Monday Blues

There's something wrong with her, I thought to myself.

She has been talking nonstop to me for the past twenty minutes. I have been staring blankly back at her and I was beginning to wonder whether there was anything in my expression that was egging her to go on with her twaddle.

I hoped that our instructor would arrive shortly so I would be spared from the verbal relay of my seatmate's lifestory to me. She paused for a while and caught her breath. She told me that she was really talkative by nature (no kidding?!) and asked me whether her chitchat was starting to get on my nerves. Of course not, I said.

Aaargh. Damn my courtesy and political correctness.

And so she went right back to it. She started to tell me about how she met a cute guy in a disco club last summer and how the guy asked her to be his girlfriend that same night and without letting a moment pass, she acceded. That's the reason why even if she lives two rides away, she opted to go to enrol at the school because the guy was an engineering major there. Now, here's the clincher. They haven't seen each other again since the night they met. She all said this matter-of-factly.

There's something terribly wrong with her, I thought to myself.

I tuned her out for a while. This was my first week at my new school and I am amazed on how much there is to adjust to. This is probably a good thing so I can practice my flexibility. It pays to be a well-adjusted person. I just hope it pays well in cash. Hehe. =)

Anyway, back to my seatmate. She was saying something about how she was so embarrassed during her class earlier that day because when asked about her own definition of psychology, she couldn't think of anything to say. I nodded and smiled at her sympathetically. She was really friendly and I wanted to be nice to her in return.

When it was clear that our instructor was a no-show, I started to put away my things. Miss Talkative abruptly asked me out of nowhere, "Kinsa'y uyab nimo?"

I literally choked and coughed out loud. How weird of her to ask such a personal question when I barely know her. Besides, the question was unexpected. I told her that I wasn't in a relationship because I am preoccupied with a lot of things and have no time to look for headaches.

Something about the way she gawked at me told me that she didn't get my answer and the intended humor went over her head.

Sigh.

Man, I hope my M-W-F's will not always start out like this.

FIRE!

You wouldn't believe what happened to me last Thursday night. A fire broke out two buildings away from where I live. Some of you might have heard about it. It was also in the national evening news. The church of the Seventh Day Adventists in front of the Capitol building was burned down to the ground.

It was around 10.30 in the evening and I was reading when I noticed that the occupants of the other rooms in my floor were running down the stairs. When I opened my door, the suffocating smell of smoke assailed my nostrils. There was a fire nearby, they said, and that we should all get out. I came back inside my room and put on a second shirt over the one I was already wearing. I desperately looked around to find out what I should bring along. I thought about unplugging my system unit, but thought it was too heavy.

Here comes a natural calamity and all I could think of is my computer and my files in the hard drive. Give me a break. That's years worth of file accumulation.

Anyway, all I ended up bringing was my mobile phone. When we all got to the ground floor, we crowded ourselves together. I noticed that most of the other tenants were in their sleepwear and all carrying their own phones. We were right outside our building's parkway where we saw the blazing fire eating up the old wooden house across the street. A giant bonfire. It was chaotic. Firetrucks, firefighters, police, ambulance, media coverage. A woman even fainted from shock.

A freshman kid named Marga clung to me. She tightly held my forearm and kept telling me how scared she was. I just found out that we have been floormates for a couple of weeks now. That night was the first time I saw her. She heard me praying under my breath and prayed along with me. My prayer was repetitive and uncohesive. Somewhere along the Our Father's, Hail Mary's, and Glory Be's, I think I might have also recited Grace before Meals. No freaking kidding.

I really didn't know what to do. I felt all alone and I couldn't think of anyone to ask help from. I finally texted my brother and sister about my situation. Which is really stupid because my brother's in Cagayan and my sister's in Manila. I am in Cebu, for crying out loud. Panic has taken over my logic.

My sister called me up and told me to stay where I was because she contacted Jansen and asked him to come over my building and help me out. He arrived a few minutes later and told Marga and I to distance ourselves from the area because it was dangerous to stand so close to the fire where electric posts might fall over. He led us a few meters away and stayed with us until the chaos subsided. Jansen asked me why I didn't call him up directly and my sister from Manila had to be the one to tell him about the fire. Well, I forgot about him. I couldn't think straight at the time. Of all the things I could've brought, all I managed to bring was my phone. No wallet, no valuables, no documents, nothing. How stupid is that?!

Anyway, we were finally allowed to get back into our own rooms at around midnight. Before he left, Jansen told me to text him if anything else happens. We're already like family, he said. Very true.

I didn't get to sleep right away that night. Not only because the electricity was turned off due to the fire, but because I couldn't stop thinking about what happened. What could have happened. How life sometimes gives you these little jolts of reality checks. How blessed I am to be safe. Before I went to bed, with a warily-guarded candlelight, I wrote to God.

Someone asked me whether my entries in this blog actually happen or just made up. They're all true. I guess you could call these entries as candid snapshots of my everyday life. My own personal scrapbook of mundane experiences. I don't know how to explain it, but it validates my existence somehow.

Is there a plumber in the house?

It happened so fast that I'm not really sure how it happened exactly. Maybe it has something to do with my sleep deprivation and fatigue. Maybe. But that theory wouldn't really explain how I managed to knock down my bathroom sink and faucet.

Yes, my dear ladies and gentlemen, I am (dis)pleased to announce that my carelessness has reached monumental levels. I have already graduated from petty crashes and minor damages. I am now experienced in the destruction of plumbing fixtures, as per my demonstration early this morning.

All I know is: I was reaching for the soap. (That's my defense, your honor.) The next thing I knew, the whole sink fell off from its hook on the wall. On its way down, it hit the water valve of the other faucet and knocked the whole thing off from the wall.

So there I was, bleary-eyed from just waking up from not-enough sleep, soap in one hand, trying to process the whole scenario before me. The sink was awkwardly dangling on the wall, supported only by the silver tube thingy (the only thing that didn't come off the wall). The whole faucet handle was on the floor and there was water gushing out from the hole in the wall where it should have been. There was water everywhere! A mini-hydrant geyser right inside my freaking bathroom!

I wish I had a video of myself at that exact moment. (I bet a lot of people who dislike me would want one, too). All I could think of was: HUH?! What the heck happened?!

Now, the slow thought processing may be attributed to tiredness. It has been one looooong weekend from me. Last friday, I had some of my subjects encoded. Saturday noon, I left for Manila with my mom via Superferry. We arrived Sunday morning. We got home in Antipolo early afternoon. I left for the airport early Monday morning. Waited awhile at the PAL Centennial terminal before acquiring a ticket. Left at 3 o'clock. Arrived in Cebu an hour later but there was a downpour at Mactan so I finally got back here at the dorm at 6.30 already. All this time, I didn't have enough rest. When I woke up at 6 am this morning, I was nothing short of a zombie. So, there. I rest my case.

Eventually, I realized that I had to do something other than just stare at the mess. I carefully lifted the sink and hooked it back into the metal fittings on the wall. I picked up the valve and tried the suppress the water flow with it. No use. I went out of my room to ask for help and the good thing was, Alvin, the utility guy was sweeping the dorm corridor. I gave him the jist of the situation. He took a second to look at the indoor waterfalls and said that he'd be right back. I sat down and waited for him to get back, silently hoping that my floor won't get flooded. When Alvin came back, I thought he brought a wrench or a screwdriver or whatever the heck is used for that kind of situation. Instead, he brought a piece of cylindrical wood. It is from a tree branch that he had cut down. Hesitantly, I asked him what it was for. He said he would just plug the gushing hole temporarily until he could call someone to fix it later in the day.

Hnh.

To make a long, stupid story short, I unplugged the hole when I took a bath and when I was done, I plugged it back in. Could any other morning be weirder?

Anyway, I finished my enrollment (finally!) before noon. I went back to the dorm at around 4 pm. When I saw Alvin outside the building, I asked him if my faucet was fixed.

"Ate, hindi pa naayos kasi walang ano... yung ano..." He gestured with his hands.

Steering wheel? headband? Needless to say, I'm not good at the charade of plumbing tools.

"Sige, 'Vin. Bukas na lang." I didn't have the time to wait for the actual name of the missing tool.

"Oo, 'te, paaayos ko na lang bukas."

I can't get over it. Until tomorrow, I have a twig for a faucet.

Transition Period

The past few days, I find myself walking a lot. It's crazy, really. It's like I'm some kind of participant in a walkathon with no finish line. I've been following up my transfer credentials in my old school and I've also been processing my enrollment in my new school. (At this point, let's disregard the whole story on why I'm switching schools. It's a different story altogether. One that involves anger, denial, acceptance, and sudden surging attacks of terroristic tendencies against heartless, inconsiderate, power-tripping college administrators.)

I'm okay. *breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out...* I'm fine.

Anyways.

Lahug and Labangon are not in close proximity. I should know. I've been going back and forth these places as if I'm hopscotching. The jeepney route 12L (Ayala - Labangon) has become my closest friend. I'm considering naming my firstborn Twelve El. I just don't think any of my friends would want to be godparents of a kid named after a transportation route.

The technical institute I'll be attending has a sprawling campus. Lots of walking involved. The departments are located in separate buildings. More walking involved. Its buildings have multiple floors. Even more walking involved.

When I was trying to have my subjects evaluated, I had to go around all the other departments and colleges to have my units signed. My majors subjects are in the College of Computer Studies, naturally. But the minor ones are scattered all around. So there I was, being my usual absentminded self, staring with mouth agape at the room numbers on top of the doors. Thrice, I walked past the department I was looking for. Three freaking times. Gosh, I can be imbecilic at times.

The Math department was in the third floor. The Physics department was in the fourth. Good thing I asked beforehand where both departments were. Can you imagine if I went up all the way to Physics and then went all the way down again, not knowing that I passed Math? The horror! I would've clubbed myself to unconsciousness. I felt like if I had to climb any more steps, I'd reach the stairway to heaven in no time.

It also doesn't help me that I'm such a klutz. There were a couple of times I tried to enter the wrong doors. Particularly in the EDP, I forcefully tried to open and shove the glass door a couple of times before I noticed the people inside who have been trying to get my attention and motioning to me to use the other entrance. Aargh. So embarrassing. I almost considered not going inside.

I also left ALL my papers with the guy who encoded my classes. The stupid thing was, I remembered to come back and get my ballpoint from him, but I left all the important papers I have been processing all week. Blame it on my pen fetish. The guy was nice enough to come down and look for me to hand me my papers. But I don't attribute that incident totally to my klutziness. The people at the room were watching NBA and the encoder and I had to literally yell to each other to hear ourselves amidst the boisterous cheers and loud conversations.

Now, the guy to girl ratio of the school, as I roughly estimated, is 5:1. It's a man's world. Which is understandable, as most students there are either engineering or architecture majors. My friend Sweet Honesty (yep, that's her real name) is an ECE major and she was once enrolled in a class where out of 40 students, she was the only girl. If I was one of those "so-many-boys-so-little-time" kinda person, I'd be delighted. But, I'm not.

More likely, "So many chances to make a fool of myself, so little time."

My (Sister's) Bestfriend's Wedding

Meet Jansen. He and my elder sister Mae have been friends since their college sophomore year. Back then, they bugged me about their research assignments. And when the time came that they were already looking for jobs, they bugged me about their resume contents. Jansen is a staple entity in our lives. He's there when Mae's got problems. And he's also there when he's got problems. And me - I don't hear the end of either of their problems.

Anyway, Jansen's girlfriend got pregnant early this year and so they decided to have a civil wedding. Well, the pregnancy itself is ill-timed, but as a whole, Jansen's ready for marriage. He's turning 25 and he has a stable job.

Now, here's the catch. My sister's in Manila right now. I am the one who's here in Cebu. Therefore, ergo, entonsis: I am supposed to go to Jansen's wedding. I thought about begging off and offering an excuse for not being able to attend but the couple actually dropped by my place to personally invite me and through long distance calls and text messages, my sister adamantly insisted that I go. It isn't that big a deal - if you're not me, that is. The thing is, accepting the invitation means that I have to be in the company of people I don't personally know. It isn't that big a deal - if you're not me, that is.

I don't have much experience with weddings. I've only been to a few. I remember turning down an invitation to be a bride's maid when I was in high school. It was kind of not-nice of me, but there was a frilly gown involved in the whole setup. Enough said.

So anyway, saturday morning, I found myself walking towards the Capitol. My building is just across it. I could look out of one of my building's front windows, and I'd see the imposing facade of the Provincial Capitol. I walked towards the front entrance, forgetting that it was closed on saturdays. Stupid me. So, I walked all the way to the other entrance and entered the rear building. There was a security guard at the entrance.

"Sir, asa diri ang RTC branch four?" I asked him.

"RTC? MTC ni sya na building."

"RTC man ang gi-ingon sa ako."

"Unsa di-ay imo tuyo, 'day?"

"Civil wedding sa ako amigo, Sir."

"Aw, MTC gyud di-ay. Tu-a sa fourth floor and branch four. Isuwat sa imo ngan sa logbook."

I mentally made a note to smack Jansen in the head for mistakenly telling me that it was RTC and not MTC. After writing my name in the log book, I headed up the stairs to the second floor. Up the stairs towards the third floor. When I got there, no more stairs. They don't really think that I should fly towards the fourth floor, do they?

An elderly man walked by and I politely asked him how I could go up the fourth floor. He led me towards a dark passage where a narrow stairway was situated. I thanked the old guy and then hesitantly walked up the steps. I half-expected the boogeyman to come jump out from nowhere and push me off. Eeerie place, that was.

I was waiting alone outside the sala of Judge Tormis ten minutes before the appointed time of 9.30 am. I paced around the corridor and browsed through the schedules of case hearings posted outside the doors. Grave defamation of character. Slight defamation of character. Sum of Money. Unlawful detention. Attempted homicide. And I said to myself, what a wonderful world.

The other guests started to arrive twenty minutes later. The couple and their parents arrived around ten o'clock. We were all ushered in the courtroom. I sat in the backmost bench. The groom's mother came and sat on my right. And the bride's mother sat on my left. Jansen came by and introduced the two women to each other because as I just found out, it was their very, very first meeting. Do you know those slapstick comedies where the funny person gets stuck between two people and finds it hard to excuse himself/herself? Well, I was the funny person in this scene. I tried my best to extricate myself from the beso-beso and the handshakes and the pleasantries and the whole shebang. I transferred seats.

Jansen, sensing that I'd rather be in a dentist chair for a tooth extraction than be in this room full of strangers, sat beside me and chatted awhile. We were both sleepless. He, from his graveyard duty from work, and me from another bout of insomnia. But his eyes were more bloodshot than mine. He introduced me to the guy beside me. It was Jay, his housemate. I nodded at him. Introductions are never my favorite things in life.

The judge finally came at around a quarter before eleven. She called the couple and the rest of us stood nearby. The whole thing was over in ten minutes - just a fraction of the whole time I waited. What irony.

When we came out of the Capitol building, the objective was to hail a couple of taxi cabs for the guests to head towards the reception area at the Cebu Grand Convention Center. Jansen wanted me to be in the same car as himself, but his relatives insisted that he went ahead first so the others can just follow him. Before he left, he told me that I could call up another friend of ours to come to the reception so I wouldn't feel out of place. One by one, the taxis were occupied. I remembered the J.D. Salinger story, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" where Buddy Glass was Seymour's only guest in his wedding and he also had to share a cab with the guests he didn't know. Well, in my case, the couple's relatives crowded themselves in the first cars. Jay and I were the last ones left and we had to wait a few minutes for the next cab to come by.

Finally, we got on one. We rode in silence all the way to grandcon. When the cab pulled over, I took out my wallet and extended my fare. Jay offered to pay it all. No way. I insisted that we should split it. He took my money and said no more of it. Good boy.

Jansen welcomed us and led us to our seats in a round table for twelve. The other people in the table were their aunts and uncles and a few cousins. They just stared at us. As an effect, I took out my cellphone and held it discreetly under the table. I texted my friend Abad to hurry up and get there fast. Jay, who also probably got awkward from the staring we got, stood up and excused himself. The coward never came back. He stayed at a different table. Before the food was served, Abad thankfully came and I got a bit more relaxed. At least I had someone to talk to.

After dessert, we stayed awhile. Abad and I chatted with a five-year-old girl, the daughter of Jansen's landlord. The kid's company was ten times better than all of the other guests' combined. Grown-ups. Ugh.

When the timing was polite enough, we said our goodbyes and congratulations to the newlyweds. Jansen thanked me for coming over. He knew that the whole large-scale socializing is not my thing.

And friends really know you well.

Thinking Not Allowed

I was fifteen - or sixteen - when a doctor told me that I "think too much". He was an opthalmologist and I came by his clinic to have my eyes checked because I had an episode of red-static vision not long before.

I was on my way home from school when my sight went blurry and everything appeared to be speckled like a bad TV reception laced with frequent static images. Only, instead of black and white, they were red and white. Pretty freaky actually. That's why I went to the doctor for some answers.

Clearly, the problem was with my eyes - or so I assumed. The examination showed that my vision was all right. The specialist then told me that the problem was in my thinking too much. He told me that there are times when the brain gets overloaded, it manifests its stress through the vision.

Hnh.

My prescription was to let go of my worries and just relax my thoughts every once in a while. I was then referred to a neurologist. And that really freaked me out more that the static vision did. Because - well, it's my brain we're talking about here. It's the seat of my existence. And just the thought that there MIGHT be something wrong about it disconcerted the hell out of me.

it felt a little bit like there was an implication that I'm crazy. Although, apparently, if the opthalmologist thought that way, he would've referred me to a shrink. For all I know, he wanted to, but was just being diplomatic. I'm not sure. I'm really not.

What I know is this. You don't tell a fifteen year old that she thinks too much. Just be glad at that age, she's really thinking at all. Although, the doctor had a point. Worrying is a bad habit to break.

God, I wish I could turn off the flow of my thoughts like a faucet. All right, time for bed, I have to stop thinking now. Off. Zzzz. It doesn't work that way. This is the reason why I lay awake most nights, seriously considering suing the Sandman of negligence and malpractice.

Fearless. [thinking aloud]

I love dusks. And rain.

It rained hard at dusk today. And there were sporadic thunderclaps. Just like in The Sound of Music when they were singing My Favorite Things. I'm not scared of thunders. I have a friend who is, though. She jumps in fright every time there's thunder. We tease her about it sometimes. But I realize that we shouldn't. There are just things that one is entitled to be fearful of. Fear is a funny thing. It betrays you. It makes you vulnerable and exposes to the world all the things that you value and hold dear. Maybe it's your life. Maybe it's your pride. Maybe it's your wealth. Maybe it's your loved ones. Each one of our fears reflects our inner selves. It's probably better if we keep our fears to ourselves. So that the whole world wouldn't take advantage of us and of the things that paralyzes us or makes us weak.

The world is a funny place. It's chock full of clueless people. Six billion pathetic lives. Six billion dreams. Six billion fears. Six billion prayers. I hope God has voice mail. And a damn good database system. I don't blame Him if He overlooks my prayers. I bet my priority number is 5,999,999,999. And that's cool with me. Because I fear nothing. Nothing I'd admit to, anyway. Besides, everyone knows that the Lord is our shepherd; we shall not fear.

I'm sure God will get right to me soon. How do I know? Because He made it rain at dusk today.

And I love dusks and rain.