a whole lotta food, a whole lotta lovin' and more sleeping time to go
*ooh, and a tiny but visible dent on my bumper!

merry christmas!

i know we agreed to have a miserable christmas together but i think the gods conspired to make this christmas a wee bit more special for both of us. there's the christmas dinner with very sweet friends of the boyfriend who braved the south luzon expressway traffic so that we can all have noche buena together. there's the day-after-christmas drive to cabanatuan where i've spend the last four days being pampered by my grandmother and favorite aunt. there's the bonding time with the boyfriend at a shell gas station where we caught up on each other's christmas stories. there's the let's-be-friends-again moment with a friend who i thought i've lost already.

-oOo-

watched mano po 2 yesterday, due to aunt's proddings. if i had my way, it would've definitely been crying ladies, especially since i am a closet sharonian at heart. still, she was paying, and since i had been slumming at her home for the last couple of days, i had no choice but to watch a movie pretending to be a filmfest entry.

it was a stupid movie really. for one, there was no story. patriarch dies, three wives fight, there's a pregnant girl, there's a wuss boyfriend, there's a criple, a kind-hearted sister, and a whole lot of shouting and crying. so what's new in all that, right?

and what were they thinking casting susan roces as the older kris aquino. i mean, if i were kris, i wouldn't want to be as old as susan roces 23 years later, especially if zsazsa just aged a bit and lorna actually looked hotter after 23 years. the kris-susan casting was so bad that the people behind us were actually confused

girl 1: sino si susan roces? lola nila?
girl 2: at ano na ang nangyari kay kris?
girl 1: patay na kaya si kris?

and so it went.

they tried to fit in so many story lines that even i got confused.

waste of money. i should've insisted on watching mega. then maybe i could've supported another bout of lipo, right?

-oOo-

i got this digital camera.

it made me happy.

i was so happy i took a lot of pictures of myself. i had so many pictures it was embarassing already.

i was so excited i wanted to take a picture of the traffic in sta. ana pampanga. i whipped it out, even if it said in the manual NOT to take pictures while driving. i reasoned out that it was traffic, and we weren't moving.

except that the car was. slightly. around 5kph.

and the tricycle in front of me wasn't.

so i smashed into it. and it smashed into the tricycle in front of it.

my helpless look worked. i bet he was thinking "stupid girl driver, and she drives that way cause she's a girl."

on a normal day i would've minded. but on a day when i was clearly at fault, i'm glad i got away with an evil look.

an evil look from him and two teeny tiny dents on my bumper.

early returns

i've been putting off posting the last couple of days because, well, i'm slowly becoming a christmas humbug. however, the fingers typing this post are now nicely manicured owing to the fact that the christmas revelry has sort of begun for me already. since law school ended tuesday, my blockmates and i capped off the year with a kiddie party at mcdonald's that same night. the following evening was the educ christmas party, then thursday was my office friends' party, and friday was the birthday party of three of my favorite students.

staying in on a saturday night with a microphone and no one to listen to me sing init sa magdamag and bituing walang ningning was actually fun after all the late nights i've been indulging on since tuesday.

moving on ...

christmas parties = christmas gifts and this year's small pile is turning out to be one of the best piles yet. i know i'm being such a kid for not waiting until christmas eve but i'm filipino and for us, christmas starts in septemBER, right?

for one, my ultra-amazing ultra-fabulous ultra-talented ultra-everything comm2 teacher from way way back sent me an autographed copy of his book, jolography. i was so excited that i actually read this and poetry to my brother on the drive home to cabanatuan.

another amazing gift was a check made out to my name so that my brother and i can purchase a not-so-expensive-but-still-quite-pricey digital camera. i had managed to cajole my favorite aunt (who happens to be my ninang too!) to buy me and my brother one, saying that the camera will be our christamas/birthday gifts already. so what if the parking later is horrible and traffic will virtually be on a standstill. i WILL go to the mall, i WILL look at digital cameras till my feet hurt, and i WILL buy one. ha ha.

third on my list is an epass. now, i know that might seem quite corny and all but for anyone who lives in the south and has waited for more than a couple of minutes while inching his way up sucat or the C5 exit will know why an epass is an absolutely amazing gift.

i still have one or two gifts left unopened. and i'm keeping my fingers crossed that since it's not christmas yet, i'll have a few more come my way.

sometimes, when you pray hard enough and wish long enough, santa does hear you.

rosa, humbug no more.

p.s. gosh, i am so materialistic for equating christmas with gifts, but if you really think about it, a favorite teacher sending you a copy of his book, an aunt fulfilling your dreams of digital camera glory, and a good friend giving you an epass actually shows that (1) there are people who care enough to find out what you really want for christmas and (2) they care enough to get it for you. right?

my thighs are killing me but ...

i finally got around to doing my entire (well, almost) program in the gym last tuesday. bummed with the thought of waking up at half past five to make it to the office by seven, i stayed in bed until i found the energy courage willpower to go back to the gym after a five day rest for my aching body.

i started with the 25-minute warm-up at the treadmill which became a bore after five minutes of watching a cinemax movie i can't hear and another two minutes of craning my neck to get a better glimpse of the other television whose sound was actually audible. it was really tiring to walk and not go anywhere so after less than ten minutes i hauled my still-jiggly ass to the bikes where i did the entire fifteen minutes required of me (yay!yay!) and burned -- don't be shocked -- a grand total of 35 calories.

yes, you read that right, 35 calories. i get more calories eating a piece of mentos.

i went through all of the machines, none of the free weights, indicated in the program. i huffed and puffed and sweated like a pig. i stretched and pulled and twisted like there was no tomorrow.

i woke up wednesday in pain. if you came across a girl driving whose car kept stopping, that might've been me. see, my thighs hurt so much i couldn't even properly step on the gas and the clutch pedals.

i was ready to swear off the gym and forget that i ever thought of giving a damn to two-piece bikinis, until i noticed that hey, my pantleg was somewhat kind of loose.

and my thighs weren't exactly rubbing against each other.

wow.

take me back to the gym, let me suffer all that pain again. sexy thighs are worth all the pain in the world, if you ask me.

now, if only i could get myself to do my crunches.

isn't it ironic?

the christmas season has started and in spite of the downturn in the economy, a couple of gifts have trickled in.

so far, the best has been a pirated version of the lex libris.

ironic though that it came from a classmate in law school.

we're breaking the very laws we're trying to learn.

boyfriend selection, much like buying a pair of shoes, can be hits or misses. for one, there are times in your life, like when you're depressed that you convince yourself that you just gotta have one. another thing is that sometimes, after the first couple of weeks of happily being together almost all the time, you hit a plateau and you begin searching for the same thrill that you got, say, when you first wore the shoe or, in the case of the boyfriend, first held his hand.

misses would be those pairs of shoes you fall in love with, you wear while in bed just looking at how nice your foot is while clad in that particular pair, but stop liking when they immediately stop being promising after you realize how painful they could be to wear on a daily basis, or how something about the insole makes your toes icky-black after a day of wearing them. misses would be those boyfriends who, absent the usual rose colored glasses one usually sports at the start of the relationship, reveal themselves to be losers beyond belief.

the problem with both a pair of shoes and boyfriends is that sometimes, you have to make the "purchase" before you really find out their true colors.

but once in a while you get lucky, really lucky, and here are five reasons why, MY BOYFRIEND is a hit:

1. he brings pasalubong: siopao from ongpin, pastillas from nueva ecija, inipit from bulacan.
2. he appreciates gifts. the other day, i gave him christmas lights for the gasoline station. around four in the afternoon, he calls just to tell me that he's had his employees put the lights up and that they're nice cause they're twinkly.
3. he doesn't pick fights. after a particularly bratty monologue (via SMS) about how he's been too busy to make time for me, he tells me, "i know you really miss me cause i'm just so 'missable' but ganun talaga honey, eh" which made me smile real wide and without me even saying anything he goes on to say, "nakangiti ka na, no? yung hindi plastic ha!"
4. he's hot. there's just something about the way he carries himself that makes everyone sit up and take notice. sometimes, i want to put a sign on him that says "mine, mine, mine."
5. and yesterday, when i was depressed for some unknown reason, and when my self-proclaimed "good friend" told me to just sleep it off, the boyfriend, after finding out, makes a detour to UP on his way home to nueva ecija to plant a big kiss and to tell me "honey, i love you."

now, tell me you don't think this one's a hit.

man eater

while veevee was happily gorging on a fat, juicy hotshots burger yesterday afternoon, she innocently asked if i dated someone who was student council president, or at least someone "famous" while in college.

no, i replied, the most "famous" one would have to be someone who actually joined mr. educ*

oh maybe that would be him, she said.

*quizzical look on rosa's face*

it turns out that in pre-rosa and veevee friendship days, she was a great repository of rosa man-eater chismis.

rosa dated this guy to get a job in university. rosa dumped him when she finally got the job.
rosa dated this guy to get through her MA. rosa dumped him when she went to law school ... and so
rosa dated this guy to get through law school.

oh, and according to urban legend, rosa dumped famous up guy because she was already dating this guy to get job in university.

then veevee went on to proclaim, rosa, you were the crazy party girl man eater who used her feminine wiles to lure men.

now, anyone who really knew me would know i absolutely have zilch feminine wiles. i didn't learn how to put on a lipstick until i was 25. i still trip a lot when wearing heels. and god forbid that the fat i have to burn are actually men-magnets.

but in a weird, twisted way, it's actually kinda cute. i mean, wow, i was a famous teacher after all.

and at least i didn't get "pregnant" in their stories. another friend's man-eater story has something to do with her getting it on with another teacher, becoming pregnant in the process and when she found out that he was getting married, she went to the states, had the baby aborted, and in the end, became good friends with the guy.

what the?

i know.

*disclaimer: when he joined abovementioned contest, we weren't dating yet. heck, we didn't even know each other at that time!

burn baby burn

two weeks ago, my boyfriend took me to centro. the sight of scantily clad teens (i'm so lola, i know!) was enough to drive me to a fitness regimen that was so un-me.

yesterday, i took the weight loss program a step further. i finally made good my year-long promise to enroll in a gym and lost the flabs, sags, and everything else that's standing between me and a two-piece suit.

letting go of my hard-earned money, i thought at first, would be the difficult part. how come no one told me that the measurements would be emotionally traumatic? or that finding out that your bmi is higher than your age will send a couple of tsk-tsks from the trainer?

still raw from the trauma, i had to deal next with burning 200 calories on the treadmill. i finished game knb and judy ann's lousy soap before i finally managed to burn 200 effing calories (and to think that's just a small can of piknik!). i was almost dying from exhaustion. halfway through the routine they had planned for me i was cursing fruits in ice cream raspberry and the yummy fried rice and siomai and the NY fries and dips -- all of which i had consumed within the day.

ten machines, two hours, and a couple of free weights later, they finally let me free. i think they thought that it was enought that they'd made me burn the lunch i ate that day -- and only lunch -- but before they finally let me free from the torture chamber gym, they just had a couple of reminders:
no rice
yoghurt for breakfast
non-fat milk for dinner

can i die now?

alone again, naturally

the gods of twenty-somethings-in-a-relationship all conspired against me and decided to make me misrable by taking my boyfriend away from me this weekend. maybe it wasn't enough that he's all the way there and i'm all the way here. maybe it would be so much better if they didn't see each other the entire weekend.

saturday was a bit manageable. two things that helped were the fact that i barely had two hours of sleep (not to mention the couple of minutes of sleep i accidentaly got while listening to my banking teacher) and my aunt invited us over to spend the night at dusit with her. feather pillows + king sized bed + airconditioning + no boyfriend = sleeping in on saturday night.

sunday was a bit tougher. after i had dealt with my laundry, i had the entire day to myself. of course i could always check journals or prepare for my class or work on thesis revisions but that would be no good, right? so i settled myself in bed with a bowl of instant pancit canton and a bottle of water and started channel surfing. i got my dose of meteor garden II rewind, fell asleep while watching csi miami, and satisfied my inner jologs with berks and the buzz. it should've been okay until the urge to go out bit me.

maybe i enjoyed being alone too much. i went around southmall thinking, hey, this is one thing i can do when the boy isn't around. i wandered aimlessly. i tried on shoes and clothes and modeled bags slung on my shoulders or arms and enjoyed NOT having to buy christmas gifts (at least not yet). i had a fat slice of brazo de mercedes while leafing through magazines. then i contemplated on watching a movie alone.


i SMSd asking for permission. i got an almost furious call in return telling me:
(1) what the hell was i thinking.
(2) what the hell was i thinking.
(3) what the hell was i thinking.

clearly the answer was NO.

so i did what any self-respecting girl would do.

i got a pedicure. i tried on shoes. i bought shoes. i bought jeans. i bought another pair of jeans and a top. i bought another top. and i ate pizza.

it was so legally blonde. the only thing missing was a dog.

i realized i enjoyed MY company. i liked the fact that i didn't have to talk when i didn't want to, and if i did, there's always the phone. i liked the fact that i had to trust my own taste and judgment in selecting stuff. i liked that i could leave whenever i wanted to leave and stay as late as i wanted (as long as the mall didn't close yet).

so alone isn't so bad, once in a while.

just don't let it be all the time.

instant mami

after finally attempting to run around the academic oval instead of simply brisk walking, i sent an SMS to jay telling him that why couldn't there be an instant way to lose weight.

lipo, he replied.

but really, i insisted. i want something instant. my legs were groaning. i fell into bed grassy jogging pants and all, and for the life of me, couldn't force myself to get out of it.

skin white promises whiter underarms in three weeks.
dove promises better skin in ten days.
rebonding promises straight locks within the day.
lucky me promises instant pancit canton within three minutes.
mini-stop promises a complete breakfast in thirty seconds.

why not instant weight loss?

of course, there's always kankunis but i couldn't bear the thought of me running to the washroom in the middle of a lecture just to do number 2. and even if i could afford lipo, the thought of becoming as massive as sharon cuneta (yes i'm a sharonian at heart but me wanting to become her ends with the weight issue) even after several trips to a doctor is enough to make me want to keep my money in the bank.

and besides, although the boyfriend is as tall as joey marquez, i don't think i need vicky belo's touch to keep him faithful.

really.

but when you're huffing, and puffing, and tripping all over the academic oval, putting one foot in front of the other just to get the evening run done, you start wishing for a friend like boy abunda who'd make a pronouncement that he'd be willing to cover your lipo expenses if you'll be strong enough to undergo the operation.

since i don't, i guess i'd have to just continue running every night, day in day out, in the hope that before i know it, i'd be in fighting form.

and if i stop obsessing about it and just concentrate on doing it, it might happen, in an instant.

fear of death

not my death, but the death of a parent.

sometime at 1030 last night, i received an SMS from my mom informing me that one of my uncles has passed away. could we kindly make time to attend his wake please?

i quickly sent an SMS to the other side of the family and told them of his passing. my paternal grandmother and i might drop by tomorrow to pay our respects.

i don't feel bad for my uncle who passed away. he's lived a full life. he has been battling cancer for the last five or so years and last year decided, to hell with it, i will jet back and forth between the US and manila instead of spending my hard-earned money on chemotherapy. he has bought his family a home and cars, sent four children to college, and has passed on the "baton" of his accounting practice to his eldest daughter. i pray that his passing was peaceful.

i feel bad though for my cousins. three daughters, and no one will ever have the privilege of being walked down the aisle by their dad. one son, and he has yet to prove to his father that the family name will be carried on for generations. and what about christmas? will the ham taste the same if daddy wasn't there to cut thick slices for everyone? what about the gifts they've hidden under their beds as a surprise for their dad to open on christmas day? will they just keep it wrapped, never to be opened? their future kids will never feel the joy of being spoiled by their lolo, or to spend sleepy nights listening to a never ending story of juan tamad or "when i was young" guilt trips?

they say that the worse thing that can ever happen to a parent is to lose a child. but to lose a parent so soon, for a child, is equally tragic.

in search of the perfect gift

i've always been a big fan of christmas and shopping malls and the holiday rush. i used to start with my christmas shopping as early as semestral break, buying tons of gifts along with christmas wrappers and ribbons and little knick-knacks to make the gift a little more special for the receiver. i'd make sure that everyone i cared to buy a gift for would find the gift tailor-bought (is there such a word?) for him or her.

over the years, the list got shorter, eventually including only the closest friends, family members, and of course, the boyfriend.

and believe me, the boyfriend is the toughest one to buy a gift for.

as it is, it's difficult to buy him a gift for any old occasion, much less christmas. i remember the first booboo of sorts i made - i bought a week-old boyfriend a watch. now, it was only a timex watch, not a very expensive one at that. a hardbound book would cost just a little less than what i spent for the watch, but the look on the now-ex boyfriend's face said it all: too much, too soon.

so now i'm faced with a dilemma. christmas, a two-month old boyfriend (two months today!!), and no idea what to buy him.

watch? gym membership? a year's subscription to fhm? a kenneth cole belt? shoes?

but he doesn't wear a watch, and he's in nueva ecija so i doubt if they have gold's or fitness first over there, and his mom might not appreciate seeing fhm in the mail every month, and he already has a kenneth cole belt, and his shoes, well, i can't afford the shoes he wears.

not even oprah's favorite things has anything for him.

help.

post a suggestion in the comments box please.

thank you.

i've gotten flowers and chocolates and teddy bears and a cornucopia of what-nots from boyfriends and suitors and boys pretending to be simply of the friendly sort. there have likewise been bags or shirts or shoes when practicality kicks in.

but i've never received three pieces of siopao. that is, until today.

yesterday, jay called saying that yes, he was still in manila but he was on his way to ongpin to buy a couple of things. as an afterthought, he asked me if i wanted anything.

no thanks, i said.

until i remembered the really huge but really yummy siopao he brought around a month ago. i ate one, and since i was so full, foolishly gave the other one to my brother. i've really got nothing against sharing, but when you're hungry at ten in the evening, you remember yummy siopao you gave away, right?

so i SMSd him and told him that i now know what i want. i want huge siopao. huge yummy siopao from ongpin.

he didn't reply and i forgot all about it until he called sometime in the middle of the night and i was fast asleep and i mumbled a sleepy "siopao ko".

tomorrow, he said. right before you go to work.

yeah right. men, i've figured, will say anything sometimes to make you just shut up. wednesdays are coding days, meaning i really have to leave way too early.

but no, he didn't forget. he didn't only have one, or two. he had three pieces, one of which he'd heated up and sliced into quarters for my breakfast.

and why three?

cause "honey, it's our second month anniversary tomorrow. i love you."

from a less amazing man, i would've cringed.

but not this man.

of course a good friend who called me up last sunday and filled in on the boy-stories commented that i always believe the one i'm currently with is the one so this may not be any different. but still. i'm a hopeless romantic <3

meeting his mother

technically, you can say that i met his mother only last night. but i've come across his mother a million of times since we got together.

from him you'd hear stories abot this amazing woman who'd be up and about really early but never steps outside of her unprepared to meet people. she's a voracious reader, not of sappy paperback novels that i'm so fond of, but of business books which presumably teach the rich on how they could be even richer. she's a strong woman who has kept the family intact, intact enough that even if all of them are above the age of 25 and 2 of her children live with her in nueva ecija and one lives in qc and the other in paranaque they all still meet up for lunch every sunday to catch up and have their weekly family meeting. she's the godly woman who has ingrained in her children fear of god and the necessity of sunday mass no matter how smashed you've been the night before and have every plans of getting smashed again.

from my favorite aunt (and ninang!) you'd hear stories of this matriarch who controls her kingdom with an iron fist. she's a woman who knows her cars and drives around a mean cefiro. they're quite rich and moneyed, my aunt told me once, and so don't come running to me when they start looking down on you. basically it's the picture of a monster she's painted and i got really scared.

from common friends i've heard the mommy stories: the woman who'd accommodate you in her house in a heartbeat and prepare fresh towels for everyone after they've braved the north expressway traffic. she's a simple woman, very generous and very kind. she's soft-spoken but when she speaks, everyone listens.

and, oh a warning -- they all said -- if she doesn't like you at all, then you'd better kiss jay goodbye.

so yesterday, with barely an hour's worth of sleep (and that's after you've put together the naps i've managed to have throughout the day) i got to meet his mother.

yup, surprise meeting. a meeting i was totally unprepared for.

he SMSd saying that he'll be going over at his sister's house for early dinner. can he hitch a ride back to UP with me?

sure, no problem.

at quarter to six he called and asked if i was awake. was i ready to pick him up?

sure, no problem.

five minutes later he SMSd again asking if i'd want to eat dinner.

sure, no problem. i'm on my way. where are we eating?

the car flew over the hump when i read his next message: "d2. d2 lahat cla. d2 mami"

i was five minutes away from his sister's house, my hands were clammy, my deodorant threatened NOT to work, and there was no way i could turn back. i presumed he's told everyone i was coming so there was no way for me the make up an excuse like "my brother borrowed the car" or "there was a family emergency".

i barely remember anything from the twenty or so minutes we were there. i do remember shaking her hand and kissing her cheek. i remember peppering my sentences with "po" and "opo" and smiling a whole lot. i remember we talked about her having married young and how she loves the silence in nueva ecija. i don't remember how i managed to eat alone in front of his entire family with people sending a curious glance or two along my away every so often. i don't remember whether i remembered to sit up straight or be polite or not to rush through my dinner.

but what else could i say? i had hurdled the last obstacle. i met the mom.

my roommate's one of those rare people who did not only NOT read lord of the rings as a child, but didn't watch the last two movies either. usually, people i meet have read it and watched the movie, or did it the other way around, or loved it so much they didn't want to tarnish their mental images with the movie. i'm thinking if you've been in manila for the last two years, the hype would've been enough to pique your interest.

apparently, not my roommate. she's skipped out on the last two movies, i don't know if she has any intention of watching the third, but has somehow managed to plod through the first two, and is now halfway, through the third in the LOTR series.

semestral breaks and being alone in a UP dorm room could do that to you.

but i digress. last week, while she was reading the second book and while i was struggling to stay awake while reading administrative law cases, she faced me and began asking a barrage of questions.

W: rosa, hindi pa kaya sila mabaho?
R: bakit mo naman nasabi?
W: eh diba dito sa book two mga ilang taon na ang nakakaraan simula nung umalis sila?
R: wala pa naman yata.
W: feeling ko mabaho na sila. kasi wala namang sinabi dito na naliligo sila or nagpapalit ng damit.
R: baka naman parang sa sine yan. diba sa sine di na nila pinapakita na naliligo yung mga tao o nagbibihis? parang dapat i-assume mo na lang dahil too much information na yon, di naman kailangan ilagay pa.
W: hindi. sa sine may bahay sila so may pagkukunan sila nang damit. eh mukha naman sa description ni tolkien, maliliit lang ang dala nilang bag. so wala rin silang dalang damit.

i don't know which was sadder. her having to ask me those questions or me actually having a long drawn-out conversation with her on the bathing habits of the LOTR characters.

i've got more shoes than i care to wear.

it doesn't help that i'm addicted to them.
or that stores are always having sales.
or that i invent special occassions so i can buy shoes.
or that i actually work hard at convincing myself that i absolutely need another pair.

within one pay period i actually bought three pairs. and each pair has its own story that would convince you, diehard critic of my spending habits, that they were absolutely necessary.

the first pair were nike cross trainers to fuel my dreams of becoming as delicious as aubrey miles.

the second pair, bought a week and a day later, were a pair of cream strappy sandals with 2 1/2" heels to replace the pair i was wearing. sandal straps breaking in the middle of a date is so worth a post, i know, and i did post, except that blogger decided not to upload it for reasons of its own.

three days later, and a fun holiday right smack in the middle of the work week, found me inside the mall -- again -- with no plans of buying shoes at all. all i wanted was lunch, shampoo, and a bar of soap. but then there was this nice pair of black sandals -- with heels to make the boy happy -- which were being sold for 50% off its regular price. then i remembered last saturday's experience where i had to do a talk in a pre-school and all the shoes i had with me were either boots, work-day pumps, cross trainers, cool rubbershoes for jeans or weekend sandals. *gasp* i had nothing NOTHING at all for a weekend pre-school talk for parents. i had to have black sandals with heels. i needed them, i remembered thinking that day, if only to come off as a more credible speaker. so it clearly was imperative that i buy this pair.

i know i'm being totally ditzy here, and materialistic at that.

wait until i get started on this bag i've been crushing on.

i know the closest i'll get to having turkey today would be me eating chicken and pretending it's a much bigger bird, but then it shouldn't really matter.

it's thanksgiving, and there's so much to be thankful about.

i'm thankful that 13th month pay came way earlier than expected, together with the end-of-the-month paycheck and so i got to blow money on stuff that i couldn't afford in the first place. call it my christmas gift to myself. a WAY too early christmas gift that i don't really deserve, being the lazy thesis writer that i am. the only reason why i went to the mall was to get shampoo and soap and i came out with this and yet another pair of sandals.

i'm thankful that my mom got the job she wanted and is generally happier than usual. i've been a very evil kid for not writing to her. i guess i'm stressed with being the adult all the time, telling her to cool down and calm down and just enjoy life.

i'm thankful that i got to FINALLY run walk the academic oval last night. i've been meaning to get some sort of exercise done (together with wearing weekend shoes which give me some height, this is one of the major requests of the boyfriend) and i've been eyeing the oval as something cheap and manageable. i used to run it like crazy in second year college when i was forced to take running for PE but although i've been back in UP since 2000, i haven't set my rubbershoes-clad feet on them. that all changed last night. i dropped off my shopping bags in the dorm, changed into shorts and running shoes, and went out into the cold air before i could change my mind.

i'm thankful that i got a second chance on a lot of things -- my thesis, my love life, my driving, my friendships. tuesday night saw me bonding with a couple of people i haven't gone out with for a while. spike's also finally fixed (save for a small scratch on the bumper which will have to be taken cared of by GM Autoworld). the new thesis adviser is way better than the other one and i'd like to think we're making a lot of progress already. and of course, in spite of the many mistakes that are listed in my relationship diary, i guess i've found the one this time around.

-oOo-

i am NOT thankful though that FPJ is running.

-oOo-

happy birthday specpro classmate. one day too early!

i know it's around this time of the year -- i got reminded cause of the news that it's ninoy's birthday today.

thanks for always being around.

thanks for being there for my first recitation in labor one which i screwed up terrible cause i didn't read the case simply because it was in spanish (and it was, save for a few paragraphs which i should have read, screw it). thanks for spending my birthday eve with me once when i was feeling really bummed over the fact that i was turning 25 in a couple of hours and i was alone. thanks for all the wonderful conversations we used to have over the phone during vacation. and you might find this weird, but the highlight of the conversation would always have to be me hearing you say palihog over the phone.

i can't imagine how law school would be after you graduate this march.

happy birthday, and based on your friendster profile, i guess you got back together with her again. happy, isn't it.

all the best, my dear beloved specpro classmate.

the honey bunny looks good in a barong

after much scheduling difficulties, cajoling, and several text messages sent with a pout that he hopefully felt when he received abovementioned SMS, jay finally agreed to go to the wedding with me.

of course the moment i found out that he'd be there too, i started panicking.

what to wear? (black strapless dress gasp! i know, a black dress to a weddng. or is it more gasp, rosa in a strapless dress? horror of horrors! with a sheer silk baby pink and yellow shawl, black heeled sandals with a baby pink back, and a pyramid-shaped pink bag) it's so hard to describe everything i'm so wishing i just had a digital camera!

what about going to the parlor to have hair/make-up/nails done?(nails, yes. hair and make-up, no, and it was a good thing since otherwise i'd be too overdone for just a guest).

hair up or down?(up)

it was quite funny how i tried to put everything together the week leading up to the wedding. by wednesday, i was quite tense, so tense that i hardly had time to panic over the fact that i was going to address a room full of parents on "negative behaviors and how to eliminate them in your children". by friday, i couldn't sleep and i couldn't eat, save for a bowl of instant lucky me noodles that i ate simply because my tummy was too noisy it was impossible to sleep.

needless to say, wedding went by with no problem. jay arrived looking oh-so-kissable-and-huggable and i tried (my very best, mind you) to be poised and confident and to act as if i wear a strapless dress every single day of my life so there's absolutely nothing to worry about.

dreamboat

i never saw the need for the word "dreamboat" until i met my nego teacher* last night.

where had he been all my life? okay, that's too much. where had he been all my law life? i'm in fourth year, second semester and they decide to assign him to our section only NOW?

the world is sooooo unfair.

still. when asked why i went to law school, the usual hi-hello-mynameis follow-up during the first day of class, i so wanted to say "to meet someone like you" but he might have slapped me with a harrassment suit right there and then.

still. he's the man. walking back to the dorm, i had visions of me in a white gown and him in a barong at the other end of a chapel. i had visions of us having our first child, then our second, then us on a second honeymoon walking hand-in-hand somewhere cold with snow.

i was almost ready to burst into song, a totally jologs mr. dreamboy, when a classmate who was walking with me gave me a dose of reality.

singing, with my lack of talent would be totally overshare. and i have a boyfriend, a boyfriend i had told everyone i loved dearly. most of all, the person who missed call his phone half an hour before class was supposed to end which prompted him to dismiss our class WAY too early (i still was legally entitled to half an hour with you, you crazy teacher you! give me what i paid for!!!) was probably a girlfriend... a girlfriend who had a sixth sense and probably felt that a senior law student was currently developing a major crush on her hotter-than-hot boyfriend.

nego was a totally boring subject. nego didn't even seem remotely interesting. nego was one of those commercial law subjects with a good dose of civil law smacked into it that one would absolutely hate. nego was everything that i probably don't like in law school, until last night.**

now, nego rocks. no wonder that girl from 3B sat in on our class and plans to sit in for the rest of the semester. i would too if the teacher were him.

*standing, fourth from left. disclaimer: he looks hotter in real life

**incidentally, if you think about it, this was a good move by the college secretary's office... probably the ranking of UP law in commercial law was slumping and they needed something to "beef up" the curriculum.

redefend

it's what i've been praying NOT to happen but it did.

i'd have to redefend. shucks.

but it's not all bad. at least the idol said it was better than the last one they asked to redefend.

*sigh*

no rubbershoes

i found out saturday evening that the boyfriend had rescheduled his bangkok trip, and wonder of wonders, was going to be in manila on sunday.

i also found out saturday night that we had a badminton game with his friends.

whoa. me, in a recreational sport. right after i had thrown away my only decent pair of rubber shoes, a pair which i bought way back in second year college and only because the only PE left was running.

trust me to have more than more than enough pairs of black shoes: black with kitten heels, black with ebony trim and kitten heels, black mules, black with stiletto heels, black slingback pumps, and black loafers. trust me to have pink shoes and red shoes and camel shoes. trust me to have more than one pair of bowling shoes and a cool pair of roxy suede rubbershoes which match my car. i have more pairs than i actually care to wear.

but no decent pair of rubbershoes.

so i once more dipped into the savings account -- after all what are savings for? -- to buy the perfect pair of shoes. i had been thinking of getting a pair for the longest time, supposedly to kick-start my fitness regimen by running the academic oval , except that they keep getting shelved all the time. saturday evening found me with an iron-clad resolve to buy rubber shoes.

i did buy a pair. and yep, i liked them. they weren't pink climacools (funny how jen wanted them too!) but they were cool.

they were so cool i was running all over the badminton court last night while dripping in my own sweat. they were so cool i slid on them and landed on my ass.

show-off.

-oOo-

first there was friendster.

now it's pam's blog. apparently it contains a forbidden word and therefore i cannot access it using the office internet connection.

weird. delisyus' blog, with all its graphic description befitting an fhm issue, was never blocked but pam's was.

could it have been the inner b*tch?

-oOo-

if i didn't love the boyfriend as much as i do, i'd make a mockery of the thousand and one rules he's come up with in the month and a half we've been together.

yesterday it was about the length of the shorts i'm supposed to wear.

aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgh.

-oOo-

you're mad at me.

you're mad at me cause i didn't want to talk to you. you're mad cause i chose bomber man over conversations which, undoubtedly, would keep going back to your advances which, in spite of my numerous attempts, i cannot deftly avoid.

i've tried apologizing and explaining. i've tried telling you how things seemed from my end and how, at that time, i was more hurt than anything by what you did. you, on the other hand, kept insisting how things were different and not at all how i saw them.

it's like i'm at fault for having moved on first.

but see, there was nothing that was keeping me there to begin with. YOU let go. YOU wanted space and time and all that crap while i stood still and waited. it had to be on YOUR terms - your timing, your feelings, you getting over your ex and all your other issues.

you could have said something then.

except you choose to say something now. you and your stupid propositions.

you're too scared to be happy. when things were good, you didn't want it. you wanted to make things complicated by wrestling with all of your demons when you didn't have to.

i'm sorry. what i have now may not be perfect.

but he loves me. which is way more than what i can say about you.

it's the weekend and the boyfriend is missing

i don't really resent the fact that he lives in far off nueva ecija.

i don't even resent the fact that he's perpetually busy with his work and family-related stuff.

but yesterday i did resent the fact that i couldn't even get him to figure out this weekend's schedule. and next week's schedule for that matter.

i resented it so much that i devolved into my former bratty girlfriend persona and attempted to break up with him with a stupid text that read "parati na lang tayo away, hiwalay na tayo."

it was so stupid i immediately sent a retraction, which made it all the more stupid, cause well, i retracted.

we made up three or so hours later, with him -- again -- logically laying out before me why it was so immature of me to have reacted that way. one of these days, either he's going to give up on me or i'm going to go nuts with his logical nature. until then, we're happy together.

i wish i could post something witty, or interesting, or even something that'll remotely stir your heart and make you cry a bit.

i was thinking of making a list of 35 things you should be happy about now that you're 35, but i couldn't get past #1.

i planned on surprising you by being outside your doorstep at midnight with burgers and fries and what have you, but i fell asleep and woke up at three.

so come on, get out of bed, take a quick bath, hop into a cab, and tell the driver, manong ***** drive po, and allow me to treat you to breakfast.

maybe then i can say something witty, and interesting, and something that will tug at your heart. and i can give you the list of 35 things you ought to be happy about now that you're 35. and although i wasn't able to show up at your doorstep, you can show up in mine.

happy birthday, dude.

the resolution triumphs over the promise of a free dinner

congratulate me.

i was beyond bummed yesterday because of the locgov grade issue so i made a promise to myself that this coming semester, no shortcuts, no middle of the week gimmick, no impromptu dates just cause i was feeling bad over some tiny insignificant thing that will solve itself if i just leave it be.

but then a good friend SMSd.

dinner, he said. free dinner cause it's his birthday treat.

it was so tempting i stayed in the office playing inane games waiting for him to get done with his thing.

it was a good thing i got (1) tired and (2) tired of waiting and (3) bored with funster that i decided to go home.

go home, get ready for bed, and stay snug right under what has become a major addiction -- baguio faux fleece blankets.

i was in bed by 930, not to stir until 530 the following morning. 8 hours of glorious sleep.

i'm storing up on as much sleep as i can. i know that dean magi + carlotta + three other courses that may be equally tough + veevee & rey leaving = major second semester stress.

-oOo-

it's weird how lunchtimes are really productive for us.

over lunch, vanessa and i came up with the idea of a whole lot of projects.

project one was a christmas tree donation project. people who have more than one christmas tree or those who have decided to change their christmas decorations at home donate their old stuff to public schools so that the schools look more festive for the season.

project two was a pledge-your-schoolbag-to-a-public-school-kid project. at the start of the schoolyear, children from private schools sign a sheet of paper pledging their brand-new schoolbag to a child in the public school. this pledge includes not only the promise to donate the bag at the end of the year, but also the promise to take care of the bag and make sure that it is still usable by another child. thus, they don't only learn to share, but also to be better stewards of their belongings.

wow, huh? rosa, the community worker.

i even have visions of having a rice distribution thing going but then that's a whole lot of logistics, stuff which without vanessa, i would die doing.

how to ruin what would've been a perfectly good grade
well i have really low standards

i would've been fine with a three in locgov. it was, after all, dan-gat. the goal was to get an above 2 recitation grade and expect to fail in the finals to get through with a 3.0 final grade.

a three would've been dandy.
a three would've let me breathe and happily donate an entire box of locgov readings -- arranged according to the outline and properly numbered, of course -- to some hapless junior taking up locgov this semester.
a three would've had me texting people and telling them that, hey there, i got a three in locgov and all is well with the world.

that is until someone i haven't spoken to in a while decided to, no not text, but CALL and tell me, "hey rosa. do you know locgov grades are out?"

"yeah"

"well, row-saa (that's how he pronounces my name), i got a pretty high grade."

mumbles, "ok"

"and see," he continues, "my standing before the exam was 2.5 so i was totally expecting to scrape by with a three but i got a pretty high grade."

which sent me calling the secretary's office to find out what my grade was.

it wasn't a 3, thank god, nor was it anything below it.

it was a 2.75.

i wouldn't call that a high grade. but i guess i would've happy with that had i found out before the call.

except i got HIS call.

which makes a 2.75 stupid.

and pathetic.

and really, really sad.

so now i'm reduced to computing my equally pathetic average again. which in turn in giving me a big headache, among other things.

and i have dean magi yet AGAIN.

gawd. i doubt my average can take another beating. much less my ego.

i am such a pathetic law student. of course i can stroke my ego, pat myself on the back, and say to myself, "you were doing your thesis then," or "but you were also working full-time, plus doing school visits and tutorial chats" but i know that would by lying to myself.

i have bad time management. i put too much stock on my ability to work fast or read fast or even type fast. in the end, i'm not really fooling anyone. i'm fooling myself.

so maybe this time around i've really learned. shortcuts may get you there, but in the end, it still wasn't the road you should've travelled.

putting in a good word for jetti

i'm a big shell fan. i mean i never let the gas gauge go down beyond 1/4 simply because i do not want to get caught in a situation where i'd have to load up spike with something else. forget the fact that they claim petron is cleaner or that caltex is pretty much just like shell too. spike = shell.

still, when someone loads up your car with free gas unbeknownst to you, you just say thank you despite your fears that the new small gas stations which have been popping up like mushrooms (flying v, unioil, etc.) may not exactly be in the same bracket as the big 3 oil companies. it's like comparing a hotel with a drive-through motel. it just doesn't compare.

so last sunday, i dropped by the boyfriend's station to have the big dent on spike's bumper checked. he took the keys and told me that while i was waiting, maybe i could help out one of his employees with excel. ok, no problem. it was going to be a long wait anyway.

three and a half hours and five worksheets later, he told me that it was time to go and hear mass (isn't he a cutie for wanting to go to mass?). i knew he had spike cleaned - bodywash, underwash, and engine wash! - but the bigger surprise was when i got inside the car and turned the engine on.

full tank.

a full tank of gas.

a free full tank of gas.

i was very VERY thankful but there was that nagging voice inside me telling me that it was JETTI... hmmm...

except that the car has been running wonderfully since last sunday.

so there. let me put in a good word for jetti.

spike hearts jetti.

someone spoiled my good weekend by making a huge dent on spike's right front bumper. i was groggy from having fallen asleep while watching the matrix revolutions. jay and i were still planning on getting coffee but at my state, he gently suggested that it would be so much better if we both just went home.

apparently, the parking gods had something else planned for us. when we got to the car, the guards swarmed around us and pointed something that -- given the lack of adequate lighting and my very sleepy state -- wasn't very obvious.

spike had a huge dent on his bumper.

now, this was really ironic.

for one, i RARELY park rear first, except that he has been telling me how it shouldn't be a waterloo for me cause it's just really really easy to do. this was one of the few times i parked rear first.

second, we weren't really supposed to watch in town center, except that it was so damn hard to get tickets for saturday night's screening at any of the makati theaters so i just decided to watch in alabang.

third, it's usually jay who brings a car when we're together, except that since he picked me up from the house, he left his license with the guard over at the other gate. also, he had driven from nueva ecija just that morning, then around ongpin to run some errands, then through the saturday afternoon traffic just to get to my house so he asked if i could be the one to drive this time around.

fourth, when i parked, jay asked me to fix the car so that one, it wasn't sticking out, and two, i was nearer the parked car beside me than the empty space on my other side.

fifth, after we had dinner, i was thinking of moving the car to a different parking spot, one that would be nearer the theater right. but i quickly killed the idea cause it would just be a waste of good gas.

i'm just feeling really hateful about it. when i saw her, i was ready to grab a handful of her hair and shake her to bits. the parking lot was HUGE and there were so many parking slots available. if she didn't have what it takes to park a car properly, why did she even attempt to park her car? or, why did she even bring a car in the first place? she just had this huge goofy face, totally devoid of any -- what would be the proper word for it, remorse? -- over what she had done. she just kept saying sorry over and over and over but her sorry wouldn't fix the dent.

her sorry wouldn't bring back spike to his pristine condition.

her sorry can't give me a car to drive on the days when he'd be stuck in the casa.

her sorry can't bring back the time i'll be losing fixing this.

her sorry can't erase the worry lines the accident caused.

so she can shove her sorry down her nicotine-laced throat and she can use her sorry to cough up the money to fix my car.

-oOo-

i know i'm being an ass for thinking all of these nasty, evil thoughts, on a sunday at that, when other people who have lost more (like sons and husbands over crazy bullet spray) can be more forgiving.

the word "EB" sounds innocent enough, until i found out five minutes before my first EB that it actually stands for "eyeball". now, the word "eyeball" evokes memories of housemaids meeting up with their penpals from god knows where, and had i known earlier that EB stood for that, well, i may never have met pam, j, and jaemark at all.

but i didn't so i finally met three of my favorite bloggers in one go, and eventually, i met the now often-forwarded mark and crazy bundi and i became jen'sand chel's friend over at friendster. just the other day i also got to meet migs who knows quite a lot of people, including some i know (see, i don't even need friendster! we had our own little personal network going).

and tomorrow, november 8, 2003, saturday, i'll get to meet nic. yep, nic, the person i should've met in high school or somewhere in bf, but instead i met on-line through an old post where he saw it fit to tell me that the blog is still public and we ought to be very careful of what we say online.

as usual, i nearly didn't get to pick up the call -- the phone was on silent -- but luckily i did and this boy with a weird accent goes "moshi moshi" so who else could it be but oh-so-wonderful nic. he asks me if i was in front of a pc with internet connection (i was) then ordered me to go to check out his site.

which i did.

and it said he'll be here for the weekend.

i squealed (as loud as i can while still maintaining my "office poise").

so if he wakes up early enough, i owe him breakfast from goodah and if he doesn't, well then i owe him lunch somewhere in town.

-oOo-

vanessa's leaving.

what about lunch? what about our maxibon dates? what about super special siopao and v-cut and zip mango juice at 4 p.m.? what about me finding someone to go to mass with at 5:45 p.m. on sunday afternoon?

who's going to listen to me gripe/whine/cheer/cry/*insert emotion here*?

all i can say is "eek"

the powers that be at work have blocked off friendster from our network and so i've been basically cut-off from my recent addiction. it seems that everyone now has an account with friendster, or are being forced to have one, or pretending they don't have one but secretly they do and actually enjoy reading the testimonials and stuff they find there (potpot is that you?). friends, students, and people you hardly even talk to you have popped up like relatives after winning the lottery. they're all there. it's like one big reunion on line.

and i've been cut-off.

dang.

-oOo-

my craziest, zaniest, and probably most unusual tutee is back in the loop.

so why did i even begin to think second sem was going to be boring?

-oOo-

when you're willing to put up with a lot of rules, does it mean you've found the one?

when you're willing to give up your own little quirks to compromise, does it mean you're ready to be someone's partner?

when he's all you think about, especially when making decisions, does it mean you've matured insofar as love is concerned?

it's been a little more than a month. sometimes i think i've had more fights with him than i can put up with. sometimes i feel like cutting him off in the middle of a sentence just to tell him that he's been nothing but a meddling pompous prick and that i don't need him, thankyouverymuch.

but then that's what i've done with all the others. when things don't go my way, i quit. when he's not there for me, i quit. when he's always there for me, i quit. when i love him too much, i quit. when i don't love him as much as i ought to, i quit. it's a no-win situation.

rosa, the quitter.

so maybe now i ought to learn how to just stand still.

and i'm off!

another weekend, another trip.

leaving at 4:30 p.m. later. i just have to make the trip to DepEd Mandaluyong again to pick something up, wrap up thesis revisions, and make sure announcements are sent off to students regarding their practicum interviews. after that, i'm going to have another rocking weekend, this time a road trip, that'll hopefully end in nueva ecija on halloween where i'll be helping a friend out by judging a costume party and where i'll be doing my good apo duties by staying in hot sticky cemetery for an entire day.

yay!yay!yay!

my weekend rocked

so what if i had a million things pending? i wasn't about to let that get in the way of a really rocking weekend.

my weekend started friday evening and ended early monday evening. i ate huge amounts of food, walked a whole lot, tried -- and failed miserably - to shop within my means, watched a cabaret show, resisted my aunt's prodding to watch banana/pingpong/open-the-bottle-with-your-p***y show, got a 2-hour full-body massage, got a one-hour body massage, and got lost in the middle of a market with absolutely zero idea on how to get back to where we lived.

still.

it was fun.

it was exhilirating.

and ... it was also then that i realized how much jay cares. half an hour before i was supposed to start my rocking weekend, he surprised me by showing up at my office just to say goodbye and take care.

you don't get that very often. but i do.

i've got a thousand and one things on my checklist, most of which i have to check off before the end of the month. there's the papers i have to check, my mom's checking account to balance, letters to send to DepEd mandaluyong and three public schools, all of which are characteristically uncooperative. there's also the thesis to polish like crazy for submission to the panel, and the clothes and other stuff i have to pack so that i can hold a garage sale in my brother's office in laguna before the sembreak ends. the books and stuff from last semester are still in the backseat of spike which i would definitely have to clear before i start dumping new stuff i'll be accumulating for the second semester.

and i thought that the end of october means sembreak.

wrong. it means catching up.

which brings me again to another list. i have to catch up with people from work re: our second semester practicum sites. i have to catch up with work friends who have almost forgotten about me since i always ditch their gimmicks (which i may end up doing yet again on our planned galera trip). i have to catch up with my best friend WHO IS PREGNANT, yay!yay!yay! i have to catch up with two super cool college friends who i lost touch with after shifting but found through the most serindipitous of circumstances.

and in between all this catching up, guess who i haven't seen for 8 days.

well it ain't over till it's over

one day, the powers that be were having a little tete-a-tete and decided to ponder on the faith of rosa.

"did you know that she's already in fourth year law?" hissed one evil power that be to another.

"uh-huh. and she told me the other day that she recently met 'the one'" said the second.

the third shook its head, "tragic, isn't it? she's supposed to be 26, with a single ovary, and her parents are away figuring out the future of their marriage. so why then is she receiving all this good luck?"

the first two nodded their heads in agreement. the turn of events in rosa's life was definitely not the way they planned things for her.

so they first decided to kill her slowly with three weeks of pure purgatory unbliss. all five teachers in law school decided to give exams. one even decided to throw two moot court presentations in the melee. another one decided that the important things he stressed in class weren't that important so he included inane question on the closure of roads by local governments.

rosa, stressed as she was, tried to put up a brave front. she continued to blog, her only release, and go out with "the one", justifying it as a sanity break, and tried to plod her way to the 18th which was the original end of the suffering.

the three evil powers that be were enraged even further! how can this girl withstand all that torture? so they decided to throw in thesis deadlines for good measure. and if that wasn't enough, they were going to put in a major conflict between two thesis panelists, one her adviser and the other one the assistant dean, in the hope that the tug-of-war would eventually tear her apart.

will she survive? can she survive?

to be continued...

surprise!

not the good kind this time around.

imagine yourself after ...
one morning meeting;
two meetings you forgot about;
breaking out into cold sweat after your chest started feeling like a heavy weight was placed on top of it and you can't breathe, and how it felt like this the entire afternoon;
conducting the direct examination in moot court in a blazer with lining and a malfunctioning aircon.

definitely, you wouldn't be at your prettiest. i'd even venture as far as saying you're almost ugly.

so even if you've been dying to meet a family member, be introduced to one, and be recognized as "the girlfriend", under the circumstances, you'd just cringe. or you could die.

i died.

figuratively, of course. although i'd rather think i'm just a ghost of the person i was yesterday.

he told me to meet him after my moot court. i thought that shouldn't be a problem until i saw that he was with his GORGEOUS sister who was in this GORGEOUS gown and looked AMAZING in full make-up and in spite of the fact that the wedding was at three and it was 1030 already, still looked AS FRESH AS A DAISY.

i felt like a maid compared to her. i felt smelly and shiny and short and effing ugly. it didn't help that i was in all black, which happened to be the color the waitresses at the pen wear. i was pangit pangit pangit.

so i just sat there, smiling like a cheshire cat all the time plotting in mind exactly how to give jay a piece of my mind about the evil little surprise he had of introducing me to his sister without warning.

then the bigger surprise came. his aunt passed away, barely a week after his cousin, the son of the same aunt, died of a heart attack at 42.

surprise.

i know i promised to stay in one lane but ...

la salle guy -- incidentally he has a name, jay -- is absolutely fearful of the way i drive. he's under the mistaken impression that one day i will kill a whole lot of people -- if i don't kill myself first -- with the way i weave from one lane to the other while driving. he has called me countless of names. so while i am absolutely positive that he loves me, i am also sure that this is one thing about me that he hates.

being the amazing driver he is, he's taken up the challenge to help me become a better driver. lesson one, according to him, is to learn how to stick to one lane and be patient. a good driver is never impatient, so unless i master that trick, i'll never be a good driver.

so for the last couple of days i've been trying to stick to one lane. it's quite easy sometimes especially since traffic has progressively gone from bad to worse. i stick to one lane and concentrate on learning the words to the different songs on my favorite cd.

but last night, *sigh* the traffic gods set a huge temptation before me. after honking goodbye to jay who turned at bohol avenue, i went down timog and saw, after i made the right turn to edsa a wide expanse of beautiful, almost car free, road.

seatbelt, check.
side mirrors properly positioned, check.
rear view mirror properly positioned, check.
seat comfortably positioned, check.
brakes, check.
jay (who called right after he saw me go straight down timog instead of turning at bohol and said goodbye already and reminded me to be careful going home and to text him the moment i've parked the car inside the garage) nowhere in sight, check check check.

so off i went. edsa, at its widest, is around four lanes (not including the yellow lanes). there were cars here and there but i happily weaved from one lane to the other, braking only when necessary. spike isn't the fastest thing on the planet with his 1.3 engine, what more if he's loaded with boxes of shoes, readings, and clothes i'm taking home for the sembreak, but i milked him for all he's worth. edsa, at 120 kph, is the closest thing to perfect bliss.

then my phone rang.

j: one lane lang pala, ha.
r: *gulp* oo. teka, nasaan ka?
j: kala ko ba mabait ka na magmaneho
r: *double gulp* maluwag edsa, eh. sayang naman. nasaan ka.
j: basta. in-overtakean mo lang naman ako sa cubao.

so for a minute or so, it was him chiding me for my lane switching and me trying to make excuses. it was also the minute or so that i was stuck behind a painfully slow truck but couldn't switch lanes, well, because i'd promised him i wouldn't switch lanes.

after a while he honked, passed by my right side, and went up ortigas flyover and i went my merry way down edsa again. i checked all mirrors, making sure he wouldn't pop up behind me again, and assured that he's not going to surprise me a second time, happily went back to lane switching all the way home.

and i feel like a sunsilk commercial

familiar with the sunsilk tagline "paganda ng paganda"?

that's how my life feels like right now. it's hell week, yes. it's been quite hellish in terms of tasks to accomplish the last three weeks, and it's not going to end until the 20th but who cares. my life is a sunsilk commercial.

first there was la salle guy on october 4.

then the thesis sort of wrote itself. it got partial approvals from the three people who read it, subject to some additions (the perspective was too western). it will be defended on november 17. the boss promised me that she'd stick by me through the entire defense, especially since there are some iffy things in the paper which may not fly (like the contextual analysis thingee which i don't really understand but she asked me to use). that's real good. she's usually "safe" when it comes to thesis defenses, opting to allow her mentee to sink or float. this promise is most definitely good.

third, i teased my aunt into taking me to a vacation. she agreed and if i fix everything to her liking, i'll get to see nic real soon, in the flesh. (provided he doesn't fly off somewhere!)

so, life is a sunsilk commercial. it's all good.

-oOo-

belated happy birthday to my favorite blogger of all time.

-oOo-

guess who showed up last night.

la salle guy.

no warning, no hey-i'll-be-driving-to-manila-so-you-better-make-time-for-me-cause-it's-the-only-free-time-i've-got-so-you've-got-to-deal-with-it-and-i-don't-care-if-you-have-a-really-tough-locgov-exam-the-following-day message to make sure i'll be free, no nothing.

just him and a text telling me that contrary to the message i had sent him a while ago that he was a hundred kilometers away, he was actually a few meters away from where i was.

i replied, really?

he said, yup, your car is parked beside a pick-up.

i swooned a little, but not after i hastily threw on clothes and looked into the mirror to make sure that my face wasn't shiny or that my hair was sticking out in the weirdest directions.

as with all happy bubbles, someone has to just burst them so wilma, my roommate, said, "di naman ikaw pinuntahan niya, eh. pumunta siya dito para dun sa patay. nagkataon lang na napadaan siya." for her, surprise visits which don't have you as the primary object of the visit (for example her boyfriend, who lives in san pablo, goes to manila to purchase stuff for his store so whenever he drops by on fridays she's not happy at all cause she feels she was just a side trip) don't count. for her, a side trip is a side trip. extra ka lang.

i don't care. la salle guy was there, in the flesh, last night and that's all that matters to me.

of course, there's locgov exam tonight. that also matters. i better hustle now.

resu

resu is one of the terms some people back in high school coined up, together with batibot, jugjug, hunger, and killer*

read resu in reverse and you'd realize it's one of the most awful things you can say about a person.

you can accuse a man of cheating on his girl and he wouldn't mind. you can tell him that you don't really enjoy his company and would rather watch someone milk a goat with his mouth in fear factor and he wouldn't mind. in fact, in some twisted sense, he'd find you hard to get and begin declaring undying love for you. but accuse a man of being a user, well, that's a different story altogether.

a post i wrote yesterday had allusions to people i know in real life and one of them happened to read the blog yesterday. he sent an SMS, miffed at what i wrote about him. although he had told me countless times in the past how writing is made better by one's unabashed honesty in writing, it doesn't count when your confession is about how you feel about someone who is your friend.

i've had similar foot in mouth situations before and i've apologized (and paid dearly) for what i've written in this blog more than once. nic told me that sometimes, that's the difficulty with blogging. people read it, and if they don't see it the way you do, or fail to understand what you were trying to say, no amount of explanation can ever fix things.

so basically, i've called him a user and he resented it. i guess i would too. i apologized, but as with being the offender, you are stuck with waiting as the other person decides whether or not to forgive you.

*killer, for atchay killer, was what they called this guy in our batch. funny how i've always known him as killer and how i found out only during graduation that his real name was david.

-oOo-

on a lighter note, the traffic in ortigas these days is just horrible. i don't know why some people believe that closing off roads and making one way streets out of other roads will facilitate traffic. it doesn't.

i long for the day that bayani fernando actually sits behind the wheel of a car during rush hour and see for himself how his rerouting scheme has made things more difficult both for motorists and pedestrians.

-oOo-

on a cheery note --

i MAY finally get to defend my thesis on the 21st.

wow. finally finally finally. an MA in Liberal Education. (don't ask me what it means. somewhere along the way, i forgot!)

keep your fingers crossed!

one big fight

no, this is not an ateneo basketball post (i rooted for la salle, for obvious reasons).

it's about how we fought in the middle of what should have been the honeymoon stage of the relationship. it's about the raised eyebrows of people who knew about the fight and were asking where a relationship with a fight on day 7 is headed for.

it's about how i finally figured out what they mean when they say you're in a relationship with an adult.

see, most of what i know about relationships i learned from sweet dreams. and if you were a teen in the 80's and early 90's, you probably know what i'm talking about. the storyline is fairly basic, girl meets boy, boy meets girl, they like each other, they have one big fight where they realize they LOVE each other, then they live happily ever after. so, i went through most of high school, and college, and even work relationships that way.

believe me, it's all crap. real life never works out that way. real life is falling in major like with checklist guy and realizing that you aren't, and will never be, his checklist girl. real life is falling for someone who most probably likes the fact that you drive a cool car and willing to share it more than he likes you. real life is having someone really in love with you but never really finding it in you to stick it out with him and make a relationship out of it.

and real life is learning to sit down, listen, and realize that you've got it all wrong. i've always thought that a mature relationship had to do with the intensity of one's feelings. yesterday, as i was sitting with him in front steps of my house, i learned that maturity has nothing to do with flowers on your desk or weekly gifts. it has nothing to do with the passion with which you entered the relationship. and it has absolutely no positive correlation with the number of text messages bearing "i love you".

i learned the hard way. i learned it through a fight that may have easily led to goodbye's had a good friend not been there with me to pull the cellphone out of my hand before i sent the first blow that might have caused a still-fragile relationship to fall down.

so we had our one big fight. but instead of simply running back to each other's arms like the way they do it in books, he came to my house (yummy mushroomburgers and a fresh buko pie in hand), talked to me about what went wrong, and assured me that this may not be the smoothest ride life has to offer, but we are going to give it our best shot.

-oOo-

admit it. wendell ramos is hot.

wendell ramos in bubble gang was hot. wendell ramos in those bench posters was hot. wendell ramos, no matter where you find him, is hot.

but -- wendell ramos in person is HOTTER.

secret lang 'to, ha. hulaan mo kung sino ang may autograph niya? ako ako ako! mabait yung waiter sa italliani's at nautusan naming humingi ng autograph para sa akin.

two down, three to go

i've been counting down like crazy for final exams, thesis, and other requirements to be done and over with. a couple of hours ago, tax finals squeezed my brain out of what little life was left in it. hopefully i get some real sleep tonight (not half hunched in the corner of my bed hoping that the awkward position will force me to wake up in the middle of the night), after having dinner with a good friend.

still, no la salle guy tonight though. he's out in tagaytay. WITHOUT me. exams and thesis on my part, and harvest season on his, makes the schedule just a wee bit awry these days.

can we still be friends?

had lunch with a new-old* friend today. for a grand total of a month or so, new-old friend rocked my world. forget law school and work and deadlines. if i had a spare minute, i'd spend it with him.

being the girl, i poured heart and soul and what-have-you. forget what i learned about being pakipot, it was not the time nor the place to emulate maria clara. i was wrong (obviously) and scared him till he ran for cover and thought i was weird and all that. can i just say that it was like a jennifer paige song:

Girl meets boys, girl goes crazy
Boy backs away, she gets her heart broken
No words are spoken
Boy came backs and acts
As if everything is cool
Soon she's got him back on a pedestal
She only sees what she wants to see
Love is blind, love is so misleading

anyway, that's done and over with now. found la salle guy, moved on, am ecstatic like crazy, and i finally saw him again after a while.

can we be friends? can i share with this person intimate details of my life? wouldn't it be weird if i told him how la salle guy invited me a while ago for an event TWO MONTHS AWAY?

it definitely feels awkward. it actually feels weird.

*translation: new, because we've known each other for less than half a year, and old, because i think we're not at that stage where we'd hardly see each other anymore except if and when we bump accidentally into each other or we make a huge effort to make time to have coffee or something like that

-oOo-

la salle guy texted asking me what i'd be doing on december 4.

wow. that's almost two months away. i don't even know what i'll be doing next month.

turns out he wants me to go with him to a christmas party in fontana that day.

that's a biggie. two months. two whole months away. he can see me and him together two months from now.

how adorable is that?

it's been 3 days and 15 hours.

it happened in the middle of finalizing my thesis final draft, preparing for moot court, and law school exams.

it took place at 2 in the morning at coutry waffle after a long meeting with law school classmates and an even longer day at the office.

i didn't think, i didn't process, i didn't even analyze. it just felt right.

it came at the right moment. it came as a surprise, but a welcome one. it was too soon, but time does not guarantee anything.

when i went home and went to bed, i sent short little happy SMS to two people who'd be happy with the news -- my best friend and a great guy who just passed the GMAT with a whopping score of 700 who goes by the name of nic.

with other relationships you feel the need to broadcast it to the world. you feel you need their validation over the leap you have just taken. you want them to be happy for you so you create so much noise about it. you create an event out of it, hoping that the event will be enough to sustain you through the rough spots.

with this one, i felt happy but with a wave of calmness that i have never felt before. i felt i've come home.

read

shows you that there's hope for all of us just yet.

it's all about him
so if this will bother you stop reading right now

so can i gush?

can i tell you how immediately after lunch sunday he rushed over to manila (sunday afternoon traffic at the north luzon expressway and all) so that we could spend part of the weekend together? and how he didn't complain when the meeting place changed from rockwell to UP to starbucks madison all within three hours?

can i tell you how he calls -- right before class at six, or first thing in the morning, or right before going to bed -- just so that we can hear each other's voices? last night, while i was driving home from UP to BF, he called right after his meeting and when he found out that we were both driving, he kept me on the phone until i got home and he knew i was safe already.

and can i tell you that sometimes, no most of the time, he rocks my world?

it's too soon, i know (it's been three weeks only) and maybe, as before, i'm jumping without looking again. maybe i should play it cool and pretend to not care. maybe instead of thinking about how nice it is when we're together i should concentrate on upcoming exams and deadlines. maybe i should heed my brother's warning about how men will go all out to win you and stop right in the middle of it to see if you're hooked, and when you are, like a drug dealer, make life a wee bit difficult for you by withholding the things that you have so gotten used to.

but when you've found someone you can laugh with at eleven in the evening when it's brownout at home and you're sitting outside your house while he's a hundred kilometers away from you, you don't really think anymore. you enjoy the moment. when you've found someone who inspires you to fix both your life (especially when you haven't planned beyond the bar exam in september 2005) and your room (he's so OC you felt ashamed when he fixed the junk you've had in the backseat of your car for the longest time), you tell yourself that to hell with everything, this is a person i wouldn't mind spending the rest of my life with. of course, there's a bit of a problem though: he still has to feel the same way.

so, if i gush, forgive me. forgive me if we're chatting and all i can mention is his name and what he's done in the last 24 hours and how he's "the one".

and if i walk around with my head in the clouds and with a goofy grin in my face, don't try to snap your fingers in front of my eyes just to bring me back down to earth. cloud 9 is nice, and although i'd love to share a small spot for you, i'm reserving the space beside me for him for the meantime.

my name is rosa, and i'm addicted to love.

say hi.

-oOo-

what is it with me a la salle people?
same school, different boy

never mind that la salle lost in the big game. at least la salle has this amazing dude for an alumna.

go on. read his blog.

what doesn't kill you will only make you stronger

right now, i am so believing that line.

ask me again after october 18. that is, if i'm still alive by then.

-oOo-

i didn't know her yet then but i hated her.

i hated how i knew she was smarter than me.

i hated how i knew she was more competent than me.

i hated her cause i knew she hated me.

if looks could kill, it would've simply been a matter of who sent the first evil glance.

but things change and time passes and people learn to be friends.

and we learned to be friends. we found out that we both liked v-cut and other potato chips, super special siopao and mango juice, and maxibon. we realized that we both had rebellious streaks and that somehow, our working styles compliment each other.

and i learned that in the middle of the night when you've just broken up with your long time boyfriend, you don't need another simpering girlfriend who'd probably give you lines that may make you feel better but don't really work. you realize you need a vanessa who will tell you to pick yourself up, concentrate on working on the thesis, and warn you of the possible implications of you breaking down just right about now.

it's her birthday today. i rarely make good friends of girls but this girl is one of the bestest girl friends one can ask for.

happy birthday, potpot!

last night, while waiting for evidence teacher to arrive, a classmate and i wrote our hell week schedule on the board which created ripples of murmurs around the room.

one even said we must be suicidal for even coming up with that schedule.

we most probably are, cause schedule looked like this:

october 4 (w) 7-10 p.m. evidence moot court (civil case 1)
october 6 (m) 6-9 p.m. evidence moot court (civil case 2)
october 9 (th) 6-9 p.m. evidence finals
october 11 (sat) 9-12 noon tax finals
october 13 (m) 6-9 p.m. puboff finals
october 14 (t) 6-8 p.m. medjur finals
october 15 (w) 6-9 p.m. locgov finals
october 16 (th) due: tax paper
october 17 (f) 6-9 p.m. evidence moot court (criminal case 1)
october 18 (s) 9-12 noon evidence moot court (criminal case 2)

i don't know how i'll manage. because on top of these things, i have to write, defend, revise, and finalize my masteral thesis. yup, the thesis that's been the burden i've been trying to get over with the last two years.

who knows? maybe after two weeks, i'll be svelte like aubrey miles. and maybe i can finally wear a two-piece suit.

right?

right.

-oOo-

what's depressing about the evil schedule though is that i've been looking forward to watching the sergio mendez concert ever since vanessa told me about it. tone deaf as i am, i've been imagining myself singing (warbling?) to his songs while in the middle of a small crowd who appreciates his songs as much as i do.

now, while sergio mendez fans get to see balding but great singer onstage, i'll be sitting in a dress and blazer racking my brain for the proper objection to raise while steeling myself for my turn.

-oOo-

if that's not bad enough, i don't know how i'll manage to see la salle guy too.

*sigh*

i think that's the biggest tragedy of them all.

quit playing games

so i've read the rules.

and i've been advised on how to go about the "cat and mouse game" -- how to let him chase and how to allow yourself be chased.

i've been told to ignore the guy, to avoid replying to messages, to be unavailable. i've been taught how to be coy and witty and to pretend that i'm not interested.

but i can't.

which makes it really weird that la salle guy thinks i'm playing games with him.

caught singing

one thing a person who drives a car without tint ought to learn early on is that singing on the top of your voice inside your car won't make you look half as good as those chicks in the mitsubishi lancer commercial.

hell, you don't even look good at all.

you just look like you're singing at the top of your voice.

it just gets worse when people see you, your students no less. and they text you to tell you they saw you. and instead of saying, "don't worry, ms. rosa, you looked cute naman, eh." they tell you "apat lang kami sa car, ms. rosa."

-oOo-

the last couple of days have been full of little but nice surprises. saturday, it came in the form of really early dismissal in tax class which left me with enough time to do the parlor bonding thing with a classmate from law. wednesday it came in the form of flowers from a dear friend who, upon hearing about a nasty thing that happened to me tuesday night, wanted to cheer me up with three pink gerberas.

and yesterday, la salle guy decided to drive the hundred kilometers or so from nueva ecija to surprise me well he also had other stuff to do like check up on his office here and stuff but it's not really exciting to read that, right?.

yep, i had date number 6. we had cake (where i saw my ultra-favorite crimlaw teacher having coffee and cake too) and coffee (where i mistakenly threw my cup into the umbrella bin!) and watched a movie and had dinner....

*sigh*

if you had a mom willing to pay for a digital camera that wasn't too expensive (somewhere around the $300 range), what would you ask her to get you?

the men that nobody wanted

when rosa was young and unjaded with life, she made a little list of things she wanted in a mate. he had to be tall and smart and interesting. he should have good genes (to have better children with) and come from a close-knit family. he should be able to engage in witty banter and someone who can sustain long and meaningful conversations deep into to night.

and he should not be over thirty. rosa figured that men over thirty, unless they went to med school, law school, or just lost a long-time girlfriend who either passed away, migrated, or turned into the ultimate b*tch overnight, are the proverbial crumbs, the dregs at the bottom of the coffee pot. they've been tried, tested, and discarded. other women didn't want them, so why should you?

so rosa had a great time dating men her age. some bloomed into wonderful meaningful relationships, some didn't, but it was all good. she also dated men older than her (but not older than thirty) and even when those didn't pan out, at least she came out a wiser and more gracious person than before.

one day, rosa was thrown by destiny to be roommates with a girl whose belief in life was that women over 25 who happen to be single are big-time losers. gasp, rosa thought, that would be me. rosa just ended a tumultuous two-year relationship and was feeling pretty much hateful of the world. she was tired of dating, tired of falling in love, tired pretty much of anything that involved men, but she didn't want to end up alone and single.

although rosa refused (adamantly, really) to subscribe to her roommate's philosophy, she began to doubt her marketability. yup, she wasn't getting any younger, and men her age, or older but under the 30-year-old cut-off, were either in relationships or weren't really looking. oh she had a totally dedicated and perfectly lovable guy chasing after her but she didn't really want him, much like in the same way you don't like eating the ulam at home... you don't like it cause, well, it's just there all the time.

so she went against the great age barrier and started dating men who were *gasp* older than 30.

the first one was really cool. he was a man of the world, had travelled extensively, and fit the checklist to a T. he was the one you could have long conversations into the night with (actually well into the morning, until you had to go to work and he could finally go to sleep) and actually go with you to a fun impromptu trip. but then he had other people on his rotation list and when rosa got rotated out, rosa tried to bow gracefully out of that and thought, well, at least i learned a lot from that guy.

the second one, introduced to her by a friend, was even cooler. although he was almost 9 years older than her, rosa could've sworn she found a soulmate. they enjoyed the same music, they enjoyed the same food, they enjoyed watching movies together (even if rosa was not a movie person to begin with), and they enjoyed each other's company. for a while there, it was all good, much like a bag of really sweet lanzones, but towards the end she bit into a sour one and things went into a screeching halt. so much with THAT older guy.

the third, and please hopefully the last one, was the guy who was good on paper. good family, established, educated, and seemed every bit the gentleman. the height difference was staggering, even in 3 1/2 inch heels, but as long as both of you remain seated, no one really notices that he's almost a foot taller. it was all good until rosa realized that one day all he wanted was to have fun (at 32? sheesh.) and more fun, and even if he did bowl her over with five dates in a row, she wasn't about to just have fun when fun involes the topic of a sugarfree song. no no no no no.

cosmo was right. mark was right. men that age have crossed the great barrier. they're over thirty, and single. they have resisted feminine wiles and devious women tricks to hook them. they can finally afford the luxury car. they can take out five women at a time and not be worried about their budget anymore. they're on to women, and for the first time in their life, they finally understand women. they're also a becoming a minority and the dating pool, as they get older, gets bigger and better.

so maybe rosa was wrong. they weren't the men nobody wanted.

they were the men everybody wanted.

and so the tables have been turned.