Heh.
It’s always been a wonder how her small body can accommodate such a huge vital capacity of air, how her diaphragm can contract so powerfully, and how her larynx can manipulate the pitch and the volume to generate a stream of jaw-dropping, beautiful melodies. However, she has amazed me not mainly because she sings as if she’s been singing for for 48 years, but because of the way she has stunned her audiences; the way she leaves them speechless at the moment she begins to sing; the way her very last high note pulls their bums out from the seats to give her a standing ovation.
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I only have a few days left here in the Philippines. Believe it or not, the desire to go back to Singapore has been building up pretty fast. I guess I’m not really used to slacking any more! \:D/ Which is kinda good, I think? For the past two years and eight months, I have been constantly bombarded with so much work that, without much realizing, it has become the quintessence of everyday life. It’s like rice. That white rice you keep on eating everyday. You don’t really like it since it’s hardly got any taste, but you keep on eating it everyday, and after getting used to it, when you have the yummy viand on your plate but you don’t have that tasteless rice in front of you, your lunches and dinners don’t feel like lunches and dinners at all. And I must admit. I have been enjoying doing work this year. There isn’t much of a pakyu-gaddamet-this-life!!! rantings this year; stress has been more of a consolation, actually. Heh. With a multitude of adolescent emotional outrages here and there, doing homework has been my sort of diversion from all of them.
I miss those long, frustrating journeys from sjii to de casalle at the end of every day. Those moments when I have to choose between the Old Police Academy and Trellis Towers bus stops. Those moments when I fall asleep on the bus and miss the After Still Road bus stop. Those long, obliterating processions along the stretch of Lor N Telok Kurau Road. All those ordeals which I have to do while carrying a hippopotamus bag on my back. And I miss that crazy hill. And that effing overhead bridge. And most of all, I miss being broke.
Recently turned 19, I am an International Baccalaureate slave, a Roman Catholic, now of legal age to vote, to drink alcohol, to drive, to marry, to smoke, and to f*** around. I am manufactured in the Philippines but currently utilized in Singapore. I am the thick-skinned, ingrate bastard who dumped the Government in exchange for a $100,000 two-year private scholarship. Most people in the Philippines call me Row, as a result of a passed down genetic trait that triggers laziness. Actually, my nickname is Anju, which I am really really not so fond of. But I am fortunate enough not to suffer from the ubiquitous Filipino frenzy of naming nicknames with letter 'h's sandwiched between other letters, e.g. Jhong, Jhing, Bhong, or Bhing, and from the usual repetition of the same syllables - usually created by the whole extended family giggling in delight as one utters his or her baby cry while shitting unconsciously and secretively on the lampin, inside the duyan - resulting in stuttering names like Ton-ton, Ping-Ping, Bam-bam, Ging-ging and Don-don.
I am currently having the time of my life.