My Boyfriend Is A Stud

Oh, my man, I love him so
He'll never know
All my life is just despair
But I don't care
When he takes me in his arms
The world is bright all right
What's the difference if I say
I'll go away
When I know I'll come back on my knees someday
For whatever my man is
I am his
forever more


Happy birthday, T!
Thank you for loving me
despite, with all, and because of
my imperfections.


You're everything to me.
I AUMULU to bits.

The Other Way Around

Certain people stay in our lives forever.

And in certain people's lives, we stay forever.

Happy birthday, Oca! Thank you for everything.Happy birthday, Ricky! Thank you for everything.
You boys will forever be part of me, as I know I will forever be a part of yours.

Be My Lady

In no particular order, here are the ladies that inspired me, moved me, and made me smile today, and made me realize that, no matter how certain I am that I will never, in this lifetime, fall in love with any of them, the world would just be a mess without women. This is my way of honoring them.

REMS
Rems is, literally and figuratively, a hard habit to break. She is my in-transit-to-work-on-the-phone companion. We spend about half an hour chatting, to an from work. not collectively. Half an hour to, and half an hour from. She sets the tone of my day and calms me after a long day. It is difficult to break away from her. She is my mother , I am stuck with her forever. And I have no qualms being stuck with her. I am grateful, in fact. There is no other woman I'd rather love for my entire time on earth.

NURSE ANN
Nurse Ann, my Smoking Cessation Counsellor, is to me what a kindergarten teacher is to her pupils. I have always held a tremendous amount of admiration for kindergarten teachers. They are noble matriarchs of great power and authority. How often do we hear a child say he eats veggies because his teacher told him vegges are good for him? A mother can force-feed veggies on her child. But all he needs is to be told by his teacher to eat them. I know for a fact that quitting smoking is one of the most intelligent, most reasonable, most beneficial decisions I have ever, ever made in my life. But to be told by her that I am doing good and that I am on the right track just validates that ten-folds. Her weekly calls have been nothing but delight.

THE GURLS
They are the ones who come to my classes regularly. They are the ones who can--- in terms of stamina, pick-up and strength--- out-dance the other girls who only come to my classes when there are no other instructors and they have no other choice. They can out-crunch them, out-stretch them, out-pas de bouree them. Best of all, they have an understanding of their own bodies. They know what works for them, and what doesn't. They know the importance of wam-up and stretching, and they know that water breaks are not fellowship or gossip hour. They probably don't know it, but they inspire me in so many ways. Every now and then, I still ask myself whether what I am doing now is what I really wanna do. Until now, I still don't know the answer. What I do know (and I know this because of them) is that, in the meantime, I am not wasting my time and energies doing what I'm doing. They are happy, they see results, they enjoy it. And that makes me happy.

ATE CORA
Ate Cora is an empowered woman. She defeated in two hours, the grease buildup in our kitchen that was three years in the making. And she did it with tremendous aplomb and out-of-the-box witty remarks.

Outside The Rain Begins

Jethro walks into the dining area from the kitchen, shirtless and his hands, wet. He stands there for a minute, waiting for the conversation he has walked into to come to a pause. He doesn't want to interrupt his kuya and his nanay. As soon as an opportunity presents itself, he jumps in. "Kuya Law, do you have a strainer?"

Law turns to him and stares blankly, trying to think whether he has any.

Rye stops what he is doing, looks to their direction and bows his head. He was putting down the wicker magazine racks that hang by the windows to let the cool breeze in.

After a beat, Law replies, "Uhmm... I don't."

"Strainers, we don't have any in this house. But strangers, we have a lot in our lives. Real strangers whom we've never really met, and the other kind of strangers: people who were once important parts of our lives that we chose to become strangers, because if we allow them to linger any longer, they might hurt us again," Rye says, still looking down.

Ryan Lee, who is in the living room, previewing "The Love Of Siam", hears all these and solicits, "Who are they, nay?"

"I don't know, 'nak. I don't know them anymore," Rye claims.

They take a moment to let the energy die down and then they burst into corpulent laughters, applauding themselves for another spontaneous dramatic improvisation. Afterwhich, each one of them goes back doing his own thing. Jethro to the kitchen to solve the absence-of-strainer issue; Law to his chopping board, slicing the veggies for his kare-kare; Ryan Lee to "Love Of Siam", Rye to the window.

It is a stormy Friday. The previous night, at 8pm, Rye overheard from his colleagues that the HK Observatory was predicting that Typhoon 8 would be hoisted by dawn and probably even to 9 mid midday. He knew that this would be a non-working Friday. He packed his getaway bag, called Jethro, organized a get-together at Law's even before Law agreed, and headed to Causeway Bay. They kept themselves up all night, monitoring the direction and the speed of the winds, hoping that the storm doesn't decide to take a re-route.

Albeit a few hours delayed, the storm finally settled in at 7 in the morning, and the suspension of work was made official. Ryan Lee arrived. Those were the circumstances that led them here. Now.

The color of the peanut sauce and that of the achuete start to meld, as the oxtail becomes too tender, it begins to disintegrate. The buzzer sounds off, and Jethro gets up from the couch, where he and his brother, Ryan Lee, have been sitting over the last 2 hours, watching the foreign film that Ryan Lee was previewing since he got here. He opens the door to let Enan and Steve in. They have with them a pot of champorado and a hefty amount of fried danggit.

Later on, Josh, Miro and Dan arrive and the party gets started. Jethro gets on the computer and invites some more friends who, after about an hour, come with enough supply of alcohol to feed the whole household until the storm subsides.

On the 18th floor of Pearl Mansion on Patterson Street, the Beckies get lost in oblivion--- celebrating friendship, sharing love, toasting to an extra dayoff, and making a complete fool of themselves while outside, the rain begins. They pray that it never ends.

Dizizit Pt. 2- Gate 3, Terminal 2

It was 7:15 in the morning. After smoking the last stick from my last packet and writing the last blog entry pre-Manila, I left the smoking room and headed to Boarding Gate 3.

It was relatively early for me. The airport wasn't so busy as they usually are, when I got there. But despite that, it was still exciting. Like in the opening scene of "Love Actually", everywhere I looked, there was at least one interesting character.

There was the leader of the ground staff who had the most unbelievable case of split personality. One minute, she was frantically screaming at her teamin chinese, ordering them to weigh in all additional bags that were gonna be brought to the cabin; the next minute, she was smiling as if she was an airline print ad model, saying, "Good morning, ma'am. Your carry-on is overweight, we have to check it in."

There was Jacky, one of the guys from the frantic leader's team. He was probably newly-hired, because of all of them, he was the only one who didn't make faces whenever the leader turned her back. He was also the only one that had the sense of urgency. And he was the only one who showed he felt humiliated being shouted at in front of passengers.

There was this corporate-looking middle-aged man who valued his space so much, he moved to another spot whenever somebody came within his 3 meter-radius.

There was Ms. Know-It-All, the migrant worker version of Kuya Germs of Philippine Entertainment, who thought she had the obligation of letting everybody know that she had lived in HK for 17 years. For every single problem, question and challenge, she thought she had the answer. And how could she not? She's been there, done that.

There were the Misses Hero. A whole bunch of them. They decided that in order to keep themselves from getting bored, they would play the "Enumerate-everything-that-you-sacrificed-in-order-to-earn-money-in-a-foreign-land-in-two-minutes-flat" game. The girl who would come up with the most, or who could move the other contestants to tears, whichever came first, would be crowned the Ms. Hero of Flight PR313. They all deserved to win.

There were the seafarers, who arrived in HK from another country the night before, and spent their evening at the boarding gate sleeping. Tired from being in transit too long, the only thing that could drag them up from sleep was Ms. It.

Ms. It, like Kim of Miss Saigon, was 17 when she moved to HK from a village, far, far away. She was young, sweet and naive then. But now, she's 23 and she wore a skirt just 3 inches longer than her panties (if she had any), she had nails painted in shocking yellow, which were just three inches shorter than her panties (if she had any) and an orange tube top that matched her nails in shock value. Her tube top was probably the same size as her panties. IF she had any. She was so excited to be back in Manila, she is now a self-made "it" girl. It had probably been too long since she last saw Manila. She had already forgotten that airplanes had airconditioning.

There were the loving parents who couldn't contain their emotions. Two of them caught my attention the most: a mother, baby-talking on the phone, sitting two seats behind me. "Wag ka mag-alala, baby, dalawang oras na lang mayayakap mo na ulit si mommy. Wag ka na umiyak. (Don't worry, baby, we'll be together again in two hours. You'll get to hug me again. Don't cry anymore)," she said; and a father, sitting away from everybody. He reached into his bag and took out a photo album. Then his tears fell. The sight of them both tore my heart.


There were the classy bitches. That morning, there were two of them. At first sight, one would think they're friends--- they have the same aura, the same look, and the same kind of scent. But they're not. In fact they might be competing against each other. Both of them were flashing their LV knock-offs, jaundiced with every gold accessory that their necks could accommodate, wearing tops with the biggest designer logo embalzoned on their chests and displaying their IPhones like they were the luckiest people on earth because they were the only ones who had them. One of them started talking on the phone, telling the peron on the other line how stressful the day will be for her, with all the plane and boat transfers she will have to do to get to Boracay. But what can she do, right? That's the price she has to pay for being rich and fabulous. Right after she hung up, the other girl did her show. Dial the phone and tell her mom (supposedly) to tell their driver to be at the airport on time. And give her specific instructions: have the driver bring the Benz. The Benz, mommy, you hear? Not any of the two Hondas. She was going straigh to EDSA Shangri-la to meet up with her friends for lunch, and neither of the Hondas were presentable enough. The two girls--- both of them--- had another thing in common. They both were confused with the difference between long e & short i, p & f, and with the correct usage of in, on & at.


There was also the real classy girl, who just sat there quietly, entertained by the show that the girls were putting on. She was dressed in an immaculately clean Lacoste shirt, drawstring khakis, and navy Lacoste sneakers.


There were the tourists, whose excitement was written all over their faces. I wished that my country could measure up to their expectations.


And then there were the nosy bitches who had their earphones plugged in their ears, bobbing their heads the the rhythm of the music that was supposedly coming from those earphones. But in reality, there was nothing coming out of them. They were props and they were necessary so that none of the people around would notice that they were minding everybody else's business, and deciding whether their observations were blog-worthy. One of them has decided that they actually were, and included his entry in his Dizizit series.