"I have a vague feeling that this would turn out to be a bloody episode.", he uttered as we both made our way against the quick flow of people-traffic on the sidewalk.   

   "Why's that? You're just meeting his parents, for the 2nd time." I took a sip of the iced coffee in my right hand, the other freely swinging his briefcase. He had been trembling like a jello experiencing a 9.0 earthquake, a not so good candidate for carrying important documents. "And I've met them. They're okay." He grimaced at my comment. 

   "They're doctors. Freakin' scared of them."

   "Goodness. You're just paranoid. Sure they're strict sometimes but they're not close-minded people." We rounded a corner and our destination loomed at the end of the road. "What did they say to you the first time you met them?"

   "They said they're quite open to the idea of me being together with their only son."

   "So what's the problem?" I stop outside a door, my hand poised for ringing the bell.

   "They're more open with the idea of castrating me first, then throwing me into the ocean with bleeding appendages." My hand hovered dangerously above the button. "Reserved for the next time of course, w/c was the point they emphasized while holding a rather sharp scalpel above my crotch area."

   I turned pale as I backed safely from the door. "Okay. Seeing them today might not be such a good idea for you right now."      

   I doubt if anything's seriously wrong with my eyesight right now. My approach to complete bat-blindedness has been thankfully stopped, if not, considerably slowed down in the past years -unless I take off my glasses, by then everything reverts to the blurry and swimmy state. Only that a week's worth of classes all starting at 7am daily had leniently lent a sort of cross-eyedness in my facial features, that neither a quick shut-eye in the afternoons nor a very long sleep-in during the weekends could quite cure.

   I am seriously in need of sleep. A very long sleep, one in which I'll wake up appearing refreshed, invigorated, and uncross-eyed -- after approximately 48 hours. My current load at school does not, in anyway, burden me; it's only the damned schedule that's getting on my nerves and my apparent sleeping time. 7am?!! At first thought I could handle it, seeing as my sched only eats up half my day. But, 7am?!?

   My usual sleeping prowess, applied shamelessly to previous classes starting at 7am, has been perfectly neutralized by my professor. I couldn't, I just can't get a wink of sleep in her class because of the following reasons: one, the class has only a number of students, too few for me to go completely unnoticed, two, the prof likes to tease her students, unless I want to be called 'sleepyhead' for the rest of the summer I'd probably stick to keeping my eyes open.

   I want a really really long weekend, a weekend that extends for a couple of more days. That should be perfect for some serious napping.

P.S. About to email a very very late script for a reporting. But I can't make out the handwritten email on my scratch paper. I'm banking on that he meant 'a' with that suspicious little swirl.... It makes sense but, what if he meant an 'o'? Or maybe an enormous 'e'? Arggh. I'm getting cross-eyed with sleepiness again.

   when your really in dire need of something: clothes for the cold, a shelter for the rain, and especially, food when hunger rears its very ugly stomach.

   Due to very foolish reasons, I have refrained from eating today, or rather, from buying anything even when I had the money. Part of my 'reasons' would be to shed a little bit of weight, not only because people keep on saying that I'm more gargantuan than usual. It was mostly influenced by the sole fact that most of my clothes decided to quit fitting me, and everyday slowly becomes a complete chore full of shirt-finding, pant-fitting mayhem. 

   The belt I keep on wearing is just for self-denial, people. And yes, I'm finding it hard to breathe in my old pants, thank you.  

   Another reason was I wanted to raise money real fast for another splurging fest, preferably in the books and anime department. And when I say splurge, it involves throwing away sums of money for inhumane amounts of books and cds. So that says a lot.

   So I was hungry. And very very hungry. SO hungry I could feel my gastric juices turning against my intestines and other internal whatsits. I was about to go home feeling slightly dejected but still in possession of a fair amount of money when a friend asked to be accompanied in Katips for a quick resumé thing. There, God miraculously provided...

   ... Cello doughnuts and a C2. And he worked through the guy who received my friend's application.

   Yezzz. Doughnuts had never tasted any yummier. Thank you T_T

   A very happy birthday to Kristina! May your succeeding days be filled with pure love and... should I say more money? Hehe.

randomness # 16 or something

   I cried when he said some words that caught in the air, rattling together with the freezing dampness pressing against us. It was dark black, a cloudy night, perfect timing for keeping secrets. But this secret I cannot keep, I told him. I fear that he could see the wet trails on my cheeks even in this darkness and so I bury my face in my hands to cover them. Silence slowly weaved in between our sounds of breathing. The air smells heavy of grass and the thick scent of wet soil.

   Cry and then forget, he whispered, and with this I knew that this was to be the end. And all that I'll be left with is the knowledge of this secret and nothing more. My soft sobbing came to a complete stop. I won't forget. I can't.

   He walked away, the footsteps slushy, mushy tracks on a rain-sodden soil. I want to follow where he goes. I want to walk into his footprints, slide both my feet into the jigsaw-like gaps on the ground, doing every heavy, sinking, step. But even without doing so I know -this little childish feet would barely fill the space he called his own.

   quick quick recap of the things so far

   Lenten season: Only one word is enough of a description, bumming. No, I wasn't able to meditate and reflect about life or faith in general. So yeah I was uhhh... I did not take advantage of the quiet. I was normal -watching anime vcds/dvds during Black Saturday and Easter Sunday, w/c set the holiness of the weekend into mere normalcy.

   Monday: First day of summer madness began at 7 in the morning, with Sociology 101 as the first class. I arrived at school with five minutes to spare only to find out that the professor wasn't coming to class anytime soon. While my 11-1pm STS, on the other hand, started as scheduled, and can be described as random flitting images of crowding people, of people talking loudly for the almost painful struggle of finding groupmates.

   today

   At last, Socio 101 prof appears and she seems to be normal and funny. For a second there when I had been waiting for the prof's arrival, I thought I'd be stuck with another one of those profs that err -let's just say I get unlucky with profs sometimes. I got into a decent group in STS and all seems fairly well. I just need to sort out my sched a bit cause things kept on popping up and getting in the way of each other, that the only possible solution to make everybody happy and unstressed is for me to grow another appendage and I'll reproduce an exact copy of myself through fission -or something. But yes, it appears I have slowly settled into summer.

   Earlier, just before heading for SM, Tina and I managed to make a quick pass through the 2nd iBlog summit. We caught up with Dean Alfar's very entertaining and informative talk and got ourselves filled with caffeine and more caffeine thanks to the iced tea. The one thing that stuck with me (other than the errr... very quotable quote I won't mention because later on people would start blogging about it anyway) is that talent could only take you so far (and I don't even have much of a talent to speak of). It's the discipline that gets you through writing (and according to Tina, through major endeavors as well, like ehem loosing weight). And discipline happens to be the thing I am most lacking, as attested by the fact I get tempted and distracted easily by things, which in turn can be proven by the poking flabs hanging here and there in my torso. Yes, a realization. So now as a challenge to myself I'll try to be more disciplined in things, and I mean in all things: money-spending, studies, etc... Really. I'm going to do it. Watch me. ^___^

   Bored as hell. After the registration -where things went amazingly well even with all my initial ranting and screaming about- I ended up particularly exhausted of things to do and to angst about. And since it's Holy Week, I guess I have to get used to the nonexistence of things to do and enjoy the not-so-quiet. Might as well try to contemplate and reflect on life in general.

****

   The Lenten season generally reminds me of gray and snow-spotted tv screens, of silence, of held back laughter, of beliefs and praying. I was once told off from playing during Holy week back when I was a child, that it was bad to dribble a basketball for thoughts concerning hurting Christ from all that dribbling. I thought God was in the ground or something so I stopped playing. I thought then too, that every year during Friday of the Holy week, Jesus Christ dies, rises on the third day, then dies again next year on that same Friday. Back then I cried and became all solemn cause I knew all along that he was dying again somewhere, back in that little hill.

   I used to relish those drawn out silences, the hushed whispers of the old, the slow looping song of a pabasa. But now, as the Holy Week starts to slide in and as I wait for that slow settling of silence and grieving, that type of solemn quiet never really comes. And now I am stuck here watching commercials and anime at a Holy Wednesday, wondering if anything will come to any quiet this week what with all the vacationing and tv-watching of people.

   The pre-summer headaches get fully blown into actual, summer registration, headaches. I can't enlist manually in Math 100 since I forgot my Math 11's & 14's classcards. And it's not the forgetting that's giving me problems. I just realized that I have no physical proof (a classcard) that I removed my 4 in Math 14 last summer. The only classcards that are with me are my Math 11's 2.75 and my previous Math 14 classcard with the encircled 4 -no way are they going to let me enlist in Math 100.

   I tried contacting my prof for some help regarding coming up with proof that I did pass her Math 14. But my text messages remain unanswered and I am sinking into semi-depression. I know some people have it worse than me -like not being able to eat or having a life and death situation- but I cannot think or give any care of them as of this moment. I'm just absorbed with every blasted thing happening to me right now. And my head hurts from all this thinking I'm damn doing.

   I could enlist for an elective instead but the problem is I don't have anything I like at the moment. And I just can't enroll just one GE for the summer -that would be a complete waste of money. If I don't do summer classes at all, I'll have two semesters with 21 units of load and that's a complete pain. Isn't it becoming increasingly obvious that I have this great aversion to pain and hard work?

   Ugh. I feel so selfishly self-absorbed. I'm starting to think that maybe God is giving me this stuff just to shake me out from being too complacent. Or is it being too stagnant? I don't know. I just want to stop worrying for one thing and stop this worsening headache.

   There's no more dvd left to watch. I've finished the gargantuan 51 episodes of Bleach just a few days ago, rewatched my Kim Sam Soon dvds last Thursday, gone through repeated readings of my Dirk Gently/Douglas Adams books, and watched my Gokusen vcds for the sheer boredness of it all.

   Now all that's left for me to do is waste in front of the PC and continually download those boy-to-boy mangas I used to really love, which most of them turned out to be plotless conundrums ending in half-expected smuttiness (I say half-expected since I usually give chances to stories up until the last page). They were a few gems alright. Yuki Shimizu's Love Mode is still the best for angsty reading though I don't like the art much. Pretty artwork awards go to Ayano Yamane for almost all of her work (pure smut or otherwise) and to Sumomo Yumeka's pretty boys and pretty angel wings. 

   So what's under my category of plotless conundrums ending in half-expected smuttiness? I'm pretty much okay with recycled plots: boy-saves-another-boy, boys-get-together-for-a-bet, boy-gets-mistaken-as-girl, bestfriends-turned-lovers - they're a staple in the yaoiness of things. I just don't like it when the author does some brainless excuse for doing smuttiness, or makes the characters into brainless beings... I mean, what kind of person -be it a boy or a girl- forgives his stepfather with a full genuine smile after being obviously taken against his will (and was truly traumatized by it) 24 hours earlier? Does a simple sorry cut it? And why would some guy rape another guy just because he saw a cute virtual monkey (which represented the raped guy) doing some disturbing, ecchi, things to itself on a computer screen with a virtual mushroom and a banana? Please explain these things to me.

   Maybe its some kind of yaoi fetish or something. Yes. A dumb and brainless uke fetish? It's okay if the uke's just clueless or plain dense -that's the essence of an uke anyway, being slightly taken advantage of. But. But. Brainlessness is just wrong. And stupid. 

   So, now I'm ranting about the mental faculties of fictitious characters in comics? Maybe I'm just bored to death with real life right now.  

   The free piano lessons (the extracurricular thingies I'm supposed to be doing this summer) officially started last Wednesday. It just so happened that with the free piano lessons I'm taking I'm also required to attend a one-hour bible study. It was all fine and dandy except for one fatal fact: my teacher in piano lessons and the one in the bible study are both full-pledged Koreans.

   I'm not discriminating them or anything nasty. They're kind and very amusing to watch. The piano teacher vaguely reminds me of Kim Sam Soon with her no-nonsense attitude, while the bible study guy brings Korean comedians to mind. Again, it just so happened that I am having a lot of trouble understanding them since they speak broken english. Everytime they try to converse with me is like risking a mild case of nosebleeding -I must concentrate all my mental faculties on catching context clues or the meaning completely escapes me.

   Case in point: the first Bible study session. Bible study guy goes through a step by step process of introducing to us the subject matter, the Bible, until we came upon a parable told by Jesus to Peter. The parable goes somewhat like this (please excuse my rough recollection): Who would pay for the taxes of the King's son? The son or the others?. In which Peter answers with 'others'. The guy then proceeds to analyze this little parable and discover its actual meaning: Who did this 'others' refer to?. Our answers ranged from nonbelievers to nonbelievers, which turned out to be far from the correct answer.

   The correct answer? 'Others is Juice People!', announced the Bible study guy which I responded to with utter silence. His sudden exclamation reminded me of dancing life-size Zesto packs, and I thought that this was an imagery completely unrelated to the Bible at the moment. Why would tetra packs of juice pay taxes at a time they haven't existed yet? Then the meaning dawns on me as the guy scribbles 'Jews' on the white board below the 'others'. Aaaahhhh.

   After that, I couldn't stop myself from smiling too much as he continued with the lesson. I just couldn't get the dancing Zesto packs out of my mind.

*******

   Strange. Earlier today I prepared my usual iced coffee drink, the one I had been hoarding like crazy for the past few weeks, planning to drink it slowly in front of the telly to relax myself for the afternoon. I took one sip and then- bleaaaacccckhhh- it suddenly tasted horrible for me. I never noticed something new from the taste just- I don't like it anymore. I tried to drink it again but I couldn't stand it so I just poured it in the sink. What's wrong with my taste buds today? Is it the end of my love affair with coffee?  

   Or this could also be titled, 'Why I hate CRS?'.

   This morning I checked the last round of preenlistment for CRS this summer to see if I got anything out of it other than the previously enlisted STS, which I hadn't really planned for in the beginning. What I really really needed for this summer was Math 100 and I was hoping I got in, any schedule would damn do. What do I get?

   I logged in and glared at the screen that blatantly replied, "no you don't get the freaking math subject and you're stuck with this 11-1pm STS unless you sweat and fall in line for it come registration day". I logged out and logged in again just so I could check if this was one of those dream sequences again. (I did dream about checking my sched on CRS, I just couldn't remember what my sched looked like. Now I know.)

   Well, there are many good reasons why I hate CRS. One, it messed up a perfectly planned schedule for summer classes: math and science in the mornings, piano lessons in the afternoon. Two, it makes me do a lot of unnecessary work, which I normally avoid at all cost, like enlisting the subjects I want through manual labor. But that's all due to my inherent laziness and bitterness on everything not going my way.  

   I just wish I could manually enlist a slot for math 100. Then I could go on griping about math again.

P.S. I peeked my grades on the online viewing at CRS. And I think part of my pissed-offness today could be attributed to my low grades. Drat.