IMHO: August 2005

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Three

Wala lang. Actually, I'm in the middle of writing something that's turning overly serious, and I need a breather.
1. Three names you go by: (aside from "Honey") Hon, Honeygirl, Honeybabes
2. Three screen names you've had: Cicerone (it's Italian, look it up), Hani, Maliboohoo
3. Three physical things you like about yourself: Hips, butt (never would have noticed were it not for Grace Mac!), eyes
4. Three physical things you don't like about yourself: bilbil, hair - wish it weren't so kulot-frizzy when it gets humid! Earlobes - what do I do, I have the Medalle Chinese-to-die-for lobes!
5. Three parts of your heritage: Filipino, Mexican, Chinese.
6. Three things that scare you: Scary movies, rats, guns.
7. Three of your every day essentials: Lipstick, earrings, prayer time.
8. Three of your favorite musical artists: Sting, U2, Hillsong Australia.
9. Three of your favorite songs: Melt With You (Modern English), The Last Place (by Bo Sanchez), You (by the Carpenters).
10. Three things you want in a relationship: Harmony (being complementary to each other), a loving friendship, a firm foundation in God.
11. Three lies and truths in no particular order: (LIES) I don't dance, I hate long drives, I like you whoever you may be. (TRUTHS) I graduated from high school at 14; I like ketchup with almost everything, including munggo guisado; I did a stand-up comedy monologue on national TV.
12. If given a million pesos to spend on one thing, I'd...buy a piece of land for He Cares (hey, that's not a "three" question!),
13. Three physical things about the opposite sex that appeal to you: Smile, hands, eyes.
14. Three of your favorite hobbies: Traveling, cooking, talking to good friends.
15. Three things you want to do really badly now: Get out of town, eat lobster, be with God.
16. Three careers you're considering/you've considered: MD, caterer/gourmet chef, Oscar-winning screenplay writer.
17. Three places you want to go on vacation: Spain-Portugal (well, they're beside each other!), back to Paris and Rome, South America.
18. Three kid's (boys) names you like: Joaquin, Antonio, David.
19. Three things you want to do before you die: Find the one, do God's will, master the guitar!
20. Three ways that you are stereotypically a boy (even if I'm not): I don't need to go to the restroom with a horde, I never ask for directions, I have more guy friends I trust and like to hang out with than girl friends (and the girl friends I have are the coolest females on the face of the earth).
21. Three ways that you are stereotypically a girl: I take care of the details, I cry a lot, I can see right through other girls' "tactics."
22. Three celeb crushes: John Cusack, Richard Gere, Hugh Jackman.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Monday

Mondays are my days-off - can't really drive anywhere because of color coding, and I usually take this time to catch up on sleep and prepare for Thursday's talks at a leisurely pace. And do some other stuff that I've neglected over the last week. Today was a particularly "productive" day, even if most of the things I ended up doing are extremely trivial in the eyes of the world (but they had to get done, one way or another). It's almost 6 p.m., and by far I've managed to:

* Make kare-kare that's long been overdue, and a pot of chili on the side (hindi bagay, but I had leftover beans from last week's minestrone so what the heck)
* Give myself a henna/hair spa treatment. No way am I going to pay a parlor P1500 (although for years that's what I always ended up doing) to do something that I can do myself for less than a tenth of that price! And I get the same results, while doing chores that I can't do while being held hostage in a salon (like cooking kare-kare and chili, hehe).
* Fix the doggone bluetooth software program and get the dongle finally working again...and download ring tones and message tones and play around with the neat features of my once-dead phone (features that are totally wasted on tekkie-retards like myself).
* Write this blog entry. Wahoo!

Next on the list - catch up on my DVD backlog, and then jump into bed with Alain, and maybe Pico. Uh, before anyone gets any ideas, scroll down to my previous post. :-P

Friday, August 19, 2005

Happiness...

...is finding out that a balikbayan box arrived containing treasures untold: books, in particular, that I could never find in this country, or, given my present priorities, could never afford. I'm so kilig with happiness! And just when I've been sadly salivating the sale season at National and Powerbooks...God is truly good! He supplies not only my every need, but many of the things I enjoy as well. :-)

The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton
"Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, by only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why."

The Sun After Dark: Flights Into The Foreign by undoubtedly one of the best travel writers *I'm not worthy to hold his book in my hands* Pico Iyer.

A hardcover edition of Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau (not the same as the photo, which is the paperback edition; stocks of the copy I have have been sold out). I actually kissed the book when I unearthed it. Whee!!!

It takes so little to make me happy, but God knows exactly how to do it. :-)

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Tag (Ulan)

Got tagged by dearest Day. Am supposed to be heading out soon, but it's hard to resist answering questions like these:

1. What are the things you enjoy doing when there's no one around you?

Talking to God. When no one else is around I can laugh, cry, worship, dance, pour my heart out, speak my most secret longings, be ME with Him. I get to do it mostly in the privacy of my prayer time when at home, or during the intense one-to-ones of quiet retreats in Kabayan, and, when there's no one in the passenger's seat, while driving. Which brings me to the next thing...

Driving. I like how long distance driving clears my head and unravels the knots of my heartstrings. Although I frequently enjoy the pleasure of driving (or letting someone else do it) for hours on end with a good conversationalist as a traveling partner, sometimes I need to have conversations with myself and my God. Driving alone always allows that. But gas is getting too expensive for such a luxury :-(

Reading. I wish I had more time for it - used to be that I could go through up to four books in a single week!

Writing. Mostly reflections, which more often than not make it to my blogs.

Cooking. There's something very calming about chopping onions. Honestly. And this particular chore brings fulfillment in a matter of an hour or so...makes you feel useful and appreciated (even if I usually don't eat what I cook!).

Taking long walks. Can't say how many times long, kilometric solitary walks have aired out my stuffy soul...by the River Seine in Paris, up and down Via Merulana in Rome, by the Lakeshore in Chicago, through the mountain paths of Sagada and Kabayan. Too bad you can't take long walks in Manila without risking life and limb.

2. What lowers your stress/blood pressure/anxiety level?

All of the above.
Quiet time before the Real Presence of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
Mass.
Mass in Quiapo. And Manaoag.
Prayer.
Saying the rosary.
Reading scripture.
Going back to my "Jerusalem": He Cares.
Listening to Kuya Joe Dean.
Talking to Ate Ardis.
Talking to Kuya Mike (sometimes!).
Just being with Miles, Ney, Rhia, and/or Neil.
Hanging out at the boys' household in Montalban...and the "Boys'" household in Roxas.
A good cry.
Writing long e-mail "letters."
Getting as far away from Manila as possible.
Looking at the ocean.
Knowing that the people I love are OK, especially after they almost kill me with worry.
Knowing that God loves me, and that He is in control.

3. Tag five friends and post it in theirs.

Yikes do I know anyone who hasn't been tagged yet?

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Hollywood Lookalikes

For a quick ego boost, check out Analogia to find out which celebrities you most closely resemble. Here are my results using this photo:

Tadah!

Tori Spelling (?!), Anne Hathaway, and Tara Reid daw o! Pwede na rin. Sabi ni Obet at Jocelyn ng He Cares at kung sino-sino pang duling yata, si Ara Mina daw ('wag ko nang i-link yung site niya, baka kung ano lumabas!). But which male celebrities?

Wahoo, two of my male celebrity major-crusheroos...Richard and Matthew! Si Kevin, pwede na rin (tigas ng mukha, hehe).

I tried another photo, just for the heck of it:

(As you probably may have noticed, I don't have "portrait" photos of myself - new ones anyway. Puros cropped out of the random group photo, hehe)

O di ba. Queen Amidala ang lola. Athena Chu and Eliza Dushku yung dalawang iba.

Sa men:

Oh my goodnessssss! As in John Cusack is my #1 Hollywood crush (#2 is Richard, #3 si Matthew...how weird is that!) Muntik ko na syang i-stalk sa tambayan niyang bar sa Chicago...at hindi na ako nagkaka-crush ha. Si Liam yummy din. Stephen Dork, este, Dorff - never mind...

Muwahaha, kung totoo lang sana. Di bale, pwede na rin si Ara Mina (Pops daw according to some). Mga chikadora! Tigas ng mukha ko, hehe...

Monday, August 08, 2005

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Sungit

The older you get, the more sungit you become? Not sure what the literal translation of "sungit" is in English - maybe cranky - so I don't know if I've become more masungit over time...I think it's less of crankiness and more of becoming intolerant of other people's ridiculous behavior.

Because the older you get, the more discerning you become of how people around you - more particularly the younger folk - behave, and more often than not, you can see beneath the surface of their actions. It's basically nothing more than a (painfully embarassing) recognition of how you yourself used to behave when you were younger - been there, been that. Don't get me wrong...I come in contact with dozens (and sometimes, on a good day, hundreds) of kids and teens almost every day, and I try to love each one for the unique person they are. But then again, many of these young ones are almost totally "authentic": no need (yet) for guiles or manipulative behavior (although some are already showing the propensity for it!). Most of them retain their childlike demeanor, and I hope that they don't grow into the childishness acquired sometime after puberty and young adulthood (which some adults don't grow out of either!). Anyway, I think when you grow older your facial muscles tend to lose interest in forcing a smile whenever you encounter adult "inauthenticity" or people who act, as my friend Robbie puts it so succintly, "T.H.!" And, for unfortunate people like myself who are so transparently reactive, there's no sense in even attempting to be "plastic": you will most certainly know that we are not pleased with your pa-cute.

So I guess the statement should be rephrased: the older you get, the less willing you are to put up with other people's bullsh*t. Pardon the French, but I wouldn't have put it otherwise. Hmmm, now that's sungit.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Procrastination

I have a weird habit that used to (and still does?) drive me insane. Whenever work starts flooding in, I feel like I'm about to drown and start "treading water" desperately, trying to keep my head above the waves...when in fact it's only starting to reach up to my knees. Back in the old days when I used to work for career's sake, or even in school, I absolutely hated it when work was left undone...I had to get rid of an assignment as quickly as I could once it landed in my "in" tray. Otherwise, other stuff would pile up and I'd get stressed and freak out and...well, suffice it to say that except for one occassion (and even then I ended up giving my boss a piece of my mind for being unduly burdensome) that that never really happened. Precisely perhaps being buried under an avalanche of undone work is one of my greatest fears - and it's only now, in retrospect, that I realize that. It probably goes without saying that I was a boss' dream - I always beat deadlines, sometimes even way ahead of time - and so merited the nightmare of being assigned with even more work whenever I thought I could chill out during the hours I'd saved. And that kind of pressure apparently still hounds me to this day, even though I've eschewed a more "regimented" career life in favor of free-lancing. I recently accepted an assignment for the maiden issue of Marie Claire Philippines, and the editor I submitted it to was "amazed" at my observance of deadlines (all I really did was submit on time - I suppose, speaking as an EIC myself, that contributors don't really take established deadlines too seriously). I only flaked (with profuse apologies) when it came time to submit my bio and photo (walastik) for the contributors' profile...the great procrastinator himself (who was supposed to take a photo considered decent enough for me to submit) and I kept putting it off for various reasons until I shamed myself enough to send in a non-set-up shot. Maybe it's the legal training I've had that's kept me on my toes - file your appeal one day later than the reglementary period and you not only face a failed appeal but possibly disbarment for negligence! Call me praning, but that's the way I am.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel like I'm treading water again...but my feet aren't even wet yet. There's so much stuff I'd like to do: write more articles, actually get started with projects that are still on the drawing board, clean my room (heh)...but there are just so many other things that need my immediate attention, like the He Cares 9th anniversary, Montalban duty, and some other domestic distractions. I know that I exaggerate the urgency and burden of the stuff on my To-Do List (because I usually cross off the "done" deeds quickly) and thereby suffer unnecessary stress, but old habits die hard! I admit to procrastinating, yes, that much I do in certain situations (especially if I don't particularly like the assignment), but thankfully I still manage to meet deadlines, even if I make a photo finish. And even then, I've never quite flaked out on anyone, much less on a professional level, and I hope I never turn into a flake either (I don't think I ever will, my ka-praningan would never allow it!).