sabado nights!

This year's block party was yet another videoke party! We dougie'd, we super bass'd, we party rock'd and even tried to get the other rooms to conga line with us! Hahaha! The photos would probably do it no justice, so here are a couple of photos I nicked from these Facebook albums. Maraming salamat for letting me gak!

(Photos under cuuuut!)

an unsolicited letter to young girls who like girls

This image is from Tumblr, and is originally from here.

Saturday afternoon, overheard in a table full of twelve-year-olds:
Girl 1 to Girl 2: Ano, may crush ka sa girls?


Dear kids,

Here's where I say: It doesn't matter, don't let anyone tell you otherwise -- yes, you can like that girl/that boy/whoever you want.

things i'm glad we didn't have in '01, no.1: twitter

I had a lot of fun doing this. Srsly. Obvsly.

Truth be told, I'm kind of glad we didn't have Twitter when we were younger -- for one thing, it would've clobbered my poor attention span. Secondly, I couldn't imagine the amount of ill-advised Twitpics I would have taken under the influence of various substances. Thirdly, well -- I've said it before and I'd say it again now: the fact that there is no record anywhere makes it all the more special. Like this moment is really just about you and you and you and you and me. You know? :)

Also, also -- man, the amount of drivel I could have subjected all of you to while I was in the middle of SO MUCH TEENAGE HEARTBREAK. Oh, lord. To quote Ice -- I shudder at the thought. :)

Anyway -- this fantasy Twitter thread was fun to do! (Jobert and libraries. OTP! True story! Peace bro!) Also -- check out that TEN YEAR OLD ID PHOTO OF ME. I wonder where my UP ID is. That is the exact same face, I kid you not.

a toast to sept 29th ten years ago

Handwritten, September 2001.

I remember my introduction to gin -- I was sixteen, sitting in a friend's seventeenth birthday. We were in her house (Cleng, this is you) and we were this small group of girls sharing a liter of gin. Sabi nga ni Almi, who was with us that night -- Grabe, ang bata pa natin noon!

Over lunch today we were debating whether The Great Gin Drinking Spree Prior to the Great Kas 2 Field Trip happened on Sept. 28th or 29th, the 29th being Cleng's birthday. To settle it, Almi asked me to check my old blogs. And I really would have -- had I been already blogging at the time. I started blogging in 2002; before that, I'd been greatly into making these really corny and juvenile "class websites" on Netscape Composer, mostly for myself, because at the time I knew very little HTML, and NOBODY WAS ON THE INTERNET, REALLY. No Twitter, no social networks, not even Friendster, which I joined in 2003 and has since been packed up. Geocities, my initial host -- God bless its digital soul. (Though aminin niyo guys, most of us heaved sighs of relief when it went down -- I know I did.)

Anyway -- I finally decided that the Great Gin Drinking Spree was on Sept. 28, 2001, and the Kas Field Trip was on Sept. 29, 2001 -- A SOLID TEN YEARS AGO, GUYS. My first year in college was hands down one of the best and most memorable -- and the fact that it's all in our heads makes it all the more special: only a handful of photos and ZERO SOCIAL NETWORK UPDATES plus NO TWEETS AT ALL.

Which brings me to: I wonder how my social network feeds would have looked like had all these things existed when we were at our craziest. Oooh. A reimagining, anyone? :)

ghost month

So as we all know, August is Ghost Month.

I'm not a stringent believer of superstitions (though I often take the 'wala namang mawawala kung susundin'-route) neither am I an ardent believer of ghosts.

What I do believe in, however, are hauntings.

Aside: I was so certain I had written something about this, sometime around 2006; I was looking for it in the dotcom and couldn't find it there. Apparently, it's in my [now locked-down] LiveJournal. Dated 2nd November 2006, it goes:

alone again on an october night -- nights like this, i could not sleep. i am kept awake by sounds of footsteps treading my worn carpet with a familiar, calculated pace.

i get up to take a look. as expected, there's no one there.

there's a haunting i fear more than i do poltergeists and spirits, and that is the kind that involves a still-living memory. it is a haunting that is defined as hearing voices, and seeing and *feeling* things that are not there.

you are most likely the only haunting i've ever come across. that makes this apartment the most haunted place i have ever been in.

i heave a sigh as i head for the kitchen to heat water for my coffee. out of habit, i take out two cups and not one; i put the other one back in upon catching myself.

there are habits that are hard to let go of -- habits a lot like this, formed through several late night trysts, few and far between. years hence, they are still here, embedded, recurring every now and then. especially on nights as haunted as this.

(a faint but familiar laugh, a swish of a pale blue sundress in the corner of my eye, a knock on the door, the feel of coldwarm hands.)

there are ghosts in this room, and they're all you.

Oh dear young self -- please use proper caps. HAHA. (Though that ending is too true. To a degree, I'm still looking for this girl who used to write like this -- have you seen her? What, she's on indefinite vacation? That. Sucks.)

(More hauntings of same sort under cut)

and at once, i knew

... i was not magnificent.


BON IVER "Holocene" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo

Damn, this Bon Iver video is beautiful.

the mid-month update

Just a few notes on this month -- halfway through August, and I just wanted to grab a few photos off Facebook and put them under cut. Heto na naman ang caption-based blog entry making haha.

dreaming

Andrea and I like to do a lot of things together, but one of the best things we do together is talk, and lately we've been talking about our dreams. If we don't catch each other in the morning (I have been having this horrible habit of oversleeping lately), we usually fill each other in when I come home from work that night.

It usually starts with, Hey, you know what? I had a totally crazy dream last night that I wanted to tell you about this morning, only you didn't wake up.

life roundup, week ending 7.24

Well -- that was an action-packed week, both work-wise and social life-wise.

In summary: simultaneous reading sessions on National Children's Book Day on Tuesday, the end of so many eras, and an awesome Saturday sports day under cut.

slates

Nicked off Friendster and taken by a camera phone. Thesis moments, 2004, I think.

My sister-slash-bestfriend wrote an absolutely heartwarming note over at her blog, and I've spent the better part of this rainy night trying to come up with a worthy reply.

Oh well, here goes. ♥

after the wreckage

or, alternatively, that post in the aftermath of Edeline's birthday party-slash-housewarming

I may not write a lot about this group of girls I used to see a lot of in college, but we did have a lot of good times together -- considering how we spent most of the Maginhawa years living practically next door to each other, hehe. Looking back at all that, I sometimes wonder if I ever did spend any time actually studying in college, considering the amount of time I spent smoking/getting drunk/hanging out/talking with/etc with all these fantastic people haha. :) Oh man, my lost youth.

Here be a photo of that grand reunion, courtesy of Edz's birthday/housewarming on Sunday:

Warming up Edz's new pad: L-R Pogo, Jaycee, Rida, Edz, Ice, Me, Drea. Thanks to Rex (a.k.a. the new Wikileaks haha) for taking this photo! :)

(More photos, reminiscences under cut!)

the grand jowa reunion

Oh man, what a fine way to spend a lovely Sunday -- picnic-ing with girl friends from college. Here be the girls with whom I spent most of my college years with -- smoking under the CMC skywalk, talking under the streetlamp on the corner of my old boarding house's street, thinking about potential dialogue between inanimate objects, like light bulbs and leaves. IN FILIPINO. Haha.

Here be a photo salvaged off Friendster (LOL) from 2003 or 2004:

Young once: L-R, Julie, Mamu, Melay, Me.
Jesus, in this picture I weighed, like, HALF of what I weigh now.

 And here's a photo nearly a decade later haha:

At Mang Jimmy's, clockwise from bottom left: Mamu, Julie, Me, Melay. Check out those matching blues! :)

(More photos under cut!)

the summer 2011 recap

Dear Universe: You've been too kind.

So. This was how we fared for summer this year:

(Cut for table of contents)

in nasugbu, discreetly

There was a nasty storm over the weekend, but guess what, this outing has been in the works for a month, so we therefore conclude: Rain or shine, the show must go on!

Kayo na ang may jump shot sa gitna ng bagyo! L-R: Me, Andrea, Ice, Almi, Julie, Abi

(Cut for photos of beaches in gloomy weather, and various shenanigans you can do with a pool and a waterproof camera)

stilts redux

Ooooh, the temptation.
Tweaking layout slightly to accommodate bigger photos for the summer.
Needless to say: More gratuitous photos under cut.

six

Ten years hence

(Cut for a random memory)

the holy week report

Working today on a Black Saturday, but am extremely happy to report that the beaches were fine in Batangas these past few days. Ah, the joys of living in a tropical country.

(Cut for photos)

La Luz, Batangas (March 2011)

(Summary: We were in La Luz, Laiya, Batangas on Saturday! There were a lot of beach photos! Some under cut!)

life roundup, week ending 3.4

So... this week: T-minus-24hrs before we hit the first beach for 2011, Sugarfree, and can we please, PLEASE talk about Skins UK season 5? -- under cut.

life roundup, week ending 2.19

Things you didn't already know about this week under cut.