Monthly Favorites: November 2015

Ah sweet November. Before the favorites, a bit of background on this month: It was crunch time for everything. I finally had to present the results of that Masters’ thesis, I had to work on another subject, I had to work, I had to be a good family member and show up to family events, I had to deal with offline drama. It was insane. And so, it probably comes as no surprise that the things I loved most about this month were those that helped me stay within the bounds of the law. Without these, I probably would have gone to the neighborhood sumpak vendor, and, you know where this train of thought goes. On to the favorites.

1.)  The bottomless underwear drawer. Every weekday for November, I would get off work and head straight to a coffee shop to write my thesis. Writing is a grind, more so if it’s academic. And when I couldn’t take it anymore, I would ride a bus home and plop straight to bed, exhausted. On weekends, I would get up, head to a coffee shop, and spend all day there (trying) to get my thesis done.

Needless to say, I didn’t have much energy for anything else. Including laundry. My favorite moment all month was when one Thursday, I got home, and was ready to cry because finally, finally there was no choice but to do the laundry if I didn’t want to go commando the next day. And then I opened my cabinet (I keep a hamper at the bottom) to take out my laundry, and lo and behold, amazing grace, I spy a last pair of panties, tucked at the corner of a shelf. I took them out and blessed them (for effect, let’s imagine that I cried a little). Another night that I can sleep instead of washing things. This is probably in effect me telling the world how much underwear I own, but eh, whatever.

2.)  That after-thesis-presentation feeling. How do I explain it? My friends are mostly in grad school, so I’ve never had to explain the feeling of working on a thesis to anybody. For the longest time, I was afraid that I would end up extending and extending, and that this thesis would be unfinished, until I finally gave up on my masters. That is how tired I have been. (Granted, it wasn’t only school that was tiring me out, but still…)

Now, since I was in undergraduate school, I have always resolved that I would finish my master’s degree, the reasons for which may be best left for another post. The thought of me not finishing because I was having a hard time would probably be akin to the feeling of: Romeo thinking that after all that eloping, Juliet still ended up dead; Arthur making it to the promised land of Camelot but still ending up cuckolded by Guinevere; everybody else on this planet believing that Adele would release a happy album, and then listening to 25 and finding out that SHE. DID. NOT. I overact, and that last analogy isn’t an analogy of disaster at all, I guess. But the thought of me not finishing, on my second-to-the-last-sem at that, sounds like a love affair ending. So imagine what I looked like when I found out that I was good to go, and I only have to finalize that manuscript.

That’s all I have. But freedom beckons, and maybe, with it, new things.

Monthly Favorites: October 2015

This is a bit hard to do. October flew by so so fast, I'm hard-pressed to think of anything that registered as a favorite. But this might be a good exercise, thinking of something that brightened up the month, regardless of how little the month left an impression. I do want to lessen the feeling that time is just speeding past, but I don't want to feel in the moment if the moment is full of shit anyway. Hence, the need to dredge up the good things, above all others.

But I digress. On to the favorites:

1. The 2 hours of peace and quiet that I've been having most mornings. I requested for a change in shift at work, so I had to time in at 7 and leave at 4. (Everybody else is supposed to come in at 9.) I am NOT a morning person. (Come to think of it, I am not an evening or afternoon person either. I'm just a sleepy person.) So this change was hard---why-don't-I-just-kill-myself-hard. But arriving early at the office turned out to be good for me. I don't think I got more done at work, but it is soothing, to be able to sit down alone for a good two hours before keyboards start clacking away, people start to walk around, and messages start clogging up my Skype. It's by no means chaotic, but I always found it slightly harrowing to come in when things are like that.

Weirdly enough, I went to Bangkok earlier this year and I had 7 days of peace and quiet, because I went alone. And I didn't like it. I was lonely. Happy to be in Bangkok again, but lonely nonetheless.

2. I finally got started on braces. Let me clarify that I am not happy to be wearing them. They aren't as painful as I thought they would be, but they are annoying. The thing about them that brings me joy is that I am paying for them out of my own pocket, and I am not borrowing from anyone to do so. Financing your own life is always a great feeling, isn't it?

3. Roasted rice tea. In some countries, apparently, roasted rice tea is a very humble product. Too easily available, unlike, say, certain varieties of green tea (I forget which) that come from plants that are hard to care for. But I tried roasted rice tea for the first time in October, and it's quite fragrant and comforting. In spite of being warm, it reminds me of frozen pinipig in coconut milk, a cold dessert which happens to be another favorite.

That's all I have for October. But my horoscope says November is a time for things to pick up. My fingers are crossed.

The Road to Pagiging Chicks

When I shelled out the money to get my eyes lasered, I opened proverbial floodgates. Just who is this person I've become? Why, around this time last year, the hair on my head was practically fried, because of a bad perm. And I lived with it. I was holding on to clothes I've had since at least college, which was a rosy half-decade past. And I wasn't holding on to the clothes because they have transcended style or were still in good shape. They were serviceable, but I did look stuck in a party everyone left quite sometime ago. In short, I was cheap, and it showed.

I had my eyes lasered partly because I couldn't recognize my relatives when I happen upon them on the streets, and mostly because people I don't know lower their voices when they see me in the library. And I must say, in spite of the resulting dryness of my eyes (which on bad days angers me, because no one in that goddamned clinic even mentioned it, and boy, are my eyes DRY) life has been much easier with perfect eyesight.

Which brings us to the proverbial floodgates. Lasering didn't just make life easier, it also bumped me up into the next level of cute. And I liked it. Suddenly nothing was good enough for me anymore. The ragged clothes were donated. I bought bags, the kind that encourages older relatives to try and make you acknowledge guilt for being so profligate.

Just last night, I was inspecting my teeth in the mirror, fretting because two of my lower teeth were pointed inwards, instead of straight up. And right there, while I was seriously considering braces because of my incorrect bite, I thought, oh my god, just who the hell have I become? Who the fuck cares about my bite?

Oh I know all about the suffering of undue wear on the teeth and all the hoopla that comes with an incorrect bite. But really, mine is a fully functional, albeit ugly mouth. If I bite you it's bound to hurt, and if I bite my dinner it's gonna break into chewable pieces. Shouldn't that be all that matters?

I wish I could tell you that last night's realization was the start of a pivot back towards a frugal, less vain self. Hahaha, no, it was not. I am getting those braces, so there's no lesson to be learned here. Maglalaway kayo sa ngipin kong pantay-pantay. Just wait and see.

Fuck It Fridays 01: September 2015

No, I will not rehash why life is fucked. There may be no one listening, but I am trying to be less whiny. I can, online at least, shut my trap. Anyway, this project was borne of a request I made of April recently: I asked her to assign me a task, to keep me from thinking of the million things I have to do regarding my thesis.

So we came up with this one. We both list the songs that we have been listening to, and explain why they are the songs of the moment. She designed the album art below. (And put up her own playlist here.) Behold, the songs I have had on repeat for the past few weeks:

art by www.grewlegs.com

Two Words, by Ms. Lea Salonga

Nope, can't relate to this song.

But doesn't the purity of that singing voice make you want to believe that there exists a person to whom you can say: No trace of sadness / Always with gladness / I do?

And since there will never be another venue for me to say it anyway, let me put it out here for the record: Lea Salonga slays at being patolera online. I don't mean this sarcastically, ha. I think it's honest, and whatever she says inevitably makes sense. So why the hell not? I wish she had a YouTube channel.

Maybe I'm Amazed, by Dave Grohl and Norah Jones

Nope, can't relate to this song either. Well, I have been amazed with a certain person all too often, who just won't get amazed in return. Let's not talk about it.

Maybe we can just talk about people who post these videos of singers. Who are they? How come I can find pages and pages of these people posting this song, and Norah and Dave aren't among them?

I Shall Be Released, by Nina Simone

Thank God I can't relate to this song. The chill in this melody is completely at odds with the lyrics, isn't it? But it makes for cathartic listening. Just you wait, you thesis. I shall be released.

Ashitta Ni Mukatte, from the YYH OST

This is a song that plays at particularly tender moments of Yu Yu Hakusho. When I sent my list of songs to April, I kept asking her if the song was not familiar at all (I hadn't told her from where I got it). I just can't imagine any 90s kid in the Philippines not watching Yu Yu Hakusho (or Ghostfighter, which is what the series was called here). When the anime aired in the Philippines, cable TV wasn't a thing yet, so most kids were stuck between two channels. (Hah! I sound old.) So there's just no way this song wouldn't be familiar.

And for the record, she said it wasn't, the filthy liar. Anyway, I kept listening to this song because I would put it on and voila, I'm a kid again. My stress falls away, like an involuntary reflex. I can't explain how it happens, it just does.

I tried looking up the meaning of the song, and the closest I got was, "thinking about the future," Good God, I don't want to relate to that just right now.





Marvin Gaye, by Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor

Ahahaha, bakit ba, bastos eh. Aaaand still can't relate. Fuck this shit.

Monthly Favorites: September 2015

I love YouTube. In fact I got a postpaid data plan JUST for YouTube. I don't text that much, I don't call that much, so theoretically I would get by with just a prepaid phone number. But I can't be bothered to watch TV, because the shows are too long. I don't really like listening to the radio, because I can't get through two minutes without fiddling with the channels. So I have to pay for YouTube, for my passive entertainment needs.

And I'm a sucker for monthly favorites videos---YouTubers would just sit in front of the camera showing/telling you about their favorites for the month. Most of them would whip out makeup, wearables, whatnot. So soothing to watch, haha.

And since this month has been nothing but a clusterfuck of fuck yous from the universe, I thought, why not take a page off those YouTubers' books and catalog the things that made the month tolerable? Maybe it would prevent me from whipping out an anvil and smashing my own head in. And so here they are. My favorite things/people/events for the month of September:

1. Nadine from that government office I've been bugging for my thesis---I am working on my Master's thesis, and getting the data has been a source of grief. I've expected the back and forth to take about a week or two. Obviously, it's taking MUCH longer. Apparently, I am requesting data that is sensitive in nature, so there needs to be lots of deliberation before the office can decide on whether they'll give me the data or not. I can angst about this right now, but let's not bring that kind of shit on this blog.

Now Nadine answers the phone for that government office, and she is just SO helpful. She can't give me the data, of course, but I appreciate how she gives me updates on who she's bugged on my behalf, and how (e.g. 'I left so-and-so a note and talked to him when he was here, so he won't forget about your case'). It may not be a guarantee of anything, but it eases my emotional suffering.

2. The movie, 'Heneral Luna'---I doubt I have anything new to say about the movie. The goriness of the movie stressed me out, and perhaps there is merit to what detractors say, i.e., that the movie is simplistic. But it is beautifully made; it is filtered enough to present its thesis to the average moviegoer; and it speaks to the issues of my time. And it is inspiring. It is inspiring that a young person made such a movie, and that the producers (businessmen, generally portrayed as opportunists in the movie) backed it up financially. And now it's an entry to the Oscars. What an exciting time for the arts, indeed.

3. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf---Always quiet enough to let me study (or pretend to study), and with the friendliest staff. I really should learn the names of these nice people who ask me how my breakfast is going, and leave me notes with my coffee.

4. My trip to Japan, which is materializing at last---Even as a kid, I've always been fascinated by Japan. And this month, a friend and I scored really really cheap tickets. We're going in March next year, and the day-to-day planning (by my friend, because I mostly just toss in requests and say yes to whatever she proposes) is a high point of my day.

I guess that covers it. And now, I guess life isn't any better just because I blogged about my monthly favorites. But I must admit, I am feeling better. Onward to October.

Wishful Thinking, Thesis Data Edition

There were too many days spent buried under the bed, turned away from the sun outside. I had gone pale, gray, a shadow of my former self.

"Come out and play," my friends would say. "It would make you feel so much better."

"No it won't," I would answer. "I have no reason to go outside." And I stayed in bed, festering like a sore. I had no desire to play, to rise, to open my eyes at the start of every morning. I had stopped dreaming at night, and stopped noting the times I would drift off to an empty sleep.

And then you came along. And it was like opening all of the windows. The sun was shining through at last.

Not Just Yet

Make no mistake---it is July, and not April, that is the cruellest month. Sometime in July I looked up my monthly horoscope to find something that I could relate to my own experiences come August. True enough, I became preoccupied with house matters. I had been wanting to get a new shelf put up for a certain wall of our bedroom, and that is actually how most of July was spent. But nowhere in any horoscope did I see that while I was busy with wall measurements, I would lose something precious. For days afterward I  looked at dozens of other horoscopes, looking for something to the effect of: You will want to lie down and not get up. You will spend nights crying, and you will start wondering how people more alone than you are can weather their own disasters.

Someday I would be able to type up a proper goodbye to Letty. But not today; when attempting to post a send-off via Instagram can still send me crying in the middle of a coffee shop, not caring about the concerned looks of the baristas. I had caused more scenes at the end of July than I ever believed I was capable of: I cried in buses, in restaurants, in a fire exit, in earshot of my roommates in Quezon City as they were watching their soap operas. One of these days I would look back to this time, and find what the universe is trying to teach me. Just not yet. Right now my grief is in puddles all over the place. My Gmail is full of unfinished goodbyes, written during the three nights I couldn't sleep at all. A notebook under my pillow is full of disjoint words that came to mind the first weekend I was going to go home to Cavite and Letty would not be there. The words are in two columns and here are some: Flood. Weight. Well. Shrink. Disappear.

So July has taken off, leaving cleanup of the ransacked house to August. I don't think I have ever hated anything more in my entire life than the past month. I hated last year, but last year I didn't want to just pick up anything jagged off the side of the road and smash it against all the glass I can find, or watch everything be swallowed up by water.

I hate July. I want to bludgeon it, or weigh it down with chains and watch it sink to the bottom of the ocean. I hate it so much. And I don't care if in all the other months, people lose bigger things than I have. I know people lose jobs, houses, or other people. I know that all I lost is a small animal, but I loved that animal as much as my heart would allow.

A few days ago I was thinking, please God, just let me see Letty in a dream. I tried to recall every single detail, from the way he would leap up, to the expression of his face. And I was able to do it. I dreamed briefly that he was sleeping, and I could see it. I don't think I'll manage to do it again. But it's something I have fished out of this murky, misty time. I hold it to myself day in and day out, until I can finally say goodbye to Letty. But not just yet.

I Don't Have Nightmares Anymore

When I was a kid I was too afraid of ghosts and evil spirits. I couldn't look directly at the TV during the annual All Souls' Day feature of Magandang Gabi, Bayan. The white face looking out at passersby from the darkened window of an abandoned house, the noiseless woman that climbs onto passenger seat one moment then disappears the next, the unknown child that looks at the unsuspecting human from under the bed: I couldn't look at them, despite my full awareness that they were actors. And as a kid I really believed that ghosts were everywhere, and all waiting to get me alone. I couldn't enter rooms whose lights were off; I couldn't stay too long by myself in rooms that were fully lit. I  was always half-expecting an old woman with long white hair to hover outside the window at night, grinning at me trapped inside, so I couldn't look out the windows at night either. (But now that I'm older, I follow on Twitter the old, long-haired, white-haired woman that seemed to play every lost, evil spirit on TV come November.)

It did not help that I had too-intense dreams. We had an old woman as a neighbor. I rarely spoke two words to her, but every day at 5am, she would be outside, sweeping her front yard. She died when I was in elementary school, and I cannot remember why. But I never forgot her face, or the rhythm of her sweeping, many years later. And If you asked me to close my eyes and visualize the lines on her forehead, I can do it, in an instant, without thinking hard. Because soon after she died, I dreamed that I was washing dishes facing a window, and there she was, outside, staring at me, inching closer and closer. Finally her face was touching the window, and for an agonizingly long time, I stared back at her, because I couldn't wake up.

There was another time, when I had a fever for a good three days. I was a small kid, and when I was sick the adults would have me lie on a wooden sofa, its back just high enough to reach the bottom of our front window. At some point during my three-day fever, I was sleeping on the wooden sofa, and I dreamed of the window above me. In my dream there was a young Chinese woman playing with the jalousie window, opening and closing it, peering at me all the while, teeth bared in a smile.

And for a time I believed that these dreams were actual visits. My sisters used to agree, and we would recount these dreams, over and over. To some extent maybe I still believe in visitations. But one day, the fear just disappeared.

I think it was because I read a story somewhere about an abandoned cottage, where a husband and wife died horrible deaths. Years later their orphan comes to live in their cottage. Her friend tells her: "People died here." And she replies, "People die everywhere." And she moved in, and the story didn't go a supernatural route. Something in me clicked; my fear went out as if by a switch.

And now, here I am, remembering my childhood terrors, seeing in my imagination every white detail of our old neighbor's face. The lights are off, I am alone in bed. Yet I type sleepily away, feeling absently for other nightmares I haven't thought about in years. Generally, I hate sleeping beside anybody now that I'm grown. I hate it when something mars the perfect quiet at night, and in Cavite, I sleep in the darkest room in the house, often alone. Occassionally I leave the window open so my cat can walk in and out without fuss. The fear has disappeared.

My nightmares aren't as otherworldly as they used to be, either. The last one I remember was during my undergrad days. Quite some time after my grandfather died, I thought I saw him. I was sleeping on the top bunk of my appointed bed, in my college boarding house. I was hovering towards wakefulness, and I half-looked at the empty space beside my narrow bed. I thought I saw him with his hand holding the bar that kept me from falling off the top bunk. He was watching me, and he was dressed in the barong we buried him in. I shot awake and screamed, fully waking up. My roommate nearest the bed turned on the lights, and I found my bedside empty.

Maybe the nightmares stopped because I couldn't be bothered with them anymore as soon as I was fully awake. Was my grandfather really looking at me from beside the bed? Maybe. But what did it matter? I couldn't see him looking anymore under the flourescent lights. In fact, after his little visit, I climbed out of bed, and wrote a somewhat unflattering essay about him, which I passed in class.

Now, when I have nightmares, they are most often about rats. (Sometimes about being the victim of a crime, but more often about rats.) Less interesting, but infinitely more plausible. And more horrible, considering that a pattern I notice about my own nightmares is they start off with me lying in the actual bed I am sleeping in. And they always go like this: I would find myself in bed, in the middle of the night, in the dark, and a rat would crawl across my blanket. It's infinitely more horrible, because I'm never sure if I'm dreaming. I woke up from such a nightmare once, while I was staying in a house in Pasig. I woke up, and jumped to my roommate's bed. In my haste I think I kneed him in the liver. And I insisted that he scour the house for the rat. Of course he couldn't find one, but by then fear had taken over and I couldn't go back to my own bed. Since my roommate was gay, there really was no happy ending for this one episode.

Believe it or not, sometimes I worry because I don't have fanciful nightmares anymore. It must be a failure of the imagination, I think. Now, I am so earthbound that I can only be afraid of the things I know for sure are real. Oh I don't want another dream about the dead, of course. But I wonder what it says about my state of mind, now that my subconscious no longer surfaces the possibility that people that may be right beside you without you knowing, when you're by yourself in the dark.

And I know it's a stupid worry. Logically, I should probably worry more about my waking fears. But they don't even make for fun storytelling, and they feel pointless to think about. So last Sunday, I watched a YouTube video about an antique haunted doll. After it scared me sufficiently, I put down my phone and closed my eyes. I slept peacefully.

How Deep Do Ferns Grow?

There was a fern that wanted to attach itself to a tree, the way an orchid hangs off driftwood. But ferns (such a goofy thing to be called) are supposed to sprout out of dirt, unkempt, like a full head of curly hair. The tree told the fern so. And anyway, there wasn't anything that the fern could do; it was not a vine that could creep along and wrap itself around the tree. It was staying where it was.

The fern dug its roots deep, long tendrils of root snaking their way deeper and deeper into the ground. Maybe the tendrils snaking underground could wind a path to the roots of the tree, and meander up, around the bark, latch on, and not let go. The fern had no idea that its roots can only dig down, and not all the way across another part of a garden. Maybe the tree had roots deep deep underground that the fern's roots could tangle with eventually. But how could the fern be sure? Do fern roots go that far?

The pain of the whole thing is that the tree was just there—had the fern been a weed, it would take only a week or so to cover the ground and join the tree's base. Had the fern been a vine, it would have been a matter of nothing to crawl over branches of the one or two plants between them, and say hello. (Or would it? The fern really wasn't sure; it was a fern and not a vine.) Best yet, if the fern had been a sunflower, it would have faced towards the sun, period. No more orienting itself towards a tree, perhaps. Needless to say, if only the fern had been a whole host of things that it wasn't, things would have been different. And needless to say, amidst all of this, the tree was just there.

The fern didn't even know what was so important about growing on the tree. It had never wanted—does not want to be—an orchid or any other aerial plant. A fern it is, and a fern it intends to stay. Just growing on a tree.

And so the fern digs its roots down, knowing that it is digging down, and not across to where the tree was (just there). Someday, the fern would learn that some things grow in pots, some things grow in water, and not everything grows on trees.

My Cat and I

I'm not a fresh 19-year-old anymore. Yesterday (Sunday) I went to Moonleaf. I've only been there once or twice before, so on a whim, I settled on a peppermint milk tea in the only size they have (which is huge).

In other milk tea shops, I would order only 25 or 50 percent sugar. This was a hundred percent. I sat down on one of Moonleaf's low benches, put my feet up and read some stories on my phone while sipping. Thirty minutes in, and I haven't even worked through a fourth of the liquid in my plastic cup.

I thought something salty would help me finish my milk tea, so I found a place to order a 5 o'clock dinner. By the time I had eaten as much as I could of my chicken (and some fried rice, which was oily, as fried rice always is) the plastic cup was three-fourths of the way empty. It was only six pm then. I went home, threw the rest of the tea away, and did not eat anything else until the next morning, i.e. today.

I woke up dry-heaving and dizzy. I spent the better part of the morning this way, heaving but having nothing to show for it, so I decided to just go on sick leave. I know how incredibly lame "sugar overload" looks on a sick leave form---only toddlers and probably midgets get that, for God's sake. I put in "dizziness" instead, which is no less lame, come to think of it, and slept off my sugar hangover until it was too late to even go on halfday to work.

Bedridden from sugar. When just last May, I was chugging two liters of Gatorade a day and it didn't faze me at all. I quit my Gatorade habit when June rolled in, and only less than a month later, here I am, getting stuck in bed for pigging out.

And how did I spend what was left of today? Oh with nothing much: just folded my clothes, picked up my laundry, then went to Globe to get my postpaid plan downsized because I find it wasteful. Maybe next week, I'll find a tai chi class in a park, get healthier. Then I'll get fitted for dentures and find a lawyer to finalize my will.

Coincidentally, my pet (and spirit animal) Letty, must be feeling the onset of undue age, too. Letty has this habit of climbing into my mother's bed when she isn't there, and gets all whiny when we take him off it. Now that bed is really luxurious, and really important to my mother. Our whole family can fit comfortably into that bed, and it's fitted with this huge orthopedic mattress that's so heavy, you can drop it on someone you want dead. When I see my mother sleeping in the living room, I suspect that she has sinned, maybe gossipped at the office or something, and doesn't want to lie on the mattress until she has confessed to a priest.

And today, Letty got into that bed, and pissed in it.

This is so unlike Letty. There was a time when he almost came into the house with a rat. We all yelled our disgust and refused to let him in, and he seemed to understand, because for the next few days he kept strictly to the floor, a deviation from his habits. And during typhoon Yolanda, when it was pitch dark and really really windy and stormy outside, he still begged to be let out to do his thing. And at two years old, he's no candidate for bladder failure. Besides, cats won't piss in the same place they like to sleep in. What's going on?

I tell my sister that Letty is probably angry at something and is letting us know about it. My sister says Letty just has an attitude problem, and wants the big-ass bed all to himself. My mother is just---

Reportedly, Letty has been banished to the box of shame, an empty, rectangular laundry basket that was lying around the house. I don't know if he feels punished though. Cats love boxes.

On Carrying On

It was one of those days when everything seemed determined to go wrong. I woke up late; while putting on liquid eyeliner my hand slipped and i got a zebra line running up to my eyebrow (and this after I've put on eyeshadow); the bus I was riding to get to work was tailing an asshole of a bus that stopped quite lengthily in the middle of Edsa (to drop off a bunch of passengers), stopping diagonally, taking up two lanes (God typing that phrase made me really, really angry); I forgot my mp3 player at home and had to listen to "Sana Ay Ikaw Na Nga" in the bus (and I emoted, which made a good song a bad thing); and last but not the least aggravating, I got late for work because of the office building's elevators, which were probably programmed by a piece of shit. By the time I got to my desk I was just ready to die. Time check, 10am.

I tried to finish all my pending work, because next week I want to attend a 2-day seminar, and I havent even finished a third of what needs to be done. I edited from 10:30 to 12:45, went to lunch, came back at 2, and lost my work by 4, when MS Word crashed. I decided to stay at work until 8:30, to redo everything. My work is unfinished.

On the bus home I caught myself grinding my teeth so I decided to go to Friuli to make myself feel better. I ordered a three-cheese pizza, that emerged as everything I love: earthy, salty, gooey and soft. Problem was, a really really loud group of three were at a table beside mine, laughing really really loud. If I could, I would beseech Satan to reserve a circle of hell for people who don't even try to not be loud in crowded spaces. (On a sidenote, if such a circle exists, it's probably full of Filipinos. We're a noisy bunch.)

The loud group was laughing because apparently, a loud girl among them went to a sleepover, to find that she was the only girl attending. Now it seems that I really really needed my peace and quiet, because at the moment I didn't care if the sleepover turned into a full-blown orgy and loud girl would be willing to share the sleepover address for future reference. I started daydreaming of myself leaning over to their table and yelling, "SHUT YOUR FACECUNT." And then I realized that I do swear really colorfully when angry (whether to myself or out loud) and wondered whether I should try to change, once my rage over the level of noise in that teeny tiny restaurant has passed.

I walked home and now I'm in bed, really exhausted. I'm really exhausted but at the same time still really twitchy, which is a really shitty place to be. I was just going to close my eyes and wait for exhaustion to take over, but I remembered that eating lots of dairy before sleep makes dreams really vivid, and even without dairy, I have really vivid dreams that amuse everyone but myself. Given my dreaming track record, I wouldn't be surprised if my dream just replays every single moment of this day, from waking up late to working overtime to getting angry over hearing what sounds like a porno plotline. So here I am, writing it all down, hoping that none of those things make an appearance when I close my eyes.

Instead, I would much rather dream of how my bedroom is, this hour before sleeping: The fan is blowing a cool and gentle wind. It is almost completely dark, just the way I like it. There are no barking dogs or passing vehicles or singing neighbors. Everything has gone quiet. It's as if the world has thrown up its hands, saying, "i'm done with you for today. You win."