"her shoes were tight but she said, awryt!"

but that's what some say.


click here.

watched once on this island last night at the carlos p. romulo theater at rcbc tower. i must say, i was dumbstruck.

i was unfortunate enough to have witnessed a totally amateur production of the play about a couple of years ago. it was horrible and it left a really bad taste in my mouth. so when my sister told me we were watching the play and that they actually had professional actors, i had high hopes.

i was in for a treat. the opening number "we dance" was enough to erase the bad taste.

there were only 12 actors, and each one played his/her role so well it was almost magical for me. well i do believe the guy playing daniel and the girl playing ti moune could have done better (look, somebody agrees with me.). but the rest of the cast, particularly bituin escalante, menchu lauchengco-yulo, bojie pascua (yes, kuya bojie), may bayot, and jett pangan gave justice to their roles. the little girl (i didn't catch her name) was also wonderful, with her lisp and pure voice. the last scene particularly got me.

must watch, if musicals are your thing. you won't be disappointed. i know i wasn't.

i'm still singing in my head.

the few, the proud, santolan-annapolis crowd

araw araw sa mrt
pagpunta sa trabaho
at sa pag-uwi
aking napapansin
di maiwasang tumingin
mga bumababang mabilis
sa santolan-annapolis.
nakikipagtulakan
parating naiipit
paisa-isa silang
lumalabas pilit.
isipin mo naman
sa dinami-dami ng tao
bakit kakaunti
ang bumababa dito?

nakakaaliw, nakakatuwa
di maiwasang maisip
ang mga nanganganak na ina.
umiiri, nagsusumikap iluwa
ang sanggol
palabas ng bukana
humihilab ang tyan
anak, labas na dyan!

bawat taong lumalabas
sa santolan-annapolis
kailangan gumalaw,
lumabas ng mabilis
at pag nakaraos
at nakalabas na ng pinto,
mga taong naiwan,
muling pupunuin bawat kanto.

naisip ko ring bumaba dito
pero pagdating ng cubao,
ubos na ang mga tao
kaya hahayaan ko na sila
na bumaba paisa-isa
at aaliwin ko na lang ang sarili
sa kanilang pagbaba.

HAHAHAHA. sometimes i kill me.

old friends found

got in touch with an old friend. i must say, it feels good. specially when you're feeling down in the dumps.

it's funny how things work out. just when i thought that nothing would lift my spirits, an old friend comes along and says hi.

good to have you back. :)

under the weather

for the first time in i don't know how long i slept till 2 pm in the afternoon.

been sick for the past week starting thursday. was working till 430 am last saturday so here i am, suffering the consequences.

stayed home today because i was too groggy. i usually can't sleep beyond 9 am, no matter how late i turn in the night (or dawn) before.

hate getting sick. it's a rare occurrence for me. i get sick once a year and it really gets me down.

so here i am, still at home, trying to not move because the heat is HORRIBLE. thank goodness it's windy. but still.

am loaded up on medicines at the moment and hopefully will be well by morning.

sigh.

do the words roasted pig mean anything to you?

yes. that's me. roasted. (pig?)

got back from 3 nights 2 days in boracay around 1 pm this afternoon.

suffice it to say that if not for the jetski and snorkeling and clear waters i would've hated the place. oh, and the fresh bread at the barracuda bar. :)

more on this when my back no longer twitches with every movement of my fingers.

my belief was not unfounded

itaas mo!

although that newest commercial with kris aquino really ticks me off.

short and sweet

i've had my share of commencement speeches. and i regret that i wasn't around to listen to this.

it is at odds with the traditional general commencement speech - mainly because it is almost conversational, and in tagalog to boot. there may have been others like it, but i profess ignorance.

read it. it's shorter than my previous blog. and easier to read. :D

after 6 years (brace yourself, this is going to be a long one)

well here i am.

sabi nga ng daddy ko, abogado na ako. and all of a sudden i don't know what to do anymore.

when i was applying for a college course, i didn't know what to take up. i didn't know what i wanted to be. i had wanted to be a nurse back in grade school then thought better of it as i grew older. (maybe i should have pursued that line of work. might be filthy rich by now. hehehe)

going back, i never had a plan in life. for a moment there i wanted to go into politics, like my grandmother and my dad. that dream faded into oblivion really, really fast.

so there i was, a high school student without the faintest idea what i wanted to take up in college. the guidance counselor didn't help any. this is the gist of his evaluation:

"Will be good at anything she endeavors, except maybe a career in politics."

duh. i could have told you that.

still, i didn't know what to do. so like any girl in a quandary, i asked my older sister who was in college. she gave me pretty sensible advice. or so i thought. by the time she was through with me, i was convinced that i wanted to take up computer science. and in default of that, interior design. a year ago i realized that i applied for those courses because my sister's two best friends were in those courses at that time.

thing is, i ended up in geodetic engineering (go figure) and stayed there for about 3 years. i got dismissed from the college of engineering and ended up in ... (drum roll please) interior design.

yes. my second choice when i filled up the application for college. i didn't go there in the first place even if i had passed because I HAD NO TALENT FOR IT. so when i got dismissed, and i applied again, i was on tenterhooks. my grade point average was fine. but hell, i didn't know how to draw and there was a talent test.

for some reason the head of the department thought my drawing of the queen anne chair was passable, so i got accepted.

barely made it though, what with all the drawings, renderings, etc.... my theories were fine, the executions were... okay i guess.

i graduated.

the year i graduated from college was the year my sister took her oath as a lawyer. i had been toying around with the idea of taking up law. just to see what it was like... bottom line was i didn't want to go to work just yet .

but i still decided to take the board exam. it seemed like a logical next step. but my sister (yes the same one who advised me on what to take for college) told me that it would not be practical to go to review classes because i was planning on taking up law.

and once again, i believed her.

my classmates sent me materials for the exam, and they went with me when i applied. they religiously attended the night classes, taught me how to draw, to color, to fix the perspectives of my plates.. the works. and me... i slept.

some of my materials have remained unopened till now.

to make the long story short, i failed the exam. i did not study, nor was i really paying attention in school. imagine this: the question was how many springs are needed for a so-and-so sized sofa. imagine me, moving around in my chair, trying to figure out how many springs will poke my butt at any given moment, and the distance of the pokes.

so yes, i failed. but i took the entrance exam to law school. passed. went for the interview. passed.

what followed was 4 years of fun. i was failing exams, getting screamed at during recitations, losing sleep. learned to play billiards, discovered the acoustic music scene, gained an unmentionable number of pounds, lost boyfriends, gained some...others...

then the bar came along. failed the first one (i still firmly believe my paper was switched with that of the person who placed number 10.) i was working at that time.

i kept on working until about a month and a half before the next bar exam. studied some, played super bounce, studied some more. took the exam.

i passed this time around. now here i am.

after the euphoria, the celebration, the endless bottles of beer... here i am.

i will never have to worry about getting good grades again. about passing. about knowing enough to get by and gain approval, and consequently, receiving a passable grade.

suddenly getting the grade doesn't matter anymore.

and i don't know how i feel. on the one hand the happy go lucky life of a student is something i enjoyed extremely. the pampered life of the bar exam taker i also enjoyed, despite the frequent stress attacks.

i'm relieved of course. and at the same time lost. it was like those few months during high school before going to college. what to do next?

i can't ask my ever reliable crazy sister. she's taking the bar too.

so i guess i'm going to have to do some soul searching... what to do next. i have a host of choices: ambulance driver? bartender? electrician? taxi driver? erotic tagalog romance novel writer? baby sitter? teacher? the list goes on and on. except politics of course. but i'm a lawyer.

i took the oath last friday. while in my slinky dress under my shiny black toga, dying because of my 4 inch heels, i thought -- this is what i had worked for. i didn't want to be a lawyer but there i was. and as i listened to the speeches and watched the faces of the people taking the oath around me, i realized that if i didn't really want to be there, i wouldn't have been.

i have never been one to just keep on going at something just because i had started already. i could have quit, and yet i pressed on. this must have been something i wanted to do. maybe it is. i'm on my way to being sure....

another chapter of my life is over, i guess. and i'm closing that book. what happens next, you'll read about it here. or not.

but for now it -- it's finally over.

taking things slow

well here i am back in baguio after all the brouhaha of the past few weeks. it's all been a blur-- celebrating with people, trying to work, catching up on my reading, still trying to work...

attended the oath-taking yesterday. with a hangover. :( so let me put a new date on my april 9 post. make that april 29. :)

my mind is mercifully empty this morning. thank god for small blessings. will post again later.

hearing double

had my longest encounter ever with a pair of identical twins today. my friend's twin is back to stay and it was the first time we've met.

it was like being in the twilight zone. i don't ever recall being with identical twins at the same time. all my cousins were fraternal twins.

anyway, their faces were easily distinguishable. they look exactly alike but there are marked differences in expressions. but when i turned my back and they started talking, it was like being with someone who was having a conversation with himself.

weird. but highly interesting. the bond they share is apparent. i was almost envious.

i used to fantasize that i had a twin sister or brother and we were just separated at birth. then we'll meet again some day and find out that we had parallel experiences all through our lives. you know, the stuff that disney movies are made of.

sigh. sometimes being a single birth is lonely.

now this is original

talked to my sister's friend last night. she said a friend of hers saw our picture together. the friend said i have a nice ambience.

ambience. hmmm. last time i checked this was NOT applicable to humans. maybe i'm wrong.

either that, or i've gotten so big i've become a place to them. sigh.

*%$#^&*(*^@^!!!*#&*$^&

yes, that is exactly how i felt the whole day. the guy in charge of the floor in the office refuses to lower the thermostat in the office. they claim that they're trying to test if the air conditioners can actually maintain a temperature below 27 degrees centigrade in the office.

27 freakin degrees???? do they have any idea how hot that is? where i come from, the maximum i've ever encountered was 26 degrees, and we considered that sweltering already.

and they want us to stay in our itchy office clothes and calmly work in the heat like there was nothing wrong.

i've been barely functional the whole day.

sigh. the moon is smiling outside my window and it's a cool evening, thank heavens.

will watch moon.

this is all i have to say

i'm a lawyer now. :)

coffee fix

i smell good enough to drink.

had a body scrub which involved vanilla and coffee. after smelling of horse the whole day (went horseback riding), it was sheer heaven.

slightly invasive though. i wouldn't recommend it to the prudish types.

i feel so clean and soft and i smell so good. sigh. if only.

my poor butt

tuesday found us travelling to pagudpud, a town in ilocos norte. the water is clear (except for some parts which have a lot of seaweed) and the sand is almost pristine. the whole family was there which made it better.

the only problem was it took us 9 hours to get there. but then, it was worth it.

we swam and ate lobsters and bought bracelets and basically just lazed around. (and gained pounds in the process) we went snorkelling but saw nothing because the winds were so strong and the boatmen didn't bring us to the lagoon. i saw 20 bucks though. i decided i like snorkelling. must do that again.

thursday afternoon we were on our way back to baguio. the trip, including meals and stops took all of 10 hours. got to baguio around midnight. rested for an hour the i was on the road again, to pick up my sister from the airport. her flight was arriving at 9:55.

we got to manila at 7 am. i took a shower and just lay on my bed for 5 minutes. just so my body could remember what a bed felt like. then we were off to the airport.

my sister was out by 11. then we headed straight to baguio. the trip was looooong. and hot. the aircon conked out somewhere in tarlac. golly. open windows. i felt so dirty and oily. ugh.

got home around 6:30.

how many hours of travelling? you do the math.

and i'm going back to manila tomorrow. sigh.

ah, but it's been all worth it.