remembrances

Generally, it's what we do as a people -- remember. Martial law declaration '72, 38 years hence. People power '86, 24 years hence. People power 2, nine years hence.

And today -- Tropical Storm Ondoy, a year later.

The paper ran a series of Page One stories commemorating the incident starting September 23rd. One story was mine -- it was about school children in Pasig coping with the tragedy one year later through art.

Another runs today in the inside pages -- it's actually a wrap of two Ondoy-focused read-along sessions, but really it's about a young friend of mine's Ondoy experience.

09.22.2010

Love makes you soft. It's the first thing it does. One moment you're steeling yourself against the harshness of the world, ready to face it with little else apart from your own limbs; the next thing you know, you're looking up from a book you're reading and then, there's a girl.

twenty-two forever

Anniversary weekend spent mostly at the 31st Manila International Book Fair at the SMX Convention Center in Mall of Asia scouting for cheap books and walking around this country's second biggest mall, which probably contained about a third of Metro Manila's population on Sunday -- incidentally also the last day of a three-day mall-wide sale.

In summary: It was crazy/fun! National Book Store had fantastic selections on sale today, and the one I'm most excited about is a book about Post-Its and projects (LOL) which cost us P30 ONLY. YEHEY! Lunch was at Yakimix (Japanese buffet for ~P600? YOU GUYS BETTER LINE UP FOR THIS ONE) and dinner was in Yellow Cab and then we had a bit of dessert in between (iskrambooool) and A LOT OF FACETIME WITH PRINTED MATTER. Is all I'm saying. Oh god, so little time, so much to READ. Can we just stay in bed and READ FOREVER? Just a question.

*

Also, if you haven't seen it, this was Andrea's anniversary gift for me: A stop-motion animated short she made with our trusty digicam and Panda:

and i thought i was over this

The girlfriend wouldn't be so thrilled about this, but... damn, ~Loveless. Why so pretty?
P.S. If you have my name on that hoodie, I will likely die.

Anyway. I am feeling so accomplished today -- bank duties, and then some interesting finds. (smirk, secret muna ;)) Hee. I'm in the middle of Elizabeth Berg's "Say When" which I got via the bookswap (thanks Kat!) and then a bit of Collins' The Hunger Games (I'm getting there, you guys, wait for me!) aaaaand BTW I'm STILL ON A HIGH BECAUSE UP WON CDC YESTERDAY! Here, Riki Flo says the future is SO BRIGHT, and well, you know how the rest of it goes, eh?

domain redesign update

That time of the month again -- when I tinker with CSS and everything else. Netvibes' graphic and webdesign feeds are the best, ngl.

[newly revamped domain here]

twenty-something

Lately I've been reading a lot of essays, mostly on NYT, about what it's like being in your mid-twenties at this time and age. One asks what's taking us so long to grow up, while another describes the members of Generation Me as "millennials born between 1982 and 2002" who are "entitled whiners".

Born 1984, I'm turning 26 in December and I guess this is just a sort of mid-life rethinking catching up with me. According to the first NYT article, sociologists define "transition to adulthood" as marked by five milestones: completing school, leaving home, becoming financially independent, marrying and having a child.

Situation check: I was twenty when I graduated from college, and I've been away from home since 16 (at the start of college); have been financially independent for more or less four or five years; have been in a committed, long-term relationship for three years, though by virtue of nonexisting laws, I might never be able to marry the person I want to be with for the rest of my life. We have no plans of having children.

I wonder if we're in the minority or the norm -- these twenty-somethings living away from home to be near the workplace, working eight to nine hours for five days a week and rarely seeing our parents and families outside of weekends or important family celebrations like birthdays or Christmas.

butch

Three years in, or almost, and still I am amused/baffled whenever the question of "roles" comes up in casual conversation with friends old and new -- so, who's the "girl", who's the "guy"? Most times I only laugh; yes, I find it funny, but only because it confuses us, more than anything.