or four rows from the front, alone, and then only allowed to wake up after they had made a turn to start heading north?

The first hint I got that my phone was missing was when I got off the bus and finally made sense of which side of the road I was in. I noticed there was no music playing in my ears despite my earphones being on. I thought perhaps they had just been disconnected from my phone, but when that happens there's always loud music issuing from my phone's loudspeakers that immediately prompts me to reconnect the accessory to the gadget. There was no loud music coming from inside my bag. I fumbled through my bag's contents—twice, thrice, four times. Jessica Zafra's Twisted Travels, automatic folding umbrella, Starbucks tumbler, newly bought antiperspirant body spray, and small bag with toothbrush, toothpaste and other stuff I might need in case I suddenly have to sleep over somewhere.

No phone.

When it finally hit me that my phone was gone, I muttered to myself, "They got it from my perfectly secure bag! Impressive!" Then I found the tear in my bag and my admiration for the thief's skills was immediately lost.

I thought my wallet had also been taken from me, but thank God it wasn't. My coin purse was, though, along with a tiny mirror I always carry in my bag for checking my braces after I had eaten. When I couldn't find my Tic Tacs, I almost made up my mind that it was truly the dude with the hood who was the culprit, and that his periodontal situation was bigger than just his having battlement-like teeth. I found the Tic Tacs later when I emptied my bag of all its contents. I still think he's the culprit.

I had a feeling something might be wrong with the bus I rode the minute I took the second three-seater from the back. There were no two-seaters left but even when a couple had emptied by the time we were driving along Ayala, I still transferred to a three-seater near the front (I was trying to avoid sitting behind or in front of my suspect who was on a two-seater right in the middle). I also found it weird when the bus actually lingered in place somewhere for about five minutes. I know jeepneys and mini-buses in the Cavite-Zapote route like to treat waiting sheds like terminals, but not big air-conditioned buses who have already set off for their destination.

I should have listened to my gut and continued reading Zafra's book after I transferred seats. I always only sleep when I'm on a two-seater, with my arms hugging my bag protectively and my fingers locked together. I wasn't really that sleepy that time but it was so cold I had to cross my arms over my chest, leaving my bag unprotected, and eventually I dozed off. The one time I deviate from my usual bus behavior turns out to be the first time in my 23 years of existence I get thieved from. Awesome.

I wonder how the thief, whose testicles will soon shrivel to nothingness, was able to take my phone without alerting everyone to his crime. 2NE1's "Ugly" or "Hate You" (how appropriate, both of them) would have boomed loudly from the speakers once he unplugged my earphones. I don't really care much for my phone, however, because we've already had a good run. But my bag... I haven't even used my bag for more than 3 weeks and now I can't use it at all, not because of a broken zipper or a ripped lining but because of an unsightly cut on the exterior that screams, "I didn't listen to my mom when she told me never to sleep on the early morning commute home!" Thank goodness, my mom didn't give me an "I told you so" sermon when she heard the news; she was so sympathetic to my plight because she knows I work hard to buy things for myself. My dad, on the other hand, who was first to hear the news from me, gave me something like an "I told you so" sermon, though it was summed up in a snicker. I'm used to him being like that.

It's funny how I've long been complaining about my phone (or Symbian OS) being chock full of bugs and my fairly new earphones being dysfunctional so soon (it's always the left one that dies first; is it just with me or is that simply how it is with all earphones?). It's also quite hilarious how just before we left the office earlier my co-worker Rich and I got to talking about how we two weren't as motivated to work as most others because we didn't have mouths to feed or siblings to get through college. Now my glitch-y phone has been stolen from me so I have absolutely no more use for my partially working earphones, and buying a new phone and really saving money to finally move to a place nearer the office or maybe buy a car are a new motivation to survive at work.

OK, so now which phone to buy?

Three months after my last blog post, I return with exciting news: I FINALLY HAVE A JOB. No more making origami cranes and devouring all that's sweet from the fridge while watching anime. What I do now is commute for two hours to get to the office, talk to people over the phone about their credit card concerns, and commute for four more hours to get home. Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful that I'm no longer a contributor to the country's unemployment rate, but there was a time I thought people who can't ever leave the call center industry were pathetic, and now I seem to have officially become one of them. Sure, it's a bit different with my current job because I was hired directly by a prestigious international bank, not a BPO company, but I'm still tethered to the phone.

Frustrating as the tediousness of the daily commute and the job itself already is, something I find almost as equally taxing is the fact that people all around me quickly come and go. A team-mate can just disappear after getting his first month's salary, never to be heard from again. A friend can suddenly decide he wants to quit because of all the stress, or get sacked because of something illegal that he did. Team members across a department can get reshuffled, and your extremely nice boss can move up the career ladder and away from you because he's been doing so great a job at handling your team. All that's a given with any company, but it happens at call centers at a much more rapid pace than anywhere else. And for a person who very slowly works up the courage to trust those he's surrounded with, that can be tough. I only have two choices: be emotionally shutdown or what the hell, get attached and make the most of the time I have with my co-workers. I'm not sure if it was my being apathetic that made me last almost two years at my first call center, because afterward I decided to let my guard down just a tiny bit and I didn't last more than half a year at my second and third call centers. It's been fun though, despite having had to go through some heartaches, and now at my fourth call center, even though I initially decided to be emotionally dead, I'm choosing to put myself out there again.

Four Wednesdays ago, I chose not to go home with my dad by car because my team-mates and I were going out for dinner after work with our beautiful trainer Tata. We had work the following day, but there I was at Yellowcab laughing hysterically at my team-mates' funny stories, not minding the fact that everyone but me can get home in less than an hour, coming all the way from Eastwood.

Having eaten all the pizza, pasta and chicken our tummies can take, we all decided to head home, and during the cab ride to the train station, one of the co-workers I was with got to talking about a girlfriend she's meeting in Cubao to lend some money to. They've been friends since grade school and they were quite close, but come college she started only coming to my co-worker whenever she needed financial help. In almost every company I've been with, I've met people who were like that. Sometimes, however, I couldn't help but wonder if for those others who don't use you for your money you're only valuable for the meantime because of your convenient companionship. Do they stick with you only because you're there? Do you only get to play with them because you're the toy that was handed to them by their parents? If after you part ways for a while they still want to be part of your life, then maybe, thankfully, the answer is no.

Quite a few times already I've been told I was melodramatic by the guy friend I'm closest with at work. My new team leader told me just last Friday that he approved of my confidence and fast pace of speaking over the phone but that he thought I was too emotional. I wanted to clarify that last point with him because I didn't think I was like that, but I simply concluded that perhaps my melancholic personality does have the tendency to shine through even when I'm talking to clients.

I've always been a forever-and-ever kind of guy when it comes to relationships, romantic or otherwise. I find it cruel, not to mention exhausting, rapidly moving on from one relationship to another, and there are people out there who seem to have made a lifestyle out of doing just that. That's why it's difficult for me to trust people, because when I trust, I trust fully. But maybe these people who shuffle through relationships like they were just a pack of cards are actually doing it right. It can be as equally exhausting at times only keeping to a small circle of really close friends, that's why these people spread out their social energies toward more acquaintances. A scatter shot instead of a bull's eye. Going to multiple stores instead of frequenting only one. Or maybe neither I nor they have got this friendship thing pegged and, just like in everything else, a balance simply has to be maintained. We do all shop at many stores and appreciate many different brands, but we also all have favorites, don't we?


That Wednesday night we dined at Yellowcab, I got home at 11 and slept for only three hours before I had to return to work the next day. But I had a great time with my co-workers. Right now, though we're all in separate teams already, we still try to go out once in a while. Starting tomorrow we'll all be having different schedules. Maybe nothing between us has to change. Or maybe this is the parting of ways which will determine who among us actually wants to stay in each other's lives... Or maybe I'm just being too emotional again. One thing I should always remind myself is that in my cab ride toward my destination there will always be people who are in merely for a couple of blocks. I have to try to enjoy being with such people, because though they may only be passersby in my life, we may never cross each other's paths again. But there will always be that handful of friends whom I know and who know me inside and out. And they will surely be there for the entire ride.

Baguio's Panagbenga festival was last month but I couldn't go because I still couldn't file a vacation leave at work. When for the fourth time in two months I got sick and lost my voice again, I was convinced the signs could no longer be ignored so I submitted my resignation letter to my boss, citing my recent bouts of illness as the reason. An acquaintance from my high school days who has never been to Baguio reconnected with me afterward. One thing led to another, and not being one to turn down invitations to quests that promise much adventure—and being of the opinion that spontaneous trips have a higher rate of pushing through than well-planned ones—I found myself, with just a light jacket and not even a spare shirt in my everyday messenger bag, hypothermic after alighting at the bus station in The City of Pines.

It was my fourth time visiting Baguio. The first time was with my family, but like most events in my childhood I could only remember a few things about the visit such as renting a room at a house as transient occupants, and buying walis tambo and lots of strawberries. The second and third time were also spontaneous trips. I really fell in love with the city on my second visit. Among other things, I liked that there's no need for air-conditioning or a refrigerator, and that it's the only place in this tropical country where I don't cringe at the sight of people wearing fur.

Almost everywhere you go in Baguio, clean comfort rooms are being advertised, though you'll be charged a few coins for their use. You can walk to most places if you're not in a hurry and you're up for losing weight traversing the mountain city's streets. Alternatively, you can ride a cab, which is inexpensive. Even if you do though, if you go around even just a couple of the tourist spots The City of Pines has to offer, you'll still do a lot of walking up and down stairs and inclined pathways.

At Burnham Park, I had my companion Gerard take a photo of me under a Baguio City Library sign (nerd). He didn't want to go biking or rollerskating, and neither did I because those were two skills I failed to learn as a child.


At the Botanical Garden, I met with Igorots who knew to do the peace sign when a camera was pointed at them. I unwittingly touched statues at inappropriate places, and with my companion attempted but failed to get to the other end of the pitch-black tunnel past the Japanese-Filipino Peace Memorial Park torii.


There was a beautiful brown horse that, from the time we entered the Botanical Garden till we exited, just stood in place, unmoving, while a man invited passersby to have photos taken with it for a small fee. The man and the poor horse were, alas, ignored the whole while.

I don't know if people simply liked having their photographs taken with equine animals on higher ground better, but when we went to Mines View Park, the white horse there seemed to fare better than its brown cousin at the Botanical Garden. At the highest area of the park, I tried to climb a steep rock with a tree growing on top of it but I could only go halfway because I didn't want to miss a step and plummet to my death. Gazing around at the observation deck, we didn't need to use binoculars because the view was beautiful as it was. Worth noting were the half a dozen plain white rectangular boxes with crosses on them which I spotted at the backyard of a house just below. I could only assume they were coffins.


Mines View Park had a wishing well that wasn't interesting in itself but had a sign above it from which we learned that, in decades past, there was once a group of children who from the sides of cliffs would expertly catch with bamboo poles the coins that tourists would throw at them. If a kid catches the coin you throw, your wish is sure to come true because the kid shares with you in the act of wishing. The last time that was done, according to the sign, was in the 1990s.

We browsed through all the knitted items sold by the shops on the way to the Good Shepherd Convent nearby, but when we finally got to our destination we didn't think we'd find anything exciting so we just went back. There were lots of food and souvenir items being sold in and around Mines View Park so that was where we bought our pasalubong. I tried to introduce my companion to the taste of odoks (one-day old chicks deep-fried in oil and soaked in vinegar) but he refused, going instead for inihaw na pusit (grilled skewered squid, also soaked in vinegar). I and the girl who sold him two kilos of fresh strawberries had to agree that he was a wuss.


We weren't able to visit all the tourist destinations in Baguio and the strawberry farm in La Trinidad, Benguet—we only had one day, after all. But with all the walking we did I went home two or three pounds lighter. That, the souvenirs I bought for myself (new additions to my arsenal), and simply having revisited one of my favorite cities in the Philippines were good enough for me.

Let's admit it, kids can be irritating. There are kids who show no respect to the elderly but speak profanity so fluently you'd think they took swearword enunciation lessons from an adult—a heartbreaking thing to witness. Those who torture stray dogs. Those who throw their garbage out the bus window and spit and stick gum everywhere. But exceptional ones come along once in a while. Those who are precocious both in intelligence and manners. Someone like the boy I talked to on the phone three days ago at work.

"Hi, my name is Corey. I was the one you were talking to earlier," he said after I had delivered my opening spiel.

"I don't believe we've talked yet," I replied, shocked because I've never talked to a child needing tech support, and when I do it's always a prank caller pretending to be one. I failed to catch his name so I had to ask for it once more.

"Corey," he politely repeated. Silly me, I still didn't get it, but I wasn't about to ask again. He couldn't provide me with a ticket number from the previous call, so I proceeded to get his phone number to pull up his account. He didn't know their home phone number's area code, however, so he had to get his mom to tell me.

The account the phone number search returned was under the name of Tracey, Corey's mom. After verifying the product information of the notebook concerned, Tracey handed the phone back to Corey. So the kid was legit, but his mother was letting the boy do all the talking on the phone. Tracey was either lazy or trying to punish Corey for causing whatever technical problem the notebook has now, I thought. Turns out the kid was simply a genius.

My 5-year old niece can switch on our living room desktop computer, navigate the Start menu, play games, and switch the computer off. Under my careful tutelage she has learned how Sunflowers, Peashooters, Wall-nuts and Planterns must be strategically placed in Plants vs. Zombies, but this boy Corey knows well enough to back up his files in one folder on his desktop and another folder in a memory stick. He knows to perform system restore—letting the computer go back to a time when it was still OK—when something software-related goes majorly wrong with his laptop. He had actually just done that to fix the Windows password issue he had previously called us about. His current issue was bringing back Microsoft Office 2010 which he uninstalled a month ago. I didn't need to give him any instructions; I only helped him make the decision to do system restore again to that point in time.


When I think of children with behavior problems I'm reminded of a 90s TV commercial encouraging viewers to set good examples for kids. It had two variations, if I recall correctly: the first one showed a school-age girl leaving the faucet running as she brushed her teeth and her little brother watched, and the second one showed an incensed father who I believe was overtaking his way through heavy traffic as his son sat in the passenger seat, observing him.

Whatever thirst for knowledge and interest in languages I have now I credit to my mom who always told me to mind my Fs and Vs and who herself loved to read so she didn't think me weird when I'd rather plop down in front of our little bookcase and peruse science and travel tomes than get out of the house and play with the neighborhood children. Whatever technical savvy I have, on the other hand, I credit to my dad who since I was little, back when the latest Windows operating system was still 3.11, had always liked tinkering with computers. He always made sure my brother and I had a fully functional computer to play games on. I usually just watched my brother play though. Games like Duke Nukem and Counter-Strike make me dizzy, and I fail at two-player games.

My parents didn't try to make me any kind of child prodigy by forcing specific talents and skills on me, and this is probably why I never mastered any musical instrument or learn to ride a bike, dribble a basketball, or eat rice with my hands. They did set good examples and let me unravel on my own, however. As a result, yeah, I've become a jack of all trades, master of none. I'm the cute Cattail in Plants vs. Zombies—I can't annihilate an entire row of zombies with an explosion or slow down and heavily damage an enemy with projectile frosted fruit, but I can throw a quick succession of sharp spikes in any direction. Indeed that's oftentimes way better than being a master of one.


Corey had borrowed a memory stick from his brother (who was in front of his own computer at the time) so he can back up 2 gigabytes worth of games before system restore did its magic and brought back Microsoft Office 2010 on his laptop. As I was completing my notes on the call and Corey was checking if his Document contents were still there, I chatted with Tracey. I found out Corey was just 10 and the brother he borrowed the memory stick from was just 9. I only learned about system restore during our technical training four months ago. I had just turned 23 then. The opportunities and possibilities kids have these days are limitless, if we can only guide them through the right path.

For Project Desensitization I went for movies I haven't seen yet with actresses famous for having roles in romcoms. I didn't watch any Jennifer Lopez though; my high school best friend Maricris had already influenced me to see most of her films. Here are the rest of the movies I watched:

Whom I started with was Julia Roberts in her 1997 film My Best Friend's Wedding, which I found deserving of being considered an all-time classic romcom. I personally think, however, that it's quite ridiculous having a mutual agreement with someone to marry him or her when you're both still unmarried at a certain age, as Julianne (Roberts) and Michael (Dermot Mulroney) did in the film. You'll most likely be that desperate if, whether you're aware of it or not, you want to please other people, i.e. your parents, siblings, amigas, or the society in general who expects you to be wed while you still have thick hair and unwrinkled skin. Do it if you want to multiply. Because that has a real deadline to it, a.k.a. your aging reproductive system.


My Best Friend's Wedding had Cameron Diaz in it and so I thought I'd watch There's Something About Mary afterward. I should have seen the classless humor coming, however, because Ben Stiller was in the movie. Now I know what that photo I've seen many times before with Cameron Diaz and a portion of her bangs standing up is all about.

Next: two chick flicks with the number 10 in their titles. How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days? Not so good. 10 Things I Hate About You, on the other hand? Surprisingly enjoyable. Any story with books, poetry, and characters who are mavericks will always appeal to me. Julia Stiles may have a sizable jaw but she's pretty nonetheless, and charming too, just like Heath Ledger. They had great chemistry.


Katherine Heigl was hilarious in The Ugly Truth, especially in the scene where her character Abby couldn't keep her composure at a corporate dinner because of, er, a special type of underwear Mike (Gerard Butler) character had given her. The ending where Mike and Abby fly on a hot air balloon turned me off though. I can never stand sketchy background or special effects. Either you make them look very real or don't use effects at all. I shouldn't have to go to the movies if I still have to convince myself of something to believe it. What I see should already do that automatically for me.


Something more recent: Love and Other Drugs. Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway reunite but this time Jake's character actually genuinely falls for Anne's. I saw it twice, the first time alone and the second time with one of my college best friends Mines. Three thoughts: "Very 1990s"; "Hey, I still know my pharmacology"; and, "One true sign of devotion is when your lover stays by your side even with the knowledge that you've got an incurable disease (like in A Walk to Remember and The Notebook, two of the best romance films I've ever seen)."

Two movies which are very 1800s: Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. Apart from the central love story of both films, they also tell of the societal role of women during that period in England, how they get passed over for an inheritance because there's another male offspring albeit one from a previous marriage, and also how they can instantly become wealthy by being wed to a man which they may not necessarily love. Not so different these days, when you come to think of it, also in the way family and relatives like to eavesdrop and gossip. I wish women today would know etiquette like they did back then though.

I've never read any of Jane Austen's works because if I couldn't stand most romance movies which only run for an hour and a half, how can I possibly stand to read a romance novel for double that number of hours or more. But I know that Jane Austen's works are good and Emma Thompson's adaptation of Sense and Sensibility for the big screen only made that story better, I'm sure. Even her performance as Elinor Dashwood was brilliant, as well as, of course, Kate Winslet's as Elinor's sister Marianne.


Pride and Prejudice was, as one of its reviews stated, absolutely glorious. I couldn't think of another adjective for it.


A movie with a tangle of issues concerning time: The Time Traveler's Wife. I am confused by how that ending (I shall not spoil it) is possible if Eric Bana's character had already died. But putting that aside, two thoughts: "Don't joke about the time traveler passing out even if it's to express how beautiful his wife is"; and, "One true sign of devotion is when your lover marries you even when you're inclined to disappear at the most unexpected of times."


And lastly, Windstruck, the only Korean romcom I watched because it was recommended to me before by an old friend. Thank goodness for freeware like VLC Media Player which can speed up a video up to 3 times without skipping scenes. 2 long hours! And the dude dies not halfway through the movie as in P.S. I Love You! There were funny scenes, however, and the ending was heart-wrenching, which kind of made up for the rest of the film.


I'm not ashamed to say I cried watching most of these films I selected for Project Desensitization, even the romcoms. Because it's by crying that we determine how into a romance or drama film we are. We either ache for the characters when they yearn for something, or we ache for ourselves because we have no such something to yearn for. And that's primarily why we watch movies anyway. To have some form of escape, to feel emotions we don't normally feel, to be able to live vicariously through the characters onscreen. Because whether we admit it or not, sometimes our lives just aren't that eventful or interesting.

Big sigh of relief, all that's over now. I already met my quota of romance films for possibly the rest of my life (there were too much, hence the delay in my blog posts about them!). But I'm not sure I was desensitized at all by them. I may have only ascertained that no matter how cynical I may be about love most of the time, I still am a romantic aching for himself and yearning for someone.

It might be my restless spirit which refuses to be contained in one place and by a routine, or it might be the Philippine climate, but I have always wanted to be constantly traveling to a different country. We all long to acquire what someone else seems to be enjoying. In the same way that Asians, especially Filipinos (and not just women anymore), strive to get fairer skin whilst Caucasians want to become tan, we people from the East long to experience living in the West and vice versa, even if it's just once in our lives. And all the better if while in a foreign city we get to find love.

Before Sunrise shows exactly how that might go. American boy Jesse (Ethan Hawke) strikes up a conversation with French girl Céline (Julie Delpy) on a train from Budapest and has the crazy idea of asking her to delay her return to Paris so she can roam around in Vienna with him before his morning flight back to the States. Céline says yes as she has enjoyed talking with him. They don't do anything fancy in Vienna, just lots of walking and talking. Their conversations are devoid of inhibition, however, because they know their time together in that strange city is limited. They become lovers, although in their hearts they're not sure how they can continue being so. In the end, without exchanging numbers or even full names, they make a promise to meet each other exactly six months from that day at the same Vienna train station.


Before Sunset is Before Sunrise's sequel that takes place nine years later in Paris. No, they did not meet six months from that fateful first acquaintance and they are very frustrated about it. There is the same combination of spontaneity and detachment from the world and again in less than a day they do lots of walking and stream-of-consciousness talking.


The ending of Before Sunset is left to the viewer's imagination. While dancing to a Nina Simone record in her apartment, Céline tells Jesse who's sitting on her couch that he's going to miss his flight. In response, Jesse fidgets with his wedding ring, contemplating his decision, and says, "I know." Ironic how nine years earlier Jesse convinced Céline to go with him by telling her she'll at least have a memory to look back on if she finds herself unhappy with her marriage one day.

Paris may be a tad overrated but there's no denying the beauty of the place or of the idea of falling in love in it. Paris, je t'aime tells different stories of love in the form of 18 short films, each set in a different arrondissement (district) of the city. Although they are all as varied in style as can be because of their unique directors, through well-shot transition sequences and some recurring characters they blend seamlessly together into one portmanteau film that showcases why Paris indeed is known as the City of Love.


Paris, je t'aime is the first episode in the Cities of Love franchise created by Emmanuel Benbihy. It was followed by New York, I Love You which, although shorter and with only eleven stories and despite using the characters instead of shots of the city for transition, somehow fails to tie everything in the end. The whole is definitely not greater than the sum of its parts, but some of the short films are still masterpieces in themselves, such as the ones with Maggie Q, Natalie Portman, Orlando Bloom, and Shia LaBeouf in them, and the story of Abe and Mitzie, the elderly couple celebrating their 63rd anniversary at Coney Island.


Rio, Shanghai, and Jerusalem are next in the Cities of Love series, with Rio, Eu Te Amo already in the works. A similarly structured film called Moscow, I Love You was released in Russia last year. I wonder why with the Filipino's fondness of adapting foreign movies and TV series something called Manila, I Love You or Maynila, Mahal Kita has not been created yet. I've only ever made short videos for uploading to YouTube (amateur director), but writing and directing for a love-themed anthology film would surely make for an interesting experience...if I could be objective enough.

Back in college, when I'd get bored out of my mind in my dorm room and I had some money saved up, I'd usually head to SM Dasmariñas to window-shop. Books didn't exert a strong magnetic force toward me yet, so what I often ended up buying, if I did decide to spend any cash, were VCDs. During one of my visits to Odyssey I chanced upon Love Actually, and being a fan of Keira Knightley and finding the plot summary interesting, I purchased it. Since then it has been one of my favorite films and just two years ago I began a tradition of watching it every Christmas.

What I like best about Love Actually, apart from Emma Thompson's outstanding performance throughout the film and the scene where Mark (Andrew Lincoln) confesses his hopeless devotion to Juliet (Keira Knightley), is it shows different pictures of affection—grade school infatuation, office romance, love between siblings, love for the departed, fatherly love, marriage, love for country, and love that crosses language barriers. Not all of these pictures are beautiful, however, and the film is not ashamed to slap you in the face and scream, "There isn't always a happy ending, especially in love!" yet it is quick to encourage that despite whatever undesirable elements of the picture there are, "love actually is [still] all around."


You may have thought it, so let me assure you: watching a romance film all alone on Christmas Day is not as tragic as it seems. Or at least not as tragic as watching dozens of romance films to desensitize one's self in preparation for all one's eyes might encounter in public and in the media on Valentine's Day. Speaking of which, look, another ensemble romcom named after a popular holiday!


Valentine's Day received a lot of bad reviews despite its box office success. But I have no complaints, except that perhaps it was too long for a romantic comedy. Still, the episodic plot served to satisfy my attention span. And that many actors is no problem with me, as long as they portray their roles well. Honestly, how can people stand two hours of a story revolving only around one couple?

Here's another ensemble romcom: He's Just Not That Into You. It also slaps you in the face, but this time with less subtlety because it is not associated with a holiday that should have everyone feeling good about themselves, and this time with the reality that not all the consoling words people tell you after you've gotten your heart broken are helpful. That cute boy in school isn't picking on you because he secretly likes you. The guy you just had a date with last night isn't calling you because he wants to avoid seeming desperate. Consider the possibility the movie title itself presents: he simply might not be that into you (softened for the easily offended). "Expect the worst," as George Lopez's character said in Valentine's Day. At least if something good happens, you'll be pleasantly surprised. Makes sense.


I hear they're creating a follow-up to Valentine's Day for next year. Guess what it is. New Year's Eve. Ashton Kutcher and Jessica Biel reportedly will still be part of the cast, but not to reprise their previous roles. Almost all popular holidays have an ensemble romantic comedy occurring around them now. Will New Year's Eve become a box office hit just like Valentine's Day? Will it receive mostly negative reviews from critiques despite its success just like its predecessor did? Will they also make an ensemble romance film for Halloween? We shall find out in a year or two.

So far I've only watched two films by Wong Kar Wai, which are In The Mood For Love and My Blueberry Nights, but I think he does very well at making spectacular artworks out of the simplest stories.


In The Mood for Love shows the development of a love relationship between next-door neighbors. Each has a spouse who's always away at work and who the protagonists think are actually involved with each other. The everyday scenes such as going to the noodle stall and eating alone are drawn out to the point that they almost drag, but only to say, "This is our everyday situation. Surely you can understand how this thing between us came to be."


The relationship that forms between them, however, despite everything, is platonic. The female protagonist declares at one point, "We will never be like them!" while she and the male protagonist speculate about their spouses' offscreen love affair. Putting yourself in either of their shoes, you will most likely find it hard to restrain yourself. Which is why you can't help but feel sadness and regret for them. And, at the same time, respect.


Notice how a lot of the shots in the movie were taken from behind objects such as hanging clothes, window grills, and bars. You really feel like you're spying on the couple. The film was supposed to have been titled, appropriately, Secrets, but Cannes encouraged that Wong change it. And so he did to a song he had been listening to—Bryan Ferry's cover of "I'm in the Mood for Love."

Now when you hear the title My Blueberry Nights, you immediately think, "Mmm, food." And it's not just the blueberry pie Jeremy (Jude Law) shares with Elizabeth (Norah Jones) which you find delicious. It's the ambiance of the film itself.


But perhaps Wong thought that 90 minutes for his first English feature film, though already shorter than the average American motion picture, would be too tedious for the American audience with a generous helping of ambiance. The transition between the different chapters of Elizabeth's life far away from the sweet Englishman who consoled her in his cafe with dessert and stories about keys and doors seems too abrupt. The scenes say, "Here's the part where Elizabeth works two jobs in Memphis and meets a drunkard and his estranged wife. And moving on, here's the part where she has a chance encounter in Nevada with a gambler named Leslie."


Yet through all those chapters, despite how the characters of David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz and Natalie Portman made Elizabeth's life eventful and interesting, the film showed not in so many words how lonely Elizabeth was away from Jeremy. Sending him postcards with updates on her activities (though not of her whereabouts) wouldn't do anymore. So being more sure of herself and having finally purchased the car she had been saving up for, she returns to the cafe where everything began. She discovers the spot in the counter where she had always sat reserved for her all along by Jeremy. And that final kiss interspersed with close-up shots of cream dripping down a blueberry pie—a sweet ending to a delicious story. "Mmm, food."

I have a gay friend whom I always ride the mini-bus with from work, who when he sees young doe-eyed couples walking by hand-in-hand and he's feeling extra crazy shouts at them, "Magbe-break din kayo! (Your relationship won't last forever!)". I don't think he's just being bitter when he does that because he was still in a relationship the first time he did that with me and our other co-workers. But I think that says a lot about people and their perspective on relationships: You can only be so idealistic and hopeful before you've actually gone through your first real breakup. The one that really hurts. The one with that person whom you thought you'd spend foreverandallthatgoodstuff with. Usually the very first one.

It's already February and that dreaded holiday that makes establishments spew hearts, cupids and roses is fast approaching. Seven months ago I had my first real relationship, and two months later my first real breakup. I don't regret anything (the story is actually quite worthy of being turned into a novel or film) but I'd like to get back to my old cynical-about-love self already. That guy always had his guard up. Though he missed out on romance a lot, at least his heart was protected. I like that guy. And I'd like to become him again to protect whatever pieces remain of my heart.

The great thing about being sick, apart from weight loss, is all the free time. In bed, at least. So I've devised a plan of action: watch romance films all day long in bed and blog about them! I've lined up 12 movies and I've watched 8 so far. The remaining 4—maybe I'll add more—I'll watch in the following days before February 14th. This much exposure to cheesiness can be bad, sure, but come Valentine's Day I should already be immune to tender feelings begotten when sighting couples being sweet to each other in public.

This isn't torture or masochism. This is what we call desensitization.

I almost didn't watch Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind because I glanced at its movie poster and skimmed through its plot on Wikipedia and thought, Air gliders and fighter planes? Not my type of thing. I prefer supernatural flight, like the ability I have most nights in my dreams. So I put Nausicaä last in my list of Hayao Miyazaki's full-length films.

After I was done with Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro, I finally watched Nausicaä and I must say it moved me the most of all the Miyazaki/Studio Ghibli films I've seen so far. It's about a precocious girl in post-apocalyptic times who unknowingly fulfills the prophecy that heals their land of the decay that had overtaken it—nature's way of fighting against the abusive humans.


Totoro is about a cute and furry supernatural being the two children protagonists encounter in the forest outside their new home. Kiki's Delivery Service is about, well, Kiki's delivery service...and finding inspiration to do the things one needs to do. They are all masterpieces, but Nausicaä doesn't send you to your childhood. It has real depth to its story: the protagonist (and giant fungi and arthropods) against the presumably environmentally irresponsible world. It's the animated adventure film equivalent of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth (which I still haven't seen yet) sans the statistics, pie charts, and other numerical data.


Nausicaä currently holds a 100% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Oh, and there are black chocobos in the film too.

It's 6:15 in the evening. Two and a half hours more and you should already be up to prepare for work. And yet you're still awake.

The neighbors are partying and there's videoke involved. No, it's not really partying; they just happen to have a videoke machine at their disposal—if they rent it or it's actually theirs you have no idea—and once in a while they like to give it a whirl. By once in a while you mean weekly. By give it a whirl you mean, with no hint of bashfulness or even self-respect, produce series of sounds that remotely resemble Bon Jovi classics, the usual "diva" songs, and local pieces about getting drunk and getting laid.

Your bedroom is just one stone fence away from the source of the noise. You think that like cars being insured, videoke machines should be registered with the names of all who are to use it. Those whose names have been registered must go through an audition with the same strictness that Simon Cowell would uphold. All other users shall be judged according to the scores provided by the machine. It shouldn't suffice anymore that one would get laughed at or teased. A strong electric shock from the mic or the like if it's anything less than 80.

One of your window shutters is smashed so that even with all of them closed you can hear the voice of a girl desperately trying to sing Daniel Bedingfield's "If You're Not The One." And after that, Yeng Constantino's "Salamat." Then Kelly Clarkson's "Because Of You." Your window shutter is smashed because last Christmas Eve you pulled at it so hard in an attempt to make the same girl's unmelodious voice as muted as possible. The irony. You slept late then, and also woke up late. Will it be the same tonight?


You think to yourself, Thank goodness I've got earphones. With earbuds too so that all noise will be shut out. So you set your music player on shuffle and since you're not yet that sleepy, you switch on your lamp, grab a book and read a few lines.

Jo Larouche is just about to embark on a journey down the subway tunnel with his fellow Order of Odd-Fish squire Ian and a boy he just met named Nick. Is Jo merely making Ian jealous by coming with a stranger? And can this boy Nick be trusted? Even with your music player's volume at its lowest, however, you can't concentrate on the story. You return the book to your bedside table, turn off your lamp and close your eyes.

Half a dozen songs later, you're still awake. During the short pause between each song, you can still hear the muted cacophony outside your house. If you push your earbuds in any deeper you'd already hit your eardrums. So you raise your music player's volume a couple of notches.

Your favorite band comes on and you try to enjoy their music. But to no avail because between verses when the harmony is just a tad softer you still hear that poor girl's desperate attempts at reaching the high notes of "Salamat." You think to yourself there are other less embarrassing ways of letting the entire neighborhood know what her favorite song is. Most other girls her age have taken to giving blow-by-blow accounts of their lives on Facebook and Twitter. Sure, it can get annoying when one of them's on your news feed or dashboard but at least it's not a menace to your hearing.

You hear your dogs bark madly at a car outside your gate. Your parents and your niece have returned from the mall. It's 7:15, if you're interpreting the hands of your wall clock correctly in the darkness. If you sleep now you'd end up being late for work again.

Sighing, you get up and notice the noise from outside seems louder now even with your music player's volume raised. Are they seriously flaunting what they think passes for singing? Sure, television and the stage are for the celebrity, while the videoke machine is for the wannabe, but that's why there are soundproof videoke rooms at malls and the shower at home. You can only think that some people simply are unaware of the condition they have that is foolishness. It's like kleptomania. Or multiple personality disorder. Or halitosis. And you suddenly understand why other people are compelled to kill people for the most ridiculous of reasons. Someone murdered his wife because he saw her smile from afar at her gorgeous ex-boyfriend. Psh, you'd literally kill—or commit arson (the recipe for homemade grenades can easily be googled)—just to get some sleep.

Three grenades, er, hours later, your surroundings are peaceful, save for the occasional barking of dogs at nothing in particular. It's time to leave for work, but you stay at home instead because you're no longer that resolved to return to work despite recovering from sickness. You spend some hours playing computer games with your niece and sleep the soonest chance you get. Your neighbors aren't likely to lay off the wailing just because it's a Sunday.

Hey. I go by so many names now that I don't know what to introduce myself as anymore. Most people know me as Myk. Among the people from the last two companies I've worked for I am known as John or Johann. Among family I am known as Mikki. You can call me either of those names, but call me Mikki and you better have proof that you're related to me by blood.

I've been blogging since 2002 when I was a high school junior, encouraged by my classmate Angela and Mitchie who was a senior and my superior in the Cadet Officers Candidate Course (COCC). Aside from the writing part, I also enjoyed the designing of my blog and even that of other friends' who also eventually got into blogging. I changed blog names and domain hosts many times until I decided on Lee Flailmarch, which is an anagram of my name, and stayed with Blogger. I've tried Tumblr, which is basically blogging and media sharing for the lazy, and I've become part of YouTube's vlogging community. But I prefer Blogger for three reasons: I have my archives here; too many people are already on Tumblr (and as a general rule I prefer to stay away from the crowd); and Blogger is to Tumblr as books are to e-books.

Though I have my archives here, I won't be making them public. I like to think of them as the scribblings of five-year-old me: not for sharing with everyone, as some of them are silly and painful just to look at, but for fond reminiscing. I might think of my future entries the same and decide to stack them in a corner of my account too. But even if they're silly and painful even just to look at, one thing I want to make sure they are now is honest.

And so I blog again.