samba

there's a rumor going around the office that i'm iglesia ni kristo. it was fueled by the fact that (1) i wear dresses almost every single day of the week (except fridays) and (2) i make a beeline for the door on thursday evenings.

god knows i've told them often enough that i go to tuloy. but, between having to rush out for ag, tuloy, and lingkod three out of five days, i think everyone's confused. plus, i guess it's much easier to simply assume i'm something that i'm not. that's office gossip for you.

{from l to r: ralf, efren, fr. beng, hyna, theo, cathy}

in any case, these are the people who make my thursdays - no matter how tired/busy/lazy/upset/irritated/PMS-y i am - immediately better.

fr. beng, the guy holding the present, is my favorite salesian. he's just so practical, and he loves the kids immensely. i remember approaching him once so that he'd hear my confession and right there and then, he did. it was a bit awkward (i had to bare my soul to a priest i see every week!!!) but it felt good knowing that there's a man of god who's not busy to help you put things right with his big boss. he's also the coolest - he has a repertoire of magic tricks and used to create daily gospel drawings with verses for us to memorize. i'm looking forward to the day that fr. beng performs the sacrament of matrimony for me and ultimate crush, but since that might not happen anytime soon, maybe i should just look forward to him blessing a new car ... which might not happen anytime soon either, haha!

of all the volunteers, i've known kuya ef the longest. while our first tutorial session happened on separate days (i came on a tuesday and he came on a wednesday), we (and another new volunteer) met on a thursday and decided that this was something we all wanted to do on a regular basis. thus began our thursday group. a lot of faces came and went in the intervening years, but this was the group that stayed.

i've experienced highs and lows with this group, and i've visited places near and far. with them, i am nothing but honest and real -- it's so easy to be myself with them, no pretentions, no masks and i'd like to think that in spite of how upsetting my personality could be at times, they still (somehow) love me.

for the longest time we've been trying to figure out an "anniversary" date for us. yesterday, kuya ef ended up preparing a mini-feast for us, and we thought, hey, let's designate july 7 as our anniversary. and, it became even more exciting when we realized that kuya ef and i started volunteering in 2007. 07-07-07 ... it doesn't get any cooler than that.

or it could be. i mean volunteer work + amazing friends + helping kids create a brighter future for themselves ... that's way cooler, right?

so there, i'm not iglesia, i'm catholic. and on thursday, i don't make samba, i go to tuloy, tutor kids, and spend time with the most fabulous friends i know.

no passport required

{finally, the eTicket}

while i would've been thrilled at the possibility of using my passport in its new passport holder and hie off to some fabulous location *ehem*cambodia*ehem*, i'm not. rather in fifteen days, i shall be flying off to the wonderful island of mactan.

cebu has always been that elusive destination for me. i guess the love affair began when i developed a huge crush on this boy from mactan. trips were planned but never made, and at one point, i was overly excited when a friend had a possible work prospect in cebu. that never panned out, and the crush eventually waned but cebu, well, the desire to go to cebu just grew and grew and grew.

last year, cebu and i had a "near meet" -- i got offered a short-term engagement for a supreme court project and i had a choice between cebu and bohol. since i visited bohol the year before, and since it was cebu (B! remember the commercial? or am i way too old?), the obvious choice was the latter. a week later, i was informed that another lawyer had beat me to cebu so would bohol be okay? fine. bohol take two it is.

early this year, i was one of the crazy ones who hounded the cebu pacific website when there was a piso fare sale. and, when texting eight other people with different destination goals and different schedules and different desires while praying to dear god i don't get booted out of the website got to be too much, i made a declaration: cebu it is and whoever wants to go may come. i had two other yesses and so, the cebu trip, for less than P800 for the round trip ticket, was booked.

and then, as i said in this post, tita celia texted, i computed my dwindling budget, and searched online, and P2,060.00 later, i was the proud owner of a roundtrip zest air ticket to, where else, cebu (B! yes, i'm makulit like that). so, come july, i'll be seeing my dream province not once, but twice: the first, to bum around shang mactan as tita celia's mascot, and the second, to cavort around with theo (first time!) and cathy.

i've no doubt it'll be exciting, and fun, and (sad to say) that money will be spent. but it's okay. after all, it's been a dream since forever (okay, fine, since 2007!) and it's CEBU (B!)

best way to start one's monday

i've said it then and i'll say it again: i am a sucker for presents. presents make my day. presents make me happy. presents can turn my foul mood 180 degrees around.

so, while mondays are usually horrible and grumpy and sleep-deprived, my july fourth started out fabulous cause i got this.

{presents are even better when there's a lovely note attached to it!}

{it's from accessorize, a store i learned to love, thanks to the boss}

{it's a passport holder!}

a short background: i regretted not buying the kipling passport holder when i went to vietnam last year, especially when i saw my friend using one as a wallet. when i spied this at the accessorize sale last january/february, it still wasn't on sale. so i made a pledge to buy it when it does. i pointed it out to my boss when we went to robinsons manila and asked her if she could get it for me once it goes on 50% sale. she did, but she said it was a gift. isn't she the best?

you expect bosses to be way smarter than you. you expect them to mentor you, impart know-hows, and watch out for you. you expect them to get mad when you screw up and to praise you when do a great job. but aside from christmas and birthdays, you don't really expect them to shower you with presents. my boss has, and she's not like that cause she's making up for her inadequacies cause she's crazy brilliant and fierce and fabulous.

{polka dots! i love dots!}

{oh, please take me places!}

thanks, boss!!!

defective plumbing

since the health card doctor diagnosed me with endometrial cysts way back in 2002 (has it really been that long?), an ultrasound has been pretty much a way of life for me. thank goodness that soon after i got operated on (to remove cysts, which eventually led to a ruptured ovary, leaving me with one fully-functional ovary) tita celia trained to perform ultrasounds - these days, no matter what my health card states (it's almost always a pre-existing condition, boo!), i can get myself checked out for free.

or, well, at least all it would take is a weekend away from manila + the bus fare to get here.

in any case, my period the past couple of months has been the horrible kind, so while i'm not exactly the pill-popping kind of girl (i actually abhor taking meds), i've resorted to regularly to pain medication. thing is, i just don't get PMS when it's close to my period -- once in a while, i get major cramping, the kind that makes me want to double up and ask the doctor to take out every bit of reproductive organ i have, just to make the pain stop. but, since i know what i have, and i know in my mind that this is part of the entire prognosis, i'm pretty much resigned to things being the way the are. it's not like some miracle will restore my ovary to full health, right?

this morning i had another ultrasound and as my aunt probed and poked around (it sure does feel that way!), she made the tsk!tsk! sound several times and proclaimed that while my ovary is healthy (miracle!), my uterus isn't. turns out i have this.

if the wikipedia article could be trusted, then i could very well say i'm an overachiever (or at least my reproductive system is -- while it rarely occurs together with endometriosis (10%) and in women from 35 to 50, i, the girl who had endometrial cysts + is only 34 years old have been diagnosed with it. it isn't cool, but it's good to know that there are parts of me that aim to be "ahead" of the pack.

still:

1. it's not cancer

2. i'm not dying

3. it'll go away once i enter menopause

and for now, those three things are good enough for me.

the end of an era

i met the pilot at the martian's birthday party in 2004.

at that time, i was dating this person, spike wasn't even a year old, and when the pilot mentioned that he was working for PAL, i mistakenly thought that he was a flight attendant. so sue me, he was that beautiful a specimen of a boy.

of course it didn't hurt that he drove a bmw. (a fact i discovered when i asked my brother if he could point out to me where in our village the pilot lived.)

in any case, he got my number and gave me his and we'd exchanged text messages every so often. for some reason, that semester, i had a lot of airline cases so i'd "innocently" text him something like, "hey, reading an airline case etc. etc." so he'd reply and we'd be texting until one of us had to go (him on a flight, me to sleep)

my best male bud died a day after my birthday. that weekend, i ended up hanging out with the pilot after i was too bummed over the fact that the person i was dating refused to go with me to my best bud's wake. and then the person i was dating ended up physically hurting me (that's a long, sad, icky part of my life that i refuse to think about up until now) so we broke up. a couple of days later, the pilot had to leave for vacation with his family in thailand (where his dad works) and all i had with me was the thought that maybe, just maybe, this beautiful specimen of a boy may one day fancy me.

we exchanged text messages. and i think there was a phone call thrown in. he came back the day of my PRIL exam. i can't remember how i managed to pass that subject, but i do remember how happy i was when the pilot handed me a wad of letters from the time he was in bangkok. old school love letters. that was new. and sweet. and kilig.

we got together on 3 april 2004. he went with me as my date to a good friend's wedding where i had to wear a horrid gown. after the wedding, i changed into a much nicer outfit and he took me to this place with a lovely view of the bay and asked me to be his girlfriend. it would've been stupid to say no, especially since he got the band to sing overjoyed, my favorite stevie wonder song.

everything was fabulous until february of the following year when for some reason, i couldn't count on him to be there. we broke up on easter sunday -- i remember he picked me and my brother up from the bus station and when we got home, we talked and he told me that he couldn't do it anymore. the week after would've been out first year anniversary; our anniversary would've been the same day that pope john paul II died (although it was still 2 april 2005 in rome) ... he took me out for dinner at gloria maris, gave me a tight hug, and brought me home.

the patrick i would meet over the intervening years was every bit the jerk everyone told me he was. he'd be fresh with me, demanding, weird, childish, impulsive. he'd want to come over and he'd steal my mint chocolates. he borrowed money from me -- money which should've gone towards my bar petition -- and never paid me back. he'd call me and ask me to draft letters for him, and he'd give my number to random people who'd call me for legal advice. i was incensed at this person who had the gall to think we'd be friends after he broke my heart.

we lost all contact eventually, and met up again one day when i spied him smoking at the corner of our street. he was every bit the good looking specimen of a boy i fell in love with, but he totally lost whatever charm he had. he was crass ... and he smoked a lot now. so not the boy i loved.

until one day, i had to text him to ask about his airline's free baggage allowance. and he replied and asked what flight i was taking so he could take it. all of a sudden, i was reminded of how it was when we were in our twenties and he'd attach "captain" to his name and "atty." to mine and it would be the representation of our dreams and future. he's now a captain, and i'm now a lawyer and sometimes i can't help but imagine what it would've been like had our paths not gone separate ways. wednesday night he dropped by and instead of his demanding, irritable, hateful self, he actually told me how he was resigning cause his only dream was to fly alongside his dad and that dream would be a reality soon. he also told me that he's already gotten his greencard and the plan was to eventually migrate to the US.

after he left, i realized it was so easy to hate him as an ex. it was so "normal" to put him down because he borrowed money and never paid me back. but wednesday night i saw a glimpse of the boy i fell in love with 7 years ago - the boy who wrote me cards and drove to UP when i was too tired to go home for the weekend; the boy who gave me spam so i'd never go hungry in the dorm, saved up bottles of coins for me so we could talk using the payphone at night (no unlicalls yet!), the boy who called me at work every morning to say how much he loved me. i don't exactly know why that boy turned into a monster in the intervening years, but the boy that visited me wednesday night, well, that was the boy who had my heart for 51 weeks (and probably a couple more of weeks after that, except i didn't have his anymore, haha!) and it's hateful that this time around, i can't even begin to hate him.

the old pat's back ... and he's leaving for good.