ok loved ones, take your pick! dont worry im still coming up with a longer list :p

tintin's birthday wish list:

1.a black labrador retriever
2. the secret history of water by silvia curbelo
3.starbucks tumblers.so i can always have coffee to go (i can have more than ONE tumbler,you know ;)
4. a Roxy top
5.DSC-U30 Cyber-shot® U Digital Camera
6. balloons
7. Powerbooks and Fully Booked Gift Checks ($$$$$$)
8. this pair of jeans
9. a gift certificate from Amazon
10. evolve
11. Sting's "brand new day" cd
12. pencils. lots and lots of it
13. a wooden book shelf
14. Doc Martens boots in Gaucho Wildhorse
15. Mead notebooks
16. Neil Gaiman's Sandman Graphic Novels #1-3
17. a Calvin and Hobbes book (aside from the Indispensable and Essential ones)
18. Ralp by Ralph Lauren for women (to let my Armani White rest)
19. books books books (second hand books are lovingly welcome!)
20. Ferrari in fire engine red remote control car (available in all SM Toy Kingdom outlets) :)
21. a big denim tote bag
22. a black nail polish
23. a massage
24. Fizz Wizz candies
25. goodies from Candy Corner
26. tank tops for weekend wear!

even without Mudra's permission yet, i had already decided to post this. my writer-friends and co-fellows in this year's UP National Writers' Workshop had another blast last saturday in which i was unfortunately absent. anyhoo, here's Mudra's (brilliant fictionist Janet Villa) email account on playing Taboo:

We played Taboo til kingdom come -- you know that game where you're supposed to describe the word to your teammates but there are some terms that are taboo, terms that you cannot use. Here are snippets of our game:


Sem (trying to describe PLATINUM): This is better than gold!
Rebecca (shouting): SEX!


U: This is what I'll never find!
Gelo: LOVE!!! [Aba, it turns out, tama si Gelo! The word really was
"love!" The boys got the point.]


U (describing SADDLE to his teammates): Assholder!! Assholder!!
Assholder!
His teammates: (confused, siyempre) Chair?
U (getting more incensed and raising his palms to cup the air):
Assholder!! Assholder!!


U (nagmamarunong, after Gelo found it difficult to describe SALMON):
Dapat sinabi mo, Gelo, "Blank Rushdie."
[O, di ba? Ang galing ng anak ko?]


U (describing FINGER): F**k you! F**k you!
Gelo: Whaaa?
U: This is what you use when you F**k you! F**k you!


Mudra (describing POEM): This is what Gelo writes!
Eleanor: Poetry?
Someone (I forgot who): Trash?

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you guys wont sue me for posting this here, no? i really wish i were with you. sigh.

I have another one of those I-want-to-write-but-can’t-get-to-doing-it mode. I will perpetually be looking for a potion to rid me of my laziness. Oh, but I am not really lazy lazy,you know. When I work, I work well and hard. Ay ambot. Basta I am tamad these days.

And in an effort to fight off this lazy streak, I will just go about this blogging business in such a way you readers would be wagging your tongues at me out of sheer boredom. Oh well.

Yesterday was fun. Kulas drove me to Roces Ave. where I transferred cars to join Nina and Sam. I had Keema with buttered rice, Sam had a Chelo Kabab and rolled her pita bread with grilled tomatoes and garlic sauce. Persian delight night. Nina just sat between us and stared at the wall while making kulit for questions.

Nina: come on now, ask me questions.
Me: armspowlkks izh kowpolkmorstern * im hungry and I don’t wanna talk *
Sam: sips her yogurt shake and rolls her eyes

Nina was craving for intelligent talk but Sam and I were too hungry to feed her with pieces of our minds.

I had to sweet-talk to my bladder all the way from QC to Intramuros. When we finally got to Starbucks, all the gallons of pee I was holding off had somehow given me vicious abdominal cramps. I would have gladly traded that pain for a root canal on a good tooth.

Dr. Sam made me pop two paracetamols and with the flick of Nina’s wand, I was enjoying my tall cup of hot cocoa.

Nina’s mauve cellophane-wrapped box of questions:

Nina: Are you ready to go?
Sam: as in die?
Tintin: (not realizing it was supposed to be a philosophical query) uh, can I finish my chocolate first please?

Sam laughs and wipes tears off the corner of her chinks.

Nina: noooooooo. As in go, “go”, you know?
Me: oh. blame Biogesic.

---------------------------------
ok ok. Those two might kill me with a nail clipper (as per my idea of a revengeful murder) so let me just say last evening was great: conversations that made heads turn to our table, two mosquito bites on my left arm, a missed episode of SATC, and two goodnight kisses. ok, ok. T’was great hanging out with you gays. As always. I mean it. Really.

---------------------------------

tere texted me yesterday that a luka-luka attacked her. when i got home last night, she showed me her bruises. wawa naman.

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men have been staring at me a lot today, perhaps sensing the lacy thang i've got under this black top-ultra-hipster denim-killer boots number i'm wearing today. ;)

kulas and i will be out on a date tonight: movies, dinner and who knows what comes after... *winks again*

i vow to have a fun, relaxed weekend. i wont bother myself with work (official work, that is). i intend to paint on saturday morning and finally get my lustful brushes from a long hiatus.

i do not have a title for this painting yet. it's my Re-creation of Van Gogh's Starry-starry Night, dementia on dementia. perhaps when i'm done with it, i could post it here and have you people suggest on a title.

this painting will be a part of a series of paintings i've already started called gods and goddesses howling. i sense a new exhibit coming up soon.

i also ought to go back working on Our House. Our House, by the way, is the center for children's creativity i am putting up.

my brain has turned to mush, ladies and gentlemen. i want a new book, a new shirt and a new pair of sneakers to add to my collection of hundreds.

oh wait. you may want to check out my poem published in tinig.

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this week has been really tough. friday, oh friday, how do i love thee?

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while i was smoking by the office stairwell, thoughts of tatay came to me, like vague ribbons of smoke, at first; now trailing after me, insistent like a child's hand tugging at my skirt.

it's been three years since he passed away. he didn't say goodbye nor did we feel any inkling that he was leaving us. i don't think it was sudden though. i know he felt it. i know he knew. death is only sudden, unbidden to those who are left behind. i know. i know because nanay soon followed him. two deaths in barely one year. too soon, too painful.

such pain you will never get used to.

i have a big heart of scars. and love. the biggest part of it has tatay and nanay in it.

of course another death scares me. one will never be able to prepare for it--for the loss of another hand to hold: not the countless in and out's in the hospital; not the gray years; nothing. there will be no warnings until it stares at you with cold, cold eyes.

what tatay and nanay had taught me with their passing is hope. immense hope:

for those who have gone ahead of us. and for those of us who are left behind.

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you came to me like rain:

rain pelting against glass windows;
rain rushing through my feet on a pavement;
rain settling on my eyelashes;
rain dousing my paper boat;
rain collecting in my open mouth, my open palm;
rain dancing on my shoulders;
rain pouring forth your name.

beautiful.

june 1889 (210 Kb); oil on canvas, 72 x 92 cm (29 x 36 1/4 in); from the museum of modern art, new york webmuseum

the starry night was completed near the mental asylum of saint-remy, 13 months before van gogh's death at the age of 37. vincent's mental instability is legend. he attempted to take paul gauguin's life and later committed himself to several asylums in hopes of an unrealized cure.

van gogh painted furiously and the starry night vibrates with rockets of burning yellow while planets gyrate like cartwheels. the hills quake and heave, yet the cosmic gold fireworks that swirl against the blue sky are somehow restful.

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my brushes and canvas on easel await.

i am so unhappy. i feel so lousy even i wouldn't want to say hi to me. i can hear my brain cells screaming "enough alreaaaaaady!"

in addition to this (see, even the way I write is conspiring against me; darn those office memos), my lips sting from eating too much of tina's Pringles Pizza. Hey, lips, you are a part of my body, remember? If I refuse to eat, I would die. And if I die, Im taking you down with me. So lips, cooperate.

i am the pinoy isaw (pig intestines skewers) left too long on the grill. i've got flies all over me. doesn't that suck big time?

i wouldn't want to wax poetic or try to come up with a Kierkegaardian tenet as to why i am in this cosmic shithole. i am normally a happy person. people know that. my friends know that. even my enemies. haha.

i want to know when this unhappiness will go and claw its nails onto somebody else. i want to know because i want to be wearing my most fabulous outfit, killer heels, my juiciest lip gloss and a smug grin when unhappiness bids bye-bye...

WARNING: christine not here yet. i might as well congratulate you, baby; you have been chosen to be my first victim for today.

i am here among mortals although this time,i am not waiting for some prince to come and rescue me while i sing lines of that sweetie-cutesy song that made disney's bank account fat.but hey yes,id like to be a part of some world -- the certainty of whose world or what world is not clear, will never be so. i am quite sober now... that's the thing with relating to mortals: you develop the same manners of thinking, you talk over beer and chicharong bulaklak,you curse the wind for blowing towards your direction because the joint,the joint!is only a few centimeters from extinction,and then you talk again while staring at the moon,waiting for some goddamn moment of illumination that the conversation would somehow create some semblance of meaning to you.

my mind is like john coltrane's higways -- my mind is a black newly asphalted road with a stretch of yellow line in the middle. every now and then, car headlights would appear and tires skid fast,a head-on collision afterwards... to give you a more vivid not to mention morbid picture of how christine's mind looks like: imagine the aftermath of a collision between a dumptruck and a camper. the truck driver is a drunk, wife-beater who abuses his thirteen year old daughter whenever his wife spends the night at 7-11. meanwhile,the wrecked camper carried a family going to a vacation -- dad's a neurosurgeon, mom's a closet-lesbian; and young lily keeps a razor in her jeans pocket, she's planning to do IT now, finally (dad & mom look happy) because her breasts are too small... now after the car crash,police mobile cars are everywhere... and the sound -- listen to the officer's report: "casualties-4,total wreckage,no need for paramedics,over." sound of static on the hand-held radio...

got the picture?

to fly away like a little white balloon... to hear nothing, ears deaf to this din; to just sit above all these alleys of mess... to just fly, fly, fly away like my little white balloon.

What is your past life? How did you die? by whisperinghope
Name
Age
Way	Murdered by sums in the Maths textbook
Past Life	Amazon.
Created with quill18's MemeGen!

it's so tintin :)

Such a goddess.

so how are you supposed to feel when you’re working on a rainy Sunday afternoon? dream of bumming around—topless—like she does; think of the beach, good books, coffee, conversations, sting, cinnamon rolls, puppies, white cotton sheets, babies, saxophone notes in a new york bar, the scent of his cologne on his collar…

what else can you do but dream dream dream. and i am here, ani difranco keeping me sane, singing to me she is trying to evolve she's just trying to evolve she’s trying trying to evolve...

i made myself a cup of coffee. (i like it black with a teaspoon of sugar. i like the purity of things). the hot liquid first touched my lips with surprise, then i felt my tongue scalding, a singe-path forming down my throat. instead of me feeling the sting, the pain, i uttered your name.

with the syllables coming out, my tongue barely touching the roof of my mouth as i pronounce your name, i closed my eyes and again felt that tingling sensation first in my mouth, my tongue, my throat, traveling down my body… down, down, down, and i imagined you sucking out the sharp pain of burning in my tongue, and i gave in to the feel of it, shivering, burning all the more…

and again i take a sip, awakening my senses fully, this time my body craves for more to sustain it. a deep, aching pang crawls through me, the caffeine surges up, insistent, demanding. like the touch of a hand barely touching the skin, my skin, sending me into madness. with my mouth half-open, the softness of my dress seems to be touching me like a hand; i feel everything touching me like a hand… your hand. and once more, i burn with urgency, rendering me breathless… my mouth half-open, waiting for a kiss.

A Kind of Burning
(Ophelia Dimalanta)

it is perhaps because
one way or the other
we keep this distance
closeness will tug as apart
in many directions
in absolute din
how we love the same
tirvial pursuits and
insignificant gewgaws
spoken or inert
claw at the same straws
pore over the same jigsaws
trying to make heads or tails
you take the edges
i take the center
keeping fancy guard
loving beyond what is there
you sling at the stars
i bedeck the weeds
straining in song or
profanities towards some
fabled meeting apart
from what dreams read
and suns dismantle
we have been all the hapless
lovers in this wayward world
in almost all kinds of ways
except we never really meet
but for this kind of burning.

it's all mama's fault

i helped tere with her Ethics paper last night. i had spent eight straight hours with her; i woke her up at past six a.m., told her there's an earthquake (which scaled 2 on the Richter--GMA news), took a shower with her, and dropped her off to school.

eavesdrop

on the way she soaps her body:

me: yuck, bakit ka ganyan mag-soap?
her: eh ganito turo ni mama eh!
me: di ah!

on the way she wears/hooks her _ _ _:

me: why do you wear your _ _ _ like that??? masisira yan!
her: ganito nakikita ko kay mama eh!
me: di noh! (shows her how to do it right)
her: eh baka kasi ang taba na ni mama when it was MY turn to see how the damn thing is done...

ang labo pare.

some drive-to-work resolutions

1) i shall not be posting about work anymore. or at least i'll try not to. people dont really have to know that i'm driving myself to slavery. (take note: slavery for a cause)

2) i shall stop whining.

3) wake up early so i can have breakfast everyday

4) bring a thermoflask or tumbler so i can drive by Tazza Cafe along Dapitan and get myself my first caffeine fix

5) go to work early, leave it early, and focus on my Projects after office---my most graceful hours

6) live by these resolutions

im turning 25 next month and these guys were doing it already....

Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age

Via museumofconceptualart.com


At age 25:

The future mythologist Joseph Campbell decided to move to Woodstock to read the classics for five years, nine hours a day. Living on very little, he would make himself readily available as a dinner guest.

Orson Welles coscripted, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane.

By this age, Charles Chaplin had appeared in 35 films.

P. T. Barnum bought a "160-year-old" slave woman and began a career in show business.

Janis Joplin made her first recording, "Cheap Thrills," which grossed over a million dollars within a few months.

Chris Burden created "Painting Shoot," which involved the artist being shot in the left arm by a friend.

Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, thus winning a $25,000 prize.

Fayette, N.Y. farmhand Joseph Smith founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He claimed he translated the Book of Mormon from some golden tablets revealed to him by the angel Moroni.

Bavarian painter Aloys Senefelder invented the lithograph.

French engineer Benoit Fourneyron invented the first waterwheel turbine.

Sarah Bernhardt scored her first triumph, being asked to repeat her theatrical performance before Napoleon III.

Physician Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile. As he collapsed unconscious into the arms of his trainer, the loudspeaker announced, "The time was three..." The uproar of the fans drowned out the rest of the announcement.

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i think im having a quarter-life crisis. i still want to do so many things. and i guess i better get my gorgeous butt off to working on these things instead of just talking about it.

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Darn. My right eye was itchy so I checked it out in the mirror. Man, I think I look like a monkey.

i was disoriented when i woke up this morning that i asked tere if it was friday already. i still have so many things to do before the Event on Tuesday and set-up will start on Monday. geez.

im dying for a really hot cup of coffee...

im super tired and i still have tons to do. i had a meeting at Museo Pambata this morning and as always, it was more fun than work. discussion with the Programs people Des, Liza and Noreen was both enriching and exciting. we were at the resource center and i could see kids running about the playground outside. some would press their faces on the glass walls of the center and smile at us--wet lips pressed on glass.

i managed to finalize things with them despite my catatonic state. i guess nights of sleeping late are taking their toll now. i slept really heavily last night and still i woke up late this morning---9 am.

i walked to Lami for lunch but the place was full so went to Forest Grill instead, where Kulas joined me. Im so grateful for Kulas' help. He went with me to the furniture shop where we placed an order for the book cart for Museo.

back here at work, phone calls are endless and i have to go to Powerbooks to later to check out the titles we will be purchasing for the event.

im dying for a smoke and cup of brewed coffee but im trying to cut down so i'll defer ingesting my poisons for as long as i can.

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went to gets' place last night with dhey, joan and sharon. talked about dhey's love problems and gets' own. we also got to plan for our baguio trip next month.

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because i am too busy with work, i can't seem to bring myself to worry about what tere texted me last night. she's in trouble with one of her classes and it means there's a possibility she wouldn't be able to graduate come March 2004.

i dont know. im too tired to think about it.

so ok, am i the only makulit one here? kulas kept bugging me to read his blog and when i finally did, i had to admit, it made me smile. nawiwili na si mokong : )

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reading other people's blogs makes me feel that mine is utterly crappy, like my life is nothing but blah.

oh well, consider this: i blog in-between phone calls, meetings, paperwork, and the usual bureaucratic hoopla. excuses. darn.

tintin's personal assistant

another christmas wish: my very own personal secretary/girl friday/life-organizer/shock absorber

i am actually tempted to place a classified ad and start interviewing applicants while perusing their priceless curriculum vitaes. tapos i'll tell them they're not hired. sige na, pleaseeee,one day lang. i want to be the Biggest Big Boss!

last sunday, the mass' theme was on marriage. the homily centered on how married life is supposed to be and stuff. it was actually pretty good.

last night,however, barry told me that his parents have been fighting. now i dont want to be alarmed but i've this weird feeling because they rarely fight. i know barry is somehow worried though...

dhey, gets and joan dropped by last night. i was home early and decided to hit the sack early since i had a long day at work. dhey talked about her problems with dondon while i triggered the paranoia button in gets. i told her not to stress herself so as not to delay her period further.

over san mig light and winston and marlboro lights, we took turns trying to knock some sense into dhey.

whatever she decides on, we'll always be with her.

now i can see the light. at least, arrangements for the launch with Museo Pambata will be finalized. i have a meeting with them tomorrow and i hope things would have more direction by then. procrastination is always my sin, i confess. i work better in pressure, see. then again, i always wonder if things would really be easier if i try to sit and work on them way before deadlines.

i had a meeting with Xtine of AIM and tina this morning. i admire Xtine's good head on program planning and development. and when she asked me what the Campaign's vision is (that would be mine,too), i told her i've somehow become disillusioned.

and it's true. i just think of the kids who would be benefitting from the Campaign, and perhaps saving our seas wouldn't be that hard after all...

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it's always delightful to get to work and have a cup of starbucks coffee on your desk. thanks, honey.

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i think kulas and i are developing the same brain waves. this morning while preparing for work, i said to myself that i bet my phone would ring in a few seconds. only the humming of the aircon in my room and my nosiy head can be heard, when after ten seconds or so, my phone did ring. and it was kulas.

hanep pare.

i have so many things to do for the Campaign launch next tuesday at the museo pambata. now i wish i had my own personal secretary...

a steaming cup of hot chocolate at the end of the day would be really really comforting...




oh and by the way, hi yummie! i'll try to put a message board here soon so i'll expect you more often :)

for tina, just because.

an excerpt from Eric Gamalinda's "Subterranean"

...Just like the perfect seasons
they will die
and I will die
and you will die also;
no one knows who will go first,
and this is the source
of all my grief.

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what's the sense in all the attempts in making this life wonderful if one day, you'd find one of the persons dear to you gone forever?

i will soon say bye-bye to you

it's the national dog week!