i realized i hadn't posted a photo in a long time. here's one taken from a moving bus, in the rain, as we cross a bridge. it was cold and wet and absolutely beautiful. looks like a scene from the last samurai no?

limbo

maybe i should go back through my blog and plot (hala, the scientist again) my ups and downs. see how long it takes for an upswing? i'm bound to have one soon. can't wait.

monday blues

today, i made someone cry. can you imagine!?? i had been away from the lab for a while, and i was chatting with one of my coworkers. i told her a story i had heard on oprah from gwenyth paltrow. my coworker started crying right then and there. middle of the lab, start of the work day, not even 10am yet, and i had made someone cry! that can't bode well for the rest of the week can it?

here's the story: i have to admit, it made me teary as well.

(background - for meow. cause she loves hearing about everything in FULL detail...
gwenyth paltrow's dad had just died recently, and she had a really really hard time dealing with it. they had a special father-daughter bond, and she was devastated that he was gone.)

when she was around 10 years old, her dad decided to surprise her for the weekend. he told her that they were going on a weekend trip to Paris. just the two of them. so off they went, they stayed at the Ritz, she ordered French fries because she had to have FRENCH french fries, went to museums and all the tourist stuff.

on the plane on the way back, he turned to her and asked, "do you know why we went, just the two of us? and mommy and your brother had their own time?"

she had no idea.

so her dad continued, "i wanted you to experience Paris for the first time with a man who will always love you no matter what."

oh.

from your side of the world. well maybe a bit further away. pat and i are chat buddies again. you're wondering, how in God's name did that happen? my AOL logged in by mistake, first time i had done that this year i think! and he messaged me. took a while to register that i was actually online on AOL. then i was staring at his message, thinking, wha???
he hasn't changed. still gets philippines withdrawal syndrome. still loves the same music. same sense of humor. same "i don't know what i want to do with my life but i have to figure it out soon" thing.
news to me: he remembers stuff for AGES ago. and when i say ages, i mean college times. he also remembers you. SHOCK.
remember THAT whole sage? grabe. in the grad room? i don't think he connected that though. (phew)

a whole lot of nothing

everyday i have lots of conversations, everybody does i suppose. but why do i get the feeling there's a whole lot of nothing happening? despite there being so much on the surface stuff around to do, i find a lot of people just passing the time to get to the next hour.
the other day, L calls me. he calls to tell me about how he's eating fishballs along pasong tamo. duh. we have a laugh. like we always do. i just have to laugh at this guy. he'd make an interesting case study: people who are emotionally disengaged from their lives.
i guess that conversation exemplifies the whole mood of today. we talked i think for over an hour. arguing and bantering about every single thing that we don't agree on. and in the end, it was a whole lot of talk about nothing. i know it. he knows it. i don't know why he insists on communicating. we're not even friends in the true sense of the word. you know how demanding i am of my friends. i don't know why i take his calls. maybe just to pass the time? i agreed to go out with him friday night. man, am bored. in the words of kaye: "eh parang if you don't go out naman, parang boring."
i have TOO MUCH TIME on my hands. hay naku. did i get so used to the rush of dealing with twenty million issues all at once that now i don't know what to do with down time???

songs that move your soul

currently listening to bach's air (it's looping). calms me down and centers me like no other can. it speaks to my soul i guess. no words to attach any meaning. no interpretation needed. just music washing over me. it must be beautiful in palau.

i'm a masochist sports fan

another championship i'm keeping an eye on. somehow, i have a feeling this isn't gonna turn out the way i'd like it either...

oh by the way.

am not over it.

the pain!!!!!!!

we $&(%#ing lost to la salle. AGAIN!!! ano ba???? the very next time ateneo wins over la salle, i will be very olympic-american-sprinter-dude and gloat about it to someone from that side of the world. ayoko na. no more miss-modest. tawagan ba naman ako ng luigi just to gloat? gross. eh hindi ako nang-ganoon when we won. o sige. next time. revenge ;)

residuals

whenpeopletakestepstomoveorchangesome
thingsofundamentaltowhotheyare,dothey
wakeuponedayanditbecomesok?dotheyever
havemomentsofjustsuchsheericannotbreathe
painwhentheyfeelthelastfewoldrootsdying?
thatyoudidnnotknowyoustillhadrootsthere?
butonlyrealizeditintheprocessoftheirremoval?
likeabruisethatyouneverknewwasthere,untilyou
getbumpedthereagain.iamnotmakingsense.because
nothingis.dreamsannoyme.notellingwhatwillbeinthem.fudge.

shopping

because you can never have too many shoes (or in some cases t-shirts...), i went out shopping the entire day with a girl friend. ok, maybe not the entire day. i did work a bit. she happened to be in the area, on leave, when i was there. so we met up at around 3. had lunch first (yes first meal of the day for me). then went around every single shoe shop in glorietta looking for good deals on very specific types shoes we wanted. (focused kami). for example, cardams had a sale: 2 pairs for P299!
long happy shoe shopping filled day. exactly the kind of therapy the girl-y girl side of me needed! since i don't really need those shoes... hello, MSI and stilletos do NOT go together no?... i've never bought them. but it was so much fun! feels good to dress to kill once in a while! sabi nga ng kamiseta: it's fun being a girl! :)

Another language I want to master someday:

My japanese name is 清水 Shimizu (clear water) 三千代 Michiyo (three thousand generations).

christmas

heard my first christmas carol a few days ago. sept. 2, 830 to be exact. when i told people, i found out a lot of them had ALREADY heard christmas music before i even did. wow. talk about christmas spirit. someone had even seen a countdown to christmas already.
i love it. people might think it's strange. roll their eyes. become cynical. but, the way i figure it... if you get people thinking christmas-y, then maybe a million of them would start thinking "oh i have to start the shopping early" or "how do i get people to buy in my store this season". but maybe, there will be a few who will actually think of the christmas spirit. and decide to start early this year too. and the longer time we have exposed to it, the chances go up even more??
so i'm all for this starting-the-season-early. of the twenty million things people have to occupy their minds, christmas thoughts are hardly the worst. and maybe, for a few, it might even be inspirational. and that, is something to be happy about.
merry christmas moo. i know i'm not the first to greet you. i remember gene. : )
i'll see you soon!

adventure in detail

was in Sablayan for a meeting/presentation for about two and a half hours. took us a day a night and several river crossings to get there.

van to Batangas port (batangas port is so developed now! i had no idea). RORO to Abra, Occidental Mindoro. van gets off, and away we go on a bumpy it's-barely-morning ride. plan was, drive all the way down to Sablayan. problem, people at the meeting forgot to tell us that a bridge (one of the twenty million bridges we had to cross) is broken. can you believe it? we were like, hindi nga?!? it's been down for three weeks and it'll take quite some time to fix it. only thing to do is to leave the van there, cross the bridge, and take one of the buses on the otherside! one long bus ride (potholes along the road were almost as big as the bus itself!) and a trike later, we were finally at the meeting. about 3 hours late!! and when we get there, everyone is saying you didn't know the bridge was out? sus. how? how would we have known?

meeting went well. i'll tell you about THAT some other time.

ended up sleeping in one of the towns there. in general, the way back was less eventful. took a supercat to make up for lost time. fast things. love them. get to the port. take one of those illegal colorum vans to manila. a kilometer away from where we're supposed to get off, it promptly breaks down. NOTHING surprises me about that. after a bridge collapse? that's nothing!

through all of this adventure, i have formed an admiration for our driver. who is the most patient, resourceful person i know. bilib. he was still smiling and helpful despite driving up and down luzon and mindoro non-stop for the greater part of 3 days. we said, we have to leave you here at the bridge. (imagine, middle of nowhere, no signal, nothing). he was like, ok, hintay lang ako dito. simple. he didn't know when we'd be back! and we had no way of telling him. he still offered us ice cream during dinner! we had to leave him (again) at abra port when we had to take the supercat ahead of him. he was still, ok! smiling. iba yung bait nito. kung ako yan, galit na ako. you're leaving me behind AGAIN???

pero saludo ako sa taong yun. amazing. and i consider myself more patient than most. but nowhere in the vicinity of his level of patience. he made the experience an adventure instead of a nightmare. he's the type of person you want around in a crisis. mang quintin, salamat po.

makeshift people bridge we had to cross. it was actually fun!!!