tulog na dilat

Okay, I think I know what's wrong. A bit.

I have strayed from the master plan. All my plans, dreams back in college were nothing more than dreams, still - until now. Back then, I have this image of what I want to be at this point in my life. But sadly, I'm still nowhere near them.

I wanted to join JVP (Jesuit Volunteers Philippines) - a program which sends new graduates to far-flung areas of the country to help out in terms of education and whatnot, and maybe along with the process, learn something more about themselves. I wanted to become a teacher, or maybe even work for an NGO. I wanted to work for something which I know means something. To really make a dent in this word (yeah, I'm really idealistic). And not just work for money, nor for a job title.

Unfortunately, JVP didn't materialize because my mom would not hear of her unica hija being assigned for a year in some far-flung area of the country (obviously). And the teaching job went bust as well as soon as a few (well, maybe more than a few) discouraging remarks from some job interviews. Ie: "you don't have education units whatsoever, we can't hire you," and "you should just enroll at PNU, since we only hire from that school." Dear, I respect PNU, but you have one weird logic. I know I should have just fought and looked for another teaching job, but it gets disappointing and discouraging after a while, and it came to a point wherein my already below minimum self-esteem has had enough.

So I fell for a pit fall. So new college grads beware. Never accept a job for the sake of just getting some job experience to boost your resume in preparation for your second job. You might get typecasted. Just like yours truly. Which is perhaps the reason why I'm stuck in this job. Which is also perhaps the reason why I'm wasting away typing on my blogs, just whining and bitching about things that could've been.

Aaahh.. life.

just my luck. a 20-something officemate who has the attitude and playfulness of a 6-year old found my blog. i'll never hear the end of this

i just saw my payslip. god. it's enough to make me not want to work.

taking my cue from here

virtual flowers for the Glorietta blast victims

all of us were saying that we could've been the ones who had been there during the blast as most of us consider glorietta our "third" home. but the reality is, for some reason, we weren't. and they were. it's about time we stop with the finger-pointing and conspiracy theories and just respect and offer our thoughts and sympathies to the families and loved ones of those who are affected by this tragedy. may justice be done and the victims rest in peace.

(i'm no photographer. so that explains the picture)

I feel trapped.

There’s no other way of saying it. Last night, I cried without really knowing why. I don’t even know if I have a valid reason for it, but what I do know is that somehow it felt great afterwards. My boyfriend was decent enough to let me do my own thing. Sure he asked me about it, but when I assured him it wasn’t him or anything, he let me be. Bless him for that.

I’ve been thinking about everything a lot for the past few days. It gets harder and harder to peel myself off my bed everyday. I want to do something. Hell, I want to do a lot of things. And I don’t even know what they are. Crazy huh?

Good luck to me finding myself. But for now, it looks like I’m stuck here.

i just heard about this when my mom suddenly called me at the office at the middle of the day just to make sure that i wasn't at glorietta at the time. she shouldn't have bothered considering the state i'm in right now - it's my first day and the cramps make it hardly bearable to do much, let alone sit up. blame it all on the girly cramps and the laziness.

anyway, this is scary: blast hits glorietta mall
contrary to what first came to my mind, there was no foul play involved, the reason for the blast was a "ripping" lpg tank, and glorietta 1 and 2 were the ones affected. news are still patchy as of yet, but the good thing is, it looks like inquirer.net's updating the reports as facts come in, but hopefully no one's badly injured or hurt.

makes you think how vulnerable we all are.

update: (omg) now they're reporting that it's a bomb and not lpg. it's also reported that there are four fatalities and more than 40 people are injured =(

this is interesting: don't make your cell phone your confidante

but wait. what do i do with my phone(s) now..

Labels: technology

i finished reading neil gaiman's stardust last thursday night, just in time to watch the film with my friend, rm at g4 - oha, iwas spoilers =D we met up at glorietta and grabbed some lunch at chef d'angelo before proceeding to the movie. what was notable about the said lunch was:

the dessert!! i think it was german chocolate - bittersweet chocolate ala-cheesecake style, the bottom part is similar to the one you get in an oreo cheesecake, while the middle part is moist chocolate!! hwaha, we were so full after the meal but i couldn't help but make some space for this baby =D

we then watched stardust, and ang galeng galeng. i share rm's sentiments by saying that robert de niro really stole the show on this one. haha, his character was quite a surprise =D while considerable changes have been made in the movie from the novel, they still managed to retain the main plot and even delivered it quite well. the movie also packed in more action, especially at the end, which was somewhat lacking in the novel. but whatevs, i love them both.

after stardust, i move on to:


according to the back cover, henry, the guy and one half of the novel's main characters/couple, "suffers from a rare condition where his genetic clock periodically resets and he finds himself suddenly into his past or future."

intriguing huh? i thought so too when i first saw it at fully booked, and which is why i had to buy it the second time around. i'm still not halfway through, but i have to say that the situation is pretty damn hard for the girl. not to mention that it sucks! which was made quite evident in the very first page:

clare: it's hard being left behind. i wait for henry, not knowing where he is, wondering if he's okay. it's hard to be the one that stays... i wait for henry. he vanishes unwillingly, without warning. i wait for him. each moment that i wait feels like a year, an eternity. each moment is as slow and as transparent as glass. through each moment i can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. why has he gone where i cannot follow?

and here's another one, a conversation between henry and henry at 15 (i think). yep, there are sometimes 2 henrys because one is in that present, while the other time traveled forward/backward to it. so in this one, one of them is explaining to the other another older henry's explanation why they couldn't change some things in the past even if they try to:

he said that he thinks there is only one free will when you are in time, in the present. he says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.

* the time traveler's wife, audrey niffenegger, p.1, p.58

Labels: books, friends, movies

it's freaking slow!! as in.. grr

anyway, i saw this at a friend's blog and i just want to share it here. just scroll to the bottom of the list to find out the meaning for my marks =D

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch 22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife (currently reading it)
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian : a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault's Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility*
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest*
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables*
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (ei ria, it's the book you want from fully booked)
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492 - present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon*
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

~~
i have it but haven't finished it yet
i read and finished it
i haven't read it but saw its movie counterpart (does that count?)*
i finished and loved it

Labels: books

i just got back at the office from a trip to quiapo manila to buy camera/lens filters (whatevs) which will be used for upcoming photo shoots for the calendar. only two of the stores i went to carry the specific filters we need. by the end, i forgot which of the stores i asked and ended up asking some of them twice! and some of the salesladies were already giving me strange looks. i then gave up and went back to the two stores to buy the filters.

afterwards, the driver and i dropped by balikbayan handicrafts at pasay rd to browse for possible gifts suitable for a foreign contact who's leaving to go back to his native land. the proponent specifically asked for crystal figurines depicting different pinoy aspects encased in glass. since i don't have a proper camera, ended up taking these pictures in my camera phone to show them. most of them are actually waaay out of their budget.

Labels: friends, office

but what really happened? the answer is simple: the lovers survive and flourish. as long as there is a single copy, a solitary transcript of my final draft, then my spontaneous, fortuitous sister and her medical prince survive to love.

...

the problem these 59 years has been this: how can a novelist achieve atonement when with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also god? there is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. there is nothing outside her. in her imagination she has set the limits and the terms. no atonement for god, or novelists, even if they are atheists. it was always an impossible task, and that was precisely the point. the attempt was all.

p. 371, Atonement, Ian McEwan

so thus ends atonement. i'll just have to wait until the movie comes out.

and i move on to:


unfortunately, the cover i bought is not the same as the one above, its already the film cover. ohwell. i can't wait for the movie's release this week too =D

hehe. can you just tell that i'm in a novel to film reading spree. and the fact that the new fully booked in high street is just crammed full with books imaginable does not help too. and also the part that we're there almost every end of the week just to get starbucks in the third floor does wonders to my already empty pockets. haay.. but the new smell of books and print is just too good to pass up, and going through their front doors is just like cracking open a new book =D isn't she a beaut?

Labels: books

i'm changing the face of my blog.. haha

~~

this is my nth blog this year. i have decided to make yet another one because my other blogs are currently getting clogged up by friends and officemates. what's so bad about this you say? well, i find that i'm getting a bit restricted in my writing because there's that nagging thought in my mind that someone i know will eventually read it. case in point, i'm currently pissed off with an officemate who's giving me the cold-shoulder for no apparent reason, and i can't rant about it in my other blogs because of my officemates who also lurk there. so this should serve as a warning to people out there who's thinking of pissing me off - haha

but seriously, i want someplace wherein i can air my thoughts without any fear of judgement whatsoever. besides, that's easier to do if you're just an anonymous blogger among tens of thousands of bloggers.

i'll also be cross-posting some non-personal posts from my other blogs as well =D

Labels: blog