Yesterday, in the middle of a report by some classmates while I got lost in the space between sleep and total wakefulness, my almost-eternal seatmate shared with me an interesting chain text. I could say I am fairly experienced in the matter, since the bulk of messages I've received in the whole span of my texting life had been mostly composed of threathening chain texts, in which their threats varied from burning in hell to losing the love of your life if ever you decided to ignore the aforementioned message. But the one my seatmate shared with me is entirely strange and...weird. I think it is safe to say that there is a new emerging trend in terms of chain texts...

   The message goes like this:

   Masarap ang pandesal. Please pass to 15 people or you will be turned into a pandesal for the next two days...

   Hmmm... I am tempted to create my own version.

****

   If there's one thing I hate it's the increasingly hot weather. And okras. Don't make me eat okras. And wait, there's one more - feeling slightly nauseous with all the hotness, sweatiness and okra-ness thrown at me.

   On certain days, when money is usually on the low point of the scale, and no amount of book-searching could produce that ever elusive cheap second-hand book that I'd really read, I would get extremely depressed and bored. But thanks to a friend, my perfectly unsolvable dilemma about not having the money to buy hordes of books had been pseudo-satisfied.

   No. I didn't get a job to get the money. What with my schedule going on and all the other lousy excuses. I did get books though, only they pseudo-satisfied me, seeing they're only pseudo-existing.

   A number of megabytic books are presently occupying our hard drive. Yes. I now succumbed to the lows of another aspect of piracy. I feel really ugly and, the fact that I've resorted to this is like a gargantuan bitch slap of how money-less I am nowadays. But, I only had the rare ones, the books I'll never get for another century.

   Most of them anyway.

   Oh venerable geniuses of narratives, please forgive my poorness. I promise I'll buy the real thing soon...

   Okay. Maybe not so soon.

   Even with only two people currently inhabiting our so called "household", I just recently realized that as weird as having to call two people a family, I lived a pretty normal "family life".

   Yes, I only have my Dad with me. Although I hear things like: "It's cool that you and your Dad get along!", and "Isn't it hard for a girl like you?", the fact that my Dad nags too much even for an average wife on menopause means I'm getting the same scoldings an average girl gets per day. And not only does he nags a great deal, he does all the chores at home, cooks well, lectures me about the nature of life, of taking care of myself as a girl, and of the complexities of having certain stupid co-workers -- all of this while keeping the front of your usual male worker type in the mornings.

   So yeah, my Dad is both my Mommy and my Daddy. I sometimes think he's got this split personality going on that he doesn't tell me about. I sometimes tease him of being a closeted gay.

   No. Scratch that last sentence out. That was just brought about by my unstoppable tendency to slash everything.

   *******

   My Dad wants me to have braces.

   After all this time, he suddenly decides that I needed to get all my teeth metalled up and shiny.

   My glasses + my bookishness + potential braces = Descent into complete geekdom/nerdishness

   "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.