happy birthday, spike

women my age, for lack of a child to support, take on replacements. in the US,for example, it's pretty common for single women to have cats. in the philippines, it's more common to "adopt" nephews and nieces.

i bought myself a car. not that i could really afford it then, and not that i can afford it now still, but i bought a 2003 suzuki jimny.

i named him spike, and i brought him everywhere i could drive him to.

it's been a year. he has cost me more money than i care to shell out really, but much like a child that yield zero return on investment, i love him to bits. he has outlasted more boyfriends, psuedo-boyfriends, dates, and crushes than i care to remember.

today, he turns a year old.

happy birthday spike!

much has been said about being a teacher. some say you do the world a whole lot of good. it's a vocation, they say, and they make you into a modern-day hero. you (sometimes) get summers off, not to mention semestral breaks and christmas breaks. if you teach in the right school and the right grade level, you come home on christmas with boxes of gifts, some amazing, some you'd rather do without, but gifts nonetheless.

what they didn't tell you would be the laughs you'd get out of examinations. wait, not really giving examinations, but the answers students give you during examinations.

for the longest time, i've never had to read anything THAT amusing in an examination. i mean, if you had a cousin answer "tik-ti-laok" to one question in a social studies quiz in reply to the question, "what do you call the town crier who signals the start of the prayer hour in muslim communities", it'll be pretty hard to top that, right? more often than not, i just get really, really exasperated marking one wrong answer after another.

but then the recent exam i gave my students brought me something totally blog worthy:

Question: Wendell and marion were eating at Manong's, a canteen in front of La Consolacion sports Academy when Yok-yok and Inggo, members of the rival fraternity began a fistfight. Wel Padilla, a teacher at La Consolacion Sports Academy, spied the fight and immediately reported the incident to the school prefect ...

Answer: ... Wela Padilla's spying was definitely wrong. She is not being a good teaher and example to her co-faculty and students.

the student barely passed the exam with a 3.0

way back in high school when stuff from tickles was still a big thing, i had stationery that sported the tagline "men are like tissues: soft, strong, and disposable." to a certain extent they are, given that immediately after my ovary operation in november 2002, i began the nasty habit of dating roughly around one guy per semester: 2nd sem 2002-2003 - the martian; summer 2003 - the guy who i though was checklist guy; 1st sem 2003-2004 - guy who taught me how to back into a parking space; 2nd sem 2003-2004 - bluebeard a.k.a. the gf-beating-piece-of-sh*t-who-is-actually-universal-pangit.

in spite of the dating spree and seeming inability to commit, i was actually engaged in what could be euphimistically called "serial monogamy". for few months at a time, before i got tired of the guy or the guy got pissed with me, i was committed (except for this one time). i sprouted sweet sappy stuff that'll make me cringe if i had to read it today. i even enrolled in a gym to please someone.

for someone who's actually friends with a man who admit to cheating, lying, and bedding other women while on the brink of proposing to his long-time girlfriend, you'd think i'd be scared of entering yet another relationship. you'd think i'd lock up, stay at home and watch hair on my armpits and legs grow to undesirable (and therefore undateable) lengths, and concentrate on earning that law degree. but no, no way. at the end of every relationship, or what seemed like it, i'd cry a little, drive like a maniac for about a week, then begin the arduous process of falling in love again.

i do it not because i'm a masochist. not because i'm a sucker either. i, and a whole lot of other women i bet, do it because they want simple things. they want a first and last call of the day. they want a cellphone inbox full of sweet nothings. they want flowers on valentine's day and someone special to buy gifts for on christmas day. they want men who wouldn't mind if they sort of pop out of their jeans because of having indulged in too many fries, burgers, and softdrinks over the summer break.

so, true to form, i found a little summer lovin' ...

i just hope this one stays in for the long haul.

my lifetime addiction to syzgy

i had just turned 21 when i discovered syzgy. now, if you weren't a alas-singco-y-medya fan way back in the '90s, you wouldn't really know what i was talking about, or even if you were, you had to be awake at around 6:45 to be able to relate.

you see, syzgy is the horoscope section, hosted by this rubenesque lady with a thick braid who goes by the name zenaida seva (i think i spelled it correctly...but then again me and spelling have had this thing for the last couple of years). i never really took it seriously but there was no reason on earth that anyone could make me leave the house before i got my horoscope for the day. my mom used to laugh at me because of this addiction but then a little fun never hurt anyone and so she let me be.

after i went to law school and television at 6:00 in the morning became an unheard of thing especially when one stays in a UP dormitory, syzgy became something akin to your tenth pair of black pumps. one day, you just forget all about it until you do a major general cleaning and spy them peeking from underneath a chair in the bodega.

similarly, one day i found myself with the television on, at 6:45 in the morning, preparing to go to work, when who else but my favorite horoscope queen pops up on the television. the show may not be ASYM anymore, julius and tintin left the show, got married, and came back, and wish ko lang lady switched channels, but by golly, zenaida seva looks exactly the same way she did 6 years ago.

i have gained more weight than i care to have, found and lost loves that i never really needed to begin with, and am in the last year of law school. i've learned to drive, rearranged the furniture at home countless of times, and reduced my savings account to a pathetic amount just to make car and insurance payments. i've grown wiser over the years. and what do you know, my favorite horoscope lady is still around dishing advice, telling me that pink is the color of the day and six is my lucky number.

i promise not to take it against you

i know that even after that amazing game 5 shot, some of you are still unbelievers. i know that even with game 1 of the western conference finals under our belts, some of you will continue making kobe jokes.

it's okay. we understand. we laker fans are used to people being envious of our team's success.

but, if like the pilot, you realize at this point in the season that the lakers do rule, don't worry.

i won't take it against you. see you in game two.

update! so we lost game two. we had to make the timberwolves feel a little better about themselves.

getting back into the habit of posting is difficult. i used to be able to churn out stuff for this blog, ranging from god-i-hate-my-job posts to i-am-so-in-love-with-this-guy until it becomes i-fell-in-love-with-a-loser-f*ck-that.

now i can't seem to write anything.

nothing.

the lakers won, game 5 being absolutely amazing in terms of that four-tenths of a second to go shot but i can't say anything about that except, I TOLD YOU SO!

the pilot and i are doing great but i don't want to write anything about that either, lest i go through this blog five months in the future and hit my head against the wall cause i sounded like a sappy teenager.

then again, i could be reading this blog five months later with no written memories of my love affair. dang. damned if you do, damned if you don't.

now, i've just used up 17 minutes of my life. i haven't written anything of consequence, nothing even remotely interesting.

but, at least i posted. that's way more than what the madponies have done.

watching troy and barely enjoying it helped me finally relate to the people who read tolkien, watched lotr, and proclaimed to the world that the movie version sucked.

i waited for that movie. i watched the online trailers over and over again. everytime i'd watch a movie with the pilot, i'd tug his arm and proclaim, "hey, we're watching that movie, ha?"

come may 12 (or was it 13?) we watched it. i fell asleep.

it was a visual treat. the thousand ships, the trojan horse, troy and its walls, the fights.

it was like a christmas gift or a birthday gift. may brad pitt na, may orlando bloom pa!

but iliad the epic and troy the movie were two different things. in fairness, they did say the movie was just "inspired".

still.

patroclos and achilles? best friends, not cousins.
achilles withdrawing from the war? it was because of a girl really. agamemnon took his prize, he got pissed, he didn't want to fight. period. nothing noble about that. think of it as your boss taking your favorite g.r.o. from pegasus.
achilles dying a noble death to look for his g.r.o.? bullsh*t.
and everything at the beginning and everything at the end? nothing in the iliad about that.

so, it was like whereas i enjoyed all those gorgeous elves marching into rohan while the rest of the tolkien-reading people were thinking "where the f*ck did all of these beauties come from?" i had the same sinking, bewildered, and lost feeling while watching troy.

read the epic. better yet, read the fitzgerald version.

you'd enjoy it much much better, promise.

bo-ring, v. boring vacation

i'll admit it. i am an infinitely boring person.

due to the growing paunch in my midsection due to non-stop eating and sleeping, i have no desire to go to the beach. due to financial difficulties brought about by car insurance, car registration, and car payments, i have withdrawn myself from the parlor, the mall, and other equally interesting places. and due to the fact that i live at my parents house where electricity, cable, and the phone are still free commodities to be partaken of by everyone, i've been stuck at home.

at first, staying at home was quite interesting. i can roll out of bed at any given time. i can wake up to the pilot's first-thing-in-the-morning call and fall back asleep. i can watch as much fear factor as my stomach can take. i completed a series they did on extra challenge. i actually watch the news from start to end. i don't have to wait for sunday for my weekly dose of csi. i actually know who's on american idol. and i actually have a favorite star struck kids contender.

and since the summer started off with a new relationship, there were lots of things to do too at the beginning. there were movies to watch, restaurants
to go to, dates to dress up for, and even sitting together watching bad television was something to look forward to.

but then, the heat gets to you.

or you both run out of money.

or the novelty of watching jasmine trias' flower wears off.

whatever.

summer begins to get boring.

yesterday it got so boring that i picked not one but two fights in one day. the second one involved me being very pissed over the cable dying on me,
the phone line being used by my brother, and having absolutely nothing to do.

but the summer gods have a way of being nice. a good friend with a car who was equally bored + patching things up with the pilot + bringing your two
favorite guys together in one place + chicken sisig which had more green and red pepper than chicken - bad restaurant service + them bugging you
about the second loss that the lakers experienced + a 13-year-old girl (or at least she looked like it) who was pregnant + halo-halo with milk that tasted
like watered-down condensed milk + laughing + sharing + bonding = a realization that summer is still a good thing after all.