Pasted behind the glass windows

*

was a network of angsana trees, involuntarily adjoined like siamese twins, their branches overlapping each other like blood capillaries, their mushroomed foliages gazing at every direction, as if surveilling the whole vicinity of the East Coast. The stagnant road was trampled with leaves; some yellow, some brown, some green and freshly amputated from their branches. The sky above me was drowned in a light shade of blue, and the clouds were nowhere to be seen. Far away on the horizon were houses that stretched like the Himalayas, the Andes, the Pyrenees or the Rockies, eclipsing the King of the sky, who, on the other hand, gradually resigned itself behind that cordillera of metal roofs, glass windows, wooden floors, and concrete walls.  As I opened one window, the invisible wind gently splashed onto my face and my shirtless body, and wafted a familiar salty smell into my nostrils. The images of sun, sea, sand, slack, sex, straw hats and strawberry milkshake flashed like lightning bolts inside my head, making me wish that had it not for being so hard up, I would be spending my life doing something else and being somewhere else rather than just staring at the same fucking scenery through the same fucking window.

It was Wednesday.

*

The test of real literature is that it will bear repetition. We read over the same pages again and again, and always with fresh delight.

~Samual McChord Crothers

********

On the same day as last year, we went to the same place, to attend the same occasion.

But there was something different this time around.

OMFG I HAD THE BEST LECHON EVER. EVERRRRRRR. FUCK ALL THE BAD CHOLESTEROL, WHO CARES, I WAS EATING THE GOD OF ALL FATTY FOODS – AND IF I DIE DUE TO SOME  BLOCKED ARTERY, I’LL DIE A HAPPY MAN, GASTRONOMICALLY IN HEAVEN.

********

And I finished reading A Streetcar Named Desire today! Amazing play. I love all the sybolisms used in the play; they mainly touch on the ubiquitous theme of appearance versus reality. I love how the stark contrast between two different American cultures were immortalized in the characters of Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski. I love how the book relates to the two other plays we’ve already learned for the closed-book written English IB exam, Antigone and A Doll’s House. AMAZING! I should be making notes about Streetcar soon and start comparing it and drawing parallels with the other aforementioned plays. I’m already beginning to draw in my mind awesome connections among the male characters Creon (Antigone), Torvald (Doll’s) and Stanley (Streetcar), and female characters Antigone, Nora, and Blanche. The only thing I have to do now is to write them down on paper to make them tangible evidences of my ‘productive’ holiday (and to reduce the load of my incapacitated brain because memory space is kind of scarce these days).

Hahaha who knew that a person like me, known last year for having no interest at Literature at all, would actually begin to embrace and appreciate the subject? Mrs. Hammond will surely smile from ear to ear if she discovers this new-found interest of mine.

Voulez-vous parler?

It’s 11:10 in the evening and I have already written thirteen pages of French notes. I’ve been contemplating on whether or not I should just print my notes since they’re already nicely presented here.

Seriously. This website is one hundred times more effective than going for French lessons in school. I don’t know why, but suddenly the French frenzy I had during the first half of last year has been gradually coming back. Hopefully, I will be able to fully regain my interest in studying French not because I want to re-like the subject, but because I don’t want it to be a nuisance in my IB studies.

You see, I’ve been showing commendable performances for the rest of my subjects – except for French. That’s why it’s painful to see my stagnating progress report here at home, which states that

Rowland has impressed his teachers with the quality of his work, his application and his attitude. He has obviously laid a very solid foundation for his final assessment and his teachers believe that he will perform well, with the notable exception of French. It would be a shame if Rowland’s final grades were marred by one poor performance and given Rowland’s ability and attitude…… BLAH BLAH BLAH AHHH FUCK SHIT

Windows Live Writer is awesome.

Damn. I’m actually typing this post using

Windows Live Writer.

I can actually see how it’s gonna look like on my blog while typing this awesome post!

SEE WHAT I MEAN??

This is so fahkeng AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!!!!!! oooooooooohhh!!!

MWHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA

********

This school term is finally coming to an end – whew – after 20 weeks or so of non-stop IB madness. By right, everyone in Grade 12 should have died already, but since we’re so cool people we’re still alive. Nevertheless, we somehow have acquired unique – whatchamacallit? – zombie-like attributes now, given the fact that we have not slept much for 20 consecutive weeks. Well, I absolutely have no idea why the school decided to merge two terms together. It was like twenty weeks of non-stop schooling. The grade 12s have been running to and fro almost everyday, like some insanely busy workaholic apparitions carrying stacks of research papers and internal assessments, chasing teachers who appear to be sadistically enjoying seeing them with gargantuan charcoal-coloured panda eyes, half-asleep, half-awake, no one really knows, desperately trying to catch up with a million deadlines. It was basically capital punishment at its most beguiling and dissimulating level, masked under what is conceivably the most humane form of torture possible, school. IB!

Although I love the IB (and the school! )

sense the masochistic aura oozing MWAHAHAHAHAHA

somehow, the long school term has made me sick and tired of doing work. It was simply too draggy. Tsk.

Now, everyone feels like

“NAH DUN WANT TO DO ANY MORE WORK LAH TOO TIRED ALREADY”

“SCREW IT LAH”

“CAN DO TOMORROW, I GOT FREE PERIOD”

“HEY CAN I BORROW YOUR HOMEWORK?!”

“I DON’T WANT TO GO FOR FRENCH…”

“WTH, I NEED 2 SKIP LUNCH, GTG DO MY HW. BRB. TTYL!”

“I’M SORRY… UMMM… MRS HAMMOND CAN I SUBMIT MY ENGLISH HOMEWORK AFTER SCHOOL?”

 

And because of that the quality of my IB work is starting to plummet in a similar fashion to an old man who’s beginning to lose his libido as he gets older. SAD! ):

On a happy note,

GAWAD KALINGA IN SEVEN MORE DAYS!

see you Bacolod!

Lapit na lang gid… magkinitaay na gid kita! Kung pwede lang ko maglakat subong, subong na gid ko naglakat!  

ROFLMAO!

Eden-de-den, de-den!!

These are long overdue photos from my trip to Eden Nature Park in Davao Citaaaaayyyee!!! Some trivial information for you, I was born in this sexxaye city 18 years ago!

On our way to DAVAOOOOOOOOO!

My youngest brother pretending to sleep inside the car. Tsk.

***

Kuya Mark on blue, Tita Abet on white. Welcome to Eden babaaayye!!

***

NATURE

NATURE

NATURE

NATURE!

Wtf Clean air

Wth Cool weather

$%$^ Lovely flowers

&*%^*^ Lush forest

DAMN!

***

From left: Hanna, Tita Mai-mai, my sexxaye mum, and Honey

And that’s my retarded brother in the background.

***

This is where we stayed,

this is where we stayed,

this is where

this is where

this is where we stayed.

***

LOVELAAAYYE POINSETTIAS!!

CHRISTMAS SEASON is lovelaaayye with poinsettias!!

***

Tita Virgie walking up the slope to the pool. (:

***

I didn’t swim. It was COLD. FREEZING COLD.

***

SKYRIDER BABBAAAAYE!

SKYRIDER ROCKS!

We were fa-la-la-lying on air!!

***

From left: COOL son, HOT mommy!!

NYAHAHAHAHAHA!

IT’S IN THE GENES, PARE!

***

Once in a while we have to go back and appreciate our ancestral roots!

***

We only toured like, 10-15 hectares of the AMAZING 80-hectare crap the Eden Nature Park has to offer?! WTF. It was so disappointing we didn’t get to tour around, ’cause all the employees had a Christmas partaaaye on our second day of stay in Eden. Tsk. What a good timing. But it was still awesome!

and my 2-megapixel phone sucks because it’s only 2-mp, but it still rocks! Photos still look nice, right?

But I still really need a REAL camera!

A letter of request.

before anything else, I would like to say a few words.

I think I have been too mean to myself and to the person I like (although you don’t know it’s you I’m talking about) or shall I say, liked, and so I would like to apologize to the two of us – if you FEEL your heart throbbing, and you BELIEVE it’s really you, I’m really sorry. If you THINK that you feel  your heart is throbbing and believe it’s really you, then you are thinking wrongly, but I’m still sorry anyway for giving you the wrong impression. And I’m apologizing to myself because I’ve basically made my life miserable even though there wasn’t a need to do so. So yeah..

I shall be careful next time. Such emotional rages are sometimes uncontrollable. Once you let them off, and then you go back to your normal self, you tend to think how insensitive you have become to yourself and to the people around you.

My sincerest apologies.

************

NOW FOR MY POST!

************

14344

Diversion Road,

Philippines 9500

Dear Hardworking Rowland,

The IB workload has ballooned exponentially at the end of the school year, but it is no surprise that almost everyone is still not serious about doing any work. Obviously (too bad if it may not be that obvious to you), that horrifying assumption is under the impression that Rowland’s batch mates continue to give me. Of course, there are people whom I  can taxonomize as closet muggers who, in their dynamic exo-skeletal personality pretend to be just as lazy and procrastinatious as me, but hidden beneath their deceptive shells, they have already finished 90% of their EE shit. Or maybe they have completed all their holiday homework.

I have written this letter in the hopes that you would decide to return as soon as possible. There are rumors flying around the town like sex videos, nude pictures, flu viruses and lame jokes, all saying that you may not return anymore, due to some personal reasons that you have failed to properly explain. It may had been a tremendous ordeal, that month of November – I have seen how much you had suffered and toiled, albeit the fact that at the end of the day you unwaveringly admitted to yourself how satisfying it was for you to be able to comply with all the tasks that you had committed yourself to. Sometimes I think that you’re so full of yourself, but worry not, for I have already learned to overlook your distasteful flaw.

Nevertheless, such an achievement has meant something for you, that I am pretty sure of. If you have successfully traversed through the once deemed insurmountable ordeal last month, then the following litany of school work should not be seen as a hindrance to your life. I wouldn’t deny the fact that the next year will be the most challenging yet, but do you realize? Every succeeding year has always been your most challenging year. Some things in life – most of them unimportant and trivial matters such as physics and literature – just get more and more difficult year after year.

Therefore, I am confident, that you will be able to surpass the forthcoming challenges in life next year – after all, you’re not alone.  You have your family, friends, and teachers to help you through. I may be of no use to you, that is a fact that will forever remain unchanged, but remember that I am always lying down somewhere thinking of you while  sipping a glass of apple juice with Aloe Vera bits, and hoping for your success in life.

Ever present is the veracity of life; but ever constantly changing it is, too.  How ironic, constant change. The truths we may hold for now may change as we walk along the pathway of our lives – you may think that through consistency of work and determination one can lead to the fulfillment of  his or her own dreams and aspirations – and I may believe that we simply have to be happy-go-lucky, to wait for things to happen, because the future has already been predetermined at the first place, encrypted deep inside the curvatures of the lines on the palms of our hands. Do you believe in palmistry?

Anyway, our friend, Rowland, who happens to have unknowingly committed himself to a detrimental curriculum, needs more of your help than mine – for now. So please, pack your things and get  your ass back here. So that I may laze around somewhere more ambient and exciting. Perhaps I should take a trip Down Under? It would be a delight if you and Rowland could come along. But he has work to do. And you have to help him. Shit.

Anyway, thank you.

Yours truly,

Lazy Rowland

Testing, testing my new internet connection.

Today is the perfect day to celebrate!

Number one, my internet connection is back! Now, I don’t need to go to my aunt’s house and be a leech and suck all the internet connection to myself.

Number two, I’m going to start on my holidays assignments soon! There’s nothing much more fun than doing school work during the holidays! Wow! Wow! Wow! OMG this is so fun! WOWOWOWOWOWOWOW!

Number three!

I get to thank my two sexy friends, Tsao Hui and Joey, for spending my last afternoon this year in Singapore watching Four Christmases, grabbing a lunch at Carl’s Jr., and spending some MOOOOOOments at Ben & Jerry’s! And of course, going with me to Holy Family Church even though the two of them aren’t sexy Catholics like me.

And of course! How can I forget!

SAVY, NALAKA, JOHN, QUANG, and JOEY again

for sending me off at the airport!

And to the people who endured my boringness over the phone… KENNETH, YZA, DANUSHA, WEIJIE, NICOLETTE, JOEY, QUANG, SAVY, ETC ETC! Thanks a million (:

The plane ride was smoooooooooth sailing.

nothing special.

I’m just back in Singapore. (:

Newspaper.

It’s time to officially start my countdown. I’m going back to Singapore on Friday!

Anyway, I went with my parents for some meeting with their new business partner (my mother’s best friend) and of course, it was a terrible ordeal for me as I had to sit down with them and do practically nothing but to listen to them talk about business prospects, money, numbers, and forecast of their future profits. Well I hope those forecasts turn out to be real money soon. It was a breather when I discovered that there was a newspaper beside me. As usual, I started my newspaper ritual by throwing away the classified ads section first, then reading the business section followed by the editorial section (the most boring sections first), and then the lifestyle section. The main article was about Mike Myers’ new movie, the Love Guru. Now, after his mojo finally waned in his Austin Powers franchise, he decides to grow SOME facial hair and dress up like an Indian to be a, guess what, a LOVE guru. He looks kinda cool actually. But then as I started reading the article I wondered if all lifestyle writers are just simply fascinated with penises as if they have never seen one before O.O, if all of them are just penis-envy O.o, or if all of them are just interested with Justin Timberlake on his speedos *.*. WTH, half of the chunk of the article on the first page was all about it! If they talked about the Love Guru’s it would have been an interesting read then. Ha ha.

Anyway, I continued reading the rest of the newspaper and I found this ridiculous poster in the first few sections of the paper.

Pinoy Idol?! $^(#$@%??!

As far as I am concerned, we already had the Philippine Idol before, with Mau Marcelo as the winner. It was a good show; the only letdown was that it was shown in ABC5. Really really annoying. And now here’s another version of the same show, and they’ve given it a different title. It sounds bad actually. Pinoy Idol.

Haha imagine if you’re talking to a Singaporean friend.

“Do you know the Pinoy Idol?”

“What? I don’t think so.”

“Pinoy Idol! U know, PINOY idol?”

“Pinoy Idol WHAAT?! I dun understand you”

“You have a Singapore Idol version here righttt. So in the Philippines, we oso got.. Pinoy Idol!”

“Philippines Idol?“.

“No lah. Pinoy Idol. PEE-NOY.”

“Pinoy? What’s Pinoy? Must explain properly!”

“Ah, it’s a slang for the word Filipino. It’s what Filipinos usually call themselves.”

“Ah! Aiyoh! it’s in Tagalog righttt??” (pronounces it as ta-galog)

“Yes. It’s the Filipino version of American Idol.”

“Oh! Philipino Idol!!”

“Y-yea–yeah.”

Why did those Spanish colonizers have to name my country after their king who died of syphilis.

____________________________________________________

another quiz!

List 6 things you would like to say to 6 different people without mentioning their names.

1. beer.

2. hallucination.

3. bankruptcy.

4. december.

5. visitation.

6. craziness.

School shooter? I’m too fucking busy to be a school shooter!

Ok I’m not vulgar by nature. I promise. Hahaha. The title is actually Quote #515 from this website!

Gaaaahhh. IB is eating my year 2008 really really fast. IB’s like this discombobulating Pac-Man dude in this time labyrinth of mine, voraciously eating up all the seconds, minutes, days, weeks and months. And I’m really getting nervous. My heart palpitates everytime I remember my unfinished English essay which has been collecting dust under my study table. My brain freezes everytime I see a French word in the internet. There have been occasions where I suddenly hear a stream of undecipherable French words inside my head, as if someone is talking to me in French. Creepy. And I haven’t revised my French yet. It seems that I have forgotten almost all the French stuff I’ve learnt for the past five months. And I can’t decide on what proposal to submit to Monsieur Heusdens in order to improve our French lessons every Mondays and Tuesdays. Maybe he has realised that the lessons have stagnated and have become quite boring at times. I even caught myself on the verge of drooling over my foolscap paper at one time. Yuck!! Good thing Amanda is such a busybody.

And the title of this blog entry does not really fit into my current life; I have been incessantly stoning inside the house; in fact, I have been sleeping 12-13 hours a day. You can actually imagine that if I counted the number of days that I have been here in the Philippines, I have spent half of that duration sleeping, let alone those moments when the sun is up and shining brightly, and there I am sitting by the window daydreaming about weird stuff. Talk about being a lazy bum in the house.

Not like the other schoolmates of mine who have been lavishly spending their holidays in faraway places around the world, like the USA, Japan, Spain, Iceland, Mongolia, Hong Kong, Malaysia (well HK and M’sia are not really considered far away). Argh, I really wish I could have a holiday getaway to some ulu place!! Me and me alone.

I’ve been wanting – dying – to visit some places in the world, places that people usually hardly know or, in case they know a lot, hardly give a shit about it. There’s one place which calls itself Ushuaia. Sounds pretty gay, actually, *Ushuaia* but I actually discovered this name when I was watching Discovery Channel a few years back. It was a given title of a show, if I’m not mistaken, and I never knew that it’s also a name of a town smacked right the tip of South America, until I have learnt how to search stuff in the Internet in Primary six.

Ushuaia is actually the sothernmost town in the world, the capital of Tierra del Fuego Province in Argentina. If you ask me, I think it would really be interesting to find out how it feels to live in the “southernmost town”. Singapore actually brags one of its microscopic Sentosa islands as the southernmost point in continental Asia, when in fact, it’s merely connected to mainland Sentosa by a little bridge; Sentosa to mainland Singapore by that Sentosa bridge (you can count the cable car and the monorail as well); mainland Singapore to mainland Asia by the Causeway. Hmph. So if I connect a bridge from that little island in Sentosa to Batam, then Batam would be the southernmost point in continental Asia. -.-

You must be kidding me.

There’s another interesting place in the world which sometimes appears in my dreams. Mongolia.

I don’t know. After watching some documentaries about this country, I just felt that this should be worth visiting. With a landlocked area of about 1.6 million sq. km., there’s plenty of land to explore. With a population density of two people per sq. km, there’s a lot of room for yourself to do some tomfoolery around. Imagine, if the Mongolian population would actually be evenly distributed, a family of six would occupy three square kilometers of Mongolia and they can have it all to themselves. Cool. And I want to experience how it feels to be a nomad in the rural areas of Mongolia. I think it’s a wonderful diversion from the stagnant and busy urban life in the Philippines and in Singapore.

Of course, if you ask the nationalistic fragment of my existence, I would want to go in an all-out expedition in Palawan, Philippines.

Regraded by renowned underwater explorer Jacques Cousteau as the most beautiful place he had ever explored. Oooh.. It think it’s actually true! Although I haven’t been there yet. It is home to one of the world’s most diverse flora and fauna, breathtaking mountains and rain forests, the world’s longest subterranean river, and some of the best beaches in the world, scattered in this vast expanse of 1768 islands that comprise the entire province.

Okay, this would be the last one, since I believe this entry’s going really boring.

I want to go to Spain.

I want to see how much this country has progressed after it has left this impoverished country of mine with a SPAIN without the S.

Hahaha this entry seemed like a travel blog.

Things you can’t just leave behind.

ah. i like the neatness and monochromatic feel of WordPress.

I find it interesting. Every time I would go back to the Philippines for a vacation, people who know me would immediately do the “OH! Why are you here again?!” look, and then they would incessantly add two lines which I have heard from every single one of them: “When did you arrive?”, and “When are you going back?”. I can’t really gauge if people are merely interested in my unannounced, unprecedented transfiguration; or in my flight schedule as if they’re going to say sorry that they didn’t welcome me on the day of my arrival, and would want to accompany me on my day of departure; or it’s just that they have nothing else to say to me because they’re stunned to see me again. Either way, I’m glad I’m home, because number one, I’m with my family, number two, there’s a mountain pile of food at home, and number three, I can have all the sleep I want.

I brought my whole school stuff though. I brought a luggage the size that would fit my youngest brother inside. Half of the luggage was school stuff – textbooks, files, papers, trash, stationeries – not to mention that stupid GCE O Level certificate which I reluctantly inserted on my bag. That stupid unmemorable laminated piece of shit. Well if you think I went back home with the slackish notion of dozing off into boringness and nothingness, well you’re wrong. The hard work starts tomorrow. (:

I promise I won’t be getting an unmemorable diploma next year.

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I ask everyone reading my blog to pray for my sick great-grandmother. She is sick and is currently admitted to the hospital. Hope that she recovers and stays strong for many more years. (: