Like A Boss

This made my night!! :) This is one of the reasons why I'm proud to be Pinoy. I love my country - no matter how densely populated, no matter how polluted, no matter how corrupt the politicians are and no matter what they say, we know how to smile and make people happy and forget our problems even for a while. :) Saludo ako sayo kahit gaano kaliit na bagay, kahit gaano kaliit ang sweldo, nagagawa mong magpasaya ng tao.

It srikes again

I really don't know why I'm writing at this moment. I just feel like I wanted to talk to someone but there is never really anyone that I could ever talk to. I just arrived home from a long day. Well, not really a long day, but rather an intense, mind-boggling psychoanalysis while I'm inside the car. They say less intelligent people tend to be happier because they don't overthink and overanalyze things. I don't say I have an intelligence quota higher than an average person, but you get the gist.

I have been dreaming of a simple life ever since I was a kid, where I wouldn't worry anymore about things way too much for my age. I just want to experience bliss that would take me somewhere; somewhere less stressful. I think we all dream of the same things. We take time to search for this road and along the way we take the roads towards unpleasurable things and we don't blame anybody but ourselves.

I have lots of things on my mind right now that I'd rather not disclose. I just want to be at peace for a moment and try to be happy. Or not.

"Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try." -Yoda

Love in 1892

One of the things I like about Milan, aside from fashion that I can't wear, and gay-like men I can't decipher, is the transportation. Not the uber organized, but not a messy transportation either. Not in the category of Japan, but certainly not lacking in class and efficiency.

Back in the Philippines, I suffer from motion sickness. I was always scared of riding a bus to Manila from Batangas because I always end up vomiting all the food I ate for breakfast. (What a mental image, thank you, Arianne.) It was both frustrating and embarrassing.

Here in Milan, I have learned to overcome that annoying sickness. There's no alternative jeepney here. We have no car or anything and the only way to go somewhere is by bus and/or tram. At first I avoided the bus rides, thinking that I wouldn't want to terrify or gross people out if I suddenly asked the driver to halt and then vomit violently on the pavements. I always took the tram. Oh, the ever beautiful, ancient tram. (It was also one of the things that makes me feel like I'm in Italy, what with all of its renaissance glory. Haha!)

But it was so slow. It takes 40 minutes for me to arrive home from downtown, whereas when I take the bus, it would literally take half the time. So, armed with courage and menthol candies, I took my first ride. It was nothing like the smell of the buses in the Philippines, nothing like the hot and smelly seats, the dark windows and everything. It was awesome. (Oh my god I can't believe I'm raving about a bus ride. My life is so lame. Haha!) From that moment on, I learned everything there is to learn about buses here in Milan, their numbers, their destinations and the connecting stops where I could get another bus to take me as fast as they can to where I want to go.

But then again, from time-to-time, I ride the trams and the subways. Subways are amazing now because they have now network coverage and they are the fastest ones, but they get pretty much packed up especially in rush hours, so unless I want my toenails to be dead the moment I step out of it, I avoid them.

If I want to pretend that I'm in a movie clip or music video while I listen to music, I ride the tram. :D It has this melancholic air and sometimes slipping into the depressive line. Really. And it is my thing. Haha. So yes, it remains my first love out of all. If I'm gonna go back home, I will certainly miss the smell of the trams and the conversations I hear inside. Most especially, I will miss the feeling of being inside one.

Bittersweet

This is the most touching scene in Harry Potter.
MUST.REREAD.NOW.

-picture came from 9gag.

From butterflies to dragonflies

The strands in your eyes that color them wonderful
Stop me and steal my breath.
Tell me that we belong together, dress it up with the trappings of love..


It's six thirty-five in the morning and here I am, lethargic and sleepless, attempting to blog my thoughts away. I had already spent the last forty-five minutes or so watching A Cinderella Story. Oh yes. Chad Michael Murray. I was already inside my not-so-comfortable comforter, completely snuggled when I suddenly had the wise idea to watch something rather than struggle to sleep with thoughts overflowing.

I'll be your crying shoulder
I'll be love suicide
I'll be better when I'm older
I'll be the greatest fan of your life


It's funny when I couldn't feel anything aside from nostalgia when I watched their football slash kiss in the rain scene. I used to feel those funny little butterflies in my stomach, and should I say I miss that feeling?

I'm getting pretty much older, I age every year and I do not have any Philosopher's Stone with me to stop me from aging. I hate it.  I hate the fact that my world is not revolving backwards and I don't get any younger. Chad Michael Murray being 30 years old is an example of my fading adolescence and a sign that I have to fully embrace adulthood.

Oh life.

I'm just missing someone and for the past four years I have felt that my world is somehow stagnant, there is that deep sense of nostalgia and solitude that no one can ever decipher.

tl;dr

I am insomniac and really nocturnal. They are two of the many reasons why I sleep in the morning and wake up in the afternoon. I don't sleep for eight frigging hours. I am lucky if I get to sleep in, and that is when I sleep until 2pm. The rest of my family puts it as laziness, not really considering the factor that if the neuroceptors don't get enough REM sleep, they lose their sensitivity to serotonin and norepinephrine, which leads to impaired cognitive function. And just like Sheldon Cooper, if I don't have my serotonin, things would get bad.

When things get bad, I get irritable. That is the reason why I get angry with my mother yelling her throat out in the morning, my sister who pokes my head for me to wake up, and my brother who has this habit of turning on the blessed lights and opening the damn doors when I'm sleeping. 

According to them, it is the reason why I get fat.

According to me, the reason why I get fat is because I eat too much and I don't have enough sleep because they keep waking me up.

You see? It's a neverending cycle. 

They don't frickin' realize that insomnia is not a joke. It is almost synonym of being a drug addict who can't sleep and eat and just think for the whole night. They don't understand that I feel aggravated when they disturb me, and I also feel helluva pissed when I hear them talking about me-not-waking-up-early when I'm just a room away, just like what they're doing right now.

And yes, who would know that I feel like this? No one. Because fuck them, they don't bother to listen.

And Mom, I may be fat and lazy and according to your clothes that I ironed out a while back: I don't do anything.. well, surprise, surprise, I am not deaf and I can hear you out here.

PS. I am not fat. They just think I am because they have Megan Fox's body. DUH. 

Fashion Disasters and Epic Wins

Fashion sense? I don't think I have that one. I am deliciously gifted at pointing out clothes that could be eye candies for my sister or my mom to put on, but when it comes to myself, I barely have the ability to keep up with the trend.

I have been browsing a lot of websites, even the news and entertainment section, heck, I am even a subscriber of Glamour magazine for a year so I could have my monthly supply of makeup tips and what's-hot-and-what's-not - but to no end I could apply every bit of it to myself. It always leaves me wondering why.

For example, if I go out shopping with my friends, they all have these concrete ideas of what they should wear at a certain occasion and I don't. I go inside some stores and all I can see is total confusion. Sometimes I literally end up not going just because I didn't want to look stupid amidst all the glitzy dressed females.

Those magazines state that we, girls, should opt for mixing and matching. I have tried it about more than a dozen times but sometimes it ends up in panic buying of a complete ensemble, an outfit ready for the What Were They Thinking?! portion of omgyahoo, or not getting anywhere at all. I mean, what the hell is wrong with me? Is there something wrong with the color and design orientation of my brain or am I just low on confidence that I always think that I'm doing it wrong?

Sometimes I blame it on the way I was brought up. I always thought that I couldn't wear sleeveless shirts or even shorts because men will be ogling at me, and I couldn't say my grandmother was wrong either. (The jeepney drivers in the Philippines really know how to stare, to my utter horror.) I also thought that girls should look conservative, should always be au naturel, and should not pluck their horrific eyebrows, no matter how thick they are. Imagine that.

So yes, you can imagine the culture shock I felt when I first came here, where models are plain sight and people can wear whatever they want without worrying about the fact that there are also other people who exist around them that could stare, could ogle or sometimes, when one's wearing a very sexy attire, could drool.

Sometimes I am a fashion victim, other times I'm really not. I would gladly pick up a first edition of the first book of Harry Potter over a pair of Louboutin pumps that I could never wear while running for the bus. I do own some leopard-printed things, some fancy accessories, the floral skirts, and bags. I also pluck my eyebrows on a regular basis, wear make-up (I even have a primer for my foundation, haha!)  sometimes, but most of the days, you'll see me walking on my black coat, wearing a beret or beanie, a pair of overused boots and bag without any trace of make-up. You'll be lucky seeing me all glammed up in an ordinary day.

My relationship with fashion is a love and hate one. I love it when shirts are trendy, when skirts are not so in, when water-and-soap faces are in demand. I hate it when it starts treading the grounds of being glamorous, of being all made up, of latex leggings being sexy or just putting on the red lipstick that makes you look like a femme fatale. I hate it not because it doesn't fit my taste, but because I couldn't do it.

What's more loathsome is the fact that guys dig it. Not only guys, but the people dig it. They really do. When you go out sans anything that could show that you wear the latest trend, they make you feel like you live in the stone age. Whatever happened to simplicity? Whatever happened to guitar-nails; the short, unpolished nails that would allow you to strum your guitar without worrying if it would ruin your bloody red nail polish?

It makes me want to drink so I can have the Dutch courage to try to wear something out of my ordinary outfits and show the world that I am not just a geek reading her book and drinking her coffee in the cold weather.

But then again, I'd rather be myself.

So yea, I should stop wondering. Maybe I'm just really a geek. And proud of it.

Of thoughts and the lack thereof

When I was four, I had this plastic lunch bag that changes its colour under the sun; from white it turned violet. I knew it was cool back then so I was happy and contented. Some kids would walk up to me and say, “Hey where did you buy that? I want one too!”

When I turned five, I was in the afternoon section of the prep class (preparatory, just after kindergarten, also known as kinder two), and I had this 70 pieces of crayons that I was pretty much proud of even though I didn’t have the slightest idea where would I use each of ‘em, seeing as I wasn’t included in the creative bunch, having only the ability to draw people made of sticks.

When I was in first grade, it all started. We are not rich, my mom was a housekeeper and my dad was just a simple employee in some family business but because my grandparents can permit it at the time, I went into an expensive private school. Things have become so hard. My classmates were bringing toys like Barbie dolls, Polly Pockets, Lego and all those things that rich parents could afford. I was just always looking at them and if lucky, get to play with them with my classmates who were, fortunately, kind enough to let other kids touch their stuff. I’ve filled the lack of toys and money with the ability to excel with my studies, so it wasn’t much of a problem.

I grew up with the knowledge that I couldn’t have everything. If one thing was given to me, I couldn’t have the other because then it would be called greed. I grew up with an upbringing that if I had to have something that I don’t need, I had to give back something of equal value, thus, I always tried to excel in my studies. My parents had to go abroad to give us a good life and that, too, was something that I needed to consider.

This is maybe one of the many reasons why I have the capability to understand every sacrifice that I needed to do in life. It is one of the things that taught me to consider other people’s feelings, especially the ones that have given me so many things.

It is important for us to be contented of what we have, but it doesn’t mean that we didn’t have to dream of something better than that. But demanding something that are beyond the resources isn’t reasonable and downright selfish. We have to always consider the circumstances, analyze the situation and do our best to understand what’s right and what’s wrong.

Sometimes, even if we are not contented, we should try to be. Because when God closes a door, he opens a window somewhere, and as they say, we’re just too busy dwelling over at the closed door that we don’t realize that there’s a window waiting for us. 

Ab Ovo

Ab Ovo ; from the beginning

Happy New Year!! Here I am, yet again at another attempt at blogging. I, myself, really don't understand why I have this need to blog but not having enough drive to maintain it. I think I'm making fun of myself while I repeatedly do this.

But since it's New Year, and we're not supposed to begin a sentence with a conjunction, I'm writing again; and I want to take this opportunity to write the now cliché New Year's resolutions. This way, I have it in black and white and will serve as my checklist for the future. HAHAHA.

Here goes.

. To reconnect with people. I want to reconnect with my online buddies, friends and/or relatives, former classmates and former flames. Kidding!! :) Seriously, a lot of time has passed and it has been taken for granted which is why I want to take this opportunity to start to break the ice again.

. To be more patient and less temperamental. I have always considered myself as a patient person. Someone once told me, "The world belongs to the patient man." Lately, though, I have noticed that my patience is now reduced to a series of oaths and expletives. Hahaha.

. To be braver. I haven't realized until the end of 2011 that I am not brave. I am strong, but I lack the courage to take risks. This year, I am hoping to change that.

. To study  until my nose bleeds. I am just kidding on the nose bleed part.

. To be frugal. Hahaha I am not a spender because frankly, I don't have much money to spend, but when I do, I spend waaay too  much. This is definitely something that I need to change!

2011 has been both good and bad to me. I have learned many lessons, made the same mistakes to learn from the same lessons again. Experience, as what you may call it. I have almost exhausted all my emotional strengths and resources, lost hope and the have it back again. But the biggest lesson I have learned: never take yourself for granted. :)

Happy New Year!! May the water dragon  bring us good luck, success, and fortune!!