I really look forward to the weekends. Even before Monday rolls around, I am already anticipating the next time I can clock out of work and unwind. I have no problems just staying in and reading or having a movie or TV series marathon, but being around loads of people felt like the thing to be done this weekend.

Raymond and I had lunch in Nomnomnom, which he’d been craving for for quite a while, a craving that he’d passed on to me. We have eaten here before, and my favorite is still The Good Sisig. Here’s what we had (not counting the soup we just finished eating):

We didn’t know where to go after (LOL) because he had a dinner and I had somewhere else to go to that night, so we ended up going to a talk for Star in Shang. I texted Isa and asked her if she wanted to have dinner, and thankfully, she couldn’t resist my feminine wiles was gracious enough to meet me on such short notice.

Continue reading The Weekender….

The past two days, I have been somewhat successful in my attempts at being zen. These attempts have been crucial, because I have been a nervous ball of nerves (!) the past few weeks. My somewhat-zen-ness been accomplished by:

• Watching Sports Night and Arrested Development before and during work.
• Backreading blog subscriptions! I can’t tell you how happy I am that the unread count is 0, and it’s not because I “mark[ed] all as read.”
• Not taking things personally.
• Talking to good people whenever I feel like freaking out.
• Collaging!

Here are a few of the ones I’ve made for We Are Triangle, a pop-up shop running next week:

If I manage to finish the stuff I have planned and hand them over to Mick (hehe), then some of my stuff will be up for sale. So, if you’re free between February 3 and 5, please stop by Cubao X. A lot of people have a lot of great stuff for sale. The last run of We Are Triangle, I got awesome pinback buttons, poetry books, and the music compilation. I handed out a few copies of Steve Roggenbuck‘s chapbook, “i am like october when i am dead.”

(Speaking of whom, he has another project you guys might be interested in: please direct your attention over here.)

RSVP HERE. It’s going to be really awesome, I promise.

Things I Love Thursday is a movement started by Gala Darling, where her readers try to look for things they love and post about them every Thursday. It’s been a while since I’ve done a TILT, but I think that it’s a good time for me to sort of shift my focus on to nice things, as opposed to keeping my mind on things that I want to beat with my fist.

Comfortable clothes!

I’m not a particularly fashion-y person, so I don’t even know why you’d listen to me when it comes to good clothes, but what I do know is comfort and lately, I’ve been wanting to live in these chambray shorts from Cotton On. This awesome tie-dyed shirt is from my friend Jamie‘s clothing line called Willow and Jack. (Link to the shirt.) I’ve only worn this out once because I spilled Moroccan Mint Tea Latte on it and it stained~ but I’ve been wanting to go ahead and wear it anyway, in spite of, since I pretty much want to live in this shirt.

The latest issue of Frankie!

I forget where I even heard of Frankie, but I’d been in a love affair ever since. I only have four issues (cries) but they are absolutely in my Top 3 Favorite Magazines (if there was ever such a list). This one, Tippy brought from Australia, since she’s visiting Manila for a bit. I’ve leafed through it and I’m super excited to read every single word of it. Frankie is great because it has a very specific voice (that appeals to me), and a specific aesthetic (that also appeals to me), and it’s generally very interesting (e.g. In this issue, there is a feature on bearded competitors, unconventional families, an Aboriginal single mother, and so on).

WhatsApp.

WhatsApp is an app that allows smartphone users to message each other. At least, that’s what I was told. Zoe told me to get it when I first got my iPhone, and it’s been the main way I’ve been interacting with her. Since she lives in Hong Kong, one might imagine how easy it is to be out of touch, but I find that my days are filled with tiny conversations with her. While we have been having meaningful conversations, we also talk about a lot of other stuff. Here, we are talking about her asparagus soup! Because I want to know how to make it. Because I miss it.

ALSO: My iPhone in general. I love it so much, it is unreal.

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a very, very good book. I’m not finished with it, so I guess my full review will just follow. But it’s a damn good book. Lives up to the hype, etc. etc.

Other Notable Things:

• The Internet.
• The Social Network and other affiliated parties and individuals.
• Google Reader.
• My books! I did not anticipate the number of you who would actually like that post. Might be my most commented on entry that is not a contest post. Would you imagine that? Hope for the future!
• Future Plans. No matter how shaky and tentative they are. I like projects. I think I just need a little bit a push and some follow-through a lot of the time, really.
• Almond Snickers.
• Australia Day! Photos to follow.
• Work (today) was good. Surprisingly!

So, I’m trying to relax and focus on good things. It worked pretty well today, considering the first half of my day was not the best way to start it. I’ve been keeping myself busy, too. I think a lot of the time, I pause too long and those pauses grow into terrible stretches of time where I can’t seem to muster enough energy to soldier on, or to care at all. An appropriate quote posted on my Tumblr dashboard today:

“‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.’” — T.H. White

I think this is a good plan.

In my last post, I talked about cleaning my room. Well, it’s not very neat… but it’s better. I just need to figure out a system. Thankfully, I have cleared most of the junk that was piled high up in front of my bookshelves. (There used to be a cart with a lot of crap on it, and now it is gone, and all I can see is the floor and my books, and everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.)

My bookshelves are mostly done! I just need to reorganize, and maybe rethink some of my literary choices. Of course, I am torn, because as much as I would like to throw out embarrassing novels and such, I remember having an enormous stack of The Secret Life of Alex Mack and Full House (!!!) novelizations and giving them away. And the truth is, I kind of want them back… for no real reason other than I am a pack-rat who delights in nostalgia.

Ahem.

Here are some pictures, but there is not a lot, because while I think books are cool, I don’t know if people will be able to stand reading about another person’s half-assed attempt at organizing them. Maybe when I’m done with the entire room?

So, for those not in the know, I share a room with my sister! So, yes, we have sort of a halfsies arrangement. Sort of like a Twin Popsie. This is what half of my half looks like:

For the curious: clicking on the image will take you to the Flickr page,
which I have liberally supplied with notes as to which shelves have what kind of books.

Random fiction, the iPod and iHome I inherited from my dad, and P.T. Flea.

One thing I am proud of is that I have enough poetry books to fill an entire shelf cube thing!
I bought a lot of poetry books last year. I don’t can’t analyze them properly, but I do enjoy reading.

Top shelf! It’s narrower, so that is where I have relegated the stumpy books.
A lot are still wrapped in plastic because I am stricken with the disease of buying faster than I can read.

Anyway, more from me soon, I promise. I have a slew of posts that I have been working on (in my head, but still!) and I’m really excited about them. This was just the easiest to put together and type up, so this is what you are getting! I am just really out of sorts and out of time right now. I need to calm down, but I can’t seem to figure out how.

Also, I think it’s almost time for a new layout? What do you think?

Today (January 20) was my lolo’s birthday. He turned 83. We had a nice family dinner. I’ll post photos from other people later. Maybe. (Pictured here are my dad & his dad; my cousin Marc; my nephew Jaime; my cousins’ dog Shino.)

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with family, both biological and non-biological. What I mean to say is that I’ve been spending time with people who are so close to my heart that they could very well be blood relatives. I’ve been going through messy things right now, and I guess that an upside to these dealings is that I’ve been able to take a step back and really re-evaluate just how good of a friend I have been to other people.

I’m not the best kind of person to be friends with, to be honest. Because as much as I can be warm and kind, I can also be spiteful and vindictive, especially when I feel like I’m entitled to those feelings. I don’t really do things that are mean, but more often than I’d like to admit, I have let go of hurtful words about people I really care about.

If you remember, I didn’t really have a set of resolutions for this year, and I’m not going to be listing them right now. But what I would like to work on from now on is to really work on how I deal with people. Because I just realized how powerful words can be—both in bringing down and encouraging people. I’ve come to realize how poisonous talking is sometimes, and I really would like to not thrive in that kind of backstabby drama. My room is messy enough; I would like to keep life as mess-free as possible.

I suppose it’s also a lesson on pride, but that’s another story.

Speaking of rooms, though, my lazy ass is in the process of cleaning up the room that I share with my sister. I suppose she’s tired of my junk but is too polite to ask me to do something about it. I like how this cleaning up has coincided with this eye-opener. That there are things that are worth the cost and the trouble, and there are things that aren’t. A semi-related excerpt from a short story by Jonathan Safran Foer:

My father has suffered twenty-two heart attacks—more than the rest of us combined. Once, in a moment of frankness after his nineteenth, he told me that his marriage to my mother had been successful because he had become a yes-man early on.

“We’ve only had one fight,” he said. “It was in our first week of marriage. I realized that it’s never, ever worth it.”

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. About fighting, revenge, cleaning up messes. Trying to figure out which things are worth the the hurt and the bruised egos, and which things I can just make peace with and let go of without stirring up insane drama.

And I realize that this is a really sad and pathetic metaphor—my life is my room and my room is my life—but with both being messy and with me starting to figure out how to deal with these messes, and both happening at the same time, well. It kind of makes me think a little bit of synchronicity.

Today, I begged my brother to take me and my sister (my parents were in Singapore) to Greenbelt 1 after church for some BonChon. Luckily, they liked it, so the outtathaway trip didn’t seem so out of the way! After this tasty excursion, I did a bit of reading (i.e. pretending to understand Albert Camus) and drank a wrongly punched order from Starbucks. It was a pleasant surprise of a drink, though, so it was okay.

Isa picked me up so we could hang out for a bit and buy stuff for my organizational needs. I’m really glad we were able to, because it didn’t seem like it was a feasibility until after a long, long time. I think I needed this weekend’s quietness.

A conversation tonight got me thinking about a lot of things, and not a lot of these things are particularly good thoughts. To brief you, albeit vaguely, I guess the thing is that I hate being caught in the middle. But that happens to me all the time, so I’m trying to figure out what I’ve been doing wrong.

And, as this is a somewhat new conscious realization for me, I don’t really have a definitive answer yet. For now, I’m just going to keep my mouth shut and stop butting into other people’s personal business, because no matter what my intention is, no matter how good I try to be despite my personal feelings and biases against a person, these things will, in one way or another, blow up in my face and be taken against me. I’m not trying to discount the fact that I probably am at fault for some things, but someone’s problem became my problem, so yeah, I’m a little bit upset.

I resent a lot of things right now, but if there’s something I learned from The Social Network, it’s that blogging in a fit of bad feelings is a terrible idea. It probably won’t cost me millions of dollars in lawsuits, but I still feel like it’s going to end badly, in some form or another.

So, I’m really glad for the good day I just had. I think it balances this tension or whatever. I hope it doesn’t affect the rest of this week, or the rest of the things I have to do. I know I’m being all cryptic-like, but I had to learn to keep my mouth shut the hard way.

I’m going to just. Let things happen, I guess.

Continue reading Sunday Slowdown….