home alone

this is my second attempt at writing this.

with a ctrl+a, and then the del button, i just deleted a five-paragraph long post and decided to start anew.

i'm thinking, where has the wit gone? where is the panache that enabled me to write crazy stuff about my life in the past? where's the girl whose smiles reached her eyes and jumped at a moment's notice.

i guess things, including me, have truly changed.

then again, if my laptop's old and dying already, what am i to expect of me? i have had this for four years now, and my dad had it for a year or so before he gave it to me. it's not exactly a new laptop, in fact, it's pretty old. and i've been blogging long before i got this. so, there. changes are truly afoot, changes are, if i must say so, truly necessary.

last night, after i found out that "the sweetest thing" was showing on hbo (thanks to an FB post by a college friend), i watched it and again was confronted by the fact that why is it that i am sort of the owner of this home and yet i am unable to claim it as my own. what am i waiting for? a husband and kids to turn me into a responsible person? has staying in the room that i've had since i was a freshman in high school stunted my growth to the point that i still leave shoes at varius places in the house? why is it that on lazy days I am still primarily preoccupied with reading books and catching up on sleep, hiding out in my bedroom when i've got an entire home to enjoy.

okay - how did i jump from the sweetest thing to my home issues? there was a scene there where cameron was at her apartment (her apartment!) and she was in the living room enjoying the space. i couldn't say that for myself. you see, my living room is where i've dumber blazers for washing, shoes i've used up for the week, and a couple of stuff i haven't stored away yet.

gah. i am 32 and still living the life of a teen.

my mom has said she's coming home soon for a vacation. hopefully that'll force me to get my act together and prove to her that hey, i AM an adult and the house shows it. until then, i just have to make sure i don't trip as i navigate around the things i've left lying on the floor :)

was it my screwed up hormones or was it just me?

as i sit behind my messy office desk listing down the numerous things i have to finish, i can help but still feel the glow of a job well done. a couple of weeks ago, i did a pleading for this old case that was assigned to me recently and after we submitted said pleading, the office copy came back my way with a very clear "very good" on it written by one of the firm's partners. then yesterday, i read an email from a new client saying i was very well prepared and that they were satisfied with my work. today, the same client sent a text message appearing to be very happy with the opinion i emailed today.

all of a sudden, all the issues i poured out to paz two sundays ago are gone and here i am, content once more with the path that i have taken and the work that i'm doing. i am happy and for some reason, i do not mind knowing that the next couple of weeks will require extra long days if i want to shine like the bright star that i want to become.

a while back a friend noted that i had ceased to be the fun person i was before. and that scared me a lot. how can i not be cheerful, sunshiny, bright, happy and bouncy when these are the very things that i think define me. i cannot NOT be fun, at least to my mind. i cannot be serious and deep, or the type that ponders on things. i am impulsive. i am a whirlwind. i am entropy personified.

so i tried blaming hormones - maybe its just cause of the medicine i'm taking. or stress, cause, really, i've been tired a lot lately. i also wanted to blame lack of sleep although we all know more than anything else i do make sure i get a lot of that.

somewhere between the blaming sessions and today, i realized that happiness doesn't mean being bright, sunshiny, and cheerful all the time. happiness isn't also something that comes from shallow little things that makes one smile from ear to ear. i can be the fun person i was without all the external trappings.

go back to the first paragraph.

i am doing a great job.

i am making my clients happy. (and if they're happy, then so must be my bosses too)

so forget happiness from bouncy shiny happy things. i am an adult, and when one's an adult, happiness comes from doing what ought to be done right and the best way you can. and guess what - that's where i am at right now :)

happy birthday, person i deleted from my life.

a year ago, i celebrated the birthday of a person i christened my best friend after a couple of days of hanging out and getting swimmingly along. two months after that, i was pissed off, mad, and had made the unilateral decision to delete him from my life without any ceremony whatsoever. i was done, i wanted to move on, and there was nothing there that i wanted to go back to anymore. it was a bad decision borne out of impulse and, most likely, loneliness and therefore best chalked up to experience.

early this morning, while watching a movie that turns a woman's heart into jello, a friend reminded me of so-and-so's birthday. i had almost forgotten about it, but apparently the fate's won't let me. and so, now, almost halfway into ex-friend's birthday, i am choosing to remember the good things, the happy moments, and the friendship that was lovingly offered when i needed it the most.

with everyone boasting of countless of "friends" on facebook, one can't but help ask herself really what friendships are made of, and whether, when one realizes her car batteries has died, there'd be someone to pick her up and say it will be okay. there's always the looming question that even with the hundreds of names on my cellphone, there's someone there i could call when i'm too choked up to breathe from crying my heart out. with the ease of getting in touch via YM and skype and facebook chat, would any one of the people i can reach via these messenger-type technology be willing to listen to me as i, for the millionth time, complain about my meager salary?

last night, i had dinner with my college dorm mates - friends i had not seen and barely heard from since i graduated in 1998. when we saw each other, we hugged and said our hi's and talked as if we all just checked out of ilang-ilang yesterday. the dad of one of us passed away before her bar results came out. the baby sister of another is now a freshman in UP manila. and, surprisingly, all of us are lawyers none, although none of us had expressed a desire to be one while we were in college. after a hearty dinner, we made plans to meet regularly, once a month, schedule permitting, and to never let time and distance come between the special bond we shared while we were all still at that stage of figuring life out.

after dinner, i rushed over to another friends how, friends from my present life, and we spent time watching movies on dvd together. all of us were tired, and none of us were in any condition to really spend the night rocking but we were there, enjoying quiet time together, knowing deep in our hearts that times like this are rare to come by.

maybe it's time for an apology to the boy who's celebrating his birthday today. maybe i was wrong for giving up on a friendship with you, after all, you did prove yourself a good friend when i was at a low point. and maybe it's time to acknowledge that friendships do not need technology but require actual time and presence to flourish. maybe it's time to thank new friends who met me when i was the most alone in my life and helped mold me into the strong, fearless, and (semi)confident single woman i now am.

and so, happy birthday, enzo. i'm sorry i can't greet you today cause i've deleted your number from my phone but know that as i go to mass tonight you'll be in my prayers. thanks ate precious and ivy for making time to have dinner last night and for making future plans to make this a regular thing. i am glad to have found you two again. and, to my girls, pazi, jenny, antonette, and shy - i am uber blessed to have you in my life, strong women all, godly, caring, and loving, fun and fearless, and always willing to have that occasional drink with me when i find myself in a horribly screwed up situation all over again.

what now, brown cow?

with my MCLE (mandatory continuing legal education)3/4 done, i can't help but ask myself, what now, brown cow?

you see, here's the drill:

at MCLE i ran across my high school classmate who's now married and working with her husband at the permanent court of arbitration at the hague.

at MCLE i ran across my law school blockmate who's now expecting his first baby with his college girlfriend who's also a lawyer.

at MCLE i ran across my law school crush who, as part of his compensation package, gets to go out on foreign trips yearly where he gets to bring his wife for free.

heck, let's make it more mababaw. at MCLE, i ran across a whole lot of lawyers who have macbook pros.

and there i was, 32 years old, earning significantly less than what i was earning when i was in the government, single, and feeling like there's so much i can do but am limited by where i am and the decisions i've made.

sometimes i question myself, question why am i where i am today. did it begin when i chose education in college? and when i "corrected" that by going to law school, did i screw that one up by not excelling when i should have? and should I have stayed in government service? and when i finally decided to do litigation, did i pick the wrong firm?

so many questions. i feel like i'm chasing after so many things that are running even faster away from me. then i ask myself, is it all about money? will i be happier only if i am given more money? but money can't give me all my dreams on a silver platter.

from the girl who thought she knew what she wanted and where she wanted to go, i've been reduced to a ball of doubt. where's the girl who was so proud to have made it to UP law? where's the girl who managed to pass the bar while working full time? where's the me that i loved so much?

no answers for now. maybe no answers for a while. but i hope there will be eventually. at 32, it's never to late to change things. but i won't be 32 forever. and so, although i seek the answers with caution, i should also remember that there are times when i just have to throw all caution to the wind and jump.

oh sun broadband wireless, you disappoint me so

long before the days of unlimited calls and text messages, i already had a sun cellular line. it was sometime in 2003, and we were at this bazaar and they had a good deal on a sun line. at that time, i was racking up major minutes on my globe bill and thought, my not give this new service a try. and so i did, and since my plan is the ancient plan 250 with 250 worth of text messages and 250 worth of calls a month, i've pretty much stuck with it over the past six years, bad signal, congested networks, and poor loyalty rewards system notwithstanding. so, while i always had another phone (either globe or smart prepaid), my sun was something that has remained with me.

when i decided to cut my PLDT phone line and was choosing amongst the many wireless landline services, i readily opted for the sun wireless landline. i figured, while sun hasn't been stellar, it's been pretty steady. globe's signal hasn't improved in my room, but somehow, sun's signal has improved a bit and so i thought, why not. and, save for the major delay in activating my line, it's been pretty much reliable whenever i've used it.

so, when i finally jumped on the usb-as-internet trend, i didn't hesitate that much in shelling out P1895 for a sun wireless broadband. i thought that with the crappy comments about the globe tattoo service (it's the cheapest by the way) and the congested smart bro network (which has allegedly amazing service nationwide), i thought that the wonderful online comments about sun's wireless service + my relatively nice experience with suncell and suntel phones are enough reasons to get the sun wireless broadband, price notwithstanding.

24 hours of using it ... while i don't exactly want to say it has crappy service - after all i could YM without interruptions - the other stuff i basically use the net for - twitter and facebook - take forever to access. while i can very easily google things, it takes FOREVER to get from the search page to the actual page i want to view. and uploading? well, forget uploading. my computer just stalled.

sometimes, i disconnect and reconnect again to "refresh" my internet connection. but truly, once my 180 free minutes run out, how effective will that be? the first time i tried to connect tonight at around 8 pm, it took almost ten minutes just to open YM ... before it stalled and died.

so it's half past ten now. i've been online intermittently the past two hours and a half. with prepaid rates, that would've cost me 50 bucks already. and so far, i've posted a couple of twitter updates, said hi to a friend in singapore, hunted once mousehount, and written this post which, incidentally, might end up not being posted.

so where's the fabulous, fast, and fantastic sun service that i've read about online? i dunno. right now, i must say, i wasted P1895 and am wishing i just bought shoes instead.

old crushes never die, they just get un-hot with age

when i was in second year law school, i fell in major like with this guy.

he was cool, he was smart, and he wrote poetry. and did i mention he also sang in a band? he was so fabulous in my eyes that my heart dropped when he asked if we could study for this one exam together (i hardly studied, i just oggled). and all the classes we had together? well, i swear my grades benefited big time: i studied like i hadn't studied in my life just so i won't be embarrassed during my recitations.

he graduated ahead of me, passed the bar, and that was that. we weren't exactly friends to begin with, and although i did bump into him once after that, his presence consisted of just random items on my news feed and the occasional comments on my entries. he was, to my mind, someone who has gone to that place where law graduates who have passed the bar go - to serious life and 12-hour days, non-stop hearings and pleadings, and family life.

and so when i bumped into him last friday at the mcle, and he plopped down beside me while muttering, "why the f*** do we have to bother with this stupidity" (or something like that), my first though was, my, my, how un-hot is he now? of course, i ought not to have cast the first stone especially that i wasn't exactly at the prime of fitness, but this was my law school hottie, the stuff that my under-bar dreams were filled of! he is not allowed, in my universe, to deteriorate as much as he did.

the first thing i did was to send out a text message to my friends complaining why, why, why, oh why, has he turned un-cute?

three hours later, i took back everything i texted and thought. because more than the eye candy he was, my law school crush was brain fodder. this was the guy who wrote a song mocking my love for brett michaels as we sat pretending to listen to labor law 2 (sorry, sir!). this was the guy who wrote for the kule and lugged around a compilation of short stories. and, lewd and crass as he was still, these were things that just fed the charming "brusko" guy that he was.

so fine if he wasn't as hot as he was in second year law school when he sauntered into class and into my consciousness? he's still every bit as witty as he was before and i am, i must admit, in major awe of this boy all over again.

p.s. a disclaimer: just a crush, people, just a crush.