not so random thoughts in between not so lucid intervals

Could it be the rains which started pouring heavily 12 days before December 24 that made this year’s Christmas celebration unexciting?

Why are there fewer ‘explosions’ this year? Could it be that ‘explosives’ have increased in prices, or people have gone totally broke as to not afford even a kawayan for kanyon?

Muslims don’t believe in Christmas like we Christians do, and yet they are the ones that make a killing with their Christmas decors and pyrotechnics!

Why does my friend insist that no matter what the Bible says, it is ALWAYS better to receive than to give?

How could my parents choose for me godparents (two are dead while one is serving time somewhere in Bicutan) who didn’t measure up? (Conversely: what bars me from visiting him in jail this Christmas and bringing him some cigarettes and Belgian Bites?)

I want to send my friends a nice, personalized Christmas cards but can’t, why?

It seems that all I have to do to draft my “2006 New Year’s Resolution” is to cut and paste my “2005 New Year’s Resolution.” I just have to make sure to change the '5' in '2005' to '6.'

Why was blogging invented?

what i received for christmas

Black Hugo boss long sleeves (received in advance)
Floral Ermenegildo Zegna polo ((received in advance)
Maroon Tommy Bahama cardigan (received in advance)
Black Kenneth Cole polo
Lavender Liz Clairborne long sleeves
Clinique for Men stuff (received in advance)
Clinique bag with which to stuff the Clinique stuff (received in advance)
Champagne COACH bag (received in advance)
Humongous Finesse Shampoo (received in advance)
3 pieces Yardley soap (received in advance)
2 pieces Pen Toothbrush (received in advance)
Canon digital camera (received in advance)
Six pieces SM placemats in my favorite color--- cobalt blue
Two rolls of SM Christmas ribbons (cobalt blue and ecru)
Cobalt blue table top item
Personalized Christmas Card
Christmas Letters from my nieces
Five Mercury Drugstore Calendars
Plaque (actually Plate) of Recognition from my office
A car freshener
P20,000 extra bonus from my office
49 Christmas Text Messages

GOD IS GOOD!

Masticating on Armpits (not a poem)

I met up with James for lunch
in my recent trip to Cebu.
Since you have health issues,
he texted, let’s try
Persian Palette, adding
it was at the lower
ground of Mango Square,
near the ‘original’
National Bookstore.

That I’m claustrophobic
and that I felt
I was inside a catacomb I
didn’t tell James. People started
coming in; I could
see it was a pretty popular
place, especially among foreigners.
Vegetarians, James said,
poring over the menu,
not looking up.

He made me
read the menu that
was too Latin, errr Persian,
for me. I let him order.

We talked.
About our jobs;
about the other Dumaguete
fellows; about the next
two weeks of the workshop
I was unfortunate not
to attend; about the real
reason why I cut short
my Dumaguete stint;
about what we’re writing
at present; about his impending
(im)migration to Canada.

Then it came,
the order. There was a spring
roll wrapper with faint
freckles that I was supposed
to dip into an oily sauce before
eating. Wanting
to be sure, I
requested James to do
a demonstration of ‘How To
Eat Something Persian.’

After so much prodding, I
tore a portion of the pallid
wrapper, smudged it
with some sauce and put
it into my mouth.

Armpits,
it felt like
I was eating sweaty
armpits!

Sorry James, I didn’t enjoy
the food, but only
because it was not
up this mental pervert’s
alley. (I had a little
serving of jaundiced
rice and nothing more.)

But for sure the
company, though brief,
was better. And it
mattered.

So much.

ATMs

I don’t know with fellow promdis but ATMs do make me feel paranoid when I go out of town. Things like forgetting my PIN and the machine capturing my card make my heart throb like mad.

Of course I can save myself a lot of unnecessary palpitations by withdrawing enough cash in one single transaction rather than use the machine often. But then I have other fears!

I dread pickpockets so I shun wallets. (Besides I find lopsided derriere brought about by bulging wallets kitschy.) Instead I clasp in my palm a tiny purse into which I stuff my coins and bills that I fold into neat squares.

Ahhh but carrying cash during pre-ATM days was much simpler for a promdi like me. The day before leaving for Cebu where we studied, our mother would give us just enough money to see us through a day of land and a night of sea travel. The rest of the moolah was stashed either under our only sister’s bra (I’m not kidding!) or sewn inside the pocket of our eldest brother’s pantaloons where it was beyond the reach of pickpockets who didn’t have scissors for hands. Other times it was buried in a sack of rice that we carried all the way to Cebu You’re right, the first thing we did upon reaching our boarding house somewhere in Junquera Extension was to empty the sack and dig for cash in a mound of rice. (Let me digress. Dunno but Mama always insisted on sending us rice even if rice was much cheaper in Carbon. Perhaps she believed that eating nothing but homegrown rice would do us a lot of good, never mind if we had to spend a fortune for freight and handling.)

When all my five siblings graduated (I was the youngest), I was left to fend for myself. So I devised ingenious ways to stash my cash.

Flash forward/backward to 1990. It was my first year of employment and first official travel to Manila. I was at Rustan’s Cubao and I took fancy over a pair of oxblood Oleg Cassini shoes. Moments after I asked her for my size, the salesperson took the Oleg Cassini out of the box. From so much excitement, I took off my espadrilles so hastily that it was too late when I realized that bills dripped out of them while others clung to my bare feet like they grew out of my toes.

When she smiled sheepishly, I picked up the bills, trying hard to ignore the sympathetic winks Manuel Roxas, Manuel Quezon and Sergio Osmena gave me.

Maxi to the Max

I took time to watch ‘Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros’ in SM Cebu. We were few but then the multi-awarded film was already on its 3rd week.

“Maxi” was a good flick. As in “Magnifico,” Yamamoto exercised an admirable if rare emotional restraint in her script. Still I wished she didn’t go shattering stereotypes to the max. And I don’t mean Maxi.

i ‘heart’ PAL

I always look forward to taking PAL flights because they never fail to throw me back to my childhood. Like in my recent trip to Manila and all other trips before that, we had a children’s party at 38,000 feet above sea level.

I’m not sure but I think this started when PAL was (partly) privatized and Lucio Tan took over. Back then party bags contained edibles labeled in a language written like cat scratches on our kitchen door. Now they contain, aside from the English alphabets on the label, the following: a pack of Bingo biscuit, a sachet of Happy peanuts and a cup cake. For drinks, I had choices between a mineral water and a juice which, I’d like to think, emanated from the same source only that the other had a pinch of food color in it. Coffee was out of the question for a child like me.

Had I been accepted as flight steward way back in 1993 when I applied (I was offered the position of a ground steward instead. Duh!), I would have donned a clown suit rather than the usual white uniform that has obviously seen better days.

while i was sleeping

I just woke up one morning with my uric acid level bursting through the ceiling. and so this mental pervert, after years of imbibing nothing but toxins, now hobbles. Indeed, uric acid, just like life, begins (troubling you) at 40.

That this is temporary according to his internist is something that the mental pervert dismisses. He should know, after all lunacy and gout are just two of the genetic defects of his lineage. Plus of course the fact that he lives in a place where seafood comes dirt cheap.

Still life goes on for the mental pervert. But already he’s thinking what shade of cane goes well with his skin tone.