Fight Club.

We had been fighting for as long as I could remember.

We fought about everything. It seemed then that the only way we knew how to interact with each other was to fight.

Heck, for the longest time, we could not even agree on the status of our relationship.  (I hear our friends chuckle in agreement!)

So when I got pregnant with Qube, I assumed people were happy. Well, at least the few people we usually bother with our petty fights. I could imagine them heaving a sigh of relief, saying “now the fighting stops.”

Surprise, surprise! It did not. Not that I had any illusions, to begin with. If anything changed, it’s the fact that we now have more things to fight about.

And during these fights, I swear I feel really happy and relieved that we have no marriage papers to keep us from leaving each other.

So, one day, I told you this: “I love you sometimes, when we are not fighting.”

And you said:

“I love you, even when we are fighting. That’s how we are different.”

I choked.

My dear nameless eldest child.

>
By now, you can probably hear me and your father talk about you endlessly every night, heck, every moment that we are together. By now, you probably already know that our goodnights revolve around what your name will be after you are born and about how I always complain that my name will be reduced to a mere middle initial because your father wants his name imprinted all over you. Don’t worry, I have no qualms about it at all. Truth be told, I am actually even prouder that he considers you to be his own wonderful creation. And that I co-created you with him. (My conversation with your father will have a different perspective though: “He co-created you with me.” Don’t mind us. Someday you will understand and will laugh about our silly competitions)

By now, the conversations you hear between me and your father may already have wielded your opinion about how we will be as parents. So, as early as now, am writing this to manage your expectations (and in the same way, manage our fears of not being the best parents we hope we could be).

Your father and I, we are not perfect. We’re far from it actually. At 29 and 30, we’re still children prematurely pushed into adulthood because of you. Let me tell you a little secret: I haven’t planned a future with your father because I never really believed we’d end up together. And you coming into our lives is a welcome change from that mindset. As you can probably tell from our nightly discussions and arguments.

Though I cannot speak for your father, I can tell you little things indicative of how I think he will fare as a father:

• Am not sure if you remembered the time we fought about him waking up at 2am to watch a football match between Spain and Netherlands? I cried a whole lot then because he preferred watching the FIFA finals over me losing sleep, turned out he was blogging about how he would wake up the same wee hours of the morning to take care of you when you are born.

• Your father tosses and turns a lot when he sleeps, that is why I am having second thoughts about having him sleep in the same bed with you. However, now I am pregnant with you, he always makes it a point to check whether you are comfortable, if my sleeping position does not hurt you, and if his embrace is not squeezing you inside my tummy. And he does not like my idea of keeping his bed separate from yours.

• He has zero organizational skills. In fact, he even voluntarily refers to his life as an “organized chaos” – Not to worry though; he is learning to clean up our house for starters. Lately, he has claimed the kitchen and the bathroom to be his domain.

• He’ll insist on turning the music louder than a normal person can tolerate, but I can assure you that he’ll instinctively cover your ears to shield you from the sound of thunders during a storm.

• He does not like talking to people, except a select few. And you’re on top of that selection – since he apparently talks to you a lot, even tries to verbalize you thoughts sometimes. Which I do not always agree with.

• Your father never learned to say goodnight to me. What he learned to do every night though is to listen to your heartbeat, though most of the time, it’s just my stomach digesting my dinner; to kiss and have a short conversation with you; to kiss and hold my hand till I fall asleep; to wake up to turn the aircon off whenever I complain that it’s cold already.

• Your father has had lots of women before me, a few serious ones, but he assured us that none of them could claim to be mothers of his child. You’re his first. (We might need to revalidate this one though. 🙂

• He is a wonderful child to your grandparents and a great kuya to your cousin. I am sure he’ll be even better as a father.

• Your father is my best friend. Sure, we fight a lot, we criticize each other a lot, we compete a lot about who is better at everything, we throw tantrums to annoy each other. But at the end of the day, we accept and try to live with each other the best way we can. I look forward to the day when you, too, could be best friends.

wash your hands clean on yourself baby and step down, step down, step down (from your massive ego)

>I was hanging out with friends last night in BHS when one friend suddenly asked me what it is exactly that i do in the office, or more particularly if i am the one doing all the clerical work in my office. My time momentarily stopped for 5 seconds – trying to figure out whether to get insulted or not – before i was able to say no, being an analyst does not qualify as a clerical job. Given my friend’s propensity for asking naive questions, it should not have come as a surprise at all.

But thinking about it now, i realized that – yes, being new in this kind of job, i really should just be doing clerical work for all the other analysts, for me to have a proper transition and to achieve the normal learning curve needed for me to function effectively in my new job. Heck, at my pace and lack of understanding right now, it would have been a much better idea if they demoted me when they convinced me to cross-post.

The problem is that i have always chosen shortcuts into my career. Yes, it benefited me. But i had readily given up all the learnings that i could have had, had i chosen to follow the normal path. I was a fledgeling when i left SGV because i had been offered a better post and a better salary somewhere else, without considering the fact that i was distorting the statistical average of employees’ length of stay in that particular firm. Not that it mattered then, because where i transferred, the job charter and responsibilites were totally different and i was able to effortlessly settle in. I had thought that this would always be the case.

This time though, i had to accept that the graphical representation of my learning progress would follow the normal curve only if i extend tremendous effort. But at my normal pace, it would be flat – which is unacceptable. And the prospect of me excelling in my new job is as bleak as my hopes for a promotion next year.

I wish i had the foresight and patience to waste time learning more during the past two years, even those that i didn’t need to use in my job then or stayed longer in external audit for me to have the proficiency at juggling numbers and looking at and analyzing financial statements. Instead of having a crash course on everything, when i should be effectively executing my functions right now. (Instead of having to think about my own incompetence day and night and rattling on about it here).

But in hindsight, maybe i didn’t do such a bad job in deciding to fast track my career. I know a lot of people who are still stuck where they were three or four years back, simply because they were too scared to say yes to the challenge of walking out of the unfamiliar and ordinary, because they are too scared to fail.

There, i needed to say all that to get me back into my self-righteousness and arrogance.

I am alone and Sugarfree is screaming in the background…

>
Ayoko nang mag-isa, ayoko nang mag-isa, ayoko nang mag-isa….

After what seemed like a moment of epiphany or an influx of crazy ideas and a series of text messages (with James McAvoy repeatedly saying “I’m sorry” in my Mac), I have decided to start living alone. Away from my boys.

(I am still trying to figure out the most plausible excuse for shocking my housemates with the news that I have decided to move out. When I am able to figure this one out, I am going to write about it.)

And today is my first night alone in a rented studio in Makati (and am beginning to regret it). In the few hours that I have been pacing back and forth my bedroom-slash-dining room-slash-receiving area-slash-kitchen, I have found the perfect tambayan.

My kitchen (just a sink, actually). Picture me sitting on top of the sink, cross-legged, and with yosi in hand. This is the best I can do without a single chair in my bedroom-slash-dining room-slash-receiving area-slash-kitchen.

Without nothing more to do, no more yosi to burn, and with my otherwise nice and obliging friend deciding that I am a lousy textmate thus he’s better off texting other interesting people or maybe he is indeed really sleepy already, I am left with nothing more to do but have a mental rerun of the things that I have done today.

10:00am – woke up and ate the remaining junk in the refrigerator. If there were still a bottle remaining from the previous night’s beer, I’d have drunk that too.

11:00am – decided that I am in a foul mood and thus keep talking to people to a minimum. Meaning, no unnecessary words when answering questions from anybody.

11:30am – reviewed my “to buy” list. Decided that I do not have the money for everything, so I took off half the items from my list.

1:30pm – Brought my remaining stuff to my new place. Didn’t get lost this time. The cab’s meter was running so fast, but i paid anyway, and told him that he has a faulty meter.

2:00pm – Realized that I am most probably acting up, thus I better try to be nicer to Ninoy. Else, this otherwise nice and accommodating friend might leave me to shop for garbage basket, pail, sofa bed, etc. ALONE.

3:00pm – Started shopping.

4:00pm – Was done shopping. See? I am broke, otherwise, I’d have stayed inside the mall till 10:00pm. Was supposed to treat Noi to a Yellowcab pizza, but it was raining so hard and we had to take advantage of SM’s staff assisting us in getting a cab and getting our things inside the cab. So we decided to just go home. Got lost on our way back. It was the cab driver’s fault, I swear.

6:00pm – The pizza became adobo and chicken curry in the karenderia in front of my new apartment. I shelled out a hundred pesos for those and for two regular coke. Also, I paid in COINS.

6:30pm – I am alone. And broke. And I’ve never felt more alone in my life.

6:40pm – Started taking out the contents from the boxes that Budoy and Noi helped me bring here yesterday. Well, they did 95% of the work, actually. I only had to carry a small Landmark plastic bag containing 21 tubes of various sizes.

By this time, Sugarfree’s Kwarto was playing in itunes. This was Noi’s idea, before he reacts and say that I am claiming this for mine, hehe.

(When I write about my reason for going solo, this song will definitely be my soundtrack.)

9:30pm – Done mopping the floor, folding and hanging my clothes, taking out my books, and throwing my remaining trash. And around this time, realized that my most precious possessions today are the following:
1. My bed
2. My electric fan
3. My laptop

Then I started pacing back and forth my bedroom-slash-dining room-slash-receiving area-slash-kitchen, until I established the routine of lighting a cigarette and sitting cross-legged on top of my sink.

Until I decided to write about my day.

Done. But I am still broke and lonely. And I miss Naga.

meet my boys.

>errr, my housemates. the annoyances i mentioned thought of mentioning in one of my previous blog posts.

these are the people who make me cry over and over again for the most petty reasons, the ones i run to during trying times, the ones who (at times) tolerate and understand my inner bitch, these are the people who i can always trust to lift my spirits each time my ego reaches an all-time low, also the ones who eat up my confidence with their incessant latik and sarcasm, the people who let me live under their roof when i abandoned mine, who let my Pasong Tamo friends use their bathroom each time their water supply gets cut off, who sometimes deplete (hehe) my budget and in return, who i trouble with unreasonable demands, the ones who put up with my perpetual sinigang craze and still willing to wait for me come mealtimes (basically because i don’t can’t eat alone and i am incapable of crossing the street by myself so the most likely probability is i’d die of starvation just because i can’t cross the street to the nearest fastfood or karinderia)

these are the same crowd i share countless of drinking and karaoke sessions with. and these people are a million other things to me.

from left:

Christian (who tolerates(?) my clutter and who occasionally buys me dinner each time i am either too lazy to go out or too scared to cross the street and who sponsored our last EK trip [SMART Family Day] where this photo was taken),

Enteng (not a housemate, but a regular guest, margarita mixer, co-blogghore, and occasional t—o daa),

Budoy (who cooks my sinigang. By the way, it’s been a while, i miss it na ..and the one who listens to my most stupid me accounts each day),

me, and

James (former former housemate, regular housemate guest housemate. i am not sure which one he is, really. but you are always welcome, noi. his face is intentionally not shown here pending his debut appearance on his blog.)

my two other housemates (Don and Bonks) who are not included in this photo will definitely be introduced in my next blog posts. with individual blown-up photos, hehe

one of the few times i am really proud to own something.

>The plan was to look for Pratchett in Powerbooks. He was nowhere to be found.

The only Pratchett book there was “Good Omens,” which was written together with Neil Gaiman. But of course, even without that book having been written with Terry Pratchett, the probability is I already have that book.

Well.

I already have that book.

We were about to leave Powerbooks when Don spotted this:

What else should one expect me to do? Without second thoughts thinking, I grabbed the book and brought it to the cashier. What I was about to do then was to ask for another copy, since the one displayed already has creases on the front cover. I was a bit disappointed when the store assistant said that that was the only copy left of the book. So for about a split-second, I considered looking somewhere else. But, what the heck, I want that book, and I want it there and then.

So, at around four on Monday afternoon, I already have my own copy of DC’s Heroes – Volume 1.

HEROES Graphic Novel @ Wiki:

This is a list of issues of NBC‘s Heroes webcomic, which supplements the television drama of the same name. The comics, which NBC refers to as graphic novels, are made available on their official website each Tuesday.

Written by the show’s writers and drawn by Aspen Comics, they are generally 7-9 pages long, the first page of which is always an advertisement for a vehicle made by Nissan, one of the sponsors for the series. The comics give additional character background and plot information not shown in the television episodes.

Wildstorm, a subsidiary of DC Comics released the first 34 chapters in a hardcover volume on November 7, 2007. Entitled “Volume One”, the collection also includes Tim Sale’s artwork as seen on the show.

The comics are available in both PDF and Flash formats; the PDF versions are linked below. The Flash versions often offer a link to a “hidden surprise“, also listed below. A few also have an animated version.

I know that this page exists, though I never got the chance to read any of the episodes. Regardless, nothing beats having MY own copy, and being able to touch and read it at my own pleasure, in my own bed, even without my laptop and a working internet.

This is what a long self-declared weekend does.

First New things first. I have changed phones and I am using a new number. I know… I have this annoying hobby of changing numbers every so often. This time, though, the change is not self-motivated.

I lost my phone last Friday. Bought a new phone on Saturday. On Sunday, I was busy installing new phone settings and games, uploading music and trying to connect to the net.

Come Monday, I have a brand new phone again. This was because the phone which I had bought on Saturday decided to shut itself off and refused to turn back on. Just like that. Just like some other things. Which means I have to have myself be absent from work to have it checked in Glorietta, where I bought it. (Okay, that was an excuse. I decided not to come to work hours before my phone broke down).

On a positive note, since the Sony Ericsson outlet is just across Hard Rock, I, together with my two housemates, decided to spend the time in Hard Rock, for our light (expensive!) snack, while waiting for my phone to get checked and to be replaced with a new one, eventually. I was suggesting that we eat at Dad’s instead, where they have this merienda buffet for only 130 pesos. But no, we had to be at Hard Rock for the experience.

The few times I had been there, it was always to attend company-initiated and company-funded events. So I did not know that a bottle of San Mig lite costs 95 pesos there. With prices like this, starting with the San Mig lite, one is inclined to think and realize several things.

1. The place is worth the price and given the chance, the right company and, of course, the right amount of money, I would want to keep coming back there.

2. Keeping up with this kind of lifestyle for even just a week will drain me of a whole month’s sweldo.

3. The place also made me realize that I want to put up something like this in Naga, but this business is waay to classy and expensive, I could never afford investing in something like this, regardless of the fact that the people in Naga will most probably afford and appreciate this scene.

4. I’ll always vote in favor of our old trusted convention, we’ll drink at home instead. This way, we can have as may beers as we want, and it’s way cheaper.